BRM Reviews the 12/7/2022 Dynamite (awesome wrestling with bad storylines)

[Big Red Machine]

We were told that William Regal is still in the hospital, and Bryan Danielson is still with him. That’s nice and all, but Regal has a family, and Bryan has a job, and it has been a week. He should be back at work. It’s not like Regal is on death’s door or something.

DYNAMITE DIAMOND RING BATTLE ROYALE- 5.75/10
Why does Dustin Rhodes’ entrance video have a bunch of snakes and a skull? He’s the consummate babyface veteran, not a heel or even someone who uses snake imagery.
This battle royale started with all of the wrestlers on the floor, and they were supposed to get in the ring after the bell rang. WHY? That’s the equivalent of dropping the puck for a face-off with all of the players on the bench and then having the starting lines hop over the board and all charge for the puck.
Shawn Dean is in this match. If you don’t remember who that is, he’s the guy who Punk helped beat MJF by causing MJF to get DQed and tricking MJF to get counted out. That last match against MJF in late April is the last time we have seen him on TV. How the f*ck did he get in this match, but, say, Adam Page or Sting or Jericho or Moxley or Keith Lee or Shane Strickland or Kenny Omega or the Young Bucks, or the Lucha Bros. or Wardlow or Will Hobbs or any other number of bigger names not otherwise booked on this card didn’t?

All I ask is that you do a battle royale of nobodies on Dark Elevation that Dean wins to earn this spot, and the announcers quickly tell me about it before the bell (or, better yet, do it last week and then they can tell me about it on Rampage when they’re hyping up this match.

And what purpose did him being in this match serve? The obvious thing to do is do a spot where Dean almost wins (maybe he’s one of the final three, and the other two are fighting by the ropes and he comes up behind them and almost dumps them both). We all know intellectually that he won’t win, but in that split second, you could get people believing it for just that one moment. That would be a clever use of an already-established character that would make an otherwise mostly bland battle royale a little more memorable. Instead, Tony Khan, supposed booking genius, had him get to number four and then just get eliminated without any teases of winning. Literally all his presence in this match did was create a plot-hole.

They spent a lot of time early on showing us Orange Cassidy and Kip Sabian brawling with each other… and then The Blade reached up from the outside and eliminated Orange Cassidy. Huh?
Brian Cage kept having Dalton Castle dead to rights but the Boys kept stopping Dalton from hitting the floor and thus being eliminated. How is that supposed to make us like Dalton? When Cage finally threw Dalton out of the ring hard enough that it took the Boys out, too, I popped because the guy playing fairly overcame the cheater.
Morrissey cheated to eliminated Jungle Boy, then chokeslammed him onto the apron. The way his neck landed looked terrifying.
The final four were Matt Hardy, Ethan Page, Ricky Starks, and Shawn Dean. Page bossed Hardy around. Hardy yelled at Page, but eventually gave in to him because Page “controls his contract.” That doesn’t make him a slave. Even if Page fires him, can’t Tony Khan just hire Matt back?
Page and Starks were the final two, and Starks won. That was baffling to me. Of all of the people to give this win to, why would you give it to the guy who already has a WORLD TITLE MATCH against MJF next week (a date which he set because of a gimmick that let him pick the time and place of that match, just like the stipulation here)?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- mostly great
MJF came out and cut a promo. He started by claiming that Bryan Danielson wasn’t here because Danielson was scared of him. Then he told us all that next week he would not only retain his world title, but also become a four-time Dynamite Diamond Ring holder. Doesn’t Starks get to pick the time and place of the match?
He then turned his attention to Ricky Starks, who he called a knock-off of The Rock. I hadn’t noticed that before he said it, but now I can’t un-see it. He said he would now refer to Ricky as “The Pebble,” and the crowd, which had previously been 100% pro-Starks because this is his “adopted home town,” started to chant “PEBBLE!” at poor Ricky.
Burying the concept of wrestling “on YouTube” as a second-class thing to do probably wasn’t the best idea, either, in a company that has TWO wrestling shows exclusively on YouTube every week.
Fortunately for Starks, he was able to get the crowd back by bumping into MJF on the way to get the mic and calling him “Maxi-pad.” He the proceeded to call MJF a “fifth-rate Roddy Piper,” (MJF is MUCH meaner than Piper ever was) and referred to MJF always insulting the crowd as “schtick,” which I definitely wouldn’t have done because we’re supposed to think that MJF actually doesn’t like us, not that he’s just doing things to get booed.
He proceeded to insult MJF some more… and all I could here was a guy trying to do The Rock. Starks the claimed that all of MJF’s clothes (and his heat) was “cheap,” and that MJF wasn’t actually rich… and then a minute later said that MJF stayed in Greece for three months.
Starks then proceeded to cut an extremely passionate promo about his journey and responsibility and so forth. It was an excellent promo, other than the fact that I didn’t find his argument that MJF didn’t understand responsibility to be persuasive at all. Just because he doesn’t have dependents, never got to the point where he was living out of his car, and he once blew off a meet-n-greet, MJF doesn’t understand responsibility?
Anyway, MJF waited for Starks to finish, then kicked him in the testicles. He went to hit Starks with the Dynamite Diamond Ring, but Starks avoided it and laid MJF out with a spear. The idea of the angle was good, but if I were booking this, I wouldn’t have had Starks recover so quickly from a low blow. I’d have found some other thing for MJF to do to him.
SAMOA JOE VS. DARBY ALLIN VIDEO PACKAGE- Joe was awesome. Darby was meh.

