BRM Reviews PROGRESS Chapter 78: 24 Hour PROGRESS People (awesome!)

[Big Red Machine]

PROGRESS Chapter 78: 24 Hour PROGRESS People (11/11/2018)- Manchester, UK


“SPEEDBALL” MIKE BAILEY vs. EDDIE DENNIS- 6.75/10
Dennis started things off with a cheap-shot. We should expected no better from him. These two proceeded to have a great opener, with the big story being whether or not Dennis could avoid Speedball’s attempts at his big, high-risk moves. Speedball is one of those guys whose long-term health I really, really worry about. His knee are going to be shot by the time he’s thirty-five.

LANA AUSTIN vs. ISLA DAWN- 5.75/10
I still don’t get this whole “witch” thing with Isla Dawn, but as long as she keeps using an Electric Chair Suplex, I’ll be happy enough with her. That’s such an underutilized move, and I am so happy to see someone using it as a finisher. Also, can we get some sort of “ISLA’S GONNA HEX YOU!” chant going? Please?

CHRIS RIDGEWAY vs. JORDAN DEVLIN- 8/10
An EXCELLENT ten-minute match that got a well-deserved standing ovation.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Paul Robinson came out and cut a promo in which he called Ridgeway a “pretty-boy” who “doesn’t know what it’s like to be a hard man” and said he wanted to fight him. He was very angry and yelled a lot. Meanwhile the crowd called him an “Essex wanker,” so I’m going to guess there is some heat between Essex and Manchester.

ILJA DRAGUNOV vs. DAVID STARR- 7.75/10
These two were having exactly the sort of hard-hitting and ANGRY match you’d expect them to have, when, during a big double-down, Travis Banks made his big return from injury and attacked both guys. While the non-finish was frustrating, they did a good job of making it feel like Banks should be the target of our ire rather than the bookers (this is the sort of thing you can get away with when you don’t do f*ck finishes very often) and we should get several excellent match-ups coming out of this. Starr and Dragunov had something of a respectful confrontation at the end of this, and Starr left Ilja in the ring to soak up the adoration of the crowd.

PROGRESS TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Aussie Open(c) vs. CTK (Chris Brookes & Timothy Thatcher)- 8.25/10
More awesome tag team wrestling from some guys who have been having awesome tag team matches quite a bit this year.

PROGRESS ATLAS TITLE MATCH: Trent Seven(c) vs. Zack Gibson (w/James Drake)- no rating, interesting segment.
They spent A LOT of time talking before this match. It wasn’t bad, but it was WAY too long. Some of this needling included Gibson making fun of Seven for losing to Riddle in six seconds in last year’s Super Strong Style Sixteen tournament. After this exchange of not-so-pleasantries, the bell rang and Seven caught Gibson with a crossbody… and got the pin in five seconds.
Gibson appeared absolutely shattered by this loss, and got into a shoving match with Drake, but they still left together.

PROGRESS WORLD TITLE MATCH: WALTER(c) vs. Mark Haskins (w/Vicky Haskins)- 8.75/10
The video package did a good job of setting up the story of the match by explaining to us the significance of working over Haskin’s neck. WALTER did work over said neck, while Haskins worked over whatever part of WALTER’s body he could. The fans were going NUTS for Haskins, and WALTER played his role wonderfully as well.

Another AWESOME show from PROGRESS, who are pretty quietly having a pretty darn good year. The main event of the next show follows up with Banks vs. Starr, so I’m quite excited for that. But even if you’re not excited for that match, you should definitely make an effort to check this show out.

[cero2k]

Another AWESOME show from PROGRESS, who are pretty quietly having a pretty darn good year.

not for anyone that tried to get into storylines, at least up until Wembley.

[Big Red Machine]

Another AWESOME show from PROGRESS, who are pretty quietly having a pretty darn good year.

not for anyone that tried to get into storylines, at least up until Wembley.

Yes and no. I think they deserve some credit for adjusting well when NJPW pulled Ospreay (looking back, they've made the pieces fit together flawlessly), and most of the build to Wembley was pretty good, which really constitutes the majority of the year. The only weak point since Wembley has been the women's division, and that was what was carrying them, storyline-wise, in the first few months of the year while the world title picture was a bit of a mess with this Banks heel turn/group break-up.

[cero2k]

Yes and no. I think they deserve some credit for adjusting well when NJPW pulled Ospreay (looking back, they've made the pieces fit together flawlessly), and most of the build to Wembley was pretty good, which really constitutes the majority of the year. The only weak point since Wembley has been the women's division, and that was what was carrying them, storyline-wise, in the first few months of the year while the world title picture was a bit of a mess with this Banks heel turn/group break-up.

Ospreay only did like two or three appearances all year to build that match, which (1) it was after a loser leaves the promotion match, and (2) they brought another retired wrestler to take his place, the same wrestler they ALWAYS use to replace Ospreay. Zero credit on that one. Just because it's an old feud doesn't mean it should have taken place, especially since they had been building this big Haskins/Havoc/ Webster group for months which really never blew off anything other than introducing Vicky Haskins to wrestling. Ilja could have fought anyone and we could had finally gotten BSS vs Havoc/Haskins/Webster and at least close that chapter properly.

And the build to Wembley was totally weak, everyone hated it, not only did PROGRESS had a terrible year booking Bank's title reign, but then he lost the title out of nowhere to WALTER, and then they did that dumb qualifier thing for Wembley, like 5 Thunderbastards throughout the year because it's the easy way out. Wembley sold out because they sold tickets a long time advanced and they managed to make some matches that in paper look great, so build aside, people were going to want to be there for the history making. They sold that show like WWE sells WM.
All their titles are super weak right now because every time Dunne comes in, it's "oohhh, the WWE UK title, Oh La Laa". Tag titles have been hot potatoes, Atlas title went from being a big thing, to a nostalgia run, to a comedy wrestler. And yeah, the women's division went down bad, and they're trying to revive it with Impact talent. Actually, since Wembley, PROGRESS has mostly been piggy backing on wXw and other established talent.

PROGRESS in a void is awesome, because the wrestlers are awesome and it doesn't take a genius to give time to them to work, but aside from that, it really became a clusterfuck this year. And no, you can't blame NJPW for pulling Sabre and Ospreay, because they were more or less exhibition guys until SSS16. Smallman and Glenn have to be completely naive to think that you can bend your knee to WWE and still book NJPW to main event your biggest show of the year.

I could go on and on with bad things PROGRESS did this year. Nothing says Punk Rock like selling out and living out of someone else's talent.

[Big Red Machine]

I could go on and on with bad things PROGRESS did this year. Nothing says Punk Rock like selling out and living out of someone else's talent.

