BRM Reviews the 3/4/2020 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- a mixed bag
Moxley cut an AWESOME PROMO. Then the Inner Circle came out and not only did the director keep cutting to show us fans rocking out to the heel’s song, but Jericho just stood there and let them do instead of cutting it short by talking.
Then when Jericho actually started talking, he made me wish he hadn’t. Claiming that Moxley cheated because Jericho had trained to face a man with only one good eye was taking the whiny/ridiculous heel thing WAY too far. He made some threats, then said he was so sure that Moxley wouldn’t walk out of the arena under his own power tonight that he would leave AEW for sixty days is Moxley was able to do so.

COLT CABANA & SCU vs. THE DARK ORDER- 4.75/10
The Dark Order have apparently won six in a row, and five of those have come in the past seven weeks. How have they not earned a title shot yet? I mean… if they were on this winning streak, why were they not even in the #1 contendership battle royale (they were on a three-match winning streak at the time)? If you want us to think that wins and losses matter, you have to actually make them matter.
Daniels was the babyface in peril. Cabana got the win. Bringing Cabana in and now putting him over the Dark Order fells very counterproductive. Yes, it gives the Exalted One a reason to be angry (as Evil Uno assured us he would be in a threatening post-match promo), but Cabana is… well… played out. We’ve seen all of his stuff over the past twenty years. The Dark Order are something new that can be taken in an interesting direction.

BIG SWOLE vs. LEVA BATES (w/Peter Avalon)- no rating, fine squash
Dr. Britt Baker, DMD showed up to do commentary.
Heel shenanigans let Leva get some heat so that Big Swole had something to come back from, and once her comeback started she never looked back.

CODY PROMO & SEGMENT WITH JAKE ROBERTS- weird and bad
Cody came out and cut a promo that I really hated. MJF betrayed you and cost you the ability to ever be AEW World Champion. Then he made you take ten lashes and then fight his bodyguard in a steel cage just to get your hands on him, and when you finally do, he cheats to beat you, screwing you out of your revenge… and you’re out here calmly talking about him costing you the monetary reward? Are you f*cking kidding me? And now you’re going to try to lure him out here by shaming him? WHERE IS YOUR FIRE?! BE ANGRY!
Jake Roberts comes out and scolds Cody for coming out here to “cry and bitch.” Is Jake back on drugs again? Cody seems to be in pretty good humor about this whole thing. Maybe he’s a little annoyed about losing out on some money, but bitching and crying he is pretty clearly not.
Jake then ventures off into something totally different, saying that he is here to “slay” Cody, and warning him that “the dark side will be coming to AEW.” Jake is apparently going to be managing someone with the intention of taking Cody’s share of AEW. Okaaay… That was very nice of Jake to just spoil his evil plan (sure, he could be setting Cody looking in the wrong direction, but the point is that Cody is now going to be looking for something whereas if Jake hadn’t spilled his beans for no reason, Cody wouldn’t have been looking for anything and would have been caught with his guard down.

PAC vs. CHUCK TAYLOR (w/Orange Cassidy & Trent)- 6.5/10
The Lucha Bros. attack Best Friends at the PPV… and so AEW books Chuck Taylor vs. Pac tonight? In kayfabe, AEW seems to have no idea how to book.
These two had a fine match. Pac won clean with the Brutalizer after they gave Chuck a shockingly convincing nearfall with the Awful Waffle.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- very bad
Trent gets in Pac’s face. Then Orange Cassidy takes over. Then the Lucha Bros. ran down to the ring. Instead of attacking Trent, whose back was turned to them, they ran around him on the outside and slid into the ring in front of him, just so they could superkick Orange Cassidy in both sides of the head simultaneously, while Trent just stood there and watched it happen. Only when Fenix had gotten his balance back after his superkick did Trent make a move, which was to charge at Fenix, who countered by grabbing him in fireman’s carry so that Pentagon Jr. could superkick him, too. This came off as guys doing things to follow a script that they had put together in an attempt to make things look cool, rather than putting any effort into making it look organic and spontaneous (i.e. believably real).
Pac and the Lucha Bros. then beat up Best Friends. For those of you keeping track at home, we just saw Pac cleanly beat a member of the Goof Patrol and a Lucha Bros. attack on the other members of the Goof Patrol. If this seems familiar, that’s because they did THE SAME F*CKING THING OVER THE WEEKEND AT THE PPV. If you were going to do this on TV, why did you waste time on the PPV? If fact, if you hadn’t it would have made more sense because I wouldn’t be wondering why the hell the geniuses in charge of AEW booked Chuck Taylor against Pac instead of one of the dudes who assaulted him for no reason three days ago!
We then got a promo where they declared themselves to be the “Death Triangle. The Lucha Bros’ brains have gone so far into spot mode that they had to stick their heads right next to the mic and say the name in Spanish at the exact same time.

