Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28
EXHIBITION MATCH WITH ARN ANDERSON AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: Q.T. Marshall vs. Cody Rhodes- no rating, bad segment
Dustin Rhodes, Billy Gunn, and various Nightmare Factory students were at ringside for this match.

(1) So if Cody won’t lock in a submission or hit a move, how is he planning on winning? Or is he just going to tall out until the time limit? This whole thing makes Cody feel like a huge douche. Other friends on the show fight and are just fine (like Kaz and Christian just did, for example).

(2) Anyway, they did some stuff for a bit. Cody could have gotten a Figure-Four but chose not to. He also could have hit the CrossRhodes but chose not to. At no point did Q.T. have Cody in any sort of trouble despite the handicaps f 1) Cody not trying and 2) Cody having an injured shoulder. So how, exactly, is this supposed to make us think Q.T. is any sort of a threat to Cody when the feud starts in earnest?

(3) Then some of the no-name students turned on some of the other no-name students because I guess they’re working with Q.T. Whatever? These people are all no-names. Cody, Dustin, Lee Johnson, and a barely-used Billy Gunn vs. Q.T. Marshall and his young-boys doesn’t seem interesting at all.

(4) Or anyone of Cody or Dustin’s friends? Or even some undercard heel who wants to curry favor with one of the bosses? Q.T. gives Dustin a piledriver onto the steps, and one of the no-names hit Cody in the stomach. Q.T. was going so smash Cody’s head into the stairs with a chair, but Red Velvet came out to defend him so the heels leave.

(5)Yet again, AEW repeats the same mistakes:
1. You can’t just throw characters on TV and expect the audience to care about them.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28 PINNACLE SEGMENT- dumb
MJF is telling them about the new stylist and interior decorator he got for them. He opens the bathroom door to find that the Inner Circle have apparently been hiding. Why did they hide in the bathroom where they would have to come out of a bottleneck instead of just waiting in the locker room and attacking the Pinnacle when they entered?
They don’t attack. MJF closes the door and tells his group “we’ve got to go.” Fortunately for the Inner Circle, he goes to another door where Hager is waiting. So has Hager been waiting outside of the locker room for as long as they’ve been in the bathroom? This was SOOOO dumb. If you want the one group to attack the other, just have them attack! Don’t try to add in comedy, and especially not “they’re in the bathroom, LOL!” This is a show where you say “sh*t” once an hour. None of the target demographic for that humor (eight-year-olds) should be watching.
And fortunately this all happened at the time when we cut to the Pinnacle’s locker room so the cameras that MJF invited in could see it. What if one of the heels had to go to the bathroom before it was time for MJF’s speech?
The babyfaces all threw the heels into or through something, and Jericho gave MJF a swirly. Oh, and they took their locker room back. The whole thing with the Pinnacle taking the Inner Circle’s locker room made no sense in the first place, so I didn’t care about that part.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28 BRITT BAKER CUTS A PROMO PLUGGING DARK: ELEVATION- bad
Also, why is Thunder Rosa being booked on Dark: Elevation and Britt on Dynamite when Thunder Rosa is the one who won the match? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

cero2k wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 08:09

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28
EXHIBITION MATCH WITH ARN ANDERSON AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: Q.T. Marshall vs. Cody Rhodes- no rating, bad segment
Dustin Rhodes, Billy Gunn, and various Nightmare Factory students were at ringside for this match.

(1) So if Cody won’t lock in a submission or hit a move, how is he planning on winning? Or is he just going to tall out until the time limit? This whole thing makes Cody feel like a huge douche. Other friends on the show fight and are just fine (like Kaz and Christian just did, for example).

(2) Anyway, they did some stuff for a bit. Cody could have gotten a Figure-Four but chose not to. He also could have hit the CrossRhodes but chose not to. At no point did Q.T. have Cody in any sort of trouble despite the handicaps f 1) Cody not trying and 2) Cody having an injured shoulder. So how, exactly, is this supposed to make us think Q.T. is any sort of a threat to Cody when the feud starts in earnest?

(3) Then some of the no-name students turned on some of the other no-name students because I guess they’re working with Q.T. Whatever? These people are all no-names. Cody, Dustin, Lee Johnson, and a barely-used Billy Gunn vs. Q.T. Marshall and his young-boys doesn’t seem interesting at all.

(4) Or anyone of Cody or Dustin’s friends? Or even some undercard heel who wants to curry favor with one of the bosses? Q.T. gives Dustin a piledriver onto the steps, and one of the no-names hit Cody in the stomach. Q.T. was going so smash Cody’s head into the stairs with a chair, but Red Velvet came out to defend him so the heels leave.

(5)Yet again, AEW repeats the same mistakes:
1. You can’t just throw characters on TV and expect the audience to care about them.

1. It's an exhibition match, those go to time limit draws, you never go for the kill in an exhibition match.
That makes sense. I just don't see what Cody thought would happen out of making this an exhibition and doing it the way he did other than Q.T. feeling humiliated.

2. Because of the angle that is just about to happen in about 2 minutes
That's when the heels gets the jump on them and have weapons. I don't see what Cody will have accomplished by beating Q.T. Obviously Q.T. is lower on the card than Cody, but they've done work to build Q.T. up from a nobody into a somebody, so why waste that by making Q.T. look so ineffective before kicking off this feud?

3. They're not no-names, they literally told you their names on the spot, they've been on the programs for months, Ogogo has done a bunch of commentary on DARK (but but ), these guys have been shown.
The announcers were acting like I should know who they are. I will admit that this isn't as big of a problem as it would be in other situations, but the issue was the way the announcers portrayed it. I don't see how you can plan to do something like this and not have the students wrestle a match or two as a big team on Dynamite in the proceeding month. Even if it's just a four-minute loss, you want to get their names out there and make them known to he audience.

4. they literally just got the assed kicked in front of you, Dustin, Lee, the Gun Club, who are you expecting?
The Nightmare Family has four-hundred dudes in it. Where were Billy's kids? Or f*cking SECURITY?

5.1 Even for people that deny the existence of DARK, even if you don't consider that half of Cody's school just turned on him as a big deal, you're shitting on this because you don't care about people on day 1! Remember that conversation about instant gratification? You haven't even heard these kids talk and you're already cutting them out.
I honestly didn't realize the school was Cody's until this segment. I thought it was Dustin's. And Q.T. is really the only one we've seen have much of a connection with the students.
I'm not counting the kids out. I'm saying that by not letting the kids be known quantities first, AEW is making it a lot harder for themselves. I can't help but draw comparisons to DNR in PROGRESS, who all at least had personalities first. Even Nexus got that right. And I think that history has shown that when you introduce a bunch of guys in a faction all at once, it makes it a lot more likely for them to get lost in the shuffle and not be allowed to develop personalities, and doubly so when you have an established personality as their leader.

