BRM Reviews the 8/27/2020 Dynamite (a stark illustration of why they won't succeed)

[Big Red Machine]

Thank G-d it’s starting at the assigned time this week.

Maybe it’s just unfortunate camera angles, but it doesn’t really look like they’re doing as promised and separating people by who they drove to the show with. Either that, or these people all took a bus together, which I guess isn’t impossible.

#1 CONTENDERSHIP GAUNTLET MATCH: Natural Nightmares (w/Allie) vs. Young Bucks vs. Best Friends vs. FTR (w/Tully Blanchard)- 3.5/10
Tony Schiavone mentioned that Brandi would be at ringside for this match, but couldn’t be because Anna Jay choked her out on Saturday. Look… I’m not a medical expert, but usually in pro wrestling, if someone gets choked out, they’re fine by the end of the day. Why has this injured Brandi so badly that she can’t even stand at ringside and give her brother-in-law some moral support? If would have been much better to just say that she’s sitting by Cody’s bedside in the hospital.
Nick hits three straight Northern Lights Suplex and goes for a fourth but Trent is able to counter the fourth? Do you know how goofy that looks? I know this happens all the time with combinations in wrestling, but without the big fire-up, and when it’s the same move being executed a bunch of times in a row, it just makes the move look meaningless.
Also goofy was Best Friends hitting a combination move on whichever Jackson that was which included Chuck’s finisher, but instead of following up on their offense, they went for their stupid f*cking hug. Schiavone defended this stupidity by saying “you’ve got to give the people what they want.” NO, Tony, you don’t. What you do have to do is WIN THE F*CKING WRESTLING MATCH (within the rules, obviously).
This match did have some good parts, too. It’s just a shame they were brought down by the dumb stuff. Speaking of dumb, Adam Page was apparently dumb enough to buy all of FTR’s crap last week, so he came out here and screwed the Young Bucks out of the match. I’m not saying there isn’t a story here, but I don’t think it has been anywhere near fleshed out enough for it to be believable that Page feels secondary to the Bucks at this point. He and Omega have gotten much more focus on TV than they have, they are the champions, and they have already beaten the Bucks for the belts. The time to be able to pull the trigger on this sort of thing has long passed, and they haven’t done anything to rebuild the story to get it to that position again.
The Bucks, for their part, were shockingly understanding that their alcoholic friend screwed them out of a shot at his title. They were having more heated confrontations when Page would cost them matches by accident! This time, Page self-servingly came out and screwed them out of a match on purpose, and they’re restraining themselves? COME ON. Making this even worse was having Le Clown on commentary shouting “HIS WESTERN SHIRT MAKES HIM GUILTY!” and “NEVER TRUST A MAN IN A COWBOY HAT!” because that’s definitely how a main eventer acts while providing commentary, and it’s also definitely the right way to treat what’s supposed to be a big angle.
Jericho is also asking whether Page is a member of the Elite or not, so we’re back to that, apparently.
Wait… there are only four teams in this match? I’m not saying you can’t justify it, but having five ranked teams and only putting the top four in a match without any set number of teams is kind of weird.
FTR jumped the bell on Best Friends. We got some heat on Chuck until we got a spot where Chuck kicked Dax off into Cash and Rick Knox called it a legal tag, so when Chuck rolled Dax up, he refused to count the pin for quite a while… and then he just gave up on enforcing the tag and started to count the pin. What the f*ck was that? Jericho got upset about what he saw as FTR getting screwed, to which Schiavone responded “are you gonna blaming the referee for that?” WELL F*CKING DUH! Who else could you possibly blame? Either the referee screwed up by calling for the tag thus screwed FTR out of a win like Jericho is saying, or the referee screwed up by deciding to throw the rules out the window and counting a pin on someone he knew to not be the legal wrestler! Either way, it’s his fault.
And right after that spot, we go a spot where Tully had to distract the referee so that he wouldn’t see Cash pull Trent off the apron! Are you f*cking kidding me? Are you going to pretend there are rules or not? Make up your mind!
Soon after that, Dax took out Chuck’s knee and made him tap. So yeah. This was a f*cking mess in many ways.

