BRM Reviews the 5/6/2020 Dyanmite (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

We’ve got all three announcers together again, and it didn’t take more than a minute of being live for Jim Ross to colossally f*ck up, referring to Cody as “the number one contender for the AEW Title.” Cody is not the #1 contender to any title (he’s headed to a tournament final to crown the first champion of a vacant belt), and is not allowed to ever challenge for the AEW World Title.


JOEY JANELA vs. CODY RHODES- 5.75/10
This was an otherwise good match brought down by several stupid spots. The first of which came when they fought on the outside for a while. Aubrey began to count them out… and then just stopped, because I guess the rules are arbitrary. You know… like how sometimes a boxing referee will just stop counting for a TKO, or let a round go for an extra minute, just for sh*ts and giggles. Oh. Wait. That doesn’t happen, because boxing is a sport… which is exactly what pro wrestling is supposed to be presented as.
The thing that irks me the most about this is that everyone keeps trying to tell me that Aubrey Edwards is such a great referee, but I counted about eight different points where these two were doing their spots on the outside where she could have easily claimed that a significant part of someone’s body broke the plane of the rope and used that as an excuse to restart her count, but instead she chose to just stop enforcing a rule for no logical reason, exposing the match as a hoax.
At one point, Janela had Cody down and went to the top rope… at which point the camera inexplicably decided to leave the action in the ring to go concentrate on some goofball in the crowd doing a stupid dance. If I were running this company, both the cameraman and the guy in the crowd would have been fired the moment the match was over.
Janela was apparently aware that this was happening, because he waited until the camera was back on him to go for his diving elbow drop, so he’s a f*cking moron. The fact that Cody didn’t reverse the move is irrelevant. He still took a completely unnecessary risk for reasons that, at best, make him look extremely egotistical. Cody is similarly a moron for wasting time taking his weight belt off, pacing around with it and then throwing it into the crowd before trying to hit the CrossRhodes. In this case, this actually did buy Janela enough time to counter the move.

WOMEN’S DIVISION VIDEO PACKAGE- a fine little way to showcase the champion and top contenders

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS NYLA ROSE- fine heel stuff from Nyla

NYLA ROSE vs. KENZIE PAGE- GREAT squash
Nyla obliterated this poor woman. Some people will probably argue that it went too long, but I thought it did a great job of helping to establish that Nyla is not just the big monster heel but also a sadistic bully. I did have one problem with this, though, and that was the framing of it. Or, rather, the lack thereof.
Nyla Rose, the AEW Women’s Champion is finally back. Hikaru Shida has been the top-ranked woman in the division for what feels like months at this point, and Nyla is booked against some random jobber? Just tell me that you’re giving Nyla a tune-up match, so that there is at least a reason why Hikaru Shida, who has been waiting MONTHS for a title shot, isn’t getting a title shot now that the champion is finally available to defend her belt. That’s all I ask.

MJF PROMO- SOOOOO much better than the dumb sh*t we’ve been getting with him the past few weeks.

SHAWN SPEARS VIDEO PROMO TRYING TO MAKE CODY FEEL BAD ABOUT NOT THROWING IN THE TOWEL FOR DUSTIN LAST WEEK- fine, I guess
In a vacuum, this was good, although I’m really not crazy about another Cody vs. Spears feud. This would also be about the fourth feud Cody is involved in at the same time (Spears, Archer/Jake, Inner Circle vs. Elite, MJF). The real problem with this, though, stems from the issue I had with the execution of last week’s match, which was that the beating Dustin took in the time between Cody stopping Marshall from throwing the towel in and the finish of the match felt pretty much negligible. If you want to make this angle work, that beating has to go on for a good four or five minutes, with Archer even pulling Dustin up at two just to keep beating on him and Cody still not throwing in the towel. I guess this still works in that Spears is a heel and thus he’s probably just trying to screw with Cody, but the idea definitely seems to be to plant this question in the viewer’s mind, and for that to work, the argument has to come across as reasonable, which this one doesn’t due to the issue I just described.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS SHAWN SPEARS & MJF (& WARDLOW)- meh
MJF put Spears over for being brave enough to tell everyone about “the real Cody.” He insulted all of the other wrestlers. Schiavone informed him that he had been booked against Jungle Boy at Double or Nothing. That’s… kind of a random match to get booked, especially before we have, say, any title matches announced.

FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. JON MOXLEY- 7.5/10
A great showing from Kaz that gave him some singles credibility with this clean loss.

THE DARK ORDER ATTACK JON MOXLEY AFTER THE MATCH- decent
SCU came out to try to make the save but were beaten down, too. Brodie Lee came out and cut a promo on Moxley. Moxley cut a defiant promo accepting Brodie’s challenge to a title match, then the Dark Order beat him down some more. The execution here was fine, but this seems very abrupt. Brodie has been a sideline character doing segments and jobber squashes, and now he’s in the world title picture? I’m also worried that they kind of have to put the belt on Brodie or else it will define him as a not being a main event act (which is what happens with these kind of abrupt pushes to a world title shot).
We were later told that Brodie Lee stole the title belt.

BRANDI RHODES PROMO- didn’t like it
In a vacuum would have been good, but Brandi’s assertion that she’s not the damsel in distress come across as absolutely silly when basically every one of Cody’s matches that she is at ringside for includes a spot where Brandi gets bumped and sells forever and Cody has to come tend to her.

LANCE ARCHER (w/Jake Roberts) vs. Q.T. MARSHALL (w/Brandi Rhodes)- 4.5/10
So Brandi didn’t manage her husband earlier tonight, but she will manage Q.T. Marshall? Really? I understand that the idea is her showing Jake that she’s not afraid of him, but why can’t she manage both guys? She managed Cody last week, so why not tonight? When you look at this in combination with my previous point about Brandi getting bumped and being the damsel in distress in basically all of Cody’s matches, it starts to feel like Brandi’s decisions about which matches to be a manager for is guided by needs of the plot rather than Brandi the character making logical choices, and anytime a character’s actions start to feel like they’re being guided by the needs of the plot rather than their own decision-making process, you’ve screwed up as a writer/booker/storyteller.
The match itself did its job of making Archer look like a killer while giving Q.T. just enough to not look like a total jobber. In reality, though, the match was just an excuse to set up the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
Remember what I said before about Brandi’s decisions on which matches to manage Cody/Dustin/Associates in feeling like they have been dictated by needs of the plot rather than any sort of rational decision-making on her part? This didn’t help.
After the match, Britt Baker randomly jumped the guardrail and attacked Brandi from behind, knocking her out with just one move. She rolled Brandi into the ring, and Jake got a snake and put the snake on Brandi.
Can Britt’s decision to attack Brandi be explained in the future? Yes. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel random right now. Personally, Penelope Ford seems like a better choice, as you can at least equip the announcers with the line that she might be taking revenge on the Rhodes Family for Dustin eliminating her fiancé from the tournament (and for Dustin’s rather disrespectful assertion that Kip Sabian is bad enough that if Dustin can’t beat him it’s a sign he should retire).
Speaking of properly equipping your announcers, it’s pretty clear that there was a big issue here, as they started off reminding us that Cody was in the building, but as time went by and Cody didn’t come out, Ross was left flailing around for an explanation of why Cody wasn’t coming out here to put a stop to this horrible, disrespectful thing that was being done to his wife. Ross eventually found a believable enough explanation (that the locker rooms are very far away), but the fact that he had to flail around for a while first shows that either 1) no one told the announcers that Cody wasn’t going to be making the save (which they should have done so that he doesn’t look like a coward) or 2) they did tell the announcers but Ross f*cked up and neither of the other announcers bothered to correct him, resulting in Cody still looking like a coward. Either way, or it’s not good.
Also, if this act is so horrible, why didn’t any of the babyfaces around the ring try to help Brandi?


They ran down the card for Double or Nothing 2020. It’s going to be:
MJF VS. JUNGLE BOY- Random, but why not?
MOXLEY VS. BRODIE LEE FOR THE AEW WORLD TITLE- This makes perfect sense based on the earlier segment, but I just find it funny that sometimes when there is one- or even multiple- segments that should clearly lead to a match being booked, AEW doesn’t book the match, but this time they’ve got it booked within an hour.
CASINO LADDER MATCH FOR A SHOT AT THE AEW WORLD TITLE- They promised that this would be a “unique” match, and that we would get all of the details next week. The last time they promised this sort of thing, it turned out to just be exactly the rules we all expected. Either way, if I were AEW, I would probably have avoided booking a #1 contendership ladder match the same month as Money in the Bank.

