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Post by Andy Martin on Feb 20, 2023 17:47:43 GMT -5
For a guy who's "The Devil" with Christian back he's at most, 3rd most evil on the roster, he needs something new, something really brutal. At least 30 percent of Christian’s evil-ness is the turtleneck sweater, in fairness.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Feb 20, 2023 17:50:55 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited.
I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit.
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Bo Rida
Fry's dog Seymour
Pulled one over on everyone. Got away with it, this time.
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Post by Bo Rida on Feb 20, 2023 18:22:00 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited. I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit. It's questionable in kayfabe too. Why would aew allow it? Just book the match instead of jepordising a big ppv match main event with the potential of a Danielson loss. It's a bit different doing that angle lower down the card and/or he's already beat an opponent, makes more sense. Admittedly I've stopped paying full attention to him so maybe that was explained. Having the power to delay the Takeshita Vs Danielson match with the ref protecting him rather than stopping him was weird too. Maybe it's long-term storytelling and it'll be revealed TK and MJF have been in cahoots all along. Tbf that would explain a lot, Wardlow's initial weird contract situation, why he gets away with having fewer matches, how he's allowed to bring in outside wrestlere etc.
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Abdullah
Hank Scorpio
Thank you, Ishmeal Loves Bayley!
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Post by Abdullah on Feb 20, 2023 18:24:17 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited. I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit. He’s not really interacting with Bryan at all during this. It’s wild. Bryan has these matches that fill time but mean nothing. MJF is taking about a girl giving him head or whatever. It’s really bad, actually. The few run-ins they’ve had are boilerplate and perfunctory. They might as well give Bryan the belt, but they won’t.
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Kalmia
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Post by Kalmia on Feb 20, 2023 18:58:07 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited. I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit. It makes no sense doing it with Danielson either. The guy loves to wrestle. Making him wrestle more is hardly a hardship. It's a story that can work with a lot of faces when it appears to be a series of obstacles in their way but wrestling more matches has never been an obstacle for Danielson. Making Danielson sit on the sidelines and NOT wrestle for several weeks would have been tougher on him
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,079
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Feb 21, 2023 2:21:56 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited. I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit. It makes no sense doing it with Danielson either. The guy loves to wrestle. Making him wrestle more is hardly a hardship. It's a story that can work with a lot of faces when it appears to be a series of obstacles in their way but wrestling more matches has never been an obstacle for Danielson. Making Danielson sit on the sidelines and NOT wrestle for several weeks would have been tougher on him Ooo how about a reversal, MJF says he'll run a gauntlet instead, and he picks total jobbers week after week(can Barry Horowitz still go), while Danielson gets madder at the disrespect but can't touch him. It makes it dumber that they started the whole thing off calling attention to how repetitive this is.... then did it anyway.
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Post by defectiveepitaph on Feb 21, 2023 5:11:25 GMT -5
It makes no sense doing it with Danielson either. The guy loves to wrestle. Making him wrestle more is hardly a hardship. It's a story that can work with a lot of faces when it appears to be a series of obstacles in their way but wrestling more matches has never been an obstacle for Danielson. Making Danielson sit on the sidelines and NOT wrestle for several weeks would have been tougher on him Ooo how about a reversal, MJF says he'll run a gauntlet instead, and he picks total jobbers week after week(can Barry Horowitz still go), while Danielson gets madder at the disrespect but can't touch him. It makes it dumber that they started the whole thing off calling attention to how repetitive this is.... then did it anyway. Being repetitive is MJF’s gimmick.
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,079
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Feb 21, 2023 5:37:22 GMT -5
Ooo how about a reversal, MJF says he'll run a gauntlet instead, and he picks total jobbers week after week(can Barry Horowitz still go), while Danielson gets madder at the disrespect but can't touch him. It makes it dumber that they started the whole thing off calling attention to how repetitive this is.... then did it anyway. Being repetitive is MJF’s gimmick.
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Abdullah
Hank Scorpio
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Post by Abdullah on Feb 21, 2023 7:24:30 GMT -5
I think the worrying thing, too, is that MJF’s 26 years old. He ended last year on a wave of positive press, arguably the most popular he’s ever been. And even before then, he’s been dubbed as this ‘can’t miss’ talent — with several performances to back it up.
That’s just not the kind of person that you leave to their own devices. He’ll either… 1) Think nothing is wrong, and he doesn’t need to change it up. 2) Utterly buy into his own hype. 3) Be plagued by pressure. 4) Some combination of all the above.
Someone should sit him down and say ‘enough with the gauntlets, let’s figure out how to make this work long-term.’ But nothing I’ve seen from Tony Khan’s booking suggests to me that he knows how to pull back talent and nurture them. You hear, even from people who work in AEW, who have only good things to say otherwise, how it’s disorganized and free-flowing and that can be a detriment.
This is just a bad feud that will likely end with a good match. Whatever. The more concerning part is Max potentially not building on his initial success because he’s so stuck in his ways and what initially worked for him. That would be a real shame.
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markymark
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
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Post by markymark on Feb 21, 2023 10:03:14 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited. I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit.
AEW had cases of title reigns having a bad start and they ended up in the positive note(Darby first TNT title reign , Kenny post Revolution to DON 2021, Mox feuding with Hager in 2020)
The Wardlow feud at least had Spears being there acting like Wardlows best friend only to show his loyalty to MJF.
