BRM Reviews the 5/5/2021 Dynamite (Blood & Guts)

[Big Red Machine]

EDDIE KINGSTON & JON MOXLEY vs. MICHAEL NAKAZAWA & KENNY OMEGA (w/Don Callis)- 5.5/10
Nakazawa isn’t even dressed to wrestle. Also, he is apparently officially “MT Nakazawa” now, but no one seems to have bothered to inform the fans or the announcers. Callis claimed that Omega wasn’t here tonight and that Nakazawa would wrestle alone. All of the announcers immediately shouted that this was a lie because they had seen Omega in the back before, but I guess no one in AEW management did (and you’d think they’d want to make sure someone wrestling in the opener was here before the show starts), because they just shrugged their metaphorical shoulders and played the babyfaces’ music.
The babyfaces made their entrance, and Omega popped out of the crowd behind them and attacked them with the title belt. That’s all well and good, but you could have accomplished the same thing by just having the babyfaces enter first and having Omega jump them, and you would have gotten to the exact same place but without making it look like management is either incompetent or doesn’t give a sh*t if the world champion no-shows a big match!
Nakazawa hit Kingston in the nuts and held his arm out like Nakamura (or Chris Bosh in PWG, well before Nakamura), and the announcers called it a “deep, deep low blow.” What the f*ck is a “‘deep’ low blow? Did he stick his hand up Kingston’s urethra?
Anyway, they did stuff. The heels got their heat on Kingston. The babyfaces made a comeback, and Omega eventually decided to abandon Nakazawa.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
The Young Bucks came out to cause a distraction.. and Matt Jackson’s outfit was certainly distracting. That might be the single loudest shirt I have ever seen. Gallows & Anderson jumped Kingston & Moxley from behind, and the heels beat them down. Gallows & Anderson held Moxley up so Matt could superkick him, which Matt did… but not before taking his shoes off first because… um… he didn’t want to hurt him too badly during this gang-beating?
Omega came back out with Brandon Cutler so Omega could hit Moxley with a One-Winged Angel. Nick Jackson then counted a pinfall for Omega.
As a beat-down, this was fine, but I have to ask: If this was the plan, why didn’t they just run in during the match? Sure, they don’t value Nakazwa and are happy to sacrifice him… but why sacrifice him if you don’t have to?
The other- and larger- issue I have with this is that while this segment was fine in a vacuum, this feud really doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. They haven’t built either guy towards Omega much, and they haven’t even pointed Kingston and Moxley in the specific direction of either tag team, either, so it doesn’t really feel like there is any sort of direction here. Just a bunch of treading water.

Britt Baker announced to be getting a title shot on PPV the week after becoming the official top-ranked contender. Cool. Now why the f*ck didn’t this same thing happen with Adam Page or SCU?

