AEW Dynamite Thread 2022

[FLips]

8 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Britt Baker vs. Jade Cargill, for example, is very appealing. 

To who?

Britt needs to be carried and Jade is still green as grass. That match would be a disaster for both of them currently.

The main issue for me with the women’s roster currently is it’s so badly booked that I have no reason to care about any of it so the low quality can’t be forgiven in lieu of a decent build. Thunder Rosa and Britt had a great feud so it made their matches feel special even if the quality wasn’t always there. Right now though we have a women’s champ that has been on TV for 20 minutes since winning the belt, and another who can’t be losing yet but has beaten all the low rank names to the point she’s repeating challengers.

Everyone not in the title picture are floundering and putting on duds and it’s hard to build the likes of Shida and Riho when they vanish for months on end.

It’s a poor division and it’s a shame because at the start it felt like it was going somewhere.
 

[Infinity Land]

10 minutes ago, FelatioLips said:

Right now though we have a women’s champ that has been on TV for 20 minutes since winning the belt

Nice line and the Twitter/Reddit post that popualrised it the other week had it pointed out that's just Dynamite. Since they had about 20 minutes of coverage with the Battle of Belts match. With other appearances on Rampage.

 

 

[69MeDon]

I enjoyed it. I thought it was a decent go-home and I'm looking forward to the PPV. Whoever said they should have done a swerve where Wardlow beats up MJF in that cage match and then they just don't have the match on the PPV is out of their mind.

Punk has to be turning heel. Come on. That line about loving all the fans across the world just sounded so disingenuous it *has* to be deliberate. 

[Duke]

18 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

Nice line and the Twitter/Reddit post that popualrised it the other week had it pointed out that's just Dynamite. Since they had about 20 minutes of coverage with the Battle of Belts match. With other appearances on Rampage.

This isn't the gotcha you think it is.

 

 

But yes I'm really interested to see the seeds planted by the Hangman promo. I think it's a foreshadow rather than something we're meant to get now, and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I'm not certain if I'd have Hanger lose this time, but rather next time where Punk shows the nasty piece of work he is.

[Infinity Land]

6 minutes ago, Duke said:

This isn't the gotcha you think it is.

I don't think it's a gotcha at all. If people want to say it's 20 minutes on Dynamite say that.

[Chris B]

11 minutes ago, Duke said:

But yes I'm really interested to see the seeds planted by the Hangman promo. I think it's a foreshadow rather than something we're meant to get now, and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I'm not certain if I'd have Hanger lose this time, but rather next time where Punk shows the nasty piece of work he is.

I think we're in the descent phase of the Hangman journey as champion, but we're not there yet. For me, this journey is about proving that he belongs as champion and deserves his status. For that, I think he needs a couple of big defences before the belt changes hands. If he defends against Punk and then Mox, he can then drop the belt to anyone - Punk and MJF being the two most obvious. But Punk and Mox feel like the biggest ones he needs to win first, just to prove he can.

Once you've done that, I think Hangman can lose the title to someone outright evil - he continues to be the 'righteous' champion in a similar way to Mox back when Omega was cheating his way through.

Before that, though, this version of Punk needs a main event title match, and I think this is as much sewing seeds for the future as much as it is for right now. I might be wrong in that, and they're screwing it up, but there are building phases.

And that's fine, I think - you build up something and land it, that's as much a jumping off point as it is a jumping on point. You can't always have bigger and better planned. Shifting down a gear or two before building back up makes sense, and could take time. 

[FLips]

58 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

Nice line and the Twitter/Reddit post that popualrised it the other week had it pointed out that's just Dynamite. Since they had about 20 minutes of coverage with the Battle of Belts match. With other appearances on Rampage.

 

 

20 minutes on the flagship show is still brutal regardless. I didn’t watch Battle of The Belts as I imagine most never.

[JimmyAnderson]

24 minutes ago, Chris B said:

If he defends against Punk and then Mox, he can then drop the belt to anyone

Is there a sceneraio where he beats Mox (having already beaten Danielson) and then loses it in a surprise upset against Wheeler Yuta?

That tips Mox and Danielson over the edge and they become the most dangerous and vicious versions of themselves. Page can turn up the intensity in the rematch (like he did with the second match with Danielson) and win the title back a week or two later or not regain the title and go back having all the insecurities he had many moons ago . And it gives whoever the next challenger (probably MJF) some ammo to throw at Page (if he wins) or a verbal battle involving Regal (if Yuta retains).

[Chris B]

5 minutes ago, JimmyAnderson said:

Is there a sceneraio where he beats Mox (having already beaten Danielson) and then loses it in a surprise upset against Wheeler Yuta?

Jesus, no. Yuta's nowhere near ready to be champion. He's a decent six months off being TNT champion.

[LaGoosh]

52 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I think we're in the descent phase of the Hangman journey as champion, but we're not there yet. For me, this journey is about proving that he belongs as champion and deserves his status. For that, I think he needs a couple of big defences before the belt changes hands. If he defends against Punk and then Mox, he can then drop the belt to anyone - Punk and MJF being the two most obvious. But Punk and Mox feel like the biggest ones he needs to win first, just to prove he can.

