BRM Reviews the 2/15/2023 Dynamite (very bad)

[Big Red Machine]

JAY LETHAL, JEFF JARRETT, SONJAY DUTT, & SATNAM SINGH vs. BILLY GUNN, THE ACCLAIMED, & ORANGE CASSIDY (w/Danhausen)- 0.5/10
Apparently Orange Cassidy’s seventeen-match winning streak isn’t enough to get him a shot at some other title… but a few weeks ago, three in a row would have gotten Brian Cage a shot at the AEW World Title.
I was relieved that Caster’s rap mentioned getting the tag titles back. I was worried the Acclaimed were just going to ignore getting screwed out of the title the way that Moxley and others in AEW do. Schiavone was predictably outraged that Gunn Club “cheated” and “stole those belts,” after having had no problem whatsoever when the Acclaimed themselves won the belts after interference from Billy Gunn (he laid Swerve out with a Fame-asser), and has had no problem with Jamie Hayter cheating to win her title, either.
Jeff Jarrett cut Billy Gunn off after having Gunn Club come out onto the ramp to cause a distraction, because G-d forbid someone just out-wrestle a near-sexagenarian. And guess to got to walk right up to Satnam Singh, kick him in the stomach, and hit him with his finisher after Singh had taken out the rest of his team single-handedly? Yup.
Between the Billy Gunn crap and the obnoxious finish built around teasing who would get to illegally leg-drop Sonjay in the nuts right I front of the referee and where they wanted me to believe that Sonjay was a turtle and was completely incapacitated by Caster just holding his legs, I came pretty close to just giving this a DUD. And yes, it was a leg drop to the nuts this time. Bowens is usually pretty good about making sure it looks like he’s hitting the opponent’s leg, but this time it looked like a low blow, and Sonjay sold it like one, too. This would be bad on its own, but it’s even worse to have them cheat to win when you want me to feel sorry for them and want to see them get their titles back because someone cheated them out of their titles.

Excalibur is still spreading this completely baseless lie that Mark Briscoe and Josh Woods were “rivals” in ROH.

BRYAN DANIELSON PROMO FROM AFTER LAST WEEK’S SHOW- mostly good
He says that he has more heart than MJF and MJF’s action show that he is scared and desperate, because he knows that Danielson will win the world title from him. My only quibble here is that Danielson (and everyone else) seems to have forgotten that he is also trying to avenge William Regal. That was a big part of the story, but then seems to have been completely dropped once they began the “you must win all of these matches in a row to get a match with me” part.

