BRM Reviews the 1/5/2021 Dynamite (TBS debut)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 1/5/2021 Dynamite (TBS debut)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 6th, '22, 12:13

AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH WITH JUDGES IN CASE THE MATCH GOED THE TIME LIMIT: Adam Page(c) vs. Bryan Danielson- 9/10
The judges are Big Show, Mark Henry, and Jerry Lynn.
This was another tremendous effort by these two. They made good use of the blood to make this match feel different from their previous one right away (and to give a reason why they were able to go sixty last time but this time the match ended well before that point). Both guys worked the head. Danielson worked the arm a bit, too, but that didn’t really go anywhere and Page pretty much stopped selling it after a certain point. I LOVED the little spot of Dragon sucking up to judge Jerry Lynn by using his finisher. I wish they had run with that idea a little more, with Dragon maybe trying to do some Big Show or Mark Henry stuff as well. They also had some good callbacks to their previous match, which is always a nice little touch.

THE ACCLAIMED PROMO- meh
They were a little too goofy here with the whole “our generation handles business via music video” thing. Otherwise, this served as a fine excuse to build up a match for next week and to get Sting’s image on TV early here in the TBS debut.

MJF vs. SHAWN DEAN- no mating, meh segment
Speaking of getting people on the show early, CM Punk ran out, so MJF ran out to the ramp. Punk then attacked Shawn Dean to cause MJF to lose by DQ, and because the records reset at the beginning of the year, MJF is now 0-1. The issue here is that if Audrey had done her job and counted MJF out, you’d accomplish the same goal while (Punk causes MJF to lose and MJF looks like a coward) while not having Punk assault an innocent person. Hell, even if you specifically want it to be a DQ so that Punk is causing MJF to lose rather than MJF causing said loss via cowardice, you could have just had Punk chop the guy. He didn’t have to lay him out with a big move.
(And an even better way to do the count-out would have been for Punk to then leave the ring and just stand between MJF and the ring, so that Aubrey isn’t just letting Punk stand around in the ring).
Punk said that this would happen every time MJF wrestles until MJF gets into the ring with him. Punk said it would be hard for MJF to get a title shot when he keeps losing. That’s true, but it would work a lot better if MJF had been winning matches for months, to the point him not getting a title shot feels a little silly.
MJF said that Punk wasn’t the guy he used to be, and that unlike Roddy Piper, Punk wasn’t talented enough to main event WrestleMania. MJF says that if he isn’t shown the proper respect, maybe one day he’ll go main event WrestleMania, too. These borderline shoot zingers of MJF’s don’t do it for me, and neither did Punk’s shots at WWE for how he assumes they would treat MJF (and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t disagree with anything Punk said), although Punk’s stuff is a lot closer to what I’d prefer, as he brought it back around to the idea of wanting to kick MJF’s ass.
The segment ended with MJF teasing giving Punk the match, but then doing the predictable swerve of announcing that Punk would face Wardlow next week. Punk accepted the challenge. I’m sure Wardlow will lose and he’ll get angry at MJF for costing him his winning streak, but they have to be really careful with how they do it if they want Wardlow to look like a babyface (more on this in the next few weeks, assuming the story plays out that way).

CODY RHODES VS. SAMMY GUEVARA HYPE PACKAGE- They mentioned about six times that Cody is a judge on the Go-Big Show, and have one of Cody’s celebrity friends from that show narrate this. This video package didn’t pretty much nothing. It told you that Sammy was good and that this was their third match, with Cody having won the first two. No promos from either guy.

CHRIS JERICHO’S PROMO IS INTERRUPTED BY 2.0- mixed
Jericho talks about being back on TBS (WHO CARES?!), then talks about wanting revenge on 2.0, so 2.0 came out. Juvenile insults were thrown around in voices that were way to loud. Daniel Garcia came out of the crowd and attacked Jericho, so LAX and Eddie Kingston ran in to make the save and build up to their Street Fight on Rampage. The promos here were quite bad, but it was effective build to the match.

JAKE ATLAS HIGHLIGHTS- good
He appears to have put some muscle on, but could still do all of his athletics stuff.

