BRM Reviews the 4/1/2020 Dynamite (bad)
Posted: Apr 12th, '20, 00:00
CODY HAS BROUGHT HIS F*CKING DOG TO THE SHOW- I don’t know how to make a puking emoji, but that’s basically what I’m feeling right now.
Also, apparently Dustin Rhodes and Q.T. Marshall are going to be a tag team now. Snore.
KENNY OMEGA vs. TRENT (w/Chuck Taylor & Orange Cassidy)- 6.75/10
The match was meh. Senior Referee Aubrey Edwards just decided to ignore the count-out rule ninety percent of the time. They did a bunch of stuff. Kenny powerbombed Trent into a big pole on the outside and he fell to the ground, and then, a minute later, it’s Trent on offense, giving Kenny a German Suplex onto his head in the ring. The match was just MOVEZ, and with no crowd around to cheer and chant “THIS IS AWESOME!” the MOVEZ are so much more obviously just that. Now, more than ever, it’s important to make sure you actually tell a story.
Anyway, Kenny won clean (well… as clean as can be when it really should have been a double count-out), but they pushed that Trent took him close to the time-limit. This sort of thing only works if you rarely ever approach the time limit. Granted, they did come closer here than usual, but it still feels like we see Kenny go relatively long every time he wrestles, so taking him nineteen minutes doesn’t feel like that big of a deal.
They have apparently abandoned their old split-screen replay for a full-screen one… which means that we inevitably moss some of the action when they cut to it. Why would you do that?!
I find Cody to be extremely grating on commentary. He’s not bad, per se, the way that someone who buries the talent is, or the way that someone who gets the storylines wrong or says dumb things or makes a joke of everything is, but he doesn’t add anything, either, and he comes like an annoying shill and someone who just wants to have fun with his friend Tony. And you can say that that makes sense because he’s management, and that it’s fine for him to joke around with Tony so much because they are friends but I’d rather have someone who comes off as a lot more of a professional and a lot more authentic.
Cody bugged me by trying to put over the opener with the trite “this match would be a main event anywhere in the world, but here in AEW it’s only the opener.” First of all, one third of the Good Patrol is not a main eventer anywhere. Secondly, that whole line is almost a quarter of a century out of date. Since Nitro began airing head to head with Raw, the idea has always been that you want a hot opening segment to grab eyeballs right away. The opener is one of the three or four most important things on any show (depending many hours your show gets. Basically, anything at the top of an hour as well as the main event are the key segments).
HIKARU SHIDA VIDEO PACKAGE- fine
HIKARU SHIDA vs. ANNA JAYY- 4/10
The second Y is not a typo. That’s how she spelled it on her tights. If that’s not her shoot last name, then there is no reason to spell your name that way. Hell, even if it is her shoot last name, it’s pro wrestling. Just change it!
Shida is already the #1 contender and ranked #1. Cody has the audacity to come on commentary and ask “yeah, but how long do you want to be a bridesmaid?” How about you stop blaming her and do your f*cking job and book a title match then, asshole? You’re one of the people responsible for making those decisions, so how about you book her in her damn title match instead of wasting everyone’s time booking her against this tomato can?
Okay. So I spoke too soon when I called Anna Jayy a tomato can, as she gave Shida a fine fight, but the point still stands. Why is Shida booked again a woman who isn’t even on the roster instead of being booked against the champion if she’s the #1 contender?
Britt Baker yelled at Shida at ringside, so I guess we’re going to get that feud now instead of our title match. Actually, this is AEW, so Shida will probably be booked against a third party instead of booking one of the two obvious matches.
JAKE HAGER VS. JON MOXLEY VIDEO PACKAGE- I liked it at first but then it went WAY too long. This went at least five minutes, and (aside from the announcers’ intro to it) was the only thing we saw from one commercial break to the next.
CODY HAS BEEN REPLACED ON COMMENTARY BY COLT CABANA- He’s not much better than Cody. Cabana is on commentary to scout him because they are opponents in the first round of the AEW TNT Championship (or whatever silly name they’ve given it).
JAKE ROBERTS VIDEO PROMO ON BEHALF OF LANCE ARCHER- AWESOME!
That being said, I noticed during this promo that Jake’s moustache is not symmetrical, and once I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it and it kept bugging me.
LANCE ARCHER vs. MARK STUNT- 4/10
The spot above Marko’s entrance graphic where they have put some kind of fact (for example, Shida’s told us that she had won six of her last seven) read that he “must overcome Archer’s 1 ½-foot, 156-pind size advantage.” I didn’t like this is because being too blunt about what is happening here in the wrong place. That is something the announcers should be telling us. Doing it via a graphic makes it feel like AEW has put someone on my couch next to me trying to explain the story directly to me, instead of announcers filling a necessary role on a sporting show.