But after all that, this is a feud between two of your biggest biases in the last 6 years, i understand you.
Your timing is a little of Q.T., but I get your point. That being said:
1. If the Q.T. Marshall we've seen in AEW was the Q.T. Marshall we had seen in ROH, I would have had no problem with the guy.
2. I think Cody is extremely talented and have for a along time. He was one of the guys I planned to give the big push to right when I started my Raw 1,000 and Beyond fantasy booking. My issue with him not trying in ROH is not an issue anymore because I don't think anyone can accuse him of not trying in AEW.
But I think that if one is going to look at AEW, one needs to acknowledge that this Cody character is often a f*cking douchebag. Q.T. came out last week and said "we're supposed to be friends, but you treat me like a servant," and Cody didn't try to correct that assumption at all. Instead he came out and instead of respecting Q.T. by giving him a normal wrestling match, he makes a specific kind of match that will allow him to not take Q.T. seriously as a thread and humiliate him over and over.
I give Cody props when he does well, but I also think that if someone talks a big game, that person needs to deliver, and Cody has talked a very big game about being old school and character and stuff, and he keeps not delivering in the way things around him are booked or hyped up. It's inconceivable to me that someone who claims to be such a student of wrestling history can think he's a babyface while being such a douchebag.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28 PINNACLE SEGMENT- dumb
MJF is telling them about the new stylist and interior decorator he got for them. He opens the bathroom door to find that the Inner Circle have apparently been hiding. Why did they hide in the bathroom where they would have to come out of a bottleneck instead of just waiting in the locker room and attacking the Pinnacle when they entered?
They don’t attack. MJF closes the door and tells his group “we’ve got to go.” Fortunately for the Inner Circle, he goes to another door where Hager is waiting. So has Hager been waiting outside of the locker room for as long as they’ve been in the bathroom? This was SOOOO dumb. If you want the one group to attack the other, just have them attack! Don’t try to add in comedy, and especially not “they’re in the bathroom, LOL!” This is a show where you say “sh*t” once an hour. None of the target demographic for that humor (eight-year-olds) should be watching.
And fortunately this all happened at the time when we cut to the Pinnacle’s locker room so the cameras that MJF invited in could see it. What if one of the heels had to go to the bathroom before it was time for MJF’s speech?
The babyfaces all threw the heels into or through something, and Jericho gave MJF a swirly. Oh, and they took their locker room back. The whole thing with the Pinnacle taking the Inner Circle’s locker room made no sense in the first place, so I didn’t care about that part.

If you saw this as comedy, then there's no helping you.
How else can you possible explain them being in the bathroom and not reacting when the door was opened (and letting MJF close it again) and MJF's reaction to it. If you can't identify that as an attempt at comedy,I don't know what to say.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28 BRITT BAKER CUTS A PROMO PLUGGING DARK: ELEVATION- bad
Also, why is Thunder Rosa being booked on Dark: Elevation and Britt on Dynamite when Thunder Rosa is the one who won the match? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Baker is contracted with AEW, Rosa is not. Also Baker straight up told you, she's there building up her win record.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 1st, '21, 20:28 CHRISTIAN CAGE vs. FRANKIE KAZARIAN- 7.25/10

EXHIBITION MATCH WITH ARN ANDERSON AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE: Q.T. Marshall vs. Cody Rhodes- no rating, bad segment

ETHAN PAGE & SCORPIO SKY PROMO- meh

PINNACLE SEGMENT- dumb

LUCHA BROS. PROMO- good
They want all of the titles.

BRITT BAKER CUTS A PROMO PLUGGING DARK: ELEVATION- bad

Also signed for next week is Darby Allin defending the TNT Title against J.D. Drake, which should be an awesome match, but what is the point of even having the records if Kaz can win eleven matches in a row and not get a title shot while J.D. Drake can do nothing but be in the right place at the right time to sign an open contract first and wind up with a title shot?

JURASSIC EXPRESS PROMO- bad
They have a match against Bear Country next week. Then Luchasaurus got angry at Marko Stunt for having a King Kong tattoo because King Kong is fighting Godzilla in a movie. Yes, really.

ARCADE ANARCHY MATCH: Chuck Taylor & Orange Cassidy vs. Miro & Kip Sabian (w/Penelope Ford)- 6.5/10

This was a bad show from AEW, despite two great matches. It’s yet another one of those shows that I feel like is a microcosm of the promotion. There is often excellent wrestling, but both the booking and environment the promotion seeks to create are flawed to the point of severely damaging the product.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 10:04
1. It's an exhibition match, those go to time limit draws, you never go for the kill in an exhibition match.
That makes sense. I just don't see what Cody thought would happen out of making this an exhibition and doing it the way he did other than Q.T. feeling humiliated.
That type of thinking seems to be close to what QT is exactly arguing, that Cody is so self centered that he doesn't even realize how his actions humiliate QT. Being oblivious to how his ego affects other people has always been Cody's character flaw.

2. Because of the angle that is just about to happen in about 2 minutes
That's when the heels gets the jump on them and have weapons. I don't see what Cody will have accomplished by beating Q.T. Obviously Q.T. is lower on the card than Cody, but they've done work to build Q.T. up from a nobody into a somebody, so why waste that by making Q.T. look so ineffective before kicking off this feud?
I don't know exactly where this thing will go, but to me QT being ineffective as a wrestler is ok, because he will be an effective coach and produce wrestlers what WILL be effective, maybe effective enough to beat Cody. The Factory's project is not top guy QT, but top guy Ogogo.

3. They're not no-names, they literally told you their names on the spot, they've been on the programs for months, Ogogo has done a bunch of commentary on DARK (but but ), these guys have been shown.
The announcers were acting like I should know who they are. I will admit that this isn't as big of a problem as it would be in other situations, but the issue was the way the announcers portrayed it. I don't see how you can plan to do something like this and not have the students wrestle a match or two as a big team on Dynamite in the proceeding month. Even if it's just a four-minute loss, you want to get their names out there and make them known to he audience.
But that's not the story, they're supposed to be students, not fully trained Dynamite level wrestlers. If commentary is making seem like you should know them, it's because they've been featured in all the other AEW products, they're telling you that you should too be watching those shows. Think of it like Nexus, WWE told you to watch NXT, but you were not forced and they debuted on RAW out of nowhere, this is similar.
I think it's less impactful for some guys with 1 match to suddenly get involved in a big angle, than to debut in a big angle and later on be introduced.

4. they literally just got the assed kicked in front of you, Dustin, Lee, the Gun Club, who are you expecting?
The Nightmare Family has four-hundred dudes in it. Where were Billy's kids? Or f*cking SECURITY
Billy's kids were there, the guy that looks like Brodie took them out. Security is a crutch, if we always expect security, then we'd never have confrontations or angles.

5.1 Even for people that deny the existence of DARK, even if you don't consider that half of Cody's school just turned on him as a big deal, you're shitting on this because you don't care about people on day 1! Remember that conversation about instant gratification? You haven't even heard these kids talk and you're already cutting them out.
I honestly didn't realize the school was Cody's until this segment. I thought it was Dustin's. And Q.T. is really the only one we've seen have much of a connection with the students.
I'm not counting the kids out. I'm saying that by not letting the kids be known quantities first, AEW is making it a lot harder for themselves. I can't help but draw comparisons to DNR in PROGRESS, who all at least had personalities first. Even Nexus got that right. And I think that history has shown that when you introduce a bunch of guys in a faction all at once, it makes it a lot more likely for them to get lost in the shuffle and not be allowed to develop personalities, and doubly so when you have an established personality as their leader.

