BRM Reviews the 6/10/2020 Dynamite

All AEW Related Reviews and Discussions
Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews the 6/10/2020 Dynamite

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 11th, '20, 21:45

THE BUTCHER & THE BLADE vs. FTR- 7.25/10
So FTR are not kayfabe under contract. Is showing up in a car just part of their entrance, or is this supposed to be a “you’re not under contract and thus can’t be in the locker room” thing? If it’s the latter, that’s kind of douchy on AEW’s part, especially when all of the jobbers who aren’t under contract get to use the dressing room.
As presented, this was a great match for the time it got (a little under ten and a half minutes), but it never should have been allowed to go as long as it did. You’re trying to establish FTR as a top team! They should not be having an even, back-and-forth match with the lowest team on the heel tag team totem pole!
I thought showing the various big-name managers (minus Taz) scouting FTR from the crowd was an EXCELLENT excuse to show us Spears not sitting with Tully, and staring a hole through his back. I can almost imagine Tully having lectured Spears to sit there and watch how the serious FTR handled business, and Spears seething and resenting being lectured to. That being said, showing us a bunch of managers only served to emphasize The Bunny’s absence to us, and the announcers’ complete and total lack of comment on it was inexcusable.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Oh. That’s what happened to Scott Dawson’s beard. Matt Jackson stole it.
Tony Schiavone is interviewing FTR when the Young Bucks come out and interrupt them. The congratulate them on having had a “great match.” How about you congratulate them on WINNING THEIR MATCH instead?
They say they want to thank FTR for saving them two weeks ago, but then proceed to be really douchy. Just when I was waiting for FTR to punch their teeth out, they got attacked from behind by The Butcher instead. He knocked down both Bucks with a horrendously weak-looking double-clothesline. FTR saved the Bucks again but jumped from behind by Kip Sabian & Jimmy Havoc coming out of the crowd. The Bucks got involved, and Kenny Omega & Adam Page came out as well. The babyfaces cleared the ring, and then jawed with each other until the commercial intro music started playing.
This was a bad segment. It started off with the Bucks being jerks for no real reason, continued with a painfully weak attack from a big heel, and turned into a painfully forced schmoz.

DASHA GONZALEZ INTERVIEWS THE NATURAL NIGHTMARES, BRANDI RHODES… & ALLIE- TERRIBLE!
They’re getting a tag title shot next week. Fun fact: Did you know that the Natural Nightmares haves yet to lose a match as a duo? I didn’t until I went to check their record to see if there was any possible explanation for them getting a tag title match. So you can’t say they don’t deserve a title shot (although you can argue that those wins over so many jobbers shouldn’t really count for much), but what you can do is ask why this hasn’t been mentioned on Dynamite AT ALL.
Dasha asks them for comment on this, but Brandi first demands to know why Allie is here.
Ah, dammit. That’s what I get for being generous and assuming I knew how Brandi’s sentence was going to end. You see, I paused it right after Brandi demanded to know “what the hell is she doing” and figured that the last word would be “here.” Nope. It turns out that the thing bothering Brandi is that Allie is wearing a Rhodes Family jacket.
Q.T. gave her a jacket because they’re dating now. Um… okay. I guess that settles that then. Don’t you feel like an asshole, Brandi?
Dustin then begins to lecture Q.T., asking him if he understands “what is at stake here.” They have a title shot next week against two of the best in the world, and even one moment of distraction could cost them, so Q.T. needs to get “this” (i.e. Allie) out of his system, and Allie won’t be allowed at ringside with them next week.
What a pair of f*cking assholes Brandi and Dustin are!
1. We have not seen ANY EVIDENCE that Allie has caused Q.T. to become distracted during matches, or even not during matches, so why are they jumping down his throat about this? Stop being dicks and stop treating him like a child.
2. Dustin, if you want to avoid distractions in your tag title match, the person you should keep in the back isn’t Allie; it’s Brandi! She’s the one who seems incapable of managing an important match without getting bumped into by someone!
3. Oh my G-d how pathetically catty is Brandi?! There are good reasons to question Allie’s presence here and even her relationship with Q.T., not the least of which is that when we last saw her she was managing a pair of heels who were shown to be in the employ of Rhodes Family arch-nemesis MJF. The natural (no pun intended) reaction for Brandi to have here is “how do you know you can trust her?” Instead, we got “OMG how dare you give her our special club t-shirt when she’s not even in the club!”

The only person so far to show any mistrust of Allie is Tony Schiavone, and no one has addressed her sudden split from The Butcher & The Blade.

HIKARU SHIDA & KRIS STATLANDER vs. NYLA ROSE & PENELOPE FORD (w/Kip Sabian)- 6.5/10
This was a fine way to immediately set up a new #1 contender, but it would have been A LOT better if the referee hadn’t clearly seen Sabian grabbing Shida’s leg and didn’t do anything about it.
Jericho has been such a f*cking clown on commentary and hasn’t made one intelligent contribution.

