Please stop with the attempts at comedy already! And can Hurt Syndicate please stop burying their opponents? – AEW RISING AND FADING STARS

Welcome everyone!

We are just days from AEW WrestleDream and I for one am really excited for the show, despite what you are about to read.

Dynamite is almost here, so let’s get to the list!

Rising Star of the Week

After WrestleDream, this list will be full.

I am going to leave this blank for the week, though. Not because I didn’t like anything this week. I just feel like it’s a holding pattern until WrestleDream.

That said, I have plenty to say on the other side of the coin that is this column.

Fading Star of the Week

The Demand

Someone explain to me what the hell is going on with The Demand and The Hurt Syndicate. Their feud has been going on for a while now and yet this past week felt like a total burial of the team who should come out on top in this feud, The Demand.

As the match went on during Dynamite, I saw what was going on and I pretty much watched the second half of the match shaking my head. In fact, the second half of the match felt more like a squash match.

Ricochet is fine. At this point, he can sustain losses and then talk or wrestle himself back into any program. The same can not be said for Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona, The Gates of Agony. The two of them are still trying to build themselves into a credible tag team.

The best thing that could happen for the Demand would be The Hurt Syndicate leaving for a few months or just moving on to someone else. There is just no way The Demand is going to get the better of The Hurt Syndicate.

Well, we all know that’s not going to happen. On Dynamite, the GOA vs. The Hurt Syndicate has been announced. With the six-man tag team rematch happening at Dynasty, why does this feel like more wins for the Hurt Syndicate?

I could be totally wrong, though, and be happily surprised. If GOA comes out with the win on Dynamite and the Demand wins at WrestleDream, then what I’m talking about above won’t matter as much. If it goes the other way, this is going to be a WWE group coming into AEW and just destroying three men who should be rising right now.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…

Check out the latest episode of the “All Elite Conversation Club” with Joel Dehnel and Gregg Kanner, part of the PWTorch Dailycast line-up: CLICK HERE to stream (or search “pwtorch” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other iOS or Android app to subscribe free)

1st Runner Up: AEW’s Comedy

Please end the backstage Conglomeration segments. Please!

So to start, I don’t tend to like a lot of comedy in my wrestling. If something comes across as funny organically, that’s okay, but forced comedy segments are, at times, very hard to watch. Add to that that, AEW has way too many forced comedy moments or goes for “haha” stuff with their serious people too much and it’s a bad recipe. For instance, the “Let’s go, Kyle!” stuff, because Kyle Fletcher should not be near any of the comedy at this point in his push.

I want to see things like the “Hangman” Adam Page and Samoa Joe promo. Or the obvious dislike between Okada and Takeshita. Hell, I will even take the FTR acting like the ECW Dudley’s over 97 percent of AEW’s comedy.

Let’s add Mark Briscoe to the no comedy list. Briscoe is endearing and easy to like, but that doesn’t mean he is funny.

I also don’t need Don Callis making inside jokes constantly on his promos or commentary either. He’s a manager of some very serious characters on AEW, but he can come off as a carney in the worst way. I have shopped at various cannabis dispensaries around this country. If I walked in and a guy like Callis was behind the counter, I would assume he’s selling fake products and I’d leave. (Yes, this is a real world issue. Know who you get your cannabis products from.)

Look, I get that at its core AEW’s fanbase was born from the Young Bucks “Being the Elite” YouTube content, so there will be some comedy at its roots, but it doesn’t need to be all over so much of the shows. The Young Bucks might really be in the “greatest tag team of all time” discussion had they basically not gone back and forth between being a comedy duo and a serious main event tag team.

Harley Cameron is a funny woman, but should she be doing comedy in every Kris Statlander backstage promo? No, especially not while Stat is trying to get over as being the AEW Women’s World Champion.

Then the argument I hear is that this person or this person is funny, but as long as they can go in the ring it doesn’t matter. I disagree with that.

There is one exception to this rule and it’s Orange Cassidy. OC pulls the two together, but he should be the majority of your comedy near the top or mid-top of the card.

QUICK NOTE: Did you know you can read an ad-free, silky-smooth-loading version of this website with a PWTorch VIP Membership? Also, unlock 35+ years of archives including nearly 2,000 PWTorch Weekly Newsletters dating back to the late 1980s, hundreds of retro radio shows from the 1990s, and two decades of podcasts including Post-PPV Roundtable Podcasts dating back to the mid-2000s. Plus, new VIP-exclusive articles and podcasts throughout the week, fully compatible with the native Apple Podcasts app: CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS ON VIP MEMBERSHIP