BRM Reviews the 4/14/2021 Dynamite (BUCKS VS. DEATH TRIANGLE!.. and then sharply downhill from there until the end)

All AEW Related Reviews and Discussions
Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews the 4/14/2021 Dynamite (BUCKS VS. DEATH TRIANGLE!.. and then sharply downhill from there until the end)

Post by Big Red Machine » Apr 16th, '21, 17:06

THE YOUNG BUCKS EXPLAIN THEIR TURN- This was good… if you ignore the logical issues inherent in the execution of the turn itself (i.e. why they were fine to give Kenny a piledriver but then agonized over the idea of hitting him with a superkick).

MJF INTERRUPTS MIKE TYSON’S PROMO- bad
MJF shows up to try to get Tyson to side with him against Jericho… and he decides that the best way to do that is to start by insulting and antagonizing him. What an idiot. In fact, he’s lucky Tyson didn’t see him and think “Oh, it’s one of Jericho’s enemies, he must be coming to attack me” and starting beating the sh*t out of MJF.
Anyway, MJF offered Tyson a lot of money to turn on Jericho and reminded him that he and Jericho used to be enemies. Tyson ripped the check up and ate it. This felt like an excuse to get Tyson on TV right away, and the way they did that made MJF look stupid. Either that or it’s also going to function as the set-up for Tyson turning on Jericho, which would also be stupid because they would then be advertising “one of the biggest matches in the history of Dynamite on this all-important week where they are probably getting a bunch of new viewers because NXT is no longer running opposite them… and giving it a f*ck finish.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Young Bucks(c) (w/Don Callis) vs. Death Triangle (Rey Fenix & Pac)- 9/10
This is the Young Bucks I want to see! It’s not that they’re heels that I’m liking. It’s just the fact that they aren’t wrestling in a way that feels like they’re a parody of themselves, which they have since about 2015, when the D-X stuff started to catch on and when they went overboard with the superkicks flips. This is a big week because there are going to be new eyeballs on the show, and this was a great way to show those people that the Young Bucks (and, by extension, all of AEW) are not necessarily what their critics say they are.
The Bucks toned down their offense and went for a more heel style. It seems to be working for now, but the last time they tried this, it didn’t take long for idiot fans to get in the way and start popping for all of their back-rakes and stuff. There was a point where I think Matt Jackson went too far with it. When he was kneeling down and pretending to cry, it felt like this was supposed to be some sort of specific reference to something and I had no idea what.
This was an awesome opener with classic tag team psychology with a babyface in peril… except that Death Triangle are heels and Pac especially has done so much to remove any redeeming qualities from himself with this “bastard” character that I found it very hard to want to see him fight through the pain and make the hot tag. This was heel vs. heel with one team playing the structural role of the babyface rather than an actual babyface vs heel match.
I didn’t like the “rip the mask off the babyface so he has to cover his face” finish for two reasons. Firs was the execution with the superkicks. It looked pretty silly that Fenix took a double-superkick to his hands covering his face hard enough to knock him down, but not hard enough to make him move his hands, even as he was falling down. The other reason I didn’t like it is that the Bucks were such assholes throughout this match that them not taking advantage of Fenix’s vulnerable state to reveal his face felt forced. This was still an absolutely awesome match, but I think that with a little more thought into both the big picture booking and the small details, it could have worked better.

ALEX MARVES INTERVIEWS ADAM PAGE & THE DARK ORDER- terrible
I believe this is the first time that anyone has tried to ask Page about Kenny Omega’s heel turn, which happened OVER FOUR MONTHS AGO. Page did not answer Marvez’s question abouts about either Omega or the Bucks’ heel turns. Instead he turned it into Dork Order goofball comedy bullsh*t. If you asked me to book a segment that illustrates one of AEW’s biggest problems, I couldn’t possibly have come up with anything better than this. Remember how I said that the opener was important because it showed the presumed new viewers AEW is expected to get tonight that the criticisms of AEW that they have probably heard might be unfounded? Well this probably undid all of that.

ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWS THE INNER CIRCLE & MIKE TYSON- meh
Jericho explains that when the Pinnacle beating them caused them to examine their past deeds, he decided to call Mike Tyson to make amends, and Tyson was willing to not only accept his apology, but even offered to come down to Florida to be back-up for Jericho if he needed. This feels more than a little forced to me… but then again, so does the extent of this supposed Jericho/Tyson rivalry. Two incidents in eleven years really isn’t a rivalry for professional combat athletes.
Jericho asks Tyson not to give him special favors, and Tyson says he won’t. He says that Jericho could get knocked out again if he screws up.

