Kalmia
King Koopa
Happy to be here
Posts: 11,878
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Post by Kalmia on May 30, 2023 3:19:44 GMT -5
The booking would be better if Khan did not write as if he forgot what he wrote 15 minutes ago. I thought one of the main criticisms of Khan's booking was that things drag on too long. That angles last months when they should be done in weeks. Not that he's too short term. His booking tends to rely on people remembering something that happened three years ago on a random episode of Dynamite.
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Post by daaave on May 30, 2023 3:34:00 GMT -5
So we going full circle now and think the booking should go back to the Elite?
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Post by eJm on May 30, 2023 3:43:03 GMT -5
The booking would be better if Khan did not write as if he forgot what he wrote 15 minutes ago. I thought one of the main criticisms of Khan's booking was that things drag on too long. That angles last months when they should be done in weeks. Not that he's too short term. His booking tends to rely on people remembering something that happened three years ago on a random episode of Dynamite. Both of these summarize the wider point of what I like and dislike the most about Khan as a booker. He's a guy whose taken more risks in terms of matches and finishes and angles than promoters in about 20 years and also somehow stuck to a vision he's kept no matter the costs. He's both the guy that managed to keep the Elite story going for almost 5 years but also was adamant Statlander had to beat Jade regardless of how long she was going to be out for. There's not a real "trait" he's known for which is both refreshing and also inconsistent. Easy example, I could tell you that one of the things Joe Cabray in OTT loves to do is unexpected heel turns. Dude adores them. If a character is working and they've lost enough matches or built enough connection for the big win, turn them heel and not really explain why in the context of the previous decisions. It's one of the traits (along with the response to Speaking Out, especially considering David Starr, champion at the time, was Patient Zero of SO) that lead me to stop being interested in OTT. Tony? The tournaments he's done have either been traditional or forced, the interim stuff is a good idea if done right but can be a coin flip and stories can drag for a bit due to circumstances so pivoting isn't something he's known for. He's a guy you can tell has learned from history but is so scared to not want to repeat it, it sometimes either feels too safe or two outside the box for it to almost have been used wrong. Sorry for the rambling but it's one of those things that when I hear people making definitive claims about his booking style, there's always something he did that contradicts it. Heck, it's one of the things that sort of made HHH a bit of an enigma when he was starting to book the main roster, there's nothing about him at this point (or likely ever considering rumors Vince is back booking via Zoom) that makes me go "Ahh, this is how HHH works", mostly because he feels so hesitant to go against the stuff established before outside of "Bring a bunch of fired people back and never really use them".
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Post by Viking Hall on May 30, 2023 4:38:16 GMT -5
I definitely think there's a case of new relationship syndrome with some AEW fans. When AEW began everything was new, fresh and exciting and now a few years in, the promotion has settled into more of a routine and some people long for the days when things were new.
The reality is that while things aren't constant fireworks like they were early on, AEW still has one of the best track records of any North American promotion to date and the good still far outweighs the bad by hundreds to one. Double or Nothing won't go down as one of the companies greatest events, but equally no-one is going to be looking back at it in ten years time as a real low point either, it was just a decent PPV that'll probably set up bigger stuff in the coming months.
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KME
Team Rocket
Posts: 813
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Post by KME on May 30, 2023 4:58:38 GMT -5
They need do, because this weeks Dynamite it will have 4000 people in a 12k venue, so dont be surprised if its another "bad crowd"
I've said this before but...they would say that wouldn't they? How many people do you really ever hear say "we were a really shit crowd!". People want to believe they were part of a hot crowd, as a football (soccer) fan I see it all the time, clubs that have absolutely no atmosphere in their grounds think of themselves as having magnificent support, while the team I support can often be very quiet in less important games, a symptom of having lots of daytrippers, but without fail there will be loads of people that were there that say "don't know what it was like on TV but we were really loud!". Only ones who are ever honest about the atmosphere being poor are season ticket holders as they go to every home game and have no reason to lie. The crowd were visibly walking around during matches more than any non-Saudi crowd I've ever seen and the things I've seen people who were there admit they went crazy for, like Stat coming back, Sammy and Tay's announcement, bits of the Battle Royale, the Pillars match...we heard them for all those and sure enough on a couple of those you also saw them rise to their feet. So was the audio not broken for those bits? And was broken in Vegas for Dynamite too, but not for the two shows before with hot crowds? AEW definitely has some audio issues but I'm really, really struggling to give Vegas the benefit of the doubt on this one. Feels very odd that this thread is a thing really, it's a thread that feels like it belongs in mid 2022, it's seemed pretty unanimous on here for months that Dynamite has been booked really well this year with the balance of the show a lot better, that they had an all timer Dynamite like 3 weeks ago, that Revolution was one of their best ever PPV's, that BCC/The Elite has been their best storyline for a long time, that OC has been arguably their best booked champion etc, while the whole "he needs help!" thing has been disproved time and time again because it's been reported several times he does have help. It feels like AEW is in a really tough position because some its own fans turn on it at a moments notice, there's unrelenting negativity on here at the moment almost completely out of the blue despite them closing their last PPV with two close to 5 star matches and a ton of exciting stuff on the horizon. Very little about what wasn't good about Double or Nothing was down to 'bad' booking for me once the show actually started (I was unhappy about a couple of matches not making it), the Jamie thing is practically unavoidable outside of just taking the title off her officially, but what drama does that bring to her winning the title back? The Outcasts need the legitimacy and it's clearly better for the storyline. Jericho/Cole had no chemistry whatsoever and the crowd, no matter what they say, were sat on their hands for it, there's not much a booking team can do about that. The moaning about MJF bores me to tears so I won't even go into that. The Statlander stuff now seems to be the new thing we're complaining about and that one I can see peoples point, I was surprised they just did the title change there and then but it really isn't worthy of throwing dollies out the pram over, it even got the zombified crowd well on board (or somehow made the mics start working). Even if they did a storyline building Stat up I don't know if they'd ever have a moment as hot as delivering a title match out of nowhere and her winning like that. It was a cool moment and totally unexpected, it says a lot about how wrestling fans are that it's being torn apart. "We want Statlander back to take the title off Jade! Get the title off Jade as soon as possible...No! NO! Not like THAT!".
