BRM Reviews the 5/25/2022 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

STEEL CAGE MATCH WITH MJF AS SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE WHERE IF WARDLOW WINS, HE GETS A MATCH WITH MJF AT DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2022 IN WHICH IF HE WINS HIS CONTRACT WILL BE VOIDED: Wardlow vs. Shawn Spears- no rating, meh segment
How dumb is Wardlow for actually walking into cage handcuffed? Also, it’s kind of hard for me to be upset at MJF insisting on checking Wardlow for weapons when regular referees are supposed to, but never seem to do so in AEW. Just saying.
Yup. Dumbass Wardlow walks into an obvious trap. Excalibur said that Wardlow can’t hit MJF because he’ll get disqualified. In a cage match. I remember three (non-Blood & Guts) cage matches in AEW history, and two of them (Thunder Rosa vs. Britt Baker and Lucha Bros. vs. Young Bucks) featured copious weapon use (the other one is Wardlow vs. Cody).
All of the expected heel ref shenanigans happened. Even with MJF fast-counting, Wardlow kicked out of a C4, so that move is now dead as a finisher. The moment that Spears grabbed the chair, my sister, who hasn’t watched wrestling since 2002, said “he’s going to accidentally hit the referee.” Lo and behold, that’s what happened.
When Wardlow pulled his straps down, my mother asked what the purpose of that was. After taking ten minutes to try to explain the concept of psychology to someone whose mind is closed to pro wrestling, it occurred to me that, in terms of the psychology of “pulling the straps down” to signify your big comeback, the way this was done really didn’t work for that purpose, so all Wardlow did is open himself up to the potential danger of Spears pulling his singlet down to his knees and tripping him up (which my sister also pointed out).
With MJF knocked out, a new ref came out, and Wardlow hit the powerbomb for the win.
Look… on the bright side, they got this out of the way quickly and early, because we all knew what was going to happen. But that doesn’t mean that this was good. The cage match having DQs could have been explained as something MJF had insisted on adding into the contract, but if that’s the case, you have to say that first. Otherwise, it comes off as just another occurrence of the rules in a gimmick match changing to suit the needs of whatever the booker wants to do, and as a fan who wants logic and consistency in his wrestling show, that’s frustrating.
Also, if there are DQs in this match and MJF doesn’t want to face Wardlow, WHY DIDN’T HE JUST COME UP WITH SOME BULLSH*T REASON TO DISQUALIFY HIM? And don’t tell me that it would have been too transparent that MJF was cheating, because that’s equally true with a fast count or with not counting for Wardlow at all, and MJF had no problem doing that.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- terrible
Security comes to get Wardlow, and he beats them up. WHY? There is no threat to him! These guys work for Tony Khan, not MJF. They’re just going to take him to the back. There is no reason for him to be attacking these men. And what did Wardlow do with his newfound freedom? Did he go after MJF? Nope. Did he try to injure Shawn Spears so that Spears couldn’t interfere in the PPV match? Nope. He just climbed the cage and pointed at MJF.

JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY CUT A PROMO AND BEAT UP A BACKSTAGE WORKER FOR WEARING A JON MOXLEY SHIRT- bad
They were clowns, as always. And I love how Tony Khan has taken no action against them for assaulting an innocent non-wrestler employee.

They tried to sell me that Jericho and Regal on commentary together would be “most intriguing.” I’m calling bullsh*t. They did it on Rampage and nothing happened. And speaking of things we’ve seen before but AEW is trying to sell as new…

TONY SCHIAVONE HOSTS A FACE TO FACE WITH CM PUNK AND ADAM PAGE-
My sister asked if Page needed therapy, and I told her that he did, because he really does seem inordinately upset about… well… I’m honestly not even sure why he’s so upset. Punk responded with a bunch of stuff that didn’t come across to me as either disrespectful or untrue. Asking for the handshake was trolling, yes, but the idea that this would cause a shoving match and then Page throwing a punch feels forced. Nothing has changed between now and their previous face-to-face situations that explains why tensions would boil over tonight when they previously didn’t. This story didn’t “build to” a physical altercation just in time for the go-home show; it feels like there was a physical altercation here because this is the go-home show.
Excalibur pushed (and the wrestlers’ reaction seemed to sell) the idea that Page “walked into Punk’s trap,” but punching him here, but that really doesn’t make any sense. How does this benefit Punk or hurt Page? If anything, Page is likely more aware of his anger issues now that he has given in to this dark emotions and punched Punk on this show, than he otherwise would have been, and thus will be more on guard to not fall into that trap during the match.
And, of course, that assumes that getting angry like this actually is a negative for Page. Sure, we understand the general idea, but a lot of the time in wrestling, anger is shown to be a positive motivator that doesn’t have any drawbacks, either, and we haven’t seen it have an drawbacks for Page, so why are we assuming that it will be a negative?

