Can we give Stadium Stampede MOTY already?

[Here Comes the Pain]

It was like a perfect blend of wwf hardcore 24/7 brawling & theatrics without it coming across too campy.

Aew hit straight bullseye yesterday.

 

[Playaz Eyez]

I get what you mean but let’s not revise history like we (maybe not you specifically) weren’t in that MITB thread praising it and laughing our asses off

The Firefly Funhouse match was fantastic and don’t let anybody rewrite history about it

 

[Cartier Murphy]

On second rewatch I fukk with it heavier than the first go round

 

[Max.]

Remember when orton edge did that gym choking spot at the marks were like

"fukk wwe!!! They making fun of benoit!"

But when they do a drowning spot 24 hours after a black man died tragically

The marks go "well that didnt cross my mind" "

 

[Brad Piff]

Remember when orton edge did that gym choking spot at the marks were like

"fukk wwe!!! They making fun of benoit!"

But when they do a drowning spot 24 hours after a black man died tragically

The marks go "well that didnt cross my mind" "

You serious breh? They staged a drowning?

it hasn’t even been a week since Shad the gawd died.

 

[MenacingMonk]

The 2 Mark Power Trip strikes again.

 

[Brad Piff]

The 2 Mark Power Trip strikes again.

Oh damn I just realized you made this thread. That’s why you so salty.

you gotta admit though man, a drowning spot the same week a wrestler drowns is not a good look.

 

[TrueEpic08]

Yes. Absolutely yes.

No potential G1 Climax match could replace it unless it takes place in an empty stadium

You just reminded me of how much this resembles the Minoru Suzuki/Sanshiro Takagi Tokyo Dome Empty Arena match from a few years back.

Sammy Guevara is the best smarmy, douchey chickenshyt heel existing to be beaten in wrestling right now. He's Top 5. Like, he's 1-5. It is not close. Dude is fukking hilarious and you can clearly see Jericho is taking an interest there because dude is legitimately hilarious in his role.

Sammy is the best punching bag/tackling dummy heel I've seen in a long, LONG time. He does almost literally nothing but eat shyt in increasingly embarrassing ways, get a minor token win from time to time, then eat shyt harder than ever before, yet he gets increasingly over with every single failure of his we see.

Dude was a fukking gem in this match. A legit star already.

Anyway, I don't really think it was the match of the year (I'd have to go back through the year's matches to decide that), but it might be the most purely fun match of the year so far. Here's what I just wrote about it in the PPV thread:

Stadium Stampede...man. Easily the best actual match of the "cinematic" matches we've seen in the pandemic era (the Firefly Fun House "match" is still a ways above this, but that wasn't an actual match). Looking past how utterly silly some of this was, I love that there was actual logic woven through the entire thing. There were some really great set pieces (with Hangman and Omega vs Hager in the bar being the best of them by quite a bit), the comedy derived from the character's tendencies and personalities as opposed to some old septuagenarian's whims (the difference between goofy yet bearable and unwatchable), and the booking of the match made complete sense. The Elite, the unit that's had a million different questions about their cohesiveness, beats the supposedly rock solid Inner Circle by drawing their opponents away from one another and using teamwork to take them down individually (Matt gets an assist from Kenny to take out Proud and Powerful in his own unique fashion, Hangman and Kenny have to team together to take down The Terminator Hager, the Young Bucks take out top heel Jericho with superior tag team wrestling, and EVERYONE shyts on Sammy [again]). I would have loved to see this in WarGames, but I would argue having to shift to the Stadium Stampede was a blessing in disguise, since it works better with everyone's sensibilities as wrestlers.

Not everyone's going to like this, since it's at heart a deeply silly match. But it's probably more representative of the wrestling-as-live-anime aesthetic Omega's been pursuing for the last half-decade or so (maybe even since he got to DDT to begin with) than maybe any other match he's had that wasn't with Ibushi. Not everyone's going to like the extremely thin line between seriousness and comedy, the overly dramatic and exaggerated character portrayals, and the focus more on the rising and falling action of storytelling than on the tried and true components of wrestling psychology. Hell, I can't even get with it all the time (if those traits of Omega's match style sound familiar, it's because it's been a staple of the WWE's now-extremely-fukking-annoying big match style for years now), but the constant, chaotic action of the match helped anchor everything in some sense of believable conflict and combat, so it worked here.

I wouldn't want to see this be a yearly thing (as with the Firefly Fun House match working so well because it was Bray and Cena, this worked so well because it was these two exact teams. Be honest, would this have been improved in any way by swapping in Cody for Matt Hardy?), but with the right teams, this could be a very fun occasional gimmick match. The second cinematic match of this period I can call an unqualified success.

 

[Max.]

You serious breh? They staged a drowning?

it hasn’t even been a week since Shad the gawd died.

Matt hardy was face down floating the after breh died

 

[MenacingMonk]

Oh damn I just realized you made this thread. That’s why you so salty.

you gotta admit though man, a drowning spot the same week a wrestler drowns is not a good look.

I don’t like people’s bullshyt. I don’t put up with it online or in real life.

Last I checked, AEW didn’t film a drowning spot in the ocean. This is something someone points out to just to find a way to be negative.

The E spot with Edge/Orton, they actually filmed that in a small gym probably using the same type of machine Benoit used to off himself.

It wasn’t even that big of a deal (edge/Orton) with the IWC (at least in TSC) because dudes were talking about it for like a day. There wasn’t even a thread about it on here. Your autistic friend just takes his Wreddit buddies’ opinions and tries to make it a TSC thing:

 

[Metal Face]

I watched this shyt 3 times yesterday
fun ass match

 

[YAYU]

shyt was entertaining as hell! this > that bray wyatt bullshyt

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

So wwe and aew taking TNA/ impact style

as usual.

sad thing is, people arent even acknowledging it.

 

[Da King]

Oh damn I just realized you made this thread. That’s why you so salty.

you gotta admit though man, a drowning spot the same week a wrestler drowns is not a good look.

that fakkit @El Villano Ingobernable takes anything against AEW to heart

I’m convinced he thinks play fighting is real

 

[MenacingMonk]

DaAutistiKKKing keeps begging for my attention like I’m his daddy. Sorry your parents didn’t give you it.