SHAWN SPEARS & TULLY BLANCHARD- bad
It’s been almost three months since we’ve seen these two on Dynamite. They’re still looking for a tag team partner. They are now apparently so desperate that they are asking wrestling to nominate themselves via social media. When you take this together with Tully’s promo about how he went out and found Babydoll back in 1984, the conclusion one comes to is that Tully is nowhere near the talent scout he was 36 years ago, because you’d think that with all of today’s video technology, he’d have found someone by now.

JAKE HAGER (w/Proud & Powerful) vs. Q.T. MARSHALL (w/Dustin Rhodes & Brandi Rhodes)- 3/10
Since when is Q.T. Marshall part of the Rhodes family/Nightmare Family/whatever? And why doesn’t he get Arn as a manager like the others do? And why are there apples in his KahnTron video?
I like how AEW has Hager under contract for almost FIVE MONTHS and doesn’t book him in a single match until Dustin Rhodes challenges him to a match Revolution, and now, right after that PPV, they finally start booking him in matches. It’s like they forgot they could book him in matches until Dustin reminded them.
The match was fine for what it was. Hager won with the head and arm choke.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- great!
Hager wouldn’t break the hold so Dustin ran in to make him. Proud & Powerful attacked Dustin, leading to Cody coming out to help his brother. He ran wild until Ortiz hit him with a chair. Matt Jackson came out (they had previously established that neither Nick Jackson nor Kenny Omega were here due to injuries suffered at the PPV) and took out Proud & Powerful, but got taken out by Hager.
The beatdown continued until Adam Page drunkenly walked out to the ring. He lulled the feels into a false sense of security, then finally turned back towards the babyface side by making the save… and then wonderfully turned that on its ear by flipping Matt off, making it clear that he made the save for Cody and Dustin, with Matt’s presence being incidental.
I REALLY hope that they keep Kenny and Nick out one more week and book Hager, Santana & Ortiz vs. Dustin, Cody, & Matt. We so rarely see one Buck wrestle without the other that I think just the novelty of it makes it feel intriguing (and, in this particular case, it’s been quite a while since the Bucks/Kenny part of the Elite have felt connected to Cody, so this would be a good way to reinforce that in the ring).

Wait… we’re getting just Cody vs. Ortiz. Oh well.
Also announced for next week is the Death Triangle “in action.” If you’re not going to book them against the Goof Patrol after everything that has happened in the week, at least have the courtesy to tell us that Goof Patrol are still undergoing medical examinations and you’re not sure if they’ll be cleared to wrestle next week so that you are at least providing us with a reason that you’re not booking the obvious match that we’re all supposed to see.
Apparently “Blood & Guts” is the actual name they’re using for their War Games. Or maybe it’s not War Games, because they’re going to announce the rules next week, and J.R. emphasized that “you think you know the rules, but you don’t.” Unless they’re doing something like TNA’s Doomsday Chamber of Blood match where you have to make an opponent bleed first before you can eliminate him/her, I think “Blood & Guts” is a really bad name.
Also announced for next week is MJF, The Butcher, & The Blade vs. Jurassic Express.

