AEW airing first-ever mixed tag team match on Dark

[XIV]

But AEW isn't attracting new fans. Their viewership (including DVRs) is not as high as it was early on.

i'm not saying they are, I even said that everything points to their strategy going after lapsed fans. But at the end of the day, we need to stop blaming Orange Cassidy or Riho or Marko Stunt or The Nightmare Collective or The Dark Order or The Lucha Brothers or anything for keeping to 'new' fans away. What keeps new people away is 'Pro Wrestling' and what the US population's idea of what that is based on 30+ years of WWE.

I don't think that's true, though. For non-fans the idea of "fake' pro wrestling has almost always been a non-starter, other than a major Attitude Era-like boom period.
Lapsed fans know that pro wrestling can be done differently than WWE. Even if they have never seen it done differently, they'll recognize the concept the moment they turn their TV on.

Your attitude seems to be that the well is completely poisoned at this point and wrestling will never make new fans because no one will give non-WWE wrestling a chance, and I think that's just plain not true.

As for Orange Cassidy... he is a likely culprit. He appeals to a certain, very niche crowd that thinks it's funny to be in on the joke. He's shtick, and the sort of shtick that makes you think the product is a joke (as opposed to Jeruch, who us shtick but takes things seriously).

The issue with the Nightmare Collective is that they are confusing on multiple levels.

This is the thing in the middle here you talk about people giving other companies a chance, I've long gone off the WWE boil,

I'm a 20+ year wrestling fan at this point and I've arrived at a point where there is more wrestling available to watch than ever before, yet there's only two shows that are purely unmissable for me now. NXT & NWA. Both of those shows contain not only good wrestling, but good promos, stories and make me want to watch from week to week... most importantly for me and many "veteran" fans is that you can look at it and sure, they're not perfect products, but they're still taking wrestling seriously, they still present it in a serious fashion.

At this point, if I do decide to watch Raw, Smackdown, Chikara, AEW, Impact or any other wrestling, I'm doing it through a casual fans eyes and they're not hooking me. In fact, for me AEW does more than the rest of those companies to actively put me off because when I have watched it I find myself getting annoyed at the show.

In a fight which is what wrestling is supposed to be portraying...? a fight or a contest... I would not put my hands in my pockets, start ducking the guy and do flips, I'm going to do what I feel I need to do to win the fight or contest... look at MMA,. do fighters taunt? Yes. Do they put their hands in their pockets and throw themselves at their opponent? No. Because it would be a stupid thing to do.

That's why I'm glad they've distanced from people like Joey Ryan, because you can't actually flip somebody with your dick, it's stupid and exposes the business and makes it look like obvious co-operation.

Cody has been smart, look at all the crap going on, Cody keeps himself looking serious, presents himself as serious and does nothing to expose the business. MJF is the same. Jericho also does this, because they know involving themselves with stupidity would do nothing for them.

I will say this much, and I'm sure BRM will say "I told you so". Darby Allin is nowhere near as bad I first thought. He's actually some level of entertaining, showing talent and being presented in a better way. There is hope.

[XIV]

I don't think that's true, though. For non-fans the idea of "fake' pro wrestling has almost always been a non-starter, other than a major Attitude Era-like boom period.
Lapsed fans know that pro wrestling can be done differently than WWE. Even if they have never seen it done differently, they'll recognize the concept the moment they turn their TV on.

Your attitude seems to be that the well is completely poisoned at this point and wrestling will never make new fans because no one will give non-WWE wrestling a chance, and I think that's just plain not true.

You're being a bit drastic with 'never make new fans', but there is definitely a hump to overcome. WWE is what people think about when someone says 'wrestling'. New fans are not likely to have any other reference than WWE, even most of lapsed fans right now are likely WWE-lapsed fans that got tired of their shit, they're not NJPW/Impact/ROH/ECW/WCW/etc-lapsed fans.

Lapsed fans are not likely to see someone like Riho or OC and get turned off unless they're old Jim Cornette cultists, they're going to be intrigued about what this whole thing is about.

As for Orange Cassidy... he is a likely culprit. He appeals to a certain, very niche crowd that thinks it's funny to be in on the joke. He's shtick, and the sort of shtick that makes you think the product is a joke (as opposed to Jeruch, who us shtick but takes things seriously).

The issue with the Nightmare Collective is that they are confusing on multiple levels.

this is what i'm talking about. Way I see it, those that don't like him are the niche crowd that can't get over that something they don't like is over as fuck.

The issue with Riho is that she's not being protrayed in a way that is intriguing or even believable. Once you've watched more than one Riho match, you;re sat there going "I cannot buy that this tiny woman is beating all of these other women who would slap the piss out of her".
It's not even like she's even being protrayed as the underdog... by being able to accomplish this... it's expected and she can't! She's 12-2!

[Big Red Machine]

I don't think that's true, though. For non-fans the idea of "fake' pro wrestling has almost always been a non-starter, other than a major Attitude Era-like boom period.
Lapsed fans know that pro wrestling can be done differently than WWE. Even if they have never seen it done differently, they'll recognize the concept the moment they turn their TV on.

Your attitude seems to be that the well is completely poisoned at this point and wrestling will never make new fans because no one will give non-WWE wrestling a chance, and I think that's just plain not true.

You're being a bit drastic with 'never make new fans', but there is definitely a hump to overcome. WWE is what people think about when someone says 'wrestling'. New fans are not likely to have any other reference than WWE, even most of lapsed fans right now are likely WWE-lapsed fans that got tired of their shit, they're not NJPW/Impact/ROH/ECW/WCW/etc-lapsed fans.

You're making the mistake of treating the "lapsed fans" like a monolith when WWE's product has changed drastically over the past nineteen years, with different people leaving at different times and for different reasons. People who left WWE in 2002 because there was no more Rock and Austin left for different reasons than people who left in 2003-2004 because they were tired of the "reigns of terror" of Hunter and Taker over Raw and SD respectively, and those people are different from people who left because they didn't like PG turn or the people who left after Benoit because they were tired of people dying, or people who left because they were tired of the McMahons being all over the product, or people who left because they didn't like the move away from the Attitude Era "violence and boobs" formula, or people who left because of the Romanism/"War on Fans" type of stuff, or people who left because they don't like the Saudi deal.

Someone who is just looking for a Rock/Austin type of character will probably gravitate to AEW because of Moxley. Someone who left because they were tired of stupid comedy bullsh*t won't gravitate towards AEW because of bullsh*t like Orange Cassidy.

Lapsed fans are not likely to see someone like Riho or OC and get turned off unless they're old Jim Cornette cultists, they're going to be intrigued about what this whole thing is about.

Riho, I don't think so. But Orange Cassidy appeals to people who like goofy bullsh*t. And if you left WWE because you were tired of goofy bullsh*t, Orange Cassidy is going to make you change the channel. No one looks at Orange Cassidy and says "Hmm... I wonder why he's not taking his hands out of his pockets?" They see him not caring and doing these idiotic light kicks to the shin and say "that's stupid." Which is exactly what my lapsed-fan brother and sister did when my cousin's boyfriend showed them a clip of Orange Cassidy.

As for Orange Cassidy... he is a likely culprit. He appeals to a certain, very niche crowd that thinks it's funny to be in on the joke. He's shtick, and the sort of shtick that makes you think the product is a joke (as opposed to Jeruch, who us shtick but takes things seriously).

The issue with the Nightmare Collective is that they are confusing on multiple levels.

this is what i'm talking about. Way I see it, those that don't like him are the niche crowd that can't get over that something they don't like is over as fuck.

I'm not going to deny that for me and a lot of people like me, seeing wrestling fans cheer Orange Cassidy makes me angry because I find him so stupid. But I get equally angry when fans do sh*t like boo when a wrestler stops a babyface from doing something that should cause a DQ when the babyface has no reason to do it (like Dustin's Shattered Dreams) because I know these same fans would get angry and start booing if the ref let Dustin hit the move and then called for the DQ. And I get equally angry when I hear fans do Swagger's WWE chant, then all cheer when Jericho says that that was a stupid gimmick. Wrestling fans nowadays way too often come across like stupid sheep who don't actually care about the wrestling or the stories or the f*cking art form in front of them and instead just want to have fun chanting things and seeing the occasional flip or comedy spot.
The fact of the matter is that just AEW fans and WWE fans are no different. Just like WWE fans were exposed as not actually caring about Rusev but rather just liking to chant "RUSEV DAY!" AEW fans don't actually care about Adam Page. They just like chanting "COWBOY SH*T!" and Adam Page is merely a convenient excuse to do that. If they actually cared about Adam Page, they wouldn't react to his f*cking ALCOHOLISM in this idiotic, immature way, completely derailing the story their favorite promotion is trying to tell.

I also think it's HIGHLY unfair to call people who think the way Jim Cornette does "cultists." Say what you will about them, but at least they ask the same thing of every company. Part of being in a cult is blind, unthinking acceptance, which AEW crowds are more guilty of than fans of any other promotion other than perhaps the TNAMecca crowd. You can bring up elements of WWE's fandom or ROHBots or the ECW nutjobs of the mid-90s, but that's just whataboutism; it doesn't refute the argument.
Someone who criticizes WWE needs to prepared to level the exact same criticisms at AEW when the critique fits, and needs to be able to explain why they don't think the critique fits when someone else levels it at AEW. I think that most people (myself included) who have criticized things like Nightmare Collective or the Pac/Omega feud or anything else have asked legitimate questions about it that we would ask if this were taking place in any other promotion.

[Big Red Machine]

because you can't actually flip somebody with your dick,

Well... maybe YOU can't.


But that magnetism sh*t is definitely business-exposing bullsh*t.

[Bob-O]

Good lord... why all the hate on OC lol...

I mean, people are gonna like what they like, but I think AEW has done very well with the character. I can understand turning off his Beyond Wrestling rock the baby stuff, but I think AEW's done a nice job with the 'WTF is this guy doing' reactions from opposition, and he usually gets his ass beat for it...

I don't think his deal is any different than Darby's handcuff spot that everyone loved so much, or the 6000 choreographed dives they do an episode, or The Rock cutting the same promo for two years...

I'm not on the "buT hE can ActUallY gO!" team, because I've seen it and flippy arm drags and canadian destroyers aren't "going" in my book, but I do get the appeal and I've loved how AEW has used him so far.

[Big Red Machine]

I don't think his deal is any different than Darby's handcuff spot that everyone loved so much, or the 6000 choreographed dives they do an episode, or The Rock cutting the same promo for two years...

The difference is that Darby wrestling while handcuffed and the guys doing the choreographed dives are at least still under the pretense that they're trying to win a competition.

[XIV]

I don't think his deal is any different than Darby's handcuff spot that everyone loved so much, or the 6000 choreographed dives they do an episode, or The Rock cutting the same promo for two years...

The difference is that Darby wrestling while handcuffed and the guys doing the choreographed dives are at least still under the pretense that they're trying to win a competition.

This!