For now I give this PLE a B. It was good and I don't want to downplay the wrestling, but I don't like the trend WWE is going down. I think this kind of thing is valid criticism that can push people to watch other promotions as well. It doesn't feel like the WrestleMania matches are predictable at least, so that works in the favor of this event. With as many wrestlers as they have, please don't show me eight matches across two nights... (6/6)
If you push other wrestlers to also be feuding with the champs at the same time then it's less predictable. Imagine if LA Knight and Randy Orton also got some words in to Seth? Then it would have been less clear who will win.
While the matches themselves were great, they all had strong favorites to win. We knew the likeliest winners were Becky, Judgement Day, Drew, and Rhea. I'm not upset with the victors, but you could at least try to make it ambiguous rather than promoting these guys' WrestleMania matches before Elimination Chamber (Becky vs Rhea or Drew vs Seth). (4/?)
In general there is so much filler and none of it adds to the awesomeness that you could have instead by giving us more matches. Imagine paying WrestleMania ticket prices for four matches? (3/?)
The matches themselves were great, but they're not made that much better by having long entrances for each wrestler. Should it be longer than regular TV? Sure. But not so long that if you add up all the entrances you could squeeze in another match. And then I know match time was traded for showing ads. If I remember correctly we barely used to see ads on PLEs and now they're common filler. (2/?)
@heartstopper84 I say 6 or 7 out of 10. The match was good, but the predictability was too much for Becky to win. If it wasn't so predictable I would rate it higher.
The match did serve to show how important workers like Deonna are, though. For every charismatic-but-inexperienced worker like Britt Baker, Thunder Rosa, or Jade Cargill, you need a solid worker in the midcard with indie or joshi experience to at least try to make them look good. A Ruby Soho, Taya Valkyrie, Mercedes Martinez, someone like that.
It seems likely that that’s where Deonna will slot in after Revolution, when Mercedes-mania starts running wild.
Then we get to Deonna vs. Madison Rayne, and this is where the lack of depth in AEW’s women’s division sticks out like a sore thumb.
Even if the match was essentially a tune-up match to give Deonna momentum going into Revolution, it ended up being painfully slow, and at times awkward. Capped off by the “Intuit Move of the Night” where Madison sells a flatliner like a DDT, and inadvertently spikes herself.
Unfortunate that No Surrender is airing at the same time as SmackDown this week. Don't know what happened there, but I hope they don't keep scheduling PPVs against other promotions. Was considering watching it live.
I'm here to talk about wrestling. Will post about #WWE, #AEW, #WWENXT, and even other promotions like #TNA or #NWA sometimes. My goal is to manifest the wrestling Mastodon community I want to see in the world.Fair warning: I do live posting when I watch shows as they air in the US.Digivoled from @JackElephant.