BRM Reviews the 5/3/2023 Dynamite (bad)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 5/3/2023 Dynamite (bad)

Post by Big Red Machine » May 3rd, '23, 22:10

ORNAGE CASSIDY, BANDIDO, ADAM COLE, & RODERICK STRONG vs. JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY (Jake Hager, Daniel Garcia, Matt Menard, & Angelo Parker)- 7/10
Hanging out with Orange Cassidy instantly makes Bandido look like a clown.
Chris Jericho joined the commentary team for this match. He took a page from Sami Callihan’s playbook and is wearing a shirt with Britt Baker’s bruised face on it. Look… this is good, but this angle is failing for me because Jericho wasn’t the one to hit Britt, and yet Cole is screaming about how is he is going to kill Jericho and isn’t even talking about the people who actually assaulted her. I realize that you can’t have male-on-female violence (which is why I wouldn’t have done this angle in the first place), but the fact that the network won’t let you show male-on-female violence doesn’t mean that you can just erase what Cole should be feeling towards the females who assaulted is girlfriend. At the very least he should be running around the locker room with handfuls of money and paying women (even a heel like Nyla Rose) to kick their asses (actually, that’d be a good way to get AEW Original Nyla Rose into this feud for a bit, wouldn’t it?).
Jericho was quite obnoxious on commentary, and Schiavone and Excalibur became obnoxious by getting dragged into repetitive arguments with him. Essentially, Jericho was constantly repeating his talking point that Adam Cole “allowed” Britt to be assaulted and “did nothing about it” and thus Cole wasn’t a real man (and Excalibur and Schiavone would jump in and say that Cole was handcuffed to the ropes). What is the purpose of Jericho constantly repeating this lie right now? It’s not like he’s laying some sort of trap for Cole where Cole will hear him and become enraged and try to attack him, running into am ambush. Cole can’t hear him right now.
I understand that he’s doing it to get heat with the fans, but why does Chris Jericho the character care about that? And any effectiveness that this would have is (as in most of Jericho’s feuds) completely undermined by how over the top he acts in doing so, because he comes off like someone playing a character rather than someone who actually believes what he is saying.
There was action. Orange Cassidy should not have been doing comedy spots in the middle of this big grudge match. Cole got the win instead of Roddy, which was baffling to me. He actually felt pretty lost in the shuffle. I think it would have been better to just have Cole and Roddy vs. Hager & Garcia. Cole then ran up the ramp and attacked Jericho until security pulled him off. There were no JAS members lying in wait for Cole, reinforcing my point about Jericho.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS JUNGLE BOY & DARBY ALLIN- fine
This was good rah-rah friendly babyface stuff to build up the main event.

ADAM COLE IS TAKNE AWAY BY SECURITY, BUT THEN BRITT BAKER COMES UP AND SLAPS CHRIS JERICHO HARD ENOUGH TO KNOCK HIM DOWN- bad
Jericho orchestrated this big assault on Britt… and she’s content to just slap hi once or twice and then leave when a security guard tells her to? Really? Well then Adam Cole sure is overreacting. She was the one who got attacked.
And yes, I realize that they couldn’t have Britt just assault Jericho because Jericho wouldn’t be able to fight back because it’s man-on-woman violence… but in that case, don’t do the segment in the first place. Because what did Britt slapping Jericho here actually accomplish? If anything, it took some heat off of Jericho before his big match with Cole. How is that productive?

BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB PROMO- Moxley good; Dragon bad
They forgot to turn the mic on for the beginning of this. Oops.
Bryan Danielson cut a promo that really didn’t make sense if these guys are heels. They want to push people to be better wrestlers for the betterment of AEW in particular and pro wrestling as a whole. That’s not a heel manifesto. Moxley did a slightly better job of phrasing that, but not really. Then he cut a great promo to build up his cage match with Kenny Omega next week.