Once you've done that, I think Hangman can lose the title to someone outright evil - he continues to be the 'righteous' champion in a similar way to Mox back when Omega was cheating his way through.

Before that, though, this version of Punk needs a main event title match, and I think this is as much sewing seeds for the future as much as it is for right now. I might be wrong in that, and they're screwing it up, but there are building phases.

And that's fine, I think - you build up something and land it, that's as much a jumping off point as it is a jumping on point. You can't always have bigger and better planned. Shifting down a gear or two before building back up makes sense, and could take time. 

Absolutely agree. Ideally for me, Hangman wins on Sunday and moves on to feuds with Mox and/or Jericho up to All Out, meanwhile build Punk back up as a challenger seeding in some heelish elements then he wins the title at say Grand Slam and turns full heel.

[CavemanLynn]

I felt to me like the Pavlovian crowd cheering muddied the waters in the Hangman-Punk faceoff. Punk spent the whole segment being a smug, disingenuous, condescending shitbag. He was practically sticking his chin out begging for a punch. And Punk knows this. One thing Punk is always sure to get across is how intelligent he is. He KNOWS the crowd will cheer for him, and he KNOWS that Hangman still doubts himself as champion, so he totally played into that. You could see in previous weeks how Hangman was realising too late how he was jumping through Punk's hoops and acting totally out of character. The almost-instant regret on his face after the punch, underlined by Punk's grinning reaction from the mat, and an actual really good call from JR about who had truly won that round, told the story.

Page has been done dirty as champion though. Paternity may play a factor, but Tony Khan's front-loading of shows means Page as champ has been sat in the midcard, compounded by a conveyor belt of main events featuring midcarders or outside talent making that spot feel even less prestigious. The Elite may have run rampant on the shows when Omega was champ, but at least that meant the champion was on TV in high-profile angles that frequently closed out the show.

In general, one of the reasons Dynamite has gone off the boil is the lacklustre second-half just ... ends; there's no cliffhanger or compelling reason you HAVE to tune in next week. As good as the shows are (and there have been some stellar moments and matches this quarter), when the final taste is blah, the lingering feeling is disappointment. Maybe it wouldn't have been any different, having Page's angles close the shows, but at least your champion would have been front and centre as you fade to black.

[LaGoosh]

3 minutes ago, CavemanLynn said:

general, one of the reasons Dynamite has gone off the boil is the lacklustre second-half just ... ends; there's no cliffhanger or compelling reason you HAVE to tune in next week. As good as the shows are (and there have been some stellar moments and matches this quarter), when the final taste is blah, the lingering feeling is disappointment.

Really that's why the TNT title should be so important. You can front load the first hour with the top stars then build the second hour to a title match where there's a good chance the title can change hands and end the show on a high. That's what they did so well with Darby's reign (and the ratings reflected that). It's the perfect TV tool. Instead they've got this Sammy/Scorpio mess they can't seem to get out of. Say if they put the TNT title on Pac or Eddie Kingston for example, you're guaranteed a great main event to end the show on a high note almost every week.

[Supremo]

The mess that Sammy vs. Scorpio has become has left me doubting this entire company.

A few months ago I’d be trying to read into the subtext of that Hangman/Punk promo, theorising where Hangman’s hostility comes from, what some of his remarks meant and where it could be leading. Now though, there’s just as much chance that it’s just bad writing.

It’s almost impossible to trust the process and believe the company are leading me somewhere after I’ve had to suffer through months of these pricks having a game of “who can you hate the most?”

[BomberPat]

I don't think that Hangman/Punk promo was out of nowhere; other people have implied in promos that Punk isn't 100% on the level, or that he's still the careerist and prick that he was back in the day, just with a smile on his face. I was beginning to worry that Hangman was going to lose, which I think is - at this stage in his title reign - the absolute wrong decision, but that promo tells me that they've got somewhere else to go in this story. If Page loses, it's going to be because Punk does something despicable and shows his true colours, but I think the more likely outcome is Hangman winning and Punk not dealing with it well, to build to an eventual bigger stakes rematch. I do wonder if they eventually will go down the Straight Edge vs. Hard Drinking Cowboy route.

The Sammy/Scorpio thing feels like overly long course correction - they're plotting a course for whenever Paige Van Zant debuts, and they clearly don't trust her in the ring in a singles match yet, and are angling for an intergender tag. When they lost Cody and Brandi as their go-to intergender act, they ended up trying to slot Sammy and Tay in that role, and that's obviously been a disaster, but given that I assume they're paying Paige a lot of money, they're not going to drop anything until they get to the fireworks factory with that one.

[Duke]

I guess this Punk Hangman feud is kind of the extension of the Punk Kingston feud, that he's not who he says he is. 

 

I've got faith in this story basically because it seems clear that while TK is the booker, the guys have a lot of freedom to drive their own stories, and both Punk and Hangman have form for being able to pull deeper narrative off.

 

ATT and Sammy clearly have no idea what they're doing.