BRM Reviews the 4/22/2020 Dynamite
Posted: Apr 26th, '20, 18:05
VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO BY CODY RHODES THE SUPERVILLAIN- meh
He’s got a large chair with his logo on the back of it, facing a wall of monitors, and he monologued at us. What else am I supposed to think other than “supervillain?”
SAMMY GUEVARA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- PERFECT! Any first-time viewer will now know everything you need to know about Sammy Guevara, and established fans, it was just Guevara being an excellent hear.
DARBY ALLIN VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- good
AEW TNT CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Sammy Guevara vs. Darby Allin- 6.75/10
Shawn Spears had a sign saying that Sammy owes him money. Maybe that idiocy with the betting actually will go somewhere after all.
Guevara jumped the bell on Darby with a big dive (see what I did there?). He beat Darby up on the outside. He was allowed to use a ladder because the bell hadn’t rung yet. This culminated in a big dive off the top turnbuckle to Darby on a ladder bridge. The doctor checked on Darby during a commercial break, and when we came back, Sammy was tired of waiting and just went to the outside and dragged him into the ring, forcing Aubrey to ring the bell. Jericho pointed out that Sammy waited for the whole commercial break to let Darby recover, as ordered by the referee, so I think everyone has acted reasonably here. If Darby can’t recover enough to wrestle in three minutes, Aubrey should have sent him to the back and ordered the match rescheduled for later. She didn’t, so it’s fair game for Sammy to go get him and bring him into the ring at that point, and fair game for Aubrey to officially start the match.
Once the match officially started it got off to quite the interesting start, with Darby starting to make his comeback by pulling Sammy’s boot off before applying an ankle lock. They went back to that a few times and Sammy sold it very well… until he just stopped selling it at all, which was the big issue I had with this match. Other things to watch for include a GREAT series of reversals as the finishing stretch, and Darby nearly killing himself, seeming to fly head-first into the barricade with a Heat Seeking Missile that Sammy moved out of the way of.
MATT HARDY PROMO(S)- LOVED IT!
First of all, I liked the fact that he brought up that Jericho ignored his challenge from two weeks ago, and used something clearly done for humor (Jericho spilling the orange juice) as evidence that Jericho was scared of him. In fact, the only Inner Circle member to mention Matt last week was Sammy Guevara, so Matt extends the same challenge to Sammy (for a fancy cinematic match at the Hardy Compound).
Then they did something extremely interesting, where Damascus showed a video of normal Matt Hardy talking about Chris Jericho and explaining the importance of AEW and why he had to stop Jericho from dominating it. In most forms of fiction, the person being possessed by the spirit (or alien that crawls into your brain, or whatever) is either unaware of anything that happens during that period of time or will at the very least separate themselves and their actions from the entity (“what you made me do”). Regular Matt, on the other hand, was talking about how when “I” showed up in AEW and confronted Chris Jericho and stood up for the Elite, etc. His priorities and Damascus’ seem to line up pretty well, too, and he wasn’t using his few moments of freedom to scream “HELP ME!” so this suggests that the relationship between Matt and Damascus is a symbiotic one, rather than a parasitic one (assuming, of course, that this was not still Damascus in full control, just pretending to be normal Matt Hardy). I’d be interested to learn more about the backstory here, and how this all works.
KENNY OMEGA vs. ALAN ANGELS- 4/10
They gave Angels a lot more than they should have, to the point where this was an actual match. I’d almost be fine with that if they hadn’t had him kick out the first V-Trigger. Why not use the fact that Kenny is facing a jobber to rebuild some of the cache that move has lost and make it at least feel like a finisher again (and jobbers don’t kick out of your finisher the first time. Or ever).
COMMERCIAL FOR MATT VS. NICK ON THE 200TH EPISODE OF BEING THE ELITE- I understand having a Falls Count Anywhere match to make sure that Nick is tough enough to return or whatever they’re doing, but there had better be a damn good reason to pull out that murder-boot with the thousands of thumbtacks glued onto the bottom. How is it going to help the team you prove Nick is tough enough to come back but, in the process,, someone loses an eye?
SCORPIO SKY VIDEO PACKAGE, PART 1- GREAT stuff, lots of pathos.
