AEW Dynamite Thread 2022

[Infinity Land]

MJF as the joker, the title, and the mic time they'll be fine.

Grand Slam main event Mox v. MJF

[DavidB6937]

There are too many "they'll be fine" moments for me recently though. It's the "let it play out" WWE fanbase attitude. How long do you actually sit around waiting for stuff to be good and get where it should be?

It's almost more frustrating with AEW because they had a fresh slate and the problems hadn't been so buried and ingrained in a product for years and years and years so they've had an opportunity to build something good and decent.

And that's not to say they haven't. That'd be stupid to suggest, but it makes the bad weeks and the low points feel even worse sometimes.

MJF coming back as the Joker would be as predictable and boring as Tony turning the lights off and back on again. Hell, I almost wanted it to be him under Kip's box at the end just for something a bit different. Even just play his damn music randomly in the middle of the show like Gargano on RAW and genuinely surprise people. Fuck it.

I'm sure the PPV will be great and the matches will be good and all of that, but there's definitely a bad pattern with their weekly shows.

[LaGoosh]

Am I the only one who liked Mox vs Punk? The placement on the show was fucking weird but I loved it. Punk talking all that shit last week only to get absolutely fucking hammered in minutes felt pretty damn perfect to me. Mox is on fire and Punk is returning from injury so it made sense. Mox cut a blistering promo later in the show where it's clear he is absolutely the man to beat in the wrestling industry. The only thing I would have done different really was have that match be the main event of All Out, Mox murdering Punk in his hometown would have been GOLDEN. Lesnar/Cena at Summerslam vibes.

My guess is we get a rematch at All Out, where beloved hometown hero CM Punk does an epic sell job of his injured foot before pulling off the major babyface victory.

I enjoyed the Jericho/Garcia/Danielson stuff a lot too. People say Garcia should have been in BCC not the JAS but being in the JAS has done wonders for him.

Rest of the show I didn't care too much about. The old problems are still here, someone needs to take real control of the booking.

Can't say I'm surprised Kingston tried to punch Sammy Guevara. I'm surprised more people haven't punched him. He's got an extremely punchable face.

Edited August 25, 2022 by LaGoosh

[RedRooster]

  

16 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

There are too many "they'll be fine" moments for me recently though. It's the "let it play out" WWE fanbase attitude. How long do you actually sit around waiting for stuff to be good and get where it should be?

I totally agree with this. They show promise, then boom, you're hit with something that takes the wind out of you. I appreciate that there have been injuries, but historically, WWE has pulled out some of its most interesting and exciting shows when they've needed to change course. I find it difficult to care about someone being crowned interim champion. 

18 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

MJF coming back as the Joker would be as predictable and boring as Tony turning the lights off and back on again. Hell, I almost wanted it to be him under Kip's box at the end just for something a bit different. Even just play his damn music randomly in the middle of the show like Gargano on RAW and genuinely surprise people. Fuck it.

Yeah, I totally agree. It would also feel a bit disconnected from the last time he appeared on TV. I'd prefer to see something that feels like a logical follow-up. I really hope he's not the joker. 

54 minutes ago, Duke said:

Edit: Now I've read suggestions that it might be Punk putting his career on the line for a rematch. That's...pretty believable, to be fair

That might actually work, I'd be genuinely intrigued by that stip. 

I do wonder how different we'd be be feeling about the show, if they'd actually placed Mox/Punk in the main event slot. At least at that point, you'd be going into the match on a high, and you'd be fairly sure that something was about to go down. If Moxley squashing Punk was the last thing you saw on the show, surely that would feel more buzzworthy, as you wouldn't have had another hour to process what you just saw. It was hard to give a shit about anything else after that. 

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, RedRooster said:

I suppose, to be fair, it depends on the context. Perhaps it emerged that Punk's injury was more serious than expected, or he somehow reinjured himself after his initial return. Even if it's a deliberate angle, a promo from a desperate Punk could heat the entire feud up again next week. 

It occurred to me briefly last week that it might be all because Punk's more hurt than they'd let on, and not fully 100% to come back. If they knew he couldn't make the PPV, then they'd be waiting until November before they could get another PPV title match out of him, and maybe they made the judgement call to do this on TV so that the focus could fully be on Moxley as champion without the "Interim" albatross hanging over him any more. Kind of like before Wrestlemania 19, where they hotshotted Angle and Lesnar on Smackdown in the belief that Angle wasn't going to make the PPV with his neck injury. 

The problem is that it's come off the back of a ton of backstage gossip and rumours, so people are going to be pointing to that rather than to the logical explanation of Punk's injury - whether in reality or kayfabe. And at the moment I'm leaning towards reality, because this is insane booking if the plan is still to do Punk vs. Moxley at the PPV - they've made Punk look weak if he's just going to be able to carry on wrestling a week after this match, and they're already doing the "did he come back from his injuries too early?" story with Kenny Omega. 

The question now is who they can heat up in a week to have a viable PPV main event with Moxley. Hangman is the logical choice, but he's been out of the picture and feels like he needs more than a week to get him there - and I think his role at the PPV will tie into the Trios tournament, rather than this match. But who else is there that's not already accounted for? Maybe Tony Khan is frantically on the phone to NJPW, or to MJF, or to whatever free agents he can get his hands on, but I'm drawing blanks on this one.

1 hour ago, Factotum said:

Yeah I don't want to know. The MJF thing is a perfect work/shoot type thing which makes sense with the character and probably where they are at. But everything else is crap and is the worst of the Russo masturbatory stuff.

