The AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite Thread

[CavemanLynn]

42 minutes ago, mrtrickio said:

Bringing him back is easy. Just have him claim only one of his personas has left AEW. Could even just keep on going until all of them have left. That match should have ended one way or the other right then

I know it's only minor compared to the much more serious of a father nearly dying on PPV, but it's this kind of thing that adds to the nonsensical match booking. Not only that a Loser Leaves match is perfect angle fodder for a character with multiple personalities, but that the two massively high risk stunts were, unless I missed something in the build, utterly irrelevant to either character. When has Sammy ever done a spear? And why hurl Matt AND himself off when making Matt fall has exactly the same effect? Beyond chucking himself off the stage that one time with a 450 splash from hell, it didn't fit. If anything, a first blood match off the back of busting each other open Hardaway in the build would have looked more violent but actually been lot safer than the concrete human basketball they went with.

[KingofSports]

9 minutes ago, CavemanLynn said:

Hardaway

Is that Hardaway, Hardyway, Hard Way or simply: 

 

[WeeAl]

From they have brought back 500 fans or whatever it is, the atmosphere has sounded like a graveyard compared with the twenty or so wrestlers that have surrounded the ring for months. I was waiting for the tumbleweeds to turn up the whole time. 

Complete nonsense that whole Matt Hardy situation was. I hope he's going to be ok and can make a full recovery. That they decided to continue that match in the manner they did, as well as feed you shite on commentary all night after it about Hardy passing tests, it was a mess from start to finish.

Anybody that has read anything about concussions for even five minutes will have learnt that one of the most common side effects of a concussion is that the injured party is likely to think they are fine and protest that they can continue what they are doing when they clearly aren't and can't. AEW need to learn from this, and sharpish. 

Dustin Rhodes. If anybody didn't know, now you know. This man needs a title run. We've known that for donkeys, and whenever he gets the chance he just proves it again and again. 

Jericho Vs Cassidy was better than their second match. Nice dunk by Jericho in the juice. 

The tag title match told a good story I thought. I'm glad that little by little it's becoming more clear that they know it has to be Omega and the Bucks that go heel. They can't hold off much longer on Page getting the big push against a heel Omega, and may have already have missed the peak chance, which is understandable with not wanting to commit too much during these Covid shows at first. The bit with the table post match was a bit naff, but overall I thought this was good. I'd have had the tag titles main event. If they are supposed to be really important, they need to main event some time. This was a big enough match to do it. 

Darby Allin is going to kill himself. Felt sick watching that too.

[The King Of Swing]

Yeah the Darby bumps are getting worse. If he's that desperate to brain himself then they should tell him to go do it elsewhere.

And in a battle royal that no one will remember by Wednesday of all matches.

Last thing they need after the Hardy shambles is Darby fucking himself up.

I'm all for giving the talent more freedom but there comes a time when management or whoever needs to learn to say no.

[digitalversicolor]

As soon as Hardy smacked his head and then they let the match continue, I just couldn't get back into the zone to enjoy the rest of the PPV. Before that, you had Darby getting powerbombed to the outside in a body bag, then the match after Hardy and Guevara you had Thunder Rosa nearly hitting her head on the steps. Ridiculous.

Why do they keep risking serious head/neck/brain injuries that can occur from these stupid stunts, potentially career and life threatening.

[Yakashi]

44 minutes ago, digitalversicolor said:

As soon as Hardy smacked his head and then they let the match continue, I just couldn't get back into the zone to enjoy the rest of the PPV. Before that, you had Darby getting powerbombed to the outside in a body bag, then the match after Hardy and Guevara you had Thunder Rosa nearly hitting her head on the steps. Ridiculous.

Why do they keep risking serious head/neck/brain injuries that can occur from these stupid stunts, potentially career and life threatening.

Moves and flips and star ratings are the most important thing to the vast majority of this generation of wrestlers.

[JohnnyF5]

The Hardy match being allowed to continue is all the more disappointing given that AEW apparently held some form of concussion symposium with Chris Nowinski and his team before last year's All Out. Also disappointing that Tony Khan doesn't appreciate that a concussed brain can show up as 'normal' on both CT and MRI scans. 

[DavidB6937]

9 hours ago, Yakashi said:

Moves and flips and star ratings are the most important thing to the vast majority of this generation of wrestlers.

And sadly the more they do, the more meaningless it becomes. The more they then have to do to get a reaction etc.

It's a vicious cycle unfortunately.

[LaGoosh]

The thing about AEW that I never expected but is a very welcome surprise is that when it start it was very much pushed as "wrestling not sports entertainment" but strangely I think they are really great and much better at angles, stories, promos, characters, gimmicks and sports entertainment stuff than the actual wrestling side of things which varies massively in quality from match to match. 

I hope they learn that hey maybe each match doesn't need 20 minutes and 5000 moves, the "sports entertainment" shit when done right will make you much more money and draw in the new fans and also less chance of the wrestlers dying.

[Sheffbag]

Managed to get a question right on Who wants to be a millionaire last night thanks to AEW

A mimosa is similar to which other cocktail?

Pina colada / Cosmopolitan / Bucks Fizz / Mojito

I just blurted out - A little bit of the bubbly. 

 

[tiger_rick]

10 hours ago, Yakashi said:

Moves and flips and star ratings are the most important thing to the vast majority of this generation of wrestlers.

 

5 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

I hope they learn that hey maybe each match doesn't need 20 minutes and 5000 moves, the "sports entertainment" shit when done right will make you much more money and draw in the new fans and also less chance of the wrestlers dying.

The biggest problem with it been run by a smark like Tony Khan is that you seriously doubt that he knows that. He's surrounded by guys like the Young Bucks who are the embodiment of that sort of style and it shows. It's not just them either, as Yakashi says, it's this entire generation.

It needs to be massively toned down. That's not a reaction to Saturday night. That was an accident. Whatever we think of the aftermath, it was just two guys hitting a big spot to stand out. There'll always been room for that, especially for a generation of guys who've grown up seeing Mick Foley being thrown off the HIAC and the Hardys and Dudleys and E&C smashing through shit from a great height. It could and should be safer but it's what it is, a blown, dangerous spot. Used sparingly, that's OK.

The constant diving and jumping for such little reward will hurt more people in the long run. It's so completely unneccessary. Look at what Jericho and OC have done for the last few months. It might not be for everyone but it's been highly entertaining stuff for the most part between a guy who works snug but safe and a guy who barely works at all and they are two of the 3 or 4 most over acts on the show, if not the country.

Work hard, work snug, up the pace when the match heats up. That's all brilliant. Chuck in the odd high spot for your finish or when you really need to up the ante. But look after yourselves. That's the message that needs pinning in every WWE, NXT, AEW and (last time I watched it) Impact lockerroom.

You'd think the problems a guy like Daniel Bryan had would really hit home given i imagine most of these guys really look up to him but perhaps not.

[BomberPat]

The Matt Hardy injury scared the hell out of me, and I was fuming watching it. While never anything that serious, I've refereed matches where a guy might have got hurt, and I've had the promoter at ringside asking me if they're alright, and all I've been able to reply with is "he says he's okay". It's a hard spot to be in. But that wasn't an obvious head injury, where - even more than anything else where wrestlers will just stubbornly try to continue - "he says he's okay" is never enough, it's not their call.

That the referee quite rightly stopped the match, and the doctor stopped the match, yet someone made the call to restart it, was awful. That's two people who should have the authority to make those decisions, and should be trusted with that authority - all they've done now is set a precedent that undermines them, and tells everyone in the locker room that their safety is less important than the angle; because I'm 100% certain the only reason the match continued was to get to the big bump and finish the match to protect the "Matt Hardy will leave AEW" stipulation. When he was trying to get back to his feet and continue the match, the way he was stumbling over himself reminded me of Sting in his last match, which was probably the last time I was that scared watching a match.

It honestly amazed me how many people on Twitter were just talking about concussion protocol - with that bump, concussions honestly couldn't have been further from my mind, and would have been the least of his worries. He's lucky not to have ended up with a fractured skull.

In terms of protecting the stipulation, if that matters, there's a hundred ways they could have got there without making a half-conscious man climb a scaffold. If they insisted on doing the bump, they could have called an audible and sent out a potential ally of Matt Hardy to chase Guevera up the scaffold. If they just wanted to not have to honour the stipulation, they could have said that a referee stoppage wasn't considered a victory for Sammy as there was never a ten count. Given that Matt Hardy's whole gimmick is that he transitions between multiple forms, "Matt Hardy" could have left and come back as Damascus, or some other pseudonym - I'm sure he worked under a mask at some point, or could come up with a new masked gimmick to ride out the stipulation. And those were all ideas that occurred to me within a few minutes of the match being restarted, they have a whole booking team to figure this shit out.

 

Beyond the most glaring stuff on the PPV, the biggest problem was that there's a clear lack of intelligent agenting of matches. It's not just flips and dives, which I've come to accept as part of modern wrestling, but incredibly specific spots repeated within the same show. Two consecutive matches featured a Swanton Bomb countered by the target wrestler getting their knees up. Two tag matches on the same night featured the exact same double team, where one guy did a German Suplex and the other followed up with a bridging jack-knife pin. 

One of AEW's selling points has been that they let wrestlers do their own thing without oppressive oversight, but there's a middle ground between Vince McMahon micro-management and matches existing in a bubble so that there's no sense of real ebb and flow across the whole show, and where there's completely avoidable repetition that I wouldn't stand for on a small indie show, let alone something with the scope and budget of AEW.

[NavigatorFan]

The decision to allow Hardy to continue was shocking and was obviously down to panicking they didn't get the right finish which was just daft. It also opened up the floodgates to the amount of negative reactions they (quite rightly) got. 