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Post by Can you afford to pay me, Gah on May 30, 2023 5:14:49 GMT -5
The booking would be better if Khan did not write as if he forgot what he wrote 15 minutes ago. I thought one of the main criticisms of Khan's booking was that things drag on too long. That angles last months when they should be done in weeks. Not that he's too short term. His booking tends to rely on people remembering something that happened three years ago on a random episode of Dynamite. No they don't drag to long. Sometimes he doesn't let things gain more heat and a lot of times, he forgets and their is a lack of connection from one week to the next. Tony has been bad with having a long term feuds happening that tell a good story.
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Post by eJm on May 30, 2023 5:18:00 GMT -5
I thought one of the main criticisms of Khan's booking was that things drag on too long. That angles last months when they should be done in weeks. Not that he's too short term. His booking tends to rely on people remembering something that happened three years ago on a random episode of Dynamite. No they don't drag to long. Sometimes he doesn't let things gain more heat and a lot of times, he forgets and their is a lack of connection from one week to the next. Tony has been bad with having a long term feuds happening that tell a good story. Death Triangle vs. House of Black doesn't so much says hello as broods outside your house and then smashes your car's window, not to steal anything but to cause a bit of chaos.
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Kalmia
King Koopa
Happy to be here
Posts: 11,878
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Post by Kalmia on May 30, 2023 7:08:19 GMT -5
I thought one of the main criticisms of Khan's booking was that things drag on too long. That angles last months when they should be done in weeks. Not that he's too short term. His booking tends to rely on people remembering something that happened three years ago on a random episode of Dynamite. No they don't drag to long. Sometimes he doesn't let things gain more heat and a lot of times, he forgets and their is a lack of connection from one week to the next. Tony has been bad with having a long term feuds happening that tell a good story. There's a reason why people joke about being dragged into the Chris Jericho vortex.
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Post by Lizuka #BLM on May 30, 2023 7:19:02 GMT -5
I'm really pretty firmly of the opinion that in pretty much every regard Tony Khan's completely awful at structuring a story, and incredibly repetitive about it as well, and any positives that do happen on that front are mostly born out of the talent he has at his disposal.
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Post by eJm on May 30, 2023 7:21:32 GMT -5
No they don't drag to long. Sometimes he doesn't let things gain more heat and a lot of times, he forgets and their is a lack of connection from one week to the next. Tony has been bad with having a long term feuds happening that tell a good story. There's a reason why people joke about being dragged into the Chris Jericho vortex. I will say people are utterly justified about it but the Starks feud was the most weird because that was the shortest one to date and honestly, made a lot of sense story wise for it to be that way. If the Cole feud goes beyond this Wednesday, we can have a conversation about that, though.
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Post by Magic knows Black Lives Matter on May 30, 2023 7:59:27 GMT -5
I think even the best bookers get burnt out, honestly. How can you not!? I don’t know if whoever is head Booker(and if there’s not a definitive “everybody shut up, we’re doing this” creative head, that’s a big issue!!) is reaching that point but change is just necessary sometimes, particularly in a televised product that feels like it’s gone fairly cold like AEW rn .
I’m not saying they have to make the move but I’d think it would be foolish to not seriously look at other options.
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Post by Tiger Millionaire on May 30, 2023 8:19:24 GMT -5
It's not really that hard to fix the issues. Swerve needs to needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine and Whenever Swerve's not on-screen, everyone should be asking: "Where's Swerve?".
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Post by Mid-Carder on May 30, 2023 8:29:45 GMT -5
I wouldn't go so far as to say hand over the book but he certainly needs a little guidance. But isn't that part of the EVPs' role as well?
