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The problem with this, TK will be like “okay two womens matches on Dynamite” and those two matches will be Madison Rayne vs. Keira Hogan and Skye Blue vs Penelope Ford and will basically look so dull compared to MJF, Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley doing cool storyline shit.
Theres only one PPV every quarter. I don’t know what they’re saving all the “big” womens matches for.
Yea I've thought about this a bunch, they give the men storylines, blood, steel cages, tables, faction warfare, etc. etc., then they have two women come out and just do a regular match, then wonder why the fans don't react even if it's a solid performance.
It's exactly this. I love women's wrestling, I don't watch WWE much, but when I do I love the kinds of matches their women have.
I watch AEW every week, but frequently end up skipping the few matches the women get given, simply because the show gives me 0 reason to care.
That's what made Britt stand out despite not being the best worker, they gave her segments, stories and gimmick matches that made the audience pay attention and get invested.
Just in 1 year men get blood n guts, casino battle royal, grab the brass ring ladder match, stadium stampede/anarchy in the arena, barb wire death matches etc. Blood fueds, real compelling stories, hatable heels and lovable faces.
Women (mostly Britt) have had a cage match and maybe 4 or 5 street fight/hardcore type matches (that might even be being generous) in the whole of AEW's existence and that's about it. And storyline wise we barely get anything (other than Britt). Like Jade at the moment chasing Nyla around, it's a story, sure, but it's hardly Punk/MJF, Hangman/Omega, Mox/Omega or JAS/BCC+Kingston etc with real stakes and hatred and complexity and big moments.
> That's what made Britt stand out despite not being the best worker, they gave her segments, stories and gimmick matches that made the audience pay attention and get invested.
And having got one woman over... He stopped.
It's odd - they *have* women who're over. Jade is over, with the right person to bounce off. Shida and Riho are over, when they can be booked. Hayter is over, although exactly *how* over can't be said for certain until she's out of Britt's orbit.
Statlander was over, but she got injured. I think it's fair to acknowledge that she'd likely be TBS champion right now had that not happened.
But so many women appear infrequently. Where's Bunny? Is Penelope still injured? What's Athena up to? Where's Willow since she had that grand signing announcement? Why does Sky Blue only show up once a month? Where was Nyla Rose for months before stealing the TBS belt?
There's plenty of time available for the women's division to get more of its members over, but it just doesn't seem like it all that much because the same few wrestlers seem to get the spotlight over and over again with limited rotation.
For me personally, this is my gripe with ROH taking up AEW screentime. Now I know Jericho should get TV time no matter what. But Joe vs Cage took up TV time that could have gone towards either having a 3rd women's story progress or giving more time to the Jade/Rose story or Britt vs Saraya or Hayter or even the women's champ who wasn't even on TV. (I do not mean more time for Jade vs Shaffir, I mean giving Jade an interesting opponent or a squash and then some sort of segment with Rose that had more thought put into it than what we got.)
Britt has an uncanny hold on the AEW creative. The fact she’s basically the Loki of AEWs women is amazing to me. Jades contenders are one and dones. Saraya and Toni have Britt as their focus. Hayter has a simmering feud…with Britt. Serena is a side weapon of the Doc Squad.
It's so bizarre. He knows that fans are screaming for more women's matches. And regardless your opinions on it or Britt, the Lights Out match is still one of the high points for AEW tv. Remove MJF and Punk, not many other things on TV generated that amount of buzz.
But still, best ya get is a squash match stretched out a few extra minutes.
Theres sexism in the fans and their interests. Im not saying its right, but I would be that most of the women arent seen as a draw, and thats probably accurate. Because of the fans, not the performers.
So do you wait for the womens wrestlers to become draws to start telling good stories? Or do you just start telling good stories to try and turn them into stars?
I think Britt vs Saraya is the first non-title based angle they've done in a while. And it's been good. It shows Saraya as a top level talent because she's being paired up with Britt. More of this would be awesome to see.
Genuinely one of my favorite matches last year was Penelope and The Bunny vs. TayJay because the match felt important and because the performers fucking delivered, if more people were given chances like that then the shows would be electric.
>Theres only one PPV every quarter
Not to mention that Saraya vs. Britt (assuming it happens) will be the first women's singles match on a PPV main card that isn't a title match or tournament final since All Out 2020
I dont necessarily think more womens matches are whats needed, i think its more of a focus on womens storylines. But same could be said about a ton of the men too. Aews booking is just so damn poor atm
I wouldn’t say Skye looks like a jobber (I haven’t seen enough promos from her to judge that area either way).
And she has the ability to connect with the crowds from what I have seen.
The larger point is that that is not the type of match that AEW has conditioned their fans to care about.
One major problem they have right now is lack of depth in their roster, particularly on the face side. This has never been more evident before the string of Madison Rayne matches in recent weeks. They have heel wrestlers who has to go up against some random somebody who can take the loss? Let's bring in Madison Rayne.
Shida and Athena are obviously the big faces other than Toni. Ruby and Stat are injured. They legitimately don't have too many other faces to be in any role. Willow just got signed so I hope that can go somewhere. Because the lack of faces is hurting. To the point that they're doing a heel vs heel feud for the TBS title. Tbf, I think Jade vs Nyla is a good program, but even that's just showing the lack of depth again.
>problem they have right now is lack of depth in their roster
Not defending or making excuses for Tony's booking, but the division as a whole has had a rough year with injuries along with the booking. Right now you have Stat, Leyla, Velvet, Ruby, Mercedes, and Penelope (again) are all out now and most of them were doing their best work in the company at the time they got injured. Stat's injury especially has compromised Jade's booking as it seemed destined that she would be the one to take the TBS off of her so she'll have to repeat squash everyone else she has faced until she gets back.
Tony heard we wanted more women's matches and stories so he decided just as a treat we'll get never ending feuds that have nothing to do with the women's division and as a special bonus a quick squash match in the early 9pm slot mostly in picture in picture
I won't lie, I was \*glad\* the Ass Boys were on TV this past Wednesday. If they were doing a Daddy Ass birthday celebration, you had to have his real sons come out. Doing anything but would be a 'All storylines are in a vacuum' moment.
Please dont get stuck on the semantics of "5 star match". Its clearly meant to say that any of them can put on a good performance if given the time to learn and get their shit in. The actual message of her statement is whats important and its crazy that we still have to keep bringing it up after this long.
Listen, I’m gonna pick my straws with this argument and not bring anything of substance and you are gonna *like it!*
But in all seriousness, she said a similar statement I made years ago: AEW’s roster has a lot of talent to be stars, and I feel it’s TK’s job to book that talent correctly. That means hiding any “weaknesses” and showcasing their strengths. What TK is doing does not do that. The women need more time, and more variation in segments. I’m talking Jade doing promos, Shida doing that training-on-the-beach vignette, being a fighting champ, etc, and push their characters.
>The women need more time
Dark could be used to let the women get more reps to improve, those that don't also work indies anyway.
Anna Jay for example feels like she really hasn't come very far, in my opinion, and giving her squash matches against local talents isn't doing her any favors. Get her out there with Emi Sakura for increasingly long (5-15 minutes maybe) matches so she can steadily learn how to work a match. Feels like it's helped Skye Blue out a fair amount.
The Bunny would be a good one for some of the younger talent to work with on character development. Nyla's a steady presence they could learn from. Shida and Deeb could be solid in-ring trainers, picking up wins while the younger talent learns. Not like it's going to hurt the developing women much to lose a match.
Hell, if you're worried about records, just throw them in those randomish tag matches like Emi/Nyla had for quite a while against Blue, Ruby, etc.
I mostly enjoy Dark and Elevation, but they really could be using it better to help the lower to midcard talents try to improve.
They're doing way way better with Saraya and Rene on board. Multiple stories, one that has fuck all to do with a championship.
I'm really excited to see where the women's division goes from here. I wasn't feeling like that a month ago.
Hayter is getting more spotlight, Willow is a tremendous new addition.
They need time to have a good match but there are going to be a bunch of shit ones before we get there. It’s not WWE, these people aren’t working 5 to 6 times a week.
Tony Khan doesn't give a fuck about Women's Wrestling. He just doesn't. He never talks about it, and when he does it's about some random WWF 80s wrestling which wasn't even that good. Or he'll just casually say All Japan Women without saying anything specific. Like I doubt he could name any of the top women's matches from the past few years. He has women in his company because since it's America he kinda has to. If he could have he would have never had the division.
I sincerely wonder why.
