BRM Reviews the 8/5/2020 Dynamite (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

FTR & THE ELITE (the Young Bucks, Adam Page, & Kenny Omega) vs. COLT CABANA & THE DARK ORDER (Brodie Lee, Five, Nine, Evil Uno & Stu Grayson)- 5.5/10
Schiavone, Ross and Taz appear to be our commentary team at the moment. Some other member of the Dark Order (including Anna Jay) are standing over by the commentary table for some reason.
The first part of this match was a bunch of stuff, ending in the Elite running around and doing all of their stuff with the ten-second rule being completely ignored. Anyone else remember last week then FTR signed a contract stipulating that the rules would be strictly enforced in all of their matches? Because AEW apparently doesn’t. Maybe FTR will be angry about his after the match, but I’m not holding my breath.
This section ended when Dax Harwood injured his knee doing the backbreaker part of a Demolition Decapitation. Cash, Adam Page, and the Bucks all went to check on him and headed towards he back with him, leaving Omega alone for a bit to get beaten up. That painfully forced. Especially for the Bucks, who aren’t really even friends with these guys the way you could argue that Page is becoming.
Matt Jackson saw what was happening and gave Omega some relief, but he was quickly cut off, too. Nick was conflicted by decided to stay around, so it’s now six against three. Page eventually came back. They’re clearly building to Page vs. Lee, but I really don’t care because they haven’t done anything to establish the Dark Order as dangerous. I mean… sure, they’re mean people, but they haven’t been made to look like a real threat, either to the health of the top stars, or to their moral fiber.
Speaking of moral fiber, Kenny Omega delivered a totally unnecessary kick to one of the Dark Order members after the match (five, I think), so they’re slowly building to that possible turn.

BEST FRIENDS SHOW UP AT THE ARENA EARLIER TODAY- Can we please stop pointing out that they’re using Trent’s mom’s car? It makes them look like losers. What’s the best-case scenario here? There’s an angle where the heels damage Trent’s mom’s car? Are you really going to tell me that this wouldn’t be more effective if it was Trent’s car?

Taz mentioned that both Brian Cage and Ricky Starks have been “banned from this arena tonight.” So we absolutely must take steps to prevent interference in this match, but MJF, Wardlow, Marko Stunt, Penelope Ford, Kip Sabian, and many others who have a history of interfering in matches are never banned from the arena because...

JON MOXLEY PROMO- This wasn’t bad, but the ending “when it’s time to stay down... Please. Stay. Down. Even though I know you’re not going to listen… because I wouldn’t” made the whole thing feel kind of pointless. I don’t really know what they were trying to get across here? That Moxley is compassionate?

BEST FRIENDS vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Santana & Ortiz)- 6.5/10
Trent’s back got worked over but Best Friends won anyway. This ended a winning streak for LAX that I had previously been completely unaware of.


MJF MAKES A STATEMENT FROM HIS “CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS”- terrible!
Yes, his “campaign headquarters,” because apparently we’re sticking with the idiotic political campaign motif. He’s a jerk to his employees and fires some of them. They’re making poster and buttons to ship out all over the world. FOR WHAT PUPORSE? He’s already getting what he wants, as AEW announced on Monday that he’s getting the title shot at All Out 2020 against the winner of tonight’s main event, so what is the purpose of any of this? This was stupid goofball bullsh*t

MATT HARDY PROMO- fine
Apparently fans haven’t liked him managing Private Party so he’s going to be a singles guy from now on. They’re also restarting the Sammy Guevara thing. On the bright side, Matt is giving up trying to convince Sammy that being with Jericho is bad for his career, because all of the evidence points to the contrary. Jericho is not holding Sammy down in any way.
Sammy came out and brawled with Matt. Sammy busted Matt open with a chair put him through a table.

LAX DESTROY TRENT’S MOM’S VAN- And just to make it worse, someone in AEW decided to give us the idiotic inexplicable “view from inside the car” that everyone so despises from WWE. The person who suggested that should have been fired on the spot, because his or her judgment is clearly not sound.

THE DARK ORDER (Alex Reynolds & John Silver) vs. CODY RHODES & MATT CARDONA (w/Arn Anderson)- 5.75/10
Cody was the babyface in peril and got his ribs worked over. He sold well. Cardona’s leg lariat is now called “Radio Silence,” which is a great name for his finisher.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Scorpio Sky came out and stared Cody down, so I guess he wants a title shot. It was later announced that he’s getting one next week. I assume that after that match, we’ll also see someone come out and go face to face with Cody, because apparently that’s all you need to do to get a title shot. Either that, or the title isn’t really important, and things are only being booked to facilitate whatever Cody is doing. Actually, I’m betting on the latter, as this belt has been around for almost two months now, has had almost as many defenses as the world title, and still doesn’t feel like it means anything.

BEST FRIENDS PROMO- bad
Chuck starts out by telling LAX that not only did they destroy Trent’s mom’s van, but they “made a liar out of me, personally” because he assured Trent’s mom that no harm would come to the vehicle.
It’s a car, and these people supposedly make a whole lot of money. What is this “you made a liar out of me personally because I promised I would protect this car” bullsh*t? This came off like a southern-style hammer home the pathos to the point where it’s so personal it’s over the top angle that makes me seriously wonder whether Jim Cornette is on payroll the way Russo secretly was for TNA in 2013-2014, because this sounds exactly like something that would have happened in Smokey Mountain Wrestling.
Oh dear Lord. They’re vowing to make LAX personally apologize to Trent’s mom. For everyone who has been doubting that the Inner Circle have been totally clownified, I present this latest piece of evidence.

CHRIS JERICHO AND ORANGE CASSIDY HAVE A DEBATE- TERRIBLE!
They guest moderator they hyped up was Eric Bischoff. Does anyone actually care about an Eric Bischoff cameo at this point?
The first question had a bad grammar mistake in it (“does” is singular; “do” would be the plural form). Did they really not even clean the grammar up to make their fans sound smart?
Jericho responded the questions via promos burying Orange Cassidy. Orange Cassidy didn’t say anything. Who could have seen that coming? Other than everyone who has ever seen Orange Cassidy before… and that includes AEW management, so why the f*ck did they allow this segment to be part of their national TV show?
The third question was a completely off-topic question about global warming, which makes you wonder why the people at AEW chose this question to be asked. The answer, of course, is because this whole thing is one big f*cking joke that they’re booking, which hurts the credibility of everything else going on on the show.
Jericho refuses to answer the question on the grounds that it’s completely off-topic. This, of course, is the question that OC answers. Okay. He clearly cares about global warming a lot more than he cares about wrestling, so why is he a pro wrestler and not an advocate for green energy or a scientist working to find way to repair the damage to the ozone layer or develop or improve green energy sources?
Orange Cassidy waits until the end and says that he does care. They can say that all they want, but it doesn’t matter because this guy showed up to a ladder match for the world title without even knowing the rules. If he cared, he wouldn’t be doing the hands in his pockets thing. Having a shtick that you turn on and off at will isn’t caring, because any time when it’s not on, you don’t f*cking care, and caring about advancing in the world of pro wrestling is not a thing you can do sometimes and not others. Do you know what happens to pro athletes who sometimes “don’t care” when they’re on the field/court/ice/pitch- fans, coaches, and media all rightfully lambast them for it, and then they get benched and don’t get to play! They don’t get re-signed, and they get chased out of their profession until they change their ways.
Eric Bischoff unilaterally declares OC to be the winner of the debate because of his remarks about global warming. It should be noted that it’s not like Jericho didn’t believe in global warming and OC was educating everyone. Jericho merely refused to answer the global warming question on the grounds that it had absolutely no place in this debate because it was so off-topic.
Jericho orders Jake Hager to beat OC up. Hager did so, then stuck his hands in his pockets and whipped him towards Jericho for the Judas Effect. So Orange Cassidy got beaten up and embarrassed by the Inner Circle. That’s the same thing we did to set up the previous match between these two. Why is this even still going on? What are our possible outcomes? That Jericho loses to a goofball loser, or that Jericho wins but OC earns his respect, which will just make me wonder why he didn’t gain Jericho’s respect after the last match. Then OC will just go right back to doing his same dumb shtick (just like he did after the Pac match), and do this same angle for a third time with someone else.


BIG SWOLE vs. REBA- DUD!
Really? Britt Baker chose non-wrestler Reba to her champion against Swole instead of some with… you know… credibility? Even if she is the same Rebel from TNA (which Taz implied and which her wrestling ability seems to speak to), she’s still very rusty and the angle here is that Britt didn’t even warn her. This just makes Britt look like a goof.
The match itself was short and wasn’t good. They did some basic stuff okay, but most of the last minute or so was bad, including a spot where Reba was supposed to miss a moonsault but Swole didn’t get out the way quickly enough and Reba still landed on Swole’s side, but Swole didn’t sell it at all.

AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jon Moxley(c) vs. Darby Allin- 7/10
This match fit the characters fine, but didn’t quite work for me. I get Darby’s character and have since his EVOLVE days, and I like the way he works his matches, but I think sometimes he just gets beaten up too much to come across like someone who has a chance to be a top guy and instead comes across like a Spike Dudley type: Admirable for his heart, resilience, and lack of fear, but someone who we know won’t be a top guy.
MJF’s interference worked fine with his comments earlier, but didn’t really feel productive to me. The finishing sequence here was pretty damn great, though.

Did you know that AEW has a women’s tag team tournament going on now on YouTube? Well you wouldn’t if you watched this show! Silly me for thinking that if they advertised a tournament last week they would at least mention it on this week’s TV show (never mind have an actual match).

This was another bad episode of Dynamite. There is too much goofiness, and even many of the non-goofy characters (FTR, Page, Bucks, Omega, Cody, Cardona, Dark Order) are being booked in ways that are painfully dull, with stories that aren’t doing much to move forward. This week's NXT was an okay show buoyed up by an excellent main event angle. This was a show that was bad and didn't have a main event that was good enough to save it.

[XIV]

Roll on “tag team appreciation week” that was specifically written into FTR’s contract, which still somehow allows singles matches on the show.

if you’re going to label something so heavily, go all the way.