AEW Full Gear 2021: Kenny Omega vs Hangman Page for the AEW World Championship

[Mr. Nerfect]

Originally Posted by Jordan Oh it's a shoot brother, no gimmick needed. AEW is producing everything you actually write about on these pages. They are developing new stars and working with unknown talents, highlighting legendary workers in a useful way while building or rebuilding damage done by WWE. AEW is curating a growing audience while constantly staying true to their core base of fans. We have stories that develop over years and stories that are settled in weeks time, the matches themselves always become the most important aspect of the stories. We have championships treated with respect and we have great tv matches every single week that build to even better matches the next. It's just perfect the way it's going. AEW doesn't have to out draw WWE in any way to be a thriving company. AEW has great ticket sales weekly, big merch buisness and a great rights deal along with a strong PPV presence. You wouldn't compare NJPW to WWE financially and say "oh well WWE makes a ton more money so they win". It doesn't matter because for years NJPW was just the best product and presentation in wrestling. They like AEW are just popping out great shows and making a good amount of money as they go forward. AEW is absolutely putting up the best shows ever. Sure WWF and WCW have so many classics but AEW is delivering classics on a much more consistent basis. Even when Dax main events against PAC it's a world class match.

No, they’re not producing the content I talk about on this forum. Don’t put words in my mouth.

They’re not developing stars. This would suggest they have fresh faces that are drawing money. Adam Page won the belt. Yippie. They ruined that for me a long time ago. He’s been a clown for the better part of the year, and has largely been a geek who doesn’t believe in himself. I’m not buying.

Apart from that, who is a star? MJF? Darby Allin? MJF loses his heat constantly and was projected to be a World Champion by now and he feels as mid-card as ever. Darby has been good at times, but feels way below being a sincere main eventer.

This idea that AEW makes stars is a construct, just like them treating tag teams better and women as equal to the men.

The stories in AEW are weak. Omega/Page was horrible. Just because you can earmark some dates when certain events happened, doesn’t make it a good story. Omega was uninspiring as World Champion, Adam Page was never hotter than he was his first day in the company. Blah. And so many stories are just dropped for no reason. Lots of things happen with no sense behind them. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

AEW is not growing an audience, lol. Rampage has lost about half its viewership and Dynamite has slipped back towards its numbers when it was opposed by NXT. 1.4-1.6 million people watched wrestling on a Wednesday. It wasn’t impressive, but it was what it was. Now you get 900k people watching. And shrinking.

Great TV matches? The wrestling in AEW is largely white noise. Even the good stuff, hypothetically, usually lacks context and suffers because of this. It’s a bunch of movez. Where is the psychology and the drama? If you enjoy AEW’s matches? Cool. Good for you. But it’s highly subjective. There are lots of people who can’t get through this grizzle.

They run in the red, dude. We don’t know how “great” any of their business is besides the ticket sales. PPV buys and rights fees are debatable and depend on your perspective. I’m not impressed by 100k buys. Sorry, but I’m not. And I’m not impressed by $45 million per year to generate 3 hours of content.

They are riding a return of people to venues and are drying out that hardcore fan well. They have already stopped selling out. They are going to find it harder to sell tickets, not easier.

I don’t compare WWE to New Japan and say they win because they’ve got more money. The Khans have more capital than the lot of them. I saw AEW sucks because its content is juvenile, silly, insulting and ineffective. I use metrics to gauge how successful they actually are at appealing to fans. Most people who have ever checked them out have tuned them back out. This product is out of touch.

Classics is, again, subjective. I have been told that Full Gear was a classic show. That sounds forced as shit, and the show itself actually sounds rather boring. WWF and WCW put on shows that people could get excited about, and actually grew interest in wrestling from where it was.