![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/mercedes_aew.jpg\")
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I\u2019m not entirely sure if Tony Khan thinks he\u2019s being clever, subtle or he\u2019s flagrantly doing it on purpose, but pretty much every wrestling fan on the planet knew that BIG BU$INE$$ in BO$$TON was going to be the debut of Mercedes Mone.<\/span><\/p>\n Say what you will though, I\u2019ve been critical about Mercedes over the last year and change, but I\u2019m also critical because I care.\u00a0 I was a fan of Sasha Banks, dubious in which the circumstances she left under, but happy to see when she re-emerged in Japan, won titles there, and even predicted her inevitable path that would take her to AEW.<\/span><\/p>\n And as much as I like the work possible by guys like Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada, their arrivals in AEW didn\u2019t really make me stop what I was doing and carve out time to see them.\u00a0 But knowing that March 13th<\/sup>, BIG BU$INE$$ FROM BO$$TON was going to be the arrival of Mercedes Mone, I made the conscious effort to carve out time from my generally time-starved life, to tune in and watch, because I was looking forward to seeing Mercedes Varnado, back in professional wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n However, having watched BIG BU$INE$$, my thoughts were making these posts pondering whatever the fuck AEW is doing, because I just have a hard time wrapping my brain around their general MO.\u00a0 I get that I probably fall into the category that\u2019s been so indoctrinated with how the WWE operates, that anything alternative to it just seems rather perplexing, but I\u2019ll also say that I had no problems being a fan of WCW and ECW and to some degree, old NWA-TNA back before the days of Impact.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019m still a fan of Impact now that they\u2019re back to being TNA, but it\u2019s just AEW, and now the AEW-controlled Ring of Honor, that I\u2019m just so often scratching my head about.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I want to like the product as their diehard fans do, but there\u2019s just so much going on that I can\u2019t find the ability to be a fan of the promotion as a whole as much as I just like cherry-picked aspects of the company, like Toni Storm, Will Ospreay, Daniel Garcia, and my growing respect for Orange Cassidy.\u00a0 And I think it\u2019s very amusing that the some of the guys that are doing the best work for the promotion, are all former WWE hands, like Storm, Christian, Swerve and Samoa Joe.<\/span><\/p>\n But back to BIG BU$INE$$, it was obvious the entire show was produced structured around Mercedes getting to open the show, as well as close it out.\u00a0 Because in no logical reality should a match between Willow Nightengale and Riho be the main event of a show, especially one that had Samoa Joe vs. Wardlow and Jay White vs. Darby Allin on the card.\u00a0 There are three former TNT champs, a former IWGP champion, and the current AEW champion, and they all played the undercard, just to ensure that Mercedes Mone got to close the show out, even if it meant main eventing a match between two girls who were literally Ring of Honor dark match talent not even a full year ago.<\/span><\/p>\n Now I was happy to see Mercedes, but I couldn\u2019t help but feel like the arena wasn\u2019t doing her any favors.\u00a0 I felt like the acoustics in the arena murdered her entrance music, it was hard to hear the crowd actually chanting C-E-O for her, and when she got on the mic to speak, the echo sounded as if the Boston Garden hadn\u2019t updated their equipment since Greg the Racist Valentine<\/a> cut his scathing promo with terribly racist undertones.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She cut a good promo, gave love to Eddie Guerrero, and it will be interesting to see how things transpire, because in AEW there\u2019s either really good workers (Toni, Britt, Purrazzo) and then there\u2019s everyone else.\u00a0 This won\u2019t be like CM Punk coming in to a sea of talent, Mercedes will have to put on her carry boots on every night, and it\u2019ll be telling to see how she measures up to this responsibility.<\/span><\/p>\n Again though, I don\u2019t think it was right to structure the entire show around ensuring Mercedes got to close out the show, especially with the talent they lined up in order to make that happen.\u00a0 I know the logical program is to work in Willow Nightengale since it was her that Mercedes got hurt against, but she\u2019s still green as baby shit, and I can\u2019t imagine that Mercedes isn\u2019t going to have some PTSD having to work with the person who basically cut her entire NJPW deal short.<\/span><\/p>\n But then again, this is why this series of posts is titled what they are, because when the day is over, I really have no fucking clue to what AEW is doing.\u00a0 And because of that, it really doesn\u2019t matter if they have Mercedes Mone, Kazuchika Okada, or even Will Ospreay, unless they find the magic formula that gives them logical, watchable weekly programming, on top of their propensity to put on above-average pay-per-views, they\u2019re never going to be seen as a superior product than the WWE.\u00a0 I know they and their brainwashed fans insist that that\u2019s not what the goal is, but everyone knows that\u2019s full of shit.\u00a0 They all want to have their cake and eat it too, which is that they need to be the #1 promotion, so they can all revel in being #1; but it\u2019s never going to happen if AEW continues to operate in the manner that basically makes AEW, AEW.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not entirely sure if Tony Khan thinks he\u2019s being clever, subtle or he\u2019s flagrantly doing it on purpose, but pretty much every wrestling fan on the planet knew that BIG BU$INE$$ in BO$$TON was going to be the debut of Mercedes Mone. Say what you will though, I\u2019ve been critical about Mercedes over the … Continue reading WTF is AEW doing #302<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,83,54,49,55],"class_list":["post-49836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-comparison","tag-observations","tag-wrestling","tag-wtf","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49838,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49836\/revisions\/49838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}