BRM Reviews the 10/12/2022 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

RENEE PAQUETTE JOINS THE BROADCAST TEAM- Hopefully she’ll just stay an interviewer, which AEW needs and she is good at, and stays away from the broadcast booth, where she was not good.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS CHRISTIAN CAGE- Christian antagonizes the crowd via sportsball, then brings out Luchasaurus. The point of this was just to get Renee on TV at the beginning.

LUCHASAURUS vs. “JUNGLE BOY” JACK PERRY- 7.5/10
Christian Cage was on commentary for this match.
The backstory to this match, of course, is that Luchasarus was Jungle Boy’s best friend, but he betrayed him and assaulted him to help Christian, and ow Jungle Boy finally gets the chance to get his revenge… so, of course, when Luchasaurus pulled out a table, the fans all chanted for him to put Jungle Boy through it.
Jungle Boy wound up putting Luchasaraus through said table with an Arabian Powerbomb. Christian insisted that this should be a DQ, but Excalibur countered by saying that it was Luchasaurus who set the table up… which makes no sense! It doesn’t matter who brought the weapon in. Using it is still an illegal act. You can argue that Jungle Boy is morally justified in using it because Luchasaurus signaled his own intent to use a table, but what is moral and what is legal are not always the same thing. A MUCH better justification for the lack of DQ (and one I personally subscribe to) is that this is a situation where it can be interpreted the Jungle Boy did the move he was going to do, and the table just happened to be there. Jungle Boy did not drag the table in place and then do the move, or bring Luchasaurus over to the table. Going through the table is, in essence, an accident that happens to benefit Jungle Boy (this also explains why whipping someone into the steps or guardrail isn’t a DQ).
Jungle Boy worked the arm, but eventually allowed himself to get distracted by Christian’s presence at ringside and lost. The match was great and worked well for its spot in the feud, except for one key issue. This should have felt like a major grudge match, but it didn’t. It felt like Jungle Boy facing the enforcer Christian has procured to protect himself from Jungle Boy, but the fact that said enforcer is Jungle Boy’s former best friend who betrayed him to side with Christian felt completely squandered.
I think a large part of that is because we still have absolutely no idea why Luchasaurus turned. If we knew why he turned, he would feel like a real person. But we don’t, so as a result, he feels like a token; like merely a piece that the booker has assigned to Christian to fill this spot, and it’s a lot harder to create a feeling of mutual hatred when one side feels like an interchangeable pawn.

RENEE PAQUETTE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE FIRM IS INTERRUPTED BY MATT HARDY & PRIVATE PARTY- good
Apparently Stokely “freed” Private Party from the AFO by buying their contracts. Okay. Matt wants a match against Ethan Page to free Private Party. Ethan challenges Isiah Kassidy instead, with the stipulation that if Kassidy wins, Private Party are released from the contracts that they signed (with Matt Hardy initially, way back when), but if Page wins, the Firm also control Matt Hardy’s contract. Matt is okay with this, so they agree to have a match on Rampage.

Q.T. MARSHALL PROMO- snore
He makes fun of Wardlow and Samoa Joe for their uncreative tag team name.

SAMOA JOE & WARDLOW vs. THE FACTORY (Q.T. Marshall & Nick Comoroto) (w/Aaron Solow)- no rating, bad segment
Joe and Wardlow won a short match. Then they attacked Q.T. for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. This segment achieved absolutely nothing, and made babyfaces look like jerks. Why are these guys even being booked as a team when they’re both TV Champions. Shouldn’t they be defending their titles? Well… then again, in order for them to have worthy challengers to face, AEW would need to have some sort of system to determine such a thing. If only AEW had some sort of ranking system or kept track of people’s records. Oh well.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- terrible
Thankfully, the Embassy showed up to distract these monsters from the unprovoked assault they were about to commit. They made comments about Joe, Wardlow, and FTR, which brought out FTR. Dax Harwood said that he couldn’t ask Joe and Wardlow to work on Friday after their hard match tonight? Why not? We see wrestlers wrestle on one day’s rest (or even more frequently than that) all the time.
To be their partner, they brought out Shawn Spears- last seen as a heel- using his WWE gimmick. Spears grabbed Aaron Solow- who he has no quarrel with- and threw him into the ring. Solow was then assaulted by FTR, who also have no quarrel with him. Imagine a movie where Batman wanted to intimate some thugs, so instead of beating them up, he grabbed a random bystander and assaulted the bystander instead. That’s what this is.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS CHRIS JERICHO & 2.0- bad
2.0 were annoying. Jericho’s promo was mostly dull, doing what is essentially his shtick now (aside from a few lines about Daniel Garcia, which were fine at best).

SHANE STRICKLAND vs. BILLY GUNN- 5.75/10
Excalibur claimed that this rivalry started with the title change, so I guess their big PPV title match wasn’t part of it?
Strickland won with illegal leverage, because G-d forbid that Billy Gunn do a clean job in 2022. And don’t tell me that it gets heat on Swerve, because Billy Gunn interfered in a match to cost Swerve and Keith Lee the tag titles.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- idiotic
Swerve left, and the Acclaimed came out. They were going to scissor, but Mark Sterling and Tony Nese interrupted them. Sterling claimed to own the trademark for scissoring, and threatened them that if they ever did it again, he would sue them, and they would be tied up in court for so long that they would give him the tag titles. This is moronic.

