BRM Reviews the 3/10/2021 Dynamite (half great, half terrible)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 3/10/2021 Dynamite (half great, half terrible)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 11th, '21, 20:40

MATT JACKSON (w/Nick Jackson) vs. REY FENIX (w/Pac)- 7.5/10
This was a great opener. This was essentially a “slow but spotty” match. Think of it as about two steps up from what Ben Carter and Josh Morrell did on NXT UK last month. Fenix won clean, which is the right move because 1) you need to build the challengers up, and 2) Fenix has a lot more potential as a singles wrestler than Matt Jackson.
They did a spot where Matt avoiding a low dropkick by the ropes resulted in Fenix’s dropkick nailing Nick, so Matt took an opportunity to get some revenge a few moments later by sliding out of the ring and superkicking Pac. I liked the idea of the spot as a way to start turning this from just s scheduled title match into more of a personal rivalry, but I think they did it backwards. Matt clearly knows that Fenix wasn’t aiming for Nick, so he comes off as kind of a jerk for taking it out on Pac when he knows that Nick getting hurt was an accident. I thought this would have been a lot better if they had Matt hit Pac by accident and then had Fenix take Nick out on purpose as revenge.

EDDIE KINGSTON & JON MOXLEY PROMO- EXCELLENT!
I thought they did a tremendous job of handling Sunday’s little oopsie by having there be something of a debate as to whether Kenny was actually planning on maiming/murdering Moxley. I think the idea that Kenny wasn’t actually trying to murder Moxley can be something of a way out of this for AEW.
I thought Kingston in particular was great here. Moxley was good too and AEW clearly loves this double-act. Me… not so much. Their interactions and talking over each other, while natural, felt like something that has the potential to get really annoying to me as a viewer if they keep doing it.

SETH GARGIS vs. CODY RHODES (w/Arn Anderson)- squash
Cody won rather quickly with the Figure Four. Cody’s shoulder is taped up, and Excalibur told us that Arn Anderson was preventing people from getting into the trainer’s room to hear about the injury.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH CODY RHODES IS INTERRUPTED BY PENTA EL 0M FROM THE SPANISH ANNOUNCER’S TABLE- hated it
Penta had one of the announcers translate his promo Cody. He tried to talk on his own a bit and didn’t work. The big line was that Penta said that he would have hurt Cody’s shoulder so badly that he wouldn’t be able to pick up his new-born baby girl. Maybe it’s just because I’m not a parent, but every time I hear a line like that in wrestling, it feels so fake to me. It feels like a heel with no real reason to say something like that to the babyface is saying something for the sake giving the babyface an excuse to rush him while the announcers rant on about how the heel has now “made it personal.”
In other words, it feels like something the heel was instructed to say by the booker so that babyface could get very angry and we could have a pull-apart to start the feud. It feels overdramatic and staged, and thus hinders my immersion.
The announcers pushed that Penta was angry that he didn’t win the ladder match, but I see no reason why Penta should decide to take this out on Cody. If anyone, it was Scorpio Sky who seemed like he destroyed Penta’s chances of winning with that chairshot to the ankle.

CHUCK TAYLOR & ORANGE CASSIDY ARE AT AN ARCADE- bad
OC was a clown. Chuck wants one more match. He offers to be Miro’s butler forever if they lose… but if they win, they get to surround the ring with videogame machines and slam Miro and Kip’s heads through all of them “and then we break you.”
This is a goofy stipulation. My guess is that it’s actually going to be a match where the ring is surrounded by video game consoles rather than the stipulation being that the babyfaces get to slam the heel’s heads through them if the babyfaces win, and if that’s the case, then there is no reason not to have re-shot this. And if it’s not the case, then it’s kind of a weird stipulation. Shouldn’t he just ask for a Street Fight?

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH STING IS INTERRUPTED BY LANCE ARCHER- meh
Sting put Darby over. Lance Archer says he doesn’t need a ladder match to prove that he’s the face of the revolution. Archer threatened Sting, then he and Jake left, so I guess they’re heels again now. Sting then left without ever getting around to answering the question that we were here to answer, which was how Sting was feeling after his first match in five and a half years.

DASHA GONZALEZ INTERVIEWS Q.T. MARSHALL AND LEE JOHNSON- fine
She asks Q.T. to explain his actions on Sunday. He says that his emotions got the best of him. He then started to put over Lee Johnson but they were interrupted by what seemed like a combination of audio problems and Ethan Page’s music.
Yeah… there is definitely a problem with the audio now. The music is overpowering everyone; the ring announcer, the announcers, and even Page’s own in-set promo.

