BRM Reviews the 9/30/2021 Dynamite (great)

[Big Red Machine]

CM Punk was back on commentary for this show.

JUNGLE BOY vs. ADAM COLE- 7.75/10
Both guys worked the head and neck. Cole won with a low blow setting up the running knee. I hope that the dirty finish here is meant to lead to something specific rather than just being done to protect Jungle Boy.

THE ELITE SEGMENT- mostly good
They were all clowns, other than Cole and Kenny. Kenny said that Bryan Danielson has no record (not true. Technically he’s 0-0-1) so Kenny will never give him a rematch. Dragon came out and said that Kenny had no balls. The crowd chanted “KENNY NO-BALLS!” at Omega. That part was good. Bryan says he’ll fight now. Kenny thinks it will be just him, but Bryan calls out his reinforcements (Jurassic Express, Christian Cage, and Frankie Kazarian). The heels ran away. Bryan and Kenny were great in their roles, but the babyfaces not chasing after the heels felt a little odd, and everything before Kenny started talking was terrible, other than the few moments that Cole was speaking for.

ANDRADE MAKES A CHALLENGE TO THE LUCHA BROS- bad
He wants to the AAA tag titles. That wasn’t a typo. Instead of Andrade saying he wants the AEW tag titles, we’re suddenly acknowledging that they have been the AAA tag champs and haven’t defended the belts for “a long time,” and Andrade wants those, instead. The Lucha Bros are happy to accept the challenge, so either way, though, the result of this is going to be a title shot for a team that hasn’t done a damn thing to earn one.

MATT SYDAL & DANTE MARTIN vs. THE NIGHTMARE FAMILY (Lee Johnson & Cody Rhodes) (w/Arn Anderson & Brandi Rhodes)- 6.75/10
There were some “CODY SUCKS!” chants early on. The match was very good, and pretty perfect for what it needed to be, given its spot on the card. Cody was in trouble, so Johnson tagged himself in, made the comeback, and picked up the win. The announcers kept calling attention to the fact that Johnson “tagged himself in.”

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS THE NIGHTMARE FAMILY- mostly good
As soon as they realized that Cody was going to talk, the crowd began to boo. Cody called out Malakai Black, but Arn stopped him to criticize him for checking on him instead of following up against Malakai. Arn found this mistake so egregious that he said that Cody was a loser and told Johnson to follow him to the back. Johnson did. That Cody sure inspires loyalty, doesn’t he? Other than Arn’s over the top ending, (yeah, I know, it’s weird that I call walking out on Cody for one mistake “over the top,” but not talking about pulling out a gun and killing a hypothetical carjacker), this was pretty good.

ANTHONY GREENE & BEAR COUNTRY vs. EDDIE KINGSTON, JON MOXLEY, & DARBY ALLIN (w/Sting)- DUD!
Three top babyfaces won a pointless squash, making their opponents look like total goofs. Then, after the match, they assaulted one of their downed opponents for absolutely no reason. Before doing this, Eddied Kingston go a “Brodie Lee” sign from a fan in the crowd, as if assaulting an innocent person were an appropriate way to pay tribute to a fallen friend.

BRITT BAKER/RUBY SOHO VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMOS- AWESOME!

MATT HARDY PROMO- heel heat

HARDY FAMILY OFFICE vs. THE DARK ORDER & ORANGE CASSIDY- 2/10
This was a SIXTEEN-man tag team match. The Dark Order argued early on. Alan Angels took off his Five mask and threw it at Uno. Wasn’t Brodie Lee the one assigning these dumb aliases? How does the symbolism of rejecting the number relate to Uno?
Hardy’s group has a new member I haven’t seen before. Way to introduce him to the TV audience, AEW.
Alex Reynolds and Uno argued about something on the outside, so Uno, Cabana, and Grayson walked out on their team, but the Dark Order women and Brodie Lee’s wife and kid came out to yell at them, and “that was the pep-talk they needed” so they went back and helped their team. How has everything AEW has done to turn these guys babyface not exploiting a death?
The Dark Order geeks all hit their finishers and did dives and they pinned the guy I hadn’t even seen before. If you give a sh*t about the Dork Order and the utterly stupid reasons they are arguing, and have the cognitive dissonance to be able to accept that this character of Brodie Lee who we saw be nothing other than a manipulative abuser has been transformed into a saint by the fact that he died, then maybe you’ll like this, but I’m not that way. If you want to pay tribute to the man, talk about Jon Huber, not Brodie Lee.