Q.T. MARSHALL vs. CODY RHODES (w/Arn Anderson)- 5/10
Q.T. left his faction in the back. That was shockingly honorable of him.
Cody runs out and goes right after Q.T. So far, so good. Cody takes his weight-belt off and goes to hit Q.T. with it but referee Bryce Remsburg stops him and takes the belt away. Still good. While Cody is arguing with Bryce about this, Q.T. takes his own belt off and whips Cody with it right in front of the referee… and this is not a DQ. Either using the belt is illegal, in which case Q.T. should have been disqualified, or it’s not illegal, in which case the referee shouldn’t have stopped Cody from using it! How do these idiots not see the problem here when they’re putting this match together!
Cody recovered form that and was soon dominating Q.T. again. He then went into Hulk Hogan territory by using eye-pokes and back-rakes when he had absolutely no need to. He went to the top rope and got cut off. Q.T. beat Cody up on the outside, then pushed Arn. Arn then attacked Q.T. right in front of the referee… and this was not a DQ. Arn was instead ejected from ringside by an army of referees. So when people are being viciously beaten down after a match, we don’t send referees out to stop it, but when Arn Anderson interferes in a match, we’ve got to get two referees to run out and order him to the back (but, again, it’s not a DQ). This was SOOO dumb, and what’s worse is that it didn’t serve any purpose! Don’t tell me it was necessary so Arn couldn’t get in Ogogo’s way for the post-match attack. Are you telling me that Anthony Ogogo isn’t above punching Arn Anderson? And even if that was an issue, you could have just had the other Factory members get in Arn’s way.
Cody made a comeback again and threw Q.T. to the outside. A fan held Q.T. in place so Cody could punch him. This, too, was right in front of the referee but wasn’t a DQ. Things got better after that, but all of that crap already had me losing my temper at this match.
I got a good laugh out of Ross yelling at Cody for not hooking the legs when pinning Q.T. after a Tombstone Piledriver. He’s not technically wrong, but it’s just funny that the pin Cody used after hitting it was the pin that the guy who is famous for winning matches with the move does, and that pin very famously does not involve hooking the leg. Maybe if Cody had stuck his tongue out, the added air resistance on Cody’s tongue when Q.T. tried to push Cody up and off would have made the difference. Do think that might be Taker’s secret technique that seems to make his Tombstones so much more effective than everyone else’s?
Anyway, after both the Tombstone and a CrossRhodes got kicked out of, Cody locked on a Figure-Four and Q.T. tapped out. This would have been fine except for the fact that Cody hadn’t worked the leg AT ALL. What? Is Q.T. a drama-type Pokémon and therefore using a move that has been a limited motif in the story is super-effective against him?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- This was okay at first, but then it fell off a cliff, and I almost followed this segment over the cliff because I was rolling around laughing so hard at AEW’s incompetence.
Out comes Anthony Ogogo to superpunch Cody in the stomach. That was fine.
Then Ogogo unfurled a piece of cloth he was holding, revealing it to be a British flag, which he then draped on top of Cody. You know, like Eddie Gilbert did to Bill Watts. Sure, when Gilbert did it he buried Watts under the flag of our geopolitical rival who represented the biggest threat to our way of life that we had ever known at least since World War II (if not longer) while Ogogo has buried Cody under the flag of the country that has been our closest ally for the past hundred and five years (at least), but I’m sure that was just a minor factor. The real humiliation was burying Watts under a foreign flag. The country in question was definitely irrelevant.
Obviously, I was being sarcastic there, but the reality is that it wasn’t just the fact that Eddie Gilbert buried Bill Watts under the Soviet flag that was so heinous (and made the angle work so well). If you haven’t seen the angle, take a few minutes and give it a watch:

As the title of the video might have tipped you off, it’s not just the fact that Gilbert buries Watts under the flag, but also the set-up and the betrayal that make it the angle work. Did you hear the way the crowd reacted when they thought Eddie was actually going to distance himself from the Russians? That’s a key element in what made that angle work, and it’s totally missing here. For a supposed student of wrestling’s history, the fact that Cody failed to understand all of that is extremely damning.

Speaking of Bill Watts, Ross noted during the Cody vs. Q.T. match that today is Bill Watts’ 82nd birthday, and that earlier today, he and Cody were reminiscing about the antics that Watts and Dusty got up to. I’m going to bet that many of those antics involved the use of the N-word.

It has been one week and no one has told Tony Schiavone not to remind people that Yuji Nagata was wrestling back when WCW was around. If you want to tell us that he’s a veteran, all you need to do is exactly what Jim Ross did, and say that he’s a veteran.

ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWS SCORPIO SKY & ETHAN PAGE- great
Sky cut a very good promo on Sting, calling him a leech sucking AEW’s blood. The only misstep here, in my opinion, was the pointless use of Sting’s shoot name.
Ethan Page then cut a promo on Darby Allin. I will proudly admit that I got irrationally angry at Page when he began his promo by alluding to his feud with Darby Allin in EVOLVE and then said “but nobody wants to listen to me talk about a bunch of matches that no one ever saw!” I, sir, saw every single one of them, and would love to hear you talk about them.
They were up in the skybox, but Darby found them and jumped them from behind. Darby got rid of Sky and then took it to Page for a while (including finding something to climb up and do a Coffin Drop off of, of course), but then Scorpio Sky came charging in with a trash can to the head and they beat Darby up. They grinded his face into Sky’s spiked shoes, and then Ethan Page threw Darby Allin down a flight of concrete stairs. I worry about Darby more than any other wrestler I have seen. The risks he is willing to take are at the same level of risk-taking you’d see in early CZW.

