I actually like Wade Barrett and I think their announce team is much better with him over Mauro.
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I like Wade too, but his voice is perhaps the most intense of them all. Itās just a wrong combination to put three of the same āvoicesā at the same table. Iād have the same problem if there were three announcers that were half asleep or only joking with one another and not paying attention to the matches. And those three, among everything else, I rarely left with the impression that they are actually listening and talking to each other while commentating. Itās more like each and every one of them commentates for themselves.
Mauro was really intense as well. Iām not sure I was a fan of him, but I guess it was the other ones around him that made the team better with him.
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They dont need Beth, but we all know it ticks a box, soā¦
So takeover has a quality card, with a decent build for most matches, including some of the top guys from Europe that you dont always get to see (e.g. Walter) and yet we still have people rushing off to fluff TK. And people want to pretend that the viewing figures are about the quality on offer, not tribalism
Who ever did this here? It was a better show than AEW this week, but it doesnāt mean I donāt have to point what I didnāt like and why is it detrimental for me to not continue watching their weekly production.
Depends what you like. Personally I like variety and the Jericho promo was better than anything NXT had on either night.
I loved Walter vs Ciampa but Iāll take variety over two hours as opposed to three hours of āgood wrestlingā. I also am not a big fan of 40-minute āunsanctionedā main events where guys kick out of everything and donāt bleed. But to each their own
I actually thought the commentary was ok. Barrett is great, the other two sound like WWE robots but I didnāt feel it was as bad as before.
I did really like Jimmy Smith on the pre-show. Iām hoping he gets a shot in the booth as he was great doing MMA. Also really liked the way they used Samoa Joe - those interviews seemed totally unlike WWE.
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I think it is a very silly sentiment that no one other than people that hate NXT would watch AEW first.
-Maybe that is just their habit and they always watch NXT on delay
-maybe it is the show they follow more closely and arenāt invested in the NXT stories so wanted to listen to reviews and decide which matches to watch.
-maybe they wanted to watch both Takover days back to back instead of splitting it up.
-Maybe they wanted to only catch some of them matches so watched AEW so they could fast forward some matches.
I chose anXT first this week for the first time in a while, and havenāt watched AEW yet because my recording is having issues but I can think of plenty of reasons why someone might choose one over the other on any given week regardless of the advertised card.
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I was thinking the same thing actually. I was pretty impressed with how well they gelled as a team. Even Beth Phoenix I think has improved a lot. It probably helps that Barrett has taken some of her role as color commentator and heās great. It takes awhile for commentary teams (especially three man teams) to develop chemistry and a rhythm. There is always room for improvement but they have already gotten a lot better in a short amount of time.
I toughly enjoyed TakeOver night 1 and 2. The main event was a little long but was still a great back and forth. I disagree with some posts that you need to spill buckets of blood and have fireworks for a match to be brutal. NXT has had some incredibly brutal matches with minimal blood shed.
But I also thought AEW was a decent show as well and the Jericho promo was terrific. The more great wrestling there is the better.
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Hey, kudos to them if they had improved. Iāve heard WAY worse through the years (especially on WWE TV). I just thought they were overwhelming compared to other commentators I watch regularly (AEW and NJPW, and from what Iāve heard from ROH lately I really, really like Ian Riccaboni).
So now delays and avoiding spoilers arenāt important. Right.
Clown? Any time pal. Any time
For sure! But I feel like those things are being said by people who are straight up ignoring the data and/or cheerleading for their favorite show. Wrestlenomics had a fairly good post earlier in the week that showed that both shows suffered slight drops in all demos in Q1. While Iām sure that there will be a number of people who will take advantage of watching both shows now that they are on different nights (perhaps they DVR the āotherā show currently), previous data suggests good jumps (+150-200k) but not incredible ones. In other words, no out of character gains in demo, no race to a million. Obviously, could be way off but I feel like the only thing going to the moon is Cameron Grimes 
Agreed. Glad Iām not that insecure in my viewing choicesā¦
Yeah, and itās as much of a place for development as the ring is for the wrestlers. As much as I liked Mauro, that was always an interesting cross point in what they should be doing with the role - do you want the guy who is amazing at the job and can do the best job of getting young wrestlers over, but is never building to move [back] up to the main roster, or do you want one of your young announcers getting reps on something bigger than Main Event or NXT UK so heās ready in case you ever need him elsewhere?
Itās why Iām far more patient with Vic and Beth than Iād otherwise be if they were calling the main roster. Thereās some real tone issues with Vic where he really doesnāt quite strike the right excitement for returns (The WALTER one was a big problem) or big moves. Thatās something that this experience will help him with tremendously where he wouldnāt have as many things with real stakes to call on 205 Live. Beth came in a hell of a lot better than I would have imagined someone doing it for the first time would be and has spent much of the last year working remotely and with different partners, so I can understand that she hasnāt had the growth you expect and is still having issues flowing with the other two. But thereās a lot of positives to having her become a strong analyst in the system and I can take the faults for a while more until she gets there. Wade, obviously, has taken to this quite perfectly.
Totally agree with all of this, and itās the reality we are going to see. Just interesting to see what expectations were when this started, when we were in the middle of it, and now as we are actually going to see the actual answers. Iām all fine lowering expectations, but I think those hopes that theyāre going to be battling the Raw numbers when alone are now a far more distant dream. Which again, doesnāt at all hurt the success theyāve had; but it does re-align their current position in the world.
The other thing with the expectations Iāve had some conflicting thoughts about is the idea that the fanbase of AEW is the āmore hardcoreā one. And if thatās so, logically, Iād imagine thatās better for NXT than AEW in terms of picking up more viewers. By nature of it, youād think the hardcore wrestling fans would be the ones more likely to watch everything or at least, spend more time watching wrestling in general. Ultimately, I think weāll find out both shows have relatively hardcore followings (this may have been a friendly generalization given to AEW from the start); I imagine if youāre getting to your 6th and 7th hours of WWE programming a week, youāre in the thick of it already.
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Depends on who you are. I find avoiding spoilers easy if I want to do so. I also donāt care about spoilers in the first place. But I easily could have watched AEW first followed by takover right afterwards if I did care
Either way your assessment of who watched AEW is flat out wrong.
If Iām an AEW fan first and foremost, I have no idea why a Takeover would be more of a pull for me when itās not like this isnāt also the one important show of the week for AEW. Like if Impact had stayed on Tuesdays and did one of their TV branded-specials and ran up against a normal episode of NXT in the future, Iām still watching NXT first, even though by no means do I hate Impact. I just like my thing more. So I think itās a much bigger swath of people who would still pick AEW first; just people in the middle who like both relatively evenly who I think would mostly side with a Takeover (as even Wai said on the Dynamite podcast he would have had they not had a show to do).
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No my assessment is correct in 99% of cases. AEW is a cult. The Brexit of wrestling
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I canāt wait for the greatest booker of all time Tony Khan to smash Raw and SmackDown, like he destroyed that pissant NXT.
If AEW is a cult, I donāt know what WWE is.
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As you have no data at all to back that upā¦Iām going with you hating on AEW being the real issue and not AEW being a cult.
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