ANNA JAY VS. JADE CARILL VIDEO PACKAGE-
Jade said that she already beat Anna Jay and Anna Jay has done absolutely nothing to deserve this title shot… and she’s not wrong. Do you know how many matches Anna Jay has wrestled on TV since losing to Jade Cargill? ZERO.
Anna says that since losing to Jade has learned so much from top wrestlers… and yet we have seen none of it. I’m also throwing a big honking red flag on the field here that this is the second time in about six months that Anna Jay has used that same “I’m a different me now” speech to sell us on her chances of winning a big match, and at no point have we seen any sort of change in her.
EDDIE KINGSTON & JON MOXLEY vs. PRIVATE PARTY- 5/10
William Regal and Chris Jericho were both on commentary for this match. They showed us clips of an angle from after Rampage went off the air where the Jericho Appreciation Society injured Bryan Danielson. How the hell was that not mentioned before?
Stuff happened. The babyfaces won cleanly, and in probably longer than they should have. I have no faith that Private Party will be getting a push at any point in the next three years. They don’t need t last this long with supposed top guys.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
Jericho sent his guys to attack. LAX and Danielson came out to make the save. Referees came out to break them up. How about those security guys we saw before? Any idea of dissension between Dragon and Kingston seems to have disappeared. It wasn’t even brought up by the announcers.

OWEN HART FINALS VIDEO PACKAGE- great stuff… but it’s really hard for me to care about his tournament with nothing on the line (especially when there are two of them going on at once, making both feel less special).

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: FTR(c) vs. Roppongi Vice- 6.5/10
Caprice Coleman was on commentary for this match. The match was building pretty well, but then United Empire (Jeff Cobb and Great O-Khan) ran out to cause a DQ because reasons. They put people through tables. No referees or security came out to stop them because… um…
Also not coming out to put a stop to this were Roppongi Vice’s CHAOS stable-mates, who are also Trent’s supposed “Best Friends.”

HARDY BOYZ PROMO- meh
Matt’s major point was that those youngsters the Young Bucks had it so good breaking in and could never have succeeded in the nineties. Jeff was bad. Then Matt just kept talking. He had a good line at the end, but it wasn’t worth the journey.

RICKY STARKS vs. JUNGLE BOY vs. SHANE “SWERVE” STRICKLAND- 8/10
Awesome match. Strickland won.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Will Hobbs came out to attack Strickland. The other partners also came out and got involved. I was quite annoyed when they cut away from Hobbs and Luchasaurus having an intense battle over an attempted goozle to show us Keith Lee walking to the ring. KEEP THE CAMERA ON THE ACTION!
More action happened. This was standard go-home show fare.

DAN LAMBERT (& MEN OF THE YEAR) PROMO- meh
He’s having a new, custom belt made for Scorpio Sky, so I assume Tay Conti, Sammy Guevara, and Frankie Kazarian will break that one, too.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS THUNDER ROSA- fine
Someone hit her music too early.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH RED VELVET IS INTERRUPTED BY RUBY SOHO- snore
Red Velvet offers Ruby the secrets to beating Kris Statlander. She says to go after the injured knee. Red Velvet then left. Ruby said she would keep it in mind, but also that she knows that this isn’t the same Kris Statlander she has faced before… and once again, I’m calling bullsh*t on that.
What is actually different about Statlander? That she isn’t pretending to be an alien (which, by the way, they haven’t actually ever SAID… because that would admit that her previous gimmick was the stupid comedy crap we all knew it was and was a detriment to her, even though they all pushed it as if it wasn’t at the time)? So what? That didn’t seem to affect her attitude towards matches or in-ring style in any way, so what is actually different? Once again, AEW doesn’t understand one of the most basic rules of storytelling: show; don’t tell.

OWEN HART FOUNDATION WOMEN’S TOURNAMENT SEMIFINAL MATCH: Dr. Britt Baker, DMD vs. Toni Storm- 4/10
Stuff happened, and much of it didn’t look very good. Jamie Hayter came out to try to distract Toni. Britt Baker won with “illegal leverage” via grabbing the ropes in one of those situations where the way she did it doesn’t make any sense. She took her hand off of Toni and used it to reach forward and pull herself towards the ropes, which did nothing to help her pin Toni. If you want to say that leaning forward more helped, I can certainly believe that, but in that case she could have leaned forward more without grabbing the ropes, and the actual grabbing of the ropes did nothing.

OWEN HART FOUNDATION MEN’S TOURNAMENT SEMIFINAL MATCH: Kyle O’Reilly vs. Samoa Joe- 8.5/10
It has been a week and we still haven’t been updated on Sting’s condition. This angle has worked so well that I completely forgot it had happened until they showed us a replay before this match.
This was f*cking awesome. Good storytelling with work on a limb, a babyface with excellent fire, and a wonderful battle of wills. The only really issue was that the outcome was never in doubt.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Adam Cole was nice enough to come out onto the stage so that we could end the show on a note that promotes the PPV.


This was an okay show from AEW. There were two really awesome matches, but as a go-home show, this was a total failure for me. I will admit that it was kind of doomed because of how poor the stories have been going in, but this just cemented things for me. This has to be the show that AEW has done with the worst overall build to everything (and especially the big matches).