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Pro-Wres Lab: A New Structure for Pro Wrestling (feat. AEW)

Bryan Danielson as AEW World Champion
Bryan Danielson as AEW World Champion

So this isn’t exactly a fantasy booking session. It’s a Pro-Wres Lab. I kind of did this before in The Agency System, Part 1. This isn’t part 2, it’s not the agency system. It’s along a similar line but not exactly the same thing. If I had to try to nail it down, The Agency System, Part 1 was kind of a fantasy meta-booking. What I’m going to do now is closer to a fantasy company strategy.

I don’t want to take a bunch of time to explain what the difference is supposed to be. Let’s just get into it.

The exercise here is to re-organize All Elite Wrestling into something that I think could actually compete against WWE. This is based on my idea that, in brief, “storylines are a con”. I haven’t fully fleshed this out yet in an article but I plan to. But to be a bit clearer, I think storylines have become the center of pro wrestling, to its detriment. Storylines cover over the exciting matches that are at the core of what makes wrestling a draw. Pushing storylines out as far as possible is the goal.

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Pro-Wres Lab: The Agency System, Part 1 (feat. AEW)

Cody Rhodes after winning the NWA World's Heavyweight Championship at the original All In
Cody Rhodes as NWA World Heavyweight Champion

Let’s try and rethink wrestling. It’s an ambitious proposition, I get it, but I’ll have fun with it and maybe you will, too. What I’m going to do is propose a new style of wrestling booking: the Agency System. If I had to boil down the goal of the Agency System to one word, it would be realism. If I had a few more, I’d say this: we’re going to rely on naturalistic stories for wrestling rather than on artificial stories.

American pro wrestling is for children. When I say this, I don’t say it disparagingly as-such. That is, I’m not saying “American pro wrestling is for children and therefore bad, because children only like bad things”. What I’m saying is compare the beats of The Sopranos to the beats of Power Rangers (look, I’m not watching TV these days, work with me) and see what pro wrestling hews closer to1. Not just WWE. All of American TV pro wrestling is like this. It is loud, it is in your face, it is frantic. It’s almost desperate not to lose your attention.

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Review: AEW Dynamite 1/1/25 – Look I Know It’s Late

I’m not gonna bother finding an image or anything for this one, but I’d still encourage you to read it. I both review Dynamite and give a commentary on the Thursday Dynamite Review from the VoW Flagship Patreon. I’m also going to start giving “enjoyment grades” to segments, using the common American grading scale (A, B, C, D, F), with C being average or moderate enjoyment. Like with the stars, I’m going to avoid “adjustments”, so there’ll be few C+s or A-s. Also in this one, I really went for a blow-by-blow type of recording, as best I can. I lost steam near the end. It wasn’t a great show.

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Commentary: Instant Reaction Live – AEW World’s End 2024

AEW Men's World Championship Match Graphic from AEW World's End 2024: Moxley vs. Page vs. Cassidy vs. White
Title Match Graphic from AEW World's End 2024: Moxley vs. Page vs. Cassidy vs. White

And here’s my commentary for the last AEW PPV of 2024, AEW World’s End! Happy New Year everybody, as I’ve said I’ve fallen behind a bit on my AEW watching but I’m catching up here. Here’s my reactions to the Voices of Wrestling Flagship podcast’s Instant Reaction Live to the show. This has a lot of talk about stakes, which is one of the Big Ideas that I’ve been working with when writing about wrestling.

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Review: AEW World’s End 12/28/2024 – Last Shot

AEW Continental Classic Final Graphic from World's End
AEW Continental Classic Final Graphic from World's End

It’s AEW’s final pay-per-view of the year and I’ve final-ly gotten to it. I took it in three chunks which probably colors my opinion. This review is just my notes as I watched through the show, including some digressions which I think are interesting. You’ll see some more move-calling in this review than in previous; this isn’t really to help people figure out what’s going on, it’s really about filling space (figuratively) if I don’t have anything else to say.

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Commentary: Thursday Dynamite Review 12/19/24

Mercedes Moné from the 12/18 AEW Dynamite
Mercedes Moné from the 12/18 AEW Dynamite

Not much to sink my teeth into on this review, which isn’t to say it was a bad review, just that nothing came up in particular. Lanza told people not to argue with him about “funny doesn’t equal money” though so obviously I’m going to do that, but we’ll get there.

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Review: AEW Dynamite 12/18/24 – Darby Allin is Not Serious

Screenshot from AEW Dynamite 12/18/2024 featuring Darby Allin and Will Ospreay ahead of their match
Darby Allin and Will Ospreay ahead of their match

I caught the latest AEW Dynamite and I have to say… it was okay. I don’t really have any particular overall thoughts, though the reprise does have a discussion on what “a champion” is via talking about Darby Allin’s seemingly inevitable title win. Everything was built solidly but unspectacularly. No bad matches here, though I could have honestly done with a couple of squashes to cleanse the palate, and some of the promos were a bit of wasted space.

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Commentary: Fri Thurs Dynamite Review (12/13/24) – Hate and Heat is Overrated

Tony Storm on AEW Dynamite 12/11/24
Tony Storm on AEW Dynamite 12/11/24

Lanza uploaded his review late so I uploaded my commentary late. Don’t come at me with “his was done three days ago” either. I’m taking off my shoe and I will throw it. Do you want the commentary or not?

This will be a bit more thorough than the review I did for this episode. I did watch the show, even though that review doesn’t really show it. There is also a fairly in-depth reprise focusing on the idea of “hate and heat”.

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Review: AEW Dynamite 12/11/24

Another so-so episode of Dynamite last night. Nothing really grabbed me on it. Next week I’ll try to lock in a little bit more, but I still haven’t really even found an act to latch onto. Even guys I like are involved in a lot of nonsense. And yeah, I know I’m being a downer right now. I’ll talk about it after the review.

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Commentary: Thursday Dynamite Review 12/5/24

Screenshot from MJF Promo on 12/4/24 Dynamite
Max, not at the show

Here is my commentary on the Voices of Wrestling Thursday Dynamite Review posted today, December 5, 2024. If you’re not aware, you can listen to this by checking out the VoW Patreon, which I’m going to trust you to be able to find. I’m not gonna shill every week but I figured I should at least point out exactly what I’m reacting to once. The host is the inimitable Joe Lanza; I’d have a specific nickname for him but they stopped doing that bit like a year ago.

Anyway, I have done a review of this event on my own where I give thoughts on suspension of belief, and I refer to some of these thoughts in the commentary so it’s worth checking out first.

Spoiler ahead for something that happened after the broadcast ended.

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