They advertised that MJF is “contractually obligated to appear” tonight, and had the announcers hammer home the point that MJF “doesn’t want to be anywhere where it might result in him wrestling.” This is one of those things that AEW does that annoys the hell out of me because it shines a big, bright, spotlight on the flaws in the way that AEW approaches details.
And that’s what this is. It’s a detail. If MJF were just here this week, no one would have batted an eyelash at it (more on that in a moment), and yet AEW chose to spend time having the announcers push this detail, and chose to spend the graphics department’s time making a graphic announcing this detail. Clearly, they think this is important.
Well, let’s look at it, shall we?
This is about the second or third time they have made this statement since MJF won the title three months ago. There have also been two shows where we was advertised I advance to wrestle, so we’ll say that this is now five shows that he has been “contractually obligated” to be at since winning the title. There have been thirteen weeks since he won the title… and I’m struggling to remember a week when he wasn’t on the show. If he doesn’t want to be here and doesn’t need to be, why did he show up pretty much every time?
Excalibur and Schiavone told us that it was because he didn’t want to be in a situation where he might be forced to wrestle, but that seems pretty ridiculous when you consider that a good chunk of the storylines he has been in have revolved around him being able to set the terms and conditions under which he will wrestle someone. It’s at the point where “MJF makes someone jump through hoops in order to wrestle him” is a booking trope in a company in which he has only been on TV for about three years.
And what does it even mean, that he would be “forced to wrestle.” Either Tony can just book him in matches based on whatever consent to that is in his contract, or there is no consent for that in his contract, and Tony needs MJF’s sign-off on every match. If it’s the former, then whether or not he shows up to TV on any given week should have no bearing on Tony’s ability to book him in matches, and if it’s the latter, then how will showing up put him in a position where Tony can somehow force him to wrestle when the contract doesn’t stipulate that Tony can do so?
In introducing this one little quite frankly unnecessary detail (if there really that much a difference in our desire to see MJF lose if we think he’s 99.999997% a dick instead of 99.999998% a dick?) and not thinking about the implications of it, AEW has opened up a plot-hole.
And even if you wat to say that Excalibur and Schiavone were just making a reason up (which they shouldn’t be doing), this detail still doesn’t really work. Perhaps MJF was there for his own nefarious reasons some of those weeks… but not all of them. And I’m sure that there were some weeks where he was on the show, but only via pre-taped or live-via-satellite video on. But if that is the idea, then you need to:
1) Make sure that every week he actually is there in person, he does something nefarious
2) When he’s only here via video on the Tron, emphasize the fact that he’s not here live.
I’m almost certain the first one hasn’t been true, and I know for a fact that the second one hasn’t.
But even still then, this whole idea that he is “contractually obligated” to appear on only certain shows and that not showing up to any more shows than absolutely necessary is a heelish thing to do is problematic, because what does that say about babyfaces like Sting or Hikaru Shida?
Again… all of these problems were created by Tony Khan’s desire to slip in this one extra little detail to try to make us hate the heel that one little bit more. Any detail added to a fiction universe needs to be checked to ensure that it doesn’t suffer from flaws of logic or continuity. More detail only makes a story better if those details do not create problems.

TORNADO TAG TEAM MATCH: Blackpool Combat Club (Claudio Castagnoli & Jon Moxley) vs. LFI (“Perro Peligroso” Preston Vance & Rush) (w/Jose the Assistant)- 6.5/10
LFI jumped the BCC in the crowd. Thankfully they came from behind them so I can pretend that they just followed the route the BCC took, rather than what we so often get, which is someone hiding in a random spot in the crowd and their target just happens to walk past there instead of the myriad of other routes they could have taken.
Excalibur decided to remind us of the history between Preston Vance and Jon Moxley, which he described as Moxley just grabbing a chair and injuring Vance’s arm ahead of his title defense against the leader of Vance’s stable, “the late, great, Brodie Lee.” What actually happened was that Brodie had stolen Moxley’s word title belt. Had picked 10 to face Moxley in that match, and Moxley won cleanly. Then Moxley grabbed the chair and said “return my stolen property, or else I will break this guy’s arm.” Brodie refused, so Moxley carried through on his threat. Excalibur’s version of events makes Moxley look like a monster, when in reality, Moxley was in the right, and Brodie was the monster. You cannot be the promotion that claims to care about continuity if you are going to distort it. If you’re not comfortable reminding people that the Brodie Lee character was a heel, just don’t bring this up at all.
Apparently this is also a no DQs match. The story of the match was each babyface taking turn being isolated… so just like a regular tag match would have probably resulted in. That makes this random stipulation feel like something that was added because Moxley wanted to bleed tonight.
The babyfaces won. Excalibur’s attempts to draw some sort of through-line between this match and the two singles matches that Moxley and Vance had had fell completely flat to me. He comes off like a guy creating his own head-canon about why this match is important to a wrestler when we have been given zero evidence that said wrestler feels that way.

Adam Page was shown watching from backstage, standing at the dreaded WWE TV-watching angle. After the match, he was attacked by Kip Sabian and The Butcher & The Blade.