DARBY ALLIN VIDEO- meh
Darby is resilient. We already knew that. This felt like an excuse to get Tony Hawk on TV, the effect of which was completely undone by the fact that they didn’t give him a graphic, so those of us who vaguely remember what he looked like twenty years ago and have probably never seen him without a helmet on could know who this old dork was.

DR. BRITT BAKER, DMD VIDEO- meh
This was nothing we haven’t seen in all of the other Britt Baker videos. I really hope she’s going to be back soon enough to actually feud with Big Swole, because Swole has delivered the few times they have given her the ball, so it’d be nice to see her given some consistent spotlight.

BEST FRIENDS & ORANGE CASSIDY vs. THE INNER CIRCLE (Jake Hager, Santana, & Ortiz)- 6.5/10
The Inner Circle do a job for the Goof Troop.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
The Inner Circle beat Best Friends and Orange Cassidy to a pulp (pun very much intended that time). There were about fifteen babyfaces in the crowd who just stood around watching. Jericho had a bag supposedly containing 20lbs of oranges, and he hit OC in the head with it. That would maybe be a good angle, except that when our vicious group has a f*cking BASEBALL BAT handy and chooses to hit someone with a sack of fruit instead, it comes off like them being merciful and not vicious.

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS MJF AND ALSO BILLY GUNN IS THERE- good
MJF makes a solid point that him being undefeated for a year and never getting a title shot can only be explained by the office being biased against him… and when the office is made up of most of our top babyfaces, that’s really not a good look.
MJF began to bury everyone, at which point Billy Gunn spoke up, prompting MJF to bury Austin. They had a confrontation, and MJF quickly summoned Wardlow to protect him.

SAMMY GUEVARA vs. COLT CABANA- 6.75/10
Jericho’s not on commentary anymore. YAY!
The match was good for what it was. The important part was Cabana slipping while trying to hit a Reverse Chicago Skyline, allowing Guevara to pick up the win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT #1- good
The whole Dark Order came out so that Brodie Lee could publicly help Cabana up. J.R. made sure that everyone understood the symbolism in a way that would make Vince proud.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT #2- bad
Sammy started to cut a promo but was interrupted by Matt Hardy coming out. Matt was totally normal and tried to tell Sammy that he has to leave Chris Jericho in order to advance his career. Why? We haven’t seen anything even resembling evidence that Jericho is holding back Sammy or any other member of the Inner Circle.
Sammy said “matter of fact” ad we got the “Matt Hardy Facts” faux YouTube page graphic. Then, when Sammy said “broken,” Matt turned into Broken Matt Hardy. So Matt Hardys’ gimmick is that he switches gimmicks every time he hears a triggering word? That’s f*cking stupid.

JOEY JANELA VIDEO PACKAGE- odd
He laments having completely lost direction over the past few months. Then he randomly sees Sonny Kiss driving by and accepts Sonny’s offer for a ride. Sure. We’ll see where this goes, I guess, but on its own, it took quite the weird transition from a video package into a vignette.

Among other matches, we’re getting Best Friends vs. Le Sex Gods next week, with Best Friends’ title shot on the line. Why do they have to put their title shot on the line? Later on, it was revealed that they volunteered to do so. I think the idea is supposed to be that they wanted to get their hands on Jericho so bad that they offered to do so, but it’s such a natural match to book that one has to wonder why Tony Kahn (Tony’s name in particular was mentioned in connection to this) wouldn’t just book the match anyway?

JON MOXLEY FINALLY SHOWS UP TO WORK SO HE CAN CUT A PROMO- very good
He started to cut a good promo. Taz showed up and talked some trash to distract Moxley so Cage could jump from behind. They had a brawl that Cage won. This was a very good angle. Taz seems to have lost control of Cage.

CODY RHODES VS. MARQ QUEN VIDEO PACKAGE- bad
95% of this was focused on Cody. All of his talk of using this open challenge to prove that he’s the best is undermined by the fact that he is facing such a pathetically unworthy challenger (and one with an injured ankle, no less).

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Cody Rhodes(c) (w/Arn Anderson) vs. Marq Quen- 7.5/10
Matt Hardy came out with Private Party. He no longer seemed to be Broken, so I guess he heard someone say the secret codeword to turn him back normal.
Excalibur told us that anyone is allowed to challenge for the TNT Title, as long as they’re approved by the matchmaker… so that’s even more fuel on the “MJF is getting screwed” fire.

Cody focused on Quen’s injured ankle and won clean via submission. Quen was fine as a singles wrestler, but didn’t stand out much, either.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Jake Hager came out and feinted towards Cody but attacked Arn instead. He brawled with Cody until Matt Hardy & Private Party came out to make the save with chairs. LAX and Sammy Guevara then came out to back Hager and we had a brawl that referees came out to try to break up. Quen forgot to sell his ankle during the schmoz. Cody offered Hager a title shot at FyterFest. Is this the open challenge championship belt that it has already been announced will be on the line next week? Why wait? Don’t you want to get revenge for Hager’s heinous attack on your coach, Cody?

