BRM Reviews the 9/16/2020 Dynamite (AWESOME... but then they ruined it in the last few minutes)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- hated it
We start off with Jurassic Express already in the ring for their match against FTR. Before FTR come out, the Bucks come out and they superkick referee Mike Posey for no reason. The point of this appears to be to show us that they’re angry, but they've ’gone well past that point and made them heels by having them attack an innocent referee in a clearly premeditated manner. Doing it to Marvez is something that is absolutely inappropriate and wrong, but we can chalk it up to two angry wrestlers who didn’t want to be disturbed, and so they lashed out at the person currently bothering them and did something they shouldn’t have.
This is just being assholes. What are they even trying to prove here, from a kayfabe point of view? We already know that they’re angry. Why are they attacking a referee? What do they gain from it? The only reason I can think of that someone would attack a referee in this manner is to make a statement to management, but that makes no sense here because the Bucks are management.
And I’m not even sure what AEW is trying to present the Bucks as. The way they’re handling the whole “that’s going to be a fine!” thing- here, on their way back, they walked up to Tony Khan at Gorilla Position and threw a stack of bills at him- has “look at me, I’m a too cool for school rebel” written all over it, but- again- what are they rebelling against? And it’s hard to be a rebel when you’re in management.
I also don’t understand why they seem to be so angry with AEW as a whole. They should be angry with Adam Page and maybe with FTR, not AEW. And yet here they came out and attacked a referee for no reason, then were disrespectful to Tony Khan, then walked right by FTR and didn’t lift a finger towards them, even as FTR taunted them!
And with Kenny, I really don’t understand why he is so bent out of shape, either. Just like with the Bullet Club Civil War, this crew is very good at putting together dramatic moments in a vacuum, but they’re terrible at stringing together a series of dramatic moments to form a coherent story.

Jim Ross insisted that “FTR are primarily responsible for the breakup of the friendship between Adam Page and the Young Bucks,” but that’s pretty clearly false. They might have manipulated the camel into picking up the straw that broke it’s back (to torture a metaphor), but we had seen for months that that camel was already carrying the extraordinary heavy load of Adam Page’s alcoholism. In the past nine months, Page and the Bucks have been at angry with each other a lot more than they have been friendly.

JURASSIC EXPRESS (w/Marko Stunt) vs. FTR (w/Tully Blanchard)- 8.75/10
Everyone is criticizing FTR for not allowing this to be a title match, but do Jurassic Express really deserve one? They lost clean to the Bucks at the PPV. Between that, the fact that both were on the winning side of the eight-man tag the week before, and the fact that the Bucks got screwed by outside interference in the #1 contendership gauntlet, I’d say that if anyone deserves a title shot, it’s the Young Bucks.
And now Excalibur is telling me that Jurassic Express aren’t even RANKED. Why would anyone even think they were worthy of a title shot? This whole thing is such a transparent “let’s get heat on FTR by saying that they’re not putting the belts on the line” thing that it just makes the announcers look bad for suggesting it when all of the evidence- including what the kayfabe promotion is telling us- points to them not being worthy of one.
Then there was the match itself which… while I don’t have the time or the strength to go back and check right now, might well have been the best match in the now almost year-long history of Dynamite. FTR are such great heels and Jurassic Express are such great babyfaces.

SOMEONE HAS TAKEN OUT MATT HARDY’S KNEE BACKSTAGE- fine
Private Party are checking on him. Jericho and Hager stop by to make fun of him. Apparently they’re wrestling Private Party tonight, so it’s likely that they did it.

FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. ADAM PAGE- 8/10
Kenny Omega was on commentary. Excalibur told us that Kenny was offered this match as Page & Kenny vs. SCU of Kaz & Scorpio Sky, but Kenny turned it down because he’s focused on being a singles wrestler now.
Okay… so now we’re two matches into the second show, and this might well already be the single best week of the Wednesday Night War so far.