I mean, the logo of the school is literally the tattoo that Cody has on his neck, I don't know who legit owns it, but I would imagine that Cody has some ownership. And thinking that QT is the one that puts most of the work with the school is the whole story, he puts all the work, Cody gets the praise and hugs when Lee wins matches, not QT. That's the story they're telling, that's why Cody was all 'dude, you're overreacting, I'm not gonna beat you up'.

Even Progress and WWE had secondary shows were all the 'new' guys had been introduced for months prior to debuting, it's really not different from what AEW is doing. It's not like PROGRESS ever told you about what was happening on Freedom's Road. DNR is not exactly a good comparison because Eaver and Mambo had been in PROGRESS for years, Trivet had done many many shows. I don't disagree that introducing a bunch of people together is tricky, but from what I see, the project is Ogogo, with Solow or 'big dude' or even QT.

But after all that, this is a feud between two of your biggest biases in the last 6 years, i understand you.
Your timing is a little of Q.T., but I get your point. That being said:
I give Cody props when he does well, but I also think that if someone talks a big game, that person needs to deliver, and Cody has talked a very big game about being old school and character and stuff, and he keeps not delivering in the way things around him are booked or hyped up. It's inconceivable to me that someone who claims to be such a student of wrestling history can think he's a babyface while being such a douchebag.

Being a student of history doesn't mean he should just imitate it, but work from it. I like that this 'babyface' has such a big flaw, the best characters are those with flaws

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 10:04 How else can you possible explain them being in the bathroom and not reacting when the door was opened (and letting MJF close it again) and MJF's reaction to it. If you can't identify that as an attempt at comedy,I don't know what to say.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 10:04 By the "contract" logic, why are they using Thunder Rosa on Dynamite at all?
And why can't she be booked on Dynamite to get wins? Shes' clearly a top talent, so why is she on f*cking Dark? And if wins and losses are supposed to matter, shouldn't the winner be rewarded with more TV time, not the loser?

cero2k wrote: ↑Apr 8th, '21, 13:25

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 10:04
1. It's an exhibition match, those go to time limit draws, you never go for the kill in an exhibition match.
That makes sense. I just don't see what Cody thought would happen out of making this an exhibition and doing it the way he did other than Q.T. feeling humiliated.
That type of thinking seems to be close to what QT is exactly arguing, that Cody is so self centered that he doesn't even realize how his actions humiliate QT. Being oblivious to how his ego affects other people has always been Cody's character flaw.
I don't disagree with this. But that makes Cody a heel because he's an inconsiderate douche.


2. Because of the angle that is just about to happen in about 2 minutes
That's when the heels gets the jump on them and have weapons. I don't see what Cody will have accomplished by beating Q.T. Obviously Q.T. is lower on the card than Cody, but they've done work to build Q.T. up from a nobody into a somebody, so why waste that by making Q.T. look so ineffective before kicking off this feud?
I don't know exactly where this thing will go, but to me QT being ineffective as a wrestler is ok, because he will be an effective coach and produce wrestlers what WILL be effective, maybe effective enough to beat Cody. The Factory's project is not top guy QT, but top guy Ogogo.
I don't see the promotional logic there. At the moment, Q.T. is lending Ogogo his credibility, just like announcers will always put over that Dragon, London, and Kendrick were trained by Shawn, and (outside of ROH, where he was an on-screen character) will rarely mention Rudy Boy Gonzalez. I'm not saying that it's not possible that someone who isn't a kayfabe successful wrestler can be a great coach or trainer. I'm just saying that not letting Q.T. look even remotely credible makes this more of an uphill climb for both the students and creating the desired sense of satisfaction in the audience than if they had let Q.T. look like the guy we saw in that big blow-off with Butcher & Blade.


3. They're not no-names, they literally told you their names on the spot, they've been on the programs for months, Ogogo has done a bunch of commentary on DARK (but but ), these guys have been shown.
The announcers were acting like I should know who they are. I will admit that this isn't as big of a problem as it would be in other situations, but the issue was the way the announcers portrayed it. I don't see how you can plan to do something like this and not have the students wrestle a match or two as a big team on Dynamite in the proceeding month. Even if it's just a four-minute loss, you want to get their names out there and make them known to he audience.
But that's not the story, they're supposed to be students, not fully trained Dynamite level wrestlers.
If you're going to draw this distinction, then people should have to win matches on Dark before being booked on Dynamite, rather than just getting a call whenever they need a jobber for Dynamite.

If commentary is making seem like you should know them, it's because they've been featured in all the other AEW products, they're telling you that you should too be watching those shows. Think of it like Nexus, WWE told you to watch NXT, but you were not forced and they debuted on RAW out of nowhere, this is similar.
WWE pushed NXT A LOT harder than AEW has ever pushed Dark. All of the Season 1 rookies wrestled on Raw or Smackdown multiple times before the big angle, and not in nothing matches against each other, either.

I think it's less impactful for some guys with 1 match to suddenly get involved in a big angle, than to debut in a big angle and later on be introduced.
It depends on the situation. In this case, where they have made Q.T. look like a joke, it would be much better to establish some credibility among his trainees, lest we all assume that they're ineffective losers like he is.

4. they literally just got the assed kicked in front of you, Dustin, Lee, the Gun Club, who are you expecting?
The Nightmare Family has four-hundred dudes in it. Where were Billy's kids? Or f*cking SECURITY
Billy's kids were there, the guy that looks like Brodie took them out.
I didn't see them get taken out, and the announcers never called attention to it.


Security is a crutch, if we always expect security, then we'd never have confrontations or angles.
Security isn't a crutch. The selective use of security (or referees or road agents or the locker room emptying out) to break up fights sometimes but not others depending on how the booker wants the segment to end is a crutch. Security doesn't mean you can't do physical angles. It means you need to do them quickly, and establish that security only shows up if things started to get physical. And when you want to do a big angle like this, you have security come out and try to stop it but have them get beaten up, too.


5.1 Even for people that deny the existence of DARK, even if you don't consider that half of Cody's school just turned on him as a big deal, you're shitting on this because you don't care about people on day 1! Remember that conversation about instant gratification? You haven't even heard these kids talk and you're already cutting them out.
I honestly didn't realize the school was Cody's until this segment. I thought it was Dustin's. And Q.T. is really the only one we've seen have much of a connection with the students.
I'm not counting the kids out. I'm saying that by not letting the kids be known quantities first, AEW is making it a lot harder for themselves. I can't help but draw comparisons to DNR in PROGRESS, who all at least had personalities first. Even Nexus got that right. And I think that history has shown that when you introduce a bunch of guys in a faction all at once, it makes it a lot more likely for them to get lost in the shuffle and not be allowed to develop personalities, and doubly so when you have an established personality as their leader.

