Is Jay Lethal the least popular guy in AEW?

[Alice Syndrome]

Jay Lethal as a face post Black Machismo was entertaining.

Jay Lethal as an attempted gatekeeper heel who still loses like shit all the time and hides behind The Great KhAliexpress? He's a charisma black hole that ruined the forest 6 months of Joe's AEW career

[4real]

He also has probably the stupidest finisher in the company.

[Mozenrath]

Outside of a really good Starks match he had, I've found him really dull. Just, excruciatingly dull.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

I thought he sucked before he started Black Machismo

I thought Black Machismo being what got him over was a searing indictment of him as a talent

I thought he was boring after that

Always disliked his work

Then after Taeler Hendrix levelled some accusations at him I didn't even have to regret skipping him

Roll on ROH's own show so I can go back to ignoring him completely

[Bo Rida]

Oct 17, 2022 18:56:12 GMT -5 Dub H said:

I would say on a scale of Tv Time x Popularity, yes.

Yeah that's the important part, alongside potential. It's why a bad Anna Jay match is more acceptable than a bad Shafir match.
At this point there's little chance Lethal will ever be more entertaining than he is now.

[kingoftheindies]

On FAN? Maybe. Since a lot of the forum was pretty sick of him in ROH before the pandemic (even without Taeler accusing him of harassment) so many are still sick of him now.

I'm not his biggest fan but I think he's done what he's been asked to do in AEW which is be a solid hand to help his opponent get over in the ring. So with fans in the building? It works but it doesn't always translate to people watching at home.

I think Sammy right now is most hated just cause he comes off like a tool. Pillman JR I don't even know if he's hated as much as everybody just thinks he's a dork

[The Ichi]

His unpopularity mostly stems from IRL accusations, doesn't it? Sammy has the honor of being terrible both IRL and onscreen.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

Oct 18, 2022 11:23:20 GMT -5 The Ichi said:

His unpopularity mostly stems from IRL accusations, doesn't it? Sammy has the honor of being terrible both IRL and onscreen.

Most of the hate seems to be more for how boring he is. I sometimes find myself wondering how much some people would care about the accusations if the guy weren't dull.

(There are definitely people who do care, for the record. It just feels like there's a difference between those who do and those who don't.)

[kingoftheindies]

Oct 18, 2022 11:23:20 GMT -5 The Ichi said:

His unpopularity mostly stems from IRL accusations, doesn't it? Sammy has the honor of being terrible both IRL and onscreen.

50/50.

There are those that absolutely do care. There's also a lot of people who don't believe the accusations because Taeler Hendricks was at the time a very toxic individual in the wrestling world (that's a different topic)

But Jay was ice cold as a singles guy in ROH since I'd say 2017. And I never got the impression that The Foundation ever got over enough to give him a breath of fresh air

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

Oct 18, 2022 11:23:20 GMT -5 The Ichi said:

His unpopularity mostly stems from IRL accusations, doesn't it? Sammy has the honor of being terrible both IRL and onscreen.

I'd argue vastly different kinds of terrible.

Sammy, and even Punk, are guys who make things harder for other people in the back who are also wrestlers on their level

Jay's accusations are the exploitation of a power dynamic over women, Vince/Johnny Ace-style. It's not really the same thing.

Say what you will about Sammy and Punk being hotheads getting into fights with their co-workers, but at least they were co-workers at the same level (or in Punk's case, technically more senior than he was) rather than systemic abuse patterns

[clifford]

I don't hate Lethal, but he's used wayyyyyy too much. It's a drawback of having so few heels near the top of the card. Every time Lethal is on screen, I'm thinking of 14-15 guys that should be in his place getting those tv time opportunities.

[Final Countdown Jones]

Oct 18, 2022 11:23:20 GMT -5 The Ichi said:

His unpopularity mostly stems from IRL accusations, doesn't it? Sammy has the honor of being terrible both IRL and onscreen.

The accusations hurt him a lot, but he's also just a guy who has been all over the highest level non-WWE promotions for almost twenty years now. ROH, TNA for a long time, ROH for a long time again after that, now AEW. If you've been following alternative wrestling for long enough, you have seen a lot of Jay Lethal and you have seen him not really change much up as an act for many years now. I'd say even without the accusations, he's in that Dolph Ziggler zone of "Okay dude we get it, change something up here please" because he's been doing just about the same work for an eternity. He's a guy who has been around forever but who has never really been quite good enough that you're glad he's still going, and whose range as a performer isn't very broad if he's not doing impersonation gimmicks.

[Giul T.]

Oct 17, 2022 22:50:38 GMT -5 Alice Syndrome said:

Jay Lethal as a face post Black Machismo was entertaining.

Jay Lethal as an attempted gatekeeper heel who still loses like shit all the time and hides behind The Great KhAliexpress? He's a charisma black hole that ruined the forest 6 months of Joe's AEW career

Side note: The Great KhAliExpress is a fantastic name and any indie Indian talent should snatch that up immediately.

[Rave]

Oct 18, 2022 12:55:42 GMT -5 kingoftheindies said:

But Jay was ice cold as a singles guy in ROH since I'd say 2017. And I never got the impression that The Foundation ever got over enough to give him a breath of fresh air

Didn't help that the Foundation/LFI feud was brutally boring and dominated the weekly show for what seemed like forever.

[Deleted]

They do have Aaron Solo on the roster…

But for all the “name talent” he’s up there, but it’s not utter hatred like Sammy it’s a more of an indifference.

[Magic knows Black Lives Matter]

I did die laughing at that beat down angle last night but don’t think that was the intention 🤣🤣

Like Darby, it was two on one, what’d you expect? That’s the stuff I don’t really care for, there’s being a firey baby face going against the odds and then there’s just blindly walking into an obvious ass whooping. I’d put Darby in the latter

[Brandon Walsh is Insane.]

He’s just ….there.

Needs a character to bring back that charisma.

[Deleted]

MJF could go out and kill a puppy in the middle of the ring and not touch the hate that Sammy Guevara is getting (deserved, in my opinion).

Jay isn't the least popular, he's just... boring. There. He's a "good hand" in a roster where "good hands" are stuck in AEW Dark purgatory.

[Deleted]

Sammy has never put Darby in a figure-four while Darby was trapped under a garage door.

[Blade]

I like Lethal fine; his team with Sonjay and Satnam is fun and it's not like he goes over anyone he shouldn't.

I might be bored with him if I'd watched RoH and TNA for years but I didn't, so he's a decent wrestler and good promo that people kvetch constantly about here regardless of what he's actually doing. My main issue with him is that like a lot of people in AEW, he meanders too much without a clear character direction. Like he had a whole thing where he was losing every match and getting frustrated and unsure of himself, but then he turned heel and immediately dropped that and even wins matches clean against lower card guys.

Then they did all the buildup for his match with Joe on AEW tv, but paid it off on RoH. I get why, but it's harder to get invested in him that way.

But he's not bad by any means, and Sonjay Dutt is a hoot.