>it was the same style of show they've been doing, not taking
>into account the major wave of buzz they'd created at ALL OUT.
>
>
>If someone was tuning into Dynamite for the first time,
>leading off with a Goldust/Malachi Black match when we've been
>hearing about DB and CM Punk for days is, to me, not the move.
>(I don't think taking Punk from Sting/Darby right into a
>program with midcarders who aren't always on the show is the
>move either, but to each his own)
>
>EDIT: and also, your point about the Moxley match kind of
>proves my point about pandering to Cincinnati. There was
>nothing last night about Moxley or specifically that match
>that was especially impressive. People expected a war between
>a top guy and a Japanese legend, what they got was a clumsy 8
>minute fist fight with a 3 minute interrupting commercial
>break.

This is probably true. At worst, AEW makes a lot of assumptions: they assume people have watched something other than WWF/WWE at some point in the last 30 years. They assume that people take in both the positive and negative blabbing from the innanet. And they assume that everyone is wrestling nerds who grew up on 90s rasslin and early 2000s video games like most of them did. They assume that they can program a big audience the same way WWE programs theirs. They’re also assuming that people get how WWE is programming folks to not gaf about basically anyone on their shows because they want to be able to switch people out whenever the fuck they feel like it.

Tangent: And that WWE ‘the show is the star’ program is working like a mofo with some folks. They can be all about Bray Wyatt one year then immediately call him fat trash when WWE drops him / gives fine ass Bliss his last gimmick. There’s WWE fans who are already comfortable hating on ‘those little indy guys on NXT’ because they heard about the new direction for nxt. And now, all of a sudden, Adam Cole is no big loss/no big star. Daniel Bryan? Oh, he’s old now. It’s impressive.

Back on: That’s a dangerous set of assumptions. And it leads to a lot of extra nerdy, insider, meta stuff that isn’t always worth the effort. A shitload of folks haven’t seen much of anything non-WWE since about 99 when WCW and ECW started having major issues. And that’s a bunch of old dues my age and up. And even then, some folks are stuck on framing everything vs vague memories of 98-2001. It is a poisonous approach that can kill almost anything Wrestling-wise. And folks do it all the damn time. And a 25-year old can hardly be relied on to clearly remember stuff they saw when they were 3. Or even 13.

Zoomed out: they are doing some things right, the roster is growing at a dream-level pace due to gifts from WWE, and they are pushing hard to make the crowd care about several individual people that they choose. It leads to some shit like Powerhouse Hobbs vs little jumping dude having heat with the live crowd when it works. When it doesn’t, it can lead to me already being afraid that Ruby is toast after she loses to Britt.

Meanwhile, Rollins could disappear tomorrow and I’m not sure the ‘WWE universe’ would give much of a shit. And dude is EXCELLENT. I don’t like that at all and put me down for ‘Smackdown is the best weekly wrestling show right now’ so I’m not some kind of Vince-hater. But I’m not gonna act like I’m at risk of getting tossed out of his will for watching other stuff and enjoying it too.