I enjoyed the tag title match, the Mimosa match and the main event. Everything else seemed like Dynamite, especially with the lack of a set making it look different. They have put more effort into the set on special episodes of Dynamite. 

There was enough to enjoy but it was their weakest PPV to date. 

[Nick James]

Not so much the Foley / Taker HIAC match, but the initial TLC match and to some degree, the first ladder match between the Hardyz / Edge & Christian for the services of Terri Runnels are still talked about with find memories of how 'hardcore' they were, however, since then, there has been thousands more extreme matches than those, that are forgotten about by the next episode, never mind the next PPV. 

There is no wonder guys have to near enough brain themselves these days to get a reaction, to which most of the time they don't.

The Darby bodybag spot, while completely unnecessary especially in a battle royale, will be forgotten about next week. Speaks volumes to what these guys are willing to do to get themselves over.

The attitude era, while great at the time, ruined wrestling forever in my opinion. Yes, there were death matches etc in Japan long before the Attitude era, but the guys coming through now, their first experiences of wrestling will have been, as mentioned, Foley in the HIAC, Shane chucking himself off high things, HHH and Foley going through drawing pins with Barbed Wire bats. 

I speak purely of the Attitude Era and no so much ECW or Japan as the Attitude Era was the meat and potatoes at the the time.

It just shows how much it is still viewed, with people moaning about PG Era, some circa 15 years after its inception. Watching the Attitude Era back now on the Network, majority of it was terrible, but there is no doubt what influence it has had on the business from then and is still being felt now.

The other issue, is I struggle to see how you can away from it, for all that AEW is different, you only have to look at the twitter hashtag to see how many people are talking about how edgy the programme is with the swearing and chair shots to the head. AEW set their stall out early with the Spears chair shot to Cody.

[BomberPat]

7 minutes ago, Nick James said:

Not so much the Foley / Taker HIAC match, but the initial TLC match and to some degree, the first ladder match between the Hardyz / Edge & Christian for the services of Terri Runnels are still talked about with find memories of how 'hardcore' they were, however, since then, there has been thousands more extreme matches than those, that are forgotten about by the next episode, never mind the next PPV. 

I've always said about Mick Foley that what people miss is that it wasn't just the bumps, it's that Mick Foley was the one taking them. He elicited so much sympathy from the audience, and sold so well, that he made every one of those huge bumps really mean something. Jeff Hardy in TLC matches was along the same lines. Someone else taking twice as big a bump doesn't mean as much when the audience don't care about the person.

Though as I say that, Foley also did so much completely unnecessary shit outside of the big famous matches, so he was as bad as anyone - the Hell In A Cell bump was one thing, but he was getting shot knees first into metal steps in nothing TV matches, or taking bumps on the floor in a five minute filler match.

 

Just remembering how much I hated the 8-man tag match. Complete nonsense.

QT Marshall, of all fucking people, getting an extended shine, including kicking out of a flurry of big moves - why the fuck does that nobody get that spot? Given that this was just building to Dustin vs. Brodie, why not give that big moment to Dustin?

The match should have just been Dustin vs. Brodie anyway. There's no heat on generic Dark Order mooks, or even on Evil Uno, it's all about Brodie Lee and Cody, and Dustin fighting for his brother's honour would be a much simpler, better told story than using a few people who we're told are Cody's mates, but have never really given us any kayfabe reason to transfer our sympathy for Cody on to them. Then Matt Cardona is in there proving what we all knew, which is that he's a WWE midcarder who wrestles like a WWE midcarder - there was no sense of there being untapped potential, or a talent that had been held back there.

The absolute worst part of it all was, predictably, Brandi, though. She's so fucking useless that she's actually detrimental to the Cody storyline having any heat or believability to it. Brodie Lee has beaten her husband to a pulp, written him off TV, apparently no one's heard from him since, but her reaction isn't to be afraid of or intimidated by Brodie, or even violently angry at him, it's to stand on the stage in hot pants wagging her finger and cutting a sassy promo on him, then playing cheerleader from the sidelines. Just absolutely no sense of her being emotionally invested in the story at all. And then a crowbarred in spot with Anna Jay because God forbid Brandi not be permitted to get her shit in. Naturally, on AEW's Twitter account, it was Brandi's spot that got giffed and highlighted for this match.

Not that a woman in wrestling should solely be defined by their husband, but if they're telling a story that Cody is so beaten that no one has even heard from him, surely it would make sense to take Brandi off TV too? Suggest that she's having to look after him/nurse him back to health because he's so battered, or just that he needs her by his side at a difficult time. Because it makes them both look like pricks when they're doing "nobody has heard anything about Cody!" angle with her still on TV, as now it's not "no one knows what's going on with Cody", it's "his wife can't be bothered telling anyone".

 

Anyway, the good news is that Ben Carter is debuting on Dark tonight against Ricky Starks.