DUSTIN RHODES TELLS CODY THAT HE’LL PUT HIS CAREER ON THE LINE IN TONIGHT’S MAIN EVENT- hated it
1. This is ratings-plot levels of random
2. This was recorded on a fifteen-camera shoot, all in Cody’s house, as Dustin’s voice came over the speakerphone. Here’s an idea? If Dustin is explaining why he has randomly decided to put his career on the line, why PUT THE F*CKING CAMERAS ON DUSTIN?! It’s sh*t like this that gets me so annoyed a Cody every time he talks about the dangers of ego in the wrestling business. Cody might not be his father, but just because Hulk Hogan isn’t as big as Andre the Giant doesn’t mean that he isn’t a huge dude.
JIMMY HAVOC vs. ORANGE CASSIDY (w/Best Friends)- 6.25/10
Havoc jumps the bell on Goofy McGooferton. This apparently knocked all of the goof out of him, and when he made his comeback he wrestled like normal person with no stupid bullsh*t going on.
Orange Cassidy turned s red in this match that they should have called him Tomato Cassidy. Whatever his name is, at the end of this, Dasha called him “the winner of this match,” as he took advantage of Jimmy Havoc getting distracted by a Penelope Ford interference attempt gone awry (after her first attempt was prevented by Best Friends, who were then taken out by Kip Sabian) to roll him up for the win. Jimmy Havoc attacked OC after the match and dropped him on his head with the same move he did last week. Best Friends chased Havoc and Sabian off so they couldn’t do any more damage.
See… I can enjoy Orange Cassidy matches… so long as he isn't being Orange Cassidy so long as he isn't being Orange Cassidy.
MJF PROMO- bad
A graphic told us that this was taped in front of “Max’s rat’s house.” This was goofy stuff saying he’d be back soon but couldn’t wrestle right now because he suffered a hangnail that turned “life-threatening,” but he’d be back soon. This served no purpose whatsoever.
WARDLOW vs. LEE JOHNSON- squash
THE DARK ORDER RECRUIT SOMEONE WHO’S FOOTBALL CAREER WAS ENDED BY INJURY AND ALSO HIS GIRLFRIEND BROKE UP WITH HIM- didn’t like it
The “I had the whole world in my hand” line was clearly intended as a Bray Wyatt reference. Which I’m sure some people will think is cool, but if the reference has no actual bearing on the story then it serves no purpose (and, at this point, fits into a pattern with Dark Order where the people writing this stuff seem to feel like it has to always somehow reference WWE.
This was a return to the “cameras are here with no explanation” style that they used at first, which doesn’t fit in with most of the rest of what AEW shows us (although I suppose that this could all be Dark Order-produced propaganda from the beginning to the end).
I also didn’t like that this recruitment was A LOT different than the previous ones we’ve seen, more akin to a vaguely evil job interview than the cult stuff we saw at first or some of the “come over to the Dark Side of the Force” direct pitching that had been done towards people like Jungle Boy.
Anyway, Brodie Lee just gives this guy a mask, so I guess he’ll have a henchman with an actual background now.
JUSTIN LAW vs. BRODIE LEE- squash
BEST FRIENDS & ORANGE CASSIDY INTERVIEW- comedy, and thus I didn’t care for it in what seems like it’s supposed to be a serious feud (JIMMY F*CKING HAVOC IS INVOLVED FOR G-D’S SAKE!).
THE BUBBLY BUNCH- even worse than last week. Why are you making your entire top heel stable into goofs? Who would have thought that there would be an episode of Dynamite where Orange Cassidy looked like less of a goof than LAX?
AEW TNT CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH WITH DUSTIN RHODES’ CAREER ON THE LINE: Dustin Rhodes (w/Brandi Rhodes) vs. Kip Sabian (w/Penelope Ford)- 6.75/10
They aired a great video package to hype this match up right before the entrances. The match itself was… not really main event quality. Dustin won after Brandi prevented Penelope from interfering. If the Dustin thing wasn’t hot-shotting, my guess is that we’re going to have him continue to put his career on the line, resulting in either Cody having to end it if Cody wants a title again, or resulting in Lance Archer ending Dustin’s career as something Jake can lord over Cody.
This was a very good episode of Dynamite, but almost entirely on the strength of the non-wrestling stuff. The wrestling wasn’t bad (although there was a point when it felt like were getting WAY too many squashes and thus it got more than a bit boring), but it wasn’t great, either, and the main event was disappointing. With a better main event, this would have been a much better show, but it was still very good.
