BRM Reviews the 11/3/2021 Dynamite

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 11/3/2021 Dynamite

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 6th, '21, 16:23

We open with them quickly telling us that their thoughts and prayers are with Jon Moxley in his recovery. A simple explanation of why he’s not on the show. That’s all I ask for.

ALAN “5” ANGLES vs. KENNY OMEGA (w/Michael Nakazawa)- 6/10
The announcers tried to build this match up by talking about the match these two had eighteen months ago where Angels took more of the match when people were expecting him to before losing. They said that he “turned a lot of heads,” but did he really? In kayfabe, he hasn’t won much since and hasn’t been given many opportunities to wrestle on TV, so if he did turn any heads, those heads seem to have realized (and it’s justified, based on his record) that he was a flash in the pan. And if this was meant to be an out of kayfabe comment, 1) you shouldn’t make it on the air, and 2) if this guy turned the heads of AEW management with that performance, and they have proceeded to do jack sh*t with him over the course of the next eighteen months, that doesn’t reflect well on AEW management, does it?
Omega did some cross-legged move where you drop the opponent’s neck onto your knee (think Eddie Edwards’ Die-Hard, but as a neckbreaker instead of a driver), which Jim Ross felt the need to tell us was “like a more brutal version of an atomic drop, in principle.” Because both involve lifting the other guy up and dropping a part of their body across your knee? I guess, but by that logic you might as well say that a punch to the face is a more brutal version of a punch to the stomach. You might think I’m picking on JR here, but the point is that Ross said something at best is “oh, that move is like this other one you fans might have seen,” which takes the attention away from what actually happened. The response to seeing a move like that shouldn’t be “that’s like this other, old-school move.” The reaction of the announcer should be some version of “What great impact on the neck of Angels!” Ross instincts for what is important to talk about and when seem to be completely gone at this point.

So, eighteen months after their first match, they did… pretty much the same thing. It took Omega longer than he thought it would to beat the undercard jamoke. The announcers pushed the idea of “what would this do to Kenny’s psyche heading into Full Gear,” but I don’t think that story actually works. The idea here is that Angels is a guy who Kenny always has more with than he should… except that Kenny always wins in the end, so wouldn’t Kenny naturally transfer that idea of “even though it’s taking me longer to beat him than I think it should, I know I can beat him in the end” onto Hangman?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
We’ve been told that the Dark Order are a family who always support each other, and yet none of them were at ringside for Angels in this big match, which really feels like it happened so that no one would be able to stop Nakazawa from getting Omega a chair that Kenny asked him for after the match. Kenny had cut a promo about how he could “taketh away” from Angels before asking for the chair, so he’s clearly going to hurt the guy. Where is the Dark Order?
The crowd is chanting for “COWBOY SH*T!” rather than something that make a little more sense in this situation, like say “HANGMAN!” or “ADAM PAGE!”
Kenny gets Angels up for the One-Winged Angel onto a chair, but Adam Page’s music plays. Kenny had plenty of time to hit the move anyway, but decided to be nice and just put Angels down. Page casually strolls down to the ring. Kenny grabs the chair and rears it back over his head, but Angels gets up and yanks it away from him… then just collapses to the mat and starts hugging it. That looked REALLY bad. This also distracted Kenny, and Page used the distraction to try to hit a Buckshot Lariat, which Kenny still managed to avoid. Kenny then bailed. Page noticed that Kenny left the belt in the ring, and cut a good little promo. The promo part was good, but this would have been SOOOO much better if they had just had Page duck the chairshot and yank the chair away, and have Kenny run after that. He’s the hero, so let him be him the hero.

Jim Ross thinks that tonight’s Andrade el Idolo vs. Cody Rhodes match will be “a candidate for Match of the Year.” I didn’t realize Cody was working the headset tonight.

MIRO HAS BEEN INSERTED INTO THE #1 CONTENDERSHIP TOURNAMENT IN MOXLEY’S PLACE- I’m fine with this, although I think it might have been a little better to just do another first-round match so he could beat someone for the spot.