ALEX MARVEZ’S INTERVIEWS WITH MJF IS INTERRUPTED BY STOKELY HATHAWAY- great
MJF is upset with Stokely for interrupting him and threatens so fire Stokely. Okay… but won’t Stokely still be around because he is the manager for about eight other people?
MJF then cut a promo first saying that he has secret history with William Regal that he might tell us someday. He then cut a promo that planted the seeds for a babyface turn. This all did a good job of doing what it was trying to do, but if MJF turns babyface, what heels do they even have?

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH JON MOXLEY IN THE RING IS INTERRUPTED BY ADAM PAGE- didn’t like it
Moxley mused about the nature of being the world champion. When he mentioned Adam Page, Page came out, quite offended that Moxley called him a “nice kid” last week. Page then ranted on about being a man and said a bunch of things about setbacks and tragedies he has experienced that were mostly non-descript. He expressed a lot of anger that felt like it came completely out of nowhere. How is this the same guy who was told that the match was in Moxley’s home town and suddenly got scared?
They both spoke with passion, sure, but how does this do anything to make me want to see either guy win?
Oh yeah. And they showed MJF watching.

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. CHRIS JERICHO VIDEO PACKAGE- GREAT!

ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Chris Jericho(c) (w/2.0) vs. Bryan Danielson- 7/10… but creatively, a total dud.
William Regal and Ian Riccaboni were both on guest commentary for this match. Jericho decided to be “Lionheart” for this match. I’m still not sure what that actually means. Jericho is the heel… so of course the fans took it upon themselves to sing his theme song a capella.
The fans cheered Jericho all match, which kills Jericho’s whose gimmick dead.
They had a great match until the ref bump. After Turner went down, one of the 2.0 geeks gave Jericho the belt, and he took F*CKING FOREVER to try to hit Danielson with the belt, so that Daniel Garcia could come out and stop him. The fans all booed this guy turning babyfaces and stopping the heel from cheating. Jericho and Garcia had a shoving match. Dragon used this to his advantage to hit Jericho with a Busaiku Knee… and then Garcia laid Danielson out with the belt and let Jericho pin him for the win.
What kind of stupid Vince Russo bullsh*t is this?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- snore
Jericho and 2.0 hugged Garcia, but Garcia was stoic. The Blackpool Combat Club (minus Jon Moxley, for some reason) came down to the ring to chase the heels off.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS NYLA ROSE & FRIENDS- mostly bad
Nyla apparently stole the TBS Title. Vicky was a clown. She was confronted by Jade Cargill, who demanded her belt back. JUST KIDDING! She was confronted by Anna Jay, who asked for a title shot from the fake champion. Nyla cut a great promo on Anna Jay. That was the only good part of this.

HIKARU SHIDA & TONI STORM vs. JAYMIE HAYTER & BRITT BAKER (w/Rebel)- 5/10
Excalibur told us that Shida wants revenge on Britt Baker for an “unprovoked backstage attack a few weeks ago.” As you’d expect, since then, Shida has been coming out whenever Britt is on screen and trying to attack her. Just kidding. She hasn’t been on TV at all. But that’s because she was injured by the attack and this is her big return, right? NOPE! She’s been wrestling on Dark. More of that wonderful AEW “storytelling” I’ve heard so much about.
They did stuff.

AEW ALL-ATLANTIC TITLE MATCH: Pac(c) vs. Orange Cassidy- 7/10
It’s absolutely baffling to me how the announcers can talk about how Pac cheated to defend his titles, then thirty seconds later put him over for the impressive feat of defending titles in back-to-back matches.
During a commercial break, they spent about fifty years on the outside and yet weren’t counted out. We got back from the commercial just in time for Pac to bring the ref back to the ring and demand he start the count, and, of course, the ref obliged, enforcing a rule he had spent the past five minutes ignoring. This, of course, was done for the sake of “dramatic” count-out, as if anyone thought that a company that regularly ignores rules just so they can do their cool sh*t but not have a match end in a DQ or a count-out because that would make people upset would end a main event title match in a count-out on a show where they clearly booked a freakin’ world title match in the middle of the show just to avoid having a main event with a dirty finish. That’s right! This match main evented over a world title match between Chris Jericho and Bryan Danielson, and there wasn’t even any talk of it having been a stand-by match, either.
They did stuff that targeted the head. Pac was winning fair and square when he decided to get the ringbell hammer and cheat. This was actually the second time he went to get the hammer. The first time, the referee ran out and stopped him. This time the referee did nothing. Fortunately for OC, Danhausen had disguised himself as a worker. Pac gave Danhausen a disgustingly soft punch. I’m sure he made solid contact. I just wish he had punched him harder.
This bought time for the ref to come over and take the hammer away from Pac, but Pac had another one stashed under the ring. He went to hit OC with it, but OC hit the Orange Punch. OC picked up the hammer and teased hitting Pac with it, but then he gave it to the ref instead. Pac rolled OC up, but OC kicked out and hit another Orange Punch, then another, then won. So the character who hasn’t developed in years won a pointless title that has no meaning whatsoever from a guy who is a heel even though his two partners are babyfaces and that is just ignored. Yeah… sounds like Dynamite.

This was an unfortunately standard episode of Dynamite, with some great wrestling hampered by bad booking and too much focus on things that shouldn’t be anywhere near TV.