JIM ROSS’ SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH WARDLOW- didn’t like it
Jim Ross told Wardlow “I don’t recall anything more shocking than the night you lost the TNT Championship to Samoa Joe.” I guess Ross’ memory must be going.
Remember about six weeks ago when Samoa Joe cut Wardlow’s hair? Well now, SIX WEEKS LATER, AEW has finally decided to reveal the significance of that to us. Apparently Wardlow wears his had the way he used to as a tribute to his father, who was in and out of Wardlow’s life when he was young, but returned when he was a young adult and they grew close, and then, just as Wardlow’s career was starting out, his father tragically died from cancer. Wardlow’s hair was his connection to his father, and he vowed bloody revenge on Samoa Joe for what Joe did.
Here my problems with this:
1. The longer you go between the nefarious act and the explanation of why it so hurts the babyface, the less effective it is because 1) it is less fresh in the viewer’s mind, and 2) it starts to feel like an ass-pull. It’s actually best to try to drop the explanation in advance, if possible, although if the object is unusual enough in a wrestling setting, you can get away with explaining it a little later if you build up the mystery of what it is important (think Undertaker burning Stephanie’s teddy bear, and why that freaked Vince out).
2. It has been SIX WEEKS since this hair-cutting, and it’s not like Joe shaved Wardlow bald, either. Wardlow has had more than enough time to grow his hair back into this style that means so much to him… and yet he hasn’t. You could come up with some sort of story where Wardlow doesn’t feel worthy of his dad’s haircut until he gets revenge on Joe, but if that’s the case, Wardlow has to say that.
3. For all of his talk here of what he would do if he got his hands on Joe, Wardlow had the chance to get his hands on Joe when he made his return, but he didn’t pursue him. That right there kills this, because it shows us that he doesn’t actually feel the way he claims he does. And that’s ignoring his unexplained month-long absence. At no point were we ever told that Wardlow was injured. He just disappeared after Joe cut his hair, and didn’t come back to try to get revenge until Joe’s had wrapped up his next feud.
And when you combine these points, it makes this feel like a wrestling angle, with Wardlow’s actions plotted out to stretch the story from the date of his return until the match (presumably at the PPV), and him not regrowing his hair in this style to serve as a visual reminder to the audience of what he has lost, rather than feeling like something that happened involving real people, with the things Wardlow is doing being done for organic reasons. Wardlow shouldn’t care about whether or not the audience has a visual reminder of what he has lost, or about his match being on the PPV. If he hates Joe so much for what Joe has done, he should be trying to get revenge on him as soon as possible.

MARK BRISCOE vs. JOSH WOODS (w/Tony Nese, Ari Daivari, & Mark Sterling)- 5.75/10
To Excalibur, a mere two matches constitutes “a long history.” He also called the Froggy-Bow by some wacky name.
The Lucha Bros. came out to stop Nese and Daivari from interfering. Nice to see someone making a save simply because it’s the right thing to do. They did some stuff. As I said on Rampage, this is not the Mark Briscoe I want to see. This was comedy goof Mark Briscoe, who seems less like a human and more like a hairless chimpanzee that is brother trained to wrestle as a tag partner. He needs to knock it off with the goofy facial expressions and grunts and goofy mountain-man accent.

RENEE PAQUETTE’S SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH ADAM COLE- bad
They started with a nice, straight-on shot of both of them, and when Renee talked they would use that, but when Cole talked they would switch to this side view that did not have the same color-balance (or whatever), and which had the back of Renee’s head taking up a good quarter of the screen. Why cut at all? What was wrong with that first view that they are insisting on using this second, sh*ttier one instead?
There were some good babyface bits about his recovery in here, but once again he said absolutely nothing new.


MJF PROMO- GREAT!
He came out and cut a great promo on Danielson, then brought out someone he claimed was a “mentor” to Bryan Danielson: Christopher Danielson. That flies in the face of all established kayfabe history. Excalibur claimed that Danielson and Daniels’ “really defined the early era of Ring of Honor, with their highly intense technical battles.” They had TWO, and when I think of Bryan Danielson and “intense, highly-technical battles” in the early days of ROH, I don’t think of Christopher Daniels. I think of Low Ki.
Am I being harsh on Excalibur? Perhaps. But at this point he has lost the benefit of the doubt with me. And not just for ROH history, either. If Excalibur is getting the ROH stuff (which I know very well) wrong, then how do I know he’s not equally wrong he talks about histories that I don’t know as much about, and I just don’t have the knowledge to catch him?
Anyway, Daniels says that MJF paid him a lot of money to come out here and bury Dragon, but he won’t do that. Instead, he puts Dragon over ad tells MJF some hard truths. They argue, Danielson slaps MJF, and MJF kicks Daniels in the nuts and locks in the Salt of the Earth. Danielson came out to make the save.

GUNN CLUB PROMO- mostly good, but they still come off a little goofy.

“JUNGLE BOY” JACK PERRY vs. BRIAN CAGE (w/Prince Nana)- 7/10
Great stuff. Jungle Boy won cleanly. Excalibur claimed that Cage had “one of the best singles records this year,” which sounds ridiculous when you realize that we’ve seen him lose most of his televised matches so far, and I don’t think anyone went into this one thinking he had a chance of winning this, either.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- groan
Christian his return, coming out to the top of the ramp. His arm is still in a sling. Jungle Boy charged at him, but Christian pulled out mace and sprayed it in his eyes. Tony Schiavone condemned Christian for being willing to “stoop that low,” but it’s hard to blame a guy with his arm in a sling who was a about to be attacked by a fully healthy opponent.
Wait… no… his arm is actually healed… which makes me wonder why he went through with this ruse in the first place. And no, this doesn’t post-facto excuse Schiavone’s comment. If he had waited until now to say it, it would have been fine, but when he said it, he thought Christian’s arm was still injured.
Christian choked Jungle Boy and told him that he wasn’t done with him, then hit him with an Unprettier/Killswitch/whatever it’s called in AEW.

RENEE PAQUETTE MAKES AN ANOUNCEMENT ABOUT THE GUNNS’ FIRST TITLE DEFENSE- It will be at Revolution, against the Acclaimed.

JUST KIDDING! That would make sense, and we can’t have that.
No, instead of giving the guys who got screwed out of the titles a rematch, Tony Khan has booked a three-way at the PPV. One of the challengers will be determined by a battle royale next week, and the other will be determined the week after that in a Battle Royale with rules that give teams random advantages. Because G-d forbid someone get a shot at the AEW World Tag Team Titles by winning some regular tag team matches.

THE ACCLAIMED INTERRUPT RENEE AND MANAGE TO MAKE IT WORSE- Bowens says that the match isn’t going to be a three-way; it’s going to be a four-way, because they’re invoking their rematch clause.
1. There are rematch clauses in AEW? That makes a lot of people look REALLY stupid. Basically anyone who never invoked one or who waited forever and tried to get a title shot the usual way. Remember when Nyla Rose was the #1 contender for MONTHS and Tony Khan didn’t book a title match? Are you telling me she could have just said “I’m invoking my rematch clause” and she would have gotten one?
2. If you can just invoke your rematch clause like that, why are you sticking yourselves into a four-way instead of waiting until after the PPV and having a regular two-on-two match where you can’t lose it by someone else getting pinned?

It has been an hour and they still don’t have an update on Adam Page after tonight’s backstage attack. Really? Still? And if you’re going to tease that might not be able to wrestle, maybe don’t put a graphic on the screen making the match seem like a certain AT THE EXACT SAME TIME!

THE ELITE ARE BEING GOOFS AND PLAYING WITH BASKETBALLS-
I don’t give a f*ck if they’re talking about the NBA All-Star game. Why do they have basketballs IF THERE ARE NO HOOPS ANYWHERE NEARBY?!
They were interrupted by A.R. Fox and Top Flight. They, too, are holding basketballs. Well… Fox and Dante are, anyway. Darius doesn’t get one because he’s the lesser star. But still… WHY?!
The guys who lost cleanly think that coming close means that they should get a rematch. Don Callis points out the absurdity of this. The losers insult the Elite, so the Elite agree to give them a title shot. Then one of the Jacksons threw the basketball at Brandon Cutler’s testicles, and apparently we’re supposed to laugh at this. What is the difference between this and what MJF did to Christopher Daniels?

ADAM PAGE vs. KIP SABIAN (w/Penelope Ford)- 5/10
Sabian is dressed like such a f*cking clown that he should have been fired merely for wanting to go on TV dressed like that. As Page’s music started to play, Excalibur said that they still hadn’t heard any updates on Page and wondered what his condition was. If they’re playing his f*cking music, I’m guessing they think he’s okay to wrestle.