ADAM COLE, BOBBY FISH, & KYLE O’REILLY PROMO- GREAT!
Cole says he knows that Kyle didn’t kick him on purpose. Hooray for people being reasonable!
Cole sells reDRagon on the idea of forming a super-group with the Bucks, then cuts a promo on Jake Atlas. He says that he is going to show the newcomer Atlas why Cole is the one everyone should be talking about.

ANTONIO ZAMBRANO vs. WARDLOW (w/Shawn Spears)- no rating, mixed segment
Hey, look at that! Tony Khan read my review of last week’s show and figured out a way to make it actually feel like Spears is stealing the spotlight from Wardlow a bit!
On the negative side, we have both Jim Ross and Excalibur somehow managing to miss the fact that the ref not seeing the pre-match attack didn’t matter for a DQ because the match hadn’t started yet. I’m not sure how they could have missed that fact because 1) the bell is very loud, and 2) Spears shouted at the referee to ring the bell.
On the bright side again, I loved that they did make the decision to have the referee distracted with Wardlow during the attack. It does make it seem a little more legitimate for a referee to be willing to start the match than if we he had seen a post-match attack and then started it anyway, but even more importantly, it meant that Wardlow didn’t see it, so he couldn’t object at the time (which makes him feel like more of a babyface), and it allows us to see Wardlow’s reaction to the attack without having to cut away from the attack.
Wardlow powerbombed the guy… and then they undid any babyfacing they had done by having him give the guy a bunch more completely unnecessary powerbombs. I get what they were going for here (Tony Schiavone spelled it out pretty succinctly), but two powerbombs would have been enough to show that it was Wardlow’s move that put the guy down, not Spears’. Four felt quite excessive.


AEW TBS TITLE TOURNAMENT FINAL: Ruby Soho vs. Jade Cargill (w/Mark Sterling)- 6.5/10
Mercedes Martinez came out, but Thunder Rosa quickly showed up to brawl away with her. The match was good, but with the story they had started to tell about the work on Ruby’s arm and the size difference, it felt like the first part of a really great match and the finish of a really great match, without all of the stuff in between.
Jade getting the belt is a huge vote of confidence in her, though I’m not certain that she’s really read for it yet. I hope they have some babyfaces who can help carry her until she is (and yes, the thought has occurred to me that the booking of this match might have changed in the past few days due to Tony responding to Big Swole by putting hit foot in his mouth, though I’m not convinced that’s the case. I think it’s more an indication that Thunder Rosa will be getting the women’s title from Britt Baker sooner than Revolution, and they wanted to have one champion of each disposition but didn’t want the first champion to have a short reign, so they made the call to just go with two heels for a bit).

JIM ROSS’ SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH SERENA DEEB- bad
Deeb is now a delusional heel who thinks that Shida beating her with a roll-up was somehow “uncivilized.” She asked Ross if he thought there was any woman in the division on her level, and he said no. Really, Jim? Not Britt Baker, not Thunder Rosa, not THE WOMAN WHO KEEPS BEATING DEEB CLEANLY Hikaru Shida? (Yeah, I know, Ross didn’t want to “provoke” Deeb, but there needed to be a better way to answer that question. Or how about have Jim answer it the right way, then have Deeb start to get upset, but then calm down to show us all how “civilized” she is.
She said “they call me the professor of professional wrestling,” which prompted to me say “they do?” I don’t think I’ve ever heard her called that. Deeb just plain wasn’t good here. Her facials were weird, and she felt like she was giving a prepared speech, and was overacting. She’ll be facing Shida next week.

MALAKAI BLACK vs. BRIAN PILLMAN JR. (w/Julia Hart)-3/10

The records reset at the beginning of the year… and yet we’re still seeing Black’s old record, and it’s just labeled as his “AEW singles record” instead of his 2021 record. You can’t have the records reset and also have them not reset, picking and choosing which one you use based on the situation. That makes the whole thing feel forced.
Julia has an eye-patch, which I suppose could make her Julia Harrrrrrrt. I’d love to hear from the doctor they took her to, just to find out what, exactly, is in that mist.
The announcers pointed out that Julia was not jumping around doing much cheerleading like she usually does.
They had some good action for a few minutes, and then Pillman botched a springboard move and hit the mat face first, then got up and got hit with Black Mass. I don’t mind doing a finish like this every once in a while where a “high risk” move goes wrong and the wrestler gets pinned as a result, but the way Pillman quickly got up after it and just walked into the Black Mass made him look really bad.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Malakai left the ring, but then went back to menace Julia because reasons. The Lucha Bros. came out to make the save, with Excalibur telling me “they remember what happened to Pac.” Well they might, but I didn’t. I checked my notes, and it turns out that Black gouged Pac’s eye out OVER A MONTH AGO, and I don’t think it has even been mentioned since. And what good friends Penta and Fenix are, waiting an entire month to try to get revenge for the terrible injury inflicted on their friend.
The lights went out when the Lucha Bros. were on the ramp, and when they came back on, the Lucha Bros. were in the ring but Malakai Black was on the ramp. Really? We had to do magical powers for that? You couldn’t have Black just retreat into the crowd?

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH RUBY SOHO IS INTERRUPTED BY BRITT BAKER & PALS- GREAT!
Dr. Baker taunted Ruby about her inability to win big matches. Ruby fired back that Britt can’t win without interference and noted that even with interference, Brit has never beaten Riho… so Britt just slugged her. Riho ran in to help Ruby, and the referees arrived to break it up. Both Britt and Ruby were excellent here. Britt in particular did a great job of coming across as being just plain mean. Not the fun mean that she does in her promos, but as just a bad person, taunting someone over a loss, and then when she realized she couldn’t refute Ruby’s points, resorting to a sucker-punch.

Q.T. MARSHALL & AARON SOLOW PROMO- This was good heel stuff, but it didn’t do anything. Hook is Hook, and nothing they have these guys say will make the fans want to see Hook win more than they already do.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Lucha Bros.(c) (w/Alex Abrahantes) vs. A Boy & His Dinosaur (w/Christian Cage)- 7.75/10
They did stuff. Some of it looked a little too cooperative. The lights went out when the Lucha Bros. had Jungle Boy up for a move. I think they might have stupidly just put him down instead of actually doing the move, because I didn’t hear any sort of impact on the mat. When the lights came back on, no one was around, so they kept going. Maybe that was their tribute to Thunder.
Abrahantes got a table (like a heel, because that’s not legal), so Christian chased him away. Luchasaurus wound up chokeslamming Fenix off the apron and through it. This is the kind of table bump that I’m a little more generous with, due to the wrestler having plausible deniability that he/she wasn’t aiming for the table and it just happened to be in the landing zone.
Christian came back. Jungle Boy pinned Penta with a roll-up countering Made in Japan to win the titles. Jungle Boy had tried to go for an Unprettier/Killswitch/whatever it is now, and the fans booed the idea loudly. That was interesting.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- WWE-level cheesy
The babyfaces celebrated with their titles. Pretty much every tag team of note in the company (the Young Bucks were the big name missing) came out onto the ramp and stood in their assigned spots to clap. We cut to Jericho watching from the crowd, and then also cut to Malakai Black, watching from somewhere else… but someone knew he was there, and there decided to cut him even though he wasn’t doing anything. They cut to some other wrestlers in the crowd, too.
This was pointlessly corny and choreographed, and really felt like it took away from the focus on Jurassic Express’ win and especially from the fact that the Lucha Bros. lost.


This was a pretty great show from AEW. Obviously Dragon and Page carried a lot of that load, but it also did a great job of building things up for Rampage and Battle of the Belts, and they did a very good job of getting pretty much all of the important players on TV in some form or another to introduce them to any new viewers (or, in the cases of guys like Dragon, Sting, Christian, and Jericho, to let new viewers know that these guys are here). The only ones missing were the Andrade, Young Bucks, Miro, and FTR (FTR only appeared at the end), and don’t fault them for Miro because I think Miro is the sort of person whose current gimmick makes him better left for week two. Yes, there could have been better focus on Cody, Sammy, and Darby, but what they did here was sufficient to at least let people know that those guys were here and were important, even if it didn’t quite explain who they were.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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