The AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite Thread

[RedRooster]

12 hours ago, Chris B said:

heelish Scorpio and Archer

I was a little disappointed by this, truth be told. Archer had been absolutely killing it as a face, and I was all on board with the idea of him facing Kenny Omega in the near future. I hope this isn't what it appears to be. 

[DavidB6937]

Oh yeah I definitely expected some drop off. I just hope that it's not a long-lasting impact on anything, especially as they've managed to pull it back with some great work from Mox and Kingston. 

[BrodyGraham]

I think it's a bit of a half glass situation though. After the initial feeling of having had me pants pulled down my prevailing thought was, "I can't wait to see how they work their way out of this." I'm super pleased that I thought that way as well because this week's Dynamite was really fun.

To be fair other than the ladder match and the bad bomb I really liked Revolution, I understand though that your anticipation for Dynamite will have been proportional to how much you enjoyed 98% of Revolution.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Apparently Christian's segment bombed in the quarter hours, which is typical really. TNA found out 15 years ago that he didnt mean as much as they thought he did. He's a good upper-midcard heel. As a babyface he's box office poison. Needs either a heater behind him or a blue dot over his face.

[LaGoosh]

Not sure how they can measure that accurately. He was only out there for about 90 seconds.

[FLips]

2 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Not sure how they can measure that accurately. He was only out there for about 90 seconds.

And not even advertised at that. Surely it was the Kenny Omega segment.

[d-d-d-dAz]

It was meant to be the Christian segment wasn’t it, and they said pre-break that that’s what was next.

Only as Schiavone went to introduce him Omega’s music hit instead.

I don’t think anyone should be surprised that Christian doesn’t move the needle.

I do think AEW are entering a very interesting period, where they might lose some goodwill with their fan base. They accepted Moxley because he was one of their own, Jericho, too, because he was always a bit of a nomad and indie darling. But, now you’ve got Christian who - despite a decent run in TNA - is pretty heavily associated with the WWE midcard, Big Show who was WWE through-and-through and Sting who is as old guard as it gets. 

Then, you have Moxley taking a break from TV shortly. Probably Cody too.

The main programs look like being:

Omega vs Christian

Jericho vs MJF (or faction vs faction)

Sting vs Lance Archer

Adam Page vs Matt Hardy

Add Big Show in, and suddenly the balance is shifting away from the disruptive, Japan-influenced, ‘indie fed with money’. It’ll be interesting to see if the hardcores stick with it.

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by d-d-d-dAz

[Carbomb]

I see the points about Show and Christian, but Sting, for me, is the one member of the old guard who probably more personifies "General Of The Upstarts" than anyone else. Because it took him so long to finally get to WWE, and because he created more memories from his runs in TNA, it certainly seems to fit his persona as "The Outsider" (cue Kevin Nash/Scott Hall gifs), the guy whom upstart, underdog, and/or "rebellious" promotions get in to legitimise and elevate the rest of their roster.

[Chris B]

3 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

It was a shame to see the ratings down this week, especially off the back of a mostly solid PPV. I'm hoping some of the clips from Dynamite this week do the rounds and get them back up to where they should be.

The ratings are down from the last few weeks, but they're basically where they usually are. They had the Big Show news two weeks ago and Shaq last week in a match that got people tuning in. On top of that, TNT had audio issues for a few segments in a row which may have been a factor.

Don't get me wrong, I think the PPV was a jumping-off point for some, and it probably didn't convince new audiences to hang around regularly, but this isn't a disaster either. It was a good rebuilding show after a fuck-up. If it keeps going down, it'll be bad news.

[Jazzy G]

Are they going to have playoffs or base who goes to dark and elevation and dynamite on win loss records? Maybe they can threaten some guys who've lost a few matches with relegation like a "three strikes and you're out" type of rule to make the different shows feel like a big deal? 

Edited March 12, 2021 by jazzygeofferz

[robinbobs]

On 3/9/2021 at 11:36 PM, DavidB6937 said:

Some of it might be shit but overall they've done a pretty solid job and delivered most of the top moments in wrestling over the past year. So not sure you can call it embarrassingly shit as a blanket statement.

No I can. Because that's my opinion. 

[DavidB6937]

10 minutes ago, robinbobs said:

No I can. Because that's my opinion. 

[robinbobs]

15 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

[wordsfromlee]

On 3/11/2021 at 4:51 PM, Liam O'Rourke said:

I'm not sure if this is common knowledge or not, but AEW have applied for the trademark on "Captain Insano".

I think thats for use in the AEW video game.

[HarmonicGenerator]

On 3/11/2021 at 10:21 PM, Chris B said:

Fucking hell, they're lucky it was Kingston and Moxley in that situation. They turned it around in seconds and looked like the coolest guys in the business in no time. You just want to go for drinks with them.

This is very true indeed. Their promo together was one of my two big highlights of this show - they covered themselves as well as anyone possibly could and I'm excited to see the two of them team together, and maybe even Kingston defeat Omega for the title. If that happens when Moxley's away for a while, and he comes back, and it's like last year but with the roles reversed? That could be amazing.

I'm enjoying happy Adam Page being happy, but the Matt Hardy stuff has completely cooled my interest in seeing him be the one to dethrone Omega. They can heat him back up but at the moment I'd rather go with Kingston.

The other Page was one of my big lowlights. Hadn't seen him before last week and it's like he's trying to be as generic as possible. Properly uninteresting and not worth bringing in from what (admittedly only two instances) I've seen.

Likewise, the other Cage coming in ... as was mentioned on the last page, he feels very WWE, and that makes AEW feel very mid-00s TNA. I loved my mid-00s TNA but in 2021 that's not a good sign. AEW have been pretty good at making the likes of Jericho, Moxley, even Matt Hardy feel like 'their' guys, but I don't get that at all from Christian in the (again admittedly only two instances) I've seen. I'm not sure what he can offer above what they already have.

My other big highlight was Penta's bit on the mic. Great great great stuff. I have not seen what the fuss is about with Penta so far in AEW - I've seen some decent matches with far too much of his hand gesture thing in them, and not much else. This Penta, I'm immediately interested in. I want to see Penta vs Cody, as long as it's not just Penta doing the hand gesture thing the whole time. I would happily see him go after Darby and the TNT title. This must be closer to the Penta people have been talking up for a year and a half.

My other big lowlight was JR. He's never been great in AEW but the last few weeks he's been noticeably worse. There's the stumbling over things of course (doubling down on 'Inter Circle' must have been deliberate though?) but mainly, it's how completely and thoroughly disinterested he seems in everything going on. Even in the shocking events of the last segment, it was all "yup, Sammy just got stomped through a chair, anyway, what time's tea". The value of JR is in getting you to care about what's happening and it's never been clearer that he really doesn't.