BRM Reviews the 4/5/2023 Dynamite (bad)

[Big Red Machine]

JUICE ROBINSON vs. RICKY STARKS- no rating, okay segment
As soon as Starks got to the ring, Jay White’s music hit and he came down the ramp and attacked Starks. They made sure to bump the referee before this happened, which is the sort of thing that actively annoys me because of all of the situations that they should bump (or distract) the ref in and they don’t… but now that they don’t need to (the match hasn’t started yet), for some reason they think that it is imperative to do so.
No one came out to help Ricky. That Action Andretti sure is a sh*tty friend, isn’t he?
We don’t get our advertised match that they have built up for weeks. The bait-and-switch doesn’t bug me because it is in service to the greater story rather than just stalling, and because we got a big thing in place of the match. That being said, if you’re going to do this, at least beat Starks down to the point where I can believe that he won’t be ready to go by the end of the night.
The big news here is obviously Jay White’s debut. The win of getting him when people expected him to go to WWE is good for AEW (especially if they’re going to lose FTR at the end of the night), though with him and Adam Cole coming in/back so close together, AEW’s past track record of these situations has me worried that this will wind up being to both of their detriments, and staggering them a month apart will turn out to have been a better idea.
I’m not as high on Jay White as most people are, but I fully admit that that’s because I have rarely seen him work anything other than the New Japan style, which I have many foibles with (I won’t get into them here, but you can check out pretty much any NJPW review of mine if you want to know what they are).
The thing that has me most wary at this point, though, is this alliance with Juice Robinson. And it’s not just a “BRM thinks Juice is a clown and wants him to disappear” thing. It’s a Bullet Club thing. It has been ELEVEN YEARS at this point. That’s almost twice as long as the nWo lasted, and even there the nWo wasn’t around continuously. Bullet Club has been. I want to see Jay White do something that feels new and fresh. Palling around with Juice Robinson is the opposite of that.

Which idiot thought it was a good idea to use the space on the front of the announcers’ desk to advertise the time and channel of the show we’re already watching? If you want to use that space to advertise something, how about the date of the next PPV?

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS JERICHO IS INTERRUPTED BY KEITH LEE- mostly good
Schiavone asked Jericho why he came to ringside after last week’s Adam Cole vs. Daniel Garcia match. I thought it was pretty obvious that he was checking on his protégé’s health. Instead, Jericho was apparently offended that 1) Britt Baker came out to celebrate with Cole and 2) streamers dropped from the ceiling, and that both of these things happened while Daniel Garcia was still out in the ring. Jericho claims that he was putting a stop to Cole’s disrespectful excessive celebrating. Whatever.
Keith Lee just happened to be walking by. Hopefully he was on his way to get some Just for Men because he’s only thirty-eight, but he looked like world’s largest sixty-year-old. He was still able to intimidate Jericho, though, and the way they had him get more in Jericho’s face and had Jericho lean back as he kept doing so was brilliant. Lee respects Adam Cole from their past wars, so he has challenged Jericho to a match next week. I assume that match will see Swerve Strickland’s next diabolical plan to eliminate Lee take place.

AEW WORLD TRIOS TITLE MATCH: House of Black(c) (w/Julia Hart) vs. Best Friends & Orange Cassidy- 6.75/10
These guys are getting a title shot because the champions beat two of them up on Rampage. Yes, really. But that also makes this a grudge match… so of course AEW decided to preface it with the “comedy” of Trent’s mom driving them to the building (just barely on time for their match, might I add) in her minivan.
The announcers pushed that the House of Black did what they did “in an effort to draw out Orange Cassidy.” WHY? It can’t be to try to get OC to give one of them a title shot, because we’ve seen over and over that all you have to do is ask him and he’ll give you one (you know… exactly like what happened with Buddy Matthews back in January?).
Anyway, these guys are 1-0 in trios matches this year, and thus they are getting a world trios title shot. Their graphic also told us that Orange Cassidy is on a seventeen-match singles winning streak. So a one win and getting beaten up gets the trio a title shot, but seventeen wins in a row doesn’t earn OC an AEW World Title shot?

OC did his dumb little kicks, and Malakai Black responded by simply kicking him in the head and seemingly knocking him out. That’s what should happen every single time.
They showed us Anna Jay watching backstage because she is feuding with Julia Hart. This would have been fine, except that the camera was not on Julia when they cut to backstage to show us Anna Jay watching the monitor, but the entire time the camera was on Anna, the camera on the monitor was on Julia (even though Trent was about to jump off the top rope when we cut away), and then, when we cut back to the ring, the camera was no longer on Julia. It made the whole thing feel painfully orchestrated. They might as well have run crawler on the bottom of the screen telling us that the booker is having Anna Jay is feud with Julia Hart, but it won’t physically involve any other members of the House of Black.
The House of Black won a match full of spots which no one thought they would lose. Despite the announcers pushing the idea that they had been attempting to “draw out” Orange Cassidy for this match, they did nothing of any sort after the match that would imply that they had an interest in him at all.

CHRISTIAN CAGE BRINGS BACK LUCHASAURUS- meh
They’re doing a thing where Christian isn’t talking. They had a pretty cool visual effect here. If, like me, you were lucky enough to have the 1993 TNG Playmates Transporter toy as a kid, it was the same effect, but with no sound effects and a full-sized person.
The thing that bugged me, though, was the whole concept of “bringing back Luchasaurus.” Where has he been that he needs to be “brought back?” It feels like the reason he wasn’t around was because the part of the Jungle Boy vs. Christian story they were telling required him not to be around, and any time you answer a kayfabe question with “because the story wouldn’t have worked otherwise,” you’ve done a bad job telling your story.

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jamie Hayter(c) (w/Dr. Britt Baker, DMD) vs. Riho- 7.5/10
Strong match. Hayter won cleanly.

RENEE PAQUETTE INTERVIEWS THE OUTCASTS- meh
They want to make sure Jamie Hayter isn’t the champion. When Renee asks which one of them will be the one to take the title from Hayter, they tell her to “stop stirring the pot.”

THE ACCLAIMED GIVE THEIR ANSWER TO THE JAS- terrible
They said “no” pretty clearly. Angelo Parker somehow took this to mean “yes,” and said that they got them a match together, and the Acclaimed were happy with this… so we’re in for at least one more week of the same stupid sh*t.

MJF DAY VIDEO PACKAGE- He’s being a total babyface. Also, in kayfabe, this just makes the Town Supervisor look like an idiot for not doing any research into MJF before holding him up as a role model for the community.

MJF SEGMENT- absolutely atrocious
There is a big band, and MJF comes out singing. It’s some kind of old 1950’s song. It’s terrible. It ended with scatting. “Scat” was certainly an appropriate term. This did nothing for anyone, took up several minutes of TV time, and probably cost a bunch of money.
They had the Town Supervisor there again. He presented MJF with the key to all of Long Island. I have one of those. It’s called an EZ-Pass. You use it to get over the Tri-Borough.
That “LMAO Cody” sign had me in stitches.
MJF said that “the only thing Jungle Boy’s ever going to have is a girlfriend with a wandering eye and a tiny little penis.” He said “thing,” singular, not plural, so MJF is saying that Anna Jay has a small penis. You’d think the JAS would be upset with this insult to Anna’s penis size, but somehow I don’t think they’re going to get involved in anything.
He gave a nice long babyface speech after that. Then he goes to sing an encore, but now the band has one person wearing sunglasses and a COVID mask who screws up with his symbols. MJF yells at him, then goes back to what he’s doing, and the guy unmasks, and, to no one’s surprise, it’s Jungle Boy. At least he waited for MJF to turn around before attacking him so he didn’t attack him from behind., but that f*cking smug look on his face made me want to see MJF kick his ass. What were you proud of there? You caused a minor annoyance. What are you, a four-year-old?
Segments like this infuriate me. What was the goal of this segment? First they have MJF come out and act like a babyface for a very long time, other than one mean line at the expense of Darby Allin and one mean line at the expense of Jungle Boy, although even that line is also partially at the expense of JB’s inexplicably heel girlfriend, so it’s not much different than him insulting heel Sammy Guevara. Then, after spending five or ten minutes mostly priming us to cheer for MJF, they have Jungle Boy, being a righteous babyface trying to get revenge for an insult to both himself and his girlfriend’s honor, attack MJF… and, of course, the crowd boos Jungle Boy because you just spent all this time telling us how cool MJF is.
And what’s worse is that anyone with half a brain could have seen that coming and there was an easy way out: Just let this be the week that MJF interacts with Sammy Guevara to build up Sammy’s part of the feud. Then the people booing MJF’s opponent is no problem because they’re booing a heel against another heel rather than booing a babyface against a heel. But AEW did this crap instead. And it’s about to get worse!
They fought until security came out to pull them apart. Meanwhile, Ricky Starks storms into the Gorilla position and demands that Tony Khan explain to him why he is sending security out to break up this fair fight, but didn’t send security out when he was getting mugged two-on-one.
In their brawl, they left the belt on the ground, creating the visual of MJF being held back on one side and Jungle Boy being held back on the other… and then Sammy Guevara’s music hits, and he just strolls out there, takes an exaggerated look at the belt before picking it up, and then walks over to first the MJF and then Jungle Boy and taunts them with the belt while they are both held back by security.
1. Sammy has been involved in this feud, too. More security should have come out try to restrain him the moment he stepped through the curtain. We know he’s not above taking cheap shots.
2. Security should have come out to grab him the moment he picked up MJF’s property.
3. Security should have certainly come for him the moment he SHOVED MJF.
But who cares about things making sense when you can have artistic symbolism, am I right?
Art is great and all, but if you only have a limited amount of building material for your skyscraper, you don’t start building the gargoyles you’re going to put on the roof until you’re finished with all of the support pillars and the framework that are going to hold the whole thing up.

