[Hitman1987]

The reviews have started to come in early, boys! The thread will be updated accordingly. I should have the majority of segments up by Sunday night.

 

[Hitman1987]

Actually fuck it. I'm editing this thread we are going to make this a Cornette megathread

 

[Hitman1987]

Jim officially the most talked about person regarding AEW. Biggest comeback in wrestling history?

Does anybody in this thread know the total number of people who listen to his podcast?

 

[Hitman1987]

yeah well i dont wanna recommend a video to a 12 year old where jim cornette says "he got a gash deep as a goat's cunt" and having his mom lambast me LOL

Classic Cornette 😂😂😂

 

[Hitman1987]

Not sure if it is public knowledge since you would have to add up all the numbers from all the podcast platforms and not all those are published, plus the YouTube clips. But he usually seems to chart pretty well on the Sports podcasts lists along with Steve Austin and Bruce Prichard.

3 million listeners a month as of August. That number was increasing at the time of that report as well.

It’s just an agreement that stipulates that Cornette can’t divulge AEW’s business strategies. He’s gotten dangerously close when he revealed that Tony Khan was planning to re-sign Goldberg and give him another streak. But that’s probably in the clear because it didn’t happen and Goldberg signed with the WWE.



Yes and yes.



It’s a few hundred thousand worldwide. He gets more people listening to his podcast than watch Impact. He’s probably sneaking up to Dynamite, honestly. Granted, that is worldwide vs. US, but it’s one guy sharing his opinion versus a wrestling promotion.

Not bad for an out of touch guy doing a podcast from his living room.

I love this thread.

 

[Hitman1987]

Shit like this stops right now. Comments like pippens stops now. Stop baiting each other and just discuss Jim's opinions.

I appreciate that you have a difficult job to moderate this thread but I do feel that this being a pinned thread is justified and hope you don’t remove it. AEW puts out dynamite every week and Cornette reviews that episode every week so there should be a mega thread for both. It also prevents multiple threads being derailed and it keeps the Cornette discussions together.

Somebody compared this thread to a piece of shit yesterday, which is fine as that’s their opinion. But if you think something’s a piece of shit and you decide to go and purposefully step in that piece of shit, you can’t blame that piece of shit for getting shit on your shoes.

 

[Hitman1987]

Dave has helped out people I know, but man is he a real fuckhead about AEW. There is legitimately shit that doesn’t make sense. You can enjoy it — that’s subjective — but to say it is “good” is bad criticism. And he criticises people who make true statements about it.

Just from this week’s Corny reviews: They went from a tag team kidnapping AEW’s equivalent to Hornswoggle — something they should get into more trouble for than cutting something off a dinosaur’s mask. But the irony is that in the next segment we got Joey Janela...who once kidnapped one of the kidnappers. That makes zero sense from a storytelling perspective.

There is stuff that isn’t explained. AEW is terrible at exposition. Some things are only explained on their YouTube shows. Some things just aren’t explained at all. Some things seem to depend on a knowledge of wrestling outside AEW — which makes no sense when you’ve got a show watched by 750k people, which is more than the US citizens who have New Japan World. So how the fuck should they know what a Bullet Club or a KENTA is. You need to explain that shit.

If you want to make some sort of arcane, dense, anime-style impenetrable mess that rewards hardcore fans for absorbing extra lore? That’s fine. It’s an annoying and shitty thing to do with that medium. But you cannot then go and argue that this shit makes sense all the time when it doesn’t.

If Jon Moxley actually carried the NJPW title around that Kenta attacked him over it may help explain to casuals why it’s happening, he doesn’t though and if he doesn’t care enough to carry it around at all times then why should anybody else care about it. Same can be said of Kenny, if he’s collecting belts then he should carry all the belts at all times, you wouldn’t see Thanos leaving one of the infinity stones at home while he goes and searches for the others. At the moment he’s a double champ but why would anybody care about the AAA title if he cant be bothered to show it off. Surely Callis could just carry it around for him. There doesn’t seem to be an issue with showing the AAA title on AEW as he’s already defended it on dynamite.

I’m also not quite sure why Archer decided to get involved when he’s already feuding with Eddie and B&B and that feud doesn’t seem to be over.

You can’t just chuck shit out there and expect the audience to do the groundwork, it’s AEW’s job to tell the story, not just do the beginning and ending.

They need some writers who can write coherent, week to week television. For example, anybody with any writing ability would know that having sting and Darby doing the same thing week after week would get shit on.

 

[Hitman1987]

All good points.

Another thing I noticed — they had KENTA give a GTS to Mox too (a shitty one at that). Yes, I know he invented the move. Most wrestling fans who recognise it would know it as CM Punk’s though. Is it really that smart to have a guy show up and hit CM Punk’s move on a guy and make people think “Man, I really wish that was CM Punk...”

Anybody who knows CM Punk and doesn’t know Kenta will basically think “Hey there’s a little guy with purple hair stealing and botching CM Punk’s move”. That’s when the commentary team has step in and explain that he invented the move and that “other people” stole it. The commentary team are very bad as joining the dots for the audience, Excalibur has the facts but reads them off a sheet like he’s narrating Wikipedia and the other 2 just don’t know enough about the bullet club/GTS connections to relay them in a compelling manner.

 

[Hitman1987]

The commentators are a huge issue with the presentation of this show. No, they are not as robotic as WWE drones. But they do one of the most annoying things a commentator can do: They sell everything like the moon landing. It’s insulting to people. Tony Shiavone was despised by wrestling fans for years because “This is the greatest night in the history of our sport!”

A commentator’s job is not to act like a hype man or sell everything as HUGE. That’s what some smarks on the internet think. It’s actually to work as a conduit between a home audience and the presentation. If things are not being explained and are being responded to with melting orgasms, it is actually quite alienating and detrimental to the product. JR knows all this, but he stopped giving a shit and is apparently drinking more. He’s WCW Bobby Heenan.

What you said is perfect. It tells you who KENTA is, why he is here, and why he did what he did. AEW commentators never explain shit.

That’s why I like it when Callis is on commentary, he brings a sense of professionalism to the show and doesn’t mark out like Excalibur and Schiavone each time somebody hits a tope or a tiger driver 96 .

Callis is passionate about Kenny and wrestling and convinces the audience to share his passion. I think JR is at an age where someday needs to lead him, if you give him something decent to call and somebody decent to lead then he would be a lot better.

 

[Hitman1987]

The first thing I thought when I saw Darby and Janela in the ring is that anybody watching the show who doesn’t know Darby Allin is going to think these 2 guys are too small to be wrestlers and therefore the TNT title becomes less important by association.

Darby Allin has something to offer but I think making him the next TNT champion after Cody booked the title so high up the card was a mistake. He is painfully small and doesn’t have the promo skills to retain interest in a way that somebody like MJF could. The TNT title has gone from being booked too high up card to bottom of mid card as Darby is visually the underdog in every match. There should’ve been an interim champ between Darby and Cody to bring it down gradually (e.g. MJF)

The way to book Darby is to put him in matches with good workers who look good but are of similar size (Sammy, JB, Pillman, Sky, Spears, Starks, MJF). That way if a casual is watching the size difference isn’t so obvious (like Darby and Cage) and there is always one guy in the match who looks like an athlete so casuals are less likely to switch. Then you let Darby display his daredevil tendencies and technical ability and the audience will then realise that it’s those that put him on the same level as his opponents. Then build him up gradually to face a monster at a PPV (e.g. Hobbs/Cage)

Booking him in a competitive match with Janela brings both Darby and the title down to Janela’s level.

 

[Hitman1987]

Darby can make his shit look good, but he needs an opponent who can actually properly work.

Darby is great in the ring and commits to his moves which makes him more believable (unlike say Mox’s tope suicidas) and also has that Jeff Hardy-esque rag doll selling. I just think he doesn’t offer much more outside of that so the best way to book him is to have him wrestle frequently with good workers who are of similar size. That’s how he will get over more, then build him up to overcome a monster. These horrendous promos/segments with Sting do nothing for him.

Darby’s first defence was against Cage, a guy way bigger than him with a great record, and that match was a bit of a stretch for me, they were also aware of the stretch so protected cage with the roll up. Then his second defence was against a guy who shouldn’t be on TV and doesn’t have the credibility or skills to get Darby over in any way. Darby should’ve squashed him to show the clear divide between his first 2 challengers and where he sits amongst those 2 challengers (Clearly above Janela, just below Cage but can beat him on a good day).

I just hoped that when Darby won the TNT title it would create a mid card similar to prime TNA X division with Starks, JB, Fenix, Sammy, MJF, Pac, with the occasional monster dipping in and out (Wardlow/Miro/Cage/Archer)

 

[Hitman1987]

Agree with basically all that. I think if his opponent is too small, he looks a bit like a guy having a bum fight. I haven’t seen him standing next to PAC, but that’s a guy with some great definition.

PAC vs Darby would be great, to a casual though people would look at the match and expect PAC to squash him because of PAC‘s superior look, yet as the match played out and Darby showed off his daredevil tendencies people would realise that is Darby’s equaliser and Darby has to put his body on the line to compete with these guys. Then it would make sense and people would cheer him on as the underdog.

Darby has something to offer, it just baffles me that he became champion before established talent like Page, PAC, Cage, Archer, Miro, Penta, MJF.

 

[Hitman1987]

I think Darby was the perfect choice for a follow-up champ to Cody. To most of us, he was the front-runner for a homegrown AEW talent to push to the upper card. The problem is the execution of his actual reign has been awful for a multitude of reasons. Instead of having really good matches, he's been getting constantly interrupted by team Tazz for over 5 months with no real progression towards anything significant.

That, combined with being a third wheel in Sting's underwhelming return angle has been really hurting him by proxy. I don't think his size is detrimental because small guys in wrestling has been normalized since 2014. It's just that his presentation sucks ass because this company can't book coherent storylines to save their lives.

Darby makes sense to push in the Cody spot to me, just because they had those early showings between him and Cody. Well, I guess it depends on whether or not you think it’s too early for Darby to actually beat Cody or not.

From a storyline line perspective, it made perfect sense for Darby to dethrone Cody due to their previous encounters, it’s just I personally feel that there were wrestlers with better records at the time (Archer/Cage/MJF) who had all lost to Mox so needed the rub to regain credibility. There’s also Miro who, despite horrific booking and TK suggesting the Miro he got was not the tank driving Rusev of WWE which is bullshit, debuted as their 3rd biggest singing behind Jericho and Mox (I would say Miro was a bigger signing than Brodie RIP) and could’ve been given a title to back it up. There’s also PAC who’s got victories over hangman and Omega but isn’t going to get the AEW title anytime soon so he could do with the mid card title rub as he’s too good to not have a title.

I just think they had more time to build Darby as he didn’t really have any credible victories when he won the belt. They could’ve got away with building him for another year while giving one or two of the others mentioned above a run with the title. MJf is homegrown so that would‘be been fine.

They can’t all be champ at the same time though and it’s a big roster so I suppose it comes down to personal preference at the end of the day of who you think should/shouldn’t be champ.

 

[Hitman1987]

Sometimes you just have to strike while the iron is hot, and I think Darby was definitely the right person for that. Some of the names you suggested are not bad choices, but Darby had more momentum than all of them at the time he won the championship. My second choice would have been Brian Cage, because a muscular monster heel is an excellent contrast to most of the wrestlers in AEW, and the fans would love to have seen their favorite wrestler overcome him. Do I think you could have had Darby chase him as an underdog babyface? Absolutely, but I'm not mad that they put the title on him immediately. I am annoyed by what came after, which is a whole lot of nothing.

It’s like they’re booking the team Taz feud in reverse. They debuted Sting at the start, then had the Darby vs Cage (team taz’s best booked guy) not long after, and they left themselves with fuck all to do between that and the street fight.

They could’ve done Darby vs Starks rematch first where Cage & Hobbs try to get involved, then a blackout, then when lights come back on, Cage/Taz/Hobbs are laid out around ring and Darby picks up a clean victory.

Then have Darby vs Hobbs where Hobbs dominates and Cage and Starks get involved. Then point camera at rafters and show an outline of a wrestler holding a baseball bat. Cage and Starks are distracted (or even leave ringside to investigate) and Darby rolls up Hobbs. Protects Hobbs and Darby has 2 victories against team Taz.

Then have team taz cut a promo saying they are sending in their top guy (Cage) to get the job done properly. Then during the Darby vs Cage match, Starks and Hobbs interfere, then stings music hits, the snow drops and Sting comes out and cleans house with baseball bat (whilst injuring Hobbs) leaving Darby and Cage to fight 1 on 1 and Darby retains.

Next dynamite, Team Taz cuts promo saying Hobbs is injured until after next PPV so it will be Cage and Starks vs Darby and Sting in streetfight match at PPV. Then have a couple of weeks (not months) of promos/segments to build to PPV and then have pay off match at PPV and end feud.

They should’ve drip fed us Sting’s debut and had Darby work his way through Team Taz one stage at a time with each stage becoming a harder obstacle to get over.

 

[Hitman1987]

I already can't wait for Saturday to hear the rant on this one.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1362102127653515269

This could be the worst singles match on paper in dynamite history

 

[Hitman1987]

The Broadway musical killed MJF for Jim, and many of us. He hasn't been the same sense.

The Moxley feud didn’t pass the raw test, then he started arguing with himself in the ring which was cringe but the final straw was the singing/dancing segment as it broke Kayfabe which was MJF’s USP.

However, even after all that above his heel performances in ring in the inner circle 3 way and tag team battle royal have been second to none.

Jericho is his Achilles heel and as soon as the shit is over MJF, Wardlow and hopefully PNP will form a stable and shine.

 

[Hitman1987]

I knew somebody would do it 😂😂😂

 

[Hitman1987]

Cody only sells powerbombs if he’s got to go and film a TV show.

Brian last said it best “everybody thinks that Cody is this wrestling wizard and he really isn’t“ and now that the AEW honeymoon period is over he is getting found out, just like the Bucks, as not having what it takes to be the guy(s)

 

[Hitman1987]

I gotta check out this weeks Cornette podcast! Thank you guys for reminding me haha

Check his twitter page out too, there’s a fan video of Shaq getting up and walking out of the ambulance 😱

 

[Hitman1987]

Can't wait to hear Cornette drag Tony Khan for 30 minutes this week.

I feel like the worst moment since AEW’s inception could lead to the greatest Cornette rant since the drive-thru’s inception 🙌