The first thing Lance Archer did in AEW was assault an innocent camera grip for absolutely no reason. He really should be fined for that, but he won’t be, because AEW doesn’t kayfabe care about it’s employees, which is a TERRIBLE look for a company where you’re acknowledging that the people in charge are a cadre of the majority of your top babyfaces.
The match did a good job of establishing Archer’s dominance.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- TERRIBLE!
Archer leaves after his victory, but then decides to come back. He picks up the defenseless Marko as a bunch of babyfaces in the crowd beg him to just go away and not hurt Marko anymore. Archer ignores them, picks Marko up, and throws him into them very hard. I’m sure everyone is going to be crooning over how cool this looked and how safe it probably wound up being for Marko but I don’t care about any of that for this segment because I care about not making the babyfaces look like idiots and cowards. What I want to know is why none of these babyfaces got off their asses to actually try to help Marko. Why did they just sit there like fans who aren’t allowed to hop the guardrail?
THE DARK ORDER HAVE A BOARD MEETING-
Instead of his cult leader robes, Brodie is wearing a tie and a jacket. He yells at a guy for not saying the catchphrase with a enough passion, throwing a glass against a wall. He yells at another guy for yawning. If their whole idea for this is to be their own version of Billionaire Ted, I’m going to be very disappointed in AEW, and also do a victory dance as the people who told me that AEW isn’t petty when Cody smashed the Triple H throne with a sledgehammer now line up to apologize.
But even without all of that, I’d still hate this, because Brodie Lee has turned out to be a f*cking terrible cult leader. The Dark Order are the ones producing these videos and sending them in to AEW, right? Well you don’t order your minion “say what I told you to say” ON CAMERA! You cut around that part! How does any of this help them spread their message and get people to join? In the first few vignettes you could see why someone might want to join. Now, the only “benefit” to joining appears to be constantly being yelled at by a large, bearded man, and if that’s your fetish you might as well not subject yourself to the possible (if not likely) physical abuse and just get off by watching NXT UK instead.
THE DARK ORDER (#8 & #9) vs. THE NATURAL NIGHTMARES (Dustin Rhodes & Q.T. Marshall) (w/Brandi Rhodes)- 2.25/10
Q.T. Marshall pretended that he was going to join the Dark Order by almost putting their mask on but then didn’t and used it as misdirection to attack them. The wrestlers around the ring chanting “YOU’VE STILL GOT IT!” at Dustin made me laugh my ass off.
Apparently the Natural Nightmares (terrible name) have been a thing on Dark and this is their third win. The Dark Order came off as total jobbers. It’s hard for me to care about he entire group when they come off as incompetents, losers, or both.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
Brodie Lee came out and had a stare-down with Dustin, then went to the ring and powerbombed one of his own dudes. Okay. He’s mean and thus he’s a bad boss. We get it already.
CHRIS JERICHO PROMO- bad
Wow… Jericho’s backyard looks a lot more awesome than Adam Cole’s. Also, has anyone else gotten the feeling that Jericho had it written into his contact that whenever he is on the show, he gets to be the one to use at least one of their two allotted “sh*ts” per show?
Anyway, Jericho cut a good promo on the Elite… then turned into a total goof when Vanguard 1 showed up and Jericho once again tried to recruit this stupid f*cking drone. He gave it a t-shirt but it flew away, and Jericho was so angry about it that he tried to catch a flying drone with a bunch of dogs. This was terrible, and felt like one of those segments that only happened because someone thought it would be funny for Jericho to give the “release the hounds!” order on TV, and so they wrote a comedy segment to let him do it.
NICK JACKSON UPDATE- good babyface stuff from the Bucks
SAMMY GUEVARA & SHAWN SPEAR vs. DARBY ALLIN & CODY RHODES (w/Brandi Rhodes)- 6.75/10
Cody throwing his belt to Brandi and heels gambling made the match feel like a joke. Also, the heels beat Cody up on the outside and no babyfaces moved to help him. Part of this involved Dr. Britt Baker, DMD hitting Cody with her shoe. Instead of being outraged by this use of a sharp high-heel to stab our babyface, Tony Schiavone simply want to know “is that Prada?”
Anyway, this match was nowhere close to good for a match that went over twenty minutes. The big takeaway is that Darby hit chose to pull a chair away from Spears and thus save Cody rather than trying to attack Spears, which resulted in Spears rolling Darby up for the win, and thus Darby got angry at Cody and attacked him. I’m not really sure why Darby is angry at Cody.
