BRM Reviews the 2/8/2023 Dynamite (great!)

[Big Red Machine]

Excalibur hyping up that “all four world championships are in play” feels like false advertising. If you didn’t know the card, you’d think there were four title matches tonight.

AEW WORLD TITLE ELIMINATOR MATCH: AEW World Champion MJF vs. Konosuke Takeshita- 8/10
The crowd was 50-50 here. MJF is supposed to be the top heel. They had an excellent opener, with body parts getting worked over, etc. MJF won mostly cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
MJF attacking Takeshita with his ring was fine, but shoving the referee was bad. There was no reason to have him do a thing that should get him fined and/or suspended. This felt like it was done specifically to create a situation where Bryan Danielson got to come out and make the save, but the fact that they have both built up this MJF vs. Takeshita feud and have shown us Takeshita having Danielson’s back makes it feel more natural that MJF wouldn’t be satisfied with merely beating Takeshita, making the whole situation feel less artificial.

SAMOA JOE VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- great… until the end, which got worrying.
He put over Darby Allin, but said that Wardlow is not a worthy challenger. He claims that Wardlow has “secrets” that he will “expose.” I don’t know where this is headed, but it seems to me that either:
1. Joe is lying and will make stuff up, which feels like a very un-Samoa-Joe thing to do (by which I mean this is the sort of scheme that Miz would do; not the sort of scheme that a heel Samoa Joe would do).
Or
2. Joe is telling the truth, and they will try to add some backstory to Wardlow, which, based on how everything else with Wardlow’s AEW run since they started his split with MJF has gone, it will be full of plot-holes.

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE ELIMINATOR MATCH: AEW Women’s World Champion Jamie Hayter (w/Britt Baker & Rebel) vs. The Bunny (w/The Butcher & The Blade, Penelope Ford, & Kip Sabian)- 6.5/10
Hayter won cleanly.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS TONI STORM & SARAYA- dull
They say that everyone in AEW is a loser. Then they call over the librarian Leva Bates, who is apparently still employed. She’s an idiot, so she goes over to them and gets jumped, then they spray-painted an L on her back. Shouldn’t they be doing this with someone who didn’t have a well-remembered run in WWE?

Tony Schiavone, the voice of WCW throughout the entire nWo era, can’t believe that people are coming into a company, insulting the home-grown stars, beating them up backstage, and spray-painting on them. He would later say that it was “unheard of” for someone to run a gauntlet the way Ricky Starks is doing tonight. What, exactly, does he add to the commentary team other than stupidity and double-standards?

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS MJF- TREMENDOUS PROMO!
This is a heel “this is who I am” promo if I have ever heard one.

IF RICKY STARKS SURVIVES THE GAUNTLET HE GETS A MATCH AGAINST CHRIS JERICHO: Ricky Starks vs. Angelo Paker, then Matt Menard, then Daniel Garcia- no rating, bad segment
Starks ran through 2.0 in a matter of minutes. Starks and Garcia wrestled for a bit. They just happened to wind up on the outside when Starks speared Garcia off the apron… and Starks just happened to stumble into a certain corner where a masked “fan” hit him with a Judas Effect, allowing Garcia to get him back into the ring and pin him. Meanwhile, said “fan” has hopped the guardrail. No security has come to stop him, even though they should all be rushing out already because he attacked a wrestler. Said fan then unmasked as Jericho, which everyone saw coming.
This was stupid. First of all, I’ve already seen Starks beat Jericho. They haven’t done much to make me feel like I need to see Starks beat Jericho again. But even if they had, I really don’t care because I’m sure they’ll just find some other way to get this match at the PPV, so this feels like a waste of time. Then, of course, there is the fact that this whole plan was only able to work because Starks happened to stumble into the same corner of the ring where Jericho was seated. It’s just so stupid. If you absolutely must have Jericho screw Starks in this sort of thing, just have him run in like a normal person.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS BILLY GUNN & THE ACCLAIMED- fine
Billy says that they all came to a decision that Billy Gunn will stay in the back tonight. I’m sure he’ll come out anyway and betray the Acclaimed, but at least they look a little smarter.