SEAN DEAN vs. MJF (w/Wardlow)- no rating PERFECT SQUASH!
Poke to the eye, then Salt of the Earth for the win. This was EXACTLY what MJF needed coming off of his PPV loss.

MJF PROMO- great
Moxley cheated, so MJF is now doing the uncrowned champion thing (and claiming to still be undefeated). I don’t love doing this, but I think MJF is the best guy to do it with because he does have the history with Cody that could allow him to claim that he’s not getting a fair shake, and he also has both the money and the ego to go out and buy his own belt. This sort of thing is why having Taz give Cage the FTW Title was such a bad idea.
He also teases forming a stable. I hope this doesn’t happen. No more stables. PLEASE.

TECHNIQUE WITH TAZ PUTTING OVER RICKY STARKS FINISHER- GREAT!

SEGMENT WITH EDDIE KINGSTON’S STABLE- bad
Kingston had three points to make.
1. He never lost the battle royale. If he’s telling the truth about this, then if AEW management believes in fair competition, they should do something about it.
2. They are violent people. To prove this, they pulled a bunch of people out of the stands and beat them up for no reason. This was dumb and bad, and that’s without considering the fact that months of Lance Archer doing this with no consequences have completely desensitized me to it.
3. Kingston tells The Blade to “get your house in order.” The announcers can’t figure out what he means by this, even though 99% of the fans figured it out in seconds.

PRIVATE PARTY vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Chris Jericho & Jake Hager)- 6.75/10
Very good stuff, with the right team winning and a post-match segment that helps the feud continue.

NWA WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Thunder Rosa(c) vs. Ivelisse (w/Diamante)- 7/10
It’s really hard for me to care about the NWA Women’s Title as something that important when the champion came in and immediately lost to AEW’s champion.
The match was great, because these two women are awesome. Not great or awesome, however, was the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Diamante attacked Thunder Rosa from behind, and Ivelisse posed with the belt. Hikaru Shida come out of the crowd and made the save. That’s two more people turning heel. It feels like everyone is a heel now. I also have very little interest in this respect between Shida and Thunder Rosa because I’ve already seen them wrestle with a decisive finish, and there are no tag titles for them to go after.

KIP SABIAN & MIRO PROMO- bad
It’s mostly goof stuff about the bachelor party. Penelope Ford stood in the background the whole time and did nothing.

LANCE ARCHER RANDOMLY BEATS SOMEONE UP FOR NO REASON- boring. AEW should cease wasting time with this immediately. It serves no purpose.

THE PARTNERS FOR NEXT WEEK’S TEAM ARCHER VS. TEAM MOXLEY SIX-MAN TAG ARE REVEALED- good
Archer’s partners will be Team Taz. Great promos were cut by both Jake and Taz. Then Jon Moxley showed up… and with all the rotten luck in the world, as the area of the arena he decided to show up in just happened to be the one where Ricky Starks and Brian Cage were lying in wait to ambush him. Fortunately for Moxley, Will Hobbs decided to show up with a chair to save him. Moxley decided that Hobbs would be one of his partners, and the other would be Darby Allin. I liked a lot of what we got here, but the coincidence was a little too much for me and thus brought it down.

During a brawl, Ross asked if this was “martial law” or “a prison break,” neither of which made any sense for the situation.


PARKING LOT FIGHT: The Inner Circle (Santana & Ortiz) Best Friends- 8.5/10
They were surrounded by a circle of cars, and also a bunch of cheering fans. For some reason LAX are cosplaying as the Guerrillas of Destiny.
They had a sick, brutal, awesome street fight. This was a level of craziness that I want to see, AT MOST once every six months. It was that scary violent.
Then, in the last minute, they had to ruin it all. Santana has the basically dead Trent leaned up against a car and his about to kill him with a lead pipe… but then the trunk of that car opens and Orange Cassidy leaps out and hits Santana with the Orange Punch with a chain around his fist, then the babyfaces hit finishers on the heels and pin them for the win.
1. Why the f*ck was Orange Cassidy in a trunk? If he was going to interfere, why didn’t he just do so right from the beginning?
2. And it just so happened that it wound up being the right trunk for him to pop out of and make the dramatic save.
3. How did he know when to pop out of the trunk. It’s a f*cking TRUNK. Did he have a little TV in there?
4. The heels were winning fair and square, and the babyfaces needed an unfair advantage to win.

Then they all got into Trent’s Mom’s van and drove away, coming off like total dorks.

It’s sh*t like this that makes me lose hope for Dynamite every time I start to get hopeful. I thought this week’s NXT was awesome, and I thought Dynamite was even better than NXT… but I’m still leaving Dynamite furious because they couldn’t help but do something stupid and goofy for the finish. WHY would you do this? So some f*cking turd with a single digit IQ can get a laugh out of the fact that a person came out of a trunk and it’s funny because people aren't supposed to be in trunks? At this point, I feel like they’ll never learn.

[cero2k]

Then they all got into Trent’s Mom’s van and drove away, coming off like total dorks.

loving your mom doesn't make you a dork

[Big Red Machine]

Then they all got into Trent’s Mom’s van and drove away, coming off like total dorks.

loving your mom doesn't make you a dork

No, but having her drive you and your friends to and from work in a minivan does. They're supposed to be professional combat athletes, not 5th graders.

[cero2k]

No, but having her drive you and your friends to and from work in a minivan does. They're supposed to be professional combat athletes, not 5th graders.

there's nothing wrong with it, just because you're a combat athlete does mean that you want to have cars or that getting a ride with your mom or your friends mom makes you look bad. You have a really money-minded view of life Red

[Big Red Machine]

No, but having her drive you and your friends to and from work in a minivan does. They're supposed to be professional combat athletes, not 5th graders.

there's nothing wrong with it, just because you're a combat athlete does mean that you want to have cars or that getting a ride with your mom or your friends mom makes you look bad. You have a really money-minded view of life Red

Where did I mention money? It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with coming across like a grown adult. Grown adults don't have mommy drive them and their carpool buddy to work.

[cero2k]

Where did I mention money? It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with coming across like a grown adult. Grown adults don't have mommy drive them and their carpool buddy to work.

I'd say that a grown adult doesn't really care about 'the look' of carpooling/getting a ride from your mother and is a far better citizen for reducing their carbon footprint, but I guess you've proven to me that carpooling with your mom is frown upon and makes you a dork. Must really suck if someone is poor and the family can't afford one car and they all ride together.

[Big Red Machine]

Where did I mention money? It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with coming across like a grown adult. Grown adults don't have mommy drive them and their carpool buddy to work.

I'd say that a grown adult doesn't really care about 'the look' of carpooling/getting a ride from your mother and is a far better citizen for reducing their carbon footprint, but I guess you've proven to me that carpooling with your mom is frown upon and makes you a dork. Must really suck if someone is poor and the family can't afford one car and they all ride together.

1. It doesn't reduce the carbon footprint to have Trent's mom drive them. If they're tag partners and want to show up to the building together then that's fine. Wrestlers have riding buddies. It's still just one car.
And if we're going to start factoring carbon footprint into babyface/heel alignment then Moxley, Cody, FTR, and anyone else driving those big trucks is a heel.

2. If they were poor then that would be one thing, but they're clearly not. They're working for Tony Khan, not Mike Quackenbush or Ian Rotten.

3. It makes them look like goofs, and as a result, it makes everything they do feel whimsical and silly. They come across as people playing characters on TV, not real people. Just like a match where Trent is bleeding all over because he got powerbombed through a non-gimmick car windshield still feels fake at the end if the finish involves some goof hiding in a trunk for absolutely no reason and it just happens to be the right trunk for him to be in the right place to surprisingly pop out of to make a save, and he just happens to pop out at the right time even though there is no way he could have seen out of the trunk. It's goofball bullsh*t designed for laughs, and if you don't believe me, find me an example on TV of an adult being driven around by his or her mother that isn't played for laughs.