this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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If you watched Dynamite last week you saw the sign, even the camera man knows what's up so my question to all of you is how would you fix it.

TK gives you the reigns and says he wants a women's division that could headline next year's All Out.

You can sign any free agents, use ROH talent, book anymatch or angle you want, but you have to have a great division in one years time.

(I'll post my own thoughts later today)

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  1. Keep a good relationship with Impact, since their woman's division is fantastic. Let talent show up on Impact randomly; let Impact talent show up on Dynamite.

  2. Promote more international tournaments like they did with US/Japanese championship tournament

  3. HIRE VEDA SCOTT.

  4. Let Maria do Women's Division Wednesday again and use the internet/social media to your advantage; run angles, do matches with other companies, etc.

  5. Let Nyla takeover AEW tiktok on Wednesdays and Saturdays before Dynamite and Collision :)

  6. Give us more than just shoehorned women's division matches. Let the women exist with the men; imagine if the Outcasts and Bullet Club Gold worked together.

  7. Let Tay Melo free; she was so good before the JAS. Give her meaning again!.

  8. Put Serena Deeb on TV... anyway you can. Because she should be on tv. Deeb/Veda Scott would be a fantastic commentary team for a women's show.

  9. If you can't do anything with the network to get more timeslot's, then do more with Youtube/socials and put more specials on for free. I'd wager the majority of AEW's audience are younger and don't have cable anyway.

  10. Persuade AJ to come back (long shot sure but I just need it to happen :))

  11. HIRE VEDA SCOTT

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It really is a joke they haven't hired Veda. Nyla doing a social media takeover would be awesome btw, great shout.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fr :// I'd love her on a commentary team with Ian and Caprice or Nigel!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Love all these points

[–] draecas 8 points 1 year ago

The obvious:

  1. Stop airing a single women's match every show. IMO the TV titles show be getting defended every other week each, and it shouldn't count as the women's match when the TBS champ has a match.
  2. Give them more build than one woman giving an interview and another showing up to randomly challenge her. The slowest improvement on the planet here.
  3. Don't stall 1 of the 2 belts for a year waiting for a single person to come back from injury, no matter how good she is.

The more controversial:

  1. Firm up some larger factions and brew up a big ol faction war. It's a great way to restart/kickstart the division imo, since so much is completely uninvolved. TFM TK keeps toying with something like this and then chickening out
  2. Push this into giving the women one of the marquee matches, Blood n Guts or Anarchy in the Arena or Casino Battle Royale or something that gets the big name on the posters and all the photo slots. Actually let them headline some shit
  3. Don't bother with any more belts atm, there's already 2 we rarely see.
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. Build division around those who can work. Deeb, Shida, Riho, Emi Sakura, Athena Kris Statlander, should be a focal point of your efforts. Willow Nightingale, Tay Conti, Skye Blue, Red Velvelt should be exciting new prospects. Do not push green talent or those who can't work a decent match into the main event scene.

  2. Book around their strengths not weaknesses. Like have Shida doing more video packages. Don't book promo battle between Serena Deeb and Thunder Rosa. Book a promo battle between Ruby and Britt.

  3. Force yourself to book more meaningful storylines and matches into your shows. One match per show, during an ad break which frequently turns into squash conditions your audience not to care.

  4. Be as aggressive in pursuing free agents as you are with men. The fact that TK didn't sign Candice LeRae, Dakota Kai, Mia Yim, Mickie James, Masha Slamovich, Sasha Banks yet is signing any wrestling body with a modicum of promise across three countries tells you a lot.

  5. If men have it, women should also have it. Blood and Guts for men, Blood and Guts for Women, Minoru Suzuki frequents AEW on his US tours, Rina Yamashita should do that as well., etc.

  6. Police your wrestlers for any sexism. "Control your woman" and "You can take all of us?" should be simply banned if there is no kayfabe retaliations to those words.

