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Post by polarbearpete on Aug 5, 2023 23:59:07 GMT -5
Match of the year is a pretty high marker in order to judge match quality. I’d say there’s still been a bunch of very good matches, even if there’s only one or two that are 4.5 stars or greater.
Becky/Bayley cage match on Raw, that Rousey/Shayna-Shotzi/Natalya tag match on Smackdown, the women’s chamber, Becky/Iyo from Raw, Asuka/Bianca at Mania and NOC, Bianca/Iyo Backlash, Trish /Becky were all between 3.25 and 4.25 stars.
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msc
Dennis Stamp
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Post by msc on Aug 6, 2023 1:22:08 GMT -5
Has Asuka lost a step or is she constantly being paired with Charlotte who has no chemistry with her and Bianca having her worst year so far?
We need Asuka v Iyo to find out.
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Post by theironyuppie on Aug 6, 2023 2:13:00 GMT -5
Has Asuka lost a step or is she constantly being paired with Charlotte who has no chemistry with her and Bianca having her worst year so far? We need Asuka v Iyo to find out. Could be a mix of things. The strange thing with Asuka/Charlotte is that they had very strong chemistry up to this year. People sometimes objected to the outcomes, but the quality of the matches themselves was never in doubt. And with Bianca it's tough because it's usually a popular formula, but a lot of the time she has a very defined style of match, and you nearly always know what she's gonna be doing because she does the same few moves every match. Finish and some wonky selling aside, the Iyo match at Backlash was at least good stuff even if Asuka/Bianca never properly delivered.
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Post by HMARK Center on Aug 6, 2023 13:19:06 GMT -5
Very telling when Kris Statlander vs. Mercedes Martinez on Collision was better than both of your women’s Summerslam matches. Say what one will about its booking (and please don't do it here, god knows we have more than enough of it in the AEW section), but I think there's a reasonable argument that the overall/average match quality in AEW's women's division might outshine WWE's, but as was said before some of that is due to what kind of feels like the lack of a vibrant women's midcard scene in WWE. I've said it before, but I really just don't think splitting their women's division in two the way they do is helping it; they just don't have enough depth to support two divisions that way, or at least not enough depth given the way they tend to book them with the aforementioned gap between the main names and everyone else.
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Post by darbus alan on Aug 6, 2023 13:29:13 GMT -5
It feels like women's wrestling has taken a step backwards overall in the mainstream American promotions. Even Impact's doesn't feel as good as it used to be, and they were the gold standard in unisex promotions on how to book a women's division as recently as last year.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2023 13:35:37 GMT -5
Has Asuka lost a step or is she constantly being paired with Charlotte who has no chemistry with her and Bianca having her worst year so far? We need Asuka v Iyo to find out. Asuka has a very odd chemistry ratio on the main roster. She always has a banger with Becky but with Rhea , Bianca , and Charlotte recently she has little to none with them. When Rhea first got called up those I would argue are probably Asukas worst matches and they ran that a few times and it just never really got better. We have gotten glimpses of IYO and Asuka squaring off and it just flows and like you would expect out of a pure Joshi match the speed was upped and the difference was IMO pretty vast in them working together compared to them working with any of the other women...and it is just Joshi in general they just seem to flow in and out of eachothers offence like they do not even need to communicate they just react to one another where as with predominantly western womens wrestlers you catch them a bit slower footed setting into their spots etc.
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Post by darbus alan on Aug 6, 2023 13:46:14 GMT -5
The joshi just have a systemic advantage over everyone else even with all other things being equal. Women's wrestling in the West is only starting to catch up after the likes of Moolah decimated it back in the day.
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mj0mn0m
Unicron
Watch me or I go Houdini! ✨️
Posts: 2,950
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Post by mj0mn0m on Aug 6, 2023 13:55:50 GMT -5
I really enjoyed Liv vs. Rhea at SmackDown. Tons of action in such short time. + hug that Liv gave to the crying girl afterwards was so'oh cool from her. Expecting 'em to have a banger of a re-match after she comes back. 🤪 In bigger scale, it should be a MOTY challenger whenever it happens...
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Post by HMARK Center on Aug 6, 2023 14:09:42 GMT -5
The joshi just have a systemic advantage over everyone else even with all other things being equal. Women's wrestling in the West is only starting to catch up after the likes of Moolah decimated it back in the day. There's a reason there's often a difference between Shida's AEW matches against, say, Toni Storm or Nyla Rose and her matches against some of the women who don't have much or any experience with Japanese tours; I believe she's said it before, but in those cases she'll go out of her way to slow things down a bit or get away from more strike-heavy matches and try to work in some gimmicks and different approaches so they'll be more comfortable. It's kind of the nature of the beast for the moment; even now, a decade into the "revolution", there's still tons of schools that don't take women's training as seriously as it's needed and the opportunities to work and thus improve on the indies are still much more limited for the women than for the men. It's not going to be fixed quickly, given how long and how thorough a lot of the historical damage was, going back to Mildred Burke getting screwed over. That said, if WWE really wants to amp up their main roster match quality for the women, I'd lean towards bringing up Roxanne and Gigi. Perez is friggin' excellent and could step right up to the biggest names on the roster (I understand if they're holding her back because she's young and they don't want to exhaust her marquee matchups too early in her career), and Dolin is highly capable of some really good, varied styles of matches. I remember before she signed she had a NWA women's title match during the pandemic that was one of the best all-around well-worked women's matches I've seen in the States since then, she's a very multi-faceted worker who knows the game outside the company's system.
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Post by xxshoyuweeniexx on Aug 6, 2023 14:25:05 GMT -5
This is where they're really missing Sasha Banks now. This is a good point. Sasha was the youngest of the 4HW and probably the best inning performer overall . She had good chemistry with most everyone. They really miss her. I feel the same, but I feel like Sasha was always positioned a star at times, but also a lot of times she was basically a more credible Liv Morgan. That's not to say Liv shouldn't be in a higher spot too, but if you're always just used to put over more taller jacked chicks or MMA fighters all the time you'd kinda wanna get the f*** outta there too.
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Post by HMARK Center on Aug 6, 2023 14:30:34 GMT -5
This is a good point. Sasha was the youngest of the 4HW and probably the best inning performer overall . She had good chemistry with most everyone. They really miss her. I feel the same, but I feel like Sasha was always positioned a star at times, but also a lot of times she was basically a more credible Liv Morgan. That's not to say Liv shouldn't be in a higher spot too, but if you're always just used to put over more taller jacked chicks or MMA fighters all the time you'd kinda wanna get the f*** outta there too. Liv seems like one of the people who would've benefitted from a more robust midcard for WWE's division; she clearly has some support, and it seems like she's improved overall, but going from "not in the title picture" to "champion" in the WWE's women's division is a big jump, and it seems like they didn't really have a plan for her once she won it, because they knew they'd have to get it off her and onto one of their bigger names. It's like when they had Carmella win the title off Asuka or something, and you just realize they really wouldn't do something like that with the men's division, they'd at least have something like an IC title feud or whatever to get the person built up a bit, first. ...Ok, I know Jinder Mahal happened, but bear with me, here.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Aug 6, 2023 15:23:56 GMT -5
I made a thread years ago asking if WWE needs a women's midcard title and I stand by it. There are a lot of women who would have solid IC title reigns but aren't main event level. Liv Morgan is a perfect example. Her matches are good but nothing special
It's exactly what they need to get more experience and confidence.
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Post by darbus alan on Aug 6, 2023 15:59:26 GMT -5
I think a women's midcard title (titles?) would far better serve the division(s) than the tag-titles tbh.
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Bo Rida
Fry's dog Seymour
Pulled one over on everyone. Got away with it, this time.
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Post by Bo Rida on Aug 6, 2023 16:26:43 GMT -5
They need some new blood People like Charlotte, Asuka aren't consistently good performers anymore with their age and tolls on their body starting to take shape. The reputation for some has far surpassed their actual skill. It is a bit of a transition period right now Yeah time catches up with everybody in the end. There's a few aew comparissons in this thread but at the top they're mostly about 5 years younger than their counterparts and in TV years much fresher, Asuka to Shida, Becky/Bayley compared to Hayter/Storm etc. Kairi and Bianca feel like upcoming stars in comparison but are nearly 35. They need others under 30 to join Rhea at the top soon.
