BRM Reviews AEW New Year's Smash: Week 2 (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

EDDIE KINGSTON PROMO FROM EARLIER TODAY- short and sweet

EDDIE KINGSTON (The Bunny & The Butcher & The Blade) vs. PAC (w/the Lucha Bros.)- 6.25/10
Pac won clean, then locked the Brutalizer on afterwards anyway. The heels aligned with Kingston came in to stop him, but then Lance Archer came out to chase those heels away. Pac and Lance archer then yelled at each other for no discernible reason.

IF TRENT LOSES, HE BECOMES MIRO’S YOUNG-BOY FOR THIRTY DAYS: Trent (w/Orange Cassidy) vs. Miro (w/Kip Sabian & Penelope Ford)- 6/10
Miro won pretty much cleanly, which I don’t like for the following reason. I assume that the way this story will develop is that Chuck will find various ways to make Miro’s life hell while being serving as his butler. To me the babyface needs to have a code of honor, and part of that code is living up to stipulations. If Miro beats Chuck cleanly, then Chuck should be honor-bound to serve as Miro’s butler to the best of his abilities. If Miro cheats to win, though, then Chuck has a reason to not fulfill the stipulation in an honest manner because Miro didn’t win honestly, either.

DASHA INTERVIEWS MATT HARDY & PRIVATE PARTY- meh
Matt insisted on speaking first, only to say nothing of use and then tell Private Party to talk. They’ve already figured out what Matt’s game is… but they still give in and let him berate them. Also, he lied last week about third-party deals not being in the contract.

THE INNER CIRCLE’S NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS ARE…- dumb segment
Sammy calls Jericho a “tag team slut” because Jericho is now teaming with MJF instead of him. Didn’t Jericho have a tag team with Hager between the Guevara and MJF teams? Why is Sammy suddenly upset about his now when he wasn’t before?
Anyway, the crowd joins Sammy in tag-team-slut-shaming Jericho. Sammy came off like an insecure and unlikable little jerk. Jericho proposed that they have a three-way tag team match for bragging rights next week to blow off steam. It will be LAX vs. “Sammy Hager” vs. Chris Jericho & MJF…and poor Wardlow is left out. Despite this segment being about them coming out here to give their resolutions, they then ended the segment without doing so other than Hager repeatedly “saying” championships to the point where he started to become a goof.

ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWS THE DARK ORDER (MINUS TAY CONTI… BUT WITH ADAM PAGE, WHO JUST HAPPENED TO BE IN THE ROOM- bad
They were goofs. Conti and Cabana were slightly protected from this by being in the background.

DARBY ALLIN VS. TEAM TAZ VIDEO PACKAGE- good

DASHA GONZALEZ INTERVIEWS KENNY OMEGA, DON CALLIS & THE YOUNG BUCKS- meh
This started of with Dasha happily exclaiming that “the band is back together!” Wasn’t Kenny part of a group of invaders who were assaulting your colleagues for no reason last week, and then the Bucks did something that most people took as an approving gesture? Why are you so happy about this?
Kenny wants to know if they’re going to do a joint entrance but Callis suggests separate entrances. I realize that this is intended to show that Callis really doesn’t want Kenny associating with the Bucks too much, but the Bucks are douchy enough that I don’t care about an eventual feud between them because it would be yet another feud between two completely unlikable groups.

DON CALLIS CHANGES THE MATCH FROM KENNY OMEGA & THE YOUNG BUCKS TO KENNY OMEGA & THE GOOD BROTHERS- How does Callis have the power to do this? And where are the Bucks to object to it. They should be right at mouth of the entrance tunnel, right?
Oh, there they are. With Tony Khan, just standing there and watching. The Good Brothers- who don’t work here and who last week showed up uninvited and assaulted a bunch of people- jumped the guardrail and get into the ring. WHERE THE F*CK IS SECURITY?!