WILLOW NIGHTINGALE vs. SARAYA (w/Toni Storm & Ruby Soho)- 4.5/10
The stupid babyfaces still haven’t learned to just come out together. The heels won because of interference for the 85,143rd time.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- atrocious
Also for the 85,143rd time, the heels attacked the babyface after the match, and another babyface came out to make the save. It’s Hikaru Shida, who I’m sure we have seen be the big babyface returning to make the save before.
Despite the fact that she is one of the people who the Outcast’s very mission statement puts them against, Shida makes like she is going to join them… and they just let her in (again, despite the fact that their mission statement says that they should be against her).
But look! It was an obvious swerve that only makes the heels look like idiots for not seeing it coming, because this bought time for Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter to come out from under the ring- where I guess they were hiding all match- so they could get behind the heels. They let Shida do 90% of the work, beating the heels up with a weapon, while they just watched. Then they spray-painted “AEW” on the Outcasts.
This was so f*cking stupid. First of all, any segment where the babyfaces’ plan relies on the heels being idiots in order to succeed is a bad segment. Then there is the coming out from under the ring part. If you’re a booker, and you have a n idea that requires someone (particularly a babyface) to come out from under the ring, then just go back to the drawing board, because your idea is bad. How the do they know when to come out? Also, coming out from under the ring and smirking like that is much less intense than charging down the ramp to make the save. And, perhaps more importantly, charging down the ramp is about forty-three billion times less hokey.
Then there is Dr. Baker. As Tony Schiavone pointed out, we just saw her in the backstage area. Even if Jamie Hayter was hiding under there all day, how the f*ck did Britt get under the ring without anyone seeing her? Did she dig a tunnel?
And once they were ready to attack the women who so viciously beat her a few weeks ago, Britt… hit Toni Storm once, and did nothing to any of the others. She was angrier at and more physically violent towards Chris Jericho- who merely organized the assault- than she was the people who actually assaulted her.

HOUSE OF BLACK PROMO- huh?
Oh yeah. Them. The Trios Champions. They’ve been champions for a little less than two months now… and they haven’t been on TV for the past month.
They say that the belts are tainted because some people are allowed to cheat in AEW. They will give title shots to anyone who wants one (because why should anyone have to earn a shot at a championship). Also, they’re creating their own rule-set.
1. No rope breaks.
2. You get a twenty-count on the outside instead of ten.
3. Disqualifications will actually be enforced. For realsies. We mean it this time.
Then Julia said “dealer’s choice. You choose the rules.” Now I’m confused. Do the challengers get to just choose any rules they want? Do they get to pick one of the three above rules as a change from the normal AEW rules for their match? And if it’s the latter, what does it say about AEW that “we will actually enforce this rule” is one of the options you can pick to be different from the standard?
Excalibur was immediately negative on this, referring to it as them setting “complications” for their challengers to overcome. If that’s how we’re supposed to look at it, why would Tony Khan agree to let them do this?
WHY DOES THIS COMPANY MAKE SO LITTLE SENSE!

Also, having these guys disappear without explanation for a month, and then come back with a new set of rules and a new catchphrase makes it feel like they were off TV because Tony Khan had no idea what to do with them, and now that he has come up with an idea, they’re back. It makes the wrestlers feel less like real people and more like pieces on a chessboard that the booker moves around at his whim, which makes them feel like they have no agency.

Anyway, now that the Trios Champions just announced that anyone who wants a title shot can have won, we’re doing a big trios battle royale. *Rolls eyes*

TRIOS BATTLE ROYALE WITH A SILLY NAME- 4.75/10
El Hijo del Vikingo is teaming with the Lucha Bros. Aren’t they already part of a trios? Where’s Pac? He’s been gone for months with no explanation, and now he has been replaced. They did some stuff with that trio and Powerhouse Hobbs. It came down to the trio of Kip Sabian & The Butcher & The Blade against Anthony Bowens and Billy Gunn. You should be able to guess who won.

RENEE PAQUETTE’S INTERVIEW WITH SAMMY GUEVARA IS INTERRUPTED BY MJF- bad
More cartoonish crap.

