Impact/TNA are weird. Their overall track record is thoroughly mediocre, but their women’s division is really well regarded and apparently tends to be booked really well.
The frustrating thing with AEW is that their overall quality level is fantastic… Probably the best the business has ever been, but there’s a noticeable lag with the women’s wrestling. Which doesn’t mean their women’s wrestling is bad; the division is fantastic, full of absolute standouts like Kris Statlander, Jamie Hayter, Hikaru Shida, Saraya (AKA Paige; yes, that Paige!), Athena (formerly Ember Moon), Julia Hart, and Dr Britt Baker DMD (who is, and I am not making a word of this up, a literal actual dentist who runs a dental practice as her day job, wrestles in her free time, and held the AEW women’s world championship for over a year because she’s just that good). And their booking isn’t terrible, it just feels like it gets less attention than the men’s side of things.
AEW is, in my opinion, the best wrestling product in the world. Even with my criticisms of their women’s booking (which has, to be fair, been slowly but steadily improving), it’s still well worth watching.
(edit to add: on the question of how they position their trans wrestlers, the main one is Nyla, who they’ve always booked really strong. She was a little too green for the booking they were giving her early on - she was their second ever Women’s World Champ - which is why she’s settled more into the mid card these days, but she consistently gets booked as a monster heel who people have reason to be afraid of. And to be clear, the fact that she’s a heel is never connected to her being trans. It’s just because her character is a total dick. Nyla the performer clearly has an absolute blast playing heel. The other one was Sonny Kiss who just never quite connected with audiences despite AEW making frequent attempts to push them. Sonny was always treated seriously, never as a joke. Their nickname was “The Concrete Rose” and commentary always put over how tough and resilient they were. But they just didn’t click with a mainstream American audience in a way that was ever going to get them out of the lower rungs)
They have had their fair share of bad decisions and behind the scenes controversies. Though probably not all the hate they get is justified.
I tend to look past the mediocre stuff because most of it is born from milking the same storyline past its due date. Aces & Eights comes to mind, and all of the EC3 stuff. Loved the concepts, they just took way too long to resolve, which kinda drains the energy.
Ultimately it’s the small moments and unique twists that I’ll remember fondly, such as Roode terrorizing Sting to the point where he took out his Insane Icon gimmick. Jay Lethal impersonating Rick Flair, the Joseph Park Esq. arc, Austin Aries bluffing his way into ‘option C’ for a shot at the heavyweight title, the introduction of The Rising during the Beatdown Clan time with the amazing speech by Eli Drake. All moments that were amazing within their context.
But my absolute favourite arc was when they brought in Taryn Terrell as a referee after Gail Kim discovered you can just seduce the male referees to win. Which escalated into one of the best feuds I have ever seen.
Great to hear that trans wrestlers are taken seriously. Really curious to see them in action now. Might look up some matches.
Nyla’s second match with Riho is excellent. Their first outing was weak, chemistry didn’t click, but second go round they put on an absolute banger. Riho has a really strong sense of ring psychology and their David & Goliath dynamic works well.
Honestly, I fell off of TNA when they brought Hogan and Bischoff in and they changed everything about the place. I’ve tried to get back into it several times since, and never quite managed.
And definitely, there are more prominent trans wrestlers now than pretty much ever. Nyla Rose is probably the most well-known one, but there’s also Gisele Shaw in TNA, Kidd Bandit and Edith Surreal have been indie standouts, and VENY has been making waves in Japan (and has also done a handful of AEW appearances). There’s a semi-regular series of indie events called Effy’s Big Gay Brunch that features an all-LGBTQ+ roster that’s well worth checking out; you can stream them online.
Oh yeah, Hogan and Bischoff definitely did more harm than good. I remeber getting so tired of the Bischoff stuff that I would just not watch it anymore.
Best decision they’ve made was to bring in Sting to replace Hogan and we got a new Main Event Mafia and an awesome feud with Roode as a result.
Thanks for the suggestions by the way, definitely interested to see how the wrestling world is becoming more inclusive. I feel like it might still take some time to adapt, though we have been watching shiny muscular men in tight speedos for years now which is arguably more gay than watching someone talented doing what they do best and they just happen to be queer.
