Mick Foley comments on botched explosion at Revolution

[Lille Matthew Goldenberg]

From Foley's Facebook page:

"SAD BUT TRUE!

I should know...I've been there when the ring that was supposed to EXPLODE at the King of the Death Match tournament in 1995 underperformed in a similar manner. I feel genuinely bad for Omega and Moxley, who worked their butts off and put their bodies on the line - and for Eddie Kingston, whose act of selflessness in saving Moxley was obviously not the powerful image it could have been.

I do think AEW should have cut their losses and just admitted that things did not go like they hoped, with the promise that they would do better the next time. I am not sure blaming Kenny Omega's carpentry skills and questionable demolition expertise was the right way to go.

Let me know what you think."

www.facebook.com/126269440736536/posts/4468258769870893/

[Venti]

Lol I saw "SAD BUT TRUE" and was ready for a Metallica reference.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Mar 10, 2021 16:12:15 GMT -5 Lille Matthew Goldenberg said:

I do think AEW should have cut their losses and just admitted that things did not go like they hoped, with the promise that they would do better the next time. I am not sure blaming Kenny Omega's carpentry skills and questionable demolition expertise was the right way to go.

Flat out admitting things didn't go as planned makes even less sense. Things in the sense of Kenny building the thing and it not working still makes sense in that realm but also in storyline if that's the direction they go. 

Just going "Oh it was supposed to blow up but it didn't, oh well" kinda f***s everyone involved further.

[TWERKIN' MAGGLE]

Everyone knows robot death spiders are scarier than explosions anyway.

[Cyno]

I like that they're leaning into it and trying to turn a lemon into lemonade instead of just writing it off as an embarrassing f***up.

[Deleted]

I say this as a big fan of the Onita/FMW exploding death matches: the concept is inherently buggy and I don't think it breaks kayfabe if an explosion doesn't go off properly. It's clever that they're weaving it into the story but you could write it off to the unpredictability of the match. The whole concept seems a bit in its own universe.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

If they hadn't done the establishing segment that credited the ring material to Omega and Callis, I'd agree.

As is, there's a non-contrived kayfabe out that was previously established, which Moxley then improv'ed on when he got a mic.

At this point, best to just go with that and don't linger on it.

[Zone Was Wrong]

Honestly love how they are playing into it. Making Kenny look like he has flaws under that cocky exterior.

[HMARK Center]

Mar 10, 2021 18:44:35 GMT -5 Zone Was Wrong said:

Honestly love how they are playing into it. Making Kenny look like he has flaws under that cocky exterior.

That could certainly be one way to go; could go with Kenny intentionally rigging it not to go whole hog and reveal that he was actually nervous about being the one caught in the blast, but either way you'd have to use it to reveal a flaw in the seemingly unbeatable Omega.

As we've said in other threads, there'll be two other things they need to address:
-Commentary selling the blast like it was huge. This should be simple, as you can have them say "we weren't watching the monitors, so it seemed big from our angle" or something like that.
-Kingston selling it. Like a lot of us said, you can play it up as Eddie going into shock thinking he was going to get blown up and suddenly realizing he was still safe, or have him say he had started tearing up and couldn't bear looking up showing emotion like that to the world.
-Possible third thing? Maybe you need to address if the match was meant to write Moxley off the show for awhile. If it was, you'll probably have to do one more big thing to really sell that to the audience; play up that he's already hurt from the match itself on Sunday, but then come up with something creative to fully write him off...but granted, we're not even really sure he actually IS being fully written off, so we'll see.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Mar 10, 2021 18:58:59 GMT -5 HMARK Center said:

Mar 10, 2021 18:44:35 GMT -5 Zone Was Wrong said:

Honestly love how they are playing into it. Making Kenny look like he has flaws under that cocky exterior.

That could certainly be one way to go; could go with Kenny intentionally rigging it not to go whole hog and reveal that he was actually nervous about being the one caught in the blast, but either way you'd have to use it to reveal a flaw in the seemingly unbeatable Omega.

As we've said in other threads, there'll be two other things they need to address:
-Commentary selling the blast like it was huge. This should be simple, as you can have them say "we weren't watching the monitors, so it seemed big from our angle" or something like that.
-Kingston selling it. Like a lot of us said, you can play it up as Eddie going into shock thinking he was going to get blown up and suddenly realizing he was still safe, or have him say he had started tearing up and couldn't bear looking up showing emotion like that to the world.
-Possible third thing? Maybe you need to address if the match was meant to write Moxley off the show for awhile. If it was, you'll probably have to do one more big thing to really sell that to the audience; play up that he's already hurt from the match itself on Sunday, but then come up with something creative to fully write him off...but granted, we're not even really sure he actually IS being fully written off, so we'll see.

With it being a block taping you can write Mox out next week if not tonight. Do a tag match with Kingston vs Good Brothers, post match involves something like them handcuffing Kingston to the ropes and then Omega/Brothers take Mox out a different way and Kingston is just helpless to save him. 

Could even have Butcher and Blade come out and act like they're gonna help but because of what Eddie did and is doing, they turn their backs on him and leave.

There are a lot of ways you can build Kingston up here, and they clearly want to which is a really good thing. 

[bob]

I think what they are doing with it saying Kenny screwed it up is the best way to go

there really isn't another way I can think of that of that makes sense from a storyline standpoint

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

They're acknowledging it was a dud. It's not King going "listen to the crowd chanting LETS GO SHEAMUS" so they're not insulting my intelligence. So as long as they're doing that, I'm down for them to explain it in kayfabe. They're good storytellers, so tell a story.

[Peeetah]

Did Mick and Terry come out after their match and apologise for the special effects in their fake fight not working? I love Foley but he's being a bit silly here.

[petef3]

Funk did shoot a very obvious, "I'm just as confused as you are, folks" shrug to the audience. On the other hand, Foley and Funk were pros who actually knew how to improvise and call a match in the ring, and had enough wits about them not to sell the explosion like death.

[rajaah]

Mar 10, 2021 21:07:26 GMT -5 petef3 said:

Funk did shoot a very obvious, "I'm just as confused as you are, folks" shrug to the audience. On the other hand, Foley and Funk were pros who actually knew how to improvise and call a match in the ring, and had enough wits about them not to sell the explosion like death.

All the respect in the world to Kingston, he seems like a master of his craft. So it's really surprising that he didn't improvise.

[sdoyle7798]

Mar 11, 2021 13:42:57 GMT -5 rajaah said:

Mar 10, 2021 21:07:26 GMT -5 petef3 said:

Funk did shoot a very obvious, "I'm just as confused as you are, folks" shrug to the audience. On the other hand, Foley and Funk were pros who actually knew how to improvise and call a match in the ring, and had enough wits about them not to sell the explosion like death.

All the respect in the world to Kingston, he seems like a master of his craft. So it's really surprising that he didn't improvise.

He had his head down and didn't see that it was a dud. It likely sounded good to him.

Then he probably figured "I'm already playing dead, I can't just suddenly wake up and be all good."

[HMARK Center]

Mar 11, 2021 14:45:16 GMT -5 sdoyle7798 said:

Mar 11, 2021 13:42:57 GMT -5 rajaah said:

All the respect in the world to Kingston, he seems like a master of his craft. So it's really surprising that he didn't improvise.

He had his head down and didn't see that it was a dud. It likely sounded good to him.

Then he probably figured "I'm already playing dead, I can't just suddenly wake up and be all good."

Yeah, if we're going to pretend that Kingston and Moxley can't improvise, then we're not playing a winning game. Both guys are really, really good at this whole pro wrestling thing, but both were covered up when things went off and couldn't see how weak it was. Just a shitty situation for them, if Eddie had his head up he would've undoubtedly had some kind of "That's it? ...The @#$% was THAT?" expression on his face.

[edgestar]

"Mick Foley comments"

....kay.

[Glitch]

It's better to roll with the momentum. What they did on Dynamite with Kenny/Callis explanation and the fireside chat was making lemons into lemonade. Outright apologizing would be settling with just sour lemons.

[toodarkmark]

I love. LOVE. Mick Foley. But he's wrong about this one. If they admit it's a botch, it's Shockmaster. If they kayfabe work around it, it's Hell in a Cell ending in a DQ. Yeah it's bad, but whatever, things move on. If they say "Hey guys, things didn't go right," then they get clowned for 30 years.