  7. Women should be able to freely mixed with male wrestlers but not as eye candy. I mean they can be, but it says something, that Tay became simply an eye toy with Sammy when she was one of the most exciting workers in the division before.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm still gutted we lost face Tay. She was so damn good.

[–] Pacers31Colts18 6 points 1 year ago

I'd book it similar to how the Collision main events are. It needs to be more interconnected and not just single matches always before the main event. Characters need to be built up.

Has Statlander been on tv much since winning the TBS title?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I have some thoughts, but nothing I can eloquently express here -- I mainly just wanted to say how damn good all of these ideas are.

I'm guessing none of you are billionaires with near-limitless resources and yet you already presented ideas for AEW's women's division that blow away almost everything Tony Khan has ever come up with.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's time for Yakuza boss Shida, straight up. We've wanted it since the pandemic era, and now is the right time. You could also elevate other women by building a faction around her.

Nyla Rose needs to let more of her personality show on tv. She and Marina Shafir also need to be separated. I don't feel either one elevates the other. Going back to my first point, maybe have Shafir be an enforcer under Shida.

I'll add more later if anything comes to mind.

[–] ItsWizardTime 7 points 1 year ago

Have shida run a gang to combat the outsiders but they need to go on the offensive and not just respond. Steal the outsiders jackets and burn em or something. Have Jade show up as the enforcer of the group because she's sick of the outsiders, or maybe the jump her when she first shows up and Shida shows her the value of people that aren't trying to use her.

Months later a renewed Jade competes in a triple for TNT title with Taya and Statlander.

Nyla should be paired with Skye, if you've seen her on Hey EW you know she needs to come out of her shell when speaking and I think Nyla is the person to help do that. Find a good mentor or partner for multiple women do a tag tournament that highlights each wrestler, do some vignettes and promos build it over 2-3 months since this is going to be THE Women's Tag Title to watch. This worked very well for Cole/MJF.

Parity PPVs/TV I know it's not fair to expect 2 blood and guts matches in a single night but we could have a women's lights out match. Baker and Thunderosa showed the crowd would eat it up. 2 women's matches a show should be the minimum. If the main event is a cage March, women's match should be of a similar spectacle. It doesn't need to be the exact same but don't give me a 30 minute banger main event and a 5 minute women's squash match.

2 out of 3 falls Table match Ladder match Falls count anywhere Concession brawls There are options!

We've seen so many weird gimmick matches that were super entertaining, let's give the women some fun ones too!

[–] Travon333 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

At least 2 womens matches/segments per show. They are definitely underutilized but looking at the whole roster TK has an issue booking all divisions.

Titles should be the focal point for the most part. We don't have a trios division and the tag division has been ignored for BTYBB. I've noticed you also need to be a good promo or high work rate to get semiconsistent time because people still get rotated. Main reason why Britt is almost always included, she is a pretty good promo but the wealth should still be spread.

Im sure injuries have affected the women's division but at least a loose separation of World champ and TBS champ contenders would do wonders. For example, I love Taya but she shouldn't get beaten for the TBS title 3x, get a few wins and then get a World title shit.

Most actionable thing though, have at 4 separate things going on at all times for them. We should have something long form for both world title and TBS title. And the undercard should be getting non title feuds to build up character so that they can transition to the title picture and people actually gaf.

[–] MolochAlter 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What needs done

  • Obviously give more time to the women.
  • Build some fucking structure in the division. Take a page out of Stardom (or hell, NJPW, or even AEW itself) and build actual factions with goals, and ethics they abide by. The only one they have right now is the Outcasts and I'll be very honest: it sucks. It's Bargain Bin Bullet Club with a weaker presentation and less compelling characters and promos.
  • Enough with the cheating heel champion bullshit. Toni with the Outcasts is literally the same shit as when Britt was on top and she'd cheat in every fucking match. Have a competent heel at the top. Deeb should have been it when she was feuding with Shida, but they fucked that up beyond salvation unfortunately.
  • Give them time to build actual storylines and feuds. The closest they got was Julia Hart vs Anna JAy and the unfortunate reality is that Anna's promo for that match was both probably her best promo and embarrassingly basic when put next to Julia's now MAlakai Black enhanced promo work.
  • Have someone be the face of a group and stick to it. To build upon the factions thing, this is a great way to hide people like Anna who can't do promos yet. The Shield had this with Mox, not everyone in a faction needs to be a talker, so build factions around a specific theme, pick a good frontwoman for them and make her be the face as the others learn what the faction is about and how to work that into their characters and promos. They are arguably doing that with Saraya somewhat unnecessarily since everyone in the Outcasts could be equally good or better.

