Beaut of a show today. Cole/MJF at All In, while historically not a match I’d have had much interest watching in that slot, works perfectly given the story they’re going for. I suppose this means that we’ll have CM Punk’s off-brand world title being a separate entity longer than All-In, which is perfectly good, that story’s got some legs on it for sure. I’ve had an inkling this eventually ends with Cole betraying MJF and validating everything he’s always felt about not trusting people, which is a compelling story, but the concept of them actually staying friends after and proving to MJF that there’s good in the world is equally compelling, could be fun.

So happy for Shida, she deserves a run in front of fans and the division needs a shake-up. I wasn’t sure whether they’d be willing to do it tonight so it was a pleasant surprise.

Swerve getting the promo we’ve all been waiting for him to get. A true mega-heel promo that makes him look legit as hell. This is how you start getting his character to the levels we’ve all wanted him to get to.

And a win for Trent? Over Moxley/Penta? That’s a heck of a win, glad for him.

The first bits of All In hype levels are starting to set in, and that’s good.

This is pretty much it. They need to be willing to commit more time slots to the division. Right now it’s like they’re afraid to give the division any more time because it has historically got lower ratings than the men’s, but it’s a chicken and egg situation, since they’ve always been shucked off to the worst timeslot and never given investment. So of course people are going to become accustomed to tuning out for that section.

Make a concerted effort to allocate more of the show’s time to the division and better booking and more focus will inherently come, since they’ll have a larger portion of the show ‘on the line’ depending on the division being good television. It was a rough transition at the start for WWE too - the first women’s rumble was weak because the division was tiny, and it felt forced to give a women’s version of every big match. After a couple years though, it was the norm and the strength of the division started to shine through. They’ve still got a ways to go on their side of things as well on the main roster nowadays, but it’s in a better state than AEW for sure.

Now’s the best time to do it with the brand split - there’s more television time to go around than ever.

Wonderful news! They’re the heart and soul of the company and it would be a gigantic hit to lose them at this stage of their career and AEW’s lifecycle.

Now that Pac is about to become remembered by gravity, Andrade will fill the role as The Man Announcers Forgot

I’d second this, provided they’re interested in the role. They’ve been doing a wonderful job kick-starting activity into the magazine and taking the reigns in getting all the threads started, much better of a job than I could dream of doing.

I think it was entirely real, and I vaguely recall Tony Khan himself acknowledging it, it’s just that it’s more of codifying rules they’ve informally had for a long time and that there’s no shortage of exceptions made for the talent they trust. Anyone thinking it would significantly affect the on-screen product like a night and day difference was out to lunch for sure.

It was a fun show, but dare I say the blood and guts match didn’t quite match my expectations, mostly due to production errors. It felt like the cameras were missing lots of important spots, which took it out of it a little bit. I get it, it’s a tough match to get everything right with how chaotic it is, just a bit unfortunate. The storyline within it was good though, BCC losing because their extras weren’t fully invested in the relationship whereas Elite is all close thus sticks together, Mox surrendering to save Yuta, showing his first ounce of humanity since joining BCC.

The tag match was fun though! My fiancé got a huge kick out of the dance-off, I appreciate how MJF is intimately familiar with the special secret disco button. Very interested to see where things go from here.

Hook/Jack was interesting. The match itself was good and Hook will seemingly always impress me, Perry needs to keep tweaking his heel persona for sure but he’s getting crazy boos in the arena so the fans are responding well to him which is good.

All in all decent show, I’m excited to see how they start to build towards All In now that we’re past Blood & Guts.

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I think most everyone else has covered my thoughts, what with the rules as they stand being pretty good.

I’ll echo the sentiment of a meme Thursday or something being a good way to fill the gap on a day where there aren’t any prominent shows going on.

I can see where you’re coming from there for sure, but I guess it’s more the sense that it was a tad silly that there wasn’t anyone from England in a faction named Blackpool Combat Club ever since Regal left. Regionally named factions without anyone in the faction being at least presented as being vaguely from the area is an odd concept to me.

I would remark that it would be equally silly if there wasn’t any American or anyone presented as being vaguely American in style in the Hollywood Hunks and would probably make the same note if they finally added an American to that faction.

It’s probably a matter of how Kbin and Lemmy interact. On Kbin I see two moderators listed.

Pac honestly makes perfect sense there in hindsight, and he did a wonderful job in his short promo time last night. Obviously, being from England the Blackpool aspect of it is a natural fit, his style both in-ring and as a character fits perfectly with the group, and he’s extremely ready for a strong heel run after being in the background for a bit for the last little while. I hope his addition to BCC is permanent and not just for this match.

We did! Got quite a good laugh out of that one.

I find it particularly interesting how MJF translates so well in both our cases. I always would have thought that he would have been much more of a ‘smark hit’ than someone who would come across well to brand new watchers. Exact same thing here, without having any idea who he is and even his history as a massive asshole (given her first exposure to him was when he was already into the ‘fake babyface’ role last week), the moment he’s on screen her interest is at 100%. His natural charisma and ability to work in any role (be it comedy, reluctant temporary face, serious heel, etc) must be really translating really well and it says a lot about just how special of a talent he is that he can capture new fans right off the bat while keeping his stuff interesting to the hardcores as well by backing it up with great in-ring psychology and whatnot.

Fun show! Not a whole lot comes to mind to note outside of wanting to point out that Nick Wayne had a great showing and they’ve done a wonderful job hyping up his debut. Kid’s got an incredible future ahead of him for sure.

Yeah, it’s tough. I think most of us would love to also throw in some WWE discussions, but it just so happens that most of the active folks here at the moment are watching only AEW, myself included. I’d love to see some WWE discussions in there but as somebody who isn’t watching it personally, I feel a little disingenuous posting about something of which I don’t have much of substance to add. I imagine it’s a pretty similar situation for most of us here.

It’s very welcome content though! I hope nobody is seeing the AEW-heavy content there and thinking their WWE thoughts are better taken elsewhere.

Looking forward to this one - I get the sense some people have soured already on Kommander, but I’m always going to be a fan of my good ol’ flippy boys.

I never followed Japan so don’t know anything about Ibushi outside of the general history with Omega and bits and pieces I’ve read over the years, but people are excited to see him so if it’s him I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s about.

BCC could be anyone - obviously Jerhicho is in the mix since they had a promo last week, but it seems like they’re going a different direction with a surprise. Honestly have no idea. I don’t know if Ospreay is back in Japan now but I feel like if they’re gunning for Omega/Ospeay at All-In, that could be a fun way to keep him in the mix.

I’ve found that the encounter builder is usually fine, but I would spend lots of extra time setting up encounters using it only to find that the things I plucked haphazardly were only about, say, 20% less balanced on average.

At the end of the day it became a question on if it was worth it to run every encounter through that for being only marginally better than just grabbing and going. For some, they have the time to spare and it is worth it, and that’s perfectly great! For myself I found that the extra variance just made things interesting and that 20% extra imbalance could be made up by the odd sneaky adjustment on the fly if I was ridiculously off base in where I expected the fight to end up in difficulty.

I found long ago that trying to balance my 5E encounters in any way, shape, or form is just a hopeless endeavor.

I just throw things at my party and kind of let 'er rip. Some end up hard, some end up easy, after a while you get a general gist for what they tend to be able to handle.

Solid show! Like a couple others were saying, I agree that it’s really great to have Dynamite and Collision having such distinct styles. It really helps keep you excited for both.

Solid in ring action tonight. Jay White is everything he was advertised to be and more so far.