All Elite Wrestling Thread (It's Wednesday...you know what that means.)

[Big Boss Man]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

She mustn't have seen Billy Jack Haynes latest videos yet.

[Ocelot]

If Teddy hadn't been such a douchenozzle he'd probably be main eventing and be on the other side of the railing.

That has to hurt a little bit, having to buy a ticket.

[Bandit]

He's been good for a while until these youtube videos where they just can't hire him. Dude is going into stores in his ring gear and cutting promos for people who have no earthly idea who he is. And it's not a Pillman work, it sadly reminds me of Larry Sweeney after he was fired from ROH. I'm not saying I think Teddy is going to kill himself, but he's just unstable like Larry was and not working an angle. He needs help, but I don't think he can get it because he's alienated everyone but Harry and Pillman Jr.

[Bandit]

Hangman needs a better hat. Homie is walking around looking like Richie Sambora in 1988.

[Ocelot]

So I guess Jericho chewed the Lucha Bros' asses for not wrestling like a traditional tag team.

He sounds so grumpy.

[Bandit]

Welp, Meltzer finally buried an AEW show. Twitter should be happy.

[Big Boss Man]

Dave says he liked the matches, just disliked the angles and that they do stuff in the commercials and don't recap it on the show. The Dark Order stuff they should have built up on BTE and AEW Dark. If it got favourable reactions then they could have progressed with it on Dynamite.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

Ugh, he shouldn't have done that.

[Ocelot]

AEW has some great stars, has some great people working there. What they *need* is a mastermind like Vince with an overall mission of constant growth, who can focus on the long game and keep the bullshit to a minimum. I'm not saying they need Vince, but someone with a wealth of experience backstage to be a voice of reason and a guide.

[Bandit]

The guy would be Heyman, but #1 he's wrapped up for 5 years and #2 he's not good this year. Other than that unless there's some older wrestler who has good ideas but never got a chance to book like Jake Roberts or Scott Hall I don't know if they exist. Vince having everyone under his thumb since 2001 ruined anyone rising up. You never got a new Bill Watts or Pat Patterson or Paul Heyman. If the takeover didn't happen maybe Tommy Dreamer or Sean Waltman would have been learning how to do weekly TV all this time.

[Big Boss Man]

I believe I said before AEW needs a guiding hand type figure to put them on the right track. Wrestling wise they are fine, it's just storyline & character development that need to be worked on. Shame Gedo's with New Japan as he'd be my #1 choice.

I thought when AEW was announced we'd be getting a New Japan-esque style "product" in terms of match style and sports type presentation. Ideally they should go that route and keep the comedy and more far fetched angles for BTE & AEW Dark. Things like Dustin/Cody would have fit perfectly in a NJPW realm and that realism aspect is the right way to go.

To be the real alternative they have to be the antithesis of what WWE are doing (outside of NXT). Going back to Cody/Dustin as one example , the story arc could have branched out even further. Where they team up and win the tag belts, Dustin warns Cody about MJF and you could have had Cody falling out with Dustin since he believes that him & MJF are good buds & Dustin is just being jealous. When MJF did turn on Cody you could have had Dustin come out and stand up for his brother. Then you incorporate him in the angle with MJF and Wardlow feuding with Cody.

More real life storylines is what they should be aiming for. Being TV-14 gives them room to have stories which can push the boundaries to some degree in terms of language and using blood to really get angles across. Like with Mox and Kenny they could have made it a Steel Cage or a Dog collar match instead and that would have been much more affective.

Which goes back to the point where they do need someone at the healm. There's no new wrestling mind out there though nowadays since WWE has controlled the biz for so long that no one has ever really competed directly with them. I think it's more so a committee booking approach they have now which is why it's a hodgepodge of different ideas. Really they need a clear vision and direction to what they are aiming for and what they hope to achieve.

If they are all in with Dark Order I would do this. Have them "brainwash" or "infect" the entire company where you've even got Excalibur wearing a Dark Order mask and coming out with their rhetoric on the announce team. Then they grow in strength to such a level that Inner Circle and The Elite have to work together to fight against them. If Marty is coming in, have him be the mastermind to get revenge for leaving him behind.