How I would do it

  • Have characters snap out of this amnesiac state where everyone seemingly forgot that Britt is a piece of shit heel who cheated her way through her entire title reign.
  • Keep the Outcasts, and build the following factions (no idea about the names, feel free to insert/suggest):
    • Shida, Riho, Willow, Skye Blue, possibly Statlander: Turbo babyface workhorses. Kick ass, take names, look out for eachother, neutralise the numbers game with ruthless efficiency. Literally no match of theirs should have a successful interference. Key concept is that they'll be honorable but will not be stupid. This is a division full of cheaters and it needs to be set straight.
    • Britt, Hayter, Anna and Tay Melo: Anna and Tay are natural fits, they're already meangirl-ing their asses off, might as well go all in on the gimmick, plus they are decent at tagging and this will give them something better than being stuck in the Jericho vortex™
    • Athena, Bunny, Penelope Ford, Abadon and/or Leyla Hirsch: The heel-but-not-pussies faction. They can fight, they will do hardcore shit, they will absolutely not be fucked with but they don't need to cheat to win, so they don't. Keep the belt on Athena, build the group around her, give them a strong style vibe. Lean into the fact that Athena got shat on for being too "unsafe" in the ring despite doing shit 1/5th as hard as people like Mox or Danielson.

The first big storyline would be the babyface faction coming together and cleaning house. Only title they don't get is the RoH one. They explicitly start playing the number games against the outcasts and such, and wreck their shit, but never interfere in matches, just ruthlessly prevent any and all interference. I want to see Willow powerbomb Ruby through a table to stop her interfering and say something like "you were my friend" on the way out.

Then when Hayter and Britt come over trying to buddy buddy with them the reaction should be something along the lines of "excuse me do you think we forgot you've done nothing but cheat and condescend everyone for like a year?" and bring that into a big faction warfare feud. Bring it to something like the first women's Blood and Guts, hopefully Tay will be back in action by next year. Faces faction goes over.

Meanwhile you have Athena start gathering cohorts because she's already paranoid and megalomaniacal enough. Call them something like "the acolytes" or something. have her pick a fight with the Outcasts, maybe she wants Ruby to join them, who knows, build this to a RoH title match, Athena vs Saraya, whoever wins gets the title and Ruby, Athena retains but Ruby tells them both to fuck off and strikes out on her own as a tweener as she always should have been. Make this the emotional core of the babyface group cause Willow likes Ruby and wants to be friends again.

The last big storyline is Athena's faction vs the faces, build it to something like Anarchy in the Arena or Stadium Stampede, something big, bombastic, silly. Heels go over, cement the new vibe that you need to actually be good at shit instead of relying on cheating 100% of the time, establish them as the new measuring stick, and use this defeat to cement that the face group is not just an alliance of convenience but it has true staying power and a strong bond even in defeat. Make them the Queen's Quest of AEW.

[–] ItsWizardTime 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Add Nyla and remove Statlander I think she needs to stand on her own in a feud with Taya until Jade shows back up triple threat match for all in.

[–] MolochAlter 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Sure, that works, my logic was that I'd want the faces to have all the gold except the RoH title, so I'd rather add her in than take it off her.

The idea isn't to start this tomorrow or anything so the current feuds were not something i took into account too much.

I wouldn't add Nyla though, she hasn't redeemed herself at all so far, she's literally just been less prominent. If she needs to join the faces she needs to show character development first.

Could be a nice angle for her, to go babyface once she realises that she's becoming a laughing stock as the gatekeeper of the division and can't seem to win the big one since her title reign, aligning with the good guys and having a match with Shafir to close off their partnership. The usual "heel turns on partner because they're going soft" routine but done well. I do believe they could pull off a nice short-ish angle to round off the numbers to 5v5 in the hypothetical blood and guts.

Also, I just found out a spoiler for Dynamite 200: >!Shida won her match against Storm so that's a step in the right direction, now let her be dominant and not incapable of basic rational decisions.!<

[–] ItsWizardTime 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think Nyla has shown she can be amazing if they let her. She would be very useful in helping talent come out of their shells and turn their knobs up to 11. Someone like Skye needs to be partnered with someone who can show them how to be a bigger than life version of themselves and I feel Nyla is the perfect person for that.

[–] MolochAlter 2 points 1 year ago

Oh definitely, I'm just talking from a storyline perspective. Nyla is great, she just needs to have an actual transition to face before she becomes one, unlike Britt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Love the ideas. Do you mind editing your original post, though? The bullet point starting with "Have someone be the face of a group and stick to it," didn't render properly (on Kbin, at least) and it's stretched the thread out east-west, making it hard to read. A quick formatting should fix that.

And if you can swap out the 'R' word for something else that'd be cool too. The last thing I want to do is delete your comments. They're mostly solid, just a few tweaks and we're good.

[–] MolochAlter 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have genuinely no idea how to format this differently, but I'll have a look, it looks fine on lemmy.world.

As for the language, could the guidelines be posted in the sidebar section, so there would be no misunderstandings about the expected standards?

I'm ESL and I have frankly no idea what the mod team finds objectionable but I'm pretty sure the standards are tighter than I'm used to given this request.

No problem with abiding by them, when in Rome and all that, but I'd like them to be explicit.

Also for the life of me I can't find the point where I used "retarded", is that what I'm supposed to be looking for?

(Feel free to remove this comment once you reply if this is indeed the offending word.)

ETA: does the formatting look correct now?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You fucking nailed it. Formatting's perfect. Thanks a lot.

And as for words, swearing (fuck, shit, etc.) is cool but we try to keep away from 'slurs.' Basically, a word that could be hurtful to a minority. In this case, disabled people. A preferred word might be "stupid" because the majority of people are definitely stupid lol

And it's the last word of the comment I replied to originally. And I'll speak to the other mods about clearing up those rules.

[–] MolochAlter 2 points 1 year ago

Oh lol, it was behind the spoiler tag that's why I didn't see it.

Fixed, and thanks for the clarification.

[–] EnderMB 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Adding to the "more time" post, I'd:

  • Make Rampage a womens-only show
  • Create a womens-only PPV
  • Hire an established women's wrestler like Trish Stratus to run the division. I know she's a HOFer at WWE and active again, but if she's not up for it, perhaps another? " Unpopular opinion, but be more ruthless with low performers. AEW have a lot of women on their books, and only a few of them are really good enough to carry a division with more time. Even the strongest supporter of the division can probably point towards at least one or two stars that probably aren't contributing as much as they could/should.
[–] ItsWizardTime 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like Rampage and women's only PPV are not possible at this moment. It would be a death sentence and then people would point to it to say this is why women's wrestling can't succeed in the US.

It may be better to build up existing factions and pepper them across the shows so they can build up their storylines. We need to get to the point where women's matches are prominent on the shows and main events are fairly common and given the amount of time they deserve.

[–] EnderMB 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they're not ready now, when will they be?

Even with a slow build, unless someone pulls the trigger on the women's division in some promotion, it's hard to say if women's wrestling can ever succeed alongside men's.

[–] ItsWizardTime 1 points 1 year ago

There was a point about 5(?) Years ago when you had Sasha Banks, Alexa Bliss, Charlotte, Becky, Bayley, Naomi and more doing amazing matches and fun angles. It wasn't where it needed to be but it was well on the way.... Things changed.

