Just curious on what everyone’s high-level thoughts are on how they’re feeling on AEW’s current path/decisions/roster/etc. now that we’ve had a taste on how they’re going to go forward in this new situation of two ‘primary’ shows.
It’s seeming like there won’t be too much of a ‘brand split’ in the traditional sense, what with Acclaimed and Punk both being implied to be at Dynamite this Wednesday, so I’m curious as to how they handle things in that regard going forward, whether there will be relatively stable rosters for each that just tend to be on each show and some crossovers, or if it will be entirely freeball with the shows just filling up more haphazardly.
All things considered, personally I’m a fan of the structure that comes with a more hardline brand split, and how it forces shows to make more space for the lowercard just by necessity, so I was a bit sad to see it doesn’t appear to be going that way, but I’m hopeful they can go an interesting direction with things under the current arrangement.
Ah man, I just wrote a long comment and I think it got eaten. Let’s see if this one works. The fast paced minimal promo nature of Rampage will work great as a developmental show. I remember someone saying they didn’t bother with Rampage because storylines neither began nor ended there, so just skip it for dynamite, which was a good point. I’m hopeful that even if it isn’t a strong brand split that Collision will not fall into that trap and have its own stories. However, I do expect a good amount of overlap at first as they work on drawing Dynamite only viewers over to the new show. Gotta put Punk where the eyes are to do whatever it is people like about him and convince them to watch his new show.
It’ll be very interesting to see where Rampage shakes out in the grand scheme of things going forward. Assuming it remains on the air, a developmental ‘transition’ show for talents ready to jump from RoH but finding their footing against established talent does make a lot of sense.
So I finally signed up for Honor Club or whatever it’s called and watched the most recent ep. Maybe that was a particularly good one, but I was way more engaged with it than I’ve been with Rampage for a while. It’s different than AEW, but I don’t know that I’d say those wrestlers aren’t “ready.” Just that there may not be room for them, such as having too much overlap in character and style with an existing Dynamite talent. But even with just one recent ep under my belt I am so ready for Athena/Kiera Hogan.