JULIA HART vs. DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD (w/Rebel)- squash

TECHNIQUE WITH TAZ- great stuff for the Team Taz vs. Christian feud

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Varsity Blonds vs. SCU vs. the Acclaimed vs. Jurassic Express (w/Marko Stunt)- 6.75/10
They did their spots. SCU won clean.

JON MOXLEY VS. YUJI NAGATA VIDEO PACKAGE- great!
Moxley wearing a “Violent Gentleman” brand sweatshirt makes him a heel to me this week. F*ck George Parros. Department of Player Safety my ass.

TONY SCHIAVONE TELLS KENNY OMEGA WHO WILL CHALLENGE HIM AT AEW DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2021- dull
Schiavone started this off by saying, “I must tell you: In all my years of doing wrestling, I’ve never seen a presentation… FOUR TITLES!” Dude… you called Ultimo Dragon matches when held the J-Crown!
Tony tells Omega that his challenger will be the winner of a match next week between the two top contenders, who are… Orange Cassidy and Pac? Really? Where the f*ck did that come from? That match is also an “eliminator” match. Who knows that will mean next week? If it’s a #1 contendership match, just say that!
Kenny completely dismisses the possibility of OC winning. I REALLY hope they’re not going to give Goofball McF*ckface a world title shot on PPV, especially after Omega’s big promo laying out several reasons why Pac would make a good challenger for him.
Orange Cassidy came out and stood there while Kenny cut a slightly goofy promo on him, but one that summed up pretty perfectly why OC should not be world champion. OC then let Kenny and Nakazawa steal his expensive sunglasses.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS MIRO- awesome!
They keep telling us that Blood & Guts is “up next” but then keep doing interviews instead. It’s pretty annoying.
Miro is getting a TNT Title shot next week.

BLOOD & GUTS MATCH: The Inner Circle vs. the Pinnacle (w/Tully Blanchard)- 8.75/10
What’s the difference between making someone submit and making someone surrender?
On his way to the ring, MJF shoved and plant, and the plant next to him had the most cartoonish look on her face. Not good. I also didn’t like the Inner Circle’s matching prison outfits. It was too cutesy.
The match itself was what it needed to be. I’m sure most people liked this a lot more than me, but I’ve never been too fond of War Games, and especially when there aren’t any pinfalls. The cage (especially at five on five) is just too crowded for me to get that “nearfall” feeling out of any submission, and that is only exacerbated when most of the people in the match don’t have a submission finisher. I’m not saying it wasn’t violent and that it wasn’t an excellent match. I’m just saying you’ll probably like it a lot more than I did.
As for the finish… I can see people not liking it, but I thought it was very good. I would have even been fine with it if MJF hadn’t pushed Jericho off the cage at the end, but the fact that he did makes it much better. I’d didn’t think it was possible to come up with a way to do a War Games match and come out of it feeling like the feud was still escalation, but props to AEW for finding a way to do exactly that. It’s just unfortunate that their safety set-up wasn’t more convincing. I think if they had had a deeper hole for Jericho to fall into where you could hide a much larger pad (and where we wouldn’t be able to get a close-up of the ramp panels he went through to see how flimsy they were) it would have worked a lot better.

This was a very good show from AEW. I’m not going to pretend that it didn’t have its problems, but there was a lot less frustrating than usual, and both the main event and the Miro promo that preceded it were excellent. This was definitely the best Dynamite in a while. It would have been nice to get some follow-up with both Adam Page and Brian Cage after the result of their match last week (the top-ranked wrestler getting toppled is certainly newsworthy), but when it comes to a good episode of Dynamite, I’ll take what I can get.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Jim Ross (and Tony Schiavone immediately agreed)- “I think Q.T.’s gotten a little bit too big for his britches. To me, he’s still paying his dues, and I don’t give a damn if you’ve worked the indies for fifty years. He just got here to AEW, just like the rest of us.”
Well if all of you “just got here to AEW” then what makes Q.T. any less deserving than anyone else. Why is Q.T. uppity but MJF or Kazarian or Rey Fenix or Britt Baker or Nyla Rose or Scorpio Sky or isn’t?

[Thelone]

EDDIE KINGSTON & JON MOXLEY vs. MICHAEL NAKAZAWA & KENNY OMEGA (w/Don Callis)- 5.5/10
Nakazawa isn’t even dressed to wrestle. Also, he is apparently officially “MT Nakazawa” now, but no one seems to have bothered to inform the fans or the announcers.

*brings a bucket of salt*

Apparently, this is a knock on QT Marshall who's Cody's lackey, so now Nakazawa is MT. Again, not sure if it's supposed to be some deep "long term storytelling" or just Omega taking the piss out of Cody because of real life heat between them, but only time will tell I guess.

The other- and larger- issue I have with this is that while this segment was fine in a vacuum, this feud really doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. They haven’t built either guy towards Omega much, and they haven’t even pointed Kingston and Moxley in the specific direction of either tag team, either, so it doesn’t really feel like there is any sort of direction here. Just a bunch of treading water.

The end goal is Bucks vs. Moxley/Kingston at the PPV it seems like, except they aren't even ranked yet and there are only three shows left (and the Youtube squashathons).

Britt Baker announced to be getting a title shot on PPV the week after becoming the official top-ranked contender. Cool. Now why the f*ck didn’t this same thing happen with Adam Page or SCU?

Well you see, she beat such greats as *checks Cagematch* Tesha Price, Skye Blue, Shawna Reed, Alex Gracia and more tomato cans, obviously that's much more impressive than... whoever Page and SCU faced.

Q.T. MARSHALL vs. CODY RHODES (w/Arn Anderson)- 5/10
[...]
Out comes Anthony Ogogo to superpunch Cody in the stomach. That was fine.

So we are getting One Punch Man vs. Cody at the PPV. Anyway, thanks for coming QT, that was... a thing that happened while it lasted.

As the title of the video might have tipped you off, it’s not just the fact that Gilbert buries Watts under the flag, but also the set-up and the betrayal that make it the angle work. Did you hear the way the crowd reacted when they thought Eddie was actually going to distance himself from the Russians? That’s a key element in what made that angle work, and it’s totally missing here. For a supposed student of wrestling’s history, the fact that Cody failed to understand all of that is extremely damning.

He does that a lot, isn't it? He tries to recreate those old school angles, but without any charm or context.

ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWS SCORPIO SKY & ETHAN PAGE- great
Sky cut a very good promo on Sting, calling him a leech sucking AEW’s blood. The only misstep here, in my opinion, was the pointless use of Sting’s shoot name.

Because it's a shoot brother!!!

TONY SCHIAVONE TELLS KENNY OMEGA WHO WILL CHALLENGE HIM AT AEW DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2021- dull

I was waiting for that one when I saw the rankings and those two were on top. Again, this is two guys with a grand total of ONE match against a non-jobber opponent (Pentagon for OC, Kingston for PAC) and a mere TWO singles matches on TV, and yet here they are, somehow the top two seeds of this fraud. And you know it's going to be Cassidy because PAC seems to fly in from the UK, work a show and I guess quarantine, fly back to the UK, quarantine there, then fly back to the US, lather, rinse, repeat.

BLOOD & GUTS MATCH: The Inner Circle vs. the Pinnacle (w/Tully Blanchard)- 8.75/10

They are pretty bad at delivering satisfying endings in big gimmicks matches. Shoot it from a distance, make it less fake looking (no, I'm not asking for Jericho to be dumped on fucking concrete like he's Matt Hardy or something, but there's a balance between that and a meter thick worth of mattresses + cardboard floors) or if you can't do any that, DON'T DO THE SPOT.

[NWK2000]

What’s the difference between making someone submit and making someone surrender?