VIDEO OF DARBY ALLIN JUMPING OFF OF A BRIDGE- you know… professional sports teams have rules that prevent people under contract to them from doing crazy sh*t like this. There was a pitcher who was told he couldn’t use the tarp as a slid-n-slide during rain delays due to the chance of injury. When I was in college, some of the players on the football team lived in my dorm. When a couple of the guys in the dorm and I decided to change our weekly football game from two-hand-touch to soft tackle, the football players had to stop playing with us on the off chance that they would get hurt. I’m not saying I support this sort of thing, but in Darby’s case, if I were AEW, I would not want someone under contract to me to be jumping off bridges or doing dangerous things on his skateboard (both in kayfabe and out of it). You all might remember Jeff Hardy breaking his leg in 2017 doing a stunt on his motorbike? Well unless Darby filled that entire ravine with mattresses, my guess is that what Darby was doing was a lot more dangerous than what Jeff tried to do (some sort flip, I think?).

Apparently we’re doing another Casino Battle Royale at this year’s All Out. Yeah… I wouldn’t be doing that if I were them. Annual matches are cool ideas if the match itself is cool. The Casino Battle Royales really weren’t. Also, this is the second time this year we’ve a big mutli-man match for a title shot on a PPV. Repeating the same things over and over again is definitely a fair criticism of AEW, and this absolutely plays into it.

LANCE ARCHER (w/Jake Roberts) vs. SEAN MALUTA- DUD (pointless squash)
I’m giving this a dud using the Ascension principle that a squash that serves no purpose deserves to be a dud. Archer beat Maluta up a bunch, pulled him up at two, then beat him up some more before getting the win. This didn’t tell us anything new about Archer, as we’ve seen him beating up random people backstage for months.
You can claim that it did something because it gave him a win and the records in AEW supposedly matter, but let’s investigate that, shall we?
Archer is now 13-1. That one loss is obviously to Cody, which dropped Archer to 5-1. That was at the end of May. In the THREE MONTHS since then, Archer has been booked against a grant total of ONE person who wasn’t a jobber, and that person was Joey Janela, isn’t even a midcarder. Other than Cody, the only person Archer has even faced who was higher than the bottom of the midcard was Dustin. The idea of these records is that it gives the wins and losses more meaning, but simply being numbers on a sheet doesn’t mean anything if the wrestler doesn’t actually move forward. Why should I think this win for Archer will mean anything more than the five or six wins that proceeded it if none of them have led to anything but him just facing another jobber? He wrestled two jobbers at once on Dark a few weeks ago? So what? He went back down to facing one jobber at a time right after that, so what was the point?
I guess that in theory these records could be a boon if used well (and I haven’t seen anyone in wrestling really do so- even Gabe decided they weren’t worth after twenty shows in EVOLVE when he switched to having a championship belt like a normal promotion), but at this point in AEW they’re more of a bane, as their mere existence helps to point out the plot-hole every time they’re being ignored. When someone starts to rack up some wins in a combat sport, you don’t keep putting them against tomato cans; you book them against better and better opponents! Why is AEW management so incompetent that they can’t do this?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Jake stared to ramble on about the Casino Royale before he was mercifully interrupted by Team Taz. Jake called them “the Flintstones.” Sick burn, bro. They argued over who would win the Casino Battle Royale. Taz completely outshined Jake.
Darby Allin eventually interrupted everyone, skateboarded down to the ring, and hit Starks with a dropkick. They brawled onto the ramp and away through the tunnel. Neither Taz nor Cage seemed to give a sh*t.
That interruption done, we went back to teasing the two big guys fighting… and then cut away, because that’s definitely what usually happens during heated confrontations with no security to be found on a wrestling show.
You teased a confrontation. So what? This was a mess, Darby brawling away with the one guy while his teammate didn’t give a sh*t felt forced, and it feels like most of these guys haven’t really gone anywhere. Cage and Darby were in multi-man match for a title shot at the previous PPV, and now they’re doing the same thing at the next one. Since the last PPV, Archer spent months beating guys up, and now he’s being thrown into a battle royale for a title shot that I’m sure will also feature dorks like Marko Stunt, who haven’t done sh*t to earn a shot.

WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH VIDEO PACKAGE- good
That being said, I probably wouldn’t have had footage of a contract signing right before you’re about to do another one. Also, tell your “legal advisor” that when she serves in an official capacity for your organization, it’s more professional to give your first and last name.

AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH CONTRACT SIGNING- TERRIBLE!
This has to be the first time Zandig’s name has ever been mentioned on a nationally-televised wrestling show, right?
MJF just droned on and on and on and was sooooo f*cking boring. Maybe I could have had the patience for this if this hadn’t been the fourth straight week where he cut a promo droning on and on and on, but he has, so I’m tired of it, and he wasn’t saying anything interesting.
Moxley finally got to talk and cut a promo that actually f*cking put over the stipulation of the match and explained the stakes to the fans. Then he told MJF “nothing I sign matters.” Um… excuse me? Is he threatening to just ignore the stipulation and get DQed to escape with the title? That doesn’t seem like something I want to see? If the hero is going to put a challenge in front of himself, I’d like to see him overcome it, not back out.
Then it got even worse. MJF and his clown lawyer celebrated together, at which point Moxley reveals that he added an extra stipulation into the contract, and apparently both MJF and his lawyer were too dumb to read the contract before signing it.
So what do you think that stipulation was?
Did Moxley add in a stipulation that MJF’s primary finisher is banned, too, so that they’re on even ground?
Did he ask for the match to be in a cage, or perhaps have MJF’s entourage all barred from ringside to prevent them from interfering?
Can MJF no longer have a title shot if he loses?
Does MJF forfeit the right so sue Moxley at any point in the future?

NOPE! The secret stipulation that our hero wanted put into this contract is that MJF will not get his title shot unless next week Moxley gets to have a match against… MJF’s non-wrestler lawyer. Yes, really. “Everyone, tune in next week to see our babyface bully an untrained civilian!” Yeah. That’s a good hook. F*cking morons.

SANTANA & ORTIZ PROMO- snore

EDDIE KINGSTON PROMO- bad
“This isn’t a stable. It’s just me and my wrestler friends working together to help ourselves win championships.” That’s basically what he said.

SONNY KISS, JOEY JANELA, GRIFF GARRISON, & BRIAN PILLMAN JR. vs. LUCHA BROS. & THE BUTCHER & THE BLADE (w/Eddie Kingston)- 2.5/10
If felt like they spent a good forty-five seconds pitching to the picture-in-picture. It was pretty embarrassing. Say what you will about “when Raw rolls on,” but at least Cole says it and then we cut to a f*cking commercial instead of someone telling us that we’re going to go to picture-in-picture and then having all three announcers flail around saying “oh yes, our picture-in-picture is about to start” while ignoring what’s happening in the match.
After the commercial break, they did a bunch of spots. Pentagon Jr. pinned Pillman.

EDDIE KINGSTON PROMO- He says that he and his guys will be in the Casino Battle Royale and that one of them will win. So all of Lance Archer’s wins have gotten him to exactly the same place as both halves of an undercard tag team in Butcher & Blade.