DANNY LIMELIGHT & THE VARISTY BLONDS vs. KENNY OMEGA, DOC GALLOWS, & KARL ANDERSON (w/Don Callis)- 4.5/10
Okay, so Callis and Omega have pulled this switcheroo on the Bucks… for what purpose, exactly? What do they game from doing this? At the end of last week’s show, the Bucks seemed to be on their side. Or at the very least neutral. What possible benefit could they gain from now antagonizing them?
It took the Good Brothers and the world champion almost ten minutes to beat these nobodies. The Bucks and Tony Khan did nothing at all, despite this clearly being against their wishes, and the fact that they essentially got double-crossed by guys who showed up last week and beat up their employees. This right here is exactly the sort of sh*t I was worried about when you told me that Cody, Omega, and the Bucks were going to be booking a wrestling promotion. It’s the Bullet Club Civil War all over again: A bunch of segments that seem really cool in isolation, but when you actually think about them together, in chronological order (you know… the exact f*cking definition of a story), they don’ actually make any sense.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Here comes Moxley to get some revenge. He gets beaten down until the Lucha Bros. come out to make the save. Pac isn’t with them because… um…?
A bunch of geeks from the locker room come out to try to pull Moxley off of Omega. I love how more people have come out to pull one AEW employee off of another than people came out to defend AEW employees from hostile invaders last week. The geeks all get beating up… but now here are the Young Bucks. Despite getting screwed over by Kenny and his pals less than fifteen minutes ago, the Bucks are out here trying to calm Moxley down and buy Kenny time to escape. This us dumb.
Then the Lucha Bros. got into the ring and attacked the Young Bucks because… um…
The Good Brothers got into the ring to brawl with everyone. More people ran in to break it up. Callis and Omega left, with Callis pulling Omega back every time Kenny seemed like he wanted to go fight.

DR. BRITT BAKER’S WAITING ROOM WITH SPECIAL GUEST CODY RHODES & ALSO SURPRISE GUEST JADE CARGILL- bad
She pulls an Oprah “look under your chair” gag on a crowd of gullible wrestlers. They’re clearly making fun of Cody, but he’s still hugging them. Cody is dressed in the ugliest green jacket I have ever seen.
Yes, Jade was a total heel here… but she does have a point that she’s been signed for weeks now and they still haven’t booked her in a match. She talks smack about Brandi and pie-faces Cody. Red Velvet stormed onto the set. I would not have been able to identify her without Excalibur’s help. Jade made fun of her height and shoved her. They had a slap-fight that was good…and then Red Velvet charged in for a brawl that was embarrassingly bad. The all-female audience then ran onto the set to pull everyone apart.
Britt then pulled up footage of the angel with herself and Rebel attacking Thunder Rosa ALMOST A MONTH AGO that hasn’t been followed up on since. Then Thunder Rosa… hacked the feed, maybe? I don’t know. All I know is that we were suddenly looking at Thunder Rosa cutting a promo on Dr. Baker in which she announced that Tony Khan has booked a match between them at Beach Break on February 3rd.

JURASSIC EXPRESS (Marko Stunt & Jungle Boy) vs. FTR (w/Tully Blanchard)- 6.25/10
FTR won after Tully got involved.

NWA WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE MATCH: Serena Deeb(c) vs. Tay Conti (w/Anna Jay)- 6/10
Deeb won clean. Not much else to say other than that Conti is very good and I’d love to see her matched up with someone who wrestles a more grapplef*ck style so she can really show off her BJJ stuff.

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Darby Allin(c) vs. Brian Cage (w/Team Taz)- 7.5/10
Taz was on commentary for this match. It had the expected dynamic of Darby being the small underdog who had to fight his way back after taking a crazy bump early on. Team Taz interfered but Sting teleported to ringside to take them out, allowing Darby to get the win cleanly.


This was a pretty dull and bad episode of Dynamite, especially for a show that had got quite a bit of hype. The booking continues to be an issue, especially where the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega are concerned.

[XIV]

Don Callis is a fucking genius.

He basically made Impact look like the superior wrestling brand. Calling Gallows and Anderson the real world champions buried Young Bucks and ultimately the AEW tag team championships AND if you were tuning in to wrestling for the first time in years and saw Two sets of Tag Team Champions, Gallows and Anderson and the Young Bucks... immediately you’d think “well, G&A would kill those two teenage girls, so that’s got to be the better promotion” and getting more people tuning into impact.

Granted, they’d tune out once they realise there Murder mysteries and shit, but absolutely brilliant to get eyes on Impact and shit on AEW all at once,

If it’s intentional, Don Callis is great, if it’s not, it’s lucky for him.