This was a meh episode of AEW. The wrestling was largely good, although with the caveat that a lot of matches got more time and were more competitive than they should have been, or had some other problem like Kip Sabian’s interference being clearly seen by the referee. The Moxley vs. Cage feud continues to be the highlight of the show. The lack of seriousness and other storyline issues are still a major problem, and with Jericho’s performance on commentary tonight, the Inner Circle feel more like cartoons than ever before. Only Hager doesn’t feel like a goof.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

User avatar
XIV
Posts: 1802
Joined: Aug 19th, '13, 11:38

Re: BRM Reviews the 6/10/2020 Dynamite

Post by XIV » Jun 12th, '20, 01:23

I can't stand this Matt Hardy changing gimmick thing. This is NOT the "sports based presentation" Tony Khan offered us when opening AEW. It's WWE Lite.

If he came out each week with a different gimmick, that's one thing, it's foley-esque. But to do it instantaneous makes a mockery of what AEW was supposedly set up to be. It was their biggest tag line! They insinuated that they were going to take wrestling seriously, it was going to herald back to Tony Khan's love of mid-south wrestling and wins and losses would matter.

They've not delivered this. Because if it did, MJF should be in the World Title picture (seeing as he hasn't lost any singles matches, certainly in 2020) and The Young Bucks would have been nowhere near the Tag Team Title picture seeing as they've done a job for almost every tag team available.

It's not what they offered. It's becoming clearer as weeks go on.

I dislike The Young Bucks, I have never understood the hype behind them, and they weren't even that big in Japan... BUT they should absolutely have been the first AEW Tag Team Champions. They were the most over team in the division and should have been selfish for the good of the company.

Imagine Young Bucks being tag team champions, not being beaten often and they've gotten 9 months in as Tag Team Champions, there's no real threat in AEW to the belts, then here comes FTR, and holy fuck, they want the Bucks and they want the tag team championship. But then they do the debut where they turn their backs and take out the other team, and now FTR are ignoring the Bucks, why? FTR are getting wins all over the place while the Bucks get hot that FTR are blatantly igoring them, finally the Bucks come out and say "FTR, we've got to sort this right now, I know you want us, I know you want these [Titles] let's do it at [Casino Related PPV]" FTR finally come out and face the Bucks dead in their eyes and tell them it's on.

The place blows, the PPV sells and you've got a tag team main event that people have wanted since FTR first became a thing.

Then if I'm Khan, I'm signing Gallows and Anderson and I'm saying "wait". Then FTR beat the Bucks, gain the belts and Gallows and Anderson debut and stare down FTR.

The Bucks do something valuable and useful, FTR are established as the top team in AEW, and here comes another tag team with household names to bolster that division. Everyone gets over.
Have A Nice Day!

User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

Re: BRM Reviews the 6/10/2020 Dynamite

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 12th, '20, 10:49

XIV wrote: Jun 12th, '20, 01:23 I can't stand this Matt Hardy changing gimmick thing. This is NOT the "sports based presentation" Tony Khan offered us when opening AEW. It's WWE Lite.

If he came out each week with a different gimmick, that's one thing, it's foley-esque. But to do it instantaneous makes a mockery of what AEW was supposedly set up to be. It was their biggest tag line! They insinuated that they were going to take wrestling seriously, it was going to herald back to Tony Khan's love of mid-south wrestling and wins and losses would matter.

They've not delivered this. Because if it did, MJF should be in the World Title picture (seeing as he hasn't lost any singles matches, certainly in 2020) and The Young Bucks would have been nowhere near the Tag Team Title picture seeing as they've done a job for almost every tag team available. It's not what they offered. It's becoming clearer as weeks go on.




This has been a big thing for me as well. I think it's clear by now that AEW is suffering- and likely has since the beginning- from a "too many cooks in the kitchen" problem. The idea of having different little booking teams for each division (Cody and Kahn for male singles, Bucks for tag teams, and Kenny and Brandi for the women) sounded good, but without a big unifying vision for what the product should be, you wind up with an incoherent mess that switches back and forth between silly and serious depending on who is in charge of each segment. The records matter in some divisions and some stories, but not anywhere near as much in others.

When Cody promised us that we wouldn't have to watch Dark or BTE to understand the storylines on Dynamite, did he even ask the others first? And if he did and they agreed, then why hasn't Cody or Tony taken them to task for it? When Tony mentioned the records, did he run it by the others first? And if so, and they said yes, why haven't they been taken to task for ignoring them? Tony Kahn is supposedly a "detail guy," and yet so many of these segments (and Cody's or those he is feuding with in particular) seem to have glaring detail problems. Is Tony bringing this up and being overruled, or is he just not actually very good at this thing Meltzer has told us he is good at?

Their cache with certain groups of fans (not to mention certain West Coast newsletter writers) has allowed them to create a lot of buzz with whatever they do that has managed to mask these deficiencies, but there will come a day when the grandiose ideas and new bring-ins dry up, and then their problems will be laid bare to those who were taken in by the hype.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests