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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 17:04:22 GMT -5
There hasn’t been a single Dynamite this year that featured more than one women’s match. Several even had none. Even taking the pandemic and injuries into equation they’re still not doing anywhere close to enough.
It seemed like the upcoming women’s tag tournament would be a good start to finally showcase the division better but it’s now been confirmed that will be online and won’t air on Dynamite. That’s bullshit. Fair enough if you don’t want to air every single match on Dynamite. Put some of the lesser earlier round matches on Dark but completely segregating them off of the main show makes them look less important than they already do. They don’t do this to the men. The tag title tournament, the TNT title tournament, the tournament to determine Jericho’s opponent at Revolution, even the diamond ring thing that MJF won; none of these were treated with such little fanfare. They were treated as a big deal and actually decided on TV.
AEW usually announce almost the entire Dynamite card a week ahead of time and 9 times out of 10 they don’t even bother announcing what the women’s match will be because it’s of such little importance, but they’ll promote that f***ing Five of the Dark Order is going to be in action.
The women are such second-class citizens right now. Their matches are promoted less than the men and they almost always have the shortest match on the show. Look at the past month:
6/17 - Abadon v Anna Jay (less than 2 minutes) 6/24 - Shida squash (less than 10 seconds) 7/1 - Shida/Ford title match (11 minutes) 7/8 - Nyla squash (less than 2 minutes) 7/15 - Brandi and Allie v MJ Jenkins and Kenzie Paige (less than 3 minutes) 722 - Ivelisse v Diamante (6 minutes) 7/29 - Shida v Diamante (5 minutes)
Only one time in over a month have they done what other companies can do every week and put on a match that isn’t either a squash or a short, thrown together match with no build. They’re looking like ROH right now and putting in the absolute bare minimum while Raw, Smackdown, NXT and Impact have their women heavily featured and arguably overshadowing the men most weeks.
As sad as it is to say, if this was 10-15 years ago it wouldn’t seem like such an issue but it’s 2020. They need to put much more effort into showcasing their women. Giving them an average of 3 minutes a week on Dynamite and relegating the rest to Youtube isn’t going to cut it.
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Post by cabbageboy on Jul 30, 2020 17:25:24 GMT -5
I don't know why they bothered with it in the first place, other than maybe Omega having some notion of bringing in joshi fed talent which they can't really do right now. Even then WWE beat them to the punch by having Asuka, Sane, Io.
At the end of the day it really comes down to this: Women's wrestling really doesn't have any particular audience, and if anything I would argue putting all this focus on women has wrecked WWE's ratings over the past 5 years. It certainly hasn't helped. I looked it up and Raw was averaging about 3.6+ million during July 2015 when Steph first did the whole "Women's Revolution" speech. Raw did under 1.5 million in the 3rd hour this week.
So really it could be argued that they should do more with it, but if they do it'll take time away from the guys who are actually going to draw the PPV money (or sell tickets if that's ever a thing again).
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Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Jul 30, 2020 17:39:55 GMT -5
It's really the pandemic and the injuries that f***ed a lot of shit up, but while the matches haven't been incredibly long, I think you're overlooking the segments they get throughout the show. Britt gets screen time every week, Nyla does as well. They aren't considered complete afterthoughts, they're just in a weird spot right now where a lot of people need to be built up
I dont mind the Tourney being on Youtube and being its own thing, I'm more curious about everyone involved however. The Final I would think should at least be on Dynamite, but we'll see. Maybe they wanna see how it's recieved.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 17:48:14 GMT -5
Wait, the tournament is on YouTube? Wow that really sucks
AEW already has me for Dark/Dynamite every week.... please don't make it a chore to follow your product
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 17:50:53 GMT -5
Everything about the women's division feels like they only have it because they'd look bad if they didn't. At no point has it read like AEW at all actually cares about it.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 17:55:05 GMT -5
You have to work with what you have.
I'm honestly just guessing, but I imagine the number of women talent to choose from compared to men is much smaller, so that's problem #1.
Problem #2 is that of the talent that exists, you have to outbid NXT to get them.
Sure, Omega filled out the roster with a lot of Joshi talent because he had those in-roads, and he trusted them to be able to go. Nobody could have predicted the pandemic would have effectively neutralized international travel which in turn obliterated a hefty chunk of the women's division. That's problem #3.
And finally, problem #4 is that with the talent you have, you don't want them getting injured. I can see why you don't want to overwork them and take that risk. If Shida got injured, the whole women's division would probably be royally screwed where she's the main workhorse at the moment.
All in all, I think they're overperforming with what they have. Hikaru Shida is on fire right now, and I'd put her against any of the Horsewomen from a talent perspective. Nyla Rose is what Nia Jax tries to be but isn't. Britt Baker is somehow turning out her best work since starting with AEW, and she's not been in a ring in months. Abadon is awesome, and I can honestly see her somehow becoming a face in the same way Taker did in the early 90's.
They don't have the depth that the WWE has. Frankly, nobody has the depth that WWE has. What AEW has to do (and in my opinion, they're doing well with it) is work smarter with what they DO have as a roster. That's been their biggest strength since day 1.
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Post by Ronny Rayguns Is All Elite on Jul 30, 2020 17:55:59 GMT -5
Maybe it's just because I've been liking the shit Riho/Britt/Shida/Swole/Nyla have been doing so much, but it never really occurred to me their Women's division was as bad as people said.
Looking forward to this tag tournament
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AEW19
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Post by AEW19 on Jul 30, 2020 18:05:03 GMT -5
They will probably put the semi's and the final on Dynamite.
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Post by Cyno on Jul 30, 2020 18:37:20 GMT -5
Impact and WWE, especially NXT, are going to be a lot more attractive for a number of reasons for their women's divisions compared to AEW. Combine that with a lot of their established talent being off the show either due to pandemic travel restrictions (the joshi and Shanna, especially) along with some really unfortunate injuries to two of their bigger names in Britt Baker and Kris Statlander and the division is running on fumes right now.
I think they need a second show on TV that isn't Dark, either. They have a really big roster and only two hours per week on television. But that's a long term solution. A lot of what they have to fix is long-term solutions, though not showing the tag tournament on Dynamite is pretty lame.
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Post by Viking Hall on Jul 30, 2020 18:47:09 GMT -5
I know, they've not had a single Bra and Panties match, what are they playing at?
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Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]
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Post by Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] on Jul 30, 2020 19:36:34 GMT -5
Everything about the women's division feels like they only have it because they'd look bad if they didn't. At no point has it read like AEW at all actually cares about it. Haven't gotten that at all. There was a lot going on before the Pandemic, including secondary feuds like the Britt/Swole storyline which has tried to get off the ground multiple times, and then the world title feud before the pandemic had the likes of Riho, Statlander, Priestley, and Nyla all involved within it. Plus there was also the Mixed Tag on the Cruise which while was filmed on one camera, was still important that it happened and they clearly wanna push the girls as important. AEW's been dealt a bad hand with this pandemic when it comes to the girls, because like half of the talent is overseas and can't get to the states, and then Britt and Statlander, two of their aces, went down to injuries. It's not that they don't care, but I don't think any division would be in good shape if it had to deal with this situation period.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 19:38:32 GMT -5
I'm going to say it.
The AEW women's division sucks in comparison to the WWE one.
And I know they haven't been featured much and you can always make the argument that we haven't seen enough of them etc...
But I'm sorry. There is just no star power in there that I'm seeing.
Mercedes Martinez would've been a massive coup for them... As would Tessa Blanchard. The likes of Big Swole, Nyla Rose, Riho, Britt Baker etc... I'm just not feeling them.
To me, they need to sign some proper stars before we see these women main eventing shows. Ivelisse is a good start.
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Post by Mozenrath on Jul 30, 2020 20:36:02 GMT -5
They've been f***ed really hard by Covid and injuries since a lot of their top women are international. Riho and Bea Priestley are the two big ones stuck out of the country, both of whom are either quite important or were being positioned to be.
Britt and Kris are probably the biggest injuries, and Big Swole's compromised immune system has been an issue, obviously.
Now, a lot of people have been derailed by Covid, but AEW really could be doing more to try to pivot here. Abadon's a plus, sure, but they really need to take some of the women's wrestling from Dark and try to get some of that going for Dark sometimes. I imagine this is going to be better when they get their second show, sure, but they do need to do better. The tag tournament will be a test of that.
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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Jul 30, 2020 20:42:27 GMT -5
Yeah, the pandemic f***ing over all their joshi imports is a huge part of it, sames goes with the injuries to Statlander and Baker, but it's not entirely on luck. They could have the Nightmare Sisters or Abadon on Dynamite more, but they are not. Nyla could be squashing some jobbers on Dynamite while furthering her new relationship with Vickie Guerrero, but she isn't.
The tournament should be a good way of scouting women they can use in the pandemic times, but if we see this tournament conclude and they don't sign and feature anyone, it does nothing for the division.
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Post by Mozenrath on Jul 30, 2020 21:00:59 GMT -5
Losing Kylie Rae also didn't do them any favors, given she was being positioned as one of their top women signees, too. They also wanted Tessa Blanchard in a big way, but thankfully....
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Post by Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby on Jul 30, 2020 21:02:58 GMT -5
The Deadly Draw being a Youtube stream kind of seals the idea that they are treating the women's division more like a DVD extra than a part of the show right now. I keep feeling uneasy about the amount of mystery they've put into it - they're foreshadowing it as a good way to jumpstart the division by getting everyone interacting with each other to form some teams and start some angles, but I can't shake the impression they're keeping the full list of participants in the dark because they don't feel like it's a selling point.
At best, they keep booking the women like they are waiting around for the division to start. Even if they had the full roster available the past few months, they would probably have still run out of meaningful stuff to do about now - especially if the women were not relegated to three minute squashes on some episodes due to the sheer lack of people. They clearly lost out on three wrestlers they could have built around (Kylie Rae, Viper, Mercedes Martinez), which is one of the reasons I can even read that motivation into what we've seen thus far.
But...numbers. They keep hiring more and more and more men, to the point where I question if they actually know what to do with some of them, but they apparently think that there aren't any women good enough to hire even to fill out a threadbare division...which is odd, since they've hired a work in progress like Britt Baker, a(n admittedly very impressive) rookie who hasn't even wrestled double digits worth of matches, and a promising unknown with a great gimmick who has no classic matches or big moments on her resume. The idea that there are zero women available to sign who don't meet that kind of standard is ridiculous.
There are, at this point, four possible conclusions that I would be able to make from the evidence of AEW's women's wrestling since October:
1. They are refusing to commit the money to actually hiring more women. The booking is stretching what it can out of a thin roster because there hasn't been a commitment to hiring more than two dozen women.
2. They are failing at outreach to women on the indies. They lost out on Viper and Martinez because of what WWE could offer, and that's reasonable, but - have they failed to woo even a single woman away from Impact in the last year, or have they not even tried? Neither option is a vote of confidence, and even outside of Impact there are some quality wrestlers they could be looking at.
3. They have a big shopping list of women they want, who have verbally committed to signing when they are available, and we are rapidly approaching the point where they are available. This is the Best Case Scenario.
4. They are holding their female hires to a questionably high standard that Britt Baker and Anna Jay were definitely not held to. Probably the most damning possibility, because it suggests very cynical motivations for some of their hires.
3 is obviously the most optimistic scenario, and there's some evidence that we are, in fact, hitting a tipping point - if they hadn't lost a third of their pushed wrestlers to travel restrictions, and had given more women's matches more time accordingly, we'd probably be running out of strong angle possibilities by now, anyway. The Deadly Draw, Shida making a vaguely open challenge for the title, and Britt promising some intimidating wrestler that Big Swole has to beat to get a match? That's three mechanisms for hiring new wrestlers all happening at the same time, and there seems to be a critical mass of women on the indies who would be great hires who are starting to become available. Some may just be hyping themselves on Twitter, but if even half of the women who have tweeted about the Shida open challenge and the possibility of a tag division are interested and available, AEW would be poised to benefit big time.
Even with that evidence for optimism, though: months and months of scant TV time and a near-drought of signings, combined with the aforementioned "DVD extras" presentation of the Deadly Draw, keeps me feeling like my expectations need to remain as low as possible.
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Post by Kalmia on Jul 30, 2020 21:09:57 GMT -5
When AEW launched it seemed the women's division was an afterthought or something they thought they could just blag their way through with a bunch of great Japanese wrestlers and no character development or stories. Then they seemed to realize what was going wrong and slowly, things were genuinely getting better and exciting. Then Covid-19 and some very unfortunate injuries happened.
Only AEW are to blame for how the division started, but I do have some sympathy for them on how the division is today. I thought the tag tournament would be a good way to get a lot of new faces on TV and into ready-built storylines so that the division could be built again. Then they put it on YouTube. That's a fail.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 22:34:40 GMT -5
It’s not quite as bad as the Women of Honor was in ROH, but right now it’s closer to that than it is WWE or Impact. They’ve done a good job with Britt and Nyla, but other than that, I haven’t seen much to grab hold of.
I feel bad for Shida because she’s so good but her existence on the shows feels so uneventful.
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Post by Cieto on Jul 30, 2020 23:04:43 GMT -5
To me it still seems like their stuck in the 'Work in Progress' stage. Which more noticeable now that the mens side of things has clicked into place quite well.
The tournament will hopefully do some good in making up for the setbacks they faced with injuries (statlander, baker), pandemic (shanna, yuka, riho, Priestley) and accelerating lack of induvidual character development inbetween.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2020 23:13:17 GMT -5
They keep making a big deal of the “deadly draw” but I really doesn’t have the same effect as a lethal lottery of 20 of the girls coming in are unsigned and slightly unknown.
Far as a normal fan goes it really won’t make much of a difference if these teams have never tagged before.
Like I said in other threads. I hope they take talent from NWA and give chances to Allie Kat and Pracilla Kelly. Maybe Maneater or Moth becomes available from ROH. Hell at this point throw money at Blanchard. AEW is a much different locker room and I don’t think she can pull the same crap.
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