I mean, the logo of the school is literally the tattoo that Cody has on his neck, I don't know who legit owns it, but I would imagine that Cody has some ownership.
I'd never seen the logo before, and I'm almost certain the school existed before the ugly-ass tattoo did. I heard "Nightmare Factory" and heard that Q.T. was involved and figured that the "Nightmare" in question is Q.T's partner in the Natural Nightmares, the former "American Nightmare" Dustin Rhodes

And thinking that QT is the one that puts most of the work with the school is the whole story, he puts all the work, Cody gets the praise and hugs when Lee wins matches, not QT. That's the story they're telling, that's why Cody was all 'dude, you're overreacting, I'm not gonna beat you up'.
In that story, CODY IS THE HEEL. He's the one going around saying "do the work" while he himself takes credit for all of the work that Q.T.is doing and treating Q.T. like a servant while he does so (and Johnson is a heel suck-up, snubbing his actual trainer in favor of the bigger stars who can help his career more now that he's fully trained).


Even Progress and WWE had secondary shows were all the 'new' guys had been introduced for months prior to debuting, it's really not different from what AEW is doing. It's not like PROGRESS ever told you about what was happening on Freedom's Road. DNR is not exactly a good comparison because Eaver and Mambo had been in PROGRESS for years, Trivet had done many many shows. I don't disagree that introducing a bunch of people together is tricky, but from what I see, the project is Ogogo, with Solow or 'big dude' or even QT.
My point is that with DNR it meant more because we'd known these people and seen their struggles and could understand why they would be jealous and resentful.
When WWE debuts someone that they're going to put in a moderately big spot right away, they'll introduce you to them first, be it through a video package or through the announcers clumsily reading the back of a baseball card to tell you what the new person's personality is. Other promotions will have video packages or vignettes or backstage segments to show you the person's personality first.
You think that the end goal here is to push Ogogo, but as someone who has only watched Dynamite (which is the situation of the majority of AEW's viewers, and AEW knows this), I certainly didn't get that vibe from this show, and after watching the 4/7 show, it still felt like Q.T. was the focus, as he got the majority of the talking time. Ogogo was made to look bigger than Solow and the other guy because they didn't talk at all, but Q.T. was the focus.
If the endgame here is to jump-start Ogogo, it would have been SOOOO much better to have Cody and Lee Johnson be all buddy-buddy and start teaming together and having Q.T. get angered by Johnson's snub of him and Cody's lack of rebuke about it and have Q.T. starting working with Ogogo and eventually have Q.T. and Ogogo challenge Johnson and Cody. That way the focus is much more on Ogogo, and Johnson feels like more of a main character than he does in this feud.



But after all that, this is a feud between two of your biggest biases in the last 6 years, i understand you.
Your timing is a little of Q.T., but I get your point. That being said:
I give Cody props when he does well, but I also think that if someone talks a big game, that person needs to deliver, and Cody has talked a very big game about being old school and character and stuff, and he keeps not delivering in the way things around him are booked or hyped up. It's inconceivable to me that someone who claims to be such a student of wrestling history can think he's a babyface while being such a douchebag.

Being a student of history doesn't mean he should just imitate it, but work from it. I like that this 'babyface' has such a big flaw, the best characters are those with flaws
Some flaws are good, but flaws that make you completely unlikable are bad for a babyface. Cody is constantly doing things that are completely unlikable, and he not only doesn't recognize this in himself, but he's blind to it in his wife, too, because she is similarly often a total jerk to people and treats them as beneath her for no reason.

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 10:04 How else can you possible explain them being in the bathroom and not reacting when the door was opened (and letting MJF close it again) and MJF's reaction to it. If you can't identify that as an attempt at comedy,I don't know what to say.

I saw a serious confrontation done in a more, (i don't want to say cinematic because that is overused in wrestling now), visual presentation. It's not like they did magic tricks or anything, they knew that Hager had to the exit blocked and creating fear and desperation to escape make your opponents vulnerable. I thought it looked perfectly fine. If we're talking comedy, I rather Jericho stopped 'roasting' people in his promos, that's so low brow.
They knew that Hager had the exit blocked, yes... but they didn't know that MJF's reaction would be to try to run away when he and his guys had 1) the numbers advantage and 2) the tactical advantage due to the bottle neck. The Pinnacle just beat the shIt out of them a few weeks ago. Why would MJF's reaction be to run away instead of saying "hey guys, the Inner Circle is in the bathroom. Everyone grab a weapon and let's go beat the sh*t out of them again?" Their plan relied on MJF acting in a completely illogical manner, which they set up by putting themselves at a tactical disadvantage. Why not just hide in the locker room and beat the Pinnacle up when they entered?

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 2nd, '21, 10:04 By the "contract" logic, why are they using Thunder Rosa on Dynamite at all?
And why can't she be booked on Dynamite to get wins? Shes' clearly a top talent, so why is she on f*cking Dark? And if wins and losses are supposed to matter, shouldn't the winner be rewarded with more TV time, not the loser?

not having a contract doesn't mean that she can't work dynamite, but I think when it comes to getting time on Dynamite, the contracted wrestler has a bit more right to get that spot. Why go to DARK for wins, because that show is 100% wrestling exclusive, in kayfabe, it's easier to get yourself a match there.
Thunder Rosa has been winning matches for weeks, and just won this match, too. Why does she have to go back "down" to Dark to build her record up when she has been winning, but Lee Johnson can lose thirty matches on a row and then get booked on Dynamite? Or how about Daniels & Kaz. They MUST be winning on Dark, or else they wouldn't be a team anymore... and yet we haven't seen Daniels on Dynamite in forever, and Kaz only showed up for the angle with Christian.

Wins and losses matter, but that match they had was unsanctioned, and that's the whole deal about Britt's promo, even if Thunder won, she doesn't get the perks of the win, just the bragging rights, a total heel twist thing to say to rub it in Thunder's face.
But if wins and losses matter, why, in kayfabe, would AEW book an unsanctioned match in the first place when they could have just called it "no DQs" and it would have been the exact same except that the result would count in the supposedly-important records?

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 9th, '21, 01:18 I don't disagree with this. But that makes Cody a heel because he's an inconsiderate douche.
not a heel, he's a babyface with flaws. He's not a inconsiderate douche on purpose, if he did it on purpose, he'd be a heel.

