BRM Reviews the 3/1/2023 Dynamite

All AEW Related Reviews and Discussions
Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews the 3/1/2023 Dynamite

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 3rd, '23, 11:58

AEW ALL-ATLANTIC TITLE MATCH: Orange Cassidy(c) vs. Big Bill (w/Stokely Hathaway)- 6.25/10
The match started off with our supposed babyface stalling a lot by running away from the heel. This was supposedly “mind games.” When the heel finally got his hands on OC, he started kicking his ass.
Picking someone up, carrying them over to a table and chokeslamming them through it is not a DQ, apparently. Danhausen wandered out to ringside during a commercial break to “even the odds.” How about you se some forethought and come out at the beginning of the match? It’s not like we’ve never seen Stokely Hathaway interfere in a match before.
Big Bill kept kicking OC’s ass until Dorkhausen went to bother Stokely and Big Bill was a big blockhead and allowed himself to get distracted by this. Stokely hit OC with his cast so we all know he was lying about his wrist being broken. AEW management sure owes Hook an apology. OC won after several Orange Punches, ending in one off the top rope. It was actually a pretty great finish, but it felt like a total waste being used on someone who they haven’t done anything to build up as a credible threat.

JON MOXLEY PROMO FROM AFTER LAST WEEK’S DYNAMITE- TREMENDOUS!
This was absolutely tremendous. It made Moxley come off as dangerous to the point of being scary. He’s quite off-putting… and would love to see that actually acknowledged by AEW instead of having the announcers treat him as this run-of-the-mill babyface, because he certainly is not that. I really don’t even think he’s a babyface.

THE HOUSE OF BLACK INTERRUPT THE ELITE’S ENTRANCE VIA MAGICAL BLACKOUT AND CONTROL OF THE SOUND BOARD… AND THEN BEAT THEM UP WITH THE LIGHTS OFF- Yes, really. With the lights off.
And the f*cking MARKS in the crowd chanted “HOLY SH*T!” at this.
This short beating apparently debilitated the Elite to the point where they couldn’t cut the promo they were on their way out to cut.

FACE OF THE REVOLUTION LADDER MATCH FOR A SHOT AT THE AEW TNT TITLE NEXT WEEK: Sammy Guevara vs. Ortiz vs. Eddie Kingston vs. Will Hobbs vs. Action Andretti vs. Kommander vs. A.R. Fox vs. Konosuke Takeshita- 7/10
Samoa Joe was on commentary for this match. The entrances for this important match all took place during a commercial. Even for Kommander, their new big signing. When he got his first moment of focus doing a cool spot, he was immediately clotheslined down by Will Hobbs… and when the crowd went nuts because this is Hobbs’ home market. How did whoever was putting this match together not see that coming?
Kingston and Ortiz brawled to the back right away and weren’t involved in the match at all. We were told by Excalibur that they had to be “separated” in the back. Are you telling me that security stopped two guys from fighting each other WHILE THEY WERE LEGAL PARTICIPANTS IN A NO DQS MATCH?
They showed Don Callis watching from backstage and noted that he has “shown interest” in Takeshita. I think I remember something about that happening once, several months ago. Why didn’t they follow up on it at any point between now and then?
Dives and ladder spots happened. Yes, it was spectacular and impressive at times, but I’ve seen a million multi-person car-crash Ladder matches in my life (hell, just over the past ten years). To catch my eye, you need to have stories that play out throughout the match.
At one point Daniel Garcia ran in to push over a ladder that Takeshita and Andretti were on. You’d think that Andretti’s pal Ricky Starks would come out to deal with Garcia, or perhaps A.R. Fox’s buddies Top Flight, but nope. Hobbs won. We didn’t see Kommander for what felt like the final five minutes of the match. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone debut in such a high-profile match and come out of it feeling like such an afterthought. Just about the only thing this succeeded in doing was making me want to see Garcia vs. Takeshita. The only thing that felt like it got any real focus here was Andretti’s feud with the JAS, which has been going on for long enough that that special focus doesn’t really help it too much.
Hobbs needing the refs to hold the ladder for him at the end was quite embarrassing.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Hobbs went to go confront Joe… and he looked like such a goof carrying that big golden life-preserver around. Before they could reach each other, though, Wardlow showed up. Security quickly came out to get between him and Joe… and, of course, Wardlow beat up the security guards. When he was done, confetti fell from the ceiling along with a banner congratulating him on assaulting his 1,000th security guard, and Tony Khan came out to shake his hand and give him a plaque.