DARK ORDER PROMO- F*CKING HORRENDOUS
They’re so happy that they went out and bought six lawnmowers. F*CKING CLOWNS. They had Brodie Lee squash Cody and put so much effort into making this group seem dangerous just five days ago… and then the next time we see them they come out and here and say “we’re so happy we bought a bunch of lawnmowers?” ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?!
Also, Evil Uno needed help counting past five. Again… we put so much effort into making these guys and their leader look dangerous last week… and now we’ve made them clowns.
Colt Cabana is standing out there with them, so I guess he had no problem with last week’s attack.
Also, there is a casket there. One of their dorks was inside it with a Cody tattoo and Nightmare Family jacket. Uno runs down the Nightmare Family. Meanwhile, the Natural Nightmares just sit on their asses in the back and do nothing.
They finally bring out Brodie Lee (with Anna Jay by his side). Brodie starts high-fiving these dorks, immediately making him one of them.
They all went to the ring so Tony Schiavone could interview Brodie Lee. Didn’t we already do this at the end of last week’s show?
Brodie then shouts about how last December, everyone was laughing at the Dark Order and ridiculing them. Dude… if you don’t want that to happen, DON’T BE GOOFS WHO BUY LAWNMOWERS WHEN THEY WIN CHAMPIONSHIPS AND CAN’T COUNT TO SIX! Do they know how bad this looks? And to have Brodie talk about not being taken seriously because he was booked poorly in WWE? Yeah, in WWE he lost a lot, but at least he wasn’t a f*cking goof!
He yells that he’s not going to be doing any more open challenges. I’m not sure how not giving out title shots like Halloween Candy is supposed to be a heel move, but whatever. Along the same lines, telling Cody he’ll never get the belt back is fine, too, because that means the open challenges will never return.
His dorks chanted “CODY SUCKS!” and “YOU DESERVE IT!” Brodie eventually got annoyed at them and ordered them to shut up. Again… you can’t figure out why people were laughing at the Dark Order before, so you decide to have them act like comedic lackeys and think that will solve the problem?
Brodie Lee introduces Anna Jay as the “Queenslayer.” Instead of whatever she was wearing before with the mask, she’s now dressed to look hot.
One of the goofs went over and grabbed the mic and started to jabber on to Brodie about how excited he was, so Brodie hit him. Good. He deserves it. Your boss already told you to shut up and you start talking now, and rambling on like a fanboy? How dumb are you? And again: The Dark Order is being portrayed as a group full of comedic lackeys. Having Brodie hit them will not make us take Brodie more seriously, and it doesn’t even make him look mean because they’re annoying, but even if did make him look mean there is no gain from it because they have him do all of these other mean things to other people, so all you’re doing is making his group look like goofs!
Brodie sent Schiavone away, and then just kept on rambling until Dustin Rhodes finally got off his ass to come out and fight. And here comes Q.T., too, well behind Dustin. They both get beaten up. Cabana doesn’t seem to want any part of this. I’m sorry, but if he doesn’t know what the Dark Order is about by now, he’s a f*cking moron. Last week they assaulted a man being carried out on a stretcher, then beat up his elderly friend. How much more blatantly evil can you get? Does Colt need them to set kittens on fire while doing the Nazi salute before he leaves?
Scorpio Sky came out to and beat up all of the goons on his own. He faced off against Brodie but Anna Jay grabbed him from behind, spun him around, and slapped him (because it’s not like she’s a wrestler who can throw a punch or something), allowing Brodie to hit him with an enzulariat. Brodie went to leave and started yelling at Uno for some reason. Anna Jay and the still-questioning Cabana left with him.
Matt Cardona, who I had totally forgotten was in the company, then ran out and took Uno out on the stage. Then he, Scorpio Sky, and the Natural Night cleared the ring together, making the Dark Order look even worse because even in their leader’s moment of triumph, they have to get taken out like total geeks for a squad of midcarders.
They regroup on the stage, and Brodie Lee comes out to pose with them as if they have done something. This sh*t right here is why AEW won’t grow. They think they’re doing these huge angles and telling these great stories and doing these cool inside references, but they can’t help undermining everything they do by making sure there is always a joke in there, and are so sure of how great their artistry is that they don’t even bother to check for plot-holes.

THE YOUNG BUCKS INTERRUPT DASHA GONZALEZ’S INTERVIEW WITH ADAM PAGE- Oh no! I fell into a time portal!
Page is at the bar, drinking. Shocker. The Bucks are angry now. And, hey, look! We’re right back where we were when the lockdown started and they couldn’t have fans at the show anymore. Funny thing that.
They’re saying things to Page like “we just wanted a friend!” and “you were good enough the whole time,” which are things they should have been saying to him in April and May, not now, months later when they seemed to have put their issues aside and been able to work together. Ditto for someone finally telling Page that he’s an alcoholic and needs to get help.
This ended with the Bucks kicking Page out of the Elite. Didn’t he voluntarily leave the group on that episode of BTE back in November, and they spent months telling us that he was associated with them by being Kenny’s partner but not a part of the group, and they teased that he wouldn’t show at Stadium Stampede but then he did and everyone just agreed to put their differences aside and they wouldn’t try to bring Page back into the group but he was still Kenny’s friend and tag team partner?
Once the Jacksons read him the riot act and threw his drink in his face and gave their big speech about their lost friendship, we closed with the great symbolism of Page going over and looking into that mirror that I’m pretty sure he broke MONTHS AGO and apparently no one has fixed it yet. It’s not even like this is Page’s house or anything. It’s an arena owned a rich family, one of whom is an EVP of the promotion. They could have afforded to get it fixed, but I guess didn’t because… um…

HANDICAP MATCH: Big Swole vs. Penelope Ford, Rebel, & Britt Baker (w/Kip Sabian)- DUD!
Yeah, Britt is apparently an official participant in this match even though she’s in a wheelchair. Darby Allin can do tricks on a skateboard, fall on his face, and be fine, and he can’t get medically cleared, but Britt Baker can get cleared while she’s in a f*cking wheelchair?! Are you kidding me?! And don’t try to tell me that she wasn’t a legal participant because they introduced it as a “three-on-one handicap match.”
We got the same sh*t we saw the last time Rebel wrestled. Swole beat both heels up on her own, and Kip Sabian, too. The heels needed a distraction to get an advantage. They then tried to have Penelope hold Swole in place while Rebel hit her with a crutch but Swole got out of the way and Rebel accidentally hit Penelope with the crutch, which would have been a fine finish if the execution wasn’t laughably slow.
At the end of the match Jim Ross asked if Britt would be able to be ready by September 5th, because she’s not ready now… and yet they let her be a recorded competitor in this match!
Seeing as how the only reason Swole signed this contract was to get her hands on Britt, you’d think she would have taken the chance of both lackeys being down to go after her, but instead Swole just danced to her music.

Among other matches announced for next week (including Jericho vs. Janela) is Private Party & SCU vs. Jurassic Express & the Young Bucks in a match where the winning team will then face off at All Out. WHY? Sure, you don’t need a reason to book a match, but doing a stipulation like this is just weird. It’s not like the match at the PPV will be #1 contendership match or something so we’re then giving a title shot to a team that will have won two in a row. And it’s even weirder to book the winners of a random eight-man tag against each other at the PPV when you’re giving an actual grudge match in the tag team division (LAX vs. Best Friends) away on free TV next week!

THE DORK ORDER COME OUT TO RECRUIT TAY CONTI- grrr
NO, TAYNARA! DON’T DO IT! YOU’LL KILL YOUR CAREER!
She’s sitting in the crowd. She just saw them be horrible people! You can’t have her f*cking hesitate and then decide to join her partner with a hug. Either she’s a heel, too, so she’s fine joining them, or she’s a babyface and should want no part of them.
Five days ago, on their big Saturday Dynamite, they had the finals of their women’s tag team tournament. On this show, the only way that entire tournament has been relevant was someone recruiting her random-draw partner to join her stable. The winners of the tournament weren't even mentioned, never mind being on TV.

TABLES MATCH: Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara- 7/10
In this match, too, they started plugging the picture-in-picture way too early. Is it really that hard to start pitching to a commercial at the right time? At least this time they kept calling the action the whole way through.
They specified that you had to put the opponent through a table with an offensive move to win, which allowed them to have someone miss a move and go through a table and keep the match going, which I think was a good idea. You can argue that it cheapens the value of going through a table, but that value is cheapened by everyone big bumps match we see where people go through fifteen tables and it doesn’t put them down. That’s the reason why I find tables matches kind of silly, so something that lets them be a little more exciting is good in my book.
What was not good was doing a spot where Sammy missed a big flippy move and went through a table…and Sammy was the first one up and trying to hit an offensive move. THAT cheapens the value of going through a table.
Other than that one spot, this was one of the best matches you’ll ever see under seven minutes. It was like these two knew that they had to go out there and do what they could to save this crap-fest of a show. There was a lot of blood here, and that Twist of Fate with the chair was sickening. The right guy won, and didn’t need any distractions or interference or low blows or anything cheap to do it. Jericho even managed to not be a total clown on commentary most of the time.
But speaking of clowns…

ORANGE CASSIDY ATTACKS CHRIS JERICHO AT THE ANNOUNCERS’ TABLE- Didn’t they already do this once in this feud? They brawled until the show went off the air. It’s a match that you can win by throwing the opponent into a vat of liquid. Nothing you do is going to make the match feel serious.
Anyway, this was a TERRIBLE show from AEW. Matt and Sammy tried their best to save it, but it was already a lost cause. Jericho was f*cking terrible on commentary. He was a full-on clown, and his commentary performance here essentially served as a personification of so much of where AEW has started to go wrong since Dynamite began. This show was a mix of goofball bullsh*t and bad logic and storytelling. It used to be that on a week where the potential “big news” factor on the two shows was about equal, I would watch NXT first because I figured I would have less to say about it and I could watch it and still go to bed at a reasonable time. Now I find myself watching NXT first on a week when all news potential is equal because I enjoy NXT more on a consistent basis… and aside from last week’s show, I don’t even think NXT has been very good lately. As Dynamite steams towards its one-year anniversary, its systematic flaws are becoming more and more apparent. I had hope for them at this point last year. Now? I highly doubt they’re going to grow beyond where they currently are without a big change in philosophy.

[NWK2000]

I'm starting to think AEW is on the line of TNA if TNA had exclusively X-Division guys and as such we got to see the X-Division in main event storylines instead of the released WWE main-eventer/midcarder parade we got. Is that accurate?

[Big Red Machine]

I'm starting to think AEW is on the line of TNA if TNA had exclusively X-Division guys and as such we got to see the X-Division in main event storylines instead of the released WWE main-eventer/midcarder parade we got. Is that accurate?

I don't think so. I think they suffer from different issues (other than the overall issue of not learning from their mistakes). In AEW's case there at least seems to be a problem of "too many cooks in the kitchen," as it is preventing the creation of a show that feels like a cohesive whole. TNA usually had one person calling the shots, be it Russo, Dusty, D'Amore, Prichard, Bischoff, Gaburik, but that person (other than D'Amore) always happened to stink at his job.

TNA's people have always had the tendency to copy sh*t from the past that generally didn't work, or sh*t that worked at a certain time and place, not realizing that times had changed (D'Amore and Callis excluded). With AEW, a lot of the copying feels less like copying and more like homages, which are fine, so long as you're not going overboard (and I don't think they are).

A lot of the time with TNA (Russo, Gaburick, and to a lesser extend Bischoff), I think the issue has been that they just don't get what wrestling is supposed to be. These are the "who cares if it doesn't make sense?" people and the people who put no stock in wins and losses or the meaning of titles).
In AEW, as I said in the other thread, I think the issue is that they understand the internal mechanics, but don't have the grasp on the other stuff that they think they do. In last week's thread I compared them to engineers trying to be architects, and while I think that's a sound metaphor for what the problem is, I don't think it's the best illustration of why the problem is.
As for why the problem is, I think a lot of the problem is that none of these people have ever booked before, or if they have, it was PWG where there weren't really many (if any) stories. And a lot of the examples these people have had have generally been bad at telling stories outside of the ring in a coherent manner (PWG, Gedo, lazy-Delirious-Era ROH). The result is a crew that knows how to tell a story in the ring and knows how to book a segment in a vacuum for the maximum reaction (and they're honestly probably better at it than Gedo, Delirious, or whoever is booking PWG), and who know how to use motifs to create value and know how to use symbolism (you can say they're heavy-handed, but there is no denying that they know how to make it make sense)... but once you take the segment out of a vacuum and try to fit it within the whole of the universe- or even the whole of the individual storyline- things stop making sense.