I don't see the promotional logic there. At the moment, Q.T. is lending Ogogo his credibility, just like announcers will always put over that Dragon, London, and Kendrick were trained by Shawn, and (outside of ROH, where he was an on-screen character) will rarely mention Rudy Boy Gonzalez. I'm not saying that it's not possible that someone who isn't a kayfabe successful wrestler can be a great coach or trainer. I'm just saying that not letting Q.T. look even remotely credible makes this more of an uphill climb for both the students and creating the desired sense of satisfaction in the audience than if they had let Q.T. look like the guy we saw in that big blow-off with Butcher & Blade.
It's easy to reference HBK with Dragon/Kendrick/etc, because HBK is not there to overshadow his 'students'. I don't think it's smart to have a coach and student stable where the coach is actively good, it risks making the students look like lackeys. The whole idea of coach and student references should always be that the student is better than the coach, especially when both are active. QT's credibility to build here is not that he was an amazing wrestler, but that he built some, and those students will go up and take out the men that QT himself couldn't. Granted he's not THE coach, but I see this like a Dan Lambert and ATT combo, with Lambert being weaker dude, but he built himself a team of killers with Lashley, King Mo, Colby, etc.
The one error that I think they're making is having QT wrestle, or at least wrestle in a competitive way, at such an early stage of the stable. This is the age old story of QT training a strong group, over-abusing the power of the group, taking the credit, and the group either turn on him, or decide to surpass him and leave him behind. Ogogo has the look of a guy that will eventually turn and break away from Marshal. Is it an uphill battle? Yeah, but not an impossible climb, they just need to be willing to give Ogogo and Solow wins over established guys.

If you're going to draw this distinction, then people should have to win matches on Dark before being booked on Dynamite, rather than just getting a call whenever they need a jobber for Dynamite.
Assuming you're not already a big-ish name, I'd say you need to have a strong showing, more than just a win. DARK is not jobber vs jobber matches, and i don't think the new guys should be getting wins over the established/signed roster.

If commentary is making seem like you should know them, it's because they've been featured in all the other AEW products, they're telling you that you should too be watching those shows. Think of it like Nexus, WWE told you to watch NXT, but you were not forced and they debuted on RAW out of nowhere, this is similar.
WWE pushed NXT A LOT harder than AEW has ever pushed Dark. All of the Season 1 rookies wrestled on Raw or Smackdown multiple times before the big angle, and not in nothing matches against each other, either.
Some of them did, some were only in the two 8 vs handicap match. NXT was also a show built for the sole purpose to getting that group over, DARK is not built for Ogogo alone. Did they promote NXT more, yeap probably, i'll give you that one, WWE is indeed an ongoing commercial, if there is something they're good at, is putting their stuff over.

It depends on the situation. In this case, where they have made Q.T. look like a joke, it would be much better to establish some credibility among his trainees, lest we all assume that they're ineffective losers like he is.
They dominated a ring full of trained wrestlers and veterans, 3 vs like 7, I have no idea how you get to the conclusion that they're ineffective losers.

I didn't see them get taken out, and the announcers never called attention to it.
it still falls on you buddy, it was there on your screen.

I'd never seen the logo before, and I'm almost certain the school existed before the ugly-ass tattoo did. I heard "Nightmare Factory" and heard that Q.T. was involved and figured that the "Nightmare" in question is Q.T's partner in the Natural Nightmares, the former "American Nightmare" Dustin Rhodes
the American Nightmare is Cody, not Dustin, it's how he came in to NJPW. The logo happened somewhere between that and starting AEW.

In that story, CODY IS THE HEEL. He's the one going around saying "do the work" while he himself takes credit for all of the work that Q.T.is doing and treating Q.T. like a servant while he does so (and Johnson is a heel suck-up, snubbing his actual trainer in favor of the bigger stars who can help his career more now that he's fully trained).
That is one way to see it and I don't think it's wrong if you want to see it like this. The way I see it, Cody is not doing it on purpose, nor is Lee being mischievous for fame, they're just oblivious to how their actions hurt other people, and that other person was hurt and overreacted. It's like wrestling is being done by actual humans!


My point is that with DNR it meant more because we'd known these people and seen their struggles and could understand why they would be jealous and resentful.
When WWE debuts someone that they're going to put in a moderately big spot right away, they'll introduce you to them first, be it through a video package or through the announcers clumsily reading the back of a baseball card to tell you what the new person's personality is. Other promotions will have video packages or vignettes or backstage segments to show you the person's personality first.
You think that the end goal here is to push Ogogo, but as someone who has only watched Dynamite (which is the situation of the majority of AEW's viewers, and AEW knows this), I certainly didn't get that vibe from this show, and after watching the 4/7 show, it still felt like Q.T. was the focus, as he got the majority of the talking time. Ogogo was made to look bigger than Solow and the other guy because they didn't talk at all, but Q.T. was the focus.
If the endgame here is to jump-start Ogogo, it would have been SOOOO much better to have Cody and Lee Johnson be all buddy-buddy and start teaming together and having Q.T. get angered by Johnson's snub of him and Cody's lack of rebuke about it and have Q.T. starting working with Ogogo and eventually have Q.T. and Ogogo challenge Johnson and Cody. That way the focus is much more on Ogogo, and Johnson feels like more of a main character than he does in this feud.

Then the DNR story is nothing like this at all, not comparable. This isn't about life struggles or anything like that, this is just a dude that got fed up with his friend and coworker (a realistic story), and some of his students backed him up. If you don't care for Ogogo or Solow's struggle, it's because there is none and hence you shouldn't be invested in their struggle.
Your idea for a story is ALSO good, but it's not the only way to do it and it's not the one they're doing. If you think that Ogogo is not being given more time, then you're being impatient, he doesn't need to be doing a lot of talking, he's the fighter, QT is the talker. Ogogo will have his time to shine, but right now, they're getting you and other people who only watch Dynamite, acquainted with him.

Some flaws are good, but flaws that make you completely unlikable are bad for a babyface. Cody is constantly doing things that are completely unlikable, and he not only doesn't recognize this in himself, but he's blind to it in his wife, too, because she is similarly often a total jerk to people and treats them as beneath her for no reason.
Yet people seem to love him, and so for some reason, it's working. It's not a flaw that is pushing the majority away. To me, he's like Superman o Ironman, egocentric fucks, but they're fighting for my side (except Civil War, Injustice, and every other time Superman goes berserk, power hungry, or is born in Russia). Good guys who I wouldn't hang out with. It's ok to hate heroes for the same reasons some people love them, you don't need to LOVE LOVE all heroes.

They knew that Hager had the exit blocked, yes... but they didn't know that MJF's reaction would be to try to run away when he and his guys had 1) the numbers advantage and 2) the tactical advantage due to the bottle neck. The Pinnacle just beat the shIt out of them a few weeks ago. Why would MJF's reaction be to run away instead of saying "hey guys, the Inner Circle is in the bathroom. Everyone grab a weapon and let's go beat the sh*t out of them again?" Their plan relied on MJF acting in a completely illogical manner, which they set up by putting themselves at a tactical disadvantage. Why not just hide in the locker room and beat the Pinnacle up when they entered?
MJF being the one running is not illogical at all. Every other wrestler in that room would had probably started a brawl, but not MJF, he surrounds himself with muscle, he's not the ready to fight guy that you seem to be expecting.
Hide in the locker room and fight them was what they did, let them get their guard down and attack, it just happened that MJF opened the door before they jumped out. Where else were they going to hide in? behind the couch?
All we know of their plan is that they hide and attack at one point, have Hager in the door in case someone tries to escape. Zero reliance on MJF's actions. Just going by what was going on, they may had thought that since the pinnacle were getting measured and maybe trying out some clothing, they'd either get them one by one inside the restroom when someone would come in to change, or tried to catch them with their pants down, it's not a situation that the pinnacle would be ready for a fight, unfortunately, MJF walked in quicker than they thought.
Babyfaces don't care if they're outnumbered, they're confident in their strength and the surprise factor.