ETHAN PAGE vs. LEE JOHNSON (w/Q.T. Marshall)- 4.5/10
New theory: There is some separate event going on at the football stadium that is drowning things out. There is seemingly random music and announcements playing now. Either way, it’s not good, but at least this way it’s not AEW’s fault.
Page won clean, but Johnson was allowed to get enough offense in to look credible.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Page attacked Johnson after the match. Dustin Rhodes ran out to make the save while Q.T. walked out on Johnson purposely not helping him in his moment of need.

EARLIER TODAY, ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWS ADAM PAGE & THE DARK ORDER- bad
This was framed as Marvez finding out how Page is “spending Matt Hardy’s money,” but that doesn’t make sense because the stipulation was for all of the losers “first-quarter earnings” and the quarter isn’t over. (And if you say that wrestlers don’t get paid quarterly, then how does the stipulation make any sense if the wrestlers have already gotten- and likely spent some of- the wagered earnings?)
The Dark Order were clowns, and Page came off as a clown for associating with them. Also, they’re jerks as they left one guy behind because he couldn’t fit on the lawnmower and went to get ice cream without him.
I just noticed that Tay Conti and Anna have been absent form all of these shenanigans with no explanation.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTIAN CAGE IS INTERRUPTED BY KENNY OMEGA & FRIENDS BEFORE CHRISTIAN EVEN CAME OUT- That’s three Schiavone interviews interrupted in less than an hour. COME UP WITH SOMETHIN NEW TO DO.
Schiavone went back to the commentary table and Christian didn’t come out, even though he was presumably standing by ready for his cut backstage. Hopefully he got jumped by Omega and pals, because if he is just letting this go, then he’s a complete pushover loser, which is a TERRIBLE way to debut.

DON CALLIS, KENNY OMEGA, & THE GOOD BROTHERS PROMO- very bad
Based on what Callis and Moxley said, the most logical explanation is that they built the bomb without double-checking it, with their logic being that if it worked, Moxley and Kingston would be dead or maimed, but if it didn’t work, Moxley and Kingston would “look like idiots.”
1) How did they know Kingston was going to come out? (Callis seemed to imply that they did, while Omega said that they didn’t).
2) Moxley and Kingston don’t look like idiots here at all. It’s either the heels (for being incompetent bomb-builders) and the promotion (for letting people with no experience build their bomb) that look bad. And if Kingston didn’t come out, how would the “sparklers” as Kenny put them, have embarrassed Moxley?
Eddie Kingston eventually came out to interrupt, but instead of talking or attacking, he just backed himself into a corner and let them keep talking. Callis cut a promo calling Kingston a perpetual screw-up. He offered Kingston ten seconds to get out of the ring before he got beaten up… and somehow, someone in the production truck knew that Callis wanted the count-down up on the screen. When the timer went off, instead of everyone attacking Kingston, Callis and Omega mocked Kingston and Moxley by having Omega lie down and ask Callis to “sixty-nine me, Don! Save me!”
With two of his opponents out not in a position to fight, you’d think Kingston would have taken this opportunity to take the initiative, but no.
Omega kept talking. He used the term “break character” for no reason. He offered Kingston a free shot on him and got knocked out like a total clown. The Good Brothers attacked, and only now did Moxley come out to give his friend a better chance in a fight that everyone knew was going to happen.
Moxley and Kingston brawled away with the Good Brothers, at which point Christian Cage finally came out, not looking like he had been knocked out or anything. He and Omega got in each other’s faces, then Kenny offered him a handshake. Christian didn’t take it. Kenny tried for a cheap-shot but Christian saw it coming and set up for the Unprettier but Don Callis pulled Christian to safety. Christian picked up the AEW World Title belt… and someone started to chant “YOU DESERVE IT!”
Christian dropped the belt, and Callis and Omega left. Meanwhile, Schiavone is lamenting that he didn’t get to do his interview with Christian. Well why don’t you go do it now, dumbass? He’s in the ring with at least one working microphone! Get off your lazy ass and go do your job!
So yeah, I’ve laid out all of the many reasons why I thought this stunk, but I can’t stress how disappointed I was that they seemed to have come up with a way out of a good chunk of this explosion debacle but then didn’t take it. If they had just said “of course we didn’t plan on killing you. That’d be ridiculous. We just wanted to have some fun and hope you’d maybe humiliate yourself with your reaction to thinking you were going to die” and then said that they got that sort of victory anyway from Kingston’s actions, it would have been fine. Instead they had to keep being over the top clowns claim that everything went according to some ridiculous plan.
Take that, throw in all of the problems I laid out above (especially the terrible way Christian came off by letting himself get pushed around and how Omega looked like a clown) and you’ve got yourself a terrible segment.
That said, in a vacuum, I like the idea of a short Christian vs. Omega program. I think the match has the potential to be great and it’s a fresh match-up in a company that really needs one, and if you can find some way to get Christian a title shot without beating anyone he really shouldn’t be beating (my idea would be to have Callis and Omega treat him like a tomato can and offer him a title shot because they’re sure Omega will win easy, which will create some room for Christian to gain something even with a clean loss), then I say go for it. An initial loss for Christian will also set up a story for him where he feels that he needs to prove himself, but that does result in him needing to beat someone at least semi-big at some point to validate him.