MALAKAI BLACK PROMO- good
He’s barred from ringside for tonight’s Cody vs. Andrade match. At least I assume that’s the match he was talking about. He never actually said it, and they didn’t have it on the graphic they showed for Cody vs. Andrade about fifty seconds ago, but it’s the one that makes the most sense.
He says that barring him from ringside won’t affect the outcome of the match, and teases that someone will turn on Cody tonight. I love how this match has someone barred from ringside, but no matter how many times the Elite’s stooges or Britt Baker’s crew or The Bunny/Penelope Ford get involved in their allies matches, those matches never have someone barred from ringside. So does Tony Khan just not care about everyone else having fair matches, or is supposed babyface Cody using his EVP stroke to get himself a special privilege that isn’t being extended to anyone else?

CM PUNK PROMO- good
The announcers assured us that he has a lot to say, but I can’t possibly believe that is still true at this point. He’s cut one big promo a week for the past two months.
He said some nice things in support of Jon Moxley, then said some good things to further his angle with Eddie Kingston.

MIRO PROMO- GREAT!

ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWS ADAM COLE & THE YOUNG BUCKS- didn’t like it
Cole cut a great little promo… and then the Bucks started to talk and it turned into cartoony bullsh*t. They talked about how they were “tough guys. Yeah. We’re not afraid of anyone,” at which point Christian showed up and they threated him, but then Luchasaurus came up behind them and they got scared. The babyfaces apparently wanted revenge on these heels so badly that they were willing to stand there right behind them and not do anything until they were attacked.
The Bucks backed away but then attacked, starting a brawl that spilled from backstage to in front of the crowd. Jungle Boy came out of nowhere at the right time to do a big dive onto everyone. Why wasn’t he with the other two from the beginning?
Anyway, after some back and forth, the babyfaces beat the heels up, and Christian gave Cole a Con-Chair-To. The announcers kept pointing out that the heels always had to cheat or use a numbers advantage to get the upper hand, which really isn’t going to work if the idea for the PPV is a big gimmick weapons match (which is what it feels like we’re building to after this segment).

RUBY SOHO VS. KRIS STATLANDER VIDEO PACKAGE- Ruby Soho said that when Tony Khan announced the TBS Title, it was “monumental in this company’s history.” She’s not technically wrong, but only because so little has happened in AEW’s history. This felt very much like a WWE-style “everything we do/say is the biggest, best, greatest, most important thing ever!”
Other than that, this was decent.

AAA TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: FTR(c) (w/Tully Blanchard) vs. Samuray del Sol & Aerostar- 5/10
AEW seems to be making a point of not referring to AAA’s title as “world” titles. The Luchadors did high-flying moves. FTR won with one of those “he used the ropes for extra leverage” roll-ups except that the situation they were in means that no only was there not any extra leverage added, but that Cash was actually taking pressure OFF of del Sol when he pinned him.
Darby Allin was shown watching the match from somewhere in the crowd.

LAST WEEK, TONY SCHIAVONE PRESENTS HIKARU SHIDA WITH HER PLAQUE FOR WINNING HER FIFTIETH MATCH- Nyla Rose interrupted and said mean things to Shida, including saying that she was going to roll through Shida next week. This was good.

WHICH MEMBERS OF AMERICAN TOP TEAM WILL THE INNER CIRCLE FACE AT FULL GEAR- Everyone was very good here, but I didn’t like them choosing Lambert. It’s cowardly to drag the manager into the fight in that way. Lambert should get his comeuppance when he tries to interfere in the match. Doing it this way means the babyfaces want a match that is going to be five vs. four and a half instead of five vs. five.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS MATT SYDAL, DANTE MARTIN, LIO RUSH, & LEE MORIARTY- fine
Sydal says he is happy for Martin and is fine if Martin wants to train with Lio Rush instead of him, because he has a new Black friend who wants to train with him now: Lee Moriarty, and also maybe we should have a tag team match. Lio put Moriarty over, but said that Martin was better, “especially with Lio Rush in his corner.”

