Everyone being on their own is unrealistic. While there are some real-life loners, most people form cliques and have entourages. Are there MMA fighters or boxers who are completely on their own and don’t have any affiliations with other fighters?
Maria is really good at least
but there are way, way too many people on the roster as everyone noted
Plenty of guys/teams were on their own when WWE was at their peak. I’m not saying “everyone”, but as it is now, practically no one is on their own. Everything is a faction or random pairing.
Wardlow’s character would work perfectly as a loner. FTR don’t need anyone.
I don’t think you should be pairing/grouping wrestlers unless it’s part of their character or if it elevated them as a group in some way.
MJF obv. needs his stable of lackies to do his dirty work, Jericho with his cronies to idolize him, etc.
Dark Order or Best Friends work b/c it takes a lot of low/mid-carders and elevates them a bit as a group.
Wardlow an FTR were over as fuck, but now Wardlow has cooled a ton and neither have really had any match of any significance in months.
wardlow just doesn’t have it I think, though he fits the wwe mold a lot more than the aew one
I say that because brian cage came back and basically did whatever he wanted on wardlow including the top rope move where a guy who has the it factor wouldn’t have let that bullshit happen from a guy who nobody has seen in months and is a jobber.
I think Wardlow could be awesome, but he’s been booked horribly. Since he won the title, he’s been booked in goofy mixed tag matches and a bunch of borderline squashes.
I’ve been wanting them to build a legit competitor for Wardlow. Can you imagine Wardlow v. Miro or Keith Lee (if they’d been building him as a monster singles guy, which I would’ve done) or even Claudio? Those could be awesome programs, but instead we just get an endless supply of mid-carders.
That was Wardlow’s highest rated match of the year. I didn’t mind it b/c Cage is a monster, who could conceivably hang with Wardlow for a little while and I liked seeing Wardlow wrestle a bit, rather than yet another quick squash.
If it were up to me, I’d book Wardlow to run through the House of Black, but Malakai had his whatever.
Instead of sticking Wardlow in a hoss fight, maybe it’d better to put him with a wily veteran. I think people like Christian Cage and Adam Cole would be good for putting over Wardlow, but they are out with injuries.
What about having Wardlow defeat the members of Death Triangle one by one? I’m not sure those will generate good matches.
another issue aew has is so many of their big matches are face vs face, like how many title matches in a row is it after page gets one loses
then mjf, who’s a heel getting cheered because he’s very good at it
remember when bryan danielson was a star and left wwe b/c he wanted to face some new faces and he just had a series of matches with up and comer and totally never seen before, chris jericho
The problem with Wardlow’s booking is they basically turned him into the Incredible Hulk. He squashed Punk, MJF, Scorpio for the title, etc. The MJF squash for the angle payoff was the only one that made sense.
After you book him that over the top, it doesn’t make sense anymore that a guy like Malakai or Adam Cole could give him a match, it would take a monster like Cage.
That’s why I’m advocating for building up another big guy like Lee or Miro to face him.
The thing is, Wardlow can actually wrestle, unlike a guy like Goldberg, so he doesn’t really need to squash everyone. It would have been nice to see him in a couple longer matches where the wily veteran takes him to the brink.
I actually like that they have more face vs face (and heel vs heel) matches. I always hated how WWE seemed to have everything magically line up a face against a heel. If wrestling were a real sport, you would naturally have more matches that pit wrestlers of the same orientation against each other.
Jericho and Danielson had two televised one-on-one matches prior to AEW, neither for a title, and one was on the first episode of NXT. It’s a much fresher matchup than if Danielson had been programmed against CM Punk, had he stayed with the company.
That’s like saying that Bret Hart vs Diesel doesn’t make sense after having Diesel destroy Bob Backlund.
Wardlow’s longest singles matches in AEW appear to have been against CM Punk and Orange Cassidy.
Did you even watch the Punk match?
He basically had him beat in minutes and MJF was telling him to keep power bombing Punk and prolong the match so he’d be in worse shape later for MJF. Punk looked like a weak jobber in that match.
Wardlow squashing like 10 guys in a row is different than Nash squashing 1.
Hangman had an ugly landing on his head during the match with Mox tonight. Match was stopped. Hope he’s gonna be okay.
https://twitter.com/dawgsfaninin/status/1582551363141369856
For such a stacked, almost PPV level card, I was a bit underwhelmed. None of the 4 title matches were bad, but none all that great either. MJF and Regal freaking killed it though, and I hope Dalton Castle becomes an AEW regular.
When was the last good women’s match? Seems like it’s been a lot of stinkers.
At least FTR v Swerve/Lee should be a guaranteed banger.
This MJF/The Firm thing is really confusing to me. What are they even going for here? After years of being the smarmy, underhanded heel, they’re trying to turn MJF into a guy who “wants to do it the right way”? I think it needed a much longer build than just one promo with Regal if that’s what they’re going for. I’m sure he’ll probably cheat to win the belt anyway, but none of this is really working for me.
I could also do with a lot less (read: no) Stokely Hathaway on my TV. Dude was brought in to be a big-time mouthpiece, but every time he speaks on TV, it’s a disaster. And why is Ethan Page just a low level goon in the The Firm? He could be a star imo.
Dark this week had one of the better women’s matches you’ll see, Riho v. Jungle Kyona. Toni Storm’s been pretty disappointing, I don’t think she’s had a good match in AEW yet and she wasn’t over with the fans at all.
Fake turn?
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I’m still finding the MJF stuff intriguing. There’s still time to ruin it, but I think whatever they do will be done well.
Where I think AEW has failed is most of the rest of the card.
What exactly is the purpose of the TNT and TBS titles? It seems to be just “we need to keep him/her unstoppable, while simultaneously not having them anywhere near the main title pictures”. It’s stupid. See also FTR (at least they did have FTR lose this week, but now you’ve just devalued the ROH title).
Also where in the hell is Ricky Starks? Dude was white hot and now he’s basically vanished.