| BasilZero said: AEW Beach break sounds good from what I read. |
I saw the first half or so. Spoilers ahead obviously. The Sammy/Cody ladder match was good. It was mostly a spot fest, but sometimes that's alright. The spots they hit looked good, but a couple of the bumps Sammy took looked really nasty. Not great on psychology, and it's a bit puzzling why they had to go this extreme for a rivalry that really had no personal grudge, but if you like stunts, there were good stunts. Sammy's cutter off the latter legitimately made me gasp.
Britt Baker's promo was pretty good. Obnoxious as fuck like it should be. Leaned a bit too heavy into insulting the Cleveland Browns. I get it, she's from Pittsburg, they were in Cleveland, but she went in hard on that, and it worked great for the crowd there but for the 99% of the TV audience not from Cleveland, who gives a shit. And... kind of unsure what the point was. I mean, it was good at making her look annoying, in a good way, but she's already got that down, and it wasn't promoting any particular match. So... why?
Wardlow beat a couple of jobbers, which is fine. Basically what Ryback did back in the day. They should have gotten smaller guys, because Wardlow is big but not super tall, and this sort of thing just works better when the monster looks bigger by comparison.
Then they had Layla Hirsh vs Red Velvet, and I'm continuously confused why she gets to wrestle live. Just looks awkward.
Punk called out MJF... and to show how tough he is basically tried to fight off the whole Pinnacle stable? Punks promo was good, but it sort of made him look like a putz for not having a plan for something he should have seen coming from a mile away. And, usually when someone is getting the shit beat out of them in AEW someone comes to make the save, but Punk has no friends.
Lance Archer vs Hangman Page is going to be a death match. For... reasons I guess? I mean, Archer attacked him once... doesn't seem like they'd have such a deep hatred that they'd need to make it a death match.
I stopped watching after that. Not like, stopped watching because it was bad, just cause I had other stuff to do. Apparently Orange Cassidy beat Adam Cole. Can't speak to the quality of the match, but I'm not a fan of Orange Cassidy's shtick, and if Adam Cole is supposed to be a big star, he shouldn't be losing to a comedy act.
What was there was mostly fine, but you don't get the sense that there's a ton of consistency or planning. Most of the reason I watched was cause I figured I'd see something with Daniel Bryan, but he was nowhere to be seen and not mentioned. Page just got a vinette... and he's like, the champion, and they should presumably be building his feud with Archer. Last episode I saw there was a lot of shit with the Young Bucks and the Undisputed Era, but that was just kind of dropped. Serena Deeb and Hikaru Shida had something going on, but nothing going on there. Ruby Soho got a quick shoutout. Didn't that guy Brody King debut like... a week or two ago? So... shouldn't he be doing something besides a few lines in a Malakai Black promo?
It's kind of like it's being booked by picking names out of a hat, and those people get to be on that week. More or less indy wrestling with a big budget. And, I get some people like indy wrestling, but the whole point of weekly TV is to consistently build people and programs, and not a lot of that going on.
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