BRM Reviews the 1/25/2023 Dynamite

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews the 1/25/2023 Dynamite

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 27th, '23, 00:56

Is it just me, or is the hard-cam higher up than it usually is? I kind of like it.

RICKY STARKS & ACTION ANDRETTI vs. JERICHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY (Chris Jericho & Sammy Guevara) (w/Daniel Garcia)- 6.75/10
Those spots where you grab the opponent’s arm and slowly walk along the ropes always look terrible, and they need to be stopped immediately. Other than that one spot, this was a solid opener.
The JAS won when Sammy pinned Andretti after a baseball bat shot by Garcia. I thought this was absolutely the wrong finish. This feud should be about Jericho in a downward spiral and things not going well between Sammy and Garcia, while Starks and Andretti emerge triumphant, with Andretti getting built up as a name and Starks being elevated by beating Jericho every time, setting up for the dissolution of the JAS (they already feel like they have run their course).

JAY BRISCOE TRIBUTE VIDEO- wonderful

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Darby Allin(c) (w/Sting) vs. Buddy Matthews (w/Julia Hart)- 7.5/10
Buddy Matthews has his face painted up like Darby’s, which is supposed to be mind-games… somehow. Maybe Darby will get confused and punch the wrong one.
Aleister Black and Brody King showed up in the middle of the match via the powers of blackout transportation. Attention wrestlers who think that doing this makes them look cooler than if they just walked down the ramp: It doesn’t. It just makes you look like an idiot every time you’re about to get pinned and you don’t use these magical powers to save yourself.
Anyway, Ortiz came out and attacked them from behind with a Kendo stick. Sting helped Ortiz beat them up. They brawled to the back… and Julia Hart followed them for no real reason. Other than that, this was GREAT! Darby won cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Tony Schiavone went to the ring to interview Darby Allin. He began to ask Darby a question, but he was interrupted by Samoa Joe appearing on the TonyTron and cutting an excellent promo on Darby, saying he wanted a rematch. When Joe was done, they just played Darby’s music, with Tony’s question about Darby and Sting’s match in Japan completely ignored.

ADAM COLE VIDEO PACKAGE- good


JUNGLE BOY & HOOK vs. MATT HARDY & ETHAN PAGE (w/Stokely Hathaway & Isiah Kassidy)- 6/10
We got some pre-match stuff with Ethan Page and Stokely Hathaway being mean to Matt Hardy & Isiah Kassidy. I didn’t like the part where the production crew played Matt’s music by mistake so that Page could get upset about it and deny the fans the chance to hear Matt’s music. I just don’t see whatever little momentary heat that gets as being worth making the show look sloppy.

They did stuff. Matt was going to hit Jungle Boy with a Twist of Fate but Ethan Page demanded that Matt tag him in, and Matt did so because “his contract dictated it.” BULLSH*T! This is not some contract that was drawn up between Matt and Ethan/Stokely. This is Matt’s AEW contract that Stokely and Ethan control. Do they really expect us to believe that the contract Matt signed with Tony Khan had a clause in it dictating that if Matt’s contract were to somehow become controlled by someone else, Matt must obey that person?
Anyway, this allowed Jungle Boy to recover and catch Page in the Snare Trap for the win.

THE GUNNS & THE ACCLAIMED AT “FAMILY THERAPY”- This was stupid, but- thankfully, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I was expecting. No one came off well. The end result was Gunn Club talking themselves into a tag title shot. I can see this ending with Billy turning on the Acclaimed.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS ADAM PAGE- bad
Page wants a match with Moxley again next week so he can knock him out. Wheeler YUTA showed up to confront Page for running his mouth about someone who isn’t even medically cleared. He challenges Page to a match on Rampage. Despite having a solid point, YUTA came off like an attention-seeking interloper here, using Page running his mouth on Moxley to try to get himself a match against a bigger star.
Then, when we went back to the announcers, Excalibur declared that the Page vs. Moxley match was happening, even though they just said that Moxley wasn’t medically cleared yet.


BRYAN DANIELSON vs. BRIAN CAGE (w/Prince Nana)- 7.5/10
Right before the match, Excalibur told us that “due to his win-loss record, if Cage defeats Bryan Danielson, he’ll be the number-one contender here tonight.” The dude barely wins, but all of a sudden two wins over a Willie Mack (who has literally never won in AEW) put him in a spot where he is just one win away from a title shot, but Bryan Danielson’s already-impressive win-loss record required him to win FIVE singles matches to get a title shot. This company is so stupid. And the most frustrating part is that it was a totally irrelevant comment. Like all of these matches, no one thought there was a chance in hell of Danielson losing, so all this comment did is make the decision-makers in this company look stupid for the ridiculous way in which they determine worthiness for title shots.
They did the expected big vs. small stuff, with a little bit of Cage working on Dragon’s shoulder per MJF’s instructions. Dragon won cleanly with a roll-up.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
Cage attacked Dragon after the match. MJF came out… and the crowd cheered him like he was a babyface. When they started cheering, I actually got excited because I thought it was a member of the Blackpool Combat Club and we were finally going to have someone come out and save a stablemate in AEW.
MJF started assaulting ringside personnel and grabbed a chair. He gave the chair to Cage, who wrapped it around Bryan’s arm and ran him into the ringpost. MJF and Cage started attacking Bryan inside the ring. We got no security coming out, no referees, and still no one from the Blackpool Combat Club. That last part is particular shocking, as you might recall that they made a big deal out of attacking non-wrestlers being a red line for them that meant that they had to take action… and yet MJF shoved this poor guy much harder than he shoved Tony Schiavone, and the BCC are nowhere in sight. It’s almost like that comment was pulled out of someone’s ass by a hack booker for the exclusive purpose of justifying why they hadn’t taken issue with Jericho declaring that he would desecrate the company they loved so much until the moment when said hack booker was ready for them to get involved in the story.
MJF goes up to the top rope to Pillmanize Danielson’s arm, and only then did someone finally come out to make the save. It was Takeshita, who I only now remembered had promised to watch Danielson’s back. If you were watching his back, why weren’t you out here earlier? How can you be a pro wrestler watching another pro wrestler’s back and not be right there at Gorilla or at ringside in case of a run-in? You can’t tell me he didn’t know that this was a possibility.
Anyway, Takeshita comes out… and despite not only having a two-on-one advantage and the fact that there was no way Takeshita could have stopped MJF from Pillmanizing Dragon’s arm if MJF had just jumped, MJF ran away, because if MJF did the logical thing and just jumped and injured Bryan, it would screw up the story the booker is trying to tell. If someone doing the logical thing screws up your story, then your story sucks, and you need to go back to the drawing board.
Takeshita took out Brian Cage. The Blackpool Combat Club not coming out here to save Bryan is completely inexcusable. Actually, it’s even worse than that, as it feeds into the perception I had earlier that Wheeler YUTA doesn’t actually care about the rest of the BCC, and him sticking up for Moxley was just him using the situation to his own advantage to get himself a match against big stat Adam Page (and, as you might remember, I felt that YUTA came across the same way when he was the guy who got all righteously angry at and demanded a match with MJF to punish him for lightly shoving poor Tony Schiavone.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS BRYAN DANIELSON & DR. SAMPSON- didn’t like it
Danielson seems to think he can just ignore the doctor. If the doctor says you can’t wrestle, you can’t wrestle. He then cut a promo on MJF that had some great fire, but he didn’t really seem to understand the idea of MJF’s mask. He said that he would expose “the person behind the mask” as “a fraud,” but based on what MJF said when he cut that promo, what Bryan just said is that he would show the world that MJF really isn’t the mean, nasty, ruthless monster that he claims to be.

TONI STORM vs. RUBY SOHO-
Before the match they showed an in-set promo from Toni Storm where she said she couldn’t believe that Ruby Soho was helping the “home-grown idiots.” Yup. Out of nowhere, she suddenly hates people who made their names in AEW rather than somewhere else.
They also played an in-set promo by Ruby Soho, who did about as good of a job as it was possible to do, given how ridiculous the premise of the storyline is.

TONI STORM vs. RUBY SOHO- 6.5/10
They did stuff. Toni was a very good heel, and Ruby is always a great babyface. Toni got an advantage by faking an injury. Britt Baker came out to help Ruby win via distraction. This is Britt basically bridging the babyface-heel divide of what will be the home-grown side, which is important to do.

MJF PROMO- EXCELLENT!
He warns Takeshita to stay out of his business, or else. He then talked about what the world title meant to him, and was particularly awesome. He warned Bryan that after the physical pain will come the mental pain. I guess Brianna Danielson will be making her AEW debut soon.
Also, next week Danielson will be facing Timothy Thatcher, so that’s your Match of the Year for 2023.

They advertised “the next chapter in the Book of Hobbs” for Rampage. Who could possibly give a sh*t at this point. They haven’t touched on that in so long that I forgot it was even a thing.

JAMIE HAYTER VS. EMI SAKURA VIDEO PACKAGE- fine

MARK BRISCOE vs. JAY LETHAL- 7.75/10
Ian Riccaboni and Caprice Coleman were on commentary. This was a very hard-hitting and very Jay Briscoe-like match. The whole locker room came out on the stage afterwards.

This was a decent episode of Dynamite. MJF’s promo was the real highlight. Some of the usual frustrations weren’t as present as usual, but the wrestling wasn’t as good as usual, either.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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