JON MOXLEY PROMO- didn’t like it
He complains that there is too much talking in AEW. Well… do something about it. You haven’t wrestled since the PPV three weeks ago. Everyone else in this company has figured out that all you need to go to get booked is to interrupt someone else’s interview and challenge them to a match, so why haven’t you done that?
On the bright side, after eight months of feuding with the JAS, he seems to have finally figured out that he can come out to ringside with his friends and try to prevent the JAS from cheating.

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Samoa Joe(c) vs. Darby Allin- 8.5/10
This was freakin’ awesome. The best of never-say-die babyface Darby Allin against the best of X-Division juggernaut monster heel Samoa Joe.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
Darby shoved Joe for no reason, so Joe headbutted Darby. He then gave Darby a Muscle Buster onto Darby’s skateboard with the trucks facing up. Then he locked on a sleeper hold until Wardlow ran out to chase him away. Did Joe g father than he should have? Yes. But Darby brought at least some of this on himself by shoving Joe for no reason. As so many of these post-match segments often do, it felt like the actions of the characters were being guided by the needs of the booker rather than stemming organically from their characters.
Also, if Wardlow wants his title back so badly, why doesn’t he just challenge Joe to a title match? It seems to work for everyone else.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS ORANGE CASSIDY & KIP SABIAN- bad
This is another interview with the “no physicality” rule in place. Why isn’t that a rule all the time? For all interviews and before and after the bell rings for matches.
OC offers Sabian a title shot on Rampage. Sabian accuses OC of only offering him a title shot now that h has been injured by Dustin Rhodes. OC says that if Sabian won’t fight him on Rampage, Sabian should find someone else who can. Isn’t that Tony Khan’s job? Anyway, OC will now defend the All-Atlantic Title on Rampage against a man of Kip Sabian’s choosing.

CHRIS JERICHO PROMO- meh build for his title defense against Claudio Castagnoli at Final Battle on Saturday.

BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB (Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler YUTA) (w/Jon Moxley) vs. JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY (Daniel Garcia & Jake Hager) (w/Sammy Guevara)- 7.5/10
At the beginning of this match, Schiavone teased some sort of video from Regal for later (or something like that).
How is the Big Swing not a “sports entertainment” move?
The ref saw Sammy Guevara clearly grabbing Claudio to stop him from hitting a springboard move. How is that not a DQ? Just because Moxley attacked Sammy afterwards doesn’t mean it didn’t effect the match?
The babyfaces won cleanly.

TONY SCHIAVONE COMES TO THE RING AND SHOWS EVERYONE AN INTERVIEW HE DID WITH WILLIAM REGAL “A FEW WEEKS BACK”- HORRENDOUS!
Regal was in a BCC shirt and the screen in the background said “Dynamite,” but Tony said that “Full Gear was unbelievable.” Was. Past tense. So this must have been either last week or two weeks ago. Tony was being friendly and jovial with Regal… even though this took place after Regal betrayed Jon Moxley to hand the world title to the person Schiavone seems to hate the most in the world. At this point, I think the evidence points to Tony Schiavone being an antisemite.
Regal said that people would only see this “if something bad happens to me.” He said that he knew the BBC didn’t need him anymore, but that they also just wouldn’t let him leave, so he burned the bridge by turning on them. He says he also did this to teach them the important lessons of “always stay one step ahead” and “always have eyes in the back of your head,” and also to get revenge on MJF for pushing Tony Schiavone, because now that MJF is world champion, everyone will be gunning for him.
What a f*cking sociopath this William Regal is. This was only to be shown in case something bad happened to him… so if MJF hadn’t turned on him, Regal would have just been his happy lackey and neve revealed to these people who he claims to be aligned with “for life” why he turned on them?
And he’s their mentor! He doesn’t think that if he just told them to “stay one step ahead” and “always have eyes in the back of your head” that they would listen to him? He had to screw Moxley out of the world title he worked so hard for in order to teach this lesson? And to multiple twenty-year veterans, no less?
And he thinks he is somehow punishing MJF by giving him exactly what he wanted? F*ck off. MJF is a pro wrestler. He already knows that if he’s the world champion, every will be gunning for him. And Regal’s plan seems to have completely failed, too, because MJF came out here last week and announced that he wouldn’t be defending the title very often, and we’d all just have to deal with it, and there was no pushback of any kind from management.
Tony then asked the BCC for their reaction to this… by cutting a promo in which he made an open challenge for Rampage and declaring the YUTA and Claudio would win the war against the JAS at Final Battle. In other words, he said nothing in any way relevant to the shocking revelation he had just been shown with his mentor explaining why he turned on him.