Thunder Rosa has been winning matches for weeks, and just won this match, too. Why does she have to go back "down" to Dark to build her record up when she has been winning, but Lee Johnson can lose thirty matches on a row and then get booked on Dynamite? Or how about Daniels & Kaz. They MUST be winning on Dark, or else they wouldn't be a team anymore... and yet we haven't seen Daniels on Dynamite in forever, and Kaz only showed up for the angle with Christian.
None of these are the same situation. Rosa got herself booked on DARK, if she could, she'd probably get booked on all three shows and rank up three wins. You want to stack up wins, you try all chances, she only got one. It's the heel making it sound like 'going down', and you're eating it up.
Lee got booked because Cody handpicked him to tag with, call it nepotism if you want, a top guy wants to team with you, or wrestle you, I don't think it's necessary to have a winning record to get the booking. Why have jobbers been kayfabe booked in the 100 years of wrestling?
SCU are wrestling, just not on Dynamite. It's ok, just because you're getting wins doesn't force you to be on Dynamite. They're the #1 seat right now, in due time, they'll have to collide with the Bucks, but the Bucks had been busy with the guys that won a shot at their titles.


Wins and losses matter, but that match they had was unsanctioned, and that's the whole deal about Britt's promo, even if Thunder won, she doesn't get the perks of the win, just the bragging rights, a total heel twist thing to say to rub it in Thunder's face.
But if wins and losses matter, why, in kayfabe, would AEW book an unsanctioned match in the first place when they could have just called it "no DQs" and it would have been the exact same except that the result would count in the supposedly-important records?
Unsanctioned matches are because the company doesn't want to deal with the repercussions of the match, it's the bargain that wrestlers agree upon in order to beat the shit out of each other, the promotion looks the other way, but the win does count. It makes both the match and the records feel like a big deal if a wrestler is willing to not have the match count in the records as long as they can fight someone with no limits or rules, and in that same way, for a record to be the one thing that a wrestler must denounce means it's a big deal.

cero2k wrote: ↑Apr 22nd, '21, 15:55

Big Red Machine wrote: ↑Apr 9th, '21, 01:18 I don't disagree with this. But that makes Cody a heel because he's an inconsiderate douche.
not a heel, he's a babyface with flaws. He's not a inconsiderate douche on purpose, if he did it on purpose, he'd be a heel.
There comes a point when someone needs to recognize their flaws, and Cody seems well past it.
The other issue i have with this is that nowhere does anyone- neither Cody nor the commentators- acknowledge this flaw. We don't get Cody having some sort of mea culpa where he realizes that maybe he was inconsiderate, and we never get the announcers saying "yeah, Cody was inconsiderate, but he didn't do it on purpose."

I don't see the promotional logic there. At the moment, Q.T. is lending Ogogo his credibility, just like announcers will always put over that Dragon, London, and Kendrick were trained by Shawn, and (outside of ROH, where he was an on-screen character) will rarely mention Rudy Boy Gonzalez. I'm not saying that it's not possible that someone who isn't a kayfabe successful wrestler can be a great coach or trainer. I'm just saying that not letting Q.T. look even remotely credible makes this more of an uphill climb for both the students and creating the desired sense of satisfaction in the audience than if they had let Q.T. look like the guy we saw in that big blow-off with Butcher & Blade.
It's easy to reference HBK with Dragon/Kendrick/etc, because HBK is not there to overshadow his 'students'. I don't think it's smart to have a coach and student stable where the coach is actively good, it risks making the students look like lackeys. The whole idea of coach and student references should always be that the student is better than the coach, especially when both are active. QT's credibility to build here is not that he was an amazing wrestler, but that he built some, and those students will go up and take out the men that QT himself couldn't. Granted he's not THE coach, but I see this like a Dan Lambert and ATT combo, with Lambert being weaker dude, but he built himself a team of killers with Lashley, King Mo, Colby, etc.
The one error that I think they're making is having QT wrestle, or at least wrestle in a competitive way, at such an early stage of the stable. This is the age old story of QT training a strong group, over-abusing the power of the group, taking the credit, and the group either turn on him, or decide to surpass him and leave him behind. Ogogo has the look of a guy that will eventually turn and break away from Marshal. Is it an uphill battle? Yeah, but not an impossible climb, they just need to
be willing to give Ogogo and Solow wins over established guys.

I totally disagree with this. The student shouldn't always be better than the teacher. Have more potential than the teacher? In most cases, yes, but even that depends on the story you're trying to tell.
HBK would have overshadowed Dragon/London/Kendrick if he were with them, but that's why WWE never put him with them. Q.T. will not overshadow his guys because he's Q.T. Marshall, and he's not that big of a name.
The way to make the students not look like lackeys is to establish an actual relationship between them and Q.T. so that you feel that there is actual loyalty and trust there; so that it feels natural that they would side with him over Cody rather than simply doing so because the plot demands it. That's why introducing people in advance is important. It gives you a chance to show Q.T. giving them advice or pep-talks or coaching them during a match. That would also make them feel more like their own characters, which would help lessen the chances of them getting overshadowed by Q.T.
The thing with Q.T. looking credible is that they have already shown him to be credible in his various feuds. He had a war with Butcher & Blade and he and Dustin earned a tag title shot. You can't suddenly have him be a hack just because you want to tell a story where he's a con-man who has convinced these trainees to follow him without merit. If you want to make the students look better than Q.T. then you do that by bringing them up, not by bringing Q.T. down.

Also, this idea of yours is incompatible with your statement that they're supposed to be "just students." They're not good enough to wrestle on Dynamite, but they're better than Q.T., who wrestles on Dynamite relatively often?




If you're going to draw this distinction, then people should have to win matches on Dark before being booked on Dynamite, rather than just getting a call whenever they need a jobber for Dynamite.
Assuming you're not already a big-ish name, I'd say you need to have a strong showing, more than just a win. DARK is not jobber vs jobber matches, and i don't think the new guys should be getting wins over the established/signed roster.
I don't disagree, but that's not how things have been portrayed on the TV. On the TV, people will be on huge winning streaks on dark and not wrestle on Dynamite for months, while other people will never win a match on Dark but be booked on Dynamite because they need a jobber.


If commentary is making seem like you should know them, it's because they've been featured in all the other AEW products, they're telling you that you should too be watching those shows. Think of it like Nexus, WWE told you to watch NXT, but you were not forced and they debuted on RAW out of nowhere, this is similar.
WWE pushed NXT A LOT harder than AEW has ever pushed Dark. All of the Season 1 rookies wrestled on Raw or Smackdown multiple times before the big angle, and not in nothing matches against each other, either.
Some of them did, some were only in the two 8 vs handicap match. NXT was also a show built for the sole purpose to getting that group over, DARK is not built for Ogogo alone. Did they promote NXT more, yeap probably, i'll give you that one, WWE is indeed an ongoing commercial, if there is something they're good at, is putting their stuff over.
so why can't AEW do it? Yes, NXT was just eight people, but of you have someone you think will be a big deal like Ogogo, or a story you're trying to tell that you're going to pay off on Dynamite like Lee Johnson's first win, why not use some time on Dynamite to draw attention to it before it pays off?

It depends on the situation. In this case, where they have made Q.T. look like a joke, it would be much better to establish some credibility among his trainees, lest we all assume that they're ineffective losers like he is.
They dominated a ring full of trained wrestlers and veterans, 3 vs like 7, I have no idea how you get to the conclusion that they're ineffective losers.

1. It was a sneak attack.
2. It wasn't 7-on-3 the whole time. The babyfaces came out in waves. The heels never didn't have the numbers advantage.


I didn't see them get taken out, and the announcers never called attention to it.
it still falls on you buddy, it was there on your screen.
And I was paying attention to the other stuff going on, like Q.T. beating up Cody. Part of the announcers' job is to make sure the fans have the full picture.


I'd never seen the logo before, and I'm almost certain the school existed before the ugly-ass tattoo did. I heard "Nightmare Factory" and heard that Q.T. was involved and figured that the "Nightmare" in question is Q.T's partner in the Natural Nightmares, the former "American Nightmare" Dustin Rhodes
the American Nightmare is Cody, not Dustin, it's how he came in to NJPW. The logo happened somewhere between that and starting AEW.

1. Dustin was the American Nightmare back in WCW
2. If Dustin is not the American Nightmare, why is Dustin and Q.T.'s team called the "Natural Nightmares."
I just checked the internet, and Dustin apparently has his own separate school, but can you at least see why people would be confused?




In that story, CODY IS THE HEEL. He's the one going around saying "do the work" while he himself takes credit for all of the work that Q.T.is doing and treating Q.T. like a servant while he does so (and Johnson is a heel suck-up, snubbing his actual trainer in favor of the bigger stars who can help his career more now that he's fully trained).
That is one way to see it and I don't think it's wrong if you want to see it like this. The way I see it, Cody is not doing it on purpose, nor is Lee being mischievous for fame, they're just oblivious to how their actions hurt other people, and that other person was hurt and overreacted. It's like wrestling is being done by actual humans!
Being oblivious to how your actions hurt other people is nice and human, yes, but in Johnson's case, the human and babyface thing to do would be to f*cking APOLOGIZE to Q.T. later, because the fact that he forgot to thank Q.T. was all over the internet so surely he had been told about it. To not apologize makes Johnson a dick.
With Cody, it's an even bigger issue for several reasons. Your argument seems to be that he was oblivious to the ways he was hurting Q.T. Then, when Q.T. pointed it out to him, instead of apologizing, Cody did something else that unintentionally hurt Q.T. In that scenario Cody is certainly flawed, and perhaps in a way that we could have sympathy for him because he is hurting people unintentionally, but he is absolutely not likable. Someone who keeps unintentionally hurting friends or coming off like a total dick needs to learn at some point to think more carefully before he speaks, and Cody has not done that. As I've noted, this is not the first friend who has turned on him, and far from the first time that he has been a dick to someone, resulting in a feud.
But there is an even bigger issue with your scenario, which is this: If Cody is doing all of these things that are unintentionally upsetting Q.T., the fact remains that is still doing them, and one of the things that Q.T. accused Cody of was hypocrisy. If Cody does not "do the work" and instead just takes credit for the training that Q.T. does, that makes him a hypocrite, whether he means to be one or not, and hypocrites are the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of likability.
Now, you might say that it doesn't matter if Cody is likable or not, but based on Cody's on (non-kayfabe) comments and the way the announcers have been painting things, I think that the idea that this is a "shades of gray" storyline is completely incorrect. All three announcers have sided with Cody 100%, and with the way Cody has done things, he's clearly more of a babyface-heel guy... or at least is a Russo-esque thinks he knows how to do shades of gray but in reality is incompetent.




My point is that with DNR it meant more because we'd known these people and seen their struggles and could understand why they would be jealous and resentful.
When WWE debuts someone that they're going to put in a moderately big spot right away, they'll introduce you to them first, be it through a video package or through the announcers clumsily reading the back of a baseball card to tell you what the new person's personality is. Other promotions will have video packages or vignettes or backstage segments to show you the person's personality first.
You think that the end goal here is to push Ogogo, but as someone who has only watched Dynamite (which is the situation of the majority of AEW's viewers, and AEW knows this), I certainly didn't get that vibe from this show, and after watching the 4/7 show, it still felt like Q.T. was the focus, as he got the majority of the talking time. Ogogo was made to look bigger than Solow and the other guy because they didn't talk at all, but Q.T. was the focus.
If the endgame here is to jump-start Ogogo, it would have been SOOOO much better to have Cody and Lee Johnson be all buddy-buddy and start teaming together and having Q.T. get angered by Johnson's snub of him and Cody's lack of rebuke about it and have Q.T. starting working with Ogogo and eventually have Q.T. and Ogogo challenge Johnson and Cody. That way the focus is much more on Ogogo, and Johnson feels like more of a main character than he does in this feud.

Then the DNR story is nothing like this at all, not comparable. This isn't about life struggles or anything like that, this is just a dude that got fed up with his friend and coworker (a realistic story), and some of his students backed him up. If you don't care for Ogogo or Solow's struggle, it's because there is none and hence you shouldn't be invested in their struggle.
It's not "some of his students." Is all of them, other than the one guy who pointlessly snubbed in hin thank yous after his first big win. That's not a good look for babyface Cody.
And I'm not saying that I don't care for these guys' struggles. I'm saying they haven't told us what they are, so how can we possibly are about things we don't know?


Your idea for a story is ALSO good, but it's not the only way to do it and it's not the one they're doing. If you think that Ogogo is not being given more time, then you're being impatient, he doesn't need to be doing a lot of talking, he's the fighter, QT is the talker. Ogogo will have his time to shine, but right now, they're getting you and other people who only watch Dynamite, acquainted with him.

What I'm saying is that if the focus is on Ogogo, then clogging that focus up with other people isn't good idea. I'm not saying it's not doable, but between his talking ability and background, he comes off as the kind of guy who could be a HUGE star, but this doesn't feel like a star-making feud because the other guys are in there as well and because the real issue is between Cody and Q.T. So far, I think they're doing as good a job as possible with him given the scenario that they have chosen, but starting from scratch, I would have put someone else in this spot and debuted Ogogo on his own, or with some other manager.