He’s got a large chair with his logo on the back of it, facing a wall of monitors, and he monologued at us. What else am I supposed to think other than “supervillain?”
SAMMY GUEVARA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- PERFECT! Any first-time viewer will now know everything you need to know about Sammy Guevara, and established fans, it was just Guevara being an excellent hear.
DARBY ALLIN VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- good
AEW TNT CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Sammy Guevara vs. Darby Allin- 6.75/10
Shawn Spears had a sign saying that Sammy owes him money. Maybe that idiocy with the betting actually will go somewhere after all.
Guevara jumped the bell on Darby with a big dive (see what I did there?). He beat Darby up on the outside. He was allowed to use a ladder because the bell hadn’t rung yet. This culminated in a big dive off the top turnbuckle to Darby on a ladder bridge. The doctor checked on Darby during a commercial break, and when we came back, Sammy was tired of waiting and just went to the outside and dragged him into the ring, forcing Aubrey to ring the bell. Jericho pointed out that Sammy waited for the whole commercial break to let Darby recover, as ordered by the referee, so I think everyone has acted reasonably here. If Darby can’t recover enough to wrestle in three minutes, Aubrey should have sent him to the back and ordered the match rescheduled for later. She didn’t, so it’s fair game for Sammy to go get him and bring him into the ring at that point, and fair game for Aubrey to officially start the match.
Once the match officially started it got off to quite the interesting start, with Darby starting to make his comeback by pulling Sammy’s boot off before applying an ankle lock. They went back to that a few times and Sammy sold it very well… until he just stopped selling it at all, which was the big issue I had with this match. Other things to watch for include a GREAT series of reversals as the finishing stretch, and Darby nearly killing himself, seeming to fly head-first into the barricade with a Heat Seeking Missile that Sammy moved out of the way of.
MATT HARDY PROMO(S)- LOVED IT!
First of all, I liked the fact that he brought up that Jericho ignored his challenge from two weeks ago, and used something clearly done for humor (Jericho spilling the orange juice) as evidence that Jericho was scared of him. In fact, the only Inner Circle member to mention Matt last week was Sammy Guevara, so Matt extends the same challenge to Sammy (for a fancy cinematic match at the Hardy Compound).
Then they did something extremely interesting, where Damascus showed a video of normal Matt Hardy talking about Chris Jericho and explaining the importance of AEW and why he had to stop Jericho from dominating it. In most forms of fiction, the person being possessed by the spirit (or alien that crawls into your brain, or whatever) is either unaware of anything that happens during that period of time or will at the very least separate themselves and their actions from the entity (“what you made me do”). Regular Matt, on the other hand, was talking about how when “I” showed up in AEW and confronted Chris Jericho and stood up for the Elite, etc. His priorities and Damascus’ seem to line up pretty well, too, and he wasn’t using his few moments of freedom to scream “HELP ME!” so this suggests that the relationship between Matt and Damascus is a symbiotic one, rather than a parasitic one (assuming, of course, that this was not still Damascus in full control, just pretending to be normal Matt Hardy). I’d be interested to learn more about the backstory here, and how this all works.
KENNY OMEGA vs. ALAN ANGELS- 4/10
They gave Angels a lot more than they should have, to the point where this was an actual match. I’d almost be fine with that if they hadn’t had him kick out the first V-Trigger. Why not use the fact that Kenny is facing a jobber to rebuild some of the cache that move has lost and make it at least feel like a finisher again (and jobbers don’t kick out of your finisher the first time. Or ever).
COMMERCIAL FOR MATT VS. NICK ON THE 200TH EPISODE OF BEING THE ELITE- I understand having a Falls Count Anywhere match to make sure that Nick is tough enough to return or whatever they’re doing, but there had better be a damn good reason to pull out that murder-boot with the thousands of thumbtacks glued onto the bottom. How is it going to help the team you prove Nick is tough enough to come back but, in the process,, someone loses an eye?
SCORPIO SKY VIDEO PACKAGE, PART 1- GREAT stuff, lots of pathos.