SAMMY GUEVARA vs. KOMANDER- 6.5/10

The tag line for AEW All-Access is missing a comma (or possibly a semicolon). It should be “out of the ring, into their lives” or “out of the ring; into their lives,” not “out of the ring into their lives.”
They showed us Jungle Boy watching on a monitor, with security around him so that he didn’t try to find MJF. Darby Allin was shown watching from the rafters.
There was a bit of a story here of Sammy learning to counter Komander’s stuff.

SAMMY GUEVARA PROMO- GREAT!
They showed us MJF watching backstage. Sammy points out that in his only singles match against MJF, MJF need interference to beat him. He then cut a hell of a promo on MJF saying that of the Four Pillars, MJF is the only one who didn’t do the work to build his own pillar. He ended the promo on a weak note, getting the name of the belt wrong, adding “heavyweight” in the name of a world title that very purposely doesn’t include it like he’s f*cking Mike Mondo in ROH in 2013 (no, I will never let that go).

FTW TITLE MATCH: Hook(c) vs. Ethan Page (w/Matt Hardy & Isiah Kassidy)- 1/10
Hook won after Matt Hardy attacked Ethan Page with the FTW Title while Kassidy distracted the referee. Remember when the idea of the story was that Stokely Hathaway owning Matt’s contract meant that Matt had no choice but to obey Ethan Page? What has changed between now and then that Matt is now able to defy him? Until that question is answered, this is a very bad storyline.

NIGEL MCGUINNESS IS In AEW- And yet Tony Schiavone is on commentary and Nigel isn’t? Yet another example of Tony Khan’s incompetence.

NIGEL MCGUINNESS, TONY KHAN, & ADAM COLE MAKE A MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT- They’re running a PPV from Wembley Stadium on 8/27 called All In. This certainly qualifies as a major announcement, so that box gets checked.
That being said, I really don’t like the use of the All In name here. The first All In really was just that. They were staking their reputations as draws on that show. That is not the case here at all. I liked the idea of keeping All In as a one-time name, and I thought that All Out was a brilliant replacement name to serve as an allusion to All In and thus invoke it’s legacy while feeling like it was simultaneously something more.
I thought it was odd that the hype seemed to be around the idea of Wembley Stadium and its history rather than the idea that they were running a PPV from Europe and bringing AEW action to Europe for the first time.

THREE JOBBERS vs. THE BLACKPOOL COMBAT CLUB )(w/Bryan Danielson)- pointless squash
When Moxley and Claudio gave an opponent a Spike Piledriver on the outside during this match, they were criticized for trying to maim their opponent. What makes this different than any of the other similar things we’ve seen during matches?
They beat their opponents up after the match, too. No security came out to try to help the poor guys getting killed.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
Bryan grabs a mic and starts to talk. He loves his family and his BCC friends, and he loves professional wrestling. But these jobbers his friends had to face tonight are “amateurs.” “They look like people the EVPs would have hired.”
Bryan says that the BCC are the only professional wrestlers in the building tonight. Adam Page comes out and walks right into a four-on-one like a complete and total moron. Bryan declares him to be an “amateur.”
No one came out to help Page. Bryan even pointed that out. No one even came out to help Page when Bryan pulled out a screwdriver. Bryan proceeded to stab Page in the eye with the screwdriver. He also repeated the world “amateur” over and over.
Where do I even start?
Firstly, if Bryan wanted blind Page from that range and with Page so restrained and didn’t manage to do so, he’s incompetent. If he wasn’t trying to blind Page, DON’T STICK A SHARP THING IN HIS EYE!
I’m also still waiting for an explanation of what caused this change. Bryan explained what the difference in the BCC’s outlook is now (well… vaguely More on that in a minute), but at no point did he explain why he has seen and decided to act on this now instead of three months ago when the others did, or six months ago, or nine months ago or a year ago.
Bryan explained his faction’s heel turn as being that they think that they are “professional wrestlers” while everyone else is an “amateur.” What, in his mind, is the difference between an “amateur” and a “professional?” There seem to be two possibilities, neither of which are good, and both of which are relatively similar. The first is that it’s just some nebulous distinction they have made up to be a divider between “us” and “them,” which essentially makes it just another version of the “sports entertainment” vs. “pro wrestling” thing that Jericho has been doing that has worked so poorly. And don’t even try to bring up fans chanting “YOU’RE A WRESTLER!” at Daniel Garcia. They chant that because it’s what they think they’re supposed to chant. There is no code of action that differentiates A from B. It’s essentially just how you want to identify, and is that really the fans’ business?
Back to the point at hand, the possibility other than it being a nebulous distinction is that there actual is some difference- be it of in-ring style or of how one comports oneself- that Bryan objects to. The best evidence for this is Bryan’s comment about how these “amateur” jobbers “look like people the EVPs would hire.” If this is what they’re going for, I am exactly the type of fan who should be supporting them, and I still think this is stupid.
Also, for what it’s worth, Bryan’s comment that they are “the only professionals in the building” and that Page is an “amateur” kills this theory. If their outlook is sincere, there is no way they could possibly say that about FTR or Hook or Jamie Hayter, and Dragon should have said something else about Adam Page- perhaps something about him wasting his potential and Dragon was sorry he had to make an example out of him. But that’s not what Bryan said.



You know how I’m always complaining about people getting screwed in title matches and not getting rematches? Well Ethan Page is getting a rematch on Rampage. So the one title where Tony does what he should and books a rematch right away is for the one title that is not an unofficial title.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH IN WHICH IF FTR DON’T WIN THE TITLES, THEY MUST LEAVE AEW FOREVER: Gunn Club(c) vs. FTR- 6.25/10
Yeah… that was not good enough for this spot. This was just plain disappointing. The story relied on overbooked idea that the heels could cheat however they wanted because if they got DQed, FTR wouldn’t win the titles and thus would be subject to the stipulation even though technically won the match because the other guys got DQed on purpose. This only worked because the babyfaces stupidly put themselves in this position for no intelligent reason other than wanting to take a shortcut to a title shot, which is a heel thing to do, and is something they shouldn’t do because we’re supposed to think that they’re the best tag team in the world. Once that started, this became an overbookedmess until the mess of a finish, which saw Dax going for a roll-up but the one Gunn ran to keep the other up, but in doing so had to put himself into position for Cash to come off the top rope with sunset flip so that we could have a double-roll-up that looked so much worse than it would have if they had just had Cash come off the top with a flying forearm and take the illegal Gunn out.
As the match went on, I also started to realize that I didn’t care if FTR lost, because if they did, they could just go to ROH, where I would be happy to see them. Having them come out at Supercard of Honor 2023 was a big mistake, just for that reason.


This was a very bad show from AEW. The storylines continue to disappoint, and now the matches are disappointing as well. Who’d have thought that a Sammy Guevara promo would be the highlight of a show?