HOUSE BLACK VIDEO- meh
Aleister said that “this company has become corrupted by people who point the finger at others while still holding the shovel they used dig graves for others in their hands.” Hmmm….
Eh. It’s a House of Black promo. It probably doesn’t mean anything for any kind of storyline.
Anyway, they are going to end the corruption by exterminating everyone who they feel is guilty of treason, or something like that. So are all of the jobbers they attacked the ones they think are guilty, or are they trying to exterminate the whole company?

TONY SCHIAVONE’S SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW WITH JAMIE HAYTER- bad
She’s upset that other people are being given sit-down interviews, but not her, the champion. Schiavone asks her for her thoughts on the division as a whole. She says they’re all very good, but she’s the best.
She says she will give the winner of Shida vs. the Bunny on Rampage a title shot. She says that the AEW Women’s World Title is much more important than whatever title those two are fighting over. Schiavone puts her over for being a fighting champion. He never once made any comment about her having cheated to win the title.

JADE CARGILL & THE BADDIES (Red Velvet & Leyla Gray) vs. KIERA HOGAN, MADISON RAYNE, & SKYE BLUE- 4.75/10
The announcers pointed out that Kiera Hogan had to be held back from going at Jade in the beginning of this match. So Kiera Hogan, who was merely fired from her position as a member of Jade’s little club, is so angry at Jade that she has to be restrained from attacking her, but Jon Moxley, who is known to have a fiery temper, has made no effort to go after the guy who cheated to take the world title from him.
The heels won. The match was bland.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH SARAYA IS IMMEDIATELY INTERRUPTED BY BRITT BAKER- bad
Britt challenged Saraya to a match on January 11th. Saraya accepted, but then Britt revealed that it would be a tag team match, with her and Jamie Hayter vs. Saraya and a partner that Saraya would need to find. I have no interest in seeing these two interact ever again.
Britt then dragged Schiavone off so that Saraya couldn’t be interviewed. Why didn’t she just cut her promo into the camera without an interviewer there, like Moxley and others do?


AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Acclaimed(c) (w/Billy Gunn) vs. FTR- 8.5/10
This was just an excellent tag team match with- shockingly- no interference from the heels from last week. Said heels were merely shown watching the match backstage. They did a great job of making the Acclaimed feel like the underdogs here. The only thing I didn’t like was the finish. I really don’t like it when a guy takes a big move and then has the wherewithal to immediately roll someone up. It feels like the move is being no-sold.

GUNN CLUB APPEAR ON THE TRON AND HAVE A MESSAGE FOR FTR- Said message is from the Briscoes. It’s a card, supposedly written in blood, challenging FTR to a Double-Dog Collar match at Final Battle on Saturday.
The stipulation is completely random and totally out of place for a feud of mutual respect, and using Gunn Club as the Briscoes’ messengers took away all of the gravitas that the challenge should have had. Why not just have the Briscoes cut a promo on YouTube, then have the announcers tell us about it and have FTR respond to it?

And why the hell did you have FTR to a clean job to the Acclaimed right before their big match with the Briscoes instead of after it? All this does is make the ROH World Title look inferior right before you want people to pay to see them defended.

There was some great wrestling on this show, but the storylines dragged it down, which is typical for Dynamite. While the wrestling was better than usual this week, the storyline stuff and general lapses of logic were worse than usual, evening things out.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Tony Schiavone (during the tag match)- “Right now, the Jericho Appreciation Society looking a lot more together than the Blackpool Combat Club because Bryan Danielson is still in the hospital with William Regal.”
Even with Dragon not there, it’s still three vs. three… and at least Danielson has a reason for why he isn’t there. The JAS has FIVE members not at ringside, with absolutely no explanation! I just don’t understand how Schiavone seems to have so much trouble THINKING BEFORE HE OPENS HIS F*CKING MOUTH.