BRM Reviews the 5/28/2021 Dynamite

[Big Red Machine]

They’ve moved the hard-cam, which I assume was done to show the fans. I didn’t like it, because they didn’t seem able to get the whole ring in the shot. It’s a pet peeve of mine. Also, the ring looked smaller.

DARBY ALLIN (w/Sting) vs. CEZAR BONONI (w/Ryan Nemeth Peter Avalon, & J.D. Drake)- 4/10
Bononi and his jobber heel friends are now called “the Wingmen.” Darby’s ribs were all taped up. Darby overcame this handicap to win a match that was great for the time it got.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- didn’t like it
Darby called out Ethan Page & Scorpio Sky to come fight right now. They came out onto the stage but said that they weren’t going to fight for free. If that’s the best reason you can come up with for why your heel doesn’t want to come fight an already-injured babyface who they have a match against in a few days, just don’t do the segment. They might as well be saying “we’re not going to fight you right now because that’s not what the script says.”
Speaking of people doing things seemingly only because that’s the what’s in the script, the Wingmen all decided to attack Sting and Darby from behind. Once Sting and Darby were down, Page and Sky decided to come join in on the beat-down. Sky got a chair, but the Dark Order came out to make the save because… um… because they’re wrestling Sky and Page tonight, I guess?

Ross clarified that it was six years since Sting had been in a “sanctioned match.” I’m pretty sure the Sting & Darby vs. Team Taz match was sanctioned.

CODY RHODES VS. ANTHONY OGOGO WEIGH-IN- boring and self-indulgent
Nothing happened… but hey! Cody got to be introduced with his dad’s nickname while the crowd chanted “USA! USA! USA!” It must be really nice to be able to waste other people’s time and money to act out your eight-year-old self’s fantasies on national television. I’m sure Cody will be masturbating to this footage later.

STADIUM STAMPEDE VIDEO PACKAGE- meh

WILL HOBBS AND CHRISTIAN CAGE ARE BRAWLING BACKSTAGE- good
This was a good little brawl. Christian got the advantage with a stanchion shot to the ribs, which I assume Taz will complain about.

ADAM PAGE vs. JOEY JANELA (w/Sonny Kiss)- 6.75/10
Taz was on commentary for this match.
Apparently on Dark, Joey Janela is in the middle of turning on Sonny Kiss via rather obvious excuses for not helping him, but Sonny doesn’t see through it. That doesn’t make Sonny look very good.
Page won a solid match cleanly. He also bled A LOT.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Taz tried to pull his same trap from last week but Page grabbed a mic and talked Brian Cage into both calling the trap off and ordering his compatriots not to interfere in their PPV match.


EDDIE KINGSTON & JON MOXLEY PROMO- They’ve still got the Bucks’ shoes. Just as Moxley said “it’s time to get serious,” TNT cut to a commercial for Wipeout. Oops.

EDDIE KINGSTON & JON MOXLEY PROMO FOR REAL THIS TIME- very good
Kingston was wearing a TNA LAX shirt. This greatly amused me. Not because it’s an AEW guy wearing a TNA shirt, but because Kingston is Puerto Rican, and I have distinct memories of LAX beating up Willie Urbina (who will cost himself his job within the hour) for being Puerto Rican and not Mexican.

WORLD TITLE MATCH HYPE SEGMENT- bad
Tony Schiavone was in the ring of what was supposed to be Orange Cassidy announcing whether he would accept Kenny Omega’s offer to defer his title shot, but instead Pac came out, shooed Tony away, and cut a promo. Orange was nowhere to be found, because he doesn’t care about making his announcement.
Don Callis appeared on the KhanTron to distract Pac but Pac saw the trap coming and started to beat up Omega. The Good Brothers came out to help Kenny, but Lucha Bros. came out to fight them off. Unfortunately for Pac, the damage was done and Kenny was able to get the advantage on him. Fortunately for Pac, when Kenny got him up for the One-Winged Angel, Orange Cassidy randomly decided that he cares now and came out, and even more fortunately, Kenny was a dumbass and was distracted by this and put Pac down to confront someone who hadn’t even come out onto the stage yet instead of hitting Pac with devastating finisher maneuver.
OC handed Kenny an envelope. Someone in AEW apparently thought it would be funny to have OC screw up spelling Kenny’s name the first time and have it crossed out. Yes, really. One of the top contenders to the AEW World Title can’t spell a name that most first-graders have no trouble spelling.
The envelope contained ripped-up paper. Kenny was understandably puzzled for a few moments, and this gave OC- the supposed babyface- the opportunity to hit him with a sucker-punch. OC went to pick the title belt up but Pac attacked him. OC countered a powerbomb and hit another Superman Punch. This was all rather stupid and made Pac feel even more marginalized than he did last week.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH JADE CARGILL IS INTERRUPTED BY MATT HARDY AND ALSO THEFEEK FROM THE OTHER WEEKS- bad
Matt tried to recruit Jade, but apparent she has signed with the other geek. The reason she chose to sign with him is apparently because he offered her a deal where he only gets paid if she wins.
This doesn’t work for me because such a deal doesn’t feel like it fits the Jade Cargill character at all. Jade’s defining trait has been confidence to the point of arguably being arrogant. The reason I say “arguably” is that, so far, Jade has actually backed up everything she has said. She’s undefeated… and she hasn’t needed any help to do it.
A manager who only gets paid when the charge wins is essentially the heel asking the manager to cheat for him/her, and that isn’t something Jade should feel that she would ever need at this point. We’re supposed to not like Matt because he’s a leech, but I don’t understand how Jade doesn’t see this guy the same way. So what if he only gets paid when she wins. His payments for those wins are money of out Jade’s pocket that it doesn’t seem like she would think she needs help getting the wins to earn.
Also, outside of kayfabe, why are we giving Jade a manager? She’s a great talker on her own!

