The OtherArena

[corrado]

The next two weeks of AEW are relocating to other arenas. Jacksonville gets next week's AEW show.

If this persists to May, one wonders if Double or Nothing gets moved to August.

[corrado]

They aired last night from Jacksonville, and had some of the wrestlers in the crowd instead of fans. They did a much better, less awkward job than the WWE shows, mainly Smackdown which seemed more of a HHH egofest.

Brodie Lee was revealed to be the Exalted One. I feel bad because they were supposed to be in Rochester, which is his hometown, and he would've gotten the biggest pop of his life. Still he had a good showcase, and hopefully he's better utilized here than the past few years in the WWE.

There was another big debut, as the very end of the show, had Matt Hardy appear. In his Broken gimmick. I guess the writing was on the wall when the Bucks made a cameo on his webshow. Obviously he chose more creative control and a easier schedule to spend with his growing brood.

it remains to be seen when the next AEW episode will air. They billed it as "next time" instead of "next week" just on the off chance they can't air next week.

[Yakuza Rich]

I watched the 'empty arena' show. For what it was, it wasn't bad. But I'm not going to praise something because it wasn't bad for an empty arena show.

The best part was that everybody came out with fire and passion instead of awkwardness and timidness.

I liked the Cody opening promo and was surprised that Omega did a solid job. That was the first time I felt that Adam Page 'looked' like a star. He just has a look about him that you could see in an action movie. Now they need to take that look and develop that into presence and a character that people care about.

They still need to really tighten up their work, particularly in tag matches. If you make tag matches tornado rules or lucha rules...fine. But don't have a standard tag match and let that digress to a tornado rules match. And still too many moves that they rarely execute perfectly or near perfectly.

I also think they've allowed the heels to 'win' the end of the show too often. I haven't watched every episode, but I can't remember the last time the faces came out on top at the end of the show.




YR

[corrado]

Well to be fair, Matt Hardy' appearance was a "win' for the faces so they did end the show on a high note for the faces.

And it was announced that "Blood and Guts" has been postphoned. I guess till they get the word on whether to do full arena shows again. That would be a sort of "season premiere" for them. The right call actually.

They're hyping for next week a "first time ever" confrontation between Chris Jericho and Matt Hardy. I would assume its a promo battle, since they've met many times in the ring in WWE.

[corrado]

So this week's episode was more a sign of the times as it was a much weaker show than last week. They had a limited number of personnel there due to the various lockdown rules that had a lot of the talent miss the show. They didnt even have the Muppet show-esque audience from last week. They just had an angle where whatever other talent there was, was betting on the various matches backstage. And also Jim Ross and Arn Anderson weren't there because of their age and how it could be a factor in others getting it. I did enjoy the makeshift announce team of Cody and Tony Schiavone. Great chemistry there.

I don't think I'm looking forward to a Jon Moxley/Jake Hagar title feud. That's not going to be pretty.

So this Brodie Lee vignette was basically a takedown of Vince. Yelling at someone for sneezing. Guess he really wanted to get that out of his system after years of being misused.

One thing I will say is that Sammy Guevara is becoming the breakout star of AEW. Moreso than Darby. He has it all. His youtube blog series is actually better than Being the Elite, at the moment. His match with Omega for the AAA title was great. I liked his interactions with Brandi, and Brandi's reactions to him. Just an enormous talent at such a young age.

I did enjoy Chris jericho yelling at the drone. That made me laugh a lot. Jericho really wants to make everything work.

Unforantely the last segment with Broken Matt Hardy wasn't that good at all. A lot of goofy shit. You can see why his broken/woken gimmick wasn't that successful with the WWE, as it can easily confound a lot of purist fans. I'm sure we'll get some Hardy compound skits in the weeks/months to come.

I wouldn't be surprised if AEW goes on hiatus for a while, mainly due to the talent not being able to participate. Its more of a stretched out roster than the WWE roster which is primarily based in Florida. I trust Tony Khan etc having better judgement than the WWE in this matter, as the WWE seems to have no problem continuing on.

[Yakuza Rich]

I actually liked this past Wednesday's show better than the previous week's. The wrestling was much tighter. They didn't get bogged down with a woman's match and even the less exciting stuff on the show still got people over.

My feeling is that I just don't like their style of tag team wrestling. It's too much the same style from team-to-team with the same type of transitions and lack of selling. And they seem to go for the spectacular spots at the expense of looking ridiculously contrived in their tag matches versus the singles matches where they tone down the spots a bit more but they look more realistic.

