All Elite Wrestling Thread (It's Wednesday...you know what that means.)

[Bandit]

[Ocelot]

Watched the two main matches again this afternoon since I had an appointment be moved to tomorrow.

Was not feeling Omega/Osprey quite as much. Loved the brutality and the story but the two points of interference took me out of the match a bit. I understand they were there to further the Callis/Omega storyline and hopefully lead to a rubber match between the two or otherwise some kind of fitting finale to this story, but it took away from the match for me. Everything else was fire though. Gonna revise it to ****
Okata/Danielson, however, was Professional Wrestling at its finest. Immaculate storytelling and Danielson continuing to perform at such a high level with an arm broken that bad (and I've had plenty of breaks like that, and trust me, they HURT to move around even slightly) is superhuman. One of my very favorite matches ever and easily the best thing I've seen all year. Ten million trillion stars.

[Bandit]

If I booked it it would have ended with the Tiger Driver 91, but it was still amazing.

The broken arm hurt Danielson/Okada. They had to end it 10 minutes early and the last 10 minutes is the best part of Okada matches. But both of them said they want to rematch soon. Maybe Wrestle Kingdom on 1/4.

[Bandit]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

[Ocelot]

FUCK MAN. I have had breaks exactly like that and they really are motherfuckers to heal unless you get that shit rodded/plated asap. That is a severely bad break that's gonna need surgery and a *lot* of downtime to heal and you cannot motherfucking rush it healing.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

There should be over 80k at All in.

[Ocelot]

Calling Osprey/Omega 3 as the main event which will be like fifteen gazilliion starss.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Big Daddy Jr vs Giant Haystacks Jr is what the English want.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Bandit]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Each cheek adds a ratings point.

[Bandit]

[Bandit]

Skye Blue"s ass went viral

[Ocelot]

So if I can change the subject from Skye Blue's ass for a second, AEW is apparently going to start restricting some moves, which on the one hand I understand, but on the other I do hope they don't try to become WWE mark 2.0 or WWE lite, because the ship will well and truly start to sink in that case.

[Bandit]

From the new Observer

There are some changes in rules regarding AEW with a memo sent to talent this past week.

Fightful reported on an internal memo which now bans certain things and also has other things that have to be approved before being done in a match.

The banned list is unprotected chair shots to the head, shots to the back of the head, buckle bombs, Blind moves backwards into the turnbuckles, pretending to have a seizure (coming off the Bryan Danielson spot in the Kazuchika Okada match), spitting (which has been done tons of times even as recently as this week in the FTR vs. Jay White & Juice Robinson match where Dax Harwood had this big log of spot on his chest for a part of he match), bleeding in the crowd, using weapons or projectiles in the crowd, taking drinks or food from customers in the crowd (the MJF deal in the Danielson match in San Francisco which was really bad since MJF poured the drink over the head of a kid and AEW was very lucky his mother was very good about it and AEW was very good to them because of it), physical conduct with customers and banning throwing anything that has blood on it into the crowd.

There to me is no problem with any of this as none is needed. I personally don’t care about the spitting because I’m more worried about stuff where people get hurt. But banning spitting is going to make no difference in anyone’s entertainment. Taking drinks from fans is 99 percent of the time fine as fans get off on that, especially when it’s a face pouring it on a heel, but it’s not needed and won’t impact the entertainment value of a match.

Regarding spitting, I watched the FTR match with Robinson & White with others and while I didn’t blink an eye over the spitting spot and have seen it countless times in wrestling, two people who watched with me were grossed out about it and one left the room. But then again, blood is a bigger thing when it comes to both turning on one part of the audience and people I’m watching with leaving the room, more than spit. But blood can heighten the excitement of a match. A lot of promotions have done just fine without blading, and drawing intention hardway blood is far more dangerous than blading. But it is part of AEW’s presentation.

But spit is like this split second pop that in the big picture means nothing past that split second and banning it does not change anything to a significant degree. The stuff to protect the head is far more important.

Things listed as needing to be approved by someone in management are apron and floor bumps, table, ladder and chair spots, dives and ladder spots outside the barricade or around the arena, All piledrivers, 450s, 630s, double moonsaults, shooting stars and intentional bleeding, throwing people into, through or over the ring steps, announcers table, guard rails and barricades, weapons shots, spraying people with sprays liquids, throwing powders, choking or hanging spots, injury angles, crowd brawling and touching referees, managers or others not in the match.

They are all still allowed and will be done, but you just have to tell the producers and coaches you are working with on the match that you are doing it. In theory, if too many are doing the same things repeatedly on the same show, they may not be approved because you don’t want to overdo those type of spots.

One wrestler noted to us that you won’t see any changes that would be noticeable since all of those things that you have to alert the producers about were all things that talent would already been telling the producers about to begin with.

He noted that during the rare occasions where people do something in the moment that would violate the rules it could be an issue after the fact, but noted those are rare. He expected if that were to happen he expected minor fines but no great repercussions and it wouldn’t happen often enough that it changes the product at all.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Kenny is not happy about the moves ban.

[Ocelot]

I have a funny feeling this is gonna lead indirectly into Kenny going to WWE