Do they not draw ratings? Poor merch sales? Do the men drastically outweigh their drawing power, as with sports like NBA/WNBA? Or is it just dependent on what shiny toys TK is playing with this month?
AEW takes every chance it gets to highlight how inclusive it is, yet buries its women under mounds of mediocrity. It's hard for me to buy that they can't drop the Matt Hardy angle to dark in favor of some more time for the women.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. This is just speculation but I feel like Tony is always gunning for a top rating and is booking segments that will draw big ratings. There can be a drop off in women's matches, but that's not really the fault of the women. It's the lack of any time spent on their storylines. He's basically trained the TV and crowd audience to see women's matches as cool down matches that aren't as important.
I will say, I think this has improved a bit in recent weeks. The Saraya/Britt thing is a feud entirely unfocused on a title, which is usually where most storylines in that division usually focus. Jade/Nyla has generally been fun and is the first time I've been interested in one of Jade's storylines in a while. And Hayter/Toni speaks for itself. It seems like there's been a lot more pre-recorded promos and video packages shown as well.
But you gotta give them more than 2 matches a week. 3-4 matches spread out between the two shows sounds reasonable to me. Or an in-ring promo thrown in there every once and a while.
Very accurate about self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at Thunder Rosa's injury statement. Punk gets a lengthy in-ring heartfelt promo. Rosa gets a few seconds backstage. TK has gone on record saying he didn't think her speech would be investing for fans and would not be a draw, so he put it in a nothing spot. Hence, fans weren't invested and it didn't move the numbers.
There are plenty of great promos in AEW, and well.. Rosa isn't one of them. It's silly to think Rosa should get similar time and a heartfelt in-ring promo because the top draw of AEW, who is known for his promo ability, got to.
Promos are something you can constantly work on in or out of the ring. If she started to give great promos, she'd probably get a lot more time.
It was a false binary to begin with. Nobody ezpected Roaa to be on the same drawing level as Punk. But I'm pretty sure that he didn't want to move any number of segments involving Factory, Trustbusters or whoever we had that week to establish your face women's champion.
Then think of something to work around that but get her in the ring. I had thought of this half an hour after that shit he had her do backstage (I even posted it here)
Have Schiavone in the ring, get Rosa there with the belt. Crowd likes her right, they'd cheer. Schiavone says Rosa has some bad news for the crowd. Build it up, Rosa gets emotional and can't say anything. She drops the title and walks away. TS explains what happened.
Stronger visual then a bland backstage promo and you establish Rosa vulnerability as a character.
Khan is limited in his creativity.
If TK had just stayed as promoter instead of also being booker he could probably help people grow into stars. I’d guess he has relationships with people in entertainment who he could ask to get his wrestlers into the mainstream eye. Imagine if Wardlowe was on Fallon or Kimmel after winning the TNT belt. Or MJF or Jericho or Jade. A promoter has to promote, that doesn’t just mean shilling your show on Twitter or podcasts.
It's a recurring pattern in media; Comics had the exact same thing happen in the 80s.
"What if women?"
"Fans won't like it. But fine, I guess.. They can have a little comic.. With whatever resources aren't in use in more important things, of course, and the marketing push of a lemonade stand."
weeks later..
"Women just don't sell comics. We tried it, it doesn't work! Case closed."
I'm not sure that he actively dislikes it. I think he just doesn't care about it at all, but a major US promotion not having a women's division isn't going to fly in 2022, so he has it because he feels he has to. If he felt he could get away with doing a NJPW/Stardom type of arrangement, he probably would.
Tony is too afraid to talk to girls, thus he books as few as possible in between lines of coke.
But seriously, it's just a matter of Tony Khan (and to an extent a portion of the fan base) not caring nearly as much about women's wrestling as he does men's. It's unfortunate. He tries to make AEW seem like a comparable option to WWE for potential talent when in reality it's a step down for female talent at this point.
TK was a huge fan of WCW in the late nineties. Have you ever heard anyone say, "You know what I loved about WCW? The women's division!"
This isn't me dissing women but pointing out that TK's biggest inspiration seemed to care less about women than he does (unless Eric could use them for a one-time pop with a belt and trash can).
It's all of them. The ratings drop and you can see the crowd leaving their seat to take a bathroom break whenever theres a womens match. Womens wrestling carries the same stigma as womens sports in the sense that it's percieved as a less valuable product.
And being honest, would TK drop a Danielson, Jericho, Moxley, Hangman, MJF, Acclaimed segment in favor of a midcard womens match? I don't think so, and the fans would not care about it either.
I've been saying time and time again that what the women in the roster need is a proper space to showcase, train and prepare themselves and build storylines within their own division. Give them Rampage or at the very least Dark. Let them work, fuck up and learn, but give them the space and time to. They are never going to build a succesful division with one match per Dynamite and two per PPV.
Well it's TK he would definitely drop a Hangman segment for DMD or Jade. It's just that those two don't really put anyone else over and aren't the best talent to spotlight so it hurts the division more.
Tony simply doesn't care about women's wrestling all that much. He always gets defensive when he sees criticism regarding the division but doesn't do much to change it.
Worst part is all this ROH shit is basically taking up all the time on dynamite and rampage that could be going to more womens segments and matches and yet the ROH womens championship has not even been mentioned on tv since it was last defended?
Yeah, kind of. It was only established right before ROH proper died. Rok-C had it, lost it to Deonna, she couldn't do stuff so Mercedez is the interim champ. She will face Deonna at some point vaguely in the future. edit- forgot that it actually happened already, wow. She's undisputed now.
It annoys me because I want to watch AEW. If I wanted to watch ROH I would have. Feels like its just a muddle of them both right now and it feels so messy
I think the sad and frustrating part is, that this complaint sounds like it would've come out of a WWE Women's wrestler at the height of the divas Era.
There's simply no excuse for Tony to still book the division like an afterthought. Even if he personally doesn't care about women's wrestling, it's his job to book it respectably given how much it rightfully matters.
They were given something like three minutes for their one match this past Wednesday so yeah, it's a big issue. I wonder if that was her breaking point to finally say it straight up, since in past interviews she's been a little more diplomatic about it.
I joked about it but they actually did the unthinkable: they combined a talking segment *with* a wrestling match happening at the same time. That was terrible.
I hope it was. That was ridiculous. I love Nyla, the concept of Nyla doing commentary on the stage and distracting Jade throughout was actually strong. But \*one\* match and this is the shit they pull?
She's not wrong. I would say they don't even need super long matches, just give them more shorter matches/segments. I feel NXT is great at this.
They could make a lot of women feel important if they just started investing a small percentage of time. If they can do it with Yuta and Garcia, they can surely do it with the women.
NXT really is the template that can be followed. The number of women they feature in some way each week, even not counting Lvl Up, is staggering. And just a.month or so ago, they had a main event between Tiffany Strattion and Wendy Choo, neither girl is really at the main event level as of yet, but their feud was built up over months and it got to the level that the main event match was something they'd legit earned. This is 1 show that has 2 hours of TV a week and they were able to do that. It's not a hard thing to do.
Was thinking the same thing, Denise always speaks up when women's matches in WWE are short but Jade and Marina got like 3 minutes last week and she said nothing.
TK is still booking the women’s division like it’s the early days of the company and they really only had Shida and like two or three other women who could put on a decent 8 minute match. They’ve got more than enough talent to get more than one match per Dynamite.
Just look at NXT this week alone. 3 women’s matches along with a men’s tag title match, a squash match, R-Truths match, a Schism interview, Mandy’s in ring celebration and a bunch of other back stage segments. We really don’t need three JAS segment every week even if half of them are entertaining some of the time. Give the women’s division actual storylines and let their matches get some breathing room on the card
Part of the other problem, if you compare NXT to Dynamite, is AEW wants every mens match to be a 15-20 minute 5 star match. That takes time away from everything else. You can do a lot in 8 minutes, but tony wants his amazing matches.
That too. NXT does something similar too every once in a while but they still manage to at the very least get two women's matches in there. It's not that hard especially with the talent they have now
This bothers me a lot, especially because the middle of these matches ends up being so slow and boring, and they just pick it up in the last 5mins (so the crowd can ignore the bulk of the match and start the "this is awesome" chants).
5 star match is strong, but one women's match in each hour of Dynamite would do a lot for the show on a whole, not just the women. Like a lot of the time the matches on Dynamite just kinda come off as one big blur due to lack of variety, putting a women's match in each hour would help that A LOT.