RENEE PAQUETTE IS IN THE TRAINER’S ROOM WITH THE GOOF TROOP- annoying
Chuck and Trent were injured by the Firm on Rampage, and they’re not medically cleared to be in tonight’s battle royale for a title shot. I’d say I feel bad for them, but it’s a battle royale that they didn’t do anything to earn their way into. If them being injured gives this spot to some other team that wasn’t in last week’s battle royale, I’d don’t see much of an injustice there.
Unfortunately, their place is being taken by the pairing of Orange Cassidy and Danhausen. They put over that OC is injured from his earlier match, but apparently not too injured to not wrestle again.

CHRIS JERICHO vs. PETER AVALON- no rating, very good segment
Tony Schiavone said “we’ve seen an edgier side of Peter Avalon and the Wingmen as of late.” I don’t even think we’ve seen them as of late. Said Wingmen weren’t at ringside for unexplained reasons.
Jericho got his ass kicked for a few minutes, then hit the Codebreaker and won. Jericho then got his baseball bat and hit Avalon with it. If the other Wingmen were at ringside, Jericho could have beat them up, too.
Ricky Starks came out to make the save. Instead of attacking Ricky with the bat, Jericho ran away and grabbed a microphone. He said that he had planted the JAS at ringside so that they could attack Starks, and attach they did… although only Garcia and Hager were there. Sammy we can give a pass to because he just wrestled a Ladder match, but where are 2.0?
Anyway, they beat Starks up. Excalibur said that “it wasn’t that long ago that Ricky Starks had a fairly serious rib injury” and that the JAS might have reaggravated it here tonight. It felt like Excalibur said this because he was expecting Jericho to hit Starks with the baseball bat… except that instead of using the bat on Starks’ ribs, Jericho laid him out with a Judas Effect. Was Excalibur not smartened up to what was going to happen?
This was a very good segment, though I really don’t understand why they felt the need to let this jobber get so much offense in on Jericho.

ADAM PAGE PROMO- didn’t like it
I guess I just don’t understand why these guys are going so crazy about this. Well… with Moxley I kind of get it because he’s just crazy, but with Page I don’t understand why losing to Moxley will be this mentally crippling thing for him. He doesn’t come off as likable or sympathetic in any way. If you can’t handle losing or getting hurt during a loss, you’re not cut out to be a professional combat athlete. Ditto if you “abhor” violence, as Page claimed to in this promo.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS CHRISTIAN CAGE IN THE RING- bad
The graphic said that Christian is a seven-time world champion, which only seems possible if you’re counting WWECW, which seems like a real stretch to me.
I’m so sick and tired of old heels saying that the young Millennials have no respect for the business and “treat it like a video game” and so forth. He was about to challenge Jungle Boy to a match at the PPV when he was interrupted by the lights going off. Instead of House of Black appearing, a video of Jungle Boy appeared on the Tron. It was a multi-camera shoot of him digging a grave for Christian while a video package of the feud played. So did the people in the production truck interrupt Christian to play a video package? That’s pretty rude.
Excalibur said that Jungle Boy had thrown down the gauntlet, but Christian was the one talking about a match. Jungle Boy just seems to want to murder Christian.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS BRITT BAKER & JAMIE HAYTER- bad
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone come off less likable while promising to stop people from cheating.

FTW TITLE MATCH: Hook(c) vs. Matt Hardy (w/Stokely Hathaway, Ethan Page, Isiah Kassidy)- 5.5/10
Didn’t they say on rampage that this match would be no DQs and that everyone was barred from ringside? Excalibur says that that was for a hypothetical Hook vs. Stokely Hathaway match which would happen if Hook wins this match. Is that official? Why didn’t they hype that up when they were hyping this match earlier? Or have the ring announcer announce it? Also, why would Stokely agree to that?
They had a good match built around Hook overcoming the interference, so apparently Stokely is going to die in the worst-built variant of “babyface gets five minutes in a cage with the heel manager” angle that I’ve ever seen.

HOUSE OF BLACK PROMO- snore
More gobbledygook. Also, they stole the tag belts, but they’ll leave them on the floor of the room their shooting this promo in for the Elite to get them, so why did you steal them in the first place?

RIHO vs. TONI STORM (w/Saraya)- 6/10
They had a decent match using the size difference between them. Baker and Hayter did come out as advertised. The finish was pretty much unprovoked interference from Baker, causing Storm to be distracted so Riho could roll her up.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
Brawl started. Hayter and Saraya paired off in the ring. Ruby first attacked Saraya, so Hayter thought Ruby was on her side, but then Ruby attacked Hayter, too, and it became a three-way brawl that needed referees and security to break it up.
Ruby’s involvement here was painfully artificial. She has said many times that she doesn’t care about this silly feud between “homegrown” stars and ex-WWE stars, so why did she run in here at all? And especially when it’s a brawl in which she will be by herself while the other two sides have two people? It felt like the whole reason Ruby ran in was so this go-home segment could visually illustrate to us that she is on either side and thus assure us that it will be a real three-way at the PPV and not some kind of two vs. one deal, and so the segment hyping the women’s title match on the go-home show could end with all three competitors brawling, not just two.

KEITH LEE & DUSTIN RHODES PROMO- Lee was fine. Dustin was okay until he decided to give them a stupid team name (“Naturally Limitless”). This is a blood-feud. You shouldn’t be spending your mic time giving you make-shift team a cutesy nickname mashup name.
They want a match with Mogul Affiliates on Rampage.

CASINO BATTLE ROYALE FOR A SPOT IN THE AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH AT REVOLUTION 2023- 3.5/10
Dark Order came out first, but were jumped from behind on the ramp by Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler YUTA, who have turned heel now with no precipitating cause.
They fought throughout the entire commercial break, including being in the ring and the match officially starting. I have no problem with the match starting during a commercial. What I do have a problem with is the fact that the Casino Battle Royales have five teams enter at a time, but the other three teams didn’t come out… until we got back from commercial. Then we got a count-down starting at seven, not at ten. And then only one team came out! AEW talked a big game about respecting continuity and respecting fans’ intelligence, and yet here they are, changing the rules to a signature match without telling us… so either they don’t respect continuity, or they think we’re too dumb to remember.
The Varsity Athletes came out of the crowd to the attack the Lucha Bros. as revenge for the Lucha Bros. helping Mark Briscoe a few weeks ago.
The Kingdom were in this match. You might have thought that they would be highlighted to try to push AEW’s new ROH show that they’re on tomorrow night, but if you thought that, you’re a lot smarter than Tony Khan. And if you can’t highlight them, just don’t put them in the f*cking match!
The Butcher & The Blade came in last, and Excalibur claimed that they were “the most dangerous team in the history of AEW inside battle royales.” I don’t care if they have the most eliminations. Calling an undercard team “the most dangerous team in AEW history inside battle royales” when they have won a grand total of zero is something you should not do. Earlier in the match, one of the announcers tried to claim that Top Flight were the “aces” of AEW battle royales because they won that trios battle royal a few months ago. Their record in battle royales going into tonight was 1-3.

The Dark Order came back out to distract the Blackpool Combat Club and cause them to be eliminated. The match predictably came down to the injured Orange Cassidy and Danhausen against the guys Excalibur just told us were extremely dangerous in battle royales, and the goofballs won.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Gunn Club and Triple J attacked OC and Danhausen after the match. Billy Gunn and the Acclaimed came out to make the save, and these six heels (including a giant) ran off from three unarmed babyfaces.

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. MJF VIDEO PACKAGE- excellent

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS BRYAN DANIELSON- excellent
Dragon cut a great promo vowing revenge on MJF and saying he would win the title. MJF had actually come out and tried to talk, but Dragon steamrolled him and wouldn’t let him start, which I thought was a good change of pace and a subtle thing to make it feel like the momentum was on the babyface’s side heading into the PPV.

This was an okay show from AEW. It had some good PPV hype and one great match, but a lot of the usual problems as well, and below-average wrestling.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests