Bret Hart Was Quite Good

@Annie85x @DavidHillier Do you think Bryan will wrestle his last match for AEW at WrestleDream and do you reckon Shane is showing up?

He’s got Mox, right?

I don’t think so, personally. It would have to be some sort of screw job (e.g. Wheeler Yuta rejoining the BCC, but thereby turning on Bryan). That would inevitably mean Bryan comes back for vengeance.

I can see him losing it more “cleanly” in a final retirement match somewhere. (God only knows who to)

And what about Shane, you think he’s joining? If so, how do you feel about?

I’m hoping he doesn’t, but also wouldn’t be THAT surprised if Bryan did lose. The idea of Mox as champ doesn’t excite me too much though, id rather unhinged crazy Hangman as champ. :arteta2:

If he does, I can see Bryan having a few months off and coming back next year for a few final matches before an “official” retirement maybe around the summer time…fuck knows who against though, he’s pretty much wrestled everyone at this stage.
There’ll be another Omega match before he retires, which is the only big singles match I can think of that they need to revisit. And Omega is heavily rumoured to return over the next few months, so it definitely should be on the cards.

I’m not too fussed about Shane either way tbh, would be a bit of a woah! moment, but ultimately I don’t feel overly interested. I would give it a chance if he did come in and be open minded about it though.

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Is the current TV product that bad?

I’m only keeping up via Reddit/Twitter, majority are shitting on it but from the few bits I see, it doesn’t look that bad.
To my surprise, the Mox stuff looks somewhat interesting.
Mind you, that’s just off a couple minutes I’ve seen over the 5-6 hours of TV content AEW puts out so maybe that’s why.

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It’s honestly been fine tbh!
It’s not been bad by any means, just had some very inconsistent booking at times and too many occasions where stories just get dropped without explanation.
We’re approaching the C2 again soon and that was great last year, so I definitely expect more of the same this year again.

I think it’s an easy target ATM with ratings being much lower than they were and WWE just being so damn hot. I see people who probably don’t even watch the show clown on it because that just seems to be the in thing right now and what a lot of the wrasslin YouTubers are getting their clicks from.

It’s not perfect, and there are weeks when you don’t feel like you’d miss much if you skipped it or just caught up with the highlights online, but I still find when it’s firing on all cylinders and doing what it does best it’s still a fantastic product to watch.

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you just had to be there

https://x.com/thenaomiwolf/status/1844229613683441767?s=46&t=eJpgg6uHWRsStnASv-OePg

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Really awkward seeing this now with all the stuff that has come out.

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Long title reigns need to not be common place. I agree with @Josh on that.

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Definitely not for every title, and within the last year pretty much every title has had a reign that would have been uncommonly long in another era.

Long title reigns aren’t the problem, it’s whether what’s happening is actually interesting. @Leper description of ‘superman’ sounds a lot like the Super Cena stuff which the fans got tired of really quickly.

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Well Roman’s title reign was a monster reign done well. Obviously with a story that long it has its ups and downs but it always felt purposeful. Some of the other long runs we’ve had with other titles definitely feel like theyre long for the sake of being long.

Younger fans seem to think once a wrestler loses a match they’re “buried” which I think plays into it.

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Very big issue and I don’t know how you change the culture around that. These guys would combust at some of the outcomes of matches during the Attitude Era. The Rock lost all the time FFS :joy: even Stone Cold ate a lot of losses. Kurt Angle wasn’t short of being punked in a match.

However, it was hugely important in establishing that ‘anything can happen’ even if it resulted in some stupid stuff.

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The Rock got pinned by Stephanie FFS and then on the next Smackdown was singing Great Balls of Fire like nothing happened :joy:

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I’ll get the exact numbers sometime but I remember reading Rock only won like 35% of his matches 98 and around 50% on 1999. Y

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Just finished the McMahon doc and man it really made me miss that attitude and ruthless aggression WWF.

Sure the business is still booming now but that will forever be peak wrestling.

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Largely I agree. It’s certainly the best the main event scene there’s ever been. However there bits of it I don’t miss. Titles getting hot shotted all over the place to the point they didn’t mean much. If I go back and watch an attitude era show now I have to be ready to cringe horribly any time a woman is presented on screen too.

Outside the main event, I don’t think the storytelling is particularly good and some of the matches that made it onto ppv were very questionable indeed

The first WWF show I ever went to was Rebellion 2001. Just really as the WWF was in the dying embers of the attitude era. The UK ppvs were booked strangely because they didn’t tend to get broadcast back in sthe States which made them house shows as well as ppvs but nonetheless, this was the card I saw:

Billy and Chuck Vs Justin Credible and Lance Storm

Edge Vs Christian (cage match) (IC Championship)

Scotty 2 Hotty Vs The Hurricane

Big Show Vs DDP

Dudley Boys Vs APA Vs Hardy Boys (WCW Tag Team Championship)

William Regal Vs Tajiri

Chris Jericho Vs Kurt Angle (WCW Championship)

Lita & Torrie Wilson Vs Mighty Molly & Stacy Kiebler

Stone Cold Vs The Rock (WWF Championship)

I think that card shows some of the best and worst habits of the attitude era. The main events were incredible. The IC title match and the tag title match too. Somehow Scotty Vs Hurricane was incredibly over and Big Show Vs DDP was rescued by the crowd loving DDP.

But christ, some of the dross that made it onto that card. The opening bout was dreadful, Regal’s match got this weird muted reception because Regal was a heel and despite both wrestlers being excellent they weren’t really allowed to show it. Plus the weird, borderline racist storyline that had led to it. The women’s tag match was literally a piss break match, so many people left their seats while that was going on.

Love this match.

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@Annie85x have you seen WrestleDream yet?

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