The AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite Thread

[tiger_rick]

5 minutes ago, mim731 said:

This is an interesting point, and I'm not saying I wholly disagree, but that seems to be one of the big criticisms of WWE, rightly or wrongly, is that the in-ring matches are just "there",

I'm not referring to yourself when I say this RIck, but the word "filler" gets used a whole lot, especially when describing Raw and I imagine plenty of the AEW die-hards won't see that as the same issue with AEW.

For me there should be a good balance, where the matches are a decent backdrop, but should also directly or indirectly forward stories and programmes (TV matches shouldn't be the endgame). I think AEW are doing a decent job holding that balance so far. A fun show overall.  

The problem I have with WWE is that it's all filler. Take the matches that don't lead to anything out of the average Raw and you're left with nothing. In fairness, take the same out of Dynamite last Wednesday and there's not much there either - just one angle. Take them out of this show and you've got loads. There were no turns on this show, no big debuts, no invasions, no hot shot world title matches. Just really good pro-wrestling. Credit where it's due from me.

[Supremo]

Five weeks of Omega vs. Moxley slowly losing steam and then Moxley finally gets a live mic and we're back in business. Fuck yeah. What a promo. What a man. Worth the wait.

[RedRooster]

Easily their best show to date, a great balance of angles and matches. Hopefully they stick to this formula going forward as it’s an absolute winner. I didn’t even mind the Rick and Morty stuff, it really seemed to work in front of that crowd. 

I’m a bit disappointed that the Lucha Bros didn’t win the tag belts, and I suspect they have gone to SCU so they can end up on the former LAX sooner rather than later.

The main downside of this show, once again, was the women’s division. Knowing that Kong is on the horizon is a big plus but they need to establish who the other wrestlers are sooner rather than later. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about Riho’s personality, all I know about Britt Baker is that she’s awful on commentary and that she’s a dentist (and why would that be a babyface trait? Fuck dentists!) and Nyla Rose, while decent on the mic, hasn’t had much of a chance to show that on Dynamite.

I’m intrigued at what the rating for this show will be, given that it’s competing against an NXT show that ended on a big angle last week. It’ll be interesting to see if that affects anything.

[Factotum]

Great show. Fantastic all round. Felt so great to watch something new and exciting

[BrodyGraham]

If I had one gripe it would be that I'd have had all the dress up stuff in one big shmozz and maybe given the tag titles more time. 

There was a lot of good stuff this week, but I felt like maybe on a show where you're constantly reminding everyone how awesome tag team wrestling is, you should present your first ever tag title match as something more than an afterthought.

[WeeAl]

Easily their best show, overall, so far. Kenny Omega and the Bucks still look like geeks, and show over and over again that they haven't got the mind for this that Cody does. 

However there were angles, promos, and storyline progression scattered all throughout the show, with Page, Moxley, Cody, Jericho, Dustin, The Inner Circle, and SCU all coming out of this one more developed and with a clear purpose. 

[RedRooster]

5 minutes ago, WeeAl said:

Easily their best show, overall, so far. Kenny Omega and the Bucks still look like geeks, and show over and over again that they haven't got the mind for this that Cody does. 

While I agree on the whole, I must admit that I loved Kenny’s Undertale entrance, it’s one of my favourite indie games ever. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

13 minutes ago, WeeAl said:

Easily their best show, overall, so far. Kenny Omega and the Bucks still look like geeks, and show over and over again that they haven't got the mind for this that Cody does. 

However there were angles, promos, and storyline progression scattered all throughout the show, with Page, Moxley, Cody, Jericho, Dustin, The Inner Circle, and SCU all coming out of this one more developed and with a clear purpose. 

But they are geeks. I am glad they are different to Cody. If they all had the same mindset for the business, the show would be a trainwreck. They are the fun to Cody's seriousness and you need the balance.

[Mark_Doctor]

Dynamite is just a good show isn't it? Really pleased because Fight for the Fallen and the other one had me worried.

[I Bent My Wookie]

Have Mox and Havoc faced off since he left WWE? 

Was sure when he said there was nobody in the back that was like him or could stop him (I may be paraphrasing but it sounded like that when I was playing Football Manager in the foreground) and all the stuff about unsanctioned that Havoc would challenge him to some form of barbaric nightmare. 

[Snitsky's back acne]

9 minutes ago, Shy Dad said:

Have Mox and Havoc faced off since he left WWE? 

Was sure when he said there was nobody in the back that was like him or could stop him (I may be paraphrasing but it sounded like that when I was playing Football Manager in the foreground) and all the stuff about unsanctioned that Havoc would challenge him to some form of barbaric nightmare. 

Hopefully AEW keep Havoc as far away from TV as possible.
Keep him on the internet show if you really must use him.

[The Gaffer]

That segment with Cody and Big Tone in the back of the limo was sensational. Just the complete antithesis of anything the other crowd seem capable of doing anymore. It felt human, and that feeling took it out of the standards of a usual wrestling TV segment and just made it a great bit of television. I know it's not The Wire or anything, but that's somewhere this medium rarely ever goes, and it touched on it this week with that stuff. 

Great show. I hope they keep doing the numbers. They deserve it. It doesn't need to grow, for me, so much as I'd like to just dearly see it stick around with the same numbers and arenas. I'm in the habit of watching a weekly wrestling show and I love it. 

Edited October 31, 2019 by Gay as FOOK

[Accident Prone]

Excellent show, save for Omega's batshit embarrassing entrance. Khan needs to have a word and wind him in. I'd rather he put all the effort of cosplaying into building his feud with Moxley. You wouldn't even know that he had a big match coming up with the way this was booked.