Impact/TNA are weird. Their overall track record is thoroughly mediocre, but their women’s division is really well regarded and apparently tends to be booked really well.
The frustrating thing with AEW is that their overall quality level is fantastic… Probably the best the business has ever been, but there’s a noticeable lag with the women’s wrestling. Which doesn’t mean their women’s wrestling is bad; the division is fantastic, full of absolute standouts like Kris Statlander, Jamie Hayter, Hikaru Shida, Saraya (AKA Paige; yes, that Paige!), Athena (formerly Ember Moon), Julia Hart, and Dr Britt Baker DMD (who is, and I am not making a word of this up, a literal actual dentist who runs a dental practice as her day job, wrestles in her free time, and held the AEW women’s world championship for over a year because she’s just that good). And their booking isn’t terrible, it just feels like it gets less attention than the men’s side of things.
AEW is, in my opinion, the best wrestling product in the world. Even with my criticisms of their women’s booking (which has, to be fair, been slowly but steadily improving), it’s still well worth watching.
(edit to add: on the question of how they position their trans wrestlers, the main one is Nyla, who they’ve always booked really strong. She was a little too green for the booking they were giving her early on - she was their second ever Women’s World Champ - which is why she’s settled more into the mid card these days, but she consistently gets booked as a monster heel who people have reason to be afraid of. And to be clear, the fact that she’s a heel is never connected to her being trans. It’s just because her character is a total dick. Nyla the performer clearly has an absolute blast playing heel. The other one was Sonny Kiss who just never quite connected with audiences despite AEW making frequent attempts to push them. Sonny was always treated seriously, never as a joke. Their nickname was “The Concrete Rose” and commentary always put over how tough and resilient they were. But they just didn’t click with a mainstream American audience in a way that was ever going to get them out of the lower rungs)
They have had their fair share of bad decisions and behind the scenes controversies. Though probably not all the hate they get is justified.
I tend to look past the mediocre stuff because most of it is born from milking the same storyline past its due date. Aces & Eights comes to mind, and all of the EC3 stuff. Loved the concepts, they just took way too long to resolve, which kinda drains the energy.
Ultimately it’s the small moments and unique twists that I’ll remember fondly, such as Roode terrorizing Sting to the point where he took out his Insane Icon gimmick. Jay Lethal impersonating Rick Flair, the Joseph Park Esq. arc, Austin Aries bluffing his way into ‘option C’ for a shot at the heavyweight title, the introduction of The Rising during the Beatdown Clan time with the amazing speech by Eli Drake. All moments that were amazing within their context.
But my absolute favourite arc was when they brought in Taryn Terrell as a referee after Gail Kim discovered you can just seduce the male referees to win. Which escalated into one of the best feuds I have ever seen.
Great to hear that trans wrestlers are taken seriously. Really curious to see them in action now. Might look up some matches.
Nyla’s second match with Riho is excellent. Their first outing was weak, chemistry didn’t click, but second go round they put on an absolute banger. Riho has a really strong sense of ring psychology and their David & Goliath dynamic works well.
Honestly, I fell off of TNA when they brought Hogan and Bischoff in and they changed everything about the place. I’ve tried to get back into it several times since, and never quite managed.
And definitely, there are more prominent trans wrestlers now than pretty much ever. Nyla Rose is probably the most well-known one, but there’s also Gisele Shaw in TNA, Kidd Bandit and Edith Surreal have been indie standouts, and VENY has been making waves in Japan (and has also done a handful of AEW appearances). There’s a semi-regular series of indie events called Effy’s Big Gay Brunch that features an all-LGBTQ+ roster that’s well worth checking out; you can stream them online.
Oh yeah, Hogan and Bischoff definitely did more harm than good. I remeber getting so tired of the Bischoff stuff that I would just not watch it anymore.
Best decision they’ve made was to bring in Sting to replace Hogan and we got a new Main Event Mafia and an awesome feud with Roode as a result.
Thanks for the suggestions by the way, definitely interested to see how the wrestling world is becoming more inclusive. I feel like it might still take some time to adapt, though we have been watching shiny muscular men in tight speedos for years now which is arguably more gay than watching someone talented doing what they do best and they just happen to be queer.