TAZ INTERVIEWS DARBY ALLIN- great
Darby didn’t answer any of Taz’s questions. On the one hand, Taz saying “you pretty much pinned yourself last week” felt kind of dickishly blunt, but on the other hand, it’s Taz, and that’s more along the lines of what I would expect from him. Also, Darby deserves to be mocked for the way that finish made him look.
Taz eventually offered to help mentor Darby if Darby wanted to talk with him about it after the interview. Darby walked off and pushed the mic away, which could have either been Darby rejecting Taz’s offer or could have been his way of immediately ending the interview so that he could solicit said help. I’m leaning towards the former, but it very well could be the latter as well.

They ran down next week’s card, which manages to feel like an important show without having anything that actually feels particularly important on it. I don’t know how they managed to do that, but by G-d they did it.
One of the things they announced was that Jericho would be “in action” next week. I assumed this would result in Jericho vs. Sugar “Pineapple Pete” Dunkerton, and their interaction on Jericho’s way to the ring for the main event confirmed it.

FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE MATCH: Kenny Omega & “Broken” Matt Hardy vs. Le Sex Gods (w/Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara) (w/Jake Hager)- 6/10
They billed this as a “street fight,” but the rules were actually those of a falls count anywhere match. There was a lot of walking around and hitting each other with stuff. It wasn’t bad, but it would have been a lot better if they hadn’t taken certain things too far. For example, Kenny going up on that scissors lift and staying there the whole time while it SLOWLY lifted up, as if coming down the extra few feet would really make that much of a difference on the dive he was planning to hit.
Also, the wrestler-fans following them backstage was a terrible mistake. Hager kept interfering and LAX also eventually showed up to beat the babyfaces down… and none of these babyfaces watching lifted a finger to try to make things fair? Everyone seems to love the wrestlers as fans in the stands because it gives us some crowd noise, but I think it’s terrible because it constantly creates issues like this, where babyfaces just sit around and watch terrible things happen and don’t lift a finger to help.
Then there was the Matt Hardy stuff. This has me extremely worried about what Broken Matt is going to be in AEW.
Early on in the match, Matt disappeared for a while when Jericho beat him up in an entrance tunnel, then came back as non-Broken Matt Hardy. Later he got dumped in an ice chest and emerged as Broken Matt again. This was stuff was all completely unnecessary and extremely stupid because you’ve now introduced magical powers which Matt for some reason never uses at a logical time to use them like when he’s being pinned or to escape a cage. Either that or he went off and changed clothes in the middle of a street fight for absolutely no reason. Twice.
And what did any of that actually do for the match? What did it add? Are people supposed to sit there and find it cool that he magically changed clothes in the middle of a match? If so, how is AEW operating at any higher of an intellectual level than WWE expecting us to think it’s cool that R-Truth got pinned in an airplane bathroom or on a golf course or whatever?
Matt got pinned after a five on two beatdown, and even though this was a totally spontaneous fight and definitely not scripted and predetermined in any way, the match just happened to end in a spot where you could see the scoreboard of the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium, and the Inner Circle just happened to have someone in place to put their logo up on the scoreboard. Was that really necessary?

One other note I have from this match: Jim Ross told us that the Young Bucks and Adam Page weren’t here to help their pals because they have newborn children and didn’t want to jeopardize their families by travelling and possibly contracting COVID-19 and bringing it home with them. This might have been the first time I have directly heard anyone on any wrestling show say “these guys aren’t here because they’re worried about COVID-19,” and it felt like a nice, refreshing blast of honesty instead of all of the workarounds we’ve been hearing from both WWE and from AEW.


On the whole, I thought this was a bad show from AEW. There was some good stuff, but most of the big stuff was either disappointing or random, and I’m not particularly interested in any of the directions they seem to have planned for the future.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Jim Ross told insisted to us that AEW was doing things totally safely and that everyone had been tested and “everyone is observing social distancing.”
He said this while sitting a lot less than six feet away from both Tony Schiavone and Excalibur. Also, most of the wrestlers and staff in the crowd were clearly-not six feet apart.