AEW Dynamite Thread 2022

[Infinity Land]

20 minutes ago, 69MeDon said:

I forgot about Punk/Spears and MJF. That was good, too.

Question: why are they doing a live Rampage this week even though it's in the same building as Dynamite was?

I think they're just experimenting with things. See how well they can double dip. One set of plane tickets, production wise i'd guess they've left everything up. It's really just a couple of extra nights in a hotel and it's the DC area so there's plenty of options to get a decent discount.

The 7,000+ they'll get across two nights is probably going to be more profitable than an extra set of Orlando DARK tapings.

[Jazzy G]

Moxley looked great, and it'll be interesting to see what program he finds his way into, presumably after Beach Break.

Is that streak of tan down Cole's front from where he's been doing the deed with Britt and her tan has run onto him? It's like a stripe down the front. Maybe she should peg him a few times to even it out. 

Of course your opening match has a table spot, and a pretty piss weak one at that. Why couldn't she have just been knocked into the barricade like Bret at Survivors 93? Also, why not just challenge him to a street fight like TayJay had with Bunny & Penelope the other week? Does this mean Cole and Cassidy are main eventing next week's Dynamite?

Nice tease of the dissention between P&P & Jericho. I'm sure there'll be plenty of "can they coexist?" next week. 

I still mark out when Punk's music hits. That was so well done. The look on MJF's face was brilliant. 

I could be less enthused about Jurassic Express Vs the Ass Boys. 

Excalibur trying to put over zoot suit Cody's "unique relationship with the fans" was a bit weak. I know covid affects your sense of taste, but I didn't realise it was this bad. His "first appearance in TNA after WWE release" promo was boring as well. I bet they wish they could sweeten the crowd so nobody could hear all the "shut the fuck up" chants from people. 

Anna Jay Vs Jade Cargill is going to be a car crash, and won't do a thing to silence the "tokenism" allegations being laid at Jade's feet. If only she was a babyface so she could have a few matches with Serena Deeb. 

It was good to see some squash matches this week. 

Pac Vs Black will be great when it happens. Maybe we'll get Pac & Penta Vs Black and Brody King as well. 

Rappongi Vice being nice to Cutler was fun. Their match with the Bucks should be good. 

Archer killed the crowd stone dead taking 10 minutes plodding around while Kaz had the occasional hope spot. Schiovane and Excalibur talking about this being his first match back since his injury while the ticker showed that he won on Dark was a little daft as well. This is Page's Kane feud as somebody called it earlier. 

Serena Deeb is the best woman on this roster. It was amusing that she wore sky blue while Sky Blue wore royal blue. 

JR wasn't sounding well. Hopefully it's just a sore throat

Can Sammy not cut promos? It feels wasteful that they burn through a session of picture in picture with him doing these Bob Dylan things. 

Layla Hirsch should drag a decent match out of Red Velvet, right? Presumably Statlander won't be in that match because she'll end up getting involved in that lights out match? 

Is Andrade going to force Matt Hardy out and force him to bring Jeff in to get revenge? 

That Acclaimed video package was good. Sting in that match for so long at his age was impressive as well. And that dive off the stage? I don't see why they couldn't stick the tag belts on either team at some point.

A decent show with its ups and downs. Did what it needed to by setting things up for next week. I'd imagine things will pick up more afterwards as they have to sell a PPV rather than just a special episode of Dynamite. 

 

[Infinity Land]

16 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Of course your opening match has a table spot, and a pretty piss weak one at that. Why couldn't she have just been knocked into the barricade like Bret at Survivors 93? Also, why not just challenge him to a street fight like TayJay had with Bunny & Penelope the other week? Does this mean Cole and Cassidy are main eventing next week's Dynamite?

Can Sammy not cut promos? It feels wasteful that they burn through a session of picture in picture with him doing these Bob Dylan things.

 

Cole v. OC should be last as I think Lights Out always have. You could speculate the reason for going that way is that it won't count as an official AEW match. In which case OC/Best Friends get the win in whatever convoluted finish takes place.

Don't know if you watched on a FITE feed, but