LIO RUSH IS A RICH BUSINESSMAN NOW- good for him!

FTR PROMO- fine

DAN LAMBERT & MEN OF THE YEAR PROMO- awesome
Lambert was awesome. He claimed that Jericho’s career was over. Scorpio Sky is angry at AEW for not pushing him and/or angry at the fans for not supporting him. Page is upset because the fans seem to think that Jericho is tougher than him or Sky. He says he has never been pinned or submitted in AEW. I checked back on it, and he’s completely correct. His only losses have been in a Ladder match, a Battle Royale, and a Coffin match (and of those three, the Coffin match is the only one that wasn’t a big multi-man match). How has a man with a record like that not gotten a title shot yet? If f*cking Fuego del Sol can get one, then surely a man who has won ten times as many matches can get one, right?
Tell me again how wins and losses and records are going to matter in AEW, Tony. I need my hiccups cured.

HIKARU SHIDA VS. SERENA DEEB VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- fine
Shida looking for her 50th win doesn’t feel like a big deal if we don’t see her approaching it on TV, and certainly not when your making makes the numbers feel completely unimportant.

THE DARK ORDER (Anna Jay & Tay Conti) vs. PENELOPE FORD & THE BUNNY- 5/10
Punk noted that Anna Jay and Tay Conti are “not wearing the Dark Order colors.” HOW DARE THEY! And on this of all nights! They must hate St. Brodie. BURN THE WITCHES AT THE STAKE, I SAY!
The babyfaces won clean. The Dark Order have now won both the male and female match-ups, so hopefully this feud has ended.

JADE CARGILL VS. NYLA ROSE VS. THUNDER ROSA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMOS- great
Thunder Rosa was easily the best, but Jade certainly held her own. Nyla… not so much.

MJF PROMO & SEGMENT WITH DARBY ALLIN- excellent
MJF’s promo was awesome… until he threatened to go to WWE. What an idiot.
Darby Allin came out. MJF called him a “school-shooter mime on a skateboard,” which had me rolling. They exchanged barbs. MJF continues to find tremendous new lows to sink to. He’s absolutely brilliant.
MJF tried to goad Darby into hitting him but Darby remained Zen and said that MJF would not mentally break him. MJF seemed to take that as a challenge and left. I assume next week he’ll be back with a plan to do something truly dastardly to Darby.

MIRO VS. SAMMY GUEVARA VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMOS- great

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Miro(c) vs. Sammy Guevara- 8/10
This was an awesome main event, but I hated the finish. Miro lost the belt because instead of following up, he was an idiot and started ripping all of the turnbuckle pads off, which led to him getting kicked into one, then hit with the 630 for the loss. Maybe you can come back with Miro having even more killer instinct, but if you go that route he needs to win the belt back, and putting the belt right back on him would damage Sammy.


There was some stuff I didn’t like at all, but on the whole I thought this was a great episode of Dynamite.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. CM Punk said that it’s legal to “manipulate his (the opponent’s) hair.”
It’s most certainly not legal to pull the opponent’s hair.
Punk also didn’t know about the “Miro’s neck is his weakness” storyline. Oops.

[cero2k]

ANDRADE MAKES A CHALLENGE TO THE LUCHA BROS- bad
He wants to the AAA tag titles. That wasn’t a typo. Instead of Andrade saying he wants the AEW tag titles, we’re suddenly acknowledging that they have been the AAA tag champs and haven’t defended the belts for “a long time,” and Andrade wants those, instead. The Lucha Bros are happy to accept the challenge, so either way, though, the result of this is going to be a title shot for a team that hasn’t done a damn thing to earn one.

a month and a half is not 'a long time'. I can also totally understand the Mexican wanting the Mexican titles.

[Thelone]

BRODIESPLOITATION'S RUNNING WILD BROTHER!!!

Anyway...

