I hope that’s just a random one off, twas a really fun way to start the show and don’t think I’ve ever seen it done before lol 
Yeaaah he’s retired, but seems like he might occasionally just crop up to save Darby from getting murdered. He did it at Wembley last year too.
Fuck sake 
Such a ridiculous spot
Apparently the state are really strict about what they could do in terms of blood and crowd fighting etc… not sure how that is more appropriate than a bit of blood tbh😂 he also attempted to stick skewers under Darby’s finger nails … Again, not sure how that’s better than a bit of blood haha
Clown show
Fuck sake, lol
The former death match sicko in me would rather they’d just gone out and had a blood bath instead of stuff like that tbh.
Blowing off a blood fued with… no blood… felt a bit lame after months of trying to murder each other.
I’ve only just remembered Hangman is the champion. Had to double check to make sure. Have they botched his title reign yet again? Feels like the last I’ve heard of him was months ago when he first won it from Moxley.
Nah it’s going ok.
The only really issue is with Swerve, Ospreay and Jay White among others out injured there’s been a bit of a lack of decent challenges.
Omega/Hangman could have been a good program but tbh it seems like Omega is winding down since returning from his illness and doing way less singles matches cause his body is just done it seems sadly.
But the Fletcher match was better than anything from his first reign, and the surprisingly brief MJF story was pretty good too. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if it ends up being MJF taking it off him tbh.
When they actually give him something meaty to work with it’s great, his character work has improved tenfold since the first reign too.
Its mind blowing how wrong AEW have gotten it with the resources behind the company.
Do you think they could have ever properly challenged WWE if they took a different direction?
They could have not been shit.
It’s like someone gave a teenager a major resource wrestling promotion.
Easily.
Their biggest mistakes for my money:
Turning everything into a work-shoot.
Having a promotion run by man-children.
Indulging over the top death match shit.
Indulging gymnasts.
Having a massive roster and abandoning developing their own stars.
Penning themselves into promoting for the IWC primarily.
Whilst most of those points have merit, their biggest stars are the ones they’ve developed themselves now for the most part.
The bigger names they’ve bought in from elsewhere haven’t worked out. Whereas Hangman, MJF, Fletcher (though he’s still work in progress) Takeshita, Toni Storm among others have come on leaps and bounds since Tony stopped being such an ex WWE star mark. Swerve has developed enormously, Ospreay has gotten better and even Ricochet has developed into an actual character.
As someone who’s watches the program regularly and continues to do so they’re in a much better place than when Tony was mopping up every single WWE release. Those points where absolutely valid a couple years ago and honestly, it looked BLEAK as fuck after the Punk stuff happened.
Those few years did probably stop them from being bigger than they are though, they’ll never be a close challenger no matter how shit WWE is nowadays because of how shit it got building up to and after Punks firing.
Bit hard when the owner is a man child himself.
I mean, even Tony has mellowed with that shit these days too. Can you imagine how ridiculous Tony of 2 years ago would have reacted to the apparent continuous counter programming from WWE? Dude would have lost his shit lol.
Most of these things that come up a lot online are grievances that were very relevant a couple years ago (and probably drove a LOT of people away) but have improved in recent times but come from people who don’t watch the product and just react to stuff they see online.
True, at least that’s how it feels from a distance.
He seems to be avoiding the spotlight nowadays.
Yeah man, he absolutely is. He was a fucking idiot online any time anything remotely rattled his cage or criticised AEW. There’s still the odd little moment, but it’s light and day compared to how petulant he used to be.
I’ll give my biggest mistakes:
Lack of watershed angle to make people watch and get the ball rolling for the company.
Failure to commit to it’s sports-based presentation they originally promised.
Better presentation of the product overall, which it could’ve been anything other than the indie bullshit which is niche for a reason and will always be niche.
Identity of the product that wasn’t indie flippy wrestling.
Not making Bryan Danielson champion much earlier when more people cared.
Pushing Jon Moxley WAY WAY too much. Sorry, nobody cared about Dean Ambrose in WWE.
Lack of hierarchy among wrestlers, to many competitive matches between known names and absolute nobodies.
That period they were signing every WWE release. Was very TNA Hogan/Bischoff like.
Way too many Belts, one of the worst things WWE did and AEW followed this mistake.
Failure to take advantage of the Punk/Page incident. Losing CM Punk in general.
EVP’s having too much power.
Genuinely think if that had been controlled and not allowed to fester The Elite vs Punk and co could have been that BIG story and angle to really make them explode. The numbers and attendances etc at that time were huge for them.
It definitely sounds a much tighter ship now but that did do enormous damage and a lot of people left with Punk too and probably never looked back.