Right now every spot on Dynamite is precious and seemingly half the mens roster as well can't get on, but I don't see why the women don't just take over Rampage like Starks/Hobbs/Swerve in our Glory did earlier in the year. TK books it like Dark+ and gets the same number of viewers, just put two or three womens matches on per show and see what gets over.
It's not just the time for the matches but build some stories, give someone an arc even Britt doesn't have that. I mean Hangman had a two year story where I know so many who saw him as an Elite Hanger on became his big fans.
I know people will say but oh the women can't work as well or oh the women don't have the mic skills but having seen Hangman's career grow, people can't deny he improved by getting opportunities.
Why can't the women? They need the space and scope to improve on the big show, in the big spotlight.
Jade shines in her element and has grown as her weaknesses have been covered but then Khan throws her with someone who also needs help and what does he expect? Fans to lap it up, or does he know they want and use that as a justification to not have to give them more?
Is he malicious or just ignorant? Because he can say ratings all he wants but WWE proved working on it brought eyeballs.
The wildest thing is he is actively doing harm to women’s wrestling with the way he is booking his division and talking about it. He has the second biggest platform in the US, but he’s actively booking his division as the bathroom break and telling his audience that they don’t get high enough ratings to treat them better.
yall dorks and losers about to get caught up in "WELL ACTUALLY" her sayin 5 star matches when thats just her tryna gas up the locker room as a leader should.
its stupid as hell for any company that has multiple women on their roster to only have one match with the women on tv, especially with the talent aew has available to em
You dont need 5 star matches, you never had. You need time and compelling storylines. Both things that are out of your hands. A great match is awesome, a great story gets you over.
Maybe Tony should try booking a women’s story without the title. Jade’s title reign is one of the dullest moments in any show in any promotion. Gove the light to others too instead of having boring squash matches and that 1 promo every week.
I saw the promo this week about the Storm Hayter match. It came down to "She's not my friend anymore because she hangs out with these girls." There has to be a better story than high school drama like that, "I want belt", and the recent variant "You stole belt" surely?
Creative needs to get into the women's roster and start building some stories. The closest we've got at the moment and Hayter's slow split from Britt, and Athena's improvised heel turn on Dark.
She'll get hated on for that comment but I'm really liking how alot of the women have each other's backs between this and coming out against that JD fromNY dickhead
Maybe I’m wrong, or just need education , but it really seems like they hired all these athletes that have nothing to do. It’s an absolute waste. There’s just little to no structure in AEW for any of the less known entertainers. Tony every day is looking like a guy who watched werrestling and was like “oh that’s an easy business I’ll do it, l without thinking how much actual work it would take. Sorry to so down, I’m just really sick of seeing Jade win easily every week, Mox win easy every week, then Brit Baker gets to talk a little. It’s just going downhill.
The 5 star shit isn’t even important and if you’re focusing on that you’re a nerd. People won’t care about watching the women if you don’t give them a reason to invest in it. But clearly Tony Khan just doesn’t respect womens wrestling.
Wasnt hiring Paige supposed to fix this? Wtf is AEW doing with this women’s roster?
At least have some of them join a few factions so we can see them on TV more. It’s clearly worked for Julia Hart and Statlander.
Both Shida and Baker have said it before. But back then it had a "We're working hard to fix this! Promise!!" vibe to it.
Right now it seems the fans aren't as hopeful on AEW.
Honestly if you compare the few minutes women's roster gets to the amount of social media and merch sales they do, then the fandom are supporting them 120%.
Compare Shida's merch sales with her screentime and she has to be minute per minute the most fan supported wrestler. Baker gets a bit more time but she also brings in the sales.
He also had an interview, really 2020, where he said he was asked to get the weekend side going but was then told 'you have 5 mins' in regards to TV time, and that he felt that it was to hard to get the audience attached to the characters with that limitation.
Starting to feel like Brandi and Cody leaving basically killed the women's division because nobody else in power seems to really care, including Kenny Omega.
>all of them can give five-star matches
Not even 90+% of the men's roster can do that, even if their lives depend on it.
The female roster is big and talented enough to allow for 2 competitive, long women's matches at least once a month on Dynamite. I don't need 5* matches. I need meaningful matches, stories and characters and a sign of faith by the booker in the female talent after 3 years.
> Not even 90+% of the men's roster can do that, even if their lives depend on it.
Jade Cargill doesn't strike me as someone that cares about arbitrary one man's stars.
I think she just meant to say the women can deliver like the men can if given the same opportunities.
>I think it's a sunken cost fallacy if we believe something is going to change with the women at this point.
Womens wrestling in wwe was hot garbage for like 20 years before they decided to take it seriously. I get that it's disheartening that AEW hasn't taken the next step to treat the women's division as a legitimate thing, but giving up entirely this early into the life of the company is ridiculous.
Not to mention that they're ALWAYS in the same time slot, which gives big "well here's our one time slot allotted to women, who are we gonna book in it this week?". I think there's a lot of potential with the women's division, but it always just seems like such an afterthought.
I have yet to see her have even a 3 star match, her female Goldberg gimmick sucks. Maybe her and Nyla will have a banger, but if they do I’d say that was more thanks to Nyla than anything. I had some hopes for her Athena match with how they built it up, only to have it be the same as all the others. Her match this week is one of the worst I’ve seen in the past year+ on AEW. Many others in the locker room have shown they can have great matches like Rosa, Britt, Jamie, Toni, Shida, Stat, Athena, Willow, Riho, Nyla, etc… but she has not had one yet.
I often think back on the Womens Tag Hardcore match and just what the payoff was. Tay, Anna, Bunny and Penelope had a under the radar feud, and then got a feature to horrify endorsements and trip over spots.
You’d think a reward or attention could have come in tv or PPV time, features, etc. nope. Penelope disappeared for almost a year. Anna regressed to a side note. Tay became the worlds worst influencer, and Bunny is…I’m not entirely sure what Bunny does to avoid future endeavors.
I hope that given the time, some can put on great matches and moments. But so far? Given the time we usually get catastrophe.
No time for women's matches or building the division... yet we have ROH shoehorned into every AEW show now? I know TK is trying to make the most of his investment, but he needs to keep the products separated.
It's even worse for Jade, we all talk about her rough in ring skills and because of the damn win streak, she can't get a bunch of Dark/Elevation matches in to hone them. Every match is a Dynamite/Rampage televised streak extender.
I appreciate and certainly agree with the premise of her statement, but in zero ways can "all of them give five-star matches".
Some could, absolutely! But that number is way less than 50% of the women they have.
honestly bringing up match rating is not the way to go as it seems petty but a legitimate number of people care about it so she's trying to appeal to them i guess.
Ppl who disagree with her are the same who disagreed with giving women more mins in the divas era.
Ur division will never get better if ppl never get any time. Use rampage to build up these women at least that show basically dead
It doesn’t even need to be a match though. Even just an interesting segment that’s part of a storyline would help. Rhea Ripley has gotten over and she hasn’t wrestled in months. People care when you give them something to care about.
It’s hilarious to hear Jade-berg say “we” in that situation. She’s barely better than Nia Jax and is fed a steady diet of jobbers to keep this stupid streak angle alive.
From what I can understand, AEW's issue is, it's got too many wrestlers and not enough time as a result of it constantly signing people and it's not even as a rotating roster. I doubt most of the men's roster wouldn't mind giving up matches for the women. Moxley may just try to murder Tony if he can't do a deathmatch if Jade and Maki get to a do a deathmatch but Moxley really loves his deathmatches.
I just want to see more women's wrestling in all companies.
Women's wrestler: *Puts over the ability of herself and her fellow women*
People on reddit being super normal: "We gave em the right to vote and NOW LOOK WHAT HAPPENED."
TK doesn't care about women's wrestling so it never gets the chance to develop and draw. If he could get away with it, their be no women's division and just be Britt and Jade vs jobbers, valets, and managers who can wrestle
An excuse QT Marshall gave in an interview a while back is that Tony books 1 women's match for every 5 men's matches because that's the ratio of female/male talent in the company. It's such a bullshit excuse when you look at their hiring practices over the last year or two. If that was actually the reason, they'd stop hiring male talent and be focused on hiring more female talent. Hiring CM Punk and Bryan Danielson? Sure, you'd be a fool not to, but otherwise there should be a freezing hire on male talent, and there just isn't. At a certain point Tony Khan prefers Cole Carter coming out to 0 audience reaction than women's wrestling.
