Punk’s promo was tremendous, the way he tied so many things together and came across as the old but dangerous veteran… but I DESPISE the choice of the Dog Collar match. Yes, he explained that Wardlow can climb a cage and MJF can try to run out of it, but at least climbing the cage will take him some time! Why would you book a match where he (or Spears, or FTR or Tully) can just interfere at will? Punk has full control of the stipulation, so why not book a cage with a roof (surely Tony Khan has the money for such things) or at least take the “escape the cage” stipulation away!
And if you absolutely must do a dog-collar match, why not add that all of MJF’s friends have to be locked in a cage backstage or something like that?
Punk called out MJF to show him a picture of young MJF meeting CM Punk, and turned that into another great promo.
Oh, yeah. The match is at the PPV, but you’ve already guessed that.
MJF did an excellent job of showing that he was trying really hard not to be scared, but truly was. He tried to say something, but couldn’t. He just walked out.
TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS CHRISTIAN CAGE, LUCHASAURUS, & JUNGLE BOY- meh
Jurassic Express will defend the tag titles at the PPV in a three-way match. Will it be between them and the top two ranked contenders by the time of the PPV, whoever those might be? Don’t be silly. That would be logical, and would justify the existence of the rankings.
Instead, over the next two weeks, we’ll be getting two battle royales. One regular, and one Casino Battle Royale, because Tony hasn’t figured out that those suck yet. Going back to the debate we’ve been having here over the past week or two, this is the time where Tony should be building up Jurassic Express’ first real feud as the tag champs (ideally with a team who he has been having gain momentum over the past month or two). Instead, we’re getting a format that almost guarantees weak build for their first PPV defense… and after the PPV, he’ll likely revert back to the out-of-nowhere challengers for a month or six weeks before starting to build up a feud for Double or Nothing, at which point they will have been the champs for five months and done nothing of note.
Jungle Boy is starting to get really annoying, as is Luchasaurus’ “BLLLAAAAH” bit. To be fair, this could all be on purpose, as Christian promised that over the next few weeks, there would be “some changes in the tag team division” but that his guys would remain champs, so they could all be turning heel, but I don’t think that’s a good idea, especially in a division where the other two top teams (FTR, Young Bucks… and hell, even Kings of the Black Throne and Fish & O’Reilly) are already heels (plus the potential of a Danielson & Moxley heel team, and Jericho/Hager as a potential heel act that would be fresh for the division, and all you’ll have on the babyface side is Best Friends and LAX. Hell, now that I think about it, even if Private Party turn babyface, the undercard will also still be mostly heel teams, with Gunn Club Team Taz, 2.0, and the Acclaimed, as opposed to just Varsity Blonds on the babyface side, and that’s assuming that they don’t break up).
Lee Moriarty has been in the promotion for months, and only now have they clued us in on why he wears that mask to the ring.
BRYAN DANIELSON vs. LEE MORIARTY- 8.25/10
MORE OF THIS!
Danielson was an excellent heel throughout, all without breaking the rules in any way more than not immediately breaking a hold in the ropes.
BRYAN DANIELSON DEMANDS AN ANSWER FROM JON MOXLEY- GREAT!
Essentially, Moxley wants to find out if Dragon’s real motivation in making his offer was to not have to wrestle (and “get destroyed” by) Moxley, so he wants a match. He spun a nice tale about not having ever beaten Byran before (assuming he only meant singles matches, his only win over Dragon was by DQ), and it kind of worked for the situation, but at the same time, he seemed to be both counting WWE as continuity (believe it or not, they only ever wrestled twice outside of WWE: the match Moxley talked about here, and their match at DGUSA Way of the Ronin, and so to have wrestled as many times as he made it seem like, you would need to include WWE, but then his comment about how they were essentially meeting here for the first time seems to discount WWE- and, no, I don’t think the whole “WWE doesn’t count because were weren’t our real selves” kind of argument makes any sense in kayfabe), which bugged me. Either WWE is part of your continuity or it isn’t, and that has to apply to all situations.
Danielson was shown as being a little worried and in deep thought. I was surprised that he didn’t immediately just accept a match. That felt like a ploy to stretch out the storyline for another week before announcing that the match will be at the PPV.
KEITH LEE VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- awesome!
He’ll win the Face of the Revolution Ladder match and win the TNT Title.
FACE OF THE REVOLUTION LADDER MATCH QUALIFIER: Max Caster (w/Anthony Bowens) vs. Wardlow (w/Shawn Spears)- 3.5/10
Wardlow won a short match cleanly. Serious question here: As a fan, am I supposed to want to see Wardlow win this match? If he wins this match and wins the Ladder match and wins the title, then MJF gets the title according to the contract that Wardlow was dumb enough to sign and which AEW has taken no issue with… so isn’t Wardlow winning the same as MJF winning, bringing MJF one step closer to the title?
POST-MATCH SEGMENT-
Anthony Bowens attacked Wardlow from behind and stomped on him in the corner. The announcers pointed out that Shawn Spears made no move to help Wardlow. Wardlow made his own comeback quite quickly and powerbombed Bowens as well. Only then did Spears ge up like he was going to help.