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mc74
Samurai Cop
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Post by mc74 on Feb 21, 2023 10:26:49 GMT -5
I really think AEW should've booked MJF as a tweener when he came back. With the Punk incident throwing everything into chaos, AEW had the perfect opportunity to do that with MJF.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2023 10:58:23 GMT -5
MJF's major problems are his tendencies to be a "greatest hits" album (making his opponents do the same stuff over and over again to face him, being the holder of that goddamn diamond ring for 4 years running, his refusal to do anything besides be a slimebag heel) and the fact that he's so desperate to maintain kayfabe that he believes cheap heat is good heat.
I get that there is a general belief that because now he's champ, its cool to rag on him much like what happened to Seth Rollins when he had his babyface run with the WWE Championship and want him to drop the belt immediately, but I think him being champ exposes these weaknesses even more.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2023 11:22:54 GMT -5
For my money, his biggest problem is that he's still acting cartoonishly evil instead of "Wow, what a bastard" evil.
Swerve is everything MJF is aiming for but not quite hitting, because Swerve is being evil in a way that works in a wrestling context.
Being a good heel is an art-form and it's not as easy as just "Your sports team sucks, you're all dumb hicks, your women are ugly, you're poor, *insert abortion joke here before going into a shoot, brother* and my name is Maxwell Jacob Friedman and I'm better than you"
My guy is so desperate to get TEH HEATZ that we got that weird-ass promo a week or two back about the car crash that doesn't even make sense for the character of MJF.
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Post by HMARK Center on Feb 21, 2023 11:37:59 GMT -5
again just for discussion sake, I do wonder how much of this being the 4th feud where MJF had someone face multiple challenges to get to him hurt the feud. Like Danielson is amazing in ring but they've done this with Cody, Jericho, and Wardlow so I can see people not being excited. I have a feeling the reign will pick up a bit. It makes no sense doing it with Danielson either. The guy loves to wrestle. Making him wrestle more is hardly a hardship. It's a story that can work with a lot of faces when it appears to be a series of obstacles in their way but wrestling more matches has never been an obstacle for Danielson. Making Danielson sit on the sidelines and NOT wrestle for several weeks would have been tougher on him Wasn't the whole idea that Danielson's shoulder is getting @#$%ed up in these matches, and Rush was the last ditch attempt to slow him down by just having him brutalized when he managed to survive the damage? I'm guessing that plays a role in the endgame at Revolution, but we'll see.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2023 12:21:46 GMT -5
It makes no sense doing it with Danielson either. The guy loves to wrestle. Making him wrestle more is hardly a hardship. It's a story that can work with a lot of faces when it appears to be a series of obstacles in their way but wrestling more matches has never been an obstacle for Danielson. Making Danielson sit on the sidelines and NOT wrestle for several weeks would have been tougher on him Wasn't the whole idea that Danielson's shoulder is getting @#$%ed up in these matches, and Rush was the last ditch attempt to slow him down by just having him brutalized when he managed to survive the damage? I'm guessing that plays a role in the endgame at Revolution, but we'll see. But, on the other side of the coin, MJF hardly ever wrestles due to him being such a coward and we're expecting him to go a whole hour, so there's the idea of him being gassed easily and doing every cheap tactic to stall for time/score pinfalls. I don't know if they've mentioned that, though.
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Post by Kay Faban on Feb 21, 2023 12:55:28 GMT -5
MJF is running into the problem some good tv characters have where you almost become a parody of yourself. Like the side characters on The Office got boiled down to single notes by the end.
MJF seems to be all shoot heat now and that is kinda boring.
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Kalmia
King Koopa
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Post by Kalmia on Feb 21, 2023 13:06:02 GMT -5
It makes no sense doing it with Danielson either. The guy loves to wrestle. Making him wrestle more is hardly a hardship. It's a story that can work with a lot of faces when it appears to be a series of obstacles in their way but wrestling more matches has never been an obstacle for Danielson. Making Danielson sit on the sidelines and NOT wrestle for several weeks would have been tougher on him Wasn't the whole idea that Danielson's shoulder is getting @#$%ed up in these matches, and Rush was the last ditch attempt to slow him down by just having him brutalized when he managed to survive the damage? I'm guessing that plays a role in the endgame at Revolution, but we'll see. It was eventually. That was part of the problem as well though. The first two matches were friendly exhibition matches with Bandido and Takeshita, MJF only started paying people off and trying to injure Danielson halfway through. That should have been the story from the start.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2023 13:24:25 GMT -5
MJF seems to be all shoot heat now and that is kinda boring.
Bingo. He doesn't go work-shooty in the way that Vince Russo does it, but he does it all the same, and it's diminishing returns.
I thought it worked with the "talking to Brian Pillman in hell" promo, because he hadn't tapped the well too many times and it was still proper "I want to see this guy get his shit wrecked in the ring" kind of heat that you want a heel to have.
He's done that too many times now, though, and he's no longer menacing. He's just a 4-chan troll as a wrestler.
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Post by sportatorium on Feb 21, 2023 14:39:49 GMT -5
His heel portrayal is pretty much the same as when he didn't have the belt. He can take everything that makes him click as a heel, but carry himself more as a champion. To me, he came across as a bigger deal when feuding with CM Punk than he does now.
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pinja
Unicron
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Post by pinja on Feb 21, 2023 14:48:10 GMT -5
MJF is desperate for attention and the most attention he gets is by shocking people. But there's only so much he can say before it gets tedious and noone takes him seriously anymore. He doesn't have an intimidation facor, neither physically nor verbally. Being in a promo battle with MJF isn't a tough position when all he does is cut surface level deep. So you end up with a kid holding the heavyweight title that gets smaller the closer you get.
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