From there you could have Inner Circle align with Dark Order too to make them even stronger. With a TV-14 framework you could make this really eerie. Even things like having Dark Order "fans" in the audience slowly growing in number so it is like a real cult following. When it seems like the odds are really stacked against The Elite, you make it seem worse for The Elite where you could have Cody lured over to lead them. But the swerve is that he's really still part of the Elite and takes the Dark Order down slowly from the inside by "deprogramming" the members.

Then you could finally "de-infect" AEW by defeating the Dark Order. If they really did this right you could stretch this out for a year or two, possibly even three with the different variables and story arc pathways you can go down. Think of it like a They Live/nWo style hybrid with The Elite in the Roddy Piper role who are trying to put a stop to the Dark Order.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

I think Jarrett did a gimmick for a while where he had his own security force of Tennessee indie guys nobody had heard of help him win matches. But AEW doesn't want that comparison.

[Bandit]

From the new Observer

Most of the show was very good, but the closing last few minutes were worrisome to say the least. I could see this was the tipping point for a lot of people and watching it felt like when I’d watch Nitro and know they were driving away customers.

The unselfish nature of the Vice Presidents has been a real negative when it comes to creating superstars. Yes, they will always remain over to the paying audience, but when WCW was going down the tubes, the dwindling paying audience would go crazy for the stars they paid to see that could no longer sell tickets and draw ratings.

Kenny Omega was pinned in the opener, which, given the storyline, was fine, but I know a lot of people who also have lost interest in him as a top guy because he’s lost too often and doesn’t feel special. But then, he got beat down again in a backstage brawl, and got beat down again in an end of the show brawl. He’s become WCW Jim Duggan, obviously a far better performer, in the sense he’s a charismatic guy who the live audience loves to see and is a star, but is booked in a way that he means nothing for ratings or attendance. Even Eric Bischoff used to tell me that one of the things you learned when studying ratings (and I was doing detailed research in that period) is that no matter how loud a pop Jim Duggan gets live, it means nothing for ratings.

The Young Bucks portrayal is just killing the announcers cred as they keep calling them the best tag team in the world and the fans only see them as guys who lose regularly.

Dave heel turn~!

[Bandit]

They need to let the person in charge of AEW commercials run creative.

[Big Boss Man]

Despite having no matches announced, All Elite Wrestling sold out their next pay-per-view in under an hour Friday.

Revolution, scheduled for Saturday, February 29th at Chicago's WinTrust Arena, will be their first PPV of 2020 and their fourth PPV in their history. While the exact amount of tickets sold wasn't released, capacity for the venue is listed as just over 10,000 for basketball.

Dave Meltzer noted that most tickets were sold out in 15 minutes, partially due to a pre-sale that took place yesterday. He added that the sellout would have been faster than an hour had AEW not released some limited visibility tickets at the 45 minute mark.

The event was scheduled the same weekend as C2E2, a major midwestern U.S. pop culture convention in Chicago geared toward comic book and entertainment fans.

Earlier this month, AEW announced they surpassed the 100,000 mark for tickets sold for events past and present. The Chicago area, and specifically the Sears Centre, has been a relatively frequent stop in the company's young history and even in their pre-AEW days with All In.

Based on recent Dynamites, it appears the direction is AEW World champion Chris Jericho vs. Jon Moxley, and Cody Rhodes vs. MJF with the stipulations to be named on the New Year's Day Dynamite.

Some additional thoughts from Meltzer:

"The sellout comes at a time when actual sellouts in the U.S. are rare. AEW's last sellout was in Philadelphia in October. WWE did sell out for Survivor Series in Chicago but the other three events that weekend did not, nor did AEW's television taping that Wednesday.

What was impressive is the sellout was done with no significant scalper activity which would make it the first major show to sell out without significant scalper activity since May. At this writing, there are only 328 secondary market tickets up. Usually, a show of this type that sells out would have no less than 1600 tickets at this point with average scalper activity and closer to 4000 with major activity."

Source: https://www.f4wonline.com/aew-news/aew- ... our-300006

[Bandit]

Isn't Jericho vs Moxley announced? I could have sworn they use that match in a graphic.

[Big Boss Man]

Not to my knowledge. Mox is #1 contender and they are on the event poster together so it's possible they could go with Mox/Jericho.