While hyping up the Punk vs. MJF Dog-Collar match, Tony Schiavone told us that this was only AEW’s second match of that type, with the first one being Cody vs. Brodie Lee, which he said they would “never forget.” Forget the match? No. But forget all of the circumstances surrounding it? Of course. Because if we acknowledge that Brodie Lee was a despicable heel, fans will think that we’re talking about Jon Huber and not the character he played on TV, even though that’s not what we do with everyone else. How is that not insulting the fans’ intelligence?
TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD & FRIENDS- meh
Mercedes tries to talk, but Dr. Baker rolls her right over. This right here is one of the issues I am having with this Wardlow turn. I fully expect Britt to act like this, but MJF has shown himself to be much more cunning.
Some new guy showed up who was never identified other than being Britt’s “sensei.” Mercedes vows to “murder a bitch,” and leaves. Britt asks the sensei what to do if Mercedes fails, to which the sensei replies “you know what to do: Take her out,” leaving us to wonder whether the “her” to be taken out is Thunder Rosa or Mercedes.
TONY SCHIAVONE’S IN-RING INTERVIEW WITH ADAM PAGE IS INTERRUPTED BY ADAM COLE- good… and then ridiculous.
Page is starting to feel like Rey Mysterio in WWE a few years ago, where they had zero confidence in his ability to carry a promo, so they kept having him get interrupted three words into his promos.
Page took a shot at turmoil in Cole’s circle of friends. Cole responded by pointing out the flaw in the booking that after supposedly being great friends, the Dark Order have completely disappeared from Adam Page’s radar and visa-versa (essentially, once they were no longer necessary for the plot).
Page claims that Cole “doesn’t have the best record with friendships, either,” which isn’t wrong… although Cole does seem to always make up with people eventually (Bullet Club, Kyle O’Reilly TWICE now). Cole says that whenever he shows up, Page becomes “the other Adam.” This makes Page want to fight, but Cole talks him down, saying he has tremendous respect for Page, and that when they face off for the title, it will be a respectful one-on-one match. He offers a handshake, which Page accepts, and then leaves.
When Cole was halfway up the ramp, reDRagon came out of the crowd and jumped Page. Cole came back and joined in. Security actually showed up for once to try to stop a beat-down, and were more successful than I was expecting. Eventually, the Dark Order came out to chase FutureDRagon away.
Then 10 from the Dark Order just started attacking the security guards for no reason. He beat up more of them than the vicious heels did! And they all just ran at him, one by one, like terrible video game AI. His friends seemed to have him calmed down when there was one guy left, but then he picked that guy up and threw him onto the others outside of the ring… and then celebrated like beating up security guards was an accomplishment, making no move to go after the people who had attacked his friend Adam Page.
What purpose did any of that serve? It made 10 completely unlikeable because he very deliberately beat up a bunch of people who had only tried to help Adam Page, while letting Page’s actual attackers go free… and now I’m supposed to want to see this douchebag beat up Adam Cole? And I’m supposed to think this undercard jamoke who I can literally not ever remember having seen win a match is going to be a threat to Adam Cole because he beat up a bunch of security guards?
SAMMY GUEVARA VS. DARBY ALLIN VIDEO PACKAGE- awesome
THE INNER CIRCLE (Chris Jericho & Jake Hager) vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Santana & Ortiz) (w/Eddie Kingston)- 7/10
They wrestled a normal match without much “it pains me to do this, brother” storytelling, or anything that really made this feel like it was an important moment in a story about a stable possibly breaking up. The finish came when Jericho was in control, but took the time to knock Kingston off the apron, allowing LAX to take over, hit some moves, and have Santana pin Jericho.
Tony Schiavone was absolutely correct that Kingston had no business getting up on the apron, so it’s hard for me to blame Jericho for going after Kingston after the match. That being said, the fact that Kingston didn’t actually put his hands on Jericho does give the storyline the necessary wiggle room for things to be a little bit gray and for LAX to side with Kingston over Jericho… but it will depend on exactly what LAX object to and what they say, as I don’t think they can really take credit for this win and still be unhappy with Jericho going after Kingston at the same time.
ADAM COLE, reDRagon, & YOUNG BUCKS PROMO- very good… until the end.
Kyle wanted to know why the Bucks weren’t out there beating Adam Page up with them. I will admit to chuckling at both the “beating up Hangman would be like beating a dead horse” line and the “who doesn’t like to beat up a dead horse? It’s fun!” line.
Cole plugs all of their upcoming matches, including the two battle royales for the tag team title shot. His phrasing her was a bit too heavy-handed, where sounded like he was doing the announcers’ job. His talk of said battle royales did nothing but stir up trouble between reDRagon and the Bucks. I’m assuming they’ll each win one of the battle royales, but what I’d like to see is one team win and the other lose, and then the one team taunt the other about it or something like that, which will extend the story a bit to the point where we won’t need one of the teams to get pinned in a match before their first big showdown (while letting Jurassic Express keep the titles, I mean. Obviously you could avoid having one of the teams get pinned by switching the belts, but I don’t think that’s a good idea).