Cody vs. Havoc was solid. They were a little slow on some spots, but nothing outrageously bad. I liked the Jake promo this week much more than the hokey-ness of the previous week's vignette. The only issue I had was at the end of Jakes promo the camera switched to a side view and the promo lost a bit of its impact.

I liked the Darby Allin promo and I thought the match was sound and booked well. I'm lukewarm on Kip Sabian, but they booked this like it should be booked with Darby basically having the advantage for almost all of the match and beating Sabian with an alternate finisher.

I like Hager, but he needs to work more like a shooter and may need to get rid of non-shooter type spots like the Vader Bomb. And I liked that he no-sold the double underhook DDT and then Moxley escaped the ankle pick.

I like Brodie Lee, I just hate the gimmick. It's too bad because he was really good in the vignette. QT Marshall isn't bad at all, but being the job guy that gets squashed at puts somebody mega-over isn't his specialty.

I thought Guevara vs. Omega was fantastic. It was nice to see more of the New Japan Omega than what we've seen from Omega to date in AEW. The only AEW match I've liked better (and I haven't seen them all) was Cody vs. Darby. But I thought this was excellent.

I stopped watching the Matt Hardy vs. Jericho stuff. I personally do not get the Broken Matt Hardy gimmick on any level, whatsoever.





YR

[corrado]

They announced that they are going to introduce the TNT Championship via a tournament which will end at Double or Nothing in May. Seems risky to do something like this when you don't know which talents will be available for the tournament. Let alone they still seem to be under the impression that Double or Nothing is still a go for next month, given that this current situation isn't ending any time soon.


But a new mid-card title is fine. It was either this or the 6-man titles.

[corrado]

So they did bring back wrestlers in the crowd watching the matches, from presumably the Nightmare Factory in Atlanta. I think I enjoyed this week's show more than last week's.

Omega/Trent was a great opener. Solid match. Good chemistry.

I did like that Lance Archer has his NJPW theme "Everybody Dies" At least they're keeping his unpredictable gimmick with him as well. Based on him attacking the ringside doctor before the match.

I think I would rather see Jericho feuding with the drone rather than matt Hardy. They had another hilarious skit tonight. Jericho wearing jeans in a hot tub. And him channeling Mr Burns with releasing the hounds, and then some dogs actually chasing the drone away. Just hilarious.

Main event was good too. I assume one of the endgames for this tourney is for Darby to finally pin Cody. I think he's the favorite for the TNT Title.

So a step up from last week. And I guess they have enough material for the next two weeks at least, which will have Jon Moxley defend the title against Jake Hager in a no holds barred match.

[Yakuza Rich]

I didn't catch the show until late. I liked last week's show, but from my experience watching AEW they have a difficult time with having back-to-back quality shows. A lot of people on the internet didn't like last week's show as much as I did, but that appears to be due to the ending segment with Jericho and Hardy which I refused to watch. I still think the rest of that show was better than most of the shows they've done.

Anyway, my premonition was correct. They build up Lance Archer only to have him start selling for Marko Stunt. This was actually the best Stunt has ever looked, but a wrestler like Archer should not sell anything. I don't understand why they feel the need to put Stunt in their program and why they are afraid to just have him get completely squashed.

I heard Bradie Lee on Jericho's podcast talking about how he's naturally an articulate speaker and Vince McMahon didn't see it that way and how Brodie had some ideas that involved a big man that speaks as well as he does. He should probably look more at a Raven type gimmick than this nonsense. Or as he also mentioned, a Bruiser Brody type of gimmick. The Dark Order is rotten. Nobody was into them from the get-go and then they got jobbed to a lower level. It just reeks of the Young Bucks and Omega being friends with Uno and Grayson and thinking they are better than they actually are. Now they added another friend in Lee and they just don't see it's not over.

It's too bad because Lee has the size and talent to be a superstar.

The main event tag was alright. Surprised Allin was pinned. Cornette is right...Allin really needs a crowd to feed off of. I think he has the intensity in these matches, but something between the connection of him and the crowd is missing in these empty arena matches. That coffin drop spot was spectacular.

Spears going over Allin is interesting. Typically I would be against it, but with a limited roster they may need to get Spears over for the short term to make him a threat.

Personally, I'd dump the Hardy vs. Jericho feud if I was Tony Khan. It's awful and it's not going to draw.

I tend to think that this is a real missed opportunity for AEW given the status. They are one of the live entertainment shows going on and it's a great time to pick up viewers. But instead they do too much goofy shit and still have difficulty understanding how to get guys over into star status.