RED VELVET vs. JADE CARGILL- 5.75/10
Red Velvet jumped the bell on Jade. I don’t remember Jade doing much of anything that would warrant Red Velvet cheating like this.
This started out good, but then they did an idiotic spot where Jade carried Red Velvet over a group of wrestlers in the crowd to give her a fall-away slam onto them. Why would she slam her onto other people who will break her fall (that’s part of why dives work as offensive moves) rather than just slam her onto the arena floor?
This was very good for both women’s level of experience. Jade won cleanly, again.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD- fine
Why does AEW have Tony leave the booth to do a live interview instead of having Marvez of Dasha do it? Because he and Britt are “friends?” So what?
Britt explains why she should move up in the rankings (because the woman in front of her- Red Velvet- just lost). This functioned as a fine plug for Britt’s match on Dark: Elevation.

A JOBBER vs. ANTHONY OGOGO (w/Q.T. Marshall & the Factory)- good squash
Before this match, they showed us clips from a house show where Cody beat Aaron Solow, but then got jumped by Ogogo. Now why can’t they do this when storyline-relevant things happen on Dark?
That being said, I do have to ask: Did we get any reason for why Cody wrestled a Street Fight against Aaron Solow rather than Q.T.? It seems like the sort of thing that should have easily been explained with a promo from Q.T. wanting Cody to run through his students first or whatever.
Ogogo won in a matter of moments via referee stoppage after a particularly vicious punch (which I guess was supposed to be a liver shot).

MIRO VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- great!
He’s done with Kip Sabian if Kip isn’t as tough as he is (which Miro suggests Kip isn’t, as Kip hasn’t been seen since losing Arcade Anarchy). He’s going to chase titles now, so all champions should be on notice.

SINGLES MATCH WITH EVERYONE BUT CASH WHEELER AND SAMMY GUEVARA BARRED FROM RINGSIDE AND MIKE TYSON AS THE SPECIAL GUEST ENFORCER: Dax Harwood (w/Cash Wheeler) vs. Chris Jericho (w/Sammy Guevara)- 4/10
We wasted time before the match with Tully Blanchard thinking he would be allowed at ringside, despite the stipulation. Given that, it would have been a lot better if Aubrey had waited until Tully was actually heading to the back to order the bell rung.
They did a spot early to establish Tyson’s impartiality. They also did several spots early on to establish that Aubrey Edwards doesn’t understand the count-out rules. Disqualifications, too, as Dax’s second shot with the microphone really should have been visible to her, and being distracted by someone else is not a good excuse because Tyson is supposed to be the one handling that, not Aubrey. Tony Schiavone responded to this act of blatant cheating by simply describing it as “smart.” Tony about being outraged, Tony? Aren’t you supposed to be a babyface?
Jericho then stabbed Dax in the forehead with a pen right in front of Aubrey. Neither of those spots needed to happen, and all they did was make a mockery of the referee in the rules in a match where they have added someone to the match specifically to help enforce the rules. After watching Aubrey not enforce the rules a bunch of times, Ross and Schiavone put her over big the one time he actually caught someone trying to interfere, with Ross calling her “the best” referee.
Speaking of people who suck at their jobs, there was a spot where Jericho got the Walls of Jericho locked in… and Mike Tyson just calmly watch Cash climb up onto the apron, follow Jericho as Jericho pulled Dax around in the ring (including f*cking rounding a corner) and punched Jericho in the head. Only after Cash had punched Jericho in the head did Tyson begin moving in his direction, and he wasn’t even running, either. So slow was Tyson that Sammy Guevara was able to run half way across the ring and get to Cash before Tyson did.
Jericho hits a Codebreaker, but out comes the Pinnacle, with the Inner Circle right behind them. Aubrey distracts herself telling them to go to the back because Tyson has disappeared. What she really should have done was just disqualify Dax because his friends who were barred from ringside showed up even though they knew they weren’t supposed to.
Cash pops up on the apron with a baseball bat, only to be scared off by Tyson. Why the f*ck was the ringside enforcer all the way back by the hard-cam side when there is a big brawl of people who aren’t supposed to be at ringside taking place on the other side of the ring?
Tyson knocks out Cash, and Sammy distracts Dax so Jericho can recover. Aubrey decides to stop caring about the big brawl at ringside and call the match again. Jericho hits the Codebreaker and wins. This was SOOOOOO F*CKING STUPID! They booked a match with stipulations that they then proceeded to either completely undermine the logical basis for or just ignore outright. What is the purpose of having a special enforcer at ringside to help make sure that the referee has the chance to enforce the rules if referee herself isn’t going to enforce the rules when she is does see someone breaking them? At that stupid brawl at ringside served no purpose whatsoever. You could have easily had Sammy accidentally cause the distraction that led to Cash getting the bat (or had Aubrey get bumped and have Cash take Sammy out) and set Tyson’s involvement up that way. All this brawl did was violate one of the special stipulations of the match (people being barred from ringside) without having the rule be enforced.
Jericho declared Tyson to now be an “ancillary member of the Inner Circle.” Does anyone care?

BULLET CLUB PROMO- good until the end
Marvez’s completely lame framing of this “it’s clear you have once again changed the wrestling world” was absolutely terrible. It made this feel so clichéd and lame. He shouldn’t be doing this job. Matt and Callis were great. Kenny was meh. The big line here was Callis telling us to “prepare to be surprised again.”
On the whole, this was very good… until they decided to do the following: The Bucks faked superkicking the cameraman. Then Callis actually did superkick the cameraman… who managed to not drop his heavy camera, instead falling down in a perfect act while holding it and landing flat on his back with the camera pointed up before readjusting it. Between this and the Fenix spot earlier, I have to wonder whether these people have ever seen someone get kicked in the face for real. People don’t fall in perfect arcs. This just made everything look fake… and once again, it added ZERO value. What did Don Callis superkicking a cameraman tell us? That he’s a jerk? We already knew that. That he and the Bucks are on the same page? We already knew that, too.

THUNDER ROSA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- bad
She starts of by telling us that she is “taking over the AEW women’s division.” This a woman who hasn’t been on Dynamite in weeks. Since we last saw her on Dynamite, she has beaten two undercard jamokes in matches so important we weren’t even shown clips of them. And she thinks she is “taking over the women’s division?” Is she delusional?
She’s in the top five now, too, despite her only recent victory of any consequence being the one that we were told didn’t count for the records and rankings. She wants the winner of Shida vs. Conti, and is also coming for the NWA World Women’s Title.

AMBER NOVA vs. KRIS STATLANDER (w/Best Fiends & Orange Cassidy)- no rating, dull squash
Statlander did her stupid nose-booping crap. This was a slow-moving and boring squash.

DASHA GONZALEZ INTERVIEWS TEAM TAZ- decent
Ricky Starks wants to know why they’re waiting so long for Christian to answer them. He came off like a hyper goof. Taz diplomatically told him to stay in the back. Brian Cage piped up and said that he agreed with Taz, so Taz says he thinks Brian Cage should stay backstage as well. One assumes that they’re going to fight (or at least pretend to have fought, if you buy the theory that this is all a ruse for some reason or another).

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS CHRISTIAN CAGE- mixed
They kept hyping this up as “who will step up to Christian’s challenge,” so why is this a Christian promo segment. Shouldn’t this be Christian vs. some sort of mystery opponent? It feels like the announcers and the graphics people are on totally different pages.
Christian says that Tony Khan has given him an open contract for tonight. Well then why the f*ck is Tony here? Why is an interview segment and not a match?
Team Taz interrupts, and other than them interrupting someone (and even then, at least they were looking for an answer they’ve been waiting a whole week for), Christian came off like a heel here. We’ve been told in every singles promotion that has invoked the memory of ECW that referring to it as a “bingo hall” is a dismissive, douchy, and heelish thing to do, and yet Christian did exactly that. WHY?!
Taz cuts a promo on Christian saying that Edge carried him. Powerhouse Hobbs got into the ring and fought with Christian. Christian almost got the Unprettier but Hook caused a distraction, allowing Hobbs to lay Christian out. Without Christian’s needless douchiness, this would have been a good little angle for a match between these two if it hadn’t cone on for longer than it felt like it needed to.

TAY CONTI VS. HIKARU SHIDA VIDEO PACKAGE- very good

FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE MATCH FOR THE AEW TNT TITLE: Darby Allin(c) vs. Matt Hardy- 8/10
They opened up with weapons right away in a way that managed to make Matt look cowardly and unworthy even though he wasn’t breaking any rules. I thought that was GREAT! There was a lot of interfering and teasing of interference. I was fine with the Dark Order, Sting and Hardy’s group, but didn’t like the stuff with Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky threatening Sting and Lance Archer helping Sting fight not just them but also the Dark Order. I’m normally in favor of killing to birds with one stone in a segment (in this case taking advantage of the fact that Sting will be involved in Darby’s match to also further the Sting/Archer/Page & Sky story), but in this case I thought it pulled the focus away from the title match for too long. I would have been fine with it if not for the other interferences, but between advancing Sting’s other story and having Matt’s friends and the people feuding with them interfere, I’d rather see the people more directly related to the principals in the match interfere.
That minor complaint aside, I thought this was excellent. Darby Allin and Matt Hardy have the kind of minds that I assumed would mesh very well together, and it was nice to see the practice live up to the theory in AEW for once. Matt proved that he can still go at a high level given the right circumstances, and Darby once again retains his title while looking like the toughest, craziest mother*cker in the world.

Where was Cody this week? We know he’s not in the hospital or anything because we were told that he wrestled at the house show, so where was he? It’s well past time that we hear from him about this supposedly devastating betrayal.


This show was a crap sandwich. One awesome match at the beginning, one awesome match at the end, and a whole bunch of bad stuff in between.
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

User avatar
Thelone
Posts: 430
Joined: Jul 9th, '19, 16:22

Re: BRM Reviews the 4/14/2021 Dynamite (BUCKS VS. DEATH TRIANGLE!.. and then sharply downhill from there until the end)

Post by Thelone » Apr 20th, '21, 08:44

Big Red Machine wrote: Apr 16th, '21, 17:06AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Young Bucks(c) (w/Don Callis) vs. Death Triangle (Rey Fenix & Pac)- 9/10
I'll just say this : this match went 30 MINUTES despite :
  • The outcome being as obvious as it gets
  • This match being heels vs. heels
  • You could have gotten the point across in half the time
ALEX MARVES INTERVIEWS ADAM PAGE & THE DARK ORDER- terrible
They are trying to kill Page with this, right? I'm all for giving storylines time to breathe and all, but the break-up took forever to finally happen, then Page has done nothing of note since then besides hanging out with those losers. They better have something solid in the coming months, but I'm not holding my hopes up.
This feels more than a little forced to me… but then again, so does the extent of this supposed Jericho/Tyson rivalry. Two incidents in eleven years really isn’t a rivalry for professional combat athletes.
This is the same promotion who told you in the early days that Chris Daniels and CIMA were these great rivals despite only crossing paths a couple of times over TWENTY YEARS.
Britt explains why she should move up in the rankings (because the woman in front of her- Red Velvet- just lost). This functioned as a fine plug for Britt’s match on Dark: Elevation.
Funny how they can use those rankings for storyline purposes, and not just bring up warm badies once in a while (hi #5 seed Will Hobbs). Also, are they trying to turn Baker face with this?
Before this match, they showed us clips from a house show where Cody beat Aaron Solow, but then got jumped by Ogogo. Now why can’t they do this when storyline-relevant things happen on Dark?
That being said, I do have to ask: Did we get any reason for why Cody wrestled a Street Fight against Aaron Solow rather than Q.T.? It seems like the sort of thing that should have easily been explained with a promo from Q.T. wanting Cody to run through his students first or whatever.
But that demands like, effort and stuff.
MIRO VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- great!
If only they did that six months ago when he debuted. I'm sure AEW fans will say that he was protected and looked like a beast every time he was in the ring or whatever, but he also spent more than six months with an undercard wrestler and her valet feuding with a trio of clowns over a broken arcade cabinet. But hey, he put the whole locker room on notice™, so now we should take him seriously I suppose.
SINGLES MATCH WITH EVERYONE BUT CASH WHEELER AND SAMMY GUEVARA BARRED FROM RINGSIDE AND MIKE TYSON AS THE SPECIAL GUEST ENFORCER: Dax Harwood (w/Cash Wheeler) vs. Chris Jericho (w/Sammy Guevara)- 4/10
They're overthinking the simplest things to such a ludicrous degree.
BULLET CLUB PROMO- good until the end
But it was "cool" and """funny""". Who cares if it looked like a Roadrunner cartoon?
THUNDER ROSA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- bad
Well you see, she put the whole locker room on notice™ as well. Also when was the last time Deeb even appeared on TV?
AMBER NOVA vs. KRIS STATLANDER (w/Best Fiends & Orange Cassidy)- no rating, dull squash
Statlander did her stupid nose-booping crap. This was a slow-moving and boring squash.
Of course she did, and that won't be annoying and one-note at all like Biesse Friends' hugging spot and Fandango #2's entire existence.
TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS CHRISTIAN CAGE- mixed
I don't know how anyone can see this whole "Outwork everyone" stuff and not think this is a heel gimmick.
FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE MATCH FOR THE AEW TNT TITLE: Darby Allin(c) vs. Matt Hardy- 8/10
Again, overthinking things and I feel like I should have red string and a white board to understand who's feuding with who and why.
Where was Cody this week? We know he’s not in the hospital or anything because we were told that he wrestled at the house show, so where was he? It’s well past time that we hear from him about this supposedly devastating betrayal.
But that dema... ok no. He'll probably just move on to something else entirely after a coal miner's glove match against QT or something. Doesn't matter if he wins or loses, just like he didn't care when MJF cheated to win the previous terrible betrayal and Cody moved on to bigger things while MJF floundered in nothingness for months.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests