AEW: Stokely Hathaway on Original Plans for CM Punk & Firm, Tony Schiavone on DQ Finishes, Dark Results

Nov 29, 2022

Stokely Hathaway Comments on AEW’s Original Post-All Out 2022 Plans for CM Punk & The Firm

A recent episode of The Sessions with Renee Paquette podcast had Stokely Hathaway as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Hathaway revealing AEW’s original plans for CM Punk and The Firm following their All Out 2022 event had Punk’s backstage fight incident not taken place.

“Who we were supposed to directly feud with is no longer in the company. That is one thing I was looking forward to because I was hand chosen for that role. I’m just going to say it: I don’t know the specifics, if people are choosing sides or whatever, but for me, the fact that CM Punk said, ‘Hey, I want to work with this guy,’ that holds a lot of weight and means a lot, regardless of what has happened, what will happen.
Everyone in the group is trying to do their best and we’re trying to figure out how to make this work because the original purpose isn’t the purpose anymore, so it’s like, what do you do?. Things are slowly gearing up; it’s just going to take a few weeks. With the way wrestling is nowadays, I get it. First impressions are everything, but it’s a little bit difficult to change people’s minds. Most people don’t want to see Picasso work on his painting — they just want to see the sh*t done. That’s the phase we’re in. We’re working on it, but people don’t want to see it worked on. They want to see the finished product.”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com

Tony Schiavone Comments on His Dislike of DQ Finishes for Matches

A recent episode of the What Happened When with Tony Schiavone podcast featured co-host Tony Schiavone’s thoughts on his dislike of disqualification finishes to wrestling matches.

While discussing the ending to the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship match between Michael Hayes and champion Ric Flair on the December 5, 1987 episode of NWA World Championship Wrestling, Schiavone stated:

“Yeah, it’s the wrong thing to do. I liked, at the time, being part of it, being excited, telling the fans ‘we have to go, we’re out time’ and I used to say ‘the tape machines are rolling, we’ll show you what happened next week.’ We necessarily never did, or most of the time we didn’t. You have the fans invested in this match, the match moves along, and all of a sudden, ope, we’re gone. What the hell? It’s like, ‘bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, we’re gonna win the World Series…but we have to go to the Mary Tyler Moore Show.’ We’ve talked a lot about the cracks in Jim Crockett promotions, the sale of UWF, Dusty (Rhodes) booking himself over in the Bunkhouse Stampede, guys not showing up for bookings, and going off TV without showing finishes. That all, mixed into the pot, is the reason we failed. I don’t think you’ll ever see Tony Khan book a show where he goes off without a finish.”

Schiavone also gave his thoughts on when DQ finishes are used to set up a post-match show closing big brawl.

“That’s a storytelling device. You can still have a finish in your match and then move on with the storytelling device after the finish. I never liked fuck finish DQs. Fuck finish DQs is fucking the fans. You don’t want to fuck the fans. You can only fuck them so many times.”

Schiavone also gave his thoughts on how many times a booker or promoter can get away with upsetting fans using disqualification finishes to matches.

“38. I knew you were going to ask me some dumb ass number, so I just threw one out there so appease your dumbass question. You can’t please everybody. Sometimes, a group of fans are going to feel like they’ve been fucked over. A lot of times, a group of fans are waiting to be fucked over and they live for that so they can shit on you and shit on your promotion and shit on this podcast and that’s what they do because they are miserable fucks.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

AEW Dark Results – Nov. 29, 2022

November 29, 2022
Newark, NJ – Prudential Center
Commentary: Excalibur and Taz

AEW Dark Quick Match Results:

The Factory (Lee Johnson, QT Marshall, & Cole Karter) defeated Justin Corino, Ryan Mooney, & Steve Josifi via Assisted Diamond Cutter (pinfall)
Zack Clayton defeated Chris Wylde via Fisherman Buster (pinfall)
Hikaru Shida defeated Layla Luciano via Katana (pinfall)
Jericho Appreciation Society (Matt Menard, Angelo Parker, & Daniel Garcia) defeated Tracy Williams, LSG, & Jack Tomlinson via Dragon Sleeper (submission)
Brian Cage defeated Tony Deppen via Drill Claw (pinfall)
Angelico defeated Hagane Shinno via Navarro Special (submission)
Emi Sakura defeated Tiara James via Double Underhook Backbreaker (pinfall)
Matt Hardy & Private Party (Marq Quen & Isiah Kassidy) defeated The Wingmen (Peter Avalon, Cezar Bononi, & Ryan Nemeth) via Ego’s Edge (pinfall)