HIKARU SHIDA, RYO MIZUNAMI, & THUNDER ROSA vs. NYLA ROSE, MAKI ITOH, & DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD (w/Vickie Guerrero & Rebel)- DUD!
The announcers once again made it clear that Rebel is faking it. The note, supposedly from the Jaguars’ team doctor, was, according to Excalibur “written on Britt’s letterhead.” And AEW Management fell for this. WHAT A BUNCH OF F*CKING MORONS! And these people- Adam Page, Cody, Brandi, the Young Bucks, Tony Khan… they’re all supposed to be babyfaces, and the they fell for something that even f*cking TONY SCHIAVONE- the most gullible person in the world- saw through as fake.
Maki Itoh is yet another goof, who was still standing there on the stage singing her song while her teammates were being attacked. The camera kept cutting between her standing there doing nothing important and some unfortunately-timed shots exposing that the stuff Vickie and Shida were doing on the outside was a cooperative effort. The announcers laughed at this.
Shida ran up onto the stage to attack Itoh but Itoh avoided her strike… and then hit Shida in the head with a microphone in the gentlest way possible, and Shida still went down for it. A few more mic shots followed that were not much better. This has been a total embarrassment so far.
The match finally officially started, and Itoh right away went for a falling headbutt in a way even goofier than Honma’s, and just like Honma usually does, she missed and looked like a total idiot. Shida got a bit of offense in and then tagged out to Mizunami, who was also a goof. I was SOOOO happy when Nyla Rose and Thunder Rosa got tagged in so we could have people who weren’t going to embarrass the wrestling business in the ring.
This… was REALLY bad. Thunder Rosa and Nyla were the only two who looked at like professionals in there. Itoh went for a Tornado DDT where she clearly needed Thunder Rosa’s help to get up for it. I will admit to taking some cathartic pleasure in how vicious the finish looked, but I hope that Itoh wasn’t injured, because it looked like Thunder Rosa absolutely killed her.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Britt beat Thunder Rosa up with the crutch, then locked in the Lockjaw. Rebel rubbed the crutch on Thunder Rosa’s head, too. This feud feels like it’s going around in circles and should have had a blow-off by now.

MATT HARDY & PRIVATE PARTY PROMO ABOUT MATT’S LOSS AT REVOLUTION- bad
Matt says he isn’t really hurt by the loss, so that makes the match feel a lot less important. He reveals that he has hired The Butcher & The Blade (and The Bunny). Apparently they don’t pay attention to anything going on in AEW because they were dumb enough to sign one of Matt’s exploitive contracts.
In fact, why did they sign with him at all? They have a manager. It’s The Bunny! If it’s because Matt is paying them more than AEW is, then how is Matt making money on this deal, even if he is taking a big cut of their money?
Also, I love how they’ve just signed up with someone else now that Kingston has turned babyface, with no mention of it at all. Didn’t they join up with Kingston because they’re all friends? Why would Kingston deciding to save a different friend cause them to leave him?
Matt cuts a promo building up their matches on Dark and Dark: Elevation.



AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Darby Allin(c) vs. Scorpio Sky- 7/10
This built very well. The story of the match was that Scorpio sky dominated it, including having great counters for Darby’s big moves, but he got caught with a roll-up and lost.

POST-MATCH SEMGNET- great
Darby offered Scorpio Sky a handshake after the match but was turned down. When Darby turned back, Scorpio took out his knee and locked on a heel hook and it took a bunch of referees to pull him off. Sky looked at his hands in shock in the classic “what have I done?” spot, but then instead of staying horrified at himself, he decided he had liked what he did and started to smile.

A bunch of matches were signed for next week, including Cody vs. Penta, Good Brothers vs. Kingston & Moxley, and a main event of an “Unsanctioned Lights Out match” pitting Britt Baker against Thunder Rosa. There was no talk whatsoever of this being unsanctioned because the violence was too out of control or anything like that, so there goes Cero’s theory about the reason why Lights Out matches are unsanctioned and therefore don’t count in the record books.

Tony Schiavone called our attention to the fact that Scorpio Sky walked to the back through the heel entrance tunnel. He didn’t say “heel,” of course, but we know what he meant. That’s the sort of thing that works as symbolism but actually falls apart if you point it out because officially there is no babyface entrance tunnel and heel entrance tunnel, and even if there was an idea like that, Sky would have no reason to think he’d be accepted by the heels just because he did something to one babyface.

THE INNER CIRCLE’S WAR COUNCIL- Excellent segment
Sammy Guevara came back with footage exposing that MJF was going to take over the Inner Circle tonight. The others bore down on Sammy and Jericho, but then turned to stand with them because they were all in on it and MJF’s trap for Jericho was actually Jericho’s trap for MJF… except that MJF had a contingency plan in place in already! His own Inner Circle, consisting of Wardlow (whose conspicuous absence from the meeting is now explained), FTR, Shawn Spears, and Tully Blanchard (I assume that had Hager and LAX sided with MJF, he simply would have introduced Tully’s guys as new recruits next week).
The only quibble I have with this (other than the pointless use of the magical lights going off to set up a more dramatic reveal bullsh*t, of course) was that Jericho and pals still don’t come off as babyfaces here. They- and even Sammy, who had started to exhibit some likable traits- are all still the same jerks they’ve been. They just happen to have been outmaneuvered by another unlikable jerk.
Jericho’s Inner Circle got obliterated, ending with several baseball bat shots to Jericho and then Wardlow powerbombing Jericho off the stage through a table.


This was an up-and-down episode of Dynamite. Essentially, the first half hour and the last half hour were great, but the middle sucked.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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XIV
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Re: BRM Reviews the 3/10/2021 Dynamite (half great, half terrible)

Post by XIV » Mar 11th, '21, 23:53

This was one of their more enjoyable recent shows really, the matches were okay/good, the Omega and Callis section was dumb, they could have just somewhat left it as “we did sparklers to humiliate Moxley” but they went too deep.

It was good to see that Scorpio Sky’s recent arrogance slowly turning into something.

I thought Kingston did a great job of using a PTSD situation you can believe to explain what happened to him, which we all knew he was capable of.

But I will admit I hugely popped for MJF’s near tears and “I didn’t want to take over the inner circle” suddenly turn into angry smug faced “because I have a group of my own”. MJF was fantastic there. For me, MJF, Wardlow and FTR fit as a group with Tully hanging about, you’d have five of the best promos in the business and Wardlow being the muscle, it’s perfect faction building, for me Shawn Spears is the extra piece they don’t need, he doesn’t feel like he fits BUT he evens up the numbers in this case, so he’ll serve a purpose here.

Overall an entertaining show, with enough good points to call it a good show.
Have A Nice Day!

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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 3/10/2021 Dynamite (half great, half terrible)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 12th, '21, 00:03

XIV wrote: Mar 11th, '21, 23:53 Shawn Spears is the extra piece they don’t need, he doesn’t feel like he fits BUT he evens up the numbers in this case, so he’ll serve a purpose here.
He can also do the jobs.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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XIV
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Joined: Aug 19th, '13, 11:38

Re: BRM Reviews the 3/10/2021 Dynamite (half great, half terrible)

Post by XIV » Mar 12th, '21, 00:33

Big Red Machine wrote: Mar 12th, '21, 00:03
XIV wrote: Mar 11th, '21, 23:53 Shawn Spears is the extra piece they don’t need, he doesn’t feel like he fits BUT he evens up the numbers in this case, so he’ll serve a purpose here.
He can also do the jobs.
So he’s the X-PAC of the faction. Taking the whoopin’s and the pins.

Seems logical.
Have A Nice Day!

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