BRM Reviews the 11/27/2019 Dynamite (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

OPENING SEGMENT- Um… what the f*ck is going on?
We open with VIRGIL in the ring, with a bunch of big presents and a large picture. The ring is also decked out in fancy red carpeting, and surrounded by a whole bunch of giant mascots, including a dancing triceratops. Apparently Virgil is the MC for Chris Jericho Appreciation night. The aforementioned picture is a picture of the Inner Circle, and the wrapping paper on one of the presents is many small pictures of Jericho with his title. Also, there is a marching band on the ramp.
The fans are cheering Jericho’s whole arrogant heel routine except when he insults them, but then they go right back to cheering him. Jericho seems to be under the impression that he is getting his oft-demanded thank you from the AEW management team tonight. He brings out the Inner Circle, and we spend several minutes on shenanigans, of which only the first one (Sammy Guevara’s gift on a giant cardboard cutout of himself and Jericho hugging) was even worth a chuckle.
They had Jericho’s father hiding in one of the presents to get some cheap heat with his Rangers jersey. A lot more cheap heat ensued, including saying that Justin Roberts’ Chicago-area high school sucks and beating Justin up after making him read the letter of thanks from AEW because they “didn’t like his tone.”
Eventually the marching band ran in and attacked the Inner Circle with their musical instruments to make the save, because of course SCU would dress up like members of Jericho’s marching band. It’s not like this even gave them any sort of surprise advantage, as they still had to run down the ramp to get into the ring. They send the heels scurrying, ending with Scorpio Sky putting Virgil in a bad-looking sleeper for a bit, then Daniels hitting him with a clothesline. This segment wasted fifteen minutes, accomplished absolutely nothing for this show, and relied on a ridiculous contrivance. They then ran down a series of huge matches on this show that made me even more angry that we wasted fifteen minutes on this sh*t.

Tony Schiavone is off calling college basketball, so some guy from the “All Elite Fleet” (presented by State Farm) is doing guest commentary. Speaking of substitutes, Dasha (no last name given) is going to be our ring announcer for tonight due to Justin Roberts’ injury.

LUCHA BROS. vs. BEST FRIENDS (w/Orange Cassidy)- 6/10
The heels jumped the babyfaces from behind, but the babyfaces quickly took over. This happened just so Orange Cassidy could do a dive while wearing a turkey suit. We also later got a spot where the babyfaces’ friend hopped up on the apron to distract the heels, totally unprovoked. Many flips and kicks occurred. Trent pinned Fenix, so they definitely seem to be pushing him.

After examining the women’s top five rankings and records, it’s clear to me that Britt Baker needs to be booked less often. She has wrestled nine matches already, while the others have wrestled only five or six.

BEA PRIESTLEY & EMI SAKURA vs. HIKARU SHIDA & KRIS STATLANDER- 6/10
Emi Sakura came out cosplaying as Freddy Mercury for unknown reasons. The heels jumped the bell on the babyfaces. One of the heels did a goofy comedy spot for no reason. Stuff happened. The heels won when Bea was allowed to very clearly purposefully physically detain the referee so he couldn’t see Sakura hit Statlander with a microphone stand. Is it that hard to come up with a way for the referee to be distracted without having one of the wrestlers just go over and manhandle him?

JON MOXLEY PROMO- awesome

CODY RHODES vs. MATT KNICKS- no rating, dull squash
I think Cody’s entrance got more pyro than WWE sets off at the start of a show. Cody’s ribs are all taped up after Full Gear. Excalibur began to explain to us why Cody is still ranked if he is no longer able to challenge for the AEW World Title, but Jim Ross angrily cut him off sad that it is “just a minority of people who are overthinking things.” What in G-d’s name made Ross think this was a good idea? I don’t care how few fans there are that think this way (I had independently come to the conclusion that Excalibur gave us as an explanation- that just because he’s ineligible doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be recognized for his accomplishments; it’s an overall ranking, not a contendership list). Excalibur was trying to smooth things over with those fans, with absolutely zero opportunity cost in terms of losing fans who haven’t been asking this question, and Ross jumped into cut Excalibur off and flip the bird to the very fans that Excalibur was trying to bring into AEW’s tent.
Cody won a boring and mostly pointless squash with the figure four.

CODY CALLS OUT BUT GETS ATTACKED BY SOME OTHER PEOPLE- terrible segment
Instead of MJF, someone cut came up through the ring behind Cody. we saw this guy cut through the canvass with a knife, which is fine, but how did he cut through the wooden beams that we saw are directly under the canvass during the Omega vs. Moxley match without someone noticing?
This person was originally masked, but then immediately took the mask off. What was the point of wearing the mask in the first place, then? This person was someone named “The Blade,” and he appeared to completely incapacitate Cody with one shot. Then some dude named “The Butcher” came out of the hole and they hit Cody with a suplex from The Butcher over The Blade’s knees. Then a blonde woman popped up through the whole. This woman was “The Bunny,” who is apparently Allie. When did Allie turn heel, put on a mask, and start hanging out with these guys? The announcers even mentioned her and showed her picture when they were running down the women’s division rankings, and they said nothing about anything like this and showed the picture of her as the happy-go-lucky babyface we have seen in every moment of her AEW career until right now.
Anyway, Cody is now feuding with a third group of people.

KENNY OMEGA vs. PAC- 7.5/10
Omega wins with a roll-up, allowing him to avenge his victory while also setting things up for a rematch. That being said, Pac feels rather wasted at the moment, going 50-50 with Page and now losing to Omega. He seems like a lot less of a featured player than he should be.

WINNER GETS THE DYNAMITE DIAMOND RING: Adam Page vs. MJF (w/Wardlow)- 6.75/10
MJF cut a great in-set promo, but at the same time, telling me that the diamond ring costs a lot of money doesn’t make me care about it anymore. Excalibur said this was the “first annual” match for this diamond, which also doesn’t do anything to make me care about it. Page’s promo was equally ineffective at making me care about the ring, but at least it told me that Page really feels that he needs a big win here. Between Page’s comment here and his booking since the PPV, I think that if AEW could do it all over again, they wouldn’t have had Page beat Pac at Full Gear.
MJF grabbed Bryce to use him as a human shield but somehow wasn’t DQed for this. He then immediately proceeded to poke Page in the eye. JUST DQ HIM ALREADY, BRYCE! Other than that, they had a very good match. MJF won after Wardlow interfered to first put MJF’s foot on the ropes to break up a pin, then to attack Page so MJF could hit him with the Cross Rhodes. Their execution of this was either the best I’ve ever seen or the worst, as it looked like Page shoot landed right on the top of his head.

DDP PRESENTS THE AEW DYNAMITE DIAMOND RING TO MJF- meh
DDP presented the ring to MJF, then started to lecture him, but then changed his mind. Page very obviously set up to hit MJF with the Diamond Cutter out of his offered handshake but MJF outsmarted him and found a way to reciprocate the show of (false) respect without exposing himself to the Diamond Cutter. At least that’s how I read the scene. Maybe it would have come off differently if Page hadn’t seemed so damn smarmy.
They had a face to face when Page grabbed MJF when MJF tried to leave but Wardlow stepped in. Page claimed he could kick Wardlow’s ass so Wardlow went after him and everyone had to be separated by security. I guess we’re getting DDP vs. Wardlow at some point. If we don’t get DDP vs. either fo these guys at some point this will have been a big waste of time.

JENN DECKER INTERVIEWS DUSTIN RHODES- fine segment
I’m not sure why someone decided that Jenn Sterger, who has name value under her own name, should use a fake name, and double so when her usual (and shoot) name is in the Twitter handle that they put up on the screen.
Dustin starts to cut a promo on Jake Hager saying he isn’t the same man he used to be, which I felt was a completely needless reminder of the fact that they were both pretty much jobbers in WWE a few years ago. I think regular outrage over being attacked would have been better here. The Inner Circle attacked Dustin from behind, and while he fought back a bit, Santana, Ortiz, and Guevara eventually overwhelmed him. The Young Bucks came out to help and eventually they put the heels down. They ended things with stereo shattered dreams to all three heels, which looked bad because the way the heels were selling being stuck was just not believable, and one of them pretty clearly showed us during his begging them not to kick him that he could easily block his nuts with his hands if he wanted to.

DARK OVER VIDEO PACKAGE- This did a good job of what it was trying to do, but I can’t help but find it a little goofy that they would advertise themselves to people as “the Dark Order” instead of using some sort of front name, and that they would all magically put on their Creeper masks and offer them to a new person at said new person’s very first meeting.

AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH WITH SECONDS BARRED FROM RINGSIDE: Chris Jericho(c) vs. Scorpio Sky- 6.75/10
Despite seconds being barred from ringside, Hager came down to ringside and caused a distraction, which did not result in a DQ. Daniels and Kaz had to come down to ringside to get rid of him. There was a lot more gaga in this than I was expecting. I was also shocked that they didn’t use Scorpio Sky’s small package for a nearfall after doing such a great job of building up. Jericho worked the back and won by submission in a match that was rather underwhelming for a TV main event.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Jericho put Scorpio Sky in the Walls of Jericho again just to be a heel. Moxley’s music played and he showed up in the crowd. He and Jericho shouted at each other a bit.


A bad show from AEW. There was only one good match, a whole lot of questionable segments, and some very underwhelming wrestling. There were definitely some good promos on this show, but those and Pac vs Omega alone were not enough to stop this from being a bad show.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Jim Ross- “Those three b’s don’t stand for Better Business Bureau, I can tell you that.”
Yeah. And so could anyone else who just heard Excalibur tell us all of their names, so why did you even open your mouth at all, never mind say something this stupid?