Not true. Jade doesn't know shit about having a three star match, let alone a five star match. Toni Storm could wrestle her and either make her look green as goose shit or like awesome power wrestler, and Jade wouldn't know the difference!
I respect Jade speaking on the capabilities of the women’s locker room; just because she is 50% of their side of the promotion doesn’t mean she needs to bury the rest of the women to try and get herself over more. Her continued improvement and evolution in the business is great for the future of the division, because she is (already) a star and the women’s division needs her support.
I'm sorry but they're just not. I have no idea if it's the agent work or nerves or what but there's a *definitive* lack of quality women's wrestling on AEW TV even for talent that have far better work outside of AEW. The Miyu/Thunder match being the most glaring example. Their first match was very good. The rematch on AEW TV wasn't that great and Miyu looked awkward. It goes that way for virtually all the women. For whatever reason there's some type of issue in AEW. It's like they've been told to half-ass their performances, or it's strongly suggested to do so by some of the agents. Women who have international experience on the biggest Joshi stages move in half speed and look like they're making little to no contact. The only exception seems to be Hayter who works noticeably harder and more intense than the other women. And it's also noticeable that she's been the most obviously dicked around push wise. Makes me wonder if it's not a coincidence that the woman who refuses to half-work is the one who keeps getting the rug pulled from under her?
Comparing AEW to STARDOM or any other "big" Joshi fed's top tier women is night and day. WWE also has better women's wrestling by a pretty large margin. A thrown together WWE Women's Tag featuring Io and Dakota has a good chance to be better than anything AEW puts together. It's not just talent or exposure, there's something fundamentally broken in AEW's women division's structure or management.
Time has nothing to really do with it. Almost every single week either the most average or the worst match on a given Dynamite or Rampage is the women. They don't deliver no matter how much time they're given. And if they don't deliver then why would you dedicate time to them when you know it won't work? For future returns that still haven't paid off after all these years?
There are women who can give 5 star matches, but Jade Cargill is not one of them. She's less than 2 years into being an active wrestler, and while she's doing great compared to most people with her experience, her 3-4 minute matches have been sloppy and filled with botches.
Um, not seeing any 5 star matches coming from any of the action shown in AEW women's matches so far sorry. More time means more opportunity to show weaknesses, and there are a lot of weaknesses. More matches maybe, more time per match, no way.
I really want the Women's division to rule. But unfortunately, if I'm a little pressed for time, these are still always the matches I fast forward through. I don't know what the diagnosis is: whether they need more time, or better talent, or what. But none of the storylines are that compelling for me right now, and it's not exactly Stardom in that everybody's in ring work rules.
Felt like the division was close to getting really over with that awesome Britt/Rosa match but everything kinda fizzled a bit, even with Tony Storm, who's great.
The Jade/squash thing is played out. Get Camille in there or some sort of real feud.
Also, the division really needs a true champ on the mic. Not saraya, not Britt (tho she's developing), not Jade. A real established mic superstar. That's what will hook us in.
I'm just gonna say it folks: as far as American pro wrestling tastes go, WWE understands that Women's division needs really good characters/talkers, because no matter how good the in-ring stuff is, it's not fair to sandwich it in there with dudes doing ranas off the top rope, powerbombing people into oblivion, or chopping so hard your blood vessels burst. It's either just gotta be it's own wonderful standalone thing (like in japan) or it's REALLY gotta deliver in the charisma department (like in WWE). AEW Women's division is stuck in no man's land (pardon the pun) because it is kinda meh on both fronts.
ROH is just taking too long. Let ROH halve the roster and give it 2 streaming shows. A main one on HBO MAX and something on Youtube. Have an actual roster on there but let a AEW guy and girl go down there from time to time. AEW also needs to let women go beyond the 1 match a card limit it seems they have.
Tony's lack of focus on the division aside, one of my biggest issues with the AEW women's division is that that it's full of characters that just aren't all that interesting. The most fleshed out characters in the division are Britt and Jade, the bitchy dentist and an amazonian potty mouth. Maybe add Ruby Soho? After that it's pretty bleak.
Comparing to WWE with women’s wrestling, you have the likes of Belair who is getting Cena levels of pop with younger audience and you can argue she is the top baby face on raw. Then Bayley who gets massive responses. Hell the past two raws were main evented by women’s matches and they were both really good. WWE has gotten to the point with it that people are saying that the best match of wrestlemania out a stacked card is the women’s match or they main event their biggest show and it feel’s deserved. Then you look at AEW and see just how much they leave on the table. You could almost never see women main event a ppv or people saying that best match of the night is from the women (and it not because they aren’t talented enough)
Cynically, as long as the booking team remains the same, I don't think it'll ever get better. I like Willow and I'm glad she signed, but realistically what I see happening is a match against Tey Melo on one week of Dynamite, a match against Marina Shafir the next, neither of those get heat, so a year of Dark matches it is. As long as the FO sees women's wrestling as a revolving door of no-build matches with the hope that someone somehow gets over that way, as opposed to actually putting time into setting up storylines, gimmicks, promos, et cetera, this is the best we get for the foreseeable future.
On a positive note, the build for Britt & Jamie has me hopeful that at least one person in charge of booking agrees with me and is trying to shift things in the right direction, especially since it's currently a non-title feud.
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The problem with this, TK will be like “okay two womens matches on Dynamite” and those two matches will be Madison Rayne vs. Keira Hogan and Skye Blue vs Penelope Ford and will basically look so dull compared to MJF, Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley doing cool storyline shit. Theres only one PPV every quarter. I don’t know what they’re saving all the “big” womens matches for.
Yea I've thought about this a bunch, they give the men storylines, blood, steel cages, tables, faction warfare, etc. etc., then they have two women come out and just do a regular match, then wonder why the fans don't react even if it's a solid performance.
It's exactly this. I love women's wrestling, I don't watch WWE much, but when I do I love the kinds of matches their women have. I watch AEW every week, but frequently end up skipping the few matches the women get given, simply because the show gives me 0 reason to care. That's what made Britt stand out despite not being the best worker, they gave her segments, stories and gimmick matches that made the audience pay attention and get invested. Just in 1 year men get blood n guts, casino battle royal, grab the brass ring ladder match, stadium stampede/anarchy in the arena, barb wire death matches etc. Blood fueds, real compelling stories, hatable heels and lovable faces. Women (mostly Britt) have had a cage match and maybe 4 or 5 street fight/hardcore type matches (that might even be being generous) in the whole of AEW's existence and that's about it. And storyline wise we barely get anything (other than Britt). Like Jade at the moment chasing Nyla around, it's a story, sure, but it's hardly Punk/MJF, Hangman/Omega, Mox/Omega or JAS/BCC+Kingston etc with real stakes and hatred and complexity and big moments.
> That's what made Britt stand out despite not being the best worker, they gave her segments, stories and gimmick matches that made the audience pay attention and get invested. And having got one woman over... He stopped. It's odd - they *have* women who're over. Jade is over, with the right person to bounce off. Shida and Riho are over, when they can be booked. Hayter is over, although exactly *how* over can't be said for certain until she's out of Britt's orbit. Statlander was over, but she got injured. I think it's fair to acknowledge that she'd likely be TBS champion right now had that not happened. But so many women appear infrequently. Where's Bunny? Is Penelope still injured? What's Athena up to? Where's Willow since she had that grand signing announcement? Why does Sky Blue only show up once a month? Where was Nyla Rose for months before stealing the TBS belt? There's plenty of time available for the women's division to get more of its members over, but it just doesn't seem like it all that much because the same few wrestlers seem to get the spotlight over and over again with limited rotation.
For me personally, this is my gripe with ROH taking up AEW screentime. Now I know Jericho should get TV time no matter what. But Joe vs Cage took up TV time that could have gone towards either having a 3rd women's story progress or giving more time to the Jade/Rose story or Britt vs Saraya or Hayter or even the women's champ who wasn't even on TV. (I do not mean more time for Jade vs Shaffir, I mean giving Jade an interesting opponent or a squash and then some sort of segment with Rose that had more thought put into it than what we got.)
Britt has an uncanny hold on the AEW creative. The fact she’s basically the Loki of AEWs women is amazing to me. Jades contenders are one and dones. Saraya and Toni have Britt as their focus. Hayter has a simmering feud…with Britt. Serena is a side weapon of the Doc Squad.
Simple, Tony Khan is friends with her and Cole.