Some flaws are good, but flaws that make you completely unlikable are bad for a babyface. Cody is constantly doing things that are completely unlikable, and he not only doesn't recognize this in himself, but he's blind to it in his wife, too, because she is similarly often a total jerk to people and treats them as beneath her for no reason.
Yet people seem to love him, and so for some reason, it's working. It's not a flaw that is pushing the majority away. To me, he's like Superman o Ironman, egocentric fucks, but they're fighting for my side (except Civil War, Injustice, and every other time Superman goes berserk, power hungry, or is born in Russia). Good guys who I wouldn't hang out with. It's ok to hate heroes for the same reasons some people love them, you don't need to LOVE LOVE all heroes.
Tony Stark has moments where he realizes he's been a douche. Cody doesn't.
As for why people seem to like him... why do people like the Young Bucks? How did SCU become babyfaces by insulting every city they visited? Because people don't really cheer based on the merits of character anymore. They see Cody as a guy who didn't get a fair shake in WWE and took the initiative to strike out on his own (and the circumstances of WWE's treatment of him in regards to his father's death certainly helped). Cody Runnels has done many laudable things, and so they cheer for Cody Rhodes, not matter what his character does. That's just how many wrestling fans (and especially a lot of Twittery, more inside fans like AEW's fanbase) are nowadays. Bryan Danielson is an amazing babyface, but he doesn't reach the heights he does if the fans don't perceive him as being screwed by WWE. It's the same for Cody, except that Cody, when left to his own devices, isn't a very good babyface.

They knew that Hager had the exit blocked, yes... but they didn't know that MJF's reaction would be to try to run away when he and his guys had 1) the numbers advantage and 2) the tactical advantage due to the bottle neck. The Pinnacle just beat the shIt out of them a few weeks ago. Why would MJF's reaction be to run away instead of saying "hey guys, the Inner Circle is in the bathroom. Everyone grab a weapon and let's go beat the sh*t out of them again?" Their plan relied on MJF acting in a completely illogical manner, which they set up by putting themselves at a tactical disadvantage. Why not just hide in the locker room and beat the Pinnacle up when they entered?
MJF being the one running is not illogical at all. Every other wrestler in that room would had probably started a brawl, but not MJF, he surrounds himself with muscle, he's not the ready to fight guy that you seem to be expecting.
Hide in the locker room and fight them was what they did, let them get their guard down and attack, it just happened that MJF opened the door before they jumped out. Where else were they going to hide in? behind the couch?
All we know of their plan is that they hide and attack at one point, have Hager in the door in case someone tries to escape. Zero reliance on MJF's actions. Just going by what was going on, they may had thought that since the pinnacle were getting measured and maybe trying out some clothing, they'd either get them one by one inside the restroom when someone would come in to change, or tried to catch them with their pants down, it's not a situation that the pinnacle would be ready for a fight, unfortunately, MJF walked in quicker than they thought.
Babyfaces don't care if they're outnumbered, they're confident in their strength and the surprise factor.
They could just wait in the room and attack the Pinnacle guys when they came through the door. That would have been a lot smarter.
If they tried to get them "one by one" as they went into the restroom, they would have blown the element of surprise the first time someone opened the door because there was nowhere to hide in that bathroom, and even if there was, the others would hear the commotion.
Yes, babyfaces don't care if they're outnumbered... but I'm still waiting to see the Inner Circle act like babyfaces.


Thunder Rosa has been winning matches for weeks, and just won this match, too. Why does she have to go back "down" to Dark to build her record up when she has been winning, but Lee Johnson can lose thirty matches on a row and then get booked on Dynamite? Or how about Daniels & Kaz. They MUST be winning on Dark, or else they wouldn't be a team anymore... and yet we haven't seen Daniels on Dynamite in forever, and Kaz only showed up for the angle with Christian.
None of these are the same situation. Rosa got herself booked on DARK, if she could, she'd probably get booked on all three shows and rank up three wins. You want to stack up wins, you try all chances, she only got one. It's the heel making it sound like 'going down', and you're eating it up.
Except that Dark clearly is the lesser show because they never book any important matches on Dark.


Lee got booked because Cody handpicked him to tag with, call it nepotism if you want, a top guy wants to team with you, or wrestle you, I don't think it's necessary to have a winning record to get the booking. Why have jobbers been kayfabe booked in the 100 years of wrestling?
The Johnson thing I'm fine with so long as they say "he's been having impressive showings on Dark and Cody hand-picked him."
As for jobbers:
1. My thought process has always been that jobbers are supposedly kayfabe better than the majority of "indy" (define as "wrestlers at a lower level than whatever the promotion in question is") wrestlers. They're the bottom rung of people who can make it to whatever level of promotion they are in.
2. The jobbers thing becomes more of an issue when you keep detailed records of everyone's win-loss record and are using the same drew of jobbers. No reason not to send guys out there under masks to do jobs with different names.
3. AEW puts on A LOT more matches with their crew of lower-level guys than promotions in the past have used to because jobbers used to be pretty much a TV-exclusive thing and only appeared on house shows to get monsters over. Also, there was less TV per week than Dark is putting out.

SCU are wrestling, just not on Dynamite. It's ok, just because you're getting wins doesn't force you to be on Dynamite. They're the #1 seat right now, in due time, they'll have to collide with the Bucks, but the Bucks had been busy with the guys that won a shot at their titles.
Does it force you to be on Dynamite? No. But if they're getting all of these wins when why haven't they gotten a tag title shot yet? The Bucks beat Pac and Fenix, so why hasn't their title defense against SCU )ranked #1, on a 12-0 winning streak) been signed yet?
This is all a result of the issue with doing records and rankings, and it was a completely predictable problem, because me and many others pointed it out before the promotion started. There is a reason that these things have been tried and then quickly dropped so many times in wrestling history. Unless you're a Quackenbush-level obsessive genius, they wind up creating a lot more logic holes than they are worth.



Wins and losses matter, but that match they had was unsanctioned, and that's the whole deal about Britt's promo, even if Thunder won, she doesn't get the perks of the win, just the bragging rights, a total heel twist thing to say to rub it in Thunder's face.
But if wins and losses matter, why, in kayfabe, would AEW book an unsanctioned match in the first place when they could have just called it "no DQs" and it would have been the exact same except that the result would count in the supposedly-important records?
Unsanctioned matches are because the company doesn't want to deal with the repercussions of the match, it's the bargain that wrestlers agree upon in order to beat the shit out of each other, the promotion looks the other way, but the win does count. It makes both the match and the records feel like a big deal if a wrestler is willing to not have the match count in the records as long as they can fight someone with no limits or rules, and in that same way, for a record to be the one thing that a wrestler must denounce means it's a big deal.
But then why- from the standpoint of the promotion not wanting to deal with the repercussions- is it any different than any other no DQs match. What made this or Omega/Moxley match have to be unsanctioned but Arcade Anarchy or the parking lot match or Sting & Darby vs. Team Taz or Blood & Guts not? Matt Hardy and Sammy Guevara did far worse to each other than Britt and Thunder Rosa did before their respective blow-offs, so why was this one unsanctioned but that one wasn't. That's the problem. Matches in AEW only seem to be unsanctioned when the planned future storylines require the win/loss not to count in the records, which makes it a contrivance and thus bad booking.