BRM Reviews the 1/22/2020 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

They’re on the Jericho Cruise this week. We were specifically told that they were in the Bahamas at the moment… which actually means that tonight’s title defense will give the AEW World Tag Team Titles official right to be called “World” Tag Team Titles (if you go by the “defenses in more than one country” scale, which a lot of people seem to).

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: SCU(Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky)(c) vs. Adam Page & Kenny Omega- 7.5/10
A great opener with a shocking title change. Page did a lot of the work for his team, got the pin, and didn’t stay to celebrate with his former buddies when the Bucks came out to celebrate with Kenny. Instead, he got free booze from the fans, then got himself crowd-surfed around the ring. Seems to me like he made the right choice.

DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD vs. PRISCILLA KELLY- 3.5/10
Schiavone and Ross seemingly having never heard of STARDOM before was pretty damn embarrassing. Also embarrassing was Ross telling us that while Britt has failed to win the Women’s Title thus far, she is clearly a “gold-oriented woman” because she worked hard to earn her dental degree. Uch. On so many levels.
Coming into this match, Britt had lost three out of four matches, including a #1 contendership match and- somehow right after losing the #1 contenderhsip match- a title match. How the hell is she still in the top five? If the division isn’t large enough for that sort of streak to result in her dropping out of the top five, I think they need to switch to a top three instead.
Britt won a match that, while technically fine, wasn’t very exciting and involved two people we have no real reason to care about. There was a spot at the end where she had Lockjaw locked in and Priscilla was inching closer to the ropes so Britt kicked herself off the ropes to them both backwards into the center of the ring. Ross said that allowing this was a “judgment call by the referee,” while Schiavone would later describe it as “questionable.” I’m calling bullsh*t on that. That’s got to be something that is either legal or it’s not, and the ref should either have ordered Britt to break the old, or not said a word about. You can’t have a middle ground. A “judgment call by the referee” is whether or not someone was aiming for the groin with a kick or if the kick just landed there by accident because the other guy moved. It’s not a situation that should be clearly outlined in the rules, like this one should be.
Also, with all of the sh*t referees let go by in this company- and we’ve seen everything from the tag rules being completely ignored to people whipping each other with belts to run-ins right in front of the referee- this is something we’re supposed to question? I don’t ever remember Tony Schiavone saying, “well, Young Bucks, it was pretty questionable the way you completely ignored the tag rules and were both running around the ring for ten minutes, but you did the get win,” so why the hell is he bringing this up with Britt in his post-match interview here?

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS BRITT BAKER- bad I know she’s being mean… but Tony was being mean to her by hypocritically questioning her character while letting so many other people cheat without comment (especially when what Britt did really doesn’t seem like cheating).
From there, this went downhill, with Britt doing the “don’t boo me, I’m a role model” schtick and claiming to be the “hottest chick on this boat” (or whatever exactly she said). Now that she’s a heel, she’s apparently turned into a completely generic one rather than the “babyface who got frustrated” heel that she had been turning into.

JURASSIC EXPRESS vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Chris Jericho, Santana, & Ortiz) (w/Jake Hager)- 6.75/10
The fans have started singing along to Jericho’s theme song. That’s probably not what we want for our top heel.
While I’m on the subject of Jericho, while I haven’t tallied things up for my Wrestler of the Year vote yet (I still need to watch WALTER’s OTT stuff), I am definitely considering giving it to Jericho for being the guy who feels most integral to his promotion’s success (plus wrestling at a high level and being my likely vote for Best on Interviews- though both Alexander James and Adam Cole are also in consideration for Best on Interviews). I think he’s been that important to AEW’s success.
So the match starts off and we build to a spot where Aubrey Edwards forced Marko Stunt to leave the ring because she didn’t see a tag… which was then immediately followed up by her just standing there and watching Jurassic Express triple-team Santana for good third seconds or so without even starting a ten-count. I just don’t understand how someone can possibly not catch this sort of thing while putting a match together.
The match was a fine six-man tag for what it was, and another win for Jericho. The important bit here was Hager and Luchasaurus brawling away, although they hit a point where it seemed impossible that Aubrey Edwards didn’t see them (unless she was just staring up the ramp at nothing, in which case she should be fired for being terrible at her job).