YR

[corrado]

Apparently they had a couple of marathon tapings in Georgia which they taped shows that last through mid-May. They did that before the Georgia shutdown. They're going to combine the Jacksonville and Atlanta tapings and footage from the various other personalities in their homes or palatial estates, like the Bucks, and Adam Page. Maybe they can do some BTE type skits and the like.

Yeah I think this benefits the Shawn Spears and Kip Sabians and even Jimmy Havoc. Those who were lost in the shuffle but now with half the roster unable to attend tapings, maybe they have a chance to make a statement before everything returns back to normal.

[corrado]

another strong showing this week. Jericho and Schiavone were great as a team. Loved Jericho's New Japan shoutouts. Could the forbidden door be creaking open?

Shida/Britt was perhaps the best AEW Women's match yet. Baker is going to be a star. Her bloody face was amazing. Her demanding the ref give her a glove was great too.

Probably the best match Michael Nakazawa has ever had. I can't hate on a match which had Tony Schiavone say the word "Hentai" Maybe this means Best friends gets a tag title shot in the future.

Another weak Matt Hardy promo. Although he did hint at a match with Jericho at the Hardy Compound. between this and matches on this week's Being the Elite from the Bucks' palatial estate, it seems there have a few more contingency options for the next month.

Main event was fine. Interesting that Cody who has a lot of finishing moves, won with a Figure 4, that was a pin and not a submission.

[Yakuza Rich]

I didn't watch this past week's show. I do see that the ratings are way down for AEW while NXT stays the same. According to Meltzer, they both did 692K with AEW beating out NXT by only 400 viewers.

It appears that this either means that their booking/shows in recent weeks have really turned off fans or viewers really liked their live shows because of the audience reactions.

Personally, I tend to think it's the former. Hard for me to believe that NXT ratings could remain stable and AEW viewership could drop 300K solely due to the lack of fan reactions.

I think the entire Matt Hardy v Jericho feud came off too much like a rival to the WWE product instead of an alternative to the WWE product and that may have exposed other parts of the program as being more of a rival than an alternative (i.e. Jake the Snake segments, etc).





YR

[corrado]

NXT did win by a very slim margin viewers wise (AEW won the coveted main demo again). No doubt led by the very unusual Ciampa/Gargano match which has to be seen to be believed. I don't think NXT can sustain that. even with Charlotte Flair as the new NXT champ.

Im assuming this week's Moxley/Hager title match will increase ratings for AEW, since that could be the last Moxley title defense before AEW returns whenever.

In other news, its widely expected that the team fka the Revival will be AEW bound when everything gets back to normal. They already have a built-in storyline with the Bucks, since many of the BTE episodes have had references to the Revival. Plus they could always feud with Omega/Page.

[corrado]

Moxley/Hager was boring as fuck. I guess I really shouldn't expect much because it was a Jake Hager match. But they basically kept in and just close outside the ring. Nothing backstage. No cinematic tricks. No schlocky spots. Just a boring-ass match. Well one good thing, it builds up Moxley some more.

meanwhile, they're doing Double or Nothing as scheduled from parts unknown. Not from Las Vegas. I guess they figure with whatever stunt the WWE got away with, with DeSantis, that AEW is probably going to tape shows now from Florida. Decisions like this make me respect New Japan continuing to postpone shows, even more.

[Yakuza Rich]

DeSantis' claim is that it's essential business if it is pertinent to the Florida economy. I dunno...whatever.

There's close to 1,200 cases in Orange County (FL) where the training center is located. I agree with Trump's decision to start to attempt to re-open the country as places like Montana have had very little impact. But I really question if certain governors, like DeSantis, will follow the guidelines smartly or if they will try to re-open too soon, causing the virus to spread.

In Orlando, it starts to get to the high 80's around mid-May. June it gets to 90-94 degrees with 60% humidity. The snowbirds usually leave after Easter, but I'm guessing that is delayed this year so I expect them to be gone by Memorial Day. But the issue is that there are still a lot of people that have likely traveled to COVID-19 hot spots like NY, NJ and still a lot of Europeans in the country.


COVID-19 really didn't hit the Southern Hemisphere as badly and in the summer there is a large influx of tourists from South America that come to visit Florida. I'm guessing there will be travel restrictions in place, but with travel restrictions from Europe and Asia and then South America, it's going to be a massive blow to the FLA economy. And most people from FLA and the rest of the country are unwilling to go outside in FL in the middle of summer.



YR