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Post by Denny Zen is Cooking™ on May 30, 2023 8:33:10 GMT -5
I thought one of the main criticisms of Khan's booking was that things drag on too long. That angles last months when they should be done in weeks. Not that he's too short term. His booking tends to rely on people remembering something that happened three years ago on a random episode of Dynamite. No they don't drag to long. Sometimes he doesn't let things gain more heat and a lot of times, he forgets and their is a lack of connection from one week to the next. Tony has been bad with having a long term feuds happening that tell a good story. It's wild how people can watch the exact same thing, and come to such vastly different conclusions. I'm not knocking your subjective opinion or saying it's wrong but, for me, to the extent that I have an issue with AEW's booking it's for almost the polar opposite reason. For me, AEW's biggest problem is its over-reliance on inside references, knowledge of the "extended universe" (like BTE, ROH, stuff that's happened in other companies like PWG and NJPW, etc...), and long running plotlines and character arcs. Sometimes it can feel like hopping into a show like Arrested Development or Community in the middle of, like, Season 3, having never seen the show before. In some respects, I appreciate that because it rewards loyal viewing, but in others I dislike it because it's the one thing that I genuinely do feel like puts the vaunted "casual fans" off of AEW's product sometimes. For me, a huge part of the reason WWE is considered more "casual friendly" is because if you're supposed to know something about a story beat or history between wrestlers, Michael Cole or Corey Graves will spell it out to you in nauseating detail roughly 70,000 times over the course of a single episode of RAW/SmackDown. That's frustrating as a wrestling fan in its own right, but it definitely makes WWE much easier "pick up and watch" programming. I truly can't think of a time where Tony Khan/AEW's booking has been inconsistent from week-to-week. Shit, even something like QT Marshall wanting to f*** the Bunny, which was a canceled storyline, continued to be referenced for months afterwards if they happened to be on-screen together. I can think of many times where a component to the story is something that happened either on Being the Elite or in a completely different company, and AEW's viewers are just, sort of, expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that goes on in the entire wrestling industry. The most prominent current examples of which being Juice and Jay White's alliance and the notion that "Bullet Club Gold" is the superior version of Bullet Club, a stable which has never existed in AEW.
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Post by Billie Gein on May 30, 2023 8:39:55 GMT -5
Yeah I don't like his booking, it feels very formulaic to me and sometimes outright lazy. He's a good promoter though and luckily the roster is stacked with talented and likeable performers that can compensate for the creative issues. I think he'd benefit from having a small committee of guys, nobody who is an active performer, working under him and contributing ideas.
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Post by SneakMan on May 30, 2023 8:43:32 GMT -5
It's not really that hard to fix the issues. Swerve needs to needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine and Whenever Swerve's not on-screen, everyone should be asking: " Where's Swerve?" "Whose House?"
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markymark
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Posts: 18,557
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Post by markymark on May 30, 2023 9:25:34 GMT -5
I'm really pretty firmly of the opinion that in pretty much every regard Tony Khan's completely awful at structuring a story, and incredibly repetitive about it as well, and any positives that do happen on that front are mostly born out of the talent he has at his disposal.
Its like Akira Toriyama post Dragon Ball Z(Dragon Ball Super), he creates an outline(with a beginning and ending) and others have to fill in the blank.
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lucas_lee
Hank Scorpio
Heel turn is finished, now stripping away my personality
Posts: 6,765
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Post by lucas_lee on May 30, 2023 9:26:23 GMT -5
The thing I hate TKs booking is his over reliance on overbooking. He's a WCW fanboy to the end it seems because that's the stuff that drove me away from WCW and it's maddening that he doesn't have the self-awareness that he does overbooked match endings in a row not realizing how spacing them out can mean more.
Also he sometimes needs to learn to pivot when injuries or other outside forces happen. Wrestling is all about plans changing and I think he's too rigid at times.
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Bo Rida
Fry's dog Seymour
Pulled one over on everyone. Got away with it, this time.
Posts: 23,692
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Post by Bo Rida on May 30, 2023 10:09:43 GMT -5
I think even when something falls flat you can usually understand the reasoning behind it. Most of the time I assume TK provides the framework and relies on the wrestlers to fill the gaps with varying degrees of success. To fix those stories that aren't so good risks removing the creative freedom that makes other angles work.
Which is a long way of saying he needs a right hand man that will help tweak things rather than reinvent them. Nudge some of 6 and 7 out of ten efforts into 8s and 9s.
Or kill them earlier on the rare times they descend into Sammy/Sky/Lambert levels of crap behind beyond redemption.
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The Ichi
Patti Mayonnaise
AGGRESSIVE Executive Janitor of the Third Floor Manager's Bathroom
Posts: 37,347
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Post by The Ichi on May 30, 2023 10:15:20 GMT -5
Jade essentially keeping the belt warm for Statlander for months shows that he does not know how to do Plan B.
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