MAXWELL JACOB FRIEDMAN vs. JOEY JANELA- 4.25/10
Wait… wasn’t Janela supposed to be wrestling Rey Fenix this week? These two had a slow, relatively boring match which MJF won after Kip Sabian and Penelope Ford showing up to make out distracted Janela and caused him to miss a diving elbow drop, after which MJF hit a sick-looking CrossRhodes for the win. Can MJF please win a match cleanly for once?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
MJF started to cut a promo but got interrupted by Cody. MJF reminded Cody that Cody isn’t allowed to lay a finger on him. MJF proceeded to mock Cody in various mean ways, then went to leave. Cody reminded MJF that while he isn’t allowed to touch MJF, “they can,” at which point MJF turned around into a superkick by the Young Bucks. Cody then directed the Bucks to throw MJF in the pool, satisfying the rule of Chekhov’s Gun so that all of us watching at home aren’t disappointed that there was a pool there and no one got thrown into it.
I didn’t like this at all. MJF’s promo was nothing new. He’s a dick. We get it. Him getting his “comeuppance” here feels like a mistake to me because we’re supposed to want to see Cody beat MJF up and humiliate him, so all Cody having his friends beat MJF and humiliate him for him does is take away the heat before the blow-off. Also, having both Bucks do it made it two on one, which is not the ideal situation when it favors the babyfaces.
Also, why wasn’t Cody out there celebrating with Kenny and Page earlier?

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS THE NEW TAG CHAMPS- This segment achieved it’s goals, but when one of the goals is to have Page get annoyed and feel disrespected because Tony asked him a question, the cut his answer off so that he could ask Kenny Omega another question about something else, it makes me wonder why they let Tony do these interviews. If I were Adam Page, I’d be pissed off, too.
The Bucks showed up and a tag title match was teased. Page was also annoyed by the Bucks seemingly trying to worm their way into a title shot.

We got some match announcements for next week. One of them was the Young Bucks vs. Butcher & Blade, which Excalibur talked up as MJF having put a bounty on the Young Bucks. That MJF sure works quick, doesn’t he?
Also announced for next week is Kip Sabian vs. Cody. Dude… what logical kayfabe reason does AEW have for not just booking Janela vs. Sabian?

#1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT FINALS: Jon Moxley vs. Pac- 7.5/10
Jericho was on commentary for this match and told us all that the fans were chanting “YOUR SHIP SUCKS!” at some other cruise ship pulling into port next to them. In other words, the fans were ignoring the #1 contendership match main event to chant something dumb at people on another ship. And Jericho was dumb enough to call attention to that fact.
They had a great match, minus the part where they brawled all over the building and weren’t count out. Moxley won, which I think we all expected.


A solid show from AEW. Nothing was too good, but there wasn’t much that was that bad either.

[Thelone]

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS BRITT BAKER- bad I know she’s being mean… but Tony was being mean to her by hypocritically questioning her character while letting so many other people cheat without comment (especially when what Britt did really doesn’t seem like cheating).
From there, this went downhill, with Britt doing the “don’t boo me, I’m a role model” schtick and claiming to be the “hottest chick on this boat” (or whatever exactly she said). Now that she’s a heel, she’s apparently turned into a completely generic one rather than the “babyface who got frustrated” heel that she had been turning into.

You know, maybe Britt Baker isn't that good at this pro wrestling thing after all.

[NWK2000]

JURASSIC EXPRESS vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Chris Jericho, Santana, & Ortiz) (w/Jake Hager)- 6.75/10
The fans have started singing along to Jericho’s theme song. That’s probably not what we want for our top heel.

I think it works for Jericho if you look at it from, "I'm such an awesome musician that people can't help but sing along to my masterpiece of a song" as opposed to "I've written this song to bring people enjoyment and it's succeeded"