Friday, May 14, 2021

Scattered Thoughts on AEW, Vol. 1: Production Woes, Conti Riling Up the Nerds, and More

Tay Conti is out here exposing nerds; you love to see it.

I don't really have a coherent topic I want to write on for 800-3000 words, but I do have quite a few thoughts on All Elite Wrestling that I want to put into the world. I don't know if this will be the first of such posts or the only one, but I think it's good to let a lot of this analysis I've had swirling in my head spoken into something a little more permanent than Twitter.

- One big reason, to me at least, why wrestling is seen as such a low-rent way to spend a couple of hours each week is because it is not produced like a television show, despite the protestations of one Vince McMahon that he doesn't promote pro wrestling but "entertainment." Kevin Dunn's production values are objectively terrible, but that hasn't stopped him from not only cementing himself as the longest-tenured wrestling television producer in America, but a growing figure of influence within WWE, the latter thought here which deserves its own longform post from someone who gives a flying shit about that damn company up North.

The reason why it matters here is because AEW has a chance to set itself apart from WWE in an important area, and the last two episodes of Dynamite have seen production gaffes that have dampened important story beats in two crucial main event matches. During last week's show, several major occurrences during the Blood and Guts match happened during picture-in-picture breaks, including Wardlow's entrance and MJF's escape out of the cage, aided by Tully Blanchard, and initial ascent to the top. While one could argue these are less errors on the television production end and more on match layout with the timing of commercial breaks, which is more on the producers, the referees, and Tony Khan, they're still big mistakes when you're trying to tell a story. You need to have big happenings taking place when the action is front and focused on TV with the commentators able to sell the drama. That kind of mistake happened again this past week when Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page assaulting Sting with their subsequent ejection took place during a picture-in-picture set-up during commercial. 

While those errors are more related to the nuts and bolts of laying out a wrestling show itself, the end of the Blood and Guts match, specifically the way the crew shot Chris Jericho falling from the top of the cage to the floor, was a failure in the actual shooting and live television production. While no other scripted drama has the peril of shooting live, a wrestling company backed by billions of dollars can simulate Jericho's stunt several times in advance using dummies while tracking to see which angles would be best to capture the actual fall while also obscuring any evidence of the safety structure that ensured Jericho's injuries would be worked instead of legitimate.

AEW is still a young company, but the excuse of inexperience is starting to wear thin. Between the last two weeks on Dynamite and the ending of Revolution, you're starting to see where Khan and his team have not learned, not only from the first two-or-so years of the company's existence, but the decades upon decades of televised wrestling, not just WWE or World Championship Wrestling, but regional promotions dating back to the 1950s. Yes, WWE still embarrasses itself regularly, but you can't get ahead of that conglomerate by making the same mistakes they continue to make. Hopefully, these things get cleaned up sooner rather than later.

- Tay Conti is one of AEW's and the Nightmare Factory's early successes, having ventured northeast from Orlando and the multi-million-dollar WWE Performance Center to go from raw-but-unique prospect to a potential anchor for the AEW women's division. AEW fans have taken to her like bees to a flower field, but the cottage industry of haters whose sole purpose in life is to yell about how AEW is some outlaw mudshow or whatever have taken to picking on her, namely for a spot she does where she drapes her opponent across the top rope in the corner and senton-splashes them.

The move looks brutal in a good way, but these bad faith actors paint any move that looks cool in AEW as unsafe. What's even funnier are the people WITHIN the industry who are coming out to say that it's an unprofessional move like Velvet Sky, whose claim to fame was never her acumen in the ring. The term most people within the industry like to use when someone gets riled up intentionally is "worked." People like Sky, her secret police head-ass boyfriend Bubba Ray Dudley, Jim Cornette, Glenn "Disco Inferno" Gilbertti, and countless other never-was nerds want wrestling to be a certain way forever because it's the only way they can make money off it. More pointedly, people like Conti are doing things that these people could never dream of doing, getting popular off ability rather than the smoke and mirrors of lobbing disgusting sexist comments to women in the crowds of the ECW Arena and Madhouse of Extreme or, well, whatever the fuck it was that Gilbertti did that was worth anything but an unintentional laugh.

Either way, they're either getting worked by someone better than they are, or they're obfuscating the issue and potentially turning fans off of an industry that isn't particularly welcoming to most people anyway. The truth is there is no such thing as a "safe" wrestling move outside of a Shane McMahon air punch anyway. Mitsuharu Misawa died taking a "routine" back suplex. Perro Aguayo, Jr. died bumping into the middle rope after taking a dropkick. Both have been ruled as freak accidents, and the thing about freak accidents is that they are what the name says they are. You go to wrestling school in order take those moves without a high probability of major injury, and when you do get hurt, it's more a function of luck than anything.

If there was a move that was more dangerous in execution, however, it would be banned immediately. At least I hope it would. Again, for all his atrocities and other lesser foibles, when faced with the evidence that a move was riskier to perform and/or take than others, McMahon banned said moves from being used in his company. One would think that Khan, who has to deal with a network in TNT that presumably doesn't want to see someone die on its airwaves, would do the same. The point is? Conti should really take it as a feather in her cap that nerds like Sky or that awful AEW Botches Twitter account go after her. It's a sign she's doing something right.

- All Cody Rhodes had to do to set up a match with Anthony Ogogo was tell say if he wanted to punch him in the gut, he should've done it face to face, man to man instead of in a cheapshot. Instead, he delivered what was, in my humble estimation, the single worst wrestling promo since the Triple H reign of terror between 2000 and 2008. AEW has done well enough to stay away from the jingoist tropes and stay in a precarious lane between corporate centrism and boilerplate wrestler conservatism, but Rhodes somehow managed to make Ogogo's immigration status a heel move in a time when immigrants are still being rounded up at the border AND he "all lives matter"-ed the impending birth of his daughter in one fell swoop. Rhodes and his trials have always been the worst part of AEW since he decided he wasn't going to challenge for the main title (outside of Jim Ross' abysmal commentary each week), but every time I think he's hit rock bottom, well, he jackhammers through to find new lows. It's a good thing nearly everything else in the company has some kind of appeal or else the "American Nightmare" doing his best "The Cerebral Assassin" impression would tank AEW to sub-TNA levels of no-care.

- While the Inner Circle/Pinnacle feud was never meant to have an endpoint outside of pay-per-view, Blood and Guts lats week felt like a good checkpoint, a place where the Pinnacle could have an interstitial run against various other faces on the roster rather than keeping the pedal to the metal on this feud. Obviously, that plan went out the window when the group, down Santana who was "sent to jail" on assault charges regarding his use of the fork inside the cage, interrupted the Pinnacle's celebration with a pressurized champagne cannon. Jim Cornette is a bloated piece of shit, but his blind-squirrel-finding-a-nut bit of wisdom is that no one can miss you if you don't go away. Chris Jericho probably should have gone away for a little bit, leaving the group rudderless and contained to Dark while they regrouped.

That wasn't the case, obviously, and now, Stadium Stampede II will put the Inner Circle's future as a stable in doubt. Obviously, the setup feels like a way to close the loop on the feud and give Jericho retribution for being assailed by one cowardly Maxwell Jacob Friedman. However, It'll have been nearly two years of that particular group running roughshod over AEW. All good things must come to an end, even wrestling stables. Sammy Guevara needs to spread his wings. Proud and Powerful deserve a shot to run on their own merits. Jake Hager... maybe he can fall in a woodchipper [NON-ACTIONABLE PARODY, THIS IS A JOKE, I DO NOT WISH BODILY HARM ON JAKE HAGER]. I don't know. Wrestling is great at beginnings, and the people inside of it get progressively worse at everything that follows those beginnings. AEW can reverse course by having MJF's group win, allowing Jericho to spend the summer recording butt rock and perhaps touring, and then giving him an in as a lone wolf/ronin-type to get his ultimate revenge on MJF further down the line. I know AEW just broke up SCU as part of a storyline tied to a loss, but at this point, putting the carrot out in the open that the Inner Circle can end in a constructive way is too tantalizing to pass up.

- The opening of the Forbidden Door so to speak has been nothing to write home about for the most part, mainly because it mostly has been used to allow Kenny Omega to have his annoying friends over on Wednesday nights. Impact seems to be getting the best of it, getting a runs from Private Party, FinJuice, and now El Phantasmo on their flagship programming. AEW had one attack from KENTA to build up something on the New Japan show and a single match with no build on Dynamite for New Japan's third-ranking title. Now, I'm not one to complain about either one of those things because they both involved the most interesting main event wrestler in America and perhaps Japan too in Jon Moxley, and because both KENTA and Yuji Nagata rule. Mox/Nagata was the best thing on this past week's Dynamite, and the show basically sucked after that happened until Britt Baker got to talk.

Mox/Nagata has to be the beginning of something bigger from New Japan to AEW for this Forbidden Door bullshit to mean something more than the fact that Omega is probably about ready to collect the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in a match with noted piece of donkey shit Will Ospreay that will probably be at least 40 minutes too long. For one, AEW has a television title, the TNT Championship, that has been at times defended on consecutive shows in "open challenge" scenarios. There's a guy who just won that title, Miro, who matches up sublimely with any number of beefy lads and ruffians on the New Japan roster, guys like Tomohiro Ishii, Shingo Takagi, Minoru Suzuki, Jeff Cobb, and Hirooki Goto. There's a guy who puts out open challenges every week named Christian Cage who should have the chance to attempt outworking legendary names such as Kazuchika Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Tetsuya Naito. There's an entire roster of wrestlers in AEW that should have the chance to go up against the best New Japan has to offer. Hopefully, this Nagata match was only the start of a more robust working relationship and not something Cody Rhodes used to placate the massive boner he has for WCW and anyone who ever worked for WCW or on TNT in the past.