This was a bad show from AEW. There was a painful amount of spinning the wheels going on, the big matches did not deliver to the level they were pushed at, and much of the middle of the show was dull as all hell. Hopefully the tournament starting next week will make things feel like they’re actually moving forward.
Also, apparently Dustin Rhodes and Q.T. Marshall are going to be a tag team now. Snore.
KENNY OMEGA vs. TRENT (w/Chuck Taylor & Orange Cassidy)- 6.75/10
The match was meh. Senior Referee Aubrey Edwards just decided to ignore the count-out rule ninety percent of the time. They did a bunch of stuff. Kenny powerbombed Trent into a big pole on the outside and he fell to the ground, and then, a minute later, it’s Trent on offense, giving Kenny a German Suplex onto his head in the ring. The match was just MOVEZ, and with no crowd around to cheer and chant “THIS IS AWESOME!” the MOVEZ are so much more obviously just that. Now, more than ever, it’s important to make sure you actually tell a story.
Anyway, Kenny won clean (well… as clean as can be when it really should have been a double count-out), but they pushed that Trent took him close to the time-limit. This sort of thing only works if you rarely ever approach the time limit. Granted, they did come closer here than usual, but it still feels like we see Kenny go relatively long every time he wrestles, so taking him nineteen minutes doesn’t feel like that big of a deal.
They have apparently abandoned their old split-screen replay for a full-screen one… which means that we inevitably moss some of the action when they cut to it. Why would you do that?!
I find Cody to be extremely grating on commentary. He’s not bad, per se, the way that someone who buries the talent is, or the way that someone who gets the storylines wrong or says dumb things or makes a joke of everything is, but he doesn’t add anything, either, and he comes like an annoying shill and someone who just wants to have fun with his friend Tony. And you can say that that makes sense because he’s management, and that it’s fine for him to joke around with Tony so much because they are friends but I’d rather have someone who comes off as a lot more of a professional and a lot more authentic.
Cody bugged me by trying to put over the opener with the trite “this match would be a main event anywhere in the world, but here in AEW it’s only the opener.” First of all, one third of the Good Patrol is not a main eventer anywhere. Secondly, that whole line is almost a quarter of a century out of date. Since Nitro began airing head to head with Raw, the idea has always been that you want a hot opening segment to grab eyeballs right away. The opener is one of the three or four most important things on any show (depending many hours your show gets. Basically, anything at the top of an hour as well as the main event are the key segments).
HIKARU SHIDA VIDEO PACKAGE- fine
HIKARU SHIDA vs. ANNA JAYY- 4/10
The second Y is not a typo. That’s how she spelled it on her tights. If that’s not her shoot last name, then there is no reason to spell your name that way. Hell, even if it is her shoot last name, it’s pro wrestling. Just change it!
Shida is already the #1 contender and ranked #1. Cody has the audacity to come on commentary and ask “yeah, but how long do you want to be a bridesmaid?” How about you stop blaming her and do your f*cking job and book a title match then, asshole? You’re one of the people responsible for making those decisions, so how about you book her in her damn title match instead of wasting everyone’s time booking her against this tomato can?
Okay. So I spoke too soon when I called Anna Jayy a tomato can, as she gave Shida a fine fight, but the point still stands. Why is Shida booked again a woman who isn’t even on the roster instead of being booked against the champion if she’s the #1 contender?
Britt Baker yelled at Shida at ringside, so I guess we’re going to get that feud now instead of our title match. Actually, this is AEW, so Shida will probably be booked against a third party instead of booking one of the two obvious matches.
JAKE HAGER VS. JON MOXLEY VIDEO PACKAGE- I liked it at first but then it went WAY too long. This went at least five minutes, and (aside from the announcers’ intro to it) was the only thing we saw from one commercial break to the next.
CODY HAS BEEN REPLACED ON COMMENTARY BY COLT CABANA- He’s not much better than Cody. Cabana is on commentary to scout him because they are opponents in the first round of the AEW TNT Championship (or whatever silly name they’ve given it).
JAKE ROBERTS VIDEO PROMO ON BEHALF OF LANCE ARCHER- AWESOME!
That being said, I noticed during this promo that Jake’s moustache is not symmetrical, and once I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it and it kept bugging me.
LANCE ARCHER vs. MARK STUNT- 4/10
The spot above Marko’s entrance graphic where they have put some kind of fact (for example, Shida’s told us that she had won six of her last seven) read that he “must overcome Archer’s 1 ½-foot, 156-pind size advantage.” I didn’t like this is because being too blunt about what is happening here in the wrong place. That is something the announcers should be telling us. Doing it via a graphic makes it feel like AEW has put someone on my couch next to me trying to explain the story directly to me, instead of announcers filling a necessary role on a sporting show.