Anyway, here's an extended rant on that. Skip this if you don't want to see me get irrationally angry over what amounts to three minutes of the total show time.

The Undertale cosplay..., of all the Halloween themed video games out there, he chooses the one that is going to resonate the least with this wrestling audience. SANS FROM UNDERTALE, for fucks sake. I mean, Jesus Christ. Is the indie gaming/wrestling crossover fanbase that strong? An 8-bit cut scene that flew over most people's heads (how much of the casual audience know of Undertale and Omega's past in New Japan?) and a baffling costume choice. Tony K has the cojones to stand up to Moxley but not ixnay Omega's increasingly shite ideas?

And to combat the "Well it works for the all people who get the references!" argument, as someone who understood every sodding reference, I can safely say that it was shit. So, so shit. Self-indulgent shit. And, again, you need knowledge of both the game and Kenny's New Japan run to fully comprehend it and I can't imagine how small that niche is.

I think that entrance has really soured me on post-New Japan Omega more than I thought. It's not isolated as there's been other awful stuff too (barbed wire broom, his backstage skits, clicking his fingers during that 6-man tag, his lack of character definition) but this was the straw that broke the camel's back. Who the fuck is Kenny Omega in AEW? In 2018 he was my favourite wrestler. In 2019 I'm highly skeptical of anything he does.

Come on, Tony. Stop wanking off the dogs and give Kenny a little talking to, yeah?

TL;RD - It's really shit.

Still, a fun match once that bollocks was out of the way.

Hikaru Shida should've been women's champ yesterday. Feels like she didn't get her legalities sorted in time and so AEW went with Riho as their champ. I wouldn't be surprised to see her take the gold soon as she's got the goods to carry that division.

Good to see Adam Page building some steam as a no-nonsense babyface. His promo, as well as Moxley's and the Cody/Jericho segment, were straight to the point, hit all the objectives and were incredibly entertaining at the same time.

Oh, and the beat down of Dustin? Incredible. What a bunch of despicable bastards. MJF staring into the camera for a split second before helping Dustin probably means something.

Talking of segments, the Rock'n'Rolls! They're great, aren't they? I'm a big fan of older wrestlers taking a modern big bump and this was one popped me huge. Santana & Ortiz had a match earlier this year with RNR Express, so hopefully they play this out after Full Gear. 

The matches themselves ranged from good to great. I've noticed that the bigger names (Omega, The Bucks, Page) have found a way to have competitive squash matches. They dominated their matches whilst giving their opponents just enough offence to bring it up out of one-sided territory. Smart.

I can't say enough good things about Orange Cassidy. The Rick And Morty stuff wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. AEW used the right people in getting that on TV in the best possible way. I can't imagine any Adult Swim exec being unhappy with how AEW presented the R&M tie-in.

Another negative with the show was not having entrances for the SCU and Lucha Bros but I gather that's due to timing issues. You could've cut that God awful Kenny entrance but I digress.

So, in my book, that's four for five so far. Not bad for a company that I thought wouldn't even sell out for the first All In.

Edited October 31, 2019 by Accident Prone
grammar

[DavidB6937]

Yeah, AEW Omega is a weird one. It's almost as if they didn't want to push 'one of the boys' too hard too soon, and seem like they're just using AEW as a vehicle for their own success, so they've attempted to keep him down or do some sort of storyline in that manner.

But who is it aimed at? I can only imagine how he appears to new viewers who aren't familiar with his other stuff at all or to any great depth.

There's just no consistency with him at the moment which is a shame because he's capable of great things. There has to be room for booking him as he should be.

[BomberPat]

Kenny did an Undertale entrance in NJPW too, and is apparently matey with one of the developers. I've seen a few people raving about it on Twitter, and know a few people - some wrestlers - who absolutely loved it and are obsessed with the game. All people younger than me, so probably more in line with AEW's key demographic.

Personally, I know Undertale is a video game. That's literally the extent of my knowledge. So I wouldn't have known that's what he was doing, what the costume was, maybe would have guessed that the intro was just generic JRPG-influenced fluff, rather than a direct call-out to that game in particular. 

 

Mostly, I just feel like Kenny is a victim of the "let the talent tell their own stories" approach. He's trying to tell this sweeping narrative about a wrestler losing momentum, and having to go outside his comfort zone and unlock some new thing inside of him to come out on top, and being pushed to extreme violence by his opponent - but he doesn't have the acting chops to pull it off, the rest of the company barely seems to be following the story along with him, and it's a story that should be stretched out over months once the character is already established, not over a matter of weeks in a brand new company. Like you said, I don't know who this Kenny Omega is, other than a nerd who we're told is the best in the world, but who keeps losing when it counts.

Something I found interesting in how Omega has been presented was in his match with PAC, and to a lesser extent in previous matches, particularly against Jericho; the fundamental truth of his wrestling style was being treated as a negative. While The One-Winged Angel is extremely well protected, he rarely gets to the point of being able to hit in, because it relies on an elaborate sequence of set-ups to get there, and he keeps getting cut off. With a focused announce team, that's actually an interesting story, and something that fits the "sports-based presentation" angle - he has to change up his gameplan to be able to win more in AEW. But that only works if he actually changes.
Similarly, the feud with Moxley has been built around how Omega needs to "get serious" - but even in his choice of weapons, he's still joking around. And even when he's in big brawls with Moxley, he still takes a break to play a drum solo, to pose, to joke around - so he isn't getting serious at all, he's still the same guy.