MJF PROMO- great!
He cut promos on basically everyone, and set himself up to go after the world title. He’s not wrong that Cody’s neck tattoo is horrifically ugly. He also took a page out of Tito Ortiz’s playbook (UFC 19 was twenty-one years ago tomorrow, so I figured I ought to mention it. MJF would have been almost three).

JON MOXLEY & DARBY ALLIN vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Sammy Guevara & Chris Jericho)-
As Moxley was making his entrance through the crowd, three fans in lucha masks and AEW sweatshirts got up and attacked him. They revealed themselves to be the other three members of the Inner Circle. That was really unlucky for Ambrose that off all the staircases in the building he could have taken down to the ring, he just happened to take the one that put him right in front of where Jericho’s pals had chosen to sit.
They beat the sh*t out of Moxley in the concourse, and instead of trying to break it up, security is just standing there watching and making sure no fans get too close.
Schiavone told us that Darby had gotten jumped in the ring… and then the camera cut back to the ring to show us Darby just standing on the outside and watching, so Tony is making sh*t up. Also, why is Darby not running to help his tag team partner?
Instead, Darby asked Rick Knox to just ring the bell and start the match, which Knox did, even though one of the competitors was currently getting choked out in the concourse and had never made it to the ring. Or maybe it just officially turned into a…

HANDICAP MATCH: Darby Allin vs. The Inner Circle (Sammy Guevara & Chris Jericho)- 7.25/10
Darby got beaten up for a while. Meanwhile, Swagger, Santana, & Ortiz made their way to ringside. Moxley never did make it to the ring. Darby did an excellent job on this own, though, and came across as the toughest mother*cker you’ve ever seen. The announcers seemed to completely miss the point of the spot where Darby tagged himself. They understood the symbolism, but didn’t seem to understand the psychological effect on himself Darby was going for by doing it.
The other big takeaway from this match, for me, was that the Judas Effect just isn’t a good finisher, as it seems to often take people a few seconds before it clicks that this is Jericho’s finisher. That being said, the idea for the for finish was very cool.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Moxley came out with a chair and beat up the Inner Circle on his own. Hager eventually got him from behind and the Inner Circle beat Moxley down again. Hager, Santana, & Ortiz triple-powerbombed him off the stage, through a table. Then the Inner Circle all put their fists together with their middle fingers raised. That was a terrific little bit.


This was a pretty good show from AEW. They had video packages for pretty much everything from the PPV, so it was effective as a follow-up show, and a show of its own it did a good job of setting up some new directions, even if some of those directions felt a little wacky. There are a lot of things that can be cleaned to make the show better, but other than the Lucha Bros. obsession with spots, nothing was offensively bad here, either.

[Thelone]

That was quite the memorable debut for Archer, huh?

Anyway, feels like the storylines are more of the same with Inner Circle vs. some mash-up of the Elite and Moxley/Allin for Totally-Not-Wargames, Swole vs. Rose in what feels like the worst women's match they could book (and that's saying something), Cody vs. I guess Archer because let's keep using legends for (older) guys who don't need them and Cody's smoke and mirrors matches, more waste of legends in this "Spears needs a tag partner" nonsense, and Best Friends/Pocket Man vs. PAC/LB will be a feud that exists as well.

Also when will they announce the new trios titles? Because this is clearly where they're going with all those factions.

JAKE HAGER (w/Proud & Powerful) vs. Q.T. MARSHALL (w/Dustin Rhodes & Brandi Rhodes)- 3/10
Since when is Q.T. Marshall part of the Rhodes family/Nightmare Family/whatever? And why doesn’t he get Arn as a manager like the others do? And why are there apples in his KahnTron video?

Besides the fact that this team came out of nowhere, I'm more shocked (except not really) that this is another example of pairing two people (three if we count Brandi because she NEEDS to be on TV of course) who shouldn't be together. Technically, I get it : Marshall is here to eat pins and protect Dustin somehow, but how does that help anybody in the long run? Marshall is enhancement talent at best while Dustin is 50 and should be helping younger talent get over at this point. You could put Dustin in a tag team with a young guy as a mentor and Marshall as a hired goon for Death Triangle (this name...) or something to protect them.