I always assumed the surrender stip was put in place so someone else could surrender on your behalf if you were getting your ass whopped too bad. Or, if you're, say Brian Pillman in that war games where he got necked by Sid Viscious, you can just surrender for that as well.

phpBB [video]

Then Ogogo unfurled a piece of cloth he was holding, revealing it to be a British flag, which he then draped on top of Cody. You know, like Eddie Gilbert did to Bill Watts. Sure, when Gilbert did it he buried Watts under the flag of our geopolitical rival who represented the biggest threat to our way of life that we had ever known at least since World War II (if not longer) while Ogogo has buried Cody under the flag of the country that has been our closest ally for the past hundred and five years (at least), but I’m sure that was just a minor factor. The real humiliation was burying Watts under a foreign flag.

There's something that puts the whole patriot gimmick on another level when your head is so far up your ass that you're fighting a where the only one who cares about or believes said war is you.

[NWK2000]

He does that a lot, isn't it? He tries to recreate those old school angles, but without any charm or context.

Context got lost when Vince testified under oath that this shit was fake but sure let's blame the booker of the promotion we don't like for this. As far as charm, thought it was plenty charming, see my post above.

[Thelone]

Context got lost when Vince testified under oath that this shit was fake but sure let's blame the booker of the promotion we don't like for this. As far as charm, thought it was plenty charming, see my post above.

This has nothing to do with the death of kayfabe. Yeah, it was a bit silly when Rusev was the evil Russian sympathiser, but it still worked and by far the highlight of his WWE run (between cuck angles and a catchphrase).

Here, we have Ogogo who made some snide remarks apparently in promos and interviews, and draped Cody in the Union Jack. This week, we have Cody cut a rambling, teary-eyed, overly dramatic MUHRICA promo that almost came out of nowhere because it's so disproportionate. This feels so tacked on and artificial, that it is why it doesn't have any charm and a completely ridiculous context.

[Big Red Machine]

What’s the difference between making someone submit and making someone surrender?

I always assumed the surrender stip was put in place so someone else could surrender on your behalf if you were getting your ass whopped too bad. Or, if you're, say Brian Pillman in that war games where he got necked by Sid Viscious, you can just surrender for that as well.

So "surrender" is an outside force (like a cornerman) submitting on your behalf.


People seem to be upset that Sammy was allowed to submit on Jericho's behalf, but I don't understand why. Sammy is a legal participant. He submitted on his own behalf to save Jericho. The official record should be Sammy as the one who submitted, not Jericho. It's like when the Horsemen submitted to save Flair from the nWo (and, in that angle, the nWo still did their heinous thing to Flair anyway, too).

[Big Red Machine]

Context got lost when Vince testified under oath that this shit was fake but sure let's blame the booker of the promotion we don't like for this. As far as charm, thought it was plenty charming, see my post above.

This has nothing to do with the death of kayfabe. Yeah, it was a bit silly when Rusev was the evil Russian sympathiser, but it still worked and by far the highlight of his WWE run (between cuck angles and a catchphrase).

Here, we have Ogogo who made some snide remarks apparently in promos and interviews, and draped Cody in the Union Jack. This week, we have Cody cut a rambling, teary-eyed, overly dramatic MUHRICA promo that almost came out of nowhere because it's so disproportionate. This feels so tacked on and artificial, that it is why it doesn't have any charm and a completely ridiculous context.

This. It's about the execution of the story and Cody clearly not understanding what made the Gilbert/Watts angle work so well.

[NWK2000]

What’s the difference between making someone submit and making someone surrender?

I always assumed the surrender stip was put in place so someone else could surrender on your behalf if you were getting your ass whopped too bad. Or, if you're, say Brian Pillman in that war games where he got necked by Sid Viscious, you can just surrender for that as well.

So "surrender" is an outside force (like a cornerman) submitting on your behalf.


People seem to be upset that Sammy was allowed to submit on Jericho's behalf, but I don't understand why. Sammy is a legal participant. He submitted on his own behalf to save Jericho. The official record should be Sammy as the one who submitted, not Jericho. It's like when the Horsemen submitted to save Flair from the nWo (and, in that angle, the nWo still did their heinous thing to Flair anyway, too).

What happened in that match is the exact reason why the surrender stip is part of the usual Wargames format. It's just that WWE has programmed so many fans to expect certain finish, and the word "non-finish" has been beaten into the ground by IWC commentary that anything outside the norm no matter how logical envokes anger.

