The world title match was the coldest thing on that card

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

Okay, so I've not actually watched this match yet, but the match quality is not really what I'm talking about anyway. I'm sure it was fine! All I saw was Cole's absolutely hilarious entrance gear and then skipped to the end to see if anyone surprise debuted.

I live in the UK so if I don't book the day off work on Monday I have to go into social media blackout until the night after. I sat down and watched this show, including the Buy-in, when I got home from work, and they were running down the card, and I was so hyped for everything, pretty much except the world title match.

This isn't an issue with either talent - Cole convinced me during his NXT days (and a YouTube documentary where he has an ongoing feud with a 10-year-old fan) and Page convinced me long before he won the strap.

It also wasn't actually the coldest thing on the card, given a few of them were kinda thrown together. But the main event did not feel like the most anticipated match, or the hottest angle, or really much of an angle at all, which I think has been true of a few AEW world title matches before (I wasn't a big fan of Moxley's reign, although I thought the matches were good, and Kenny had a few placeholder challengers) but given this is the longest gap between big shows they have, it really felt like there wasn't a great deal of meat on the bone for the ALL ADAM EVERYTHING match.

Was anyone here super hyped for this match? Like, more than the others? More than Danielson/Mox? More than Eddie/Jericho? More than MJF/Punk? Page is feeling a little directionless as a champion the past few weeks, he is a bit of an afterthought for the world champion. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.

What would you do next? What do you think is next? How do you keep a babyface hot once they've finished chasing the title?

[Deleted]

I think AEW made a bit of a mistake with how long they took to start building Page/Cole. In that time Punk/MJF got red hot and Mox/Bryan possible team up & match became the main matches for Revolution in the mean time. There is no reason why Page/Cole can’t be intriguing with all the ROH past, Elite drama, and both are good on the mic. But only 3 weeks build? They couldn’t cram it all in.

I half expect them to continue to do Page vs Cole for a bit, just because they should have plenty of story to stretch it out. But who knows.

[Super Duper Dragunov]

Nah. I wasn't hyped as I knew the outcome before even watching it (which will be the case until Page drops it to MJF I presume). I think it's one of many reasons I just wasn't into it.
Yeah, the wrestling can be great, but if the story is a foregone conclusion, then it's hard to get fully invested.

I can't wait til we're out of "telegraphed predictable" land with the World Title.

Punk/MJF should have main evented, but I get why it didn't due to the "World Titles should be in the main event".
Which I agree with.

They could have done a LOT more with the Young Bucks/Dark Order/Cole/Page story.
And honestly, it felt lazy.

Same way not having Mercedes Martinez out for Rosa/Baker felt lazy.
You spend all this time building up a tentative ally, and she doesn't even show up to have your back during your match which you know is absolutely going to have interference b/c every Britt Baker match is "copy and paste Jinder Mahal"?
It's lazy booking.

But hey, TK is "booker of the year" so what do I know?

[eJm]

I don't think it's as bad as others have been saying, I think it's just more priorities have been shuffled a bit. I feel like since Kenny was supposed to be back by now, more probably would have been done with the Elite story and considering he said it'll be a bit longer, it's sort of hard to do what you want to do without one of the main players. So if you have something better to replace it and put it on the backburner for a bit, like a MJF/Punk, you go with that. It's not ideal but it's also not the worst thing in the world either.

As an aside, I'll never really understand the whole "if the outcome is predictable, it's less investment" thing because, like, most media is predictable. If I watch most blockbusters, the hero/es are going to win. Doesn't take away from the rest of the movie. If I watch Stranger Things, the creatures aren't going to eat everyone in Hawkins, Indiana or else there wouldn't be more show. It's different in other media, but with something like wrestling, it'd be like being annoyed The Avengers beat Thanos in Endgame. That's just me, though.

[clifford]

AEW seems to have the opposite of a problem WWE has/has had the last decade or so. In WWE, no one seems to be able to have a meaningful feud unless its over a title. In AEW, the title feuds seem to be the slapped together and not very meaningful ones. Its a result of the rankings system I think. Even the great world title feuds in AEW (Kenny/Hangman, Jericho/Cody, Moxley/Kingston) have been less about the title per se, and more about the relationship between the wrestlers fueding.

For what its worth, I think Page has had a really good title reign thus far, its just that there has been a number of fantastic feuds, storylines and angles happening concurrently, to the point that he does not seem the main focus of the shows.

Mar 8, 2022 9:03:11 GMT -5 @bagins said:

I half expect them to continue to do Page vs Cole for a bit, just because they should have plenty of story to stretch it out. But who knows.

There's this, too. I think Page/Cole might go on a bit longer.

[Kalmia]

To be fair, Punk/MJF was arguably the hottest angle AEW has done. Any title match apart from Omega/Hangman would have seemed cool next to that.

I think it was a combo of not the hottest title match, matched against some absolutely fire ones. The crowd were largely up for the match though, despite sitting through four hours of wrestling before it.

[EoE: Well There's Your Problem]

I think it was just a bit of bad luck in how it seemed to coincide with a legit bloody blood feud with a whole bunch of callbacks that rewarded the investment of longtime fans (Punk/MJF), a feud that people were already really into when they were just going to feud, that got even hotter when it got floated that they could team up after it (Moxley/Danielson) and a feud featuring the one guy who has the most uncanny everyman ability to get people into his shit no matter what (Kingston/Jericho)… A regular, no-fuss world title feud seemed rather ho-hum in contrast, especially if its just the entrée for the big angle that could come from it.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Was it the most hyped part of the PPV? No. Was it my number one match from the PPV? No. Did it deliver and begin what could be a fracture into an even more intricate storyline that they're probably gonna keep calling back to? Yeah

And one especially important thing to point out... the crowd loved this match and was INSANELY into it, and that was after five hours of GREAT wrestling, and the potentially more hyped matches. They were hooked, pushing midnight, and the ending had them going pretty nuts for it being a forgone conclusion. So they did something right... when it hit that live atmosphere, it didn't feel "Cold", it felt important, and they delivered to make it feel like the wait for it at the end was also worth it, imo.

[nihilismizhawt]

It was the match I was most hyped for, and my match of the night.

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

I think it had more heat than it got credit for simply because Cole and Page are both over and their last few angles hit with the live crowd. It was still below 3-4 other matches on the show, don't get me wrong. But I felt more for it than a few other matches including the tag titles and Britt/Rosa (which had its own issues). And I think the reactions live despite being over four hours in showed that. Now was it what it should've been? No. But I think we all talked about how cold it was a few weeks ago so much that we undervalued the work they put in recently.

[Deleted]

I liked it.

I wasn't even really that excited about it due to booking issues others have mentioned.

The match itself was great, and the crowd chants were pretty much the best/most entertaining since the ECW ONS shows.

[HMARK Center]

Mar 8, 2022 9:14:08 GMT -5 eJm said:

I don't think it's as bad as others have been saying, I think it's just more priorities have been shuffled a bit. I feel like since Kenny was supposed to be back by now, more probably would have been done with the Elite story and considering he said it'll be a bit longer, it's sort of hard to do what you want to do without one of the main players. So if you have something better to replace it and put it on the backburner for a bit, like a MJF/Punk, you go with that. It's not ideal but it's also not the worst thing in the world either.

As an aside, I'll never really understand the whole "if the outcome is predictable, it's less investment" thing because, like, most media is predictable. If I watch most blockbusters, the hero/es are going to win. Doesn't take away from the rest of the movie. If I watch Stranger Things, the creatures aren't going to eat everyone in Hawkins, Indiana or else there wouldn't be more show. It's different in other media, but with something like wrestling, it'd be like being annoyed The Avengers beat Thanos in Endgame. That's just me, though.

Yeah, it may just be that I'm used to being a fan of promotions that did things like the Samoa Joe/Bryan Danielson World title reigns or watching Okada break a title defenses record, but "predictable" can be absolutely fine as long as it's serving a purpose. It's simply impossible to have every match or every title shot feel like a toss-up, because after awhile you're going to get familiar with the storytelling and booking styles of your favorite promotions and you're going to just kind of know "yeah, not happening tonight." It does behoove a booker to throw a shock outcome or two in there every now and then to keep fans on their toes; a lot of people didn't foresee Austin Aries being the one to dethrone Joe in 2004 ROH, nor did people think Homicide's reign would be cut short by Morishima. But as a rule of thumb I'd keep those the exception rather than the rule; I don't want to see promotions fall back into the trap of "book a big title change here because it'll get people talking", or doing the WWE thing of "book so-and-so to win, nobody's picking him/her so it'll swerve the dirtsheet readers" or something.

I think there's also simply sometimes a difference in philosophy concerning how to go about booking world title feuds; sometimes you just have to rely on the prestige of the title itself to carry a feud, because you're not going to wring a super compelling feud or heavily character driven story out of every challenger. Frankly, I think you shouldn't want that, anyway; you want other feuds on your card to shine sometimes, or you want to save a true blood feud for the title for a moment where you really want/need it.

Not saying I'm totally right here, different takes on something like this are very understandable, but it's an interesting topic.

[Bo Rida]

Feels like both the aew and tag champions took a backseat to bullet club/elite drama.
Which would be fine except nothing really progressed there either, I guess they're waiting on Kenny and Switchblade.

The most interesting thing to me is The Bucks not wanting to fight Hangman. Just have them tell Cole they want a clean fight or they'll have to rethink their positions. Then have Cole act like he doesn't want re.dragon there when they come down. Still miminal progression but at least it's something to build on, do they trust Cole saying re.dragon acted independently against his wishes or do they think he planned it?

[ghost]

Had no interest in the match or program at all. Agreed, very ice cold. Maybe if they built it up longer it would have meant more. At this rate move on to Hangman/Punk. Cole is a main event talent but his money match is probably against Omega at this point.

[Deleted]

The main thing that I disliked about the build is that I think it had an overreliance on the expectation that everyone watching would know Hangman and Cole's entire history. Like, I'm a big enough wrestling dweeb to spend my downtime at the office posting on a forum like this during the day, but I have never really watched ROH and my exposure to New Japan is somewhat limited, so I think I would have liked a little more explanation of the complex relationship and reason for animosity than Excalibur saying something like "we know these guys' history."

But, I do think that, ultimately, even if the build was nothing more than "Hangman Page is a relatively new champion who still has doubt about his ability, and now has to put the title on the line against one of the hottest new stars in the company, who has been successful everywhere he's been and exudes confidence," it was enough for what that match needed to be on this card. The match wasn't heatless. The crowd was into it and the story of the match itself was compelling. It helped tremendously that the match itself was excellent. But, that PPV wasn't being sold on Hangman/Cole, it was sold on Punk/MJF. Honestly, anything was going to pale in comparison to that match. It's kind of like, does anyone really think of Austin/Kane First Blood as the main event of King of the Ring 1998, even though it was nominally positioned there?

There's nothing wrong with that. There's a million different directions the "all of Adam Cole's factions are in one place now" storyline (which I think had dovetailed into the world title program) can go from here, and I'm pretty excited to see what direction they take it. I do hope the company addresses this kind of criticism and the story requires less outside knowledge to fully understand as it moves forward. Hangman can either stay involved in that program, or move on to a new challenger (probably Punk) at this point.

[lavelleuk22]

I used to feel the same way about NXT Takeovers, where you often had the main event be a title match where the storyline was just that, someone trying to win a title.

Then earlier matches were grudge matches based on more interesting storylines as they needed to find reasons to have the match on the PPV.

So yeah, I know they tried to work a bit more of a story into it, but it was below Eddie-Jericho, Punk-MJF, even Danielson-Moxley which I thought the crowd were oddly quiet for.

What I will say, and I actually just said similar in another thread, they put on a fantastic match and got me invested due to the quality of their ring work. I think they got very lucky with the "Adam-Adam" thing as I'm not sure if the crowd would have been so hot or loud without it, guess we'll never know though.

But for me that was a solid 10/10 PPV and if you can still follow the matches I've already mentioned, plus a high spot ladder match, debut of a much loved legend, a fantastic fast paced three-way tag AND an insane spotfest featuring Sting doing a balcony dive and keep the fans invested after five hours of wrestling then I think you are doing something right lol

[Dub H]

It really wasnt,

At very least by the end the people were still more into it than thew womens title match and trios and those werent exactly cold either

It for sure was not Punk-MJF but that shouldnt be a standard we should hold it to

[Fade]

Yeah, it took me a minute to get into it because it was so predictable. My thoughts on the ME were always “well it’ll be a good match at least” and in that respect, it was. Crowd even stuck with ‘em by the end despite being tired/the trolling.

As far as building up Adam for Adam, yeah I think Tony fumbled with that. Simple as. With the rest of the card, it’s far less of an egregious error.

[asuka007]

I feel like Hangman’s reign has suffered from two things;

1. Predictability. It has not felt like any of his challengers so far had a real chance of beating him.

2. He has not had that truly compelling feud/story to really run with yet.

[Deleted]

Mar 8, 2022 12:18:37 GMT -5 asuka007 said:

I feel like Hangman’s reign has suffered from two things;

1. Predictability. It has not felt like any of his challengers so far had a real chance of beating him.

Agree completely with this. I think, to really put his reign over the top, he needs to beat CM Punk if that's the next feud they're going with.