KILYNN KING vs. JADE CARGILL (w/Mark Sterling)- fine semi-squash

LANCE ARCHER & JAKE ROBERTS PROMO- fine

AEW TNT TITLE MATCH: Miro(c) vs. Dante Martin- squash
How did Dante Martin wind up with a title shot? Oh. He’s beaten a bunch of other nobodies on Dark. And like everyone else who suddenly gets a title shot as a result of a winning streak on Dark that no one ever brought up until this moment, he gets his ass kicked, proving that wins on Dark are not to be taken as any sign credibility.
They found one or two things for Dante to do to get some shine, but Miro dominated the vast majority of the match and didn’t event get pinned for more than a one-count.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- AWESOME!
Jake and Archer came out and Jake cut a great promo (though I suspect that wasn’t really Bulgarian he was speaking, and thus a little insensitive to speak gibberish and call it someone else’s language). Miro cut a typically great Miro promo, calling Jake and “old fart” and goading Archer on. Jake finally let Archer go, and Miro got this BRILLIANT momentary of fear on his face before reaching down and grabbing his title belt to use as a weapon. Archer avoided the belt shot and went for a chkeslam but Miro slipped free. Archer hit Miro with a big boot and then a herd of referees got between them to break it up.

CELEBRATION OF HIKARU SHIDA’S TITLE REIGN REACHING THE ONE-YEAR MARK- meh
They gave her a new title belt. Promotions seem to LOVE designing new title belts to present to their champions, but it really doesn’t do anything for me. I’d rather the one design stay around for years and years and become iconic.
In this case, I think the real reason AEW did this was to try to make people doubt the conclusion that most viewers seem to have reached about the outcome of Sunday’s title match, with the logic being “fans will think ‘they wouldn’t spend the money to give her a new belt if they were going to have her lose the title in a few days,’” but I think a lot of the audience is aware of that trick by this point.
I was a little skeptical of the idea of this segment when it was announced last week, but I actually like it. If Shida retains then it won’t have mattered much, but won’t seem silly to celebrate a milestone in reign, either. If Shida loses, having done this for the expressed purpose of celebrating her reaching the one-year mark will make the fact that Shida hit this milestone a little more memorable to fans. Three years from now, we’ll remember how long Shida’s reign was because we have memories of her getting celebrated for having been the champion for a year (as opposed to having to try to remember which month she won the title in and then which month she lost it).
We were all expecting Britt Baker to interrupt this, so I appreciated that they didn’t go too long before that happened. Britt came out and cut a very good promo, although comparing herself to Steven Austin was several bridges too far. I guess you could say “well, she’s a heel,” but the fans apparently didn’t get the memo, as they cheered everything she said.

SCORPIO SKY & ETHAN PAGE vs. THE DARK ORDER (Evil Uno & Stu Grayson)- 6.25/10
Page and Sky won clean.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- goofy
Ethan Page started to cut a promo but he was interrupted by Darby Allin, who was followed by a parade of men in Sting t-shirts and very bad Sting masks. These looked nowhere near as good as the ones WCW, TNA, and WWE have sold.
Darby attacked Page while the Sting impersonators were sporting and only attacked Sky one at a time. When he got to about the fifth one, the sky no-sold his punch, then took off his mask to reveal it was the real Sting, at which point Sky ran away in fear. If Sting could just no-sell Sky’s punch, what was the point of having the first five guys there? Did our babyfaces really recruit people and tell them to let the heel beat them up just so Sting could do a dramatic reveal?

CLOSING SEGMENT- meh
The Inner Circle came out and talked. Also Eric Bischoff talked. Eventually the Pinnacle took over the Tron and revealed that they were at the Stadium and were beating up Jericho’s buddy Dean Malenko (and here I will give AEW a little credit for displaying the Jericho/Malenko friendship on TV last week before doing this). The Inner Circle rushed to the stadium to save Dean but it was an ambush and they got beaten up.
This didn’t work for me. It felt a little too on the nose “THIS IS THE GO-HOME SEGMENT FOR STADIUM STAMPEDE!” That might seem like an unfair criticism, so I hope I can do a good job of articulating exactly what it was that bothered me and explain why I don’t think it’s unfair.
The first thing that bothered me was the heels taking over the Tron. In the earlier segment where Don Callis appeared on the Tron to interrupt Pac, I can envision Callis running to the control room or the interview set or somewhere else where he knows he can find a cameraman and someone who can get in contact with the director (or Tony Khan) and saying “put me up on the Tron. I want to talk to him.” Here, the Pinnacle are far away, in a place that doesn’t usually have AEW cameras up and running, and they’re in the process of assaulting someone. Add that to the way it was shot where it feels like the camera is cooperating with MJF to set up this dramatic reveal instead of focusing on the person who was just beaten up, and it made the whole thing feel manufactured.
The other thing that bothered me was the setting. Why did they do this in the stadium instead of backstage? At this point I’m sure you’re saying “Because they’re building up a Stadium Stampede match. Duh!” but that’s not a good kayfabe answer. Doing this in the stadium made it feel too much like the heels’ goal was to do an angle to build up the PPV match than to get the advantage on the babyfaces.



Anyway, this was a decent episode of Dynamite. It was a dedicated go-home show, and the various go-home angles were the feud were a mixed bag.