Tell me again how wins and losses and records are going to matter in AEW, Tony. I need my hiccups cured.

I'll say it again, but they need to rethink those rankings/records or just dump them altogether. Wins against outside jobbers on Elevation/Dark should be worth less than wins against contracted talent. It's the same with the hard reset at the end of the year. The worst offender is actually the women's division because they have 23 women listed on the roster page and only THREE have a losing record :

• Leva Bates and Rebel at 0-2, both being joke characters
• Hayter at 1-2, who was supposed to be this big deal when she came back a few weeks ago

You have Soho at 1-1, then the "worst" record is Allie with 8-4. I'm pretty sure that besides Brandi who hasn't wrestled this year apparently, the seventeen others have .750 or higher. Frankly, they should have all those women ask for a title shot before the end of the year since they'll all be back at 0-0 on January 1st.

MJF PROMO & SEGMENT WITH DARBY ALLIN- excellent
MJF’s promo was awesome… until he threatened to go to WWE. What an idiot.
Darby Allin came out. MJF called him a “school-shooter mime on a skateboard,” which had me rolling. They exchanged barbs. MJF continues to find tremendous new lows to sink to. He’s absolutely brilliant.
MJF tried to goad Darby into hitting him but Darby remained Zen and said that MJF would not mentally break him. MJF seemed to take that as a challenge and left. I assume next week he’ll be back with a plan to do something truly dastardly to Darby.

I kinda feel like MJF has plateaued currently and been a bit lazy with his work. It's the second feud in a row where he's immediately going for the dead/awful family member out of nowhere to KICK-START the feud. Like where can you go from there? Go dig up Allin's uncle's corpse and sodomize it on live TV? The dumb worked shoot comments about Khan/Pritchard and lame "[city] SUCKS" cheap heat aren't helping.

[Big Red Machine]

ANDRADE MAKES A CHALLENGE TO THE LUCHA BROS- bad
He wants to the AAA tag titles. That wasn’t a typo. Instead of Andrade saying he wants the AEW tag titles, we’re suddenly acknowledging that they have been the AAA tag champs and haven’t defended the belts for “a long time,” and Andrade wants those, instead. The Lucha Bros are happy to accept the challenge, so either way, though, the result of this is going to be a title shot for a team that hasn’t done a damn thing to earn one.

a month and a half is not 'a long time'. I can also totally understand the Mexican wanting the Mexican titles.

It was Andrade who said it was "a long time," not me.

I'm not saying he can't want the AAA belts, but why wouldn't Andrade want both belts? It's also awkward that these guys have apparently been the champs for a while and yet the belts are only being brought up now, when someone wants them. And if Andrade wanted them, why hasn't he said anything about it over the past few weeks. He's been feuding with these guys for a while now.

[Big Red Machine]

BRODIESPLOITATION'S RUNNING WILD BROTHER!!!

Anyway...

Tell me again how wins and losses and records are going to matter in AEW, Tony. I need my hiccups cured.

I'll say it again, but they need to rethink those rankings/records or just dump them altogether. Wins against outside jobbers on Elevation/Dark should be worth less than wins against contracted talent. It's the same with the hard reset at the end of the year. The worst offender is actually the women's division because they have 23 women listed on the roster page and only THREE have a losing record :

• Leva Bates and Rebel at 0-2, both being joke characters
• Hayter at 1-2, who was supposed to be this big deal when she came back a few weeks ago

You have Soho at 1-1, then the "worst" record is Allie with 8-4. I'm pretty sure that besides Brandi who hasn't wrestled this year apparently, the seventeen others have .750 or higher. Frankly, they should have all those women ask for a title shot before the end of the year since they'll all be back at 0-0 on January 1st.

MJF PROMO & SEGMENT WITH DARBY ALLIN- excellent
MJF’s promo was awesome… until he threatened to go to WWE. What an idiot.
Darby Allin came out. MJF called him a “school-shooter mime on a skateboard,” which had me rolling. They exchanged barbs. MJF continues to find tremendous new lows to sink to. He’s absolutely brilliant.
MJF tried to goad Darby into hitting him but Darby remained Zen and said that MJF would not mentally break him. MJF seemed to take that as a challenge and left. I assume next week he’ll be back with a plan to do something truly dastardly to Darby.

I kinda feel like MJF has plateaued currently and been a bit lazy with his work. It's the second feud in a row where he's immediately going for the dead/awful family member out of nowhere to KICK-START the feud. Like where can you go from there? Go dig up Allin's uncle's corpse and sodomize it on live TV? The dumb worked shoot comments about Khan/Pritchard and lame "[city] SUCKS" cheap heat aren't helping.

Great point about the women.

I'm not going to argue that MJF isn't repetitive, but it hasn't gotten old for me yet.

[cero2k]

It was Andrade who said it was "a long time," not me.

I'm not saying he can't want the AAA belts, but why wouldn't Andrade want both belts? It's also awkward that these guys have apparently been the champs for a while and yet the belts are only being brought up now, when someone wants them. And if Andrade wanted them, why hasn't he said anything about it over the past few weeks. He's been feuding with these guys for a while now.

not that different from the Impact and AAA Megachampionship, how often does Omega talk about it, not to mention promote his big defenses? I don't fully mind this, the last thing I want are for multiple titles to be changing at the same time, Andrade can win those titles and with that win, challenge for others, kinda like Cage and Omega.

[Big Red Machine]

It was Andrade who said it was "a long time," not me.

I'm not saying he can't want the AAA belts, but why wouldn't Andrade want both belts? It's also awkward that these guys have apparently been the champs for a while and yet the belts are only being brought up now, when someone wants them. And if Andrade wanted them, why hasn't he said anything about it over the past few weeks. He's been feuding with these guys for a while now.

not that different from the Impact and AAA Megachampionship, how often does Omega talk about it, not to mention promote his big defenses? I don't fully mind this, the last thing I want are for multiple titles to be changing at the same time, Andrade can win those titles and with that win, challenge for others, kinda like Cage and Omega.

They didn't mention the AAA belt too often, but the Impact belt was mentioned a lot, and Omega always carried both of those belts with him in addition to the AEW belt, so it didn't feel out of place when someone talked about challenging for one of them. Here, they never acknowledged that these guys were the champs and they never had the belts with them... until the one week the booker decided he wanted to do a segment where it would be relevant. It makes it feel forced and fake.

[Thelone]

I'm not going to argue that MJF isn't repetitive, but it hasn't gotten old for me yet.

It's not the repetitive nature of the content that's bothering me, but how generic it has become lately. I don't remember MJF using overly basic "your local sports team/city sucks" cheap heat in MLW for example. It's never been highbrow quips, but also never this lame and lazy.

As for "using" dead people lately, it wouldn't be that bad (I still think it's cringe as the kids say these days and again, a bit lazy) if it was in a blood feud and as the go-home angle before a big PPV blow-off, not for a one-and-done filler feud on TV. I'm gonna assume that this program with Allin will be a bit more than that, but it's going to be a jarring to start with "man, the wrong guy died in that car crash" to probably beating up Sting to calling Darby an emo kid or something.

[cero2k]

It makes it feel forced and fake.

This is what I don't feel at all, I wouldn't expect a champion in one promotion always bringing those titles to the other promotion, but it makes perfect sense that the one person to bring them up, is a wrestler that works for that other promotion, that would perfectly know who the AAA champions are right now. It comes off as two AAA guys challenging each other outside of the allowed 2 hr show period of AAA.

[Big Red Machine]

It makes it feel forced and fake.

This is what I don't feel at all, I wouldn't expect a champion in one promotion always bringing those titles to the other promotion, but it makes perfect sense that the one person to bring them up, is a wrestler that works for that other promotion, that would perfectly know who the AAA champions are right now. It comes off as two AAA guys challenging each other outside of the allowed 2 hr show period of AAA.

On a show where they have been constantly recognizing another title from the same promotion? It's contrived. We had a huge cage match with the AAA tag champs against the AEW tag champs, and the fact that it was champion vs. champion wasn't ever mentioned. Excalibur seems to know everything about everyone coming in, be they from the indies or Mexico or Japan, but he didn't know that these guys have been the AAA tag champs for over two years? AAA is a partner promotion. Everyone in the company should know who the champs are.

When it suddenly becomes part of the show the moment it is decided they want to do an angle for it, it feels forced.

[Big Red Machine]

I'm not going to argue that MJF isn't repetitive, but it hasn't gotten old for me yet.

It's not the repetitive nature of the content that's bothering me, but how generic it has become lately. I don't remember MJF using overly basic "your local sports team/city sucks" cheap heat in MLW for example. It's never been highbrow quips, but also never this lame and lazy.

As for "using" dead people lately, it wouldn't be that bad (I still think it's cringe as the kids say these days and again, a bit lazy) if it was in a blood feud and as the go-home angle before a big PPV blow-off, not for a one-and-done filler feud on TV. I'm gonna assume that this program with Allin will be a bit more than that, but it's going to be a jarring to start with "man, the wrong guy died in that car crash" to probably beating up Sting to calling Darby an emo kid or something.

I think the way they played it with Darby makes it all make sense, though. He saw MJF do this to Pillman and it got Pillman all riled up, so now when MJF tries to do it to him, he is refusing to let it get to him.

[Thelone]

I think the way they played it with Darby makes it all make sense, though. He saw MJF do this to Pillman and it got Pillman all riled up, so now when MJF tries to do it to him, he is refusing to let it get to him.

That makes sense sure, but it's a really cheap way to get heat and kind of a waste to use such powerful tools on a nothing filler feud (Pillman Jr.) and to start off another with no backstory at all between the protagonists (Allin).

[Big Red Machine]

I think the way they played it with Darby makes it all make sense, though. He saw MJF do this to Pillman and it got Pillman all riled up, so now when MJF tries to do it to him, he is refusing to let it get to him.

That makes sense sure, but it's a really cheap way to get heat and kind of a waste to use such powerful tools on a nothing filler feud (Pillman Jr.) and to start off another with no backstory at all between the protagonists (Allin).

I think you're looking at it wrong. It's not "wasted" on Pullman if the purpose of doing it with Pillman was to set up doing it with Darby (you need to do it with someone MJF can beat first to show that it's effective.

[Thelone]

I think you're looking at it wrong. It's not "wasted" on Pullman if the purpose of doing it with Pillman was to set up doing it with Darby (you need to do it with someone MJF can beat first to show that it's effective.

Again, I understand the logic, but I don't think you should use dead people on such nothing feuds in general. Going after a dead close relative is supposed to be one of the most dastardly move you can make and should be kept in the pocket for a big main event and/or blood feud, not filler/midcard stuff for cheap heat.

The Pillman feud was just something quick to relaunch MJF after that shitty, endless mess with Jericho and did mostly nothing for Mullet Man except give him a little bit of TV time (and immediately drop back to Dark with Garrison and Hart). Now this feud with Allin started with MJF basically saying "Listen, this is an important feud because we're two of the four pillars of the promotion (another totally obscure wink most people didn't get)", then cut a Russo promo with needless worked shoot horseshit (and Schiavone mumbling "The hell are we doing here?" if you listen closely) and that bombshell about Allin's uncle which was hotshotting what could possibly be a hot angle at some point in the future for shock value. And again, you can only go down from here, like they'll beat up Sting backstage next, then MJF will call Allin "Dumby" or whatever, then they'll have a nice polite debate as the go-home angle before Full Gear.

[Big Red Machine]

The "Pillars" thing didn't bother me. If you get the All Japan reference then you get it, but it's not like it doesn't make sense if you don't get it.

Maybe I need to listen to it again, but nothing in that promo jumped out to me as Russo-esque.

[Thelone]

The "Pillars" thing didn't bother me. If you get the All Japan reference then you get it, but it's not like it doesn't make sense if you don't get it.

Yeah I know, I was being facetious with that one, although it's a bit odd to have MJF of all people make that kind of reference.

Maybe I need to listen to it again, but nothing in that promo jumped out to me as Russo-esque.

I've watched it again yesterday and yeah, it's mostly those two things and not really the content of the promo. The issue is that the shoot comments about Pritchard and Khan were pointless and added nothing while the dead uncle stuff didn't do anything because the crowd was too busy getting their shit in chanting "asshole" to MJF to react accordingly.