The first thing Lance Archer did in AEW was assault an innocent camera grip for absolutely no reason. He really should be fined for that, but he won’t be, because AEW doesn’t kayfabe care about it’s employees, which is a TERRIBLE look for a company where you’re acknowledging that the people in charge are a cadre of the majority of your top babyfaces.
The match did a good job of establishing Archer’s dominance.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- TERRIBLE!
Archer leaves after his victory, but then decides to come back. He picks up the defenseless Marko as a bunch of babyfaces in the crowd beg him to just go away and not hurt Marko anymore. Archer ignores them, picks Marko up, and throws him into them very hard. I’m sure everyone is going to be crooning over how cool this looked and how safe it probably wound up being for Marko but I don’t care about any of that for this segment because I care about not making the babyfaces look like idiots and cowards. What I want to know is why none of these babyfaces got off their asses to actually try to help Marko. Why did they just sit there like fans who aren’t allowed to hop the guardrail?
THE DARK ORDER HAVE A BOARD MEETING-
Instead of his cult leader robes, Brodie is wearing a tie and a jacket. He yells at a guy for not saying the catchphrase with a enough passion, throwing a glass against a wall. He yells at another guy for yawning. If their whole idea for this is to be their own version of Billionaire Ted, I’m going to be very disappointed in AEW, and also do a victory dance as the people who told me that AEW isn’t petty when Cody smashed the Triple H throne with a sledgehammer now line up to apologize.
But even without all of that, I’d still hate this, because Brodie Lee has turned out to be a f*cking terrible cult leader. The Dark Order are the ones producing these videos and sending them in to AEW, right? Well you don’t order your minion “say what I told you to say” ON CAMERA! You cut around that part! How does any of this help them spread their message and get people to join? In the first few vignettes you could see why someone might want to join. Now, the only “benefit” to joining appears to be constantly being yelled at by a large, bearded man, and if that’s your fetish you might as well not subject yourself to the possible (if not likely) physical abuse and just get off by watching NXT UK instead.
THE DARK ORDER (#8 & #9) vs. THE NATURAL NIGHTMARES (Dustin Rhodes & Q.T. Marshall) (w/Brandi Rhodes)- 2.25/10
Q.T. Marshall pretended that he was going to join the Dark Order by almost putting their mask on but then didn’t and used it as misdirection to attack them. The wrestlers around the ring chanting “YOU’VE STILL GOT IT!” at Dustin made me laugh my ass off.
Apparently the Natural Nightmares (terrible name) have been a thing on Dark and this is their third win. The Dark Order came off as total jobbers. It’s hard for me to care about he entire group when they come off as incompetents, losers, or both.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
Brodie Lee came out and had a stare-down with Dustin, then went to the ring and powerbombed one of his own dudes. Okay. He’s mean and thus he’s a bad boss. We get it already.
CHRIS JERICHO PROMO- bad
Wow… Jericho’s backyard looks a lot more awesome than Adam Cole’s. Also, has anyone else gotten the feeling that Jericho had it written into his contact that whenever he is on the show, he gets to be the one to use at least one of their two allotted “sh*ts” per show?
Anyway, Jericho cut a good promo on the Elite… then turned into a total goof when Vanguard 1 showed up and Jericho once again tried to recruit this stupid f*cking drone. He gave it a t-shirt but it flew away, and Jericho was so angry about it that he tried to catch a flying drone with a bunch of dogs. This was terrible, and felt like one of those segments that only happened because someone thought it would be funny for Jericho to give the “release the hounds!” order on TV, and so they wrote a comedy segment to let him do it.
NICK JACKSON UPDATE- good babyface stuff from the Bucks
SAMMY GUEVARA & SHAWN SPEAR vs. DARBY ALLIN & CODY RHODES (w/Brandi Rhodes)- 6.75/10
Cody throwing his belt to Brandi and heels gambling made the match feel like a joke. Also, the heels beat Cody up on the outside and no babyfaces moved to help him. Part of this involved Dr. Britt Baker, DMD hitting Cody with her shoe. Instead of being outraged by this use of a sharp high-heel to stab our babyface, Tony Schiavone simply want to know “is that Prada?”
Anyway, this match was nowhere close to good for a match that went over twenty minutes. The big takeaway is that Darby hit chose to pull a chair away from Spears and thus save Cody rather than trying to attack Spears, which resulted in Spears rolling Darby up for the win, and thus Darby got angry at Cody and attacked him. I’m not really sure why Darby is angry at Cody.
This was a bad show from AEW. There was a painful amount of spinning the wheels going on, the big matches did not deliver to the level they were pushed at, and much of the middle of the show was dull as all hell. Hopefully the tournament starting next week will make things feel like they’re actually moving forward.