TBS TITLE TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Anna Jay vs. Jamie Hayter (w/Dr. Britt Baker, DMD, & Rebel)- 4/10
Why is Tay Conti not at ringside? Her best friend and stablemate is wrestling, and the opponent has people at ringside who are notorious for interfering in matches, including just a few weeks ago when Anna wrestled one of them.
Jim Ross was apparently quite upset that a standard DDT isn’t a finish in 2021, so when Anna Jay hit one and Hayter kicked out of it, Ross essentially said that she didn’t hit the move well (his exact wording was that “you’re supposed to win the match with a DDT,” and the fact that she didn’t means that Anna “needs to work on refining it.” It’s sh*t like this that is why JR needs to be removed from commentary immediately. Someone just kicked out of a move he thinks should be devastating. He could have put the person who kicked out of it over for being tough, he could have come up with an excuse for why it wasn’t the finish that enhanced the match (like Tony did, saying that Anna Jay was slow on the cover because she was worn down), or he could do what he chose to do, which is bury the wrestler hitting the move. He had two options that would have made the wrestlers or the show look better, but instead he chose to say something that made one of the wrestlers look worse.
The heels interfered, so Anna Jay lost. How much do you want to bet that no one is barred from ringside in Hayter’s future matches? In kayfabe, both Tony Khan and Tay Conti are idiots for not seeing this coming.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
The heels beat Anna Jay up after the match, seemingly just so Britt’s next challenger (and Anna Jay’s best friend) Tay Conti could come chase them off. I’m not sure why they ran away, considering that they had a three-on-one advantage, but they did. If this sound familiar, it’s because they did the same thing two weeks ago after the aforementioned Anna Jay vs. Britt Baker match, and once again, it felt a lot more like something that was pre-planned to hype up a Tay Conti vs. Britt Baker match than it does something that happened for any reason stemming from any of the characters involved.
Tay got some shots in on Britt, but the other two came back and beat her up. They were setting up for the Curb Stomp, but this time Thunder Rosa came out for the save, because we’ve got a second match to build to (Hayter vs. Thunder Rosa in the quarterfinals). Why didn’t Thunder Rosa come out to make the save the first time?

MARK STERLING & JADE CARGILL PROMO- Jade says she’ll beat whoever she has to face in the tournament. Jade was good, but you could have removed this from the show and it wouldn’t have mattered.

MJF PROMO- They kept showing Darby in the crowd. MJF cut an excellent promo on him. He finally decided he was going to attack MJF and got up to do so, but MJF went to leave. When he got to the top of the ramp, he was cut off by Sting, and an army of people in paper Darby Allin masks. Yeah, apparently Sting has random minions backstage now. Shawn Spears came out and attacked them, and the rest of the Pinnacle soon joined in. Who are these people that Tony Khan is allowing to get into a fight with his employees?
MJF finally got smart and went to leave through the crowd, but, unfortunately for him, he picked the exact aisle Darby was standing in to try to make his escape up. For the second week in a row! What terrible luck!
They brawled in the crowd. We couldn’t see it for a bit because the cameras were blocked by (ironically), a bunch of fans crowding around so they could film it on their own phones. Credit to AEW for changing to a crane camera pretty quickly. Darby got MJF to the ring and was going to hit the Coffin Drop, but MJF got up and ran to the crowd, and I guess Darby decided he didn’t want revenge right now anymore because he didn’t bother trying to chase him.

SINGLES MATCH WITH MALAKAI BLACK BARRED FROM RINGSIDE: Andrade el Idolo (w/Jose the Assistant) vs. Cody Rhodes (w/Arn Anderson)- 6.75/10
During the commercial split-screen, I am certain I saw Cody hit Andrade with a foreign object (a water bottle or something) right in front of the referee. That should have been a DQ.
The fans were very behind Andrade, but Andrade also seemed to be doing spots that they had t know would get him cheered, like the Three Amigos and the Figure Four. The match was very good. Apparently FTR have been hiding under the ring the whole time. They came out and hit Cody with one of their title belts to set up the finish.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
We got post-match attack #3. I’m going to have to bring the drinking game back for next week.
Arn decided to get in the way and faced off with Tully. The Lucha Bros. came down to fight for Arn. For some reason, Andrade did not help FTR fight the Lucha Bros. Once again, I can’t help but note that despite Cody having a stable of about seventy-three people, not one of the seventy-two who weren’t at ringside with him came out to help when he was being attacked. Does anyone really want to see Tully Blanchard vs Arn Anderson in 2021?

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS JOHN SILVER- terrible
Tony Schiavone, who called MJF a “sh*t-head” a few segments ago, now won’t say the word “ass.”
He kept calling Adam Cole “Budge” and was upset that Cole wasn’t taking his advice to get new gear or become the Dark Order’s manager. I assume this was a combination of some dumb Being The Elite crap and a shot at WWE for supposedly wanting to make Cole Keith Lee’s manager… except if we are to believe that making Cole a manager is a dumb idea (which it is) then that just means that Silver is an idiot, and who wants to cheer for an idiot?

We were told that Kingston responded to Punk on Twitter saying that he will be at Rampage to answer Punk.

THE BUNNY VS. RED VELVET VIDEO PACKAGE- good
They meet on Rampage in a TBS Title Tournament match.

WORLD TITLE ELIMINATOR FIRST ROUND MATCH: Miro vs. Orange Cassidy (w/Chuck Taylor, Wheeler YUTA, & Kris Statlander)- 4.75/10
Bryan Danielson was on commentary for his match. I eagerly anticipate hearing him bury Orange Cassidy for not working hard and applying himself.
The Goof-Clown’s ribs are taped up, though he still did his usual sh*t and didn’t sell it like his ribs were injured at all until he got suplexed the first time, and he barely sold them for the rest of the match.
Matt Hardy was shown watching from ringside, because apparently his feud with OC isn’t over yet. They did more stuff with the “Miro’s neck is his weakness” story, except that stops working as a story if everyone always goes after the weakness and it almost never beats him. Dragon came to the ring to have a stare-down with Miro after the match.


This was a meh episode of AEW. We’ve still got one week to go before the PPV (three televised shows), and a lot of the feuds feel like they’re already out of steam.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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Thelone
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Re: BRM Reviews the 11/3/2021 Dynamite

Post by Thelone » Nov 7th, '21, 06:02

It's going to be such a mistake to put the belt on Page, but they've cornered themselves and don't have much choice. I'll give him six months at best before he drops it to Bryan or Punk and quite frankly, I wouldn't be shocked if Dragon wins it whenever he faces Page on a random Dynamite to pop a rating or something.

Anyway...
This was a meh episode of AEW. We’ve still got one week to go before the PPV (three televised shows), and a lot of the feuds feel like they’re already out of steam.
That would imply that those feuds had steam in the first place.
  • Omega vs. Page : this might as well become a textbook example of long ≠ epic and rewarding
  • Baker vs Conti : yet another heatless routine defense for Ms. Yankem and we're SIX MONTHS IN
  • Lucha Bros vs. FTR : eh, it kinda came out of nowhere because El Flop wanted to fuck with the LB for whatever reason
  • Allin vs. MJF : alright, except they did that feud in reverse as usual with the big face-off first and random beatdowns since
  • JE/Christian vs. Elite : it's... there really
  • Punk vs. Kingston : yet another "thrown together at the last minute" """feud""" for Punk
  • IC vs. ATT : it has some build-up sure, but does anyone really care? Also no TNT defense for Guevara, almost like he shouldn't have won it in the first place, but gotta pretend that this four pillars promo meant something and wasn't just lip service and a glorified ad for an ugly shirt
  • Danielson vs. Miro : should be good, that's all I can say
Unfortunately, this has become a trend with AEW's PPVs that a lot of the card is jumbled up together during the last few weeks, and longer feuds tend to be in either the "can we be done with this shit already?" territory or just meh/ok.

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Big Red Machine
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Re: BRM Reviews the 11/3/2021 Dynamite

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 7th, '21, 12:44

Thelone wrote: Nov 7th, '21, 06:02 It's going to be such a mistake to put the belt on Page, but they've cornered themselves and don't have much choice. I'll give him six months at best before he drops it to Bryan or Punk and quite frankly, I wouldn't be shocked if Dragon wins it whenever he faces Page on a random Dynamite to pop a rating or something.
I agree that they've written themselves into a corner with Page where he absolutely has to win, but I don't totally think it's their fault. It was the timing of Page's baby and the way they wrote him out for a bit (which I'm not sure they had much choice on). You only get so many stutter-step moments in a story like this, and they were forced to use one there. I mean... it's their fault for setting up the situation with Page instead of doing a better slow-burn where they actually told the story of him losing his confidence via showing it on TV instead of just having him do other things for months, but if you assume they were always going to mess up the actual telling of the story that sets up the build to the title shot, then the timing of Page needing to take time off did force them into this corner a bit, both from an "if Page doesn't win here, he'll start looking like Tyler Black" standpoint, and from the standpoint of Danielson coming in and feeling like a better, hotter choice.

That being said, I don't think putting the belt on Page here would be a mistake. I agree that a quick switch to Dragon is probably a good idea, but you need to find the right way to frame it for Page and to follow up on it with him.
Thelone wrote: Nov 7th, '21, 06:02
Big Red Machine wrote:This was a meh episode of AEW. We’ve still got one week to go before the PPV (three televised shows), and a lot of the feuds feel like they’re already out of steam.
That would imply that those feuds had steam in the first place.
  • Omega vs. Page : this might as well become a textbook example of long ≠ epic and rewarding
  • I don't even think this qualifies as that. I think this is them just not understanding how to tell a long-term story (or course, you're right that long ≠ epic and rewarding, but when I think of that, I think of Tyler Black's ROH World Title Chase, where at least it was an on-going story, as opposed to choppy, disorganized crap that this was until they decided to bring it into the home stretch when they restarted things in early June or whenever.

    Baker vs Conti : yet another heatless routine defense for Ms. Yankem and we're SIX MONTHS IN
  • Agreed. They have been TERRIBLE at building up challengers in this division.

    Lucha Bros vs. FTR : eh, it kinda came out of nowhere because El Flop wanted to fuck with the LB for whatever reason
  • This. There were a million ways this could have been done better, and without 1) this convoluted bullsh*t involving Andrade and 2) suddenly recognizing a title that the Lucha Bros. have had for years that has gone unmentioned.

    Allin vs. MJF : alright, except they did that feud in reverse as usual with the big face-off first and random beatdowns since
  • I think that has worked with the story they've been trying to tell.

    JE/Christian vs. Elite : it's... there really
  • I don't have a problem with this, so long as the match delivers on PPV and doesn't hurt any other stories.

    Punk vs. Kingston : yet another "thrown together at the last minute" """feud""" for Punk
  • I think you're looking at this the wrong way. This isn't about Punk. It's about Kingston, and turning him heel. Punk just happens to be a big (and hopefully exciting) name that has the necessary veteran credibility to get righteously annoyed by another veteran- i.e. someone who should know better- ranting through his interview space, and for Kingston to be matched up against and lose to (I assume, again, by some manner of stoppage which Kingston will be upset about).
    And it could also turn out to be about Punk, too, as Punk certainly seems to have become more and more upset by people interrupting him when he's just trying to be in AEW and have his comeback.
    But either way, it's not a story about "Punk vs. Kingston." It's a story about Eddie Kingston (and also possibly a separate story about CM Punk), and the interaction with Punk (or their interaction with each other) helps to tell that story/those separate stories. Having a wrestling match between them is just the natural consequence of such an interaction. Unless the finish of the match is Punk winning by stoppage or a full Kingston heel turn, the finish will be mostly inconsequential to the story/ies in question... and in a case like this, that's okay. Certainly not ideal, but perfectly fine, because the stories in question have already been furthered by the interaction that set the match up.
    As I'm sure you can tell by how much I've written about it here, I actually admire this sort of booking a lot. It's the kind of stuff that whenever I was doing a long-term fantasy booking project and I came up with something like this, it felt like a "light bulb going on over my head" moment.
    Now, given that I've said that it's entirely possible that the finish won't actually matter, you could certainly argue that this match therefore should not be on PPV, and I wouldn't argue too hard against that, but I do think that if they didn't put this on PPV, someone would start a narrative that management had "lost faith in Punk" to either deliver buys or to deliver PPV-quality matches, which they obviously want to avoid (and also people would criticize them for not putting the Punk match on PPV so that it has a chance to draw actual money), and I'm also not really sure what you'd stick on a PPV in its place, other than perhaps a key match in the Martin/Lio/Sydal story.


    IC vs. ATT : it has some build-up sure, but does anyone really care? Also no TNT defense for Guevara, almost like he shouldn't have won it in the first place, but gotta pretend that this four pillars promo meant something and wasn't just lip service and a glorified ad for an ugly shirt
  • Again, agreed.

    Danielson vs. Miro : should be good, that's all I can say
I think Miro was a perfect person to insert here, and not just because of match quality. His promo on this show set up perfectly that this "miracle" that has been done for him will wind up amplifying/accelerating whichever direction his story is going to go in (regaining or losing more of his "faith") depending on the result of the match.

Unfortunately, this has become a trend with AEW's PPVs that a lot of the card is jumbled up together during the last few weeks, and longer feuds tend to be in either the "can we be done with this shit already?" territory or just meh/ok.
Yeah, I would LOVE to know how far out Tony Khan books the week-by-week for individual feuds, how far out he at least has the major matches for the next PPV, and how far out he has the full card for the next PPV.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
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