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asuka007
Fry's dog Seymour
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Post by asuka007 on Aug 6, 2023 18:20:55 GMT -5
Very telling when Kris Statlander vs. Mercedes Martinez on Collision was better than both of your women’s Summerslam matches. Say what one will about its booking (and please don't do it here, god knows we have more than enough of it in the AEW section), but I think there's a reasonable argument that the overall/average match quality in AEW's women's division might outshine WWE's, but as was said before some of that is due to what kind of feels like the lack of a vibrant women's midcard scene in WWE. I've said it before, but I really just don't think splitting their women's division in two the way they do is helping it; they just don't have enough depth to support two divisions that way, or at least not enough depth given the way they tend to book them with the aforementioned gap between the main names and everyone else. They also just need to USE the women better. Part of the reason why Rhea for example “has no credible challengers” is that 95% of the Raw division is just never on TV.
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Aug 6, 2023 19:01:35 GMT -5
They need some new blood People like Charlotte, Asuka aren't consistently good performers anymore with their age and tolls on their body starting to take shape. The reputation for some has far surpassed their actual skill. It is a bit of a transition period right now Yeah time catches up with everybody in the end. There's a few aew comparissons in this thread but at the top they're mostly about 5 years younger than their counterparts and in TV years much fresher, Asuka to Shida, Becky/Bayley compared to Hayter/Storm etc. Kairi and Bianca feel like upcoming stars in comparison but are nearly 35. They need others under 30 to join Rhea at the top soon. They really need to focusing on blooding some young talent on the main roster. Roxanne Perez and Cora Jade are probably as ready to go on the main roster as they'll ever be so why not move them on up? That's two sub-23 aged women who will hopefully be there for a decade. Obviously the ones fresh to wrestling from other sports won't be ready to be fast tracked but the ones with years of indie experience really don't need more than a year of developing in NXT before being main roster ready. Keep some to train the rookies and carry the workload but don't cause a logjam at the top of the division because you don't want to move them up yet.
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Post by King Devitt and the Woke Mob on Aug 6, 2023 19:49:27 GMT -5
Calling new people up is fine, but there's still plenty of current women they just aren't using. You gotta fix the stop-gap first.
For instance, I think there's no reason they couldn't have built up to Piper Niven vs. Rhea at Summerslam.
That match would've ruled.
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Post by HMARK Center on Aug 6, 2023 20:04:17 GMT -5
Say what one will about its booking (and please don't do it here, god knows we have more than enough of it in the AEW section), but I think there's a reasonable argument that the overall/average match quality in AEW's women's division might outshine WWE's, but as was said before some of that is due to what kind of feels like the lack of a vibrant women's midcard scene in WWE. I've said it before, but I really just don't think splitting their women's division in two the way they do is helping it; they just don't have enough depth to support two divisions that way, or at least not enough depth given the way they tend to book them with the aforementioned gap between the main names and everyone else. They also just need to USE the women better. Part of the reason why Rhea for example “has no credible challengers” is that 95% of the Raw division is just never on TV. Yeah, I can't speak to all of it since I don't watch enough WWE to know the full story, but it does kind of feel like there's the S tier of Charlotte, Becky, Rhea, and Bianca (not sure if Rousey's sticking around), the A tier of Asuka, Bayley, and Io...and then it just kind of drops away. So you're splitting basically a small handful of top wrestlers across two shows, and not utilizing the depth beneath them, because you're leaning hard on those top names to carry each individual episode or your weekly shows. I'm sure I'm missing a few names in there, so my apologies for my ignorance on that.
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asuka007
Fry's dog Seymour
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Post by asuka007 on Aug 6, 2023 20:15:17 GMT -5
Calling new people up is fine, but there's still plenty of current women they just aren't using. You gotta fix the stop-gap first. For instance, I think there's no reason they couldn't have built up to Piper Niven vs. Rhea at Summerslam. That match would've ruled. Or Rhea vs. Candice perhaps. Candice excels at this “David vs. Goliath” scenarios. Rhea, your champion and one of the most over stars you have, got like Two minutes on freaking Summerslam. I don’t care what Triple H says, that is patheticz
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2023 20:23:47 GMT -5
It says something to the quality of Joshi and in particular STARDOM that they can do this. And you not bat a f***ing eye because they than throw a show with 5 star bangers all over the place right after and you just left to imagine the above was just a feaver dream. So my point is wanna up the quality WWE YOU NEED TO GET RID OF THE TITLES AND PUT WOMEN IN GIANT ZORB BALLS TO DO BATTLE!
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