- 3 months ago
Follow , like and share
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Hello there, my very good friends. Andy here for WhatCulture Wrestling. Do you want to know how to turn a wrestle dream into a wrestle nightmare? Well, this is the video for you, my friends. We are previewing the show across the next two days. Tomorrow, we're going to look at my views on what should happen on the show.
00:25Today, we're going to look at some potential nightmare scenarios that could manifest should things go wrong on the night. Going to try and keep them as believable as possible. Not going to do like the moon crashes through the roof of the building and a bunch of cheese falls out and everyone's upset because they don't like cheese. We're not going to do any of that totally fanciful stuff. We're going to try and stick within the realms of reality where possible. These videos are just a bit of fun. They're a bit of a laugh.
00:53But we're also pointing out some concerns along the way. We did this for WWE last week. We're doing it for AEW this week. I think it's a very interesting looking show on paper. Let's begin with the nightmares. Here are five nightmares that could come true.
01:08AEW Wrestle Dream. It's October. Of course, they're going to be nightmares.
01:11Number five. Brodie King turns on Bandido. I've seen this one pitched a few times. It's been brought up a couple of times on the old social media machine and Reddit and places like that. Buddy Matthews might be getting ready to come back. He's been out injured for a while. Obviously, an ally of Brodie King as part of the Hounds of Hell. A lot of people are wondering, how are you going to reunite those guys? What are you going to do with those guys? What are you going to do with Bandido?
01:32Brodie Matthews is ready to return again. What is going to happen? Well, I think the least interesting of these scenarios is Brodie King turning heel, my friends. I'll tell you why. Brodido are over. People love Brodido. They have found a really good partnership.
01:45And I think it would be absolutely stupid to squander that immediately. I think that if you are going to split them up at some point, and you will at some point, probably, right? It's wrestling. Everyone splits up eventually.
01:55You should do it later. Do it longer term. Wait a while. This stuff's over. So not only do I think that they should beat Okada and Takeshi for reasons I will articulate on tomorrow's video, but I think that Brodie King should stay a babyface, man.
02:07He's the coolest man alive. How can you root against this guy? Talks up. Stands up for what he believes.
02:15And he's an awesome wrestler. Far too much fun to boo. Barks like a dog. The entire arena does it. Don't do it. Don't do it.
02:22Now, look. I love Buddy Matthews. Sorry. Didn't mean to use your fed name there, bud. But I love Buddy Matthews. I love the hounds as well.
02:29I love the aesthetic that they had earlier this year with the fire and the new theme and the chaos. The really true representation of who they are.
02:38It's unfortunate that Buddy got injured and that he's been out for so long and that that tag team kind of had its legs chopped out from beneath it.
02:45Julia Hart's obviously doing different things now as well. And I would like to see them go back to that. But this is good too. This is good too.
02:53We can have our cake and eat it, folks. It doesn't need to be this whole thing.
02:57Why doesn't Bandito join the hands of hell, man? You're telling me that a Bandit wouldn't fit in well with a couple of dogs from Satan's realm?
03:05It's good stuff. Don't split them up yet. Don't turn Brodie King heel. If you do, I will be moderately annoyed about it on the internet.
03:13And you don't want that.
03:14Number four. Everything is ice cold.
03:17Going for a bit of juxtaposition here with the background because that is clearly not a cold show.
03:21Oh, that is a packed arena. That's a packed arena.
03:24Unfortunately, it's not going to be such a packed arena this weekend.
03:27500, sorry. No, they've not sold 500 tickets. That'd be a disaster.
03:31Five and a half thousand tickets sold so far for WrestleDream at the time of recording this.
03:35It's not going to be a bumper house. It's not going to be a massive house.
03:38And the signs are, unfortunately, that some of this stuff might fall short.
03:43Hangman Page and Samoa Joe in particular had an ice cold go-home angle on the episode of Dynamite leading into this show.
03:50And that is something that could permeate throughout the entire lineup.
03:54Now, look, I do expect Hangman and Joe to be more over than they were in that previous segment.
03:59And actually, if you're going to do this as the opener, it's probably a really good shout because everyone loves Hangman and Joe can fire an entire arena up.
04:06I have not... I screamed myself hoarse all in 2023 when he did Hulk Hogan stuff.
04:12It was wild. It was crazy.
04:13They've got the command of the audience.
04:15They can conduct them like...
04:17Conductors.
04:20Beethoven, I don't know.
04:21But there's a danger here.
04:23There is a danger here.
04:24How much of this stuff feels really hot?
04:25How much of the stuff on this lineup feels really over?
04:28Like, I think if you were honestly to sit here and go through these eight, nine matches and mark them off,
04:32you'd probably have more that feel cold than feel white hot.
