BRM reviews the 7/20/2022 Dynamite (Barbed Wire and Bad Decisions Everywhere)

[Big Red Machine]

BRODY KING vs. DARBY ALLIN- 7/10
They have now added “also, they’ve been friends outside of AEW for years” to this feud, as if that somehow makes Brody’s taking offense at Darby congratulating him on a good effort against Jon Moxley more of a betrayal or something. Obviously this violates the rule of “show; don’t tell,” but this feels like even more of an ass-pull than usual because we’ve already heard Brody cut a promo about why he attacked Darby, and that fact didn’t come up at all.
Taz made sure to let us know that it was believable for a smaller man to take so much punishment from a larger man and survive. That was pretty much the story of the match, until Darby got Gonzo-Bombed and pinned.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Brody King attacked Darby after the match. Sting walked briskly out to the ring (want to show some urgency while your friend is in danger, Stinger?) to make the save. He had Brody set up for the Scorpion Death Drop, but Malakai Black did magic to make the lights go out. The announcers insisted to us that they “heard the thump,” so Sting must have hit the move. When the lights came back on, Malakai Black was in the ring, having a face-off with Sting. Then Brody popped back up- not really selling the finisher Sting just gave him- to grab Sting from behind in a sleeper. Malakai Black blew mist into Sting’s eyes, and Brody choked him out. No word yet on whether this was blinding mist or make you turn evil in six months mist.
Miro came out onto the ramp, so I guess he’s a babyface now. That’s yet another AEW “babyface turn” where the babyface doesn’t do anything to actually show that they have changed their ways and become moral. They’re just on the opposite side from some other heel now, and thus we’re automatically supposed to trust them and cheer for them and so forth.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH COLE CARTER ABOUT HIS UPCOMING FTW TITLE MATCH IS INTERRUPTED BY TEAM TAZ- BAD
Someone we’ve never seen before is getting a shot at a non-sanctioned title, and we’re supposed to care. They talked about something that happened “last week.” I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

BEST FRIENDS vs. BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB (Jon Moxley & Wheeler YUTA)- 7.25/10
Orange Cassidy and William Regal were both on commentary for this match. Best Friends are apparently on a nine-match winning streak.
Credit where it’s due: The announcers did not push the issue between Trent and YUTA (and, by extension, between these two groups) as if it has been hot for the whole three and a half months since it started.
Excalibur wanted me to believe that Orange Cassidy and Chuck Taylor were teaching Wheeler YUTA the Ilave style of submission wrestling. F*ck off. YUTA’s style never changed while he was with them, but more importantly, the idea that if Wheeler went up to OC and asked “hey, can you show me some Ilave?” OC would say “sure, kid, let me show you what I learned from Skayde” does not fit this character of his we’ve been presented with AT ALL (which is why you would need to show him incorporating Ilave into his repertoire while he was with them; because it gives us some evidence that maybe that did happen, unlikely as it sounds).
That, by the way, is one of the big problems with this Orange Cassidy character. AEW wants to have their cake and eat it, too. They want him to be a normal guy to be relatable when they want pathos, and they want him to be the hands-in-his-pockets gimmick when they want to do that gimmick for comedy, and those two things just aren’t compatible, unless the idea is that hands-in-the-pockets “I don’t care” schtick is a character that he just puts on sometimes, and that would mean that he doesn’t care about winning his matches (because he’ll do the schtick in ways and at times that are disadvantageous to him during a match), and also makes him a douchebag in some situations where we are supposed to side with him (like when he walked right through Jericho’s promo).
There was some great emotion here (especially from Trent and YUTA). YUTA took lots of moves to the head, but kicked out, including kicking out after two Stump Piledrivers in a row from Trent, so that finish is dead. YUTA won with a complicated roll-up (it’s that cool double-chicken wing one), and Orange Cassidy got upset because “Chuck taught him that pin.”
Again… this feels like an ass-pull. Before this week there had been no talk Chuck and OC ever teaching YUTA the Ilave style, and Wheeler didn’t use it in his matches. Then, this week it all of a sudden becomes a talking point, and YUTA wins with a roll-up we’ve never seen him use before, and it’s “how dare he use that special technique that Chuck taught him against us!” If you want something to be significant, you have to build it up beforehand!

They showed us Daniel Garcia watching backstage, because he challenges YUTA at the ROH PPV this Sunday.

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH HYPE PACKAGE- meh
This wasn’t bad, but it was far too short to really be effective. It was to see Ian Riccaboni, though.

A SHARK MASCOT APPEARS AT THE COMMENTARY TABLE TO PROMOTE SHARK WEEK-
It’s really annoying when there are about sixteen different directions you can go in for a joke, but you know that going in more than one would be overkill. Anyway, I settled on the following:
I couldn’t help but notice that Tony Schiavone was absent from the commentary table when this happened. Presumably, he saw the shark coming and ran away from the table in fear, assuming it was a real shark.

SWERVE IN OUR GLORY’S CHAMPIONSHIP CELEBRATON- F*CKING ATTROCIOUS!
The fans chanted “YOU DESERVE IT!” Really? Both guys were good. They had some hip-hop celebrity there who is a friend of Swerve.
Up until that point, this was fine. Then Mark Sterling and Tony Nese came out so Sterling could be a clown with his ridiculous anti-Swerve petition. He thought Swerve’s celebrity friend would sign it. The friend wouldn’t so Sterling said mean things about him. This non-wrestler, non-employee of AEW jumped the barricade. No security tried to stop him. Tony Nese got in his face, so the non-wrestler knocked Tony Nese out with one punch. Then Swerve hit Mark Sterling in the face with a cake, because apparently Vince McMahon is not the only owner of a televised wrestling company with a sense of humor best suited to Nickelodeon. And, of course, it this crap took the focus of the segment off of the new champions, and put it on a celebrity who won’t be back next week, a loser, and a clown.
And, while we are staring at Mark Sterling with a cake all over his face, Excalibur is plugging the “Barbed Wire Everywhere” big blow-off match between Eddie Kingston & Chris Jericho.

TONY SCHIAVONE IS BACKSTAGE BECAUSE THE BEAVER BOYS WANTED TO TALK TO BUTCHER AND BLADE- terrible
The Beaver Boys were annoying jackasses, so Butcher & Blade finally lost their patience with them and beat them up. Adam Page showed up with a chair and turned heel by preventing Butcher & Blade from beating John Silver to death.

THE VARSITY BLONDS vs. CHRISTIAN CAGE & LUCHASAURUS- squash
Christian new shirt says “Worked. Everyone.” The word “worked” doesn’t really make any kayfabe sense in this context, and the shirt itself doesn’t really make sense in any context because of that random period after “worked.”

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- very good
Jungle Boy made his big return, coming out with a chair. Luchasaurus came to the foot of the ramp tot meet him. They had a long stare-down, and then Luchasaurus stepped aside and let Jungle Boy go after Christian, who ran away… and Jungle Boy didn’t just give up. Instead, he followed, like someone who was more interested in revenge than in getting a pop.
I don’t know if this was the original plan or not, but whether it was the plan from the beginning or a pivot in response to the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Luchasaurus’ turn, this works very well. I don’t like relying on explanations like “well, he wanted his friend to get revenge first” in a scenario where someone viciously assaults your best friend, but if you’re only using it once in a while (like once every few years), I can accept it. What makes this work for me, though, is the detail that everyone one of Luchasaurus’ post-match attacks on people only happened after Christian directed him to do so. This makes them something Luchasaurus had to do for the sake of not blowing his cover as opposed to something he did of his own volition, even though it was clearly wrong.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS GUNN CLUB- bad
One of them challenges Max Caster to a rap battle on Rampage, with the winner getting to pick stipulations for a match. Being so delusional as to thing they would win this makes Gunn Club look stupid(er).

FTW TITLE MATCH: Ricky Starks(c) (w/Will Hobbs) vs. Cole Karter-5/10
Why is this even happening. Did someone (either Starks or Taz) approach Tony Khan and say, “hey, you should book an open challenge for the FTW Title on Dynamite this week,” and despite having an ROH PPV to build up, Tony said “sure, I’ll let you defend your unsanctioned title against someone who will likely be completely unworthy!” or did Tony come up with the idea himself and think this was a better use of his TV time than building up the ROH PPV?
This guy spells “Karter” with a K at the beginning. That’s a heel move right there. Now I want to see Starks kick his ass. Starks won clean.
Jim Ross thought Sabu was the first FTW Champion. Yeah, he was one of two to ever had it, but Taz is the person who had it 99% of the time, and the guy who everyone remembers with it.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Ricky Starks, a heel, decides that he is going to make another open challenge right now. I guess he has booking power, so everyone just goes along with it. Danhausen answers the open challenge, and of all the people in the work, Ricky Starks is afraid of Dorkhausen, so he changes his mind and they’re going to have the match next week.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS ATHENA, WILLOW NIGHTENGALE, & KRIS STATLANDER- TERRIBLE!
When Excalibur pitched to this, it seemed like he was having a lot of trouble finding the right words to say. Despite Excalibur having just told us about the match and pitched to him, Tony Schiavone opened this by saying that many people will have known about this match because of “social media.” It seems pretty clear that there was some sort of screw-up here, as this would have made a lot more sense if this was an interview from “earlier today.”
Also, apparently Statlander was supposed to be in this match, but has to sit out because Stokely Hathaway said so. Huh? Why does Stokely get to choose who is on the other team?
Willow Nightengale said that “Leyla not being here tonight is a sign.” What? Why? Was this originally a six-woman tag that now has to be changed because Leyla Grey had travel issues or something? That’s about the only way that this would make any sense, but if that’s the case, YOU HAVE TO F*CKING TELL US SO THAT WE DON’T WIND UP FEELING COMPLETELY CONFUSED!
Athena suggests that Statlander should go win the AEW Women’s World Title and that she herself will go after the TBS Title… so she just told us that the TBS Title is more important than the world title. Also, what the hell has Statlander done to earn a title shot?
Willow spoke again, and was very annoying. This was terrible. That match is “up next.”

Or not.
TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS FTR- great babyface stuff.

LEXI NAIR’S INTERVIEW WITH SONJAY DUTT, JAY LETHAL, & SATNAM SINGH IS INTERRUPTED BY CHRISTOPHER DANIELS- bad
Everyone here was a cartoon. Sonjay having a Shark Week fin on his head only made things worse. Daniels showed up to cut a promo on Samoa Joe’s behalf, and challenged Lethal to a match on Rampage.

WILLOW NIGHTENGALE & ATHENA vs. JADE CARGILL & KIERA HOGAN (w/Stokely Hathaway & Jermaine Dupree)- 4.75/10
Before the match, Stokely Hathaway came out and said that Leyla Gray was “unable to compete tonight,” but tells us that he also got Kris Statlander barred from ringside. Apparently Statlander also now as has some sort of gimmick where slaps her own head or something? Did Statlander not know in the promo she cut a few minutes ago? Why has that not been mentioned at all tonight? Or the fact that Leyla was booked in this match in the first place?
This whole thing has been such an embarrassing mess. It feels like they had a match booked earlier in the week, but then Leyla got injured, and so they decided to handle that by having the announcers just ignore the fact that she (and Statlander) had ever been booked in the match, but they didn’t tell either the wrestlers or Stokely that that’s how they were handling it, so they cut promos assuming prior knowledge that we were missing.
This show took place in Atlanta, where Jade Cargill is from, so she came out and cut a total babyface promo, even though she’s a heel.
They did some stuff. Jade won clean, pinning Willow.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH THUNDER STORM IS INTERRUPTED BY JAMIE HAYTER & DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD- bad
Some random woman from Japan (Miyu Yamashita) is getting a title shot against Thunder Rosa. Baker & Hayter then showed up and buried the babyfaces’ starpower and promo ability. The babyfaces had no response.

JUST ADDED TO THE ROH SHOW IS… WILLOW NIGHTENGALE VS. ALLYSIN KAY- Yes… come a random woman you might remember from TNA from seven years ago under a different name wrestle the woman you just saw lose clean. Meanwhile, not wrestling on the ROH show, is Christopher Daniels (lots of history in ROH), the Young Bucks (history in ROH, plus they showed up on the last show and attacked FTR), Brian Cage (featured relatively heavily on the previous show as an exciting new bring-in), Colt Cabana (lots of history in ROH), Matt Sydal (lots of history in ROH), Adam Page (a big star who has history in ROH) and Lee Moriarty (the perfect guy to be building ROH around).

We’ve added even more titles to AEW’s Universe, as The Righteous will defend the ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Titles against Dalton Castle & the Boys.

BARBED WIRE EVERYWHERE MATCH WITH THE JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY SUSPENDED ABOVE THE RING IN A SHARK CAGE: Eddie Kingston vs. Chris Jericho- 4.75/10
There was no barbed wire on the canvass, which means that the barbed wire was not “everywhere,” so that’s false advertising. (It’s a stupid name. Just called it a “Barbed Wire match” like everyone else.)
Justin Roberts’ microphone is wrapped in barbed wire, which is unnecessary and mean. There are (fake) sharks on the stage, wrapped in barbed wire, because humor is the sort of thing you want in a barbed-wire match.
They’ve let Ruby Soho sit at ringside, hold the key, and control the elevator mechanism for the cage. This feels more and more like management is just trying to screw with Jericho and his group.
They’ve also wrapped the ring bell in barbed wire. It’s a good thing Kingston jumped Jericho and thus they didn’t need to ring the bell, or else they would have had to ring it and wouldn’t have been able to because of a stupid, goofy thing they did.
A few minutes in Kingston made Jericho bleed, which is what he has spent the past few weeks telling us he wanted to do… so why should I care about the rest of the match?
They hit each other with stuff and bled a lot. This is now the third time I’ve seen them do that in two months. So what if they’re using a different (and, quite frankly, less exciting) apparatus to do it? This issue was compounded by the fact that they worked this like any other weapons match (just hitting each other with the advertised gimmick and a few other gimmicks as well), without any of the psychology you’d see in a good Barbed Wire match.
Tay Conti ran out to attack Ruby Riott. Isn’t she a member of their group? Why wasn’t she in the cage?
Anna Jay came out and pulled Tay off of Ruby (probably because that’s what she was booked to do, but it’s possible she did this as a shoot to save her shoot friend from embarrassing herself by throwing any more of those punches). Then… RUUSO-SWERVE! Anna Jay attacks Ruby.
They let the heels out of the cage. Or at least they tried to, but Tay couldn’t undo the lock… so the heels just WALKED OUT. WCW, everybody! They should have taken the cage not opening as a sign from G-d to nix idea of them getting out of the cage and just let Jericho and Kingston do their planned finish without any interference until Sammy’s (I’ll get to how much I hated that in a moment). No one came out to try to stop Tay from letting the heels out, either. Doesn’t Kingston have a stable? Where are they?
The heels got out of the cage and beat up Eddie Kingston. I was laughing my ass off at this point because of how ridiculous this was. They can just blatantly violate the stipulations because “it’s a no DQs match?” F*ck off. Are you telling me that in a Dog Collar match in AEW, a heel can just unclip it and run away? Ah. Here come the babyfaces to help Kingston. They were waiting for the appropriate dramatic moment, I guess.
This shark cage stuff was so dumb, and it came out of nowhere. If they actually did this as some sort of cross-promotion for Shark Week, it shows that Tony Khan just doesn’t learn from his past mistakes (Space Jam, Halloween bullsh*t).
They did more stuff to each other. Kingston was going to win, but Sammy Guevara came out to interfere and help Jericho win, so once again they have lied to us about this being the blow-off. The heels went to beat Eddie up even more, but Eddie made his own comeback and beat them up. Why didn’t they just have him win?
So Jericho wins the match dirty, so surely Kingston will want revenge, right? And don’t tell me that he doesn’t need revenge because he beat them up afterwards. In the Blood & Guts match he was beating Jericho up when someone on his own team got the win, and that wasn’t enough for him, but now he’s going to be content with haven beaten Jericho up at the end of a match that he lost?
And no, “this way Kingston gets to win but the Painmaker gets to stay undefeated” is not a valid excuse. That might have been their reasoning for doing it, but that doesn’t not make it good reasoning. If you didn’t want Kingston to lose clean and you didn’t want the Painmaker to lose, you shouldn’t have had Jericho be the Painmaker in the first place (you know… in addition to the fact this whole Painmaker thing doesn’t actually make any kayfabe sense for the reasons I described last week).

This was yet another frustrating episode of Dynamite, despite good wrestling. There were some embarrassing production issues, frustrating booking, and a lot of really bad decision-making on display along various axes. And it’s not just the stuff I’ve talked about already. In last week’s main event, the Young Bucks lost the tag titles, and without even being pinned. They were nowhere to be found on this show, while a large amount of time was dedicated to a guy on the team that got pinned. I really have no faith in Tony Khan anymore, either for AEW or for ROH.

[cero2k]

JUST ADDED TO THE ROH SHOW IS… WILLOW NIGHTENGALE VS. ALLYSIN KAY- Yes… come a random woman you might remember from TNA from seven years ago under a different name wrestle the woman you just saw lose clean. Meanwhile, not wrestling on the ROH show, is Christopher Daniels (lots of history in ROH), the Young Bucks (history in ROH, plus they showed up on the last show and attacked FTR), Brian Cage (featured relatively heavily on the previous show as an exciting new bring-in), Colt Cabana (lots of history in ROH), Matt Sydal (lots of history in ROH), Adam Page (a big star who has history in ROH) and Lee Moriarty (the perfect guy to be building ROH around).

to be fair, Cage and Cabana did make it into the show, and I would definitely keep the Bucks and Page level names out of the ROH show. It's obvious that they really like Willow and probably want her to be a name in ROH more than AEW, but I do agree that the announcement was somewhat mistimed with the match and AK is not exactly an exciting opponent now a days. I still much rather have this second women's match than having an Anthony Henry match or that Trustbusters match

[Big Red Machine]

JUST ADDED TO THE ROH SHOW IS… WILLOW NIGHTENGALE VS. ALLYSIN KAY- Yes… come a random woman you might remember from TNA from seven years ago under a different name wrestle the woman you just saw lose clean. Meanwhile, not wrestling on the ROH show, is Christopher Daniels (lots of history in ROH), the Young Bucks (history in ROH, plus they showed up on the last show and attacked FTR), Brian Cage (featured relatively heavily on the previous show as an exciting new bring-in), Colt Cabana (lots of history in ROH), Matt Sydal (lots of history in ROH), Adam Page (a big star who has history in ROH) and Lee Moriarty (the perfect guy to be building ROH around).

to be fair, Cage and Cabana did make it into the show, and I would definitely keep the Bucks and Page level names out of the ROH show. It's obvious that they really like Willow and probably want her to be a name in ROH more than AEW, but I do agree that the announcement was somewhat mistimed with the match and AK is not exactly an exciting opponent now a days. I still much rather have this second women's match than having an Anthony Henry match or that Trustbusters match

Haven't seen the show yet, but from the announced line-up, it felt like there was very little star-power (and, unfortunately, when you put them in an AEW environment, guys like Lethal and Gresham don't feel as much like stars as they did in ROH, simply from lack of build and proximity to much bigger stars like the Bucks, Moxley, Jericho, Page, etc. I'd even put guys like Darby and Jungle Boy well above them).

They are running these shows o infrequently that they need to make them all feel special, both for the sake of making money on them as well as for the sakes of the brand itself and to draw eyes to a situation where someone like Gresham or Lee Moriarty or Brian Cage or whoever can look like a star in front of the AEW crowd.

I don't know who the Trustbusters are, but I would much rather see Anthony Henry than pretty much any woman on AEW's roster other than Thunder Rosa. Why is Henry not wrestling Lee Moriarty on a show like this?

[Thelone]

This shark cage stuff was so dumb, and it came out of nowhere. If they actually did this as some sort of cross-promotion for Shark Week, it shows that Tony Khan just doesn’t learn from his past mistakes (Space Jam, Halloween bullsh*t).

Weirdly enough, Tiny might be learning from his mistakes here.

He actually had to pay for whatever song they used for the Space Jam entrance because it wasn't a cross-promotion for the Lebron movie, but basically a cosplay of the first one with Jordan, complete with the old Tune Squad gear and I think Omega spoofing one of MJ's famous quotes at some point.

The Ghostbusters one on Halloween was literally just the Elite cosplaying. I think they wanted to dress up as Squid Game characters at first, but Warner told them no (I suppose because it's available on a rival's service) and they had to change at the eleventh hour for Ghostbusters instead.

So yeah, this shark stuff was "better" (and the Rick & Morty one they did in the early days) than those two... somehow. At least they didn't spend tens of thousands for no reason and no payoff whatsoever.