[Evil Vito]

Originally Posted by M-A-G Gonna need some details as to why Bad Romance has that name. Did they both have Lady Gaga at some point in their lives?

I think I could feature them on Dynamite more if I could pull that kind of celebrity cameo. That said the name is a result of Joey Janela's nickname (The Bad Boy) and Sonny Kiss' surname. They're a fun team that mostly wrestle on Dark. Janela's another guy that originally started as a deathmatch guy before making his way on the regular indies, Sonny Kiss is one of the few openly gender-fluid wrestlers in the business.

That's how you open a show! But really, is the Blood and Guts thing just War Games with a different paint job? How are they getting away with that? I mean Cody and Dustin are certainly heirs to whatever Dusty Rhodes ever created but doesn't the WWE essentially own everything?

Although they didn't get to have Blood and Guts due to the pandemic, all signs were that it was essentially War Games. Not sure if it would've been a totally faithful interpretation or if there would've been rule modifications.

Vince might own the trademarks to a lot of the names but doing the same match styles is fair game. Nearly every promotion has done their own take on the Royal Rumble.

Yeah, that moment when you book a hell of a match between competitors who are over as fuck immediately before some scrubs. The game will give the middle finger to stats in this regard and will only care about how over your guys are. So sticking a bunch of guys in their forties right after a bunch of guys in their mid-eighties to nineties is just asking for a let down. I try to keep anybody lower than seventy in the first few matches. Also, booking angles and interviews in between will not help mitigate the problem.

It's one of those things where when booking the show I knew it was possible/likely to happen but I'm also striving to book somewhat like the real AEW and they usually try to have high points to open and close the show. But ah well.

Is that 'haircut-as-a-memento' thing real? I've always wanted to see something like that and I don't think it's ever been implemented. It totally fits Kong.

Yeah Kong was doing that during her original AEW run, the stable she was in with Brandi, Mel, and Luther was a bit of a flop and it abruptly ended when Kong had to go film GLOW, but I'd be down to see it return as a solo act.

You're a braver man than I am. I never stick a person with less than 85 charisma in an interview segment unless accompanied by a manager. Like you put it, sort of, work with what you got.

Yeah, I usually don't either. I could've just booked it as "Cody invites Darby to join the face team" and been fine with it but booking it as a dual interview gave each guy a +1 in their ongoing feuds.

These guys work pretty well together, I've noticed. Their stats have to be pretty boss, no?

The funny thing about it is they have good stats but their strengths are in opposite areas. It's obviously not been enough to generate any sort of notice that they don't click, the stats are good enough to pull 3 stars and they the crowd rating's gonna be there, both guys have probably gone up around 5-6 points in overness due to the feud.

I should probably think long and hard about trimming my roster down so that I'm focused on a select few people, kind of like what you're doing but I have such good talent that no one else deserves.

In terms of in-ring I think AEW mixes up their usage a bit more than I have in game. Plenty of guys don't wrestle every Dynamite and sometimes it might be 3 weeks between matches, but the key players are always doing interviews and segments to keep their stories going. I try to replicate it as best I can.