RENEE PAQUETTE’S ATTEMPT TO INTERVIEW BRYAN DANIELSON IS INTERRUPTED BY SOMEONE LOCKING THEM (& TAKESHITA) IN THE TRAINER’S ROOM- dumb
It turns out that MJF orchestrated it (and Preston Vance and Jose the Assistant carried it out), and after Rush’s entrance, he demands that Aubrey start the match and then count Danielson out. AEW Management knows what’s happening. Why wouldn’t they just shift the card around so that they can unlock the door?
But no. It’s in the AEW rulebook, and apparently this is the one rule that a referee can’t just ignore at his or her own discretion. And, of course, this was all done so that Danielson would have no choice but to ram the door open using his injured shoulder, so now he’s at a disadvantage.
This would have been an extremely clever angle in a promotion with a heel authority figure. Maybe it could even work in a promotion where they were REAL sticklers for the rules, like the very early days of EVOLVE. But AEW is neither of those things.
So this was a waste of time… unless you’re a real fan of Aubrey Edwards, in which case you were probably ecstatic to see her standing up to MJF by counting slowly… but why the f*ck is AEW wasting time on spots whose purpose is to shine up the referee? That’s who the fans were chanting for here. Not Dragon.

IF BRYAN DANIELSON WINS, HE GETS A WORLD TITLE SHOT IN AN IRONMAN MATCH AT REVOLUTION 2023: Bryan Danielson vs. Rush- 8.5/10
MJF joined the commentary team for this match. Rush did Rush stuff to Danielson on the outside, while Aubrey Edwards didn’t count them out. So she can arbitrarily ignore the count-out rule now, but couldn’t do so before?
Danielson bled everywhere. When he got belly-to-bellied off the apron, blood splashed right on the camera lens. Zandig is soooo jealous.
Rush has apparently never lost a singles match in AEW. The first time we heard about this was in the middle of this match. Way to waste Rush’s first loss on a spot where the guy who beats him won’t get elevated by it. Two weeks ago, they pushed that if Brian Cage beat Danielson, he might get a title shot. That idea was never brought up for the guy who hasn’t yet lost a singles match in AEW.
They hit each other very hard. Dragon won cleanly.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
MJF assaulted Danielson and locked him in Salt of the Earth. Security came out to try to pull him off. Why don’t they come out every other time? And, of course, Danielson’s Blackpool Combat Club buddies aren’t coming out this time. MJF punched a security guard, and Excalibur said that he would likely be fined for this. Where was all of this talk of fines for punching security guards last week when Wardlow did it?

TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS SOME IMPRACTICAL JOKERS- bad
They are here to play a practical joke on Chris Jericho, by which they mean they stole his baseball bat. That’s not a practical joke. That’s just theft. I mean really! What is the difference between what they have done here and Team TNA stealing that celebrity guy’s Golden Globe?

AEW WORLD TRIOS TITLE MATCH: The Elite(c) (w/Brandon Cutler & Michael Nakazawa) vs. A.R. Fox & Top Flight- 7.75/10
Don Callis was on commentary for this match. The wrestlers did lots of flips and dives. No one thought there was a snowball’s chance of the Elite losing, so this was mostly just waiting for the flips and dives to finish. Give me a reason to care who wins and who loses!

HOOK VIDEO PACKAGE- fine

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS STOKELY HATHAWAY- meh
He denies that Matt Hardy and Ethan Page have been arguing. He says that everything going wrong for the Firm is Hook’s fault. Hook just happened to be walking by at this moment. Stokely tried to suck up to hm, but Hook grabbed him and said something to him that was too soft for me to hear.

They announced some random matches for Rampage… and also a promo by Mark Briscoe. Now you have my attention.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Acclaimed(c) vs. Gunn Club- 7/10
They had a pretty good match for a while. The Gunns looked more vicious than I gave them credit for being. Of course there was a ref bump and Billy came out… and, shockingly, he proved his loyalty to the Acclaimed. The Acclaimed got several visual pinfalls, but the Gunns managed to cheat to win anyway.
I REALLY don’t like this title change. Gunn Club do not come off like main eventers at all. They barely come off like midcarders.


This was a great episode of Dynamite. The fact that was mostly wrestling helped, as it left less time for annoying plot holes, but other than the silly Danielson angle, they were pretty tight this week. And, of course, there was that tremendous MJF promo. That being said, I think some follow-up from both Darby Allin and Wardlow was necessary, and we didn’t get any.