That being said lumping all of the women on the shortest and lowest rated show just takes eyes off of them on the 2 bigger shows.

Rampage is the B show it's the taped show at the end of a Live Dynamite. The crowd is often exhausted, and emptying because it's nearing midnight by the time of the main event. Putting all of the women there is basically saying they aren't good enough to be on the live shows. Also lumping 30+ women on a one hour show is exactly good for anyone.

Each show needs it's own identity and the women on each show should have their own angles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Great idea. I’ll add more later (maybe a day or two? I’m gonna let this one marinate). But quickly: I don’t know why they didn’t do a “Blind Eliminators Tag Tournament” for the women’s division also. It fell flat during the pandemic era, but the roster is much stronger now. It would’ve been a great way to start new feuds/friendships/etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Mob boss Shida. Also pair Yuka with Riho, call them the Murder Girls, and have everyone who underestimates them get big time forearms til their lights go out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's simple. More matches, and more angles.

They have all the ingredients they need. They just need to bake the fucking cake already.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is pretty much it. They need to be willing to commit more time slots to the division. Right now it's like they're afraid to give the division any more time because it has historically got lower ratings than the men's, but it's a chicken and egg situation, since they've always been shucked off to the worst timeslot and never given investment. So of course people are going to become accustomed to tuning out for that section.

Make a concerted effort to allocate more of the show's time to the division and better booking and more focus will inherently come, since they'll have a larger portion of the show 'on the line' depending on the division being good television. It was a rough transition at the start for WWE too - the first women's rumble was weak because the division was tiny, and it felt forced to give a women's version of every big match. After a couple years though, it was the norm and the strength of the division started to shine through. They've still got a ways to go on their side of things as well on the main roster nowadays, but it's in a better state than AEW for sure.

Now's the best time to do it with the brand split - there's more television time to go around than ever.

[–] tankplanker 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem has always been that the women are an afterthought when it comes to planning out the minutes in dynamite. Like tonight they wanted all the big name men wrestlers to get a spot, and time those matches were left there was hardly any time left for a main event title match that would:

spoilersee the womens title change hands

In other words, a big deal match. It should have had about 20 minutes plus entrances but was about 5 minutes short.

Adding more matches for women does not fix the problem when they are the first ones to get their time cut when other segments go long, either during the show or even worse during the planning meeting. It is also unhelpful when they are often the default buffer between two big mens matches that often have gimmicks or special stips applied.

Nobody is going to care about something the owner shows that they don't care about because its always an afterthought. Its no coincidence that the biggest "home grown" name in the women's division is the only one to have the majority of TV time. That's not to diminish what Brit has achieved, but you cannot run with the ball like she did if you're not consistently given it in the first place.

Consistent booking of TV time is something that the men's division also suffers with outside of the (much larger group of) usual suspects, but it can be particularly bad with the women's division. Both divisions also suffer with a lack of consistent promo time outside a handful of big name men.

How to fix this? Stop booking womens matches as an afterthought or buffers - they need more time and more matches at the start and end of the show. Start booking feuds and not matches, give everybody and all shows access to promos at all levels to actually progress feuds.

[–] ItsWizardTime 4 points 1 year ago

I completely agree, I was shocked that they used time for that tag match which was fun but in the grand scheme meaningless. It's great that they were willing to go over time, it shows that it's an important match, but it does feel like a knee jerk reaction to the "Fix the women's division" sign from last week. If they can actually build this into an interesting angle and a match come All In, it will show they are learning.

Someone mentioned Mafia Boss Shida and I'm here for it, have her assemble her crew of AEW talent and use her winning to have Shida transform the division as she sees fit.

The most frustrating thing is you see sparks of it here and there but they just don't follow through

Athena is killing it on ROH Willow has been great on Dynamite Julia Hart has developed into a great character Lady Frost looks great every time I see her..

But for every one of these there's a Shafir, a Deeb, a Hersch, a Kiss, an Abadon, a Nyla that could do so much more...