DUSTIN RHODES TELLS CODY THAT HE’LL PUT HIS CAREER ON THE LINE IN TONIGHT’S MAIN EVENT- hated it
1. This is ratings-plot levels of random
2. This was recorded on a fifteen-camera shoot, all in Cody’s house, as Dustin’s voice came over the speakerphone. Here’s an idea? If Dustin is explaining why he has randomly decided to put his career on the line, why PUT THE F*CKING CAMERAS ON DUSTIN?! It’s sh*t like this that gets me so annoyed a Cody every time he talks about the dangers of ego in the wrestling business. Cody might not be his father, but just because Hulk Hogan isn’t as big as Andre the Giant doesn’t mean that he isn’t a huge dude.
JIMMY HAVOC vs. ORANGE CASSIDY (w/Best Friends)- 6.25/10
Havoc jumps the bell on Goofy McGooferton. This apparently knocked all of the goof out of him, and when he made his comeback he wrestled like normal person with no stupid bullsh*t going on.
Orange Cassidy turned s red in this match that they should have called him Tomato Cassidy. Whatever his name is, at the end of this, Dasha called him “the winner of this match,” as he took advantage of Jimmy Havoc getting distracted by a Penelope Ford interference attempt gone awry (after her first attempt was prevented by Best Friends, who were then taken out by Kip Sabian) to roll him up for the win. Jimmy Havoc attacked OC after the match and dropped him on his head with the same move he did last week. Best Friends chased Havoc and Sabian off so they couldn’t do any more damage.
See… I can enjoy Orange Cassidy matches… so long as he isn't being Orange Cassidy so long as he isn't being Orange Cassidy.
MJF PROMO- bad
A graphic told us that this was taped in front of “Max’s rat’s house.” This was goofy stuff saying he’d be back soon but couldn’t wrestle right now because he suffered a hangnail that turned “life-threatening,” but he’d be back soon. This served no purpose whatsoever.
WARDLOW vs. LEE JOHNSON- squash
THE DARK ORDER RECRUIT SOMEONE WHO’S FOOTBALL CAREER WAS ENDED BY INJURY AND ALSO HIS GIRLFRIEND BROKE UP WITH HIM- didn’t like it
The “I had the whole world in my hand” line was clearly intended as a Bray Wyatt reference. Which I’m sure some people will think is cool, but if the reference has no actual bearing on the story then it serves no purpose (and, at this point, fits into a pattern with Dark Order where the people writing this stuff seem to feel like it has to always somehow reference WWE.
This was a return to the “cameras are here with no explanation” style that they used at first, which doesn’t fit in with most of the rest of what AEW shows us (although I suppose that this could all be Dark Order-produced propaganda from the beginning to the end).
I also didn’t like that this recruitment was A LOT different than the previous ones we’ve seen, more akin to a vaguely evil job interview than the cult stuff we saw at first or some of the “come over to the Dark Side of the Force” direct pitching that had been done towards people like Jungle Boy.
Anyway, Brodie Lee just gives this guy a mask, so I guess he’ll have a henchman with an actual background now.
JUSTIN LAW vs. BRODIE LEE- squash
BEST FRIENDS & ORANGE CASSIDY INTERVIEW- comedy, and thus I didn’t care for it in what seems like it’s supposed to be a serious feud (JIMMY F*CKING HAVOC IS INVOLVED FOR G-D’S SAKE!).
THE BUBBLY BUNCH- even worse than last week. Why are you making your entire top heel stable into goofs? Who would have thought that there would be an episode of Dynamite where Orange Cassidy looked like less of a goof than LAX?
AEW TNT CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH WITH DUSTIN RHODES’ CAREER ON THE LINE: Dustin Rhodes (w/Brandi Rhodes) vs. Kip Sabian (w/Penelope Ford)- 6.75/10
They aired a great video package to hype this match up right before the entrances. The match itself was… not really main event quality. Dustin won after Brandi prevented Penelope from interfering. If the Dustin thing wasn’t hot-shotting, my guess is that we’re going to have him continue to put his career on the line, resulting in either Cody having to end it if Cody wants a title again, or resulting in Lance Archer ending Dustin’s career as something Jake can lord over Cody.
This was a very good episode of Dynamite, but almost entirely on the strength of the non-wrestling stuff. The wrestling wasn’t bad (although there was a point when it felt like were getting WAY too many squashes and thus it got more than a bit boring), but it wasn’t great, either, and the main event was disappointing. With a better main event, this would have been a much better show, but it was still very good.