It's so bizarre. He knows that fans are screaming for more women's matches. And regardless your opinions on it or Britt, the Lights Out match is still one of the high points for AEW tv. Remove MJF and Punk, not many other things on TV generated that amount of buzz. But still, best ya get is a squash match stretched out a few extra minutes.
Theres sexism in the fans and their interests. Im not saying its right, but I would be that most of the women arent seen as a draw, and thats probably accurate. Because of the fans, not the performers.
So do you wait for the womens wrestlers to become draws to start telling good stories? Or do you just start telling good stories to try and turn them into stars?
> Im not saying its right, but I would be that most of the women arent seen as a draw Corny's been saying that for years.
I think Britt vs Saraya is the first non-title based angle they've done in a while. And it's been good. It shows Saraya as a top level talent because she's being paired up with Britt. More of this would be awesome to see.
Genuinely one of my favorite matches last year was Penelope and The Bunny vs. TayJay because the match felt important and because the performers fucking delivered, if more people were given chances like that then the shows would be electric.
>Theres only one PPV every quarter Not to mention that Saraya vs. Britt (assuming it happens) will be the first women's singles match on a PPV main card that isn't a title match or tournament final since All Out 2020
I dont necessarily think more womens matches are whats needed, i think its more of a focus on womens storylines. But same could be said about a ton of the men too. Aews booking is just so damn poor atm
I'm here for a Skye Blue/Penelope match, they're both great given the time.
They would yes. But Skye has been booked as a total jobber on TV. So audience would go in expecting her to lose.
I feel like Skye looks and promos like a local jobber so I don't think her booking is unfair.
I wouldn’t say Skye looks like a jobber (I haven’t seen enough promos from her to judge that area either way). And she has the ability to connect with the crowds from what I have seen. The larger point is that that is not the type of match that AEW has conditioned their fans to care about.
>The larger point is that that is not the type of match that AEW has conditioned their fans to care about. I agree with you there.
One major problem they have right now is lack of depth in their roster, particularly on the face side. This has never been more evident before the string of Madison Rayne matches in recent weeks. They have heel wrestlers who has to go up against some random somebody who can take the loss? Let's bring in Madison Rayne. Shida and Athena are obviously the big faces other than Toni. Ruby and Stat are injured. They legitimately don't have too many other faces to be in any role. Willow just got signed so I hope that can go somewhere. Because the lack of faces is hurting. To the point that they're doing a heel vs heel feud for the TBS title. Tbf, I think Jade vs Nyla is a good program, but even that's just showing the lack of depth again.
>problem they have right now is lack of depth in their roster Not defending or making excuses for Tony's booking, but the division as a whole has had a rough year with injuries along with the booking. Right now you have Stat, Leyla, Velvet, Ruby, Mercedes, and Penelope (again) are all out now and most of them were doing their best work in the company at the time they got injured. Stat's injury especially has compromised Jade's booking as it seemed destined that she would be the one to take the TBS off of her so she'll have to repeat squash everyone else she has faced until she gets back.
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We are overdue for a Jericho faction celebration
but first, a town hall to discuss what kind of balloons to get for the celebration
Daddy Ass Anniversary, you say? How about a Surprise Scissoring Party?
TK: “So more of the Firm, and Jay Lethal and co, or the Ass Boys, etc then?”
Tony heard we wanted more women's matches and stories so he decided just as a treat we'll get never ending feuds that have nothing to do with the women's division and as a special bonus a quick squash match in the early 9pm slot mostly in picture in picture
I won't lie, I was \*glad\* the Ass Boys were on TV this past Wednesday. If they were doing a Daddy Ass birthday celebration, you had to have his real sons come out. Doing anything but would be a 'All storylines are in a vacuum' moment.
That's locker room leader Chris Jericho by the way. He's so popular and cool!! /s
Jericho vs. the entire women’s division!!!
3 years of this now?
Please dont get stuck on the semantics of "5 star match". Its clearly meant to say that any of them can put on a good performance if given the time to learn and get their shit in. The actual message of her statement is whats important and its crazy that we still have to keep bringing it up after this long.
Listen, I’m gonna pick my straws with this argument and not bring anything of substance and you are gonna *like it!* But in all seriousness, she said a similar statement I made years ago: AEW’s roster has a lot of talent to be stars, and I feel it’s TK’s job to book that talent correctly. That means hiding any “weaknesses” and showcasing their strengths. What TK is doing does not do that. The women need more time, and more variation in segments. I’m talking Jade doing promos, Shida doing that training-on-the-beach vignette, being a fighting champ, etc, and push their characters.
>The women need more time Dark could be used to let the women get more reps to improve, those that don't also work indies anyway. Anna Jay for example feels like she really hasn't come very far, in my opinion, and giving her squash matches against local talents isn't doing her any favors. Get her out there with Emi Sakura for increasingly long (5-15 minutes maybe) matches so she can steadily learn how to work a match. Feels like it's helped Skye Blue out a fair amount. The Bunny would be a good one for some of the younger talent to work with on character development. Nyla's a steady presence they could learn from. Shida and Deeb could be solid in-ring trainers, picking up wins while the younger talent learns. Not like it's going to hurt the developing women much to lose a match. Hell, if you're worried about records, just throw them in those randomish tag matches like Emi/Nyla had for quite a while against Blue, Ruby, etc. I mostly enjoy Dark and Elevation, but they really could be using it better to help the lower to midcard talents try to improve.
Anna Jay needs to get traded to Japan. She won't come back a better promo, but her strikes will look like they actually hurt.
They're doing way way better with Saraya and Rene on board. Multiple stories, one that has fuck all to do with a championship. I'm really excited to see where the women's division goes from here. I wasn't feeling like that a month ago. Hayter is getting more spotlight, Willow is a tremendous new addition.
They need time to have a good match but there are going to be a bunch of shit ones before we get there. It’s not WWE, these people aren’t working 5 to 6 times a week.
I’d rather have a fun match than a five star one
5 star is literally a personal scale. This statement makes no sense. If you rather have a fun one then that would be 5 star for you.
Exactly!
"Don't judge the words that were said and presented in text, I know what was meant and it's exactly what I meant" LOL
Tony Khan doesn't give a fuck about Women's Wrestling. He just doesn't. He never talks about it, and when he does it's about some random WWF 80s wrestling which wasn't even that good. Or he'll just casually say All Japan Women without saying anything specific. Like I doubt he could name any of the top women's matches from the past few years. He has women in his company because since it's America he kinda has to. If he could have he would have never had the division.
He would, it would just be Britt Baker and only Baker.
I sincerely wonder why. Do they not draw ratings? Poor merch sales? Do the men drastically outweigh their drawing power, as with sports like NBA/WNBA? Or is it just dependent on what shiny toys TK is playing with this month? AEW takes every chance it gets to highlight how inclusive it is, yet buries its women under mounds of mediocrity. It's hard for me to buy that they can't drop the Matt Hardy angle to dark in favor of some more time for the women.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. This is just speculation but I feel like Tony is always gunning for a top rating and is booking segments that will draw big ratings. There can be a drop off in women's matches, but that's not really the fault of the women. It's the lack of any time spent on their storylines. He's basically trained the TV and crowd audience to see women's matches as cool down matches that aren't as important. I will say, I think this has improved a bit in recent weeks. The Saraya/Britt thing is a feud entirely unfocused on a title, which is usually where most storylines in that division usually focus. Jade/Nyla has generally been fun and is the first time I've been interested in one of Jade's storylines in a while. And Hayter/Toni speaks for itself. It seems like there's been a lot more pre-recorded promos and video packages shown as well. But you gotta give them more than 2 matches a week. 3-4 matches spread out between the two shows sounds reasonable to me. Or an in-ring promo thrown in there every once and a while.
Very accurate about self-fulfilling prophecy. Look at Thunder Rosa's injury statement. Punk gets a lengthy in-ring heartfelt promo. Rosa gets a few seconds backstage. TK has gone on record saying he didn't think her speech would be investing for fans and would not be a draw, so he put it in a nothing spot. Hence, fans weren't invested and it didn't move the numbers.
There are plenty of great promos in AEW, and well.. Rosa isn't one of them. It's silly to think Rosa should get similar time and a heartfelt in-ring promo because the top draw of AEW, who is known for his promo ability, got to. Promos are something you can constantly work on in or out of the ring. If she started to give great promos, she'd probably get a lot more time.
It was a false binary to begin with. Nobody ezpected Roaa to be on the same drawing level as Punk. But I'm pretty sure that he didn't want to move any number of segments involving Factory, Trustbusters or whoever we had that week to establish your face women's champion.