I'll get to the rest of the post later when I have time (and you have some compelling points), but this sentence here is one I think is totally unfair. You are speaking as if all of these guys had never been in PROGRESS before WWE came in and dropped them in their laps. But these guys (BSS, Banks, Toni Storm, Jinny, WALTER, etc.) were names in PROGRESS long before they were names in WWE.

[Big Red Machine]

Yes and no. I think they deserve some credit for adjusting well when NJPW pulled Ospreay (looking back, they've made the pieces fit together flawlessly), and most of the build to Wembley was pretty good, which really constitutes the majority of the year. The only weak point since Wembley has been the women's division, and that was what was carrying them, storyline-wise, in the first few months of the year while the world title picture was a bit of a mess with this Banks heel turn/group break-up.

Ospreay only did like two or three appearances all year to build that match, which (1) it was after a loser leaves the promotion match, and (2) they brought another retired wrestler to take his place, the same wrestler they ALWAYS use to replace Ospreay. Zero credit on that one. Just because it's an old feud doesn't mean it should have taken place, especially since they had been building this big Haskins/Havoc/ Webster group for months which really never blew off anything other than introducing Vicky Haskins to wrestling. Ilja could have fought anyone and we could had finally gotten BSS vs Havoc/Haskins/Webster and at least close that chapter properly.

You're not wrong that they shouldn't have brought him back, but at least they did something with the idea that they did (Havoc's comments to Smallman about him favoring Aussies and others over PROGRESS regulars). I'd much prefer that than "well... we just decided to go against the stip" like you'd see most other places.
Yes, they often use Robinson to replace Ospreay, but this time it fits into a story, and was used to set up a real comeback for Robinson, plus on Havoc's side, they've stepped up Drew Parker's role more.
Yes, the ball was dropped on BSS vs. Havoc/Webster/Haskins, but that had nothing to do with Wembley because they clearly intended to blow that off earlier because of the way they broke Webster off.
For the Ilja story to work, he had to face someone who hadn't spent significant time in wXw (remember, the whole idea was CMJ trying to prove that Dunne wasn't good enough to make it in wXw, as opposed to Bate, Seven, Star, WALTER, ZSJ, Thatcher, etc.), and Dunne is the biggest name they had who fit the bill (plus he's an excellent stylistic match-up for Ilja).

And the build to Wembley was totally weak, everyone hated it, not only did PROGRESS had a terrible year booking Bank's title reign, but then he lost the title out of nowhere to WALTER, and then they did that dumb qualifier thing for Wembley, like 5 Thunderbastards throughout the year because it's the easy way out. Wembley sold out because they sold tickets a long time advanced and they managed to make some matches that in paper look great, so build aside, people were going to want to be there for the history making. They sold that show like WWE sells WM.
All their titles are super weak right now because every time Dunne comes in, it's "oohhh, the WWE UK title, Oh La Laa". Tag titles have been hot potatoes, Atlas title went from being a big thing, to a nostalgia run, to a comedy wrestler. And yeah, the women's division went down bad, and they're trying to revive it with Impact talent. Actually, since Wembley, PROGRESS has mostly been piggy backing on wXw and other established talent.

WATLER's win wasn't out of nowhere. They built up a decent chase for him, and established the idea of Banks running away against Bate as well (which was then paid off in Bate vs. WALTER). The belts have been booked pretty well other than the tag titles, and even those haven't been horrific. You're acting like this is 2014-2016 TNA where they're changing the belts at least once every set of tapings.
I thought the "Doug Williams" if I lose it I'll retire" thing worked pretty well. It's not at all fair to call Seven a "comedy wrestler" who shouldn't hold a title (or if you do, you'd have to say that about three quarters of the PWG roster).
Is the talent they've been piggy-backing on wXw established? Yes. But other than Ilja, most of them are already long-established in PROGRESS, too. It's ZSJ or Timothy Thatcher or Toni Storm, not Absolute Andy and Melanie Gray.

PROGRESS in a void is awesome, because the wrestlers are awesome and it doesn't take a genius to give time to them to work, but aside from that, it really became a clusterfuck this year. And no, you can't blame NJPW for pulling Sabre and Ospreay, because they were more or less exhibition guys until SSS16. Smallman and Glenn have to be completely naive to think that you can bend your knee to WWE and still book NJPW to main event your biggest show of the year.

Except NJPW's pulling those guys for that show had nothing to do with WWE. And I sure can blame NJPW for not communication to their wrestlers that "hey, we'd like you on this date, so please don't take any bookings on it." That's just common courtesy to everyone involved.

[cero2k]

You're not wrong that they shouldn't have brought him back, but at least they did something with the idea that they did (Havoc's comments to Smallman about him favoring Aussies and others over PROGRESS regulars). I'd much prefer that than "well... we just decided to go against the stip" like you'd see most other places.
Yes, they often use Robinson to replace Ospreay, but this time it fits into a story, and was used to set up a real comeback for Robinson, plus on Havoc's side, they've stepped up Drew Parker's role more.
Yes, the ball was dropped on BSS vs. Havoc/Webster/Haskins, but that had nothing to do with Wembley because they clearly intended to blow that off earlier because of the way they broke Webster off.
For the Ilja story to work, he had to face someone who hadn't spent significant time in wXw (remember, the whole idea was CMJ trying to prove that Dunne wasn't good enough to make it in wXw, as opposed to Bate, Seven, Star, WALTER, ZSJ, Thatcher, etc.), and Dunne is the biggest name they had who fit the bill (plus he's an excellent stylistic match-up for Ilja).

i'm not saying the stories didn't make sense, i'm saying they were bad, out of the bag stories for Wembley, and the rest of the year kinda didn't matter. The year didn't build up to Wembley, the year did something, and as soon as Wembley came up, they did bunch of other stuff out of nowhere. Making things fit it's the same things you complain about njpw a lo of the times. It doesn't matter if you couldn't do a match one show because one guy got injured, if you're a storyline driven promotion, you simply postpone the match, not completely say oh well, do a handicap and let things go.
Ilja's story could had work with any PROGRESS original, if he's the big invading cocky heel, build up to the dunne match, don't lose your first big match. Why should i care about him now fighting for 2nd place? Then you have matches like Eddie vs Andrews that was draaaaaagged for a year and they made it a number one contender's match for no reason whatsoever.