Page won, but they teased afterwards that he might have suffered another concussion.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
The Blackpool Combat Club (minus Danielson) came out. Moxley told Page that it doesn’t matter what Page thinks; their feud is done. Page lost cleanly, and Moxley now knows Page so well that he will never lose to him again.
Page is apparently a terrible listener, because he says that he knows that Moxley is disappointed with how their previous match ended. Page wants a Last Man Standing match at Revolution. Moxley responded to this by going in a weird direction that seemed like it was specifically intended for him to say something (“the emo cowboy; he don’t got no friends”) that would serve as a cue for the Dark Order to come out and back Page up (which also explains why Claudio and YUTA were out here with Moxley even though they usually haven’t been in this feud).
The Dark Order came out and declared that they are Page’s friends. They had saved him from the beat-down earlier… and despite this, Adam Page has the f*cking temerity to yell at them for coming out here. Apparently Page asked them to stay out of it. I’m not sure why he would do that. I popped for Uno telling Page to shut up. Page deserved that.
I also popped for Uno telling Moxley that the Dark Order wasn’t afraid of him, and popped even louder for him slapping Moxley in the face unprovoked, but those two were because I assumed it would result in Moxley murdering the entire Dork Order and wouldn’t have to see their annoying faces or hear their annoying voices anymore. Disappointingly, Moxley did not respond with violence. Instead he told Page that instead of a Last Man Standing match, he wanted their match at the PPV to be its lamer cousin, the Texas Deathmatch. No one came out of this segment not looking like an asshole, and all of them are supposed to be babyfaces.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS THE MALE MEMBERS OF THE JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY- bad
They’re obnoxious cartoons. Even Garcia. He’s not using a cartoon voice, but he’s saying the same cartoonish Jericho things. They insist that Ricky Starks will never get another match with Jericho. Garcia says that he will “expose” Starks when they wrestle on Rampage. I feel like I’ve seen this match a million times already.

In addition to the Trios Title rematch, Vertvixen, whose AEW record is ZERO WINS AND FIFTEEN LOSSES is getting a shot at the TBS Title. Meanwhile, Bryan Danielson had to win five straight matches to get one, and Jungle Boy wants one but can’t seem to get one, despite the fact that his only loss since October was in a battle royale. This company is f*cking stupid.
Joe vs. Wardlow is official for the PPV, as is Moxley vs. Page in a Texas Deathmatch.

Excalibur claims that our main event has “huge implications” because “where to Ruby Soho’s allegiances lie? We will find out!” How will putting her in a three-way- a match notorious for temporary alliances and betrayals- help us find out whose side she is on in this larger ideological conflict?

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS STOKELY HATHAWAY, ETHAN PAGE, MATT HARDY, & ISIAH KASSIDY- bad
Stokely was a clown, claiming he had been injured by Hook. He said he had been on the phone with Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Angela Davis, and demanded that Hook be suspended before changing his demanded to Hok being fired.
Matt Hardy said something goofy to kill time, then Tony Schiavone got word that Hook had just been “suspended, pending investigation.” Are you kidding me? With all of the sh*t we see on this show week after week… THIS gets a suspension? F*ck off.
As if to drive home exactly how stupid this is, LESS THAN SIXTY SECONDS AFTER HOOK’S SUSPENSION WAS ANNOUNCED, SARAYA ASSAULTED A FAN. How do you put this show together and not see a problem here?

RUBY SOHO vs. TONI STORM (w/Saraya) vs. BRITT BAKER (w/Jamie Hayter)- 6.75/10
They did some spots where Britt and Toni seemed to think they were making Ruby choose a side, but, as I said before, it’s in the middle of a three-way match, and Ruby is just trying to win this match. Ruby stole Toni’s pin on Dr. Baker. Saraya and Hayter each tried to recruit her afterwards, but she ignored them.


This was very a bad episode of Dynamite. It was your usual episode of Dynamite, but minus the quality wrestling that usually buoys it up.