[NWK2000]

Context got lost when Vince testified under oath that this shit was fake but sure let's blame the booker of the promotion we don't like for this. As far as charm, thought it was plenty charming, see my post above.

This has nothing to do with the death of kayfabe. Yeah, it was a bit silly when Rusev was the evil Russian sympathiser, but it still worked and by far the highlight of his WWE run (between cuck angles and a catchphrase).

Here, we have Ogogo who made some snide remarks apparently in promos and interviews, and draped Cody in the Union Jack. This week, we have Cody cut a rambling, teary-eyed, overly dramatic MUHRICA promo that almost came out of nowhere because it's so disproportionate. This feels so tacked on and artificial, that it is why it doesn't have any charm and a completely ridiculous context.

Yeah Cody's promo was fucking piss but I was just talking about the fact that Ogogo is so fucking dillusional that he thinks dropping the Union Jack on somebody is a big statement. As a standalone moment it isn't so bad, but when you factor in probably the worst promo in 2021 into it, yeah...

[Big Red Machine]

Context got lost when Vince testified under oath that this shit was fake but sure let's blame the booker of the promotion we don't like for this. As far as charm, thought it was plenty charming, see my post above.

This has nothing to do with the death of kayfabe. Yeah, it was a bit silly when Rusev was the evil Russian sympathiser, but it still worked and by far the highlight of his WWE run (between cuck angles and a catchphrase).

Here, we have Ogogo who made some snide remarks apparently in promos and interviews, and draped Cody in the Union Jack. This week, we have Cody cut a rambling, teary-eyed, overly dramatic MUHRICA promo that almost came out of nowhere because it's so disproportionate. This feels so tacked on and artificial, that it is why it doesn't have any charm and a completely ridiculous context.

Yeah Cody's promo was fucking piss but I was just talking about the fact that Ogogo is so fucking dillusional that he thinks dropping the Union Jack on somebody is a big statement.

Except that if Ogogo thinks it's a big deal, so does Cody because Cody reacted like it was.

[NWK2000]

This has nothing to do with the death of kayfabe. Yeah, it was a bit silly when Rusev was the evil Russian sympathiser, but it still worked and by far the highlight of his WWE run (between cuck angles and a catchphrase).

Here, we have Ogogo who made some snide remarks apparently in promos and interviews, and draped Cody in the Union Jack. This week, we have Cody cut a rambling, teary-eyed, overly dramatic MUHRICA promo that almost came out of nowhere because it's so disproportionate. This feels so tacked on and artificial, that it is why it doesn't have any charm and a completely ridiculous context.

Yeah Cody's promo was fucking piss but I was just talking about the fact that Ogogo is so fucking dillusional that he thinks dropping the Union Jack on somebody is a big statement.

Except that if Ogogo thinks it's a big deal, so does Cody because Cody reacted like it was.

Again, I saw the promo after this conversation began, so that was the context I had at the time.

[Big Red Machine]

I always assumed the surrender stip was put in place so someone else could surrender on your behalf if you were getting your ass whopped too bad. Or, if you're, say Brian Pillman in that war games where he got necked by Sid Viscious, you can just surrender for that as well.

So "surrender" is an outside force (like a cornerman) submitting on your behalf.


People seem to be upset that Sammy was allowed to submit on Jericho's behalf, but I don't understand why. Sammy is a legal participant. He submitted on his own behalf to save Jericho. The official record should be Sammy as the one who submitted, not Jericho. It's like when the Horsemen submitted to save Flair from the nWo (and, in that angle, the nWo still did their heinous thing to Flair anyway, too).

What happened in that match is the exact reason why the surrender stip is part of the usual Wargames format. It's just that WWE has programmed so many fans to expect certain finish, and the word "non-finish" has been beaten into the ground by IWC commentary that anything outside the norm no matter how logical envokes anger.

I will not only agree with this, but I will one-up you by pointing out that this isn't even technically a non-finish. MJF did something perfectly legal in the match, and it made a legal competitor surrender. No one outside the match was involved in any way, and no one did anything against the rules.