WATLER's win wasn't out of nowhere. They built up a decent chase for him, and established the idea of Banks running away against Bate as well (which was then paid off in Bate vs. WALTER). The belts have been booked pretty well other than the tag titles, and even those haven't been horrific. You're acting like this is 2014-2016 TNA where they're changing the belts at least once every set of tapings.
I thought the "Doug Williams" if I lose it I'll retire" thing worked pretty well. It's not at all fair to call Seven a "comedy wrestler" who shouldn't hold a title (or if you do, you'd have to say that about three quarters of the PWG roster).
Is the talent they've been piggy-backing on wXw established? Yes. But other than Ilja, most of them are already long-established in PROGRESS, too. It's ZSJ or Timothy Thatcher or Toni Storm, not Absolute Andy and Melanie Gray.

Yeah, WALTER chased Banks on a few shows, but they decided to run this feud/title change after SSS16 that should kinda establish the Wembley main event, and before Wembley. It's the same complain that usually goes into a WM where we have this big things going, but then as soon as WM comes in, we throw everything out the window, put the titles on the big names we want to feature, and fuck the rest. If their plan was for WALTER to reign at Wembley, then have WALTER challenge at Wembley and do Sabre later, or take the title away from Banks months before because his whole reign sucked ass.
Doug William's story didn't need the title, he'd been retiring for several shows before he won the title. And Seven IS the comedy part of BSS, and he wrestles in promotions that take themselves seriously, PWG, doesn't pretend to be this serious promotion. Tag titles kept changing in thunderbastard matches because fuck booking a team, here Flamita and Bandido, wins titles because why not. And we can't really say that the women's title is well booked since there has only been one change, but still, they never really gave us the Laura Di Matteo comeback that everyone wanted, she ended up being just a tool in the Toni vs Jinny feud and then turned heel. They failed to capitalize with Laura, they kinda failed to capitalize with Millie too. And unrelated, but they completely fucked TK Cooper's momentum. Sexy Starr's momentum. Thatcher and Brookes teaming just means they have nothing for them.
I was sure I had seen RISE and Killer Kelly booked, maybe it was co-promoted show.

Except NJPW's pulling those guys for that show had nothing to do with WWE. And I sure can blame NJPW for not communication to their wrestlers that "hey, we'd like you on this date, so please don't take any bookings on it." That's just common courtesy to everyone involved.

NJPW didn't pull them out because of WWE, but it still stands, Smallman and Glenn have to be completely stupid to think you can work for WWE and still try to book NJPW at the top, because sooner or later WWE won't want it. And NJPW pulled them off months away, they didn't pull them until they booked the show, and before you say a good booker has all their shows booked a year in advanced, that is not the case, the show they got pulled off for came later.

Maybe PROGRESS will get better again, but at least 2018 sucked.

[Big Red Machine]

You're not wrong that they shouldn't have brought him back, but at least they did something with the idea that they did (Havoc's comments to Smallman about him favoring Aussies and others over PROGRESS regulars). I'd much prefer that than "well... we just decided to go against the stip" like you'd see most other places.
Yes, they often use Robinson to replace Ospreay, but this time it fits into a story, and was used to set up a real comeback for Robinson, plus on Havoc's side, they've stepped up Drew Parker's role more.
Yes, the ball was dropped on BSS vs. Havoc/Webster/Haskins, but that had nothing to do with Wembley because they clearly intended to blow that off earlier because of the way they broke Webster off.
For the Ilja story to work, he had to face someone who hadn't spent significant time in wXw (remember, the whole idea was CMJ trying to prove that Dunne wasn't good enough to make it in wXw, as opposed to Bate, Seven, Star, WALTER, ZSJ, Thatcher, etc.), and Dunne is the biggest name they had who fit the bill (plus he's an excellent stylistic match-up for Ilja).

i'm not saying the stories didn't make sense, i'm saying they were bad, out of the bag stories for Wembley, and the rest of the year kinda didn't matter. The year didn't build up to Wembley, the year did something, and as soon as Wembley came up, they did bunch of other stuff out of nowhere. Making things fit it's the same things you complain about njpw a lo of the times. It doesn't matter if you couldn't do a match one show because one guy got injured, if you're a storyline driven promotion, you simply postpone the match, not completely say oh well, do a handicap and let things go.
Ilja's story could had work with any PROGRESS original, if he's the big invading cocky heel, build up to the dunne match, don't lose your first big match. Why should i care about him now fighting for 2nd place? Then you have matches like Eddie vs Andrews that was draaaaaagged for a year and they made it a number one contender's match for no reason whatsoever.

In this case, for timing reasons, they couldn't postpone the match. Seven wrestled on every show he was healthy for, and the only one he was healthy for before they needed to do the turn with Haskins and Webster was Chapter 72, when Jimmy Havoc was in Australia. Yes, that whole Webster turn wasn't good. You can (and should) argue that they shouldn't have done it (or at least held off on it until after Wembley) and you can argue that they should have given themselves more wiggle-room in terms of timing by not making the timing of the turn so dependent on the timing of the Thunderbastard, but that's one dropped ball (I think the poor idea of the turn itself is a separate issue, and you are arguing here that not postponing the match was the mistake).

Ilja's opponent had to be a real top guy for CMJ's promo to work. Maybe Tyler Bate could have been a theoretical possibility, but Dunne vs. Ilja is 100% the better match-up, this puts Dunne in a match he can win (assuming WWE wouldn't let him job to outside talent), and Bate vs. WALTER wound up working out better anyway after NJPW pulled Zack because of the whole interplay between Bate's injury and Zack earning the title shot at SSS16 and the whole "what if" thing, plus the theoretical idea that they played into of all three BSS members leaving this year's big show with gold, after they all lost their titles at least year's big show.
Ilja was never an invading heel. He was CMJ's example of a top wXw guy who was supposedly doing to show Dunne up. It was never a wXw vs. PROGRESS thing; it was CMJ besmirching Pete Dunne. And you should care about Ilja because of the extreme amount of heart and determination he showed in his loss. When was the last time someone not in a gimmick match took that level of punishment on ANY PROGRESS show?
Eddie vs. Andrews was made a #1 contendership match so they would have something to climb the ladder and grab. I didn't love it, either, but it's a relatively common thing to just make a huge match a #1 contendership match in a lot of promotions. As for the allegation that it dragged on too long, that's because of Eddie's injury. He was back in the ring on the second PROGRESS show after he returned from injury. I thought they did a great job of keeping it relevant. And that's the sort of match it makes perfect sense to put on your biggest show of the year. If it weren't for Eddie's injury, I suspect it would have been done in June.

The difference between PROGRESS (and EVOLVE, and wXw, and even CHIKARA) and promotions like NJPW and ROH is that when the former drops a ball, it's because they have so many different things in motion that either something (an injury, a signing) screws it up and they're forced to adjust and can't quite make everything work, or it's because they made a miscalculation; they had several possible storyline paths to choose but they picked one that wasn't good. With NJPW and ROH they don't even seen to realize that some of these balls are falling. It's like they meant to grab four balls and but somehow grabbed ten without noticing it and threw them all up in the air and just caught the four balls that they set out to catch while being completely oblivious to the other balls falling around them.
Maybe a better metaphor would be a fireworks display. In my town, you can't set off fireworks without notifying the fire department so they can be on standby in case something goes wrong and you start to burn down a forest, so when we do our Fourth of July fireworks show, the fire department is stationed in all of the probably firework landing zones based off of the calculations for how high they're supposed to go and the wind and all of that other stuff so that if one comes down while it's still hot and lands on someone's house or on a tree or whatever, they're right there to put out the fire.
PROGRESS is like if the local fire department has set up this crazy elaborate display and they have their conrades stationed all over town in the probable landing zones and they shoot the fireworks off. If it all goes off without a hitch then great, but when it doesn't, the reason the fire trucks aren't in the right spot is either because someone guessed where things would fall incorrectly, or because something unpredictable happened (like a huge gust of wind carrying the embers hundreds of yards away from where they were supposed to land.
With ROH and NJPW, they are trying to set off a less complicated fireworks display but somehow shoot off ten times more fireworks than they meant to, and the embers land in trees and fields and on people's houses, and it causes fires all over town. Their coworkers who are at the planned landing sights quickly put out the fires that are in their designated zones... and then everyone just goes home for the night, completely oblivious to all of the other fires they have started, even when calls start coming in.

When I find a booking/storytelling issue in EVOLVE or PROGRESS or wXw (or NXT), and I ask myself "how could I have done this better/done this in a way that makes sense?" it usually takes me a while to think up an answer- if I can find one at all- because the booking is so complex and has so many necessary pieces that need to be in certain places at certain times (including things like "who is booked elsewhere the weekend of which show?"). When I find a booking/storytelling issue in ROH or NJPW, it rarely takes me more than a few minutes to figure out how this could have been done better/in a way that made sense, because the solutions don't require much thought. It's hard to find those answers in EVOLVE/wXw/PROGRESS because so much thought has been put into so many different things. With ROH and NJPW (and WWE and TNA), it's easy to find those answers because so little thought has been put into the logical consequences of the characters' actions.

WATLER's win wasn't out of nowhere. They built up a decent chase for him, and established the idea of Banks running away against Bate as well (which was then paid off in Bate vs. WALTER). The belts have been booked pretty well other than the tag titles, and even those haven't been horrific. You're acting like this is 2014-2016 TNA where they're changing the belts at least once every set of tapings.
I thought the "Doug Williams" if I lose it I'll retire" thing worked pretty well. It's not at all fair to call Seven a "comedy wrestler" who shouldn't hold a title (or if you do, you'd have to say that about three quarters of the PWG roster).
Is the talent they've been piggy-backing on wXw established? Yes. But other than Ilja, most of them are already long-established in PROGRESS, too. It's ZSJ or Timothy Thatcher or Toni Storm, not Absolute Andy and Melanie Gray.

Yeah, WALTER chased Banks on a few shows, but they decided to run this feud/title change after SSS16 that should kinda establish the Wembley main event, and before Wembley. It's the same complain that usually goes into a WM where we have this big things going, but then as soon as WM comes in, we throw everything out the window, put the titles on the big names we want to feature, and fuck the rest. If their plan was for WALTER to reign at Wembley, then have WALTER challenge at Wembley and do Sabre later, or take the title away from Banks months before because his whole reign sucked ass.

I don't think that applies here because the original plan was WALTER vs. Zack (Zack even announced the title shot before he got pulled) and those two had a match together in PROGRESS Mania weekend. Sometimes the plan from the beginning was to change the title at the February PPV to set up your planned Mania main event. I find that to be extremely preferable to "Omega will got to a time-limit draw with the champion in a title match in June, then pin him clean in a non-title match in August... and then then we'll completely ignore all of that and he won't get a title shot for another ten months even though we're doing multiple major shows a month, because... um... uh... um... because that's how the booker wants to do it, okay?!"

And, if I remember correctly, you were loving Banks' run when all of the stuff was going on with Cooper and Brookes. What made you change?

Doug William's story didn't need the title, he'd been retiring for several shows before he won the title. And Seven IS the comedy part of BSS, and he wrestles in promotions that take themselves seriously, PWG, doesn't pretend to be this serious promotion. Tag titles kept changing in thunderbastard matches because fuck booking a team, here Flamita and Bandido, wins titles because why not. And we can't really say that the women's title is well booked since there has only been one change, but still, they never really gave us the Laura Di Matteo comeback that everyone wanted, she ended up being just a tool in the Toni vs Jinny feud and then turned heel. They failed to capitalize with Laura, they kinda failed to capitalize with Millie too. And unrelated, but they completely fucked TK Cooper's momentum. Sexy Starr's momentum. Thatcher and Brookes teaming just means they have nothing for them.

Williams' angle didn't need the title, but doing so 1) made the title more relevant, 2) gave Williams a well-deserved last hurrah, and 3) gave something tangible to the person who actually beat Doug and made him retire.
Seven might be the comedic part of BSS, but there is a far cry between him and Santino. He does nothing worse than you see most guys in PWG do in most places. PWG isn't a serious promotion... except when they want to be and try to heat big heat angles and want people to think their titles and title changes matter.
The tag title booking definitely felt like it was done to get buzz, and it was some hot-shotting to shock the American fans. That being said, it's also entirely possible that they only changed the belts because of Kid Lykos getting injured on the Coast to Coast Tour.
I said before that the women's title booking went down hill at Wembley. Before then it was quite good. It was mostly Toni vs. Jinny at first, yes, but they first established the House of Couture as a thing, then had them screw Toni out of the belt, then built up Millie McKenzie as a challenger and brought Laura back. The mistake was Laura turning heel instead of taking the belt off of Jinny.
They f*cked TK's momentum with the heel turn, yes. Sexy Starr didn't really feel like they had much momentum to me, and while Thatcher and Brookes might have seemed random, they have become the hot sh*t. Also, it does make some sense to do with Brookes' regular partner injured and Thatcher's regular partner as the world champion, setting Thatcher up in a tag team with Brookes sets up some interesting possibilities.

I was sure I had seen RISE and Killer Kelly booked, maybe it was co-promoted show.

RISE only worked the co-promoted tour. Killer Kelly worked the co-promoted tour, plus lost one match to Toni Storm on a regular show (Chapter 73).

Except NJPW's pulling those guys for that show had nothing to do with WWE. And I sure can blame NJPW for not communication to their wrestlers that "hey, we'd like you on this date, so please don't take any bookings on it." That's just common courtesy to everyone involved.

NJPW didn't pull them out because of WWE, but it still stands, Smallman and Glenn have to be completely stupid to think you can work for WWE and still try to book NJPW at the top, because sooner or later WWE won't want it. And NJPW pulled them off months away, they didn't pull them until they booked the show, and before you say a good booker has all their shows booked a year in advanced, that is not the case, the show they got pulled off for came later.

Maybe PROGRESS will get better again, but at least 2018 sucked.

I never said to have everything booked a year in advance. I said you should know where you want to be direction-wise (have a big picture idea of what you want your top acts to be doing) six to nine months out. PROGRESS announced those guys for the show. NJPW only pulled them after NJPW announced that they were doing a show that same day and wanted those guys on their own show. If it was a WWE-related thing then NJPW wouldn't have let their guys go back at all, but they did. NJPW is selfish and doesn't communicate with their friends as well as they should, but they're not petty the way WWE or TNA can be (and the way ROH likely would have grown to be if they hadn't been taught a sobering lesson by the PWG guys).
You can think PROGRESS wasn't as good as last year, but I think it's far from fair to say that it "sucked." Awesome might have been an overstatement, but it has not been bad at all, never mind "sucking."

[cero2k]

In this case, for timing reasons, they couldn't postpone the match. Seven wrestled on every show he was healthy for, and the only one he was healthy for before they needed to do the turn with Haskins and Webster was Chapter 72, when Jimmy Havoc was in Australia. Yes, that whole Webster turn wasn't good. You can (and should) argue that they shouldn't have done it (or at least held off on it until after Wembley) and you can argue that they should have given themselves more wiggle-room in terms of timing by not making the timing of the turn so dependent on the timing of the Thunderbastard, but that's one dropped ball (I think the poor idea of the turn itself is a separate issue, and you are arguing here that not postponing the match was the mistake).

Ilja's opponent had to be a real top guy for CMJ's promo to work. Maybe Tyler Bate could have been a theoretical possibility, but Dunne vs. Ilja is 100% the better match-up, this puts Dunne in a match he can win (assuming WWE wouldn't let him job to outside talent), and Bate vs. WALTER wound up working out better anyway after NJPW pulled Zack because of the whole interplay between Bate's injury and Zack earning the title shot at SSS16 and the whole "what if" thing, plus the theoretical idea that they played into of all three BSS members leaving this year's big show with gold, after they all lost their titles at least year's big show.
Ilja was never an invading heel. He was CMJ's example of a top wXw guy who was supposedly doing to show Dunne up. It was never a wXw vs. PROGRESS thing; it was CMJ besmirching Pete Dunne. And you should care about Ilja because of the extreme amount of heart and determination he showed in his loss. When was the last time someone not in a gimmick match took that level of punishment on ANY PROGRESS show?
Eddie vs. Andrews was made a #1 contendership match so they would have something to climb the ladder and grab. I didn't love it, either, but it's a relatively common thing to just make a huge match a #1 contendership match in a lot of promotions. As for the allegation that it dragged on too long, that's because of Eddie's injury. He was back in the ring on the second PROGRESS show after he returned from injury. I thought they did a great job of keeping it relevant. And that's the sort of match it makes perfect sense to put on your biggest show of the year. If it weren't for Eddie's injury, I suspect it would have been done in June.

The difference between PROGRESS (and EVOLVE, and wXw, and even CHIKARA) and promotions like NJPW and ROH is that when the former drops a ball, it's because they have so many different things in motion that either something (an injury, a signing) screws it up and they're forced to adjust and can't quite make everything work, or it's because they made a miscalculation; they had several possible storyline paths to choose but they picked one that wasn't good. With NJPW and ROH they don't even seen to realize that some of these balls are falling. It's like they meant to grab four balls and but somehow grabbed ten without noticing it and threw them all up in the air and just caught the four balls that they set out to catch while being completely oblivious to the other balls falling around them.
Maybe a better metaphor would be a fireworks display. In my town, you can't set off fireworks without notifying the fire department so they can be on standby in case something goes wrong and you start to burn down a forest, so when we do our Fourth of July fireworks show, the fire department is stationed in all of the probably firework landing zones based off of the calculations for how high they're supposed to go and the wind and all of that other stuff so that if one comes down while it's still hot and lands on someone's house or on a tree or whatever, they're right there to put out the fire.
PROGRESS is like if the local fire department has set up this crazy elaborate display and they have their conrades stationed all over town in the probable landing zones and they shoot the fireworks off. If it all goes off without a hitch then great, but when it doesn't, the reason the fire trucks aren't in the right spot is either because someone guessed where things would fall incorrectly, or because something unpredictable happened (like a huge gust of wind carrying the embers hundreds of yards away from where they were supposed to land.
With ROH and NJPW, they are trying to set off a less complicated fireworks display but somehow shoot off ten times more fireworks than they meant to, and the embers land in trees and fields and on people's houses, and it causes fires all over town. Their coworkers who are at the planned landing sights quickly put out the fires that are in their designated zones... and then everyone just goes home for the night, completely oblivious to all of the other fires they have started, even when calls start coming in.

When I find a booking/storytelling issue in EVOLVE or PROGRESS or wXw (or NXT), and I ask myself "how could I have done this better/done this in a way that makes sense?" it usually takes me a while to think up an answer- if I can find one at all- because the booking is so complex and has so many necessary pieces that need to be in certain places at certain times (including things like "who is booked elsewhere the weekend of which show?"). When I find a booking/storytelling issue in ROH or NJPW, it rarely takes me more than a few minutes to figure out how this could have been done better/in a way that made sense, because the solutions don't require much thought. It's hard to find those answers in EVOLVE/wXw/PROGRESS because so much thought has been put into so many different things. With ROH and NJPW (and WWE and TNA), it's easy to find those answers because so little thought has been put into the logical consequences of the characters' actions.

Timing issues are only a problem when care more about big matches in big shows, and less about telling a story beginning to end. A good booker has their timeline set up a long time in advance, building towards a top show, but a good booker is also capable to adjusting mid-way to make sure that your stories are followed up to the end, not just half ass a match and then go on like nothing happened. A good booker/promoter should also be able to recognize all the potential matches to sell a show. Going back to Ilja, there are many other top guys that could had taken Dunne's place. You can reword CMJ's promo, make it Riddle getting his win back from 16 Carat Gold, ask WWE to borrow Chris Hero.
They wanted their big WWE boys on the main matches, they threw away their year's storylines to do so, everything else was pretty much thrown together last minute. In 2016-17 everything built towards Alexandra Palace, and then instead of building towards Ally Pally to Wembley, stuff happened, then they threw everything out of the window to make an 'epic match ups' show.
Booking convoluted storylines so that an injury or signing makes them really complicated to fix, so that you can't even postpone a match is not good booking. If your fix to an issue is bring back Paul Robinson out of retirement or let's never blow off that feud for timing issues, then you're not that good of a booker. They had more than 10 shows to do it and they didn't.
Maybe i exaggerate that 2018 'sucked', but it surely was worse than 2017 and 2016.

I don't think that applies here because the original plan was WALTER vs. Zack (Zack even announced the title shot before he got pulled) and those two had a match together in PROGRESS Mania weekend. Sometimes the plan from the beginning was to change the title at the February PPV to set up your planned Mania main event. I find that to be extremely preferable to "Omega will got to a time-limit draw with the champion in a title match in June, then pin him clean in a non-title match in August... and then then we'll completely ignore all of that and he won't get a title shot for another ten months even though we're doing multiple major shows a month, because... um... uh... um... because that's how the booker wants to do it, okay?!"

Again, if the plan is WALTER vs Sabre, that's ok, work the WALTER vs Banks feud earlier so that by SSS16, WALTER wins the title and Sabre wins the tourny and we have our match right there. I don't mind who've the chosen to put on top with the title, but I think everything inbetween title changes and timing is just off and boring. It's not like WALTER and Banks were doing much other than taking on all comers anyway.

And, if I remember correctly, you were loving Banks' run when all of the stuff was going on with Cooper and Brookes. What made you change?

It was a combination that my standards were likely starting to run low without me noticing since it was pretty much Banks's first feud of his reign, and the overall idea was great, except it led to nothing, Brookes and Cooper ended up irrelevant at the end. This should had led to either a blood feud or a South Pacific Calamary Trip team to challenge GYV, but by SSS16, both Cooper and Brookes just lost their opener round, got put in the multi-men matches, and where are they now?
PROGRESS has a way of making things seem more exciting in the moment, than they really are. Probably because Glenn screams at everything like if Bill Eaver was actually Jesus. He'd be a perfect fit for WWE commentary.

Williams' angle didn't need the title, but doing so 1) made the title more relevant, 2) gave Williams a well-deserved last hurrah, and 3) gave something tangible to the person who actually beat Doug and made him retire.
Seven might be the comedic part of BSS, but there is a far cry between him and Santino. He does nothing worse than you see most guys in PWG do in most places. PWG isn't a serious promotion... except when they want to be and try to heat big heat angles and want people to think their titles and title changes matter.
The tag title booking definitely felt like it was done to get buzz, and it was some hot-shotting to shock the American fans. That being said, it's also entirely possible that they only changed the belts because of Kid Lykos getting injured on the Coast to Coast Tour.
I said before that the women's title booking went down hill at Wembley. Before then it was quite good. It was mostly Toni vs. Jinny at first, yes, but they first established the House of Couture as a thing, then had them screw Toni out of the belt, then built up Millie McKenzie as a challenger and brought Laura back. The mistake was Laura turning heel instead of taking the belt off of Jinny.
They f*cked TK's momentum with the heel turn, yes. Sexy Starr didn't really feel like they had much momentum to me, and while Thatcher and Brookes might have seemed random, they have become the hot sh*t. Also, it does make some sense to do with Brookes' regular partner injured and Thatcher's regular partner as the world champion, setting Thatcher up in a tag team with Brookes sets up some interesting possibilities.

In no way did William's story make the ATLAS title more relevant, it was coming off WALTER's great reign in which he was more relevant than Banks, if anything, the ATLAS has gone down since WALTER had it.
Seven may not be Santino, but he is comedy, from his entrance to the finish. PWG may have their faults, but that doesn't excuse that Seven is comedy and that PROGRESS pretends to be a more serious promotion. Compare him with whoever you want, the ATLAS title, once held by Rampage Brown, Riddle, and WALTER, is now in a comedy wrestler's hands.
It's entirely possible that Lykos' injury was why the changed the titles, even though CCK has like 17 members by now, but you still had teams they'd been working with like Sexy Starr who are really over in the UK, like Sexsmith is incredibly over, the titles have still been hot potatoing if you compare it to 2017.

NJPW is selfish and doesn't communicate with their friends as well as they should

what exactly didn't they communicate to their friends? The show wasn't on the books until they pulled them

[Big Red Machine]

In this case, for timing reasons, they couldn't postpone the match. Seven wrestled on every show he was healthy for, and the only one he was healthy for before they needed to do the turn with Haskins and Webster was Chapter 72, when Jimmy Havoc was in Australia. Yes, that whole Webster turn wasn't good. You can (and should) argue that they shouldn't have done it (or at least held off on it until after Wembley) and you can argue that they should have given themselves more wiggle-room in terms of timing by not making the timing of the turn so dependent on the timing of the Thunderbastard, but that's one dropped ball (I think the poor idea of the turn itself is a separate issue, and you are arguing here that not postponing the match was the mistake).

Ilja's opponent had to be a real top guy for CMJ's promo to work. Maybe Tyler Bate could have been a theoretical possibility, but Dunne vs. Ilja is 100% the better match-up, this puts Dunne in a match he can win (assuming WWE wouldn't let him job to outside talent), and Bate vs. WALTER wound up working out better anyway after NJPW pulled Zack because of the whole interplay between Bate's injury and Zack earning the title shot at SSS16 and the whole "what if" thing, plus the theoretical idea that they played into of all three BSS members leaving this year's big show with gold, after they all lost their titles at least year's big show.
Ilja was never an invading heel. He was CMJ's example of a top wXw guy who was supposedly doing to show Dunne up. It was never a wXw vs. PROGRESS thing; it was CMJ besmirching Pete Dunne. And you should care about Ilja because of the extreme amount of heart and determination he showed in his loss. When was the last time someone not in a gimmick match took that level of punishment on ANY PROGRESS show?
Eddie vs. Andrews was made a #1 contendership match so they would have something to climb the ladder and grab. I didn't love it, either, but it's a relatively common thing to just make a huge match a #1 contendership match in a lot of promotions. As for the allegation that it dragged on too long, that's because of Eddie's injury. He was back in the ring on the second PROGRESS show after he returned from injury. I thought they did a great job of keeping it relevant. And that's the sort of match it makes perfect sense to put on your biggest show of the year. If it weren't for Eddie's injury, I suspect it would have been done in June.