Honestly, I think the MJF stuff was far more masturbatory and counter-productive than anything they've done since - at least the "sandbagging" stuff, while shit, is a fairly minor part of the show and not the focus of the story. MJF was given an entire promo segment to talk about behind-the-scenes drama at the expense of the actual story of the match his character had just lost. MJF, in kayfabe, should have been furious that he'd just lost to Wardlow, and Wardlow didn't even get a look-in in that promo, and I think it hampered his momentum greatly to not be able to fully capitalise on that win - a win that had been built up since literally day one of AEW. It was an exercise in prioritising backstage drama and dirtsheet rumours over the story that needed telling, when a good worked shoot is about using the "real" element of the story to accentuate the kayfabe angle - that's why CM Punk's Pipebomb works, because it still ultimately sold the match with Cena and played into how that story unfolded. MJF's "shoot" promo did the exact opposite. 

[Infinity Land]

11 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Am I the only one who liked Mox vs Punk? The placement on the show was fucking weird but I loved it.

I liked it. When it was moved to Dynamite it's not like I was expecting an epic. Moving it to early in the show gave it some unpredictability that it might be given some time. Whereas if it had been the main with 10 mins to go it'd give the game away.

It's doing it a week and a half before a PPV. We don't know what the All Out main event is going to be until they're in Chicago for the week of shows. If anything is announced before then on Rampage or social media it's playing to a fragment of their audience.

[The Gaffer]

19 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Am I the only one who liked Mox vs Punk?

I can see where the negative reactions are coming from, but there's definitely a part of me that thinks it might have been a clever way out of a tough spot, and far from the worst thing about the product right now. 

If it turns out Punk couldn't have done a proper match in Chicago then hotshotting it to pop a rating is definitely preferable to pissing off a PPV crowd. Popping a rating isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself either. It's what wrestling done in its hottest ever period. And doubtless those most let down by this are the ones guaranteed to buy the PPV anyway. 

They also made Mox look like a killer, where last week the issue was that the promo made him look weak. Taken in isolation as a two week contingency booking plan, it ain't all bad. 

Punk got fucking battered. 

[WyattSheepMask]

“Will Osprey in the last 30 days has wrestled 18 matches”. Come back when you’ve wrestled 400 days a year, brother.

Remsburg just seemingly disappearing while Kip Sabian laid out PAC was infuriating. Say what you want about WWE’s storytelling and camera work, but you can bet they’d have shown the ref’s attention being diverted prior to an attack. Excalibur tried to cover for it, but basic stuff being fucked right up.

Interim belts can fuck off, and so can Four Way Matches with people who haven’t been on TV for months. Just do a singles match between the top two contenders to crown a new champion.

[Hannibal Scorch]

I’m another that enjoyed Mox/Punk. I had no ide it wasn’t the main, so found that pretty exciting. Punk is either really injured still or he’s been selling it well (in previous appearances he has hobbled on that foot subtly). The quick dominance made Mox look a killer. If they are setting this up for Mox Punk 2 at this PPV, that would be awful. But if the real reason is because they need a new match for the PPV, I think it was great booking.

Enjoyed the main, enjoyed the opening. Good to see KiLynn King on TV, think she’s got potential. And who doesn’t love The Acclaimed and Daddy Ass?

[Mr.Showtime]

It was a shame so many people were getting over-excited for the title match, not keeping in mind the reason it was moved to TV was most likely because it wasn't going to be a "proper" match. The spectacle of it was still fun though, although yep it did feel a little flat when it seemed the fallout and new direction wasn't going to be answered right away. But Moxley is the man. His promo being aired in the past few days saying that Punk is full of shit and he's going to crush him, with a knowing gleam in his eye - he was absolutely correct and it made him come off even cooler, to me.

I've no idea what they're going to do at the PPV, and I'm not interested in trying to figure it out when it comes to an MJF return or a CM Punk rematch, etc. If Moxley's involved, it'll be grand.

The trios match was a lot of fun!

[DavidB6937]

Saw a few people on Twitter mention John Cena after Mox kept saying his time was now, so basically that's all I want from All Out now.

[poetofthedeed]

I'll admit, I thought we were getting 40 minutes of match/shenanigans and the trio's match would get bumped to Rampage, so I'm happy to say they got me good.

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

There are too many "they'll be fine" moments for me recently though. It's the "let it play out" WWE fanbase attitude. How long do you actually sit around waiting for stuff to be good and get where it should be?

About 15 years if this place is anything to go by. 

[DavidB6937]

I totally get where some people are coming from thinking these particular calls are down to business decisions or injuries or whatever else. And absolutely their hand may have been forced by various things, but as a viewer do I care about any of that? Not really.

I think more often than not if AEW can't stick to what they were meant to be doing then they're not the company to thrive on that.

[Pinc]

I didn't mind the unification match but I don't see why they couldn't have just done this at All Out?

Moving the match forward and placing it at an unnatural point in the show, I suppose it broke my suspension of disbelief. It was hard to engage with the story of the match when the circumstances made it extremely clear that this was a deviation from what would otherwise have been the plan.

Clumsy storytelling. I get that squashing Punk in Chicago might have turned the crowd on the night, but Moxley is enough of a tweener to roll with it. I wonder if Punk said he'd rather not lose in that manner in his home town?

P.S. I also noticed the 'Time is Now' repetition from Moxley... 👀