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The AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite Thread


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29 minutes ago, CavemanLynn said:

I've said before that I think they REALLY need to lean more into pretapes for the main broadcast shows. There's so much gold they put on their Insta and Youtube accounts - after-match interviews, vignettes, hell even Eddie Kingston's promo on his phone - that absolutely should be being put on the main show. And that's not just for variety - it's genuinely better than a lot of what they do broadcast. If you get 10-15% of your airtime on pretapes, it's easier to produce, safer for talent during Covid, and a different creative outlet for those involved.

I've said this about WWE for a long time, especially when you've got a 3 hour RAW. How they don't manage to give more time to vignettes and stuff like that I don't know. There are so many better ways to get talent over than just shoving them out there to have meaningless matches week on week. The stuff I watch on the Network makes me care more about most of the roster than anything they do on the main shows. AEW put together some great stuff too and I definitely think they could benefit from utilising similar non-match segments.

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1 minute ago, LaGoosh said:

A 60 second vignette, promo or skit is definitely more likely to do more to get someone over than a 10 minute TV match.

Yep. If all anyone is good for is having matches, by all means, keep them on board, but have them in the WCW filler match role, like Blitzkrieg or Jerry Flynn. Not everyone is going to be a superstar. In all seriousness, if all anyone given some creative freedom can think of is matches, I'd wonder how much time they're worth anyway. I much rather a 5 minute sprint followed by 2 minute post-match promo than 15 minutes of chain-international-cutoff-heat-tennis-apron bump-finish. Pop a catchphrase, sell a t shirt, drop an opinion on one of the big matches, just show how your character fits in the big picture.

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Much, much better show than last week. The Vegas stuff wasn't as good as I expected, but was still funny all the same. Ortiz is highly underrated in his comedy stuff. I could do with out Konnans tough guy routine and I was expecting maybe another Tyson cameo with them taking off The Hangover.

Thunder Rosa is the best woman in wrestling right now, she's great and a programme with Britt is a sure fire hit. As much as I like Shida, they need to get the title off her and on to Britt ASAP.

Will Hobbs looked so weird coming out all baby oiled up on jeans, but the turn needed to happen sooner rather than later. Cody is the most gullible man in wrestling with how many people turn on him. For the first time, Team Taz felt like it worked for me here, their music is great.

Looks like the Nyla Rose / Vikki split is off, with them backing up Jade Cargill. Again, worst segment on the show, the pillmanizing spot has been used twice in recent weeks, with it not really affecting Matt Jackson much and Brandi kind of just sat there saying 'ouch' rather than acting like it may have broken her arm. Speaking of Brandi, she is so unlikeable, even in that really cool looking documentary, she was laid on the sunlounger smug as fuck while they're all talking about how it's a company for the people. She's as unlikeable as Stephanie in my opinion.

Cassidy and Kip had a good little match, a couple of botches but nothing major. Miro running away though was a bit strange, it made Trent look great and Chuck look like a tea boy which should be the case. 

Really good video package to put over Top Flight, really liked that, however Jack Evans and Angelico shouldn't be seen on National TV. They're god awful.

The Family Vs Death Triangle and eventual turn of Penta will be a great watch. Fenix seems like a botch machine, just purely through how fast he goes. However, the botches actually play into his style, so I actually quite like how they happen. He jumped straight into the ring and landed on PAC, through shear speed and momentum it was like he couldn't stop, I'm all for that.

 

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1 hour ago, Nick James said:

Fenix seems like a botch machine, just purely through how fast he goes. However, the botches actually play into his style, so I actually quite like how they happen. 

 

I don't even think of them as "botches"; if nobody gets hurt, and it doesn't kill the flow of the match, what does it matter? Part of that style of Lucha Libre generally involves a fair bit of improvising to recover when the move you go for doesn't quite go to plan, and Fenix is great at making that into part of the match, or turning the move into something else entirely. The original Sin Cara was also great at this, but how tightly scripted his WWE matches were meant that he never had the opportunity to actually do it, so came across as clumsy and useless, and was basically set up to fail.

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2 hours ago, Nick James said:

Speaking of Brandi, she is so unlikeable, even in that really cool looking documentary, she was laid on the sunlounger smug as fuck while they're all talking about how it's a company for the people. She's as unlikeable as Stephanie in my opinion.

Brandi can be excellent on the mic and probably has it in her to be a good manager (perhaps a Nyla/Brandi partnership would have been more effective than Nyla/Vickie, for example) 

Their insistence on using her as an in ring talent is seriously detrimental to the AEW women's division and to her as a character. She's embarrassingly over-pushed. 

All in all it was a solid enough show, although the Las Vegas skits weren't quite as fun as I'd hoped they would be, particularly the last one which was pretty weak. 

I really wish they'd take more time to establish Thunder Rosa as a character. As great as she is in ring, she's perfectly capable outside of it too as proven by her time on NWA Powerrrr. 

I'm enjoying the new Kenny Omega character, but I'm not sure I want to see him take the title from Moxley.

Every time Mox cuts a promo it's beyond compelling. He feels like an absolute megastar, and there simply isn't a better babyface in wrestling right now. I'm not ready to see his title reign come to an end. 

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40 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Brandi can be excellent on the mic and probably has it in her to be a good manager (perhaps a Nyla/Brandi partnership would have been more effective than Nyla/Vickie, for example) 

Their insistence on using her as an in ring talent is seriously detrimental to the AEW women's division and to her as a character. She's embarrassingly over-pushed. 