The difference between PROGRESS (and EVOLVE, and wXw, and even CHIKARA) and promotions like NJPW and ROH is that when the former drops a ball, it's because they have so many different things in motion that either something (an injury, a signing) screws it up and they're forced to adjust and can't quite make everything work, or it's because they made a miscalculation; they had several possible storyline paths to choose but they picked one that wasn't good. With NJPW and ROH they don't even seen to realize that some of these balls are falling. It's like they meant to grab four balls and but somehow grabbed ten without noticing it and threw them all up in the air and just caught the four balls that they set out to catch while being completely oblivious to the other balls falling around them.
Maybe a better metaphor would be a fireworks display. In my town, you can't set off fireworks without notifying the fire department so they can be on standby in case something goes wrong and you start to burn down a forest, so when we do our Fourth of July fireworks show, the fire department is stationed in all of the probably firework landing zones based off of the calculations for how high they're supposed to go and the wind and all of that other stuff so that if one comes down while it's still hot and lands on someone's house or on a tree or whatever, they're right there to put out the fire.
PROGRESS is like if the local fire department has set up this crazy elaborate display and they have their conrades stationed all over town in the probable landing zones and they shoot the fireworks off. If it all goes off without a hitch then great, but when it doesn't, the reason the fire trucks aren't in the right spot is either because someone guessed where things would fall incorrectly, or because something unpredictable happened (like a huge gust of wind carrying the embers hundreds of yards away from where they were supposed to land.
With ROH and NJPW, they are trying to set off a less complicated fireworks display but somehow shoot off ten times more fireworks than they meant to, and the embers land in trees and fields and on people's houses, and it causes fires all over town. Their coworkers who are at the planned landing sights quickly put out the fires that are in their designated zones... and then everyone just goes home for the night, completely oblivious to all of the other fires they have started, even when calls start coming in.

When I find a booking/storytelling issue in EVOLVE or PROGRESS or wXw (or NXT), and I ask myself "how could I have done this better/done this in a way that makes sense?" it usually takes me a while to think up an answer- if I can find one at all- because the booking is so complex and has so many necessary pieces that need to be in certain places at certain times (including things like "who is booked elsewhere the weekend of which show?"). When I find a booking/storytelling issue in ROH or NJPW, it rarely takes me more than a few minutes to figure out how this could have been done better/in a way that made sense, because the solutions don't require much thought. It's hard to find those answers in EVOLVE/wXw/PROGRESS because so much thought has been put into so many different things. With ROH and NJPW (and WWE and TNA), it's easy to find those answers because so little thought has been put into the logical consequences of the characters' actions.

Timing issues are only a problem when care more about big matches in big shows, and less about telling a story beginning to end. A good booker has their timeline set up a long time in advance, building towards a top show, but a good booker is also capable to adjusting mid-way to make sure that your stories are followed up to the end, not just half ass a match and then go on like nothing happened. A good booker/promoter should also be able to recognize all the potential matches to sell a show. Going back to Ilja, there are many other top guys that could had taken Dunne's place. You can reword CMJ's promo, make it Riddle getting his win back from 16 Carat Gold, ask WWE to borrow Chris Hero.
They wanted their big WWE boys on the main matches, they threw away their year's storylines to do so, everything else was pretty much thrown together last minute. In 2016-17 everything built towards Alexandra Palace, and then instead of building towards Ally Pally to Wembley, stuff happened, then they threw everything out of the window to make an 'epic match ups' show.
Booking convoluted storylines so that an injury or signing makes them really complicated to fix, so that you can't even postpone a match is not good booking. If your fix to an issue is bring back Paul Robinson out of retirement or let's never blow off that feud for timing issues, then you're not that good of a booker. They had more than 10 shows to do it and they didn't.

Timing is more of an issue when you care about having big matches on big shows, but it also makes sense to make sure that the show you're trying to sell as your biggest has the biggest chance of being a success. The Ally Pally show sold 2,000 tickets. Wembley sold 4,750.

There is only so much adjusting you can do four months out, and especially when you're using talent with WWE commitments, NJPW commitments, wXw commitments, (who tour more full-time than most non-WWE, major Lucha, or Japanese promotions do), STARDOM commitments, MLW commitments (Havoc missed some shows for these) plus other names who are in high demand on the British indies.

They didn't have "more than ten shows to do it." They had one show, because of the timing of the turn and the Thunderbastard. It's totally valid to say that this is a risk for booking something like a Thunderbastard, or any sort of extended round robin or something like that. I'm not disputing that. But if some key player had gotten injured in the middle of the G1 and thus they couldn't pay off big artsy idea on the final weekend or pay things off at Destruction or KOPW, no one would be complaining and saying Gedo made a mistake by booking such a long, intricate tournament.

And for all we know, the endgame to this was really to set up a three-way Moustache Mountain vs. 198 vs. Havoc & Haskins. Dunne already got individual wins on Webster and Haskins.


Riddle wouldn't have been around for CMJ to cut a promo on or to do any of the build segments they did. And why are you assuming that WWE would just give them Hero?

This claim

They wanted their big WWE boys on the main matches, they threw away their year's storylines to do so, everything else was pretty much thrown together last minute.

Doesn't stand up to the evidence. Remember that the originally-planned top two matches on the card were WALTER vs. Zack and Ospreay vs. Havoc. That's two NJPW guys and two indy guys. No one from WWE. The top four were those two, plus Dunne (WWE) vs. Ilja (wXw) and Andrews (WWE) vs. Dennis (WWE, but this feud was put into motion as a major feud before WWE had any interest in signing Dennis). Anything "thrown together at the last minute" was more because of injuries than anything else. Maybe you could say that Riddle match was, but that was then having Riddle put Haskins over on Riddle's way out, and also was a win to help set Haskins up for his title shot two shows later.

Maybe i exaggerate that 2018 'sucked', but it surely was worse than 2017 and 2016.

I didn't see enough of 2016 to judge, but at least from an in-ring standpoint, I think 2018 has been better than 2017.

I don't think that applies here because the original plan was WALTER vs. Zack (Zack even announced the title shot before he got pulled) and those two had a match together in PROGRESS Mania weekend. Sometimes the plan from the beginning was to change the title at the February PPV to set up your planned Mania main event. I find that to be extremely preferable to "Omega will got to a time-limit draw with the champion in a title match in June, then pin him clean in a non-title match in August... and then then we'll completely ignore all of that and he won't get a title shot for another ten months even though we're doing multiple major shows a month, because... um... uh... um... because that's how the booker wants to do it, okay?!"

Again, if the plan is WALTER vs Sabre, that's ok, work the WALTER vs Banks feud earlier so that by SSS16, WALTER wins the title and Sabre wins the tourny and we have our match right there. I don't mind who've the chosen to put on top with the title, but I think everything inbetween title changes and timing is just off and boring. It's not like WALTER and Banks were doing much other than taking on all comers anyway.

So you'd rather Zack win the tournament in May and the belt just be on ice for five months? I'd rather spend the overlapping time between SSS16 and WALTER's win wondering whether the Wembley title match would be ZSJ vs. WALTER or ZSJ vs. Banks (and, later, if they'd decide to add Havoc into it as well like they teased).

While WALTER was defending the belt against all comers, they at least did their best to make some of those matches meaningful. Mark Andrews got his title match in Chicago because Eddie Dennis got to pick Andrews opponent and booked him against WALTER so WALTER would kick his ass, and Eddie did his best to make sure that Andrews didn't win the title (and the dirty finish now sets Andrews up as a future challenger for the honorable WALTER to offer a rematch to). And the whole thing is more about WALTER taking Banks vow- originally made when Banks was a babyface but then when he turned heel it resulted in him being dishonorable in his title defenses- and restoring the honor to the belt by doing Banks' thing the right way.
Banks' defenses were to set up his heel turn, and in the process of doing that, the result of his defense against Webster was the thing that led to Webster turning heel and joining with Havoc & Haskins.
I'd liken the stuff that was accomplish with Banks' reign to the early part of Dragon's ROH run, where he was doing the "open contracts" thing, where the real purpose of those title defenses weren't so much about the title itself (although Dragon having great matches with everyone was great for the title) so much as it was about the way it set up for/justified/interacted with other elements that Gabe wanted to set in motion. For example, the story behind Corino's title shot was that Cabana- without any allies now that Punk was gone- took the contract for himself and instead gave it to Corino in exchange for Corino coming in to help Cabana in the Homicide feud. It wans't about Corino getting a title shot so much as a plot device to justify Corino's presence while also getting a title match on the show for Danielson to impress people and to buy some time for Gabe to build up the "real" challengers (because Joe, Daniels, and Roddy had all just had shots against Punk, and Cabana, Homicide, and Spanky all had shots against Gibson). Similarly, the Hero defense was to really kick off the CZW feud.
It also served as a catch-all justification for stuff that otherwise might not have had it but made sense to do, like Sabin- who hadn't been in ROH for two years- suddenly getting a title shot so that they could have a hometown guy in the main event of their debut in Detroit, or Lance Storm getting the title shot Mania weekend or bringing Marufuji in for a title shot at Final Battle was also used to test the waters for him to see if he was someone they wanted to keep bringing in for the planned "Samoa Joe doesn't like NOAH" angle.

And, if I remember correctly, you were loving Banks' run when all of the stuff was going on with Cooper and Brookes. What made you change?

It was a combination that my standards were likely starting to run low without me noticing since it was pretty much Banks's first feud of his reign, and the overall idea was great, except it led to nothing, Brookes and Cooper ended up irrelevant at the end. This should had led to either a blood feud or a South Pacific Calamary Trip team to challenge GYV, but by SSS16, both Cooper and Brookes just lost their opener round, got put in the multi-men matches, and where are they now?
PROGRESS has a way of making things seem more exciting in the moment, than they really are. Probably because Glenn screams at everything like if Bill Eaver was actually Jesus. He'd be a perfect fit for WWE commentary.

Brookes suffered from it temporarily, until he started to catch steam with Thatcher again as a tag team, but I think the mistake with Cooper came later. Having him in the Banks' lackey role worked fine. The problem is not knowing what to do with him after Banks got injured )they basically quickly turned him babyface to set him up as a challenger for the ATLAS Title).

Williams' angle didn't need the title, but doing so 1) made the title more relevant, 2) gave Williams a well-deserved last hurrah, and 3) gave something tangible to the person who actually beat Doug and made him retire.
Seven might be the comedic part of BSS, but there is a far cry between him and Santino. He does nothing worse than you see most guys in PWG do in most places. PWG isn't a serious promotion... except when they want to be and try to heat big heat angles and want people to think their titles and title changes matter.
The tag title booking definitely felt like it was done to get buzz, and it was some hot-shotting to shock the American fans. That being said, it's also entirely possible that they only changed the belts because of Kid Lykos getting injured on the Coast to Coast Tour.
I said before that the women's title booking went down hill at Wembley. Before then it was quite good. It was mostly Toni vs. Jinny at first, yes, but they first established the House of Couture as a thing, then had them screw Toni out of the belt, then built up Millie McKenzie as a challenger and brought Laura back. The mistake was Laura turning heel instead of taking the belt off of Jinny.
They f*cked TK's momentum with the heel turn, yes. Sexy Starr didn't really feel like they had much momentum to me, and while Thatcher and Brookes might have seemed random, they have become the hot sh*t. Also, it does make some sense to do with Brookes' regular partner injured and Thatcher's regular partner as the world champion, setting Thatcher up in a tag team with Brookes sets up some interesting possibilities.

In no way did William's story make the ATLAS title more relevant, it was coming off WALTER's great reign in which he was more relevant than Banks, if anything, the ATLAS has gone down since WALTER had it.

The problem was in how WALTER dropped it. It helped the world title but wasn't great for the ATLAS Title. I thought this was a good quick fix.

Seven may not be Santino, but he is comedy, from his entrance to the finish. PWG may have their faults, but that doesn't excuse that Seven is comedy and that PROGRESS pretends to be a more serious promotion. Compare him with whoever you want, the ATLAS title, once held by Rampage Brown, Riddle, and WALTER, is now in a comedy wrestler's hands.
It's entirely possible that Lykos' injury was why the changed the titles, even though CCK has like 17 members by now, but you still had teams they'd been working with like Sexy Starr who are really over in the UK, like Sexsmith is incredibly over, the titles have still been hot potatoing if you compare it to 2017.

Seven is "comedic" but he's not a "comedy wrestler." Or at the very least, he's a guy who can turn it on and off as the role dictates (Cabana, Rhett Titus, Chuck Taylor, Delirious to an extent). He hasn't done anything comedic with the title, so I have no complaints.
I wouldn't put any belts on Sexsmith after the failure that was his title shot against Banks. I've seen Banks have great matches before but have yet to see Sexsmith do so, so Sexsmith is where I'd put the blame. The tag division booking hasn't been as good as last year, yes. But I wouldn't call it "bad" at this point, especially compared to a lot of other promotions right now.

NJPW is selfish and doesn't communicate with their friends as well as they should

what exactly didn't they communicate to their friends? The show wasn't on the books until they pulled them

They didn't pull them until the show was announced. They knew they were doing it beforehand.