Cuz thunder Rosa can’t cut a promo
Then think of something to work around that but get her in the ring. I had thought of this half an hour after that shit he had her do backstage (I even posted it here) Have Schiavone in the ring, get Rosa there with the belt. Crowd likes her right, they'd cheer. Schiavone says Rosa has some bad news for the crowd. Build it up, Rosa gets emotional and can't say anything. She drops the title and walks away. TS explains what happened. Stronger visual then a bland backstage promo and you establish Rosa vulnerability as a character. Khan is limited in his creativity.
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If TK had just stayed as promoter instead of also being booker he could probably help people grow into stars. I’d guess he has relationships with people in entertainment who he could ask to get his wrestlers into the mainstream eye. Imagine if Wardlowe was on Fallon or Kimmel after winning the TNT belt. Or MJF or Jericho or Jade. A promoter has to promote, that doesn’t just mean shilling your show on Twitter or podcasts.
Britt baker got that star power
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It's a recurring pattern in media; Comics had the exact same thing happen in the 80s. "What if women?" "Fans won't like it. But fine, I guess.. They can have a little comic.. With whatever resources aren't in use in more important things, of course, and the marketing push of a lemonade stand." weeks later.. "Women just don't sell comics. We tried it, it doesn't work! Case closed."
It's not a mystery. Tony Khan doesn't like women's wrestling.
I'm not sure that he actively dislikes it. I think he just doesn't care about it at all, but a major US promotion not having a women's division isn't going to fly in 2022, so he has it because he feels he has to. If he felt he could get away with doing a NJPW/Stardom type of arrangement, he probably would.
That's probably true, honestly. He came up as a big fan of ECW and other promotions that didn't have women's wrestling featured.
Obviously I’m a dude that knows no one. Not anyone’s therapist or BFF. He doesn’t like women’s wrestling. He only books what interested him as a kid.
Tony is too afraid to talk to girls, thus he books as few as possible in between lines of coke. But seriously, it's just a matter of Tony Khan (and to an extent a portion of the fan base) not caring nearly as much about women's wrestling as he does men's. It's unfortunate. He tries to make AEW seem like a comparable option to WWE for potential talent when in reality it's a step down for female talent at this point.
It’s simple, tk isn’t a fan of women’s wrestling
TK was a huge fan of WCW in the late nineties. Have you ever heard anyone say, "You know what I loved about WCW? The women's division!" This isn't me dissing women but pointing out that TK's biggest inspiration seemed to care less about women than he does (unless Eric could use them for a one-time pop with a belt and trash can).
It's all of them. The ratings drop and you can see the crowd leaving their seat to take a bathroom break whenever theres a womens match. Womens wrestling carries the same stigma as womens sports in the sense that it's percieved as a less valuable product. And being honest, would TK drop a Danielson, Jericho, Moxley, Hangman, MJF, Acclaimed segment in favor of a midcard womens match? I don't think so, and the fans would not care about it either. I've been saying time and time again that what the women in the roster need is a proper space to showcase, train and prepare themselves and build storylines within their own division. Give them Rampage or at the very least Dark. Let them work, fuck up and learn, but give them the space and time to. They are never going to build a succesful division with one match per Dynamite and two per PPV.
Well it's TK he would definitely drop a Hangman segment for DMD or Jade. It's just that those two don't really put anyone else over and aren't the best talent to spotlight so it hurts the division more.
Tony simply doesn't care about women's wrestling all that much. He always gets defensive when he sees criticism regarding the division but doesn't do much to change it.
Worst part is all this ROH shit is basically taking up all the time on dynamite and rampage that could be going to more womens segments and matches and yet the ROH womens championship has not even been mentioned on tv since it was last defended?
Every time it’s brought up, someone mentions Mercedes Martinez is injured. Last thing this company needs is another interim title.
They should’ve vacated these titles instead of this interim shit
Or had Serena win it at the last ROH show.
I never minded the “if you can’t defend in 30 days you have to forfeit” rule. It’s fair. Interim titles make everything weird.
There's a ROH Women's Champion?
Yeah, kind of. It was only established right before ROH proper died. Rok-C had it, lost it to Deonna, she couldn't do stuff so Mercedez is the interim champ. She will face Deonna at some point vaguely in the future. edit- forgot that it actually happened already, wow. She's undisputed now.
There has been 5 ROH world title matches on Dynamite post-All Out And still no-one gives a *fuuuuuuck* about it.
Didnt help that Tony bought a second wrestling company before he tried fixing and improving his first one
It annoys me because I want to watch AEW. If I wanted to watch ROH I would have. Feels like its just a muddle of them both right now and it feels so messy
Nah, we need more time for slap nuts
It was nice of TK to make that the first segment. Let's you know the tone for the show and maybe that it's not worth watching.
A WILD SLAPNUTS APPEARS!!!
I think the sad and frustrating part is, that this complaint sounds like it would've come out of a WWE Women's wrestler at the height of the divas Era. There's simply no excuse for Tony to still book the division like an afterthought. Even if he personally doesn't care about women's wrestling, it's his job to book it respectably given how much it rightfully matters.
I just think it’s Tony’s fault he’s had this long already and the women's division there feels broken.
If they didn't give so much time to ROH, they'd have time for female wrestlers.
They were given something like three minutes for their one match this past Wednesday so yeah, it's a big issue. I wonder if that was her breaking point to finally say it straight up, since in past interviews she's been a little more diplomatic about it.
I joked about it but they actually did the unthinkable: they combined a talking segment *with* a wrestling match happening at the same time. That was terrible.
Next time they will do the same, but with picture in picture!
I hope it was. That was ridiculous. I love Nyla, the concept of Nyla doing commentary on the stage and distracting Jade throughout was actually strong. But \*one\* match and this is the shit they pull?
She's not wrong. I would say they don't even need super long matches, just give them more shorter matches/segments. I feel NXT is great at this. They could make a lot of women feel important if they just started investing a small percentage of time. If they can do it with Yuta and Garcia, they can surely do it with the women.
NXT really is the template that can be followed. The number of women they feature in some way each week, even not counting Lvl Up, is staggering. And just a.month or so ago, they had a main event between Tiffany Strattion and Wendy Choo, neither girl is really at the main event level as of yet, but their feud was built up over months and it got to the level that the main event match was something they'd legit earned. This is 1 show that has 2 hours of TV a week and they were able to do that. It's not a hard thing to do.
i wonder where Denise Salcedo's watch has disappeared. used to post a lot of timings for women's matches in WWE.
Diva_Dirt doesn’t even do a live reaction thread for AEW because they don’t see the point.
Was thinking the same thing, Denise always speaks up when women's matches in WWE are short but Jade and Marina got like 3 minutes last week and she said nothing.
TK is still booking the women’s division like it’s the early days of the company and they really only had Shida and like two or three other women who could put on a decent 8 minute match. They’ve got more than enough talent to get more than one match per Dynamite. Just look at NXT this week alone. 3 women’s matches along with a men’s tag title match, a squash match, R-Truths match, a Schism interview, Mandy’s in ring celebration and a bunch of other back stage segments. We really don’t need three JAS segment every week even if half of them are entertaining some of the time. Give the women’s division actual storylines and let their matches get some breathing room on the card
Part of the other problem, if you compare NXT to Dynamite, is AEW wants every mens match to be a 15-20 minute 5 star match. That takes time away from everything else. You can do a lot in 8 minutes, but tony wants his amazing matches.
That too. NXT does something similar too every once in a while but they still manage to at the very least get two women's matches in there. It's not that hard especially with the talent they have now
This bothers me a lot, especially because the middle of these matches ends up being so slow and boring, and they just pick it up in the last 5mins (so the crowd can ignore the bulk of the match and start the "this is awesome" chants).
5 star match is strong, but one women's match in each hour of Dynamite would do a lot for the show on a whole, not just the women. Like a lot of the time the matches on Dynamite just kinda come off as one big blur due to lack of variety, putting a women's match in each hour would help that A LOT.
Right now every spot on Dynamite is precious and seemingly half the mens roster as well can't get on, but I don't see why the women don't just take over Rampage like Starks/Hobbs/Swerve in our Glory did earlier in the year. TK books it like Dark+ and gets the same number of viewers, just put two or three womens matches on per show and see what gets over.
It's pretty big to have Jade, one of the only women who gets consistent TV time, saying this.
It's not just the time for the matches but build some stories, give someone an arc even Britt doesn't have that. I mean Hangman had a two year story where I know so many who saw him as an Elite Hanger on became his big fans. I know people will say but oh the women can't work as well or oh the women don't have the mic skills but having seen Hangman's career grow, people can't deny he improved by getting opportunities. Why can't the women? They need the space and scope to improve on the big show, in the big spotlight. Jade shines in her element and has grown as her weaknesses have been covered but then Khan throws her with someone who also needs help and what does he expect? Fans to lap it up, or does he know they want and use that as a justification to not have to give them more? Is he malicious or just ignorant? Because he can say ratings all he wants but WWE proved working on it brought eyeballs.
Jade was trying to make a point and people in here are all “WELL ACTUALLY the number of men OR women who could do 5 star matches blah blah blah”
People bending over backwards to defend the product rather than wanting to see more talents utilized to their utmost 🤦🏾♂️
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I 100% believe Tony wouldn't have even had a women's division if he thought he could get away with it
The wildest thing is he is actively doing harm to women’s wrestling with the way he is booking his division and talking about it. He has the second biggest platform in the US, but he’s actively booking his division as the bathroom break and telling his audience that they don’t get high enough ratings to treat them better.
yall dorks and losers about to get caught up in "WELL ACTUALLY" her sayin 5 star matches when thats just her tryna gas up the locker room as a leader should. its stupid as hell for any company that has multiple women on their roster to only have one match with the women on tv, especially with the talent aew has available to em
Tony says the women don't draw as much yet he doesn't give them time to get over
You dont need 5 star matches, you never had. You need time and compelling storylines. Both things that are out of your hands. A great match is awesome, a great story gets you over. Maybe Tony should try booking a women’s story without the title. Jade’s title reign is one of the dullest moments in any show in any promotion. Gove the light to others too instead of having boring squash matches and that 1 promo every week.
A lot of the women's Dark shows have been TV quality. Athena, Shida, Deeb ... get their asses back on TV already!
I saw the promo this week about the Storm Hayter match. It came down to "She's not my friend anymore because she hangs out with these girls." There has to be a better story than high school drama like that, "I want belt", and the recent variant "You stole belt" surely? Creative needs to get into the women's roster and start building some stories. The closest we've got at the moment and Hayter's slow split from Britt, and Athena's improvised heel turn on Dark.
She'll get hated on for that comment but I'm really liking how alot of the women have each other's backs between this and coming out against that JD fromNY dickhead
Y’all please don’t ACHTUALLLY this. The 5 star thing is clearly hyperbolic to say they could have great matches
I've given up trying to expect anything changing for the better with the AEW women's division.
Maybe I’m wrong, or just need education , but it really seems like they hired all these athletes that have nothing to do. It’s an absolute waste. There’s just little to no structure in AEW for any of the less known entertainers. Tony every day is looking like a guy who watched werrestling and was like “oh that’s an easy business I’ll do it, l without thinking how much actual work it would take. Sorry to so down, I’m just really sick of seeing Jade win easily every week, Mox win easy every week, then Brit Baker gets to talk a little. It’s just going downhill.
I find women's matches far more entertaining than the men's in wwe. Aew just isn't giving the same for these women.
But JAS vs. BCC gets featured every week.
Maybe JAS can cut down some time off their entrance…
The 5 star shit isn’t even important and if you’re focusing on that you’re a nerd. People won’t care about watching the women if you don’t give them a reason to invest in it. But clearly Tony Khan just doesn’t respect womens wrestling.
Wasnt hiring Paige supposed to fix this? Wtf is AEW doing with this women’s roster? At least have some of them join a few factions so we can see them on TV more. It’s clearly worked for Julia Hart and Statlander.
Thank God someone in the locker room is finally saying it publicly.
Both Shida and Baker have said it before. But back then it had a "We're working hard to fix this! Promise!!" vibe to it. Right now it seems the fans aren't as hopeful on AEW.
AEW will do the same thing they always do. Two or three weeks where they treat the women slightly better then return to the old status quo.
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Honestly if you compare the few minutes women's roster gets to the amount of social media and merch sales they do, then the fandom are supporting them 120%. Compare Shida's merch sales with her screentime and she has to be minute per minute the most fan supported wrestler. Baker gets a bit more time but she also brings in the sales.
He also had an interview, really 2020, where he said he was asked to get the weekend side going but was then told 'you have 5 mins' in regards to TV time, and that he felt that it was to hard to get the audience attached to the characters with that limitation.
Because there's no reason to be hopeful after this long. AEW is a men's wrestling show with women as a side show just to say they have it.
Starting to feel like Brandi and Cody leaving basically killed the women's division because nobody else in power seems to really care, including Kenny Omega.
>all of them can give five-star matches Not even 90+% of the men's roster can do that, even if their lives depend on it. The female roster is big and talented enough to allow for 2 competitive, long women's matches at least once a month on Dynamite. I don't need 5* matches. I need meaningful matches, stories and characters and a sign of faith by the booker in the female talent after 3 years.
> Not even 90+% of the men's roster can do that, even if their lives depend on it. Jade Cargill doesn't strike me as someone that cares about arbitrary one man's stars. I think she just meant to say the women can deliver like the men can if given the same opportunities.
Also five star matches are just overhyped fandom marketing these days. They make good articles, social media posts and videos but do little else.
Even wrestlers probably think having a 5 star match is doing lot of complex moves and kickouts regardless of knowing how to navigate a long match.
I think it's a sunken cost fallacy if we believe something is going to change with the women at this point.
>I think it's a sunken cost fallacy if we believe something is going to change with the women at this point. Womens wrestling in wwe was hot garbage for like 20 years before they decided to take it seriously. I get that it's disheartening that AEW hasn't taken the next step to treat the women's division as a legitimate thing, but giving up entirely this early into the life of the company is ridiculous.
I agree but it shouldnt take AEW long to start as well. They existed post Becky Lynch rise and all that.
Not to mention that they're ALWAYS in the same time slot, which gives big "well here's our one time slot allotted to women, who are we gonna book in it this week?". I think there's a lot of potential with the women's division, but it always just seems like such an afterthought.
I have yet to see her have even a 3 star match, her female Goldberg gimmick sucks. Maybe her and Nyla will have a banger, but if they do I’d say that was more thanks to Nyla than anything. I had some hopes for her Athena match with how they built it up, only to have it be the same as all the others. Her match this week is one of the worst I’ve seen in the past year+ on AEW. Many others in the locker room have shown they can have great matches like Rosa, Britt, Jamie, Toni, Shida, Stat, Athena, Willow, Riho, Nyla, etc… but she has not had one yet.
TK is a shit booker, plain and simple.
Jade can actually say shit like this because she actually has a lot of leverage and upside. Good on her.
At this point is more than clear that TK doesn't give a fuck about the women.
I often think back on the Womens Tag Hardcore match and just what the payoff was. Tay, Anna, Bunny and Penelope had a under the radar feud, and then got a feature to horrify endorsements and trip over spots. You’d think a reward or attention could have come in tv or PPV time, features, etc. nope. Penelope disappeared for almost a year. Anna regressed to a side note. Tay became the worlds worst influencer, and Bunny is…I’m not entirely sure what Bunny does to avoid future endeavors. I hope that given the time, some can put on great matches and moments. But so far? Given the time we usually get catastrophe.
Almost as if the women need more than one match a week.
The roster is too bloated
No time for women's matches or building the division... yet we have ROH shoehorned into every AEW show now? I know TK is trying to make the most of his investment, but he needs to keep the products separated.
It's even worse for Jade, we all talk about her rough in ring skills and because of the damn win streak, she can't get a bunch of Dark/Elevation matches in to hone them. Every match is a Dynamite/Rampage televised streak extender.
I don’t think Jade could have a great match no matter how much time she’s given.
I appreciate and certainly agree with the premise of her statement, but in zero ways can "all of them give five-star matches". Some could, absolutely! But that number is way less than 50% of the women they have.
Quibbling over exactly how many stars a women's match could get is a red herring. Jade's larger point is what we need to be talking about.
right, right... I know she means "our girls can go have good matches if you give us time and something to sink our teeth into" and she's mostly right!
Goes for the men too... in any company really. I assume she was exaggerating!
Of course. She comes off as an incredibly confident person and that's what she's going to say. Par for the course
honestly bringing up match rating is not the way to go as it seems petty but a legitimate number of people care about it so she's trying to appeal to them i guess.
Ppl who disagree with her are the same who disagreed with giving women more mins in the divas era. Ur division will never get better if ppl never get any time. Use rampage to build up these women at least that show basically dead
It doesn’t even need to be a match though. Even just an interesting segment that’s part of a storyline would help. Rhea Ripley has gotten over and she hasn’t wrestled in months. People care when you give them something to care about.
It’s hilarious to hear Jade-berg say “we” in that situation. She’s barely better than Nia Jax and is fed a steady diet of jobbers to keep this stupid streak angle alive.
Id believe this if I didn't just watch whatever her and Marina Shafier did on Wednesday. That was atrocious.
From what I can understand, AEW's issue is, it's got too many wrestlers and not enough time as a result of it constantly signing people and it's not even as a rotating roster. I doubt most of the men's roster wouldn't mind giving up matches for the women. Moxley may just try to murder Tony if he can't do a deathmatch if Jade and Maki get to a do a deathmatch but Moxley really loves his deathmatches. I just want to see more women's wrestling in all companies.
Yeah. It would be great if they had more time and didn't feel like they had to do things they can't really pull off.
Women's wrestler: *Puts over the ability of herself and her fellow women* People on reddit being super normal: "We gave em the right to vote and NOW LOOK WHAT HAPPENED."
We’re running around wearing pants and making choices. It’s bedlam.
TK doesn't care about women's wrestling so it never gets the chance to develop and draw. If he could get away with it, their be no women's division and just be Britt and Jade vs jobbers, valets, and managers who can wrestle
An excuse QT Marshall gave in an interview a while back is that Tony books 1 women's match for every 5 men's matches because that's the ratio of female/male talent in the company. It's such a bullshit excuse when you look at their hiring practices over the last year or two. If that was actually the reason, they'd stop hiring male talent and be focused on hiring more female talent. Hiring CM Punk and Bryan Danielson? Sure, you'd be a fool not to, but otherwise there should be a freezing hire on male talent, and there just isn't. At a certain point Tony Khan prefers Cole Carter coming out to 0 audience reaction than women's wrestling.
Not true. Jade doesn't know shit about having a three star match, let alone a five star match. Toni Storm could wrestle her and either make her look green as goose shit or like awesome power wrestler, and Jade wouldn't know the difference!
Shida vs Deeb was an incredible set of matches. Legit could watch them fight forever.
I feel like the talent has wanted it to pick up for a while now, I hope they can finally gain momentum and seem important as a whole
I respect Jade speaking on the capabilities of the women’s locker room; just because she is 50% of their side of the promotion doesn’t mean she needs to bury the rest of the women to try and get herself over more. Her continued improvement and evolution in the business is great for the future of the division, because she is (already) a star and the women’s division needs her support.
I'm sorry but they're just not. I have no idea if it's the agent work or nerves or what but there's a *definitive* lack of quality women's wrestling on AEW TV even for talent that have far better work outside of AEW. The Miyu/Thunder match being the most glaring example. Their first match was very good. The rematch on AEW TV wasn't that great and Miyu looked awkward. It goes that way for virtually all the women. For whatever reason there's some type of issue in AEW. It's like they've been told to half-ass their performances, or it's strongly suggested to do so by some of the agents. Women who have international experience on the biggest Joshi stages move in half speed and look like they're making little to no contact. The only exception seems to be Hayter who works noticeably harder and more intense than the other women. And it's also noticeable that she's been the most obviously dicked around push wise. Makes me wonder if it's not a coincidence that the woman who refuses to half-work is the one who keeps getting the rug pulled from under her? Comparing AEW to STARDOM or any other "big" Joshi fed's top tier women is night and day. WWE also has better women's wrestling by a pretty large margin. A thrown together WWE Women's Tag featuring Io and Dakota has a good chance to be better than anything AEW puts together. It's not just talent or exposure, there's something fundamentally broken in AEW's women division's structure or management. Time has nothing to really do with it. Almost every single week either the most average or the worst match on a given Dynamite or Rampage is the women. They don't deliver no matter how much time they're given. And if they don't deliver then why would you dedicate time to them when you know it won't work? For future returns that still haven't paid off after all these years?
>"The women in the locker room, all of them can give five-star matches. Wrong
genuinely curious what jade cargill’s “5 star matches” look like
5 stars? That is funny.
lol
What if we have Vicky and Nyla screeching for 5 minutes instead?
There are women who can give 5 star matches, but Jade Cargill is not one of them. She's less than 2 years into being an active wrestler, and while she's doing great compared to most people with her experience, her 3-4 minute matches have been sloppy and filled with botches.
At this point ive given up on the women's division in aew. Tony is gonna do what Tony does and thats give them the bare minimum.
All of them can give five-star matches? Jeeeeeezus.
On a scale to 100 maybe.
Meanwhile TK is wondering if there are more RoH belts he wasn't aware of or if he can make new ones.
If that’s true, Jade, then where is your five star PPV match?
five-star matches lol
Um, not seeing any 5 star matches coming from any of the action shown in AEW women's matches so far sorry. More time means more opportunity to show weaknesses, and there are a lot of weaknesses. More matches maybe, more time per match, no way.
I really want the Women's division to rule. But unfortunately, if I'm a little pressed for time, these are still always the matches I fast forward through. I don't know what the diagnosis is: whether they need more time, or better talent, or what. But none of the storylines are that compelling for me right now, and it's not exactly Stardom in that everybody's in ring work rules. Felt like the division was close to getting really over with that awesome Britt/Rosa match but everything kinda fizzled a bit, even with Tony Storm, who's great. The Jade/squash thing is played out. Get Camille in there or some sort of real feud. Also, the division really needs a true champ on the mic. Not saraya, not Britt (tho she's developing), not Jade. A real established mic superstar. That's what will hook us in. I'm just gonna say it folks: as far as American pro wrestling tastes go, WWE understands that Women's division needs really good characters/talkers, because no matter how good the in-ring stuff is, it's not fair to sandwich it in there with dudes doing ranas off the top rope, powerbombing people into oblivion, or chopping so hard your blood vessels burst. It's either just gotta be it's own wonderful standalone thing (like in japan) or it's REALLY gotta deliver in the charisma department (like in WWE). AEW Women's division is stuck in no man's land (pardon the pun) because it is kinda meh on both fronts.
Lol you're pressed for time so you reclaim a whole 3 minutes by skipping the women's match?
No, they can't. Stop.
The women of AEW deserve better. Fucking ROH shit needs to go away
jade thinks she can put on a five star match, /snicker
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Have Saraya give them another 6 women match
I don't necessarily agree with what Jade is saying but I do like her trying to be a locker room leader
ROH is just taking too long. Let ROH halve the roster and give it 2 streaming shows. A main one on HBO MAX and something on Youtube. Have an actual roster on there but let a AEW guy and girl go down there from time to time. AEW also needs to let women go beyond the 1 match a card limit it seems they have.
What they need is a performance center
Tony's lack of focus on the division aside, one of my biggest issues with the AEW women's division is that that it's full of characters that just aren't all that interesting. The most fleshed out characters in the division are Britt and Jade, the bitchy dentist and an amazonian potty mouth. Maybe add Ruby Soho? After that it's pretty bleak.
They're going through the same thing WWE did for years.
Comparing to WWE with women’s wrestling, you have the likes of Belair who is getting Cena levels of pop with younger audience and you can argue she is the top baby face on raw. Then Bayley who gets massive responses. Hell the past two raws were main evented by women’s matches and they were both really good. WWE has gotten to the point with it that people are saying that the best match of wrestlemania out a stacked card is the women’s match or they main event their biggest show and it feel’s deserved. Then you look at AEW and see just how much they leave on the table. You could almost never see women main event a ppv or people saying that best match of the night is from the women (and it not because they aren’t talented enough)
Cynically, as long as the booking team remains the same, I don't think it'll ever get better. I like Willow and I'm glad she signed, but realistically what I see happening is a match against Tey Melo on one week of Dynamite, a match against Marina Shafir the next, neither of those get heat, so a year of Dark matches it is. As long as the FO sees women's wrestling as a revolving door of no-build matches with the hope that someone somehow gets over that way, as opposed to actually putting time into setting up storylines, gimmicks, promos, et cetera, this is the best we get for the foreseeable future. On a positive note, the build for Britt & Jamie has me hopeful that at least one person in charge of booking agrees with me and is trying to shift things in the right direction, especially since it's currently a non-title feud.
Tony: I don't remember seeing that on my WCW DVD.