She really isn't, in the bigger picture. Don't get me wrong, she shouldn't be a wrestler at this stage, and their failed experiments does lend credenence, but she's only had four matches on Dynamite, and she's lost three of them. It could be significantly, significantly worse. To be honest, if they'd used her the same amount, but been less experimental and stuck to her best role - babyface backing up Cody and cutting those good sitdown interviews for videos and the occasional angle like with Anna Jay, it would have been fine. 

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Really enjoyable show overall. 

Using the NWA title match to start off an actual feud while just throwing together a random defence for Shida was peak AEW women's division. Got us some John Silver airtime though. 

Hopefully we get some shenanigans in that match as well. 

Oh god the tension any time Kingston is on commentary is insane.

Opening tag was fun. 

Pac Vs. Blade was too competitive for my tastes but enjoyable. 

Rosa is great. 

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5 minutes ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

She really isn't, in the bigger picture. Don't get me wrong, she shouldn't be a wrestler at this stage, and their failed experiments does lend credenence, but she's only had four matches on Dynamite, and she's lost three of them. It could be significantly, significantly worse. To be honest, if they'd used her the same amount, but been less experimental and stuck to her best role - babyface backing up Cody and cutting those good sitdown interviews for videos and the occasional angle like with Anna Jay, it would have been fine. 

It's not so much the win/loss record for me, it's the fact they seem to be throwing mud at the wall until something sticks as far as it goes with Brandi as an in ring competitor. They tried The Nightmare Collective, the tag team with Allie, the feud with Anna Jay, the angle with Jade Cargill, and outside of that she regularly accompanies Cody, Dustin and QT to the ring meaning it certainly feels like her presence on Dynamite has been disproportionate compared to other female wrestler. 

Not many female wrestlers have had as many high level angles as Brandi, and I'm not sure any of their Women's Champions have at all, the only person who comes close is Britt Baker and even her appearances on TV have been inconsistent. 

Don't get me wrong, Brandi isn't the biggest problem with AEW's women's division, but her role in it feels disproportionate to me.

I do agree that if they'd been sticking to her strengths and using her the same amount no one would be batting an eyelid. I also think she could be an excellent manager. The problem with the pairing with Kong was that the focus was very much on Brandi and not so much on Kong/Mel. She absolutely could be an asset to AEW, but as it stands she isn't at all.  

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On 11/16/2020 at 2:56 PM, Carbomb said:

Brand splits are shit. WWE are the only promotion to have done them, and they've never really worked. 

I don't disagree with the sentiment that they've never really worked. That being said, when you have the mad scientist at the top who just constantly disregards stuff, more often than not for no other reason than he feels like it. It's hard to tell whether a true brand split would work or not. The few times they seemed to follow through with them (very first time in '02, again at the restart in '16), they did help more talent get exposure. Some failed, but others did flourish where they wouldn't have gotten a chance to otherwise.

My fear with AEW heading down that route is they are a young company. Other than the die hards that probably tune in every week, a new audience wouldn't be bothered with few recognisable faces. To a wider, casual audience you probably have Jericho, Moxley, Cody, Hardy who are faces you might know of. To then have to split that small percentage in two and thin out what star power (to a casual audience again mind, to those who have watched they have done a good job of establishing new names etc) they actually have. It's counter productive. For the record, I am not in favour of a brand split for this company.

Maybe there's a show that I'm not aware of, but they could really do with a recap type show (in the vain of your Saturday morning/afternoon WWE shows) to help bring that brand to more faces. Not just talking about kids either, talking about the dads who might have switched off years ago to never go back and watch along with their children. However, I would assume it's going to be given a prime time slot. And that, unfortunately, does not lend itself to a recap show.

I hope, I really do, that they don't run before they can walk. A few minor missteps along the way these last 18 months (which for the most part have been rectified) have been understandable given how new they are. But adding another prime time show which will over saturate their product ridiculous levels, could be a costly mistake that they may not be able to reverse.

One thing they could use Eric Bischoff for is to ask him not what to do, but what he wishes he didn't do or be forced to do 20 years ago. He's very vocal about the wrong decisions being made/dictated to him, so he should be able to identify those areas whereby history could be repeating itself.

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36 minutes ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

She really isn't, in the bigger picture. Don't get me wrong, she shouldn't be a wrestler at this stage, and their failed experiments does lend credenence, but she's only had four matches on Dynamite, and she's lost three of them. It could be significantly, significantly worse. To be honest, if they'd used her the same amount, but been less experimental and stuck to her best role - babyface backing up Cody and cutting those good sitdown interviews for videos and the occasional angle like with Anna Jay, it would have been fine. 

It's an issue of perception. Like how Roman Reigns still felt over-pushed and over-exposed, even when he was losing practically every PPV match - presumably in the hope of convincing people he wasn't being over-pushed. It doesn't matter how often you win or lose if people still feel like you're getting unfair treatment, or that you're not deserving of your spot. 

I can't think of an angle that's been improved for having Brandi in it. Maybe the whipping. I can think of multiple matches where Brandi was actively detrimental to the story they were telling, and none that she added to. 

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Was their any payoff to the brandi/allie thing? A blow off match on dark, A promo, a tweet? 

Was there any payoff to brandi/Anna Jay, they were out for the same match last week 

The biggest problem with Brandi is Brandi, she gets bored halfway through a story and just moves on. And Cody's too doe eyed to tell her no. 

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