I answered a survey.
Hey everyone, @JesseCollings is running a brief little survey for AEW fans and he'd like to get a lot of entries. Help do the wrestling science.https://t.co/xDpWMPnOwr
— Trevor Dame (@TrevorDame) April 19, 2024
If you'd like to answer it yourself, you can find it here.
I've seen SO MANY PEOPLE complaining about anti-AEW podcasts, and I feel that. I mean, I really want to like Wrestletalk because the guys themselves are usually upbeat and entertaining. Alas, lately it feels like those guys really don't want to be there, at least as far as AEW is concerned. Like, there's already a lot of WWE to cover, and that's mostly what makes them money, so AEW has become little more than a pain in their collective asses.
Behold, the world's tiniest violin, my friends.
I honestly don't care that they don't like the product. In fact, I think the issue is more that they do like the product, but there's just too much product on TV between the two companies. Which, again, is not my problem in any way. However, if they -- or anyone else -- is going to present themselves in the "support all wrestling" vein, then at that point no one wants to hear them complaining about having to cover wrestling.
If they don't want to do that shit, I'm 100% sure that the real, working world is still out there for them.
So.
Here is my review of AEW Dynamite. Because, as they say, solve the problem you want to see solved. Regardless of my qualifications or lack thereof, I at least actually enjoy this show.
Watching the combined United Football League (UFL) struggle this week to build and maintain an audience reminded me of some of AEW’s recent struggles with ratings and attendance.
The UFL is, of course, the fifth recent attempt at launching a spring league of American Football in the United States, following on from the AAF, XFL 2.0, XFL 3.0, and the USFL. This newest league is an amalgamation of the most successful half of the XFL 3.0 -- the one owned by The Rock -- and the most successful half of the USFL. It’s notable because it’s launched to markedly less overall fanfare amongst the general populace of football viewers than several of these other leagues. This has happened despite the UFL producing by far the best on field product of any spring football league in American history.
It reminded me of AEW in the sense that AEW has also struggled to maintain buzz and overall audience despite producing the best, most consistent in-ring product of any major American pro-wrestling brand.
I wrote earlier this week about how AEW is a young man's or woman's company, and then they throw *that* out there.
Before we get started this week, I’d like to acknowledge that the last two articles in this series got way too negative in their approach to the fanbase. I am therefore trying to keep it more upbeat this week. There definitely are times when, “Fuck all these assholes. Normalize tribalism!” feels like an appropriate response to the discourse around pro-wrestling. However, our charge as West Pointers is “to live above the common level of life” and “to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong”. It therefore matters little what other people are doing. I myself have long since been called to a higher standard.
Well friends, how are we doing?
I said on Twitter yesterday that I didn’t think that these #AsForDynamite posts were necessarily getting over, and since then -- happily -- we’ve seen a small but substantial uptick in readership. I mean, I’m still not sure that the world needs yet more bullshit in the pro-wrestling space, nor I am about to quit my day job to create yet another pro-wrestling YouTube channel. However, enough folks tuned into the last two articles to make me feel comfortable at least writing a mission statement for what we're now calling #AsForDynamite.
My daughter Emma and I went to last night’s AEW Dynamite in Worcester, MA. The show was awesome. And now, since I’ve wanted to pitch a series of articles called “The View from the Cheap Seats” to AEW President Tony Khan for quite some time now, I’m gonna go ahead and shoot my shot.
To say the very least, I was *quite* surprised when AEW announced a show in Worcester. My daughter Emma is a freshman at Clark, located just two miles away from the DCU Center, and while she likes the university, we both agree that the town itself is kind of a dump.
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| With Emma during the Bucks' entrance |
I grant you that no one needed this much pro-wrestling analysis from me today. But then this happened, and well, here we are.
Tax evasion?
— Danno E. Cabeza (@DannoECabeza) March 29, 2024
I obviously missed something.
Some very low IQ individuals have said recently that AEW was created by the Khan’s for tax purposes
— Wrestling_Mark (@WrestlingMark16) March 29, 2024
After watching Will Osprey's match against Kyle Fletcher a few weeks ago, the guys are Wrestletalk said something to the effect those two guys had pushed the boundaries of what's possible in pro-wrestling in 2024. For what it's worth, this is what I personally like most about AEW. They not presenting the same old staid, expected crap. They are at least trying to take the art form in a new direction.
We've seen this a ton lately. Whether it's Osprey just doing what he does, or Swerve cutting an extremely uncomfortable promo over another man's child. Hangman using that angle to fuel a moment in which he drinks Swerve's blood. Hell, even something as straightforward as MJF and Adam Cole building the tired, "Can they coexist?" trope into a poignant story of loneliness and male friendship.
We're not seeing this kind of stuff anywhere else.
Friends, this should be the last of the Twitter Threads Project -- at least for right now.
I have a million things I need to be working on right now, but fuck it. Let’s talk about AEW Dynamite. Granted, maybe ten people are gonna read this, but…
Who cares?!
Twitter got into a thing about Bill Goldberg the other day, and it got me thinking.
This was awesome at the time, but in retrospect, Diamond Dallas Page is the only guy who got a legitimately good match out of Goldberg.
— Danno E. Cabeza (@DannoECabeza) June 1, 2023
So okay. After Double or Nothing, AEW head honcho Tony Khan was asked about potentially bringing Goldberd into the company for a brief run. Goldberg is a free agent, but rumor has it that his price is too high. Still, Khan noted that he’s spoken to Goldberg a few times, and that he “likes” the big man.
If you’re AEW, what do YOU do with Bill Goldberg?
Let’s just acknowledge up front that no one really needs my thoughts on last night’s AEW show. For better or worse, these As For Dynamite spots aren’t exactly getting over with my particular audience. I suppose that this means you either care about Army Football and open water swimming, or you care about AEW pro-wrestling, but apparently, you absolutely cannot care about all of that stuff at the same time.
Sigh.
I got super-excited for this PPV. I’m a regular Dynamite viewer, but I’ve missed the last two AEW PPVs just because of family stuff, and I’ve also missed the last two Ring of Honor PPVs. So it’s been a good long while since I’ve been able to sit down and really dig into longform stuff from the Tony Khan-verse, and I’ve missed it. Moreover, there was a lot of stuff on this particular card that I thought looked cool. I got into it.
AEW’s Double Or Nothing (DoN) Pay Per View (PPV) is this evening, and folks online are talking about it. Friends, there are a LOT of pro-wrestling takes out there on the interwebs, and some of them are, well, “strange” is a polite way to put it. To the point where I sometimes question what’s wrong with me that I’m actually reading some of this nonsense. And let’s be honest: if you follow me, As For Football, or my writing career in general, my interest in AEW might seem a little off-theme from the rest of it. So maybe now is a good time to talk about why I enjoy AEW -- and pro-wrestling in general.
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that All Elite Wrestling (AEW) announced a new two-hour Saturday show at the Warner Brothers-Discover (WBD) upfronts yesterday called AEW Collision.
On its face, this seems like good news.