I can’t help but wonder if the bit where Kyle was bragging about having a child, and then each Buck in turn asserted his superiority by pointing out that he had even more children was a shot at Cody… but it still works for the segment even if it wasn’t, and it allowed Cole to bring things back where they needed them to be.
The Bucks walked off one way and reDragon walked off the other way, with Cole being indecisive. I thought that was great… and then they ruined it by having him go a little too cartoonish by going one way, then starting back the other way, and then having Brandon Cutler mockingly as “which way you gonna go, Cole?” so that Cole could tell him to shut up and turn the camera off. It made an otherwise very good segment too goofy and added a completely unnecessary element explicitly pointing out the symbolism. Symbols, by definition, are supposed to stand on their own.
NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: Thunder Rosa vs. Mercedes Martinez- 7/10
This was disappointingly short, but still great. There was a lot of stuff here that didn’t really go as smoothly as they would have liked, but this is a great example of a match where that didn’t matter, because everything still looked like it hurt and looked believable. Thunder Rosa got the win.
Thunder Rosa now improves to 40-2 in her last forty-two matches. HOW THE F*CK HAS SHE NOT GOTTEN A TITLE SHOT YET?!
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
Thunder Rosa showed Mercedes respect after the match, which I really didn’t like. I don’t care how much history you have. This woman has been brought in as a mercenary to end your career. They’ve been quite explicit about that. A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, she grabbed a pipe and smashed you in the head with it. You should not be showing her respect after a match.
Britt Baker and friends came out, and Britt went over to her sensei, who was seated in the front row, to ask him what to do… so I guess she wasn’t listening when she asked him exactly what to do in this eventuality earlier on this show. The sensei says “I told you she was weak,” and Britt gives the “slash her throat” sign, so Hayter and Rebel attack Thunder Rosa.
Dr. Baker grabbed a pipe, and ordered Mercedes to hit Thunder Rosa with it.
This is another one of those segments where it feels like the characters’ actions are guided by the booker’s goal with the segment (Mercedes turned babyface, heel standing tall in the end) rather than by their own motivations. Even if we are nice to AEW and assume that 1) the issues I had with Thunder Rosa showing Mercedes respect after the match can be ignored (I don’t think they should be, but if you really want to say “she’s such a valiant and pure-hearted person that she would do that,” I won’t argue too hard) and 2) that handing Mercedes the pipe was intended as a test of loyalty, and Hayter attacking her from behind when she hesitated was the contingency plan, then there is still the issue of why they didn’t just hit Thunder Rosa with the damn pipe afterwards. They gave up on their own goal, because the goal the booker had scripted the segment to accomplish had been accomplished.
And the most frustrating part of this all is that if there had been no pipe, this wouldn’t have been an issue. If the goal of the segment is to turn Mercedes babyface while still having the heels standing tall at the end, the same thing could have been accomplished by simply having Rebel hold Thunder Rosa up in a full nelson and Britt ordering Martinez to punch her. That creates the same situation to allow Mercedes to turn babyface, but without the easy way right at hand for the heels to inflict the promised grievous bodily harm on Thunder Rosa, and thus it’s not an issue when Britt decided she is tired of just punching Thunder Rosa in the face.
Yes, I realize that it’s a connection to the previous match, where Mercedes hit Thunder Rosa with a pipe. Motifs are great storytelling devices, and AEW is better at creating them than pretty much any company I can remember (the only individual who I’ve seen come close is Jimmy Jacobs, and that’s just one guy on a consistent basis, not a whole promotion). But the purpose of a motif is to enhance a story. It using the motif gets in the way of the logic of the story, don’t use the motif!
HOUSE OF BLACK VIDEO/PROMO- awesome
He said stuff that sounded cool and showed us that they will have a mysterious third person joining them. A useful thing to have when you’re feuding with a group that could soon become a trio. Brody King asked exactly who they were waiting for, and Malakai Black replied “mystery.” I’m going with Buddy Murphy, though I have no real reason for why other than he seems like he would fit their aesthetic.
JAY WHITE VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- AWESOME!
AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Sammy Guevara(c) vs. Daby Allin (w/Sting)- 7.75/10
A GREAT match, with a good heel finish of Andrade costing Darby the match while Sting and the referee were focused on Jose. Sammy sold MUCH better here than he has in the past, and Darby is always awesome.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Matt Hardy a came out and attacked Darby. Sammy chased him away, but that let Andrade sneak up behind Darby and take him out with the same weapon shot (a tablet. The electronic device, not a clay or stone writing surface) that he had hit Darby with. Andrade posed with both TNT Title belts (why are there still two?) until Sting scared him off.
This was a good episode of Dynamite. The wrestling was great, and the storylines stuff was a little better than last week. The same problems were still there, but they weren’t as prevalent. as they were last week.