04:35And that's a real shame.
04:36It's reflected in the tickets sold so far.
04:38Maybe it will reflect in the pay-per-view buys as well.
04:41We'll know about those a week or so after the show comes out.
04:43But it is a real danger.
04:45There's nothing worse than sitting there watching a wrestling show and there's no enthusiasm coming through the screen.
04:49Even worse if you're in the building, I imagine.
04:52Now, frequently, what happens in the building, sometimes it's not reflected at home.
04:57I don't want to be sitting there watching people wrestle to crickets.
05:00I don't want an empty arena.
05:01I don't want ice-cold crowd nonsense.
05:04I want it to be hot.
05:05I want it to be exciting.
05:06I want it to be fast and engaging and all of those good things.
05:09But when you've got this long show and things aren't really as over as they need to be,
05:13there is a real danger there.
05:16Obviously, I hope it doesn't happen because it will make my viewing experience suck and yours too, potentially.
05:21But it could happen and it should probably provoke some kind of inquest into how they can heat things up again.
05:28Number three, Moxley and Darby go too far.
05:31Speak about heating things up, here are a couple of guys who want to set each other on fire, baby.
05:36Look, these guys, they're going to do crazy stuff.
05:39They're going to have this match that's going to have no limits, basically.
05:43There'll probably be glass, there'll probably be fire, body bags, coffins, all kinds of crazy bumps that are just insane.
05:49All kinds of stuff.
05:50They're going to do all kinds of crazy stuff.
05:52I think it has a really high ceiling, this match, in terms of quality, right?
05:55Because Moxley has been so good at being a villain backed into a corner over the past couple of months.
06:01However, they are both psychopaths when it comes to wrestling.
06:06And there's a very high chance that they push the envelope a little bit too far.
06:11What is too far, you ask?
06:12Well, I think that's in the eye of the beholder.
06:14For some people, a gimmicked chair shot to the back is too far.
06:17For others, yeah, gouging at people's faces with light tubes or whatever, whatever.
06:22For me, I don't have a problem with either of those things.
06:24And I don't like playing safety police either.
06:27I'm not going to sit here and go, they shouldn't do these things because it's not my body.
06:30And ultimately, I don't care.
06:32Obviously, hope they look after themselves, but whatever.
06:34I don't get to decide what they do and don't do.
06:36That being said, not too into the whole, I'm going to kill you.
06:41I'm going to set you on fire.
06:42I'm going to murder you.
06:44I'm going to do this.
06:45I'm going to do that.
06:45It's a little bit that stretches beyond the realms of believability to me.
06:50We have these established rules within pro wrestling, these logic things that we just accept.
06:56Things like Irish whips and things like that, which are obviously cooperative, but they're
07:01an accepted part of the pro wrestling psychological canon.
07:04For me, attempted murder is a little bit too far, my friends.
07:06So that would personally be my line.
07:08Not because I'm disgusted by this or anything like that.
07:11Just because it takes me out of the moment, right?
07:14It breaks my immersion and it pulls me out of the action.
07:16It makes me start thinking, nah, I don't know about this.
07:19And I don't like that.
07:20I know you don't like it either.
07:21So tell me, what is the spot these guys could do that would go too far?
07:24Let me know in the comments section below.
07:26They're going to go nuts.
07:27It's going to be too far for some people.
07:29You can't please everybody.
07:30But what's your line?
07:31What's your limit?
07:32Let me know.
07:32Number two, Samoa Joe beats Hangman out of sheer, sheer panic.
07:38So Hangman Page, very popular figure amongst the AEW fan base online in particular, often
07:43portrayed as the main character, the protagonist, the guy central to this company's story.
07:47And honestly, it's quite hard to argue that.
07:50I certainly would not argue against it personally.
07:54However, he's been on top for a couple of months now.
07:56And we have not seen any kind of growth in the consumer metrics that are made public.
08:02We don't know about HBO Max numbers.
08:05Could be five people.
08:06Could be 500,000 people.
08:07It's probably somewhere in the middle of those.
08:09We don't know about those.
08:11So we can't comment on those.
08:12But if you're looking at things like ticket sales, TV ratings, right?
08:16With the guy on top, not a lot of positive movement going on there.
08:20AEW Dynamite has hit its lowest rating ever several times throughout the last couple of
08:24months.
08:25Now, there are extenuating circumstances there.
08:28There is the change to the Nielsen reporting system.
08:30There have been preemptions, stuff like that.
08:32But if you have the guy we are told to receive as the protagonist, the main character of the
08:37company on top with the belt, you would hope that that would also translate at the box office.
08:42And when this guy that is universally beloved is on top, he would make a difference and move
08:47the needle in positive directions.
08:48And yes, these things do matter.
