BRM Reviews the 4/15/2020 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

JAKE ROBERTS PROMO- great!
Can we start every week with a Jake Roberts promo on behalf of Lance Archer?

COLT CABANA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- fine

AEW TNT CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Colt Cabana vs. Lance Archer- 5.75/10
Archer came out and punched a guy in the crowd, timed perfectly with his music stopping. That’s the sort of thing that makes a show feel over-scripted and fake.
Colt was allowed to get his sh*t in, but Archer looked dominant. As a match to build Archer up without making Colt look like a chump, this was more than fine.

DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD’S RULES OF BEING A ROLE MODEL- I was disappointed that there was only one rule.
This was a very good “heel who thinks she’s the babyface” promo. I loved the fact that she did this from her dental office and wearing a lab coat for absolutely no reason other than to remind everyone that she’s a dentist.

ARIEL HELWANI & TAZ GIVE US THEIR PICKS FOR HAGER VS. MOXLEY- Taz was great (though I would have preferred it if he hadn’t called Hager a “‘legit’ mat-man”) and Helwani wasn’t. He just said a bunch of stuff that felt generic. Also, he said that Hager was “breaking barriers” in MMA. What barriers? You can’t just say sh*t like that. You have to actually explain it or else it feels generic and fake.

TECHNIQUE WITH TAZ- He explained how Hager’s finisher works. Cool.

CASSANDRA GOLDEN vs. DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD- no rating, pointless squash
I don’t think this did much for Britt, and thus it felt like a waste of time. She won with the same “put your mother around the rope and stomp it” move that they’ve used to knock teeth out, but that didn’t lead anywhere last time and they didn’t knock the teeth out this time, so why do it?

MORE PEOPLE WEIGH IN ON MOXLEY VS. HAGER- Okay… so now everyone connected to MMA is picking Hager to win, which makes this feel like it’s some sort of MMA vs. wrestling thing, which I don’t want to see.

They’re going ahead with Double or Nothing 2020. They’ve still got the Vegas theme, but they didn’t give a location.

THE INNER CIRCLE PRESENTS “THE BUBBLY BUNCH”- F*CKING TERRIBLE- They cut promos on Matt Hardy & The Elite that all sucked. This was them being goofs. They came off as the lamest people in the world, and not even in a heelish way. In a goofball way.

SUGE D vs. SAMMY GUEVARA- no rating, meh squash
So last week this guy reaches over the barricade and interferes in a match, and this week they reward him for this misbehavior with a booking… and not even against the man that he wronged? I’d say this is another example of AEW management kayfabe inexplicably not booking the obvious match, but with this example it’s actually worse because the guy Suge D interfered to help is CODY, and Cody is one of the people in charge of booking the matches, so what we have here is someone doing something wrong to benefit Cody, and Cody rewarding him with a booking that also allows him to avoid facing justice for his crime.
The match was a squash for Sammy that went longer than it needed to.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- great
Sammy cut a great heel promo telling us all that he was going to kick the ass of “that face-painted weirdo” Darby Allin in their tournament match. He said he was going to show us all how he was going to kick Darby’s ass by beating Suge D up right here, but Darby came out and made the save.

MORE MOXLEY VS. HAGER PICKS- Once again, the MMA person picks Hager and the wrestling person picks Moxley. And don’t tell me they’re not trying to make it a wrestling vs. MMA thing. Excalibur, who is usually much smarter than this, even said that Hager would have an advantage if this was in a cage, as if pro wrestling cage matches and MMA fights are analogous.

KIP SABIAN (w/Penelope Ford) vs. CHUCK TAYLOR (w/Orange Cassidy)- 6/10
The Development here is that Jimmy Havoc, who was in the crowd, was annoyed at Chuck Taylor’s posing, and so he eventually jumped the guardrail when Orange Cassidy was up on the apron distracting Sabian, and took out OC. I would be fine with this if not for the fact that OC was up on the apron trying to distract Sabian in a way that was mocking something that Penelope Ford had just done to try to distract Chuck Taylor. I’m pretty sure that Jimmy Havoc was a babyface the last time we saw him. All of this led to Penelope getting her Lita-carana spot in and then Sabian rolling Chuck up for the win.

MORE MOXLEY VS. HAGER PICKS- Hey, look! Hager got some support from people who aren’t in the MMA world. All of those people were his own stablemates, though, so that does take away from it a bit.

SHAWN SPEARS vs. JUSTIN LAW- no rating, good squash
On his way to the ring, Spears taunted Billy Gunn, who he defeated last night on Dark.

Jimmy Havoc vs. Orange Cassidy has been signed for next week. Hopefully this is their way of writing this terrible character out.

EMPTY ARENA NO HOLDS BARRED MATCH FOR THE AEW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Jon Moxley(c) vs. Jake Hager- 7.25/10
This was not a cinematic. They just had exactly the advertised match. This went about half an hour, and while I do think they got out of second gear, they never really seemed to stay in third for very long. It was very good and you won’t get bored while watching it, but don’t go into it expecting the slow pace they start off with to build up much over the course of the match.

This was a pretty good episode of AEW. There was some good and some bad, but aside from the Inner Circle skit, most of the bad wasn’t the “grr… I hate it” bad so much as the “that maybe could have gone better, but it wasn’t frustrating or boring” bad, while the good was… well… good, so the positives far outweighed the negatives.

[XIV]

Jake Roberts has absolutely nailed how to do a manager promo!

I love Britt Baker's shtick right now. It's great. In the ring, she's alright, but this character is fucking great.

At last Shawn Spears is finally being given the opportunity to start finding character (even if it is him being obnoxious over beating a 50 year old veteran) because so far, he's had a manager who is one of the best promos and never talked and tried to find a tag team partner on social media which has produced nothing of note.

Sammy Guevara has been soaking up Jericho's heel magic and is getting better as time goes on.

A lot of positives from this AEW show.