I also think both promotions have had problems with zealots in their fan-base (and I' not saying other promotions don't, either), but I think they are creating different issues. I could be wrong about this, but my impression was that the TNAMecca crowd didn't actually like a lot of the Russo-esque comedy and the marginalizing of the X-Division and women's division that happened over the years, or even the Hogan/Bischoff stuff, but they defended it because "it's still better than WWE," and they had an unjustified sense of optimism about the bring-ins, where every one was that last piece of the puzzle they needed to turn things around. That led to a fan-base that was very vocal (and combativly so) online, but when it came down to it, didn't really go out and spend the money as things were going downhill, because one by one their faith would break and they'd just quit.
With AEW, I think the fan-base (and especially the zealots) genuinely like 99% of the things that AEW does. They like- nay, love- the goofage. They want to go to AEW shows and laugh at gags from BTE and chant and cheer for all of their dumb catchphrases just as much as much as they want to see the Bucks and Cody and Kenny and Lucha Bros. wrestle. AEW's hardcores (at least from my outsider perspective) go to the shows to see their favorite wrestlers doing whatever they're doing... which means that while they're into everything- including whatever chapter of the story they're being shown that week- because they're into the wrestlers, they're not actually there for the stories.
The result of all of this is a guaranteed super-hot crowd and lots of merch sales, but AEW's mistake is that thinking that their base of hardcores wants the same thing as everyone else, so they keep doing what their base wants, and thus they're not going to grow (as opposed to TNA who failed to grow because they tried to attract new viewers and everything they did sucked). And if the idea is not to grow but rather to just keep the company in business and make money, that's a perfectly fine strategy. But considering that everything AEW has said points to the idea being to grow, them taking this track is not a good sign.

As for the worked -shoot stuff, with Russo, Bischoff, etc. I think they really wanted us to think that these people are shooting. With AEW, I think they are looking for one of three things, depending on the situation:

1. I think they want us to think of whatever experience they're talking about as being part of the character's backstory and thus a driving force in their motivations (Brodie Lee, Spears, FTR have kind of gone there a bit, Cardona probably will, too), and it just doesn't occur to them that saying something that breaks the kayfabe of WWE also breaks the kayfabe of AEW, as I'm pretty sure they don't think we'll think "well, WWE is fake but AEW isn't."

2. They're looking for the "ooooooh.... That was STIFF. I can't believe they went there" gasp/buzz.

3. With someone like MJF, I think we're just supposed to think it's either part of the gag (just like we're supposed to think that he knows he doesn't need to give campaign speeches to ask for a title shot) or just dismiss it as a lying heel running his mouth (and in cases 2 and 3, they either don't realize that breaking kayfabe in one place on the show breaks it everywhere, or they think fans will be able to compartmentalize it and enjoy the worked shoot.

[Thelone]

"Too many cooks" is part of the problem, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the biggest one is two wrestling philosophies clashing and not working at all together. On one hand, you have the Bucks and Omega with the goofy shit, then you have Cody on the other with the more serious rasslin' (and being mostly about him). I could add a third one which is "weird Brandi stuff with no point" and I'm not sure what are Tony Khan's inspirations.

Anyway, it's kinda crazy how easily you can tell who's booking what during the show :

• Opening tag : Bucks
• Allin video : not sure, but let's put it in a "meandering" category
• Archer squash and post match : meandering
• Women's contract signing : most likely Cody
• World title contract signing : I would say Cody, but the presidential shit is most likely Khan and/or the Elite trio
• S&O promo, Kingston promo, random 8-man tag, other Kingston promo : meandering
• Dark Order garbage : Bucks
• Bucks/Page confrontation backstage : Bucks
• Handicap match : Omega
• Conti joins DO : Cody (I'm pretty sure Jay is a pet project of his and it didn't involve fifty tons of """comedy""")
• Tables match : probably Hardy himself
• Cassidy/Jericho fight : Khan

The meandering stuff is very much just everything that doesn't involve or isn't a project of the Elite/Cody/Khan

[Big Red Machine]

I'm certain Cody is booking Archer. Sh*t that goes nowhere is a specialty of his.

I'm also pretty sure Jericho is booking his own stuff.