08:52TV revenue is the biggest thing keeping these companies going.
08:56AEW earns $185 million a year from their TV deal.
09:00So these numbers do matter.
09:02Now, the one consumer metric that has looked positive for AEW recently is, of course, the
09:07pay-per-view buys, which are still very high and still good.
09:10You would hope that that continues.
09:11But there is every chance that a man with a spreadsheet looks at the TV and the attendances
09:17with Hangman Page on top and goes, ooh, these are not trending in the right direction.
09:23Maybe we need a change.
09:24That panic change would be putting the belt on Samoa Joe.
09:27Now, I love Samoa Joe.
09:29He's a perfect transitional champion.
09:31He was great last time.
09:32I don't think this is the move you do on Saturday.
09:35I will articulate this in a little bit more detail in tomorrow's video as to why Page must
09:40go over.
09:41But this is not the time for panic booking.
09:43This is not the time for hot-shotting.
09:45This is not the time for making decisions based on a couple of weeks of wonky numbers,
09:48a couple of months of wonky numbers.
09:51This is a time for careful planning, for long-term stuff, for figuring out what the next wave
09:57of stars is going to be and how to maximize the curve wave.
09:59You shouldn't just change, rip everything up and throw it in the bin if you've got nothing
10:04beyond that.
10:06So for me, no panic changes this weekend.
10:08Please keep the belt on Hangman.
10:10Try and work things out that way.
10:11And number one is the show runs too long.
10:15Okay, poison topic, but let's talk about it.
10:17This is another one that's entirely in your subjective eyes, right?
10:22This is one of these things where there are five hour...
10:26Right, let's break it down.
10:28Right back to basics.
10:30There are five hour shows that are too long.
10:32There are also five hour shows that are too short.
10:34There are three hour shows that are too long.
10:37And there are three hour shows that are too short.
10:40It's a matter of pacing.
10:42It's not a case of looking at a number and going, that's too much.
10:46Because if that number is full wall to wall with quality stuff, it's not too much.
10:51Whereas if that number is filled with some quality stuff, but some mid stuff you don't
10:57really care about and a bunch of breaks and commercials and boring things that make you
11:01lose your immersion, that's a problem.
11:04That's a problem.
11:05It's about keeping it going.
11:06It's about pacing.
11:07It's about timing.
11:08It's about match order.
11:10It's about making things feel different and distinct and unique.
11:13So you don't feel like you're watching the same thing over and over for four or five hours.
11:17This has been something of a problem for AEW over the past few years.
11:20Now, I absolutely think that there are some shows that definitely justify the runtime.
11:26But quite often, if things start to go wrong and things maybe don't connect to the desired
11:31level, which goes into my previous point about maybe things not being hot or becoming cold.
11:37Yeah, that's a real issue.
11:39I think that in the year of our cod, I don't know, fish, I like fish.
11:45But in the year of our fish, 2025, the perfect balanced wrestling show, I think, is somewhat
11:50mad Frankenstein's monster version of a WWE PLE and an AEW pay-per-view.
11:57AEW has the problem of them, like the runtime is much longer and, you know, sometimes
12:01there's a lot of similar matches that go 20 minutes, 25, a bunch of them all in a row
12:06with similar finishes and there's lots of action in a lot of them and that wears people out.
12:12The WWE show's problem is that they're three and a half hours and they have five matches
12:15with nothing in between them.
12:1730 minutes of pure skippable garbage, which is fantastic if you're watching on a delay,
12:21but if you're watching it live, it sucks.
12:24It really sucks.
12:25I think if you took these problems, if you merged the two formats and you had longer shows
12:29with less gaps and a more measured approach, you'd have the perfect wrestling pay-per-view.
12:35But we're not there yet.
12:36That's utopia.
12:37Utopia doesn't exist.
12:39So it is a danger.
12:40It will be a talking point after this show.
12:42Look, the show could go two hours long and there'd be some nonties complaining it was
12:45too long.
12:46So, you know, again, you can't please anyone, particularly when you're AEW, the most overanalyzed
12:51wrestling promotion of all time, in my opinion.
12:53But, look, we can't have a five and a half hour marathon where nothing feels distinct and
13:00nothing stands out as a result.
13:01That can't go on forever, in my view.
13:04I'm a quality over quantity guy.
13:07I would rather eat a really nice meal that's one course and like a perfectly cooked steak
13:11than have five courses of Burger King, for example, right?
13:16So that's my view on it.
13:17Yours might be completely different, but we respect each other's differences.
13:20That's what we do here.
13:21That's what made this whole thing so beautiful.
13:23If you like this video, check out the one that's on your screen right now.
13:25Enjoy the show.
13:26Back tomorrow with another preview video.
13:27It's going to be great.
13:28Bye.