KENNY OMEGA & DON CALLIS PROMO- mostly great
Callis was great. Kenny was very good. I don’t like him saying that everything will end by beating Moxley in a cage match when the others are just as guilty as Moxley for the attacks on the Bucks and Takeshita.

LOGAN LAROUX vs. WARDLOW (w/Arn Anderson)- pointless squash
While is Wardlow still squashing people multiple weeks in a row at this point in his run?

AEW needs to stop sucking their own dick about the ticket sales. It’s bad when WWE does it, and it’s bad when AEW does it… and at least when WWE does it, they don’t talk about it in terms of how much money they made, which AEW did during the Juice vs. Starks match. If you want to do it on the night of the big show, that’s fine, but don’t do it beforehand.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Wardlow grabs a mic. He says “I demand an open challenge” and then specifically tells Christian to bring Luchasaurus out so they can have a title match. Apparently, the meathead doesn’t understand what an “open” challenge is.
Christian comes out and says that he could send Luchasarus down to the ring to take the title, but he won’t do that, because the title shot isn’t for Luchasaurus; it’s for Christian. That’s all Wardlow’s fault right there for demanding an “open challenge” instead of just saying “hey, Luchasaurus. Come on out and fight me. I’ll give you a title shot.”

EARLIER TODAY, JAY LETHAL, SATNAM SINGH, JEFF JARRETT, SONJAY DUTT SHOWED UP AT MARK BRISCOE’S HOUSE- painful
They were clowns. Sonjay and Satnam wore overalls to help on the farm. Also, Jeff Jarrett rode a tractor. Papa Briscoe showed up and said that Jay Lethal was okay, but that Mark should watch the two in overalls. So, Papa Briscoe is suspicious of the two foreigners, but not the two Americans. Not a good look.
Anyway, Lethal and Jarrett declare themselves the #1 contenders, and Jay immediately asks Mark how the Briscoes were able to beat FTR. Okay, this storylines makes a little more sense now. What it doesn’t do, however, is make any of those segments any good in hindsight, because you easily could have done a version of this story where the heels weren’t acting like f*cking clowns the whole time!


JUICE ROBINSON vs. RICKY STARKS- 6.75/10
Jay White came out for Juice’s entrance. He was dressed the way Starks usually dresses, in order to bother Starks, I guess.
Starks won cleanly, but then got jumped by Jay White. No security came out to break it up. Why is it different when these guys fight as opposed to Cole and Jericho. Starks was going to hit White with the Rochambeau, but Juice pulled White to safety.

THE FIRM VS. HARDY-PARTY & HOOK VIDEO PACKAGE- meh

Daniel Garcia will be getting a shot at Orange Cassidy’s AEW International Title next week. If you were going to do this, why not have Garcia pin Cassidy in the eight-man tag they were on opposite sides of earlier? Or at least have Garcia get the win instead of being on the losing side?

WE CUT BACKSTAGE SO WE CAN WATCH JUNGLE BOY AND DARBY DO NOTHING, BUT THEN DARBY LEFT AND MJF SHOWED UP- bad
I don’t know why MJF thought Jungle Boy would be willing to throw the match, but thinking it made MJF look like an idiot. I had assumed that Darby had left the room because he was going to Gorilla for his entrance, but then Darby came back and caught Jungle Boy talking to MJF and became suspicious. This just made Darby leaving in the first place seem like a ridiculous contrivance. And all of this was for what purpose? To set up dissension between the babyfaces in a match that everyone knows they’ll win anyway?

IF DARBY ALLIN & JUNGLE BOY WIN, THEY GET ADDED TO THE AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH AT DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2023: “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry & Darby Allin vs. MJF & Sammy Guevara)- 7.25/10
They did stuff. The babyfaces won not because they were better, but because MJF and Sammy Guevara’s egos were too big to work together. The execution on the finish to set up friction between Jungle Boy and Darby was quite good, though. MJF’s look of fear and then rage when they put up the graphic for the four-way was far too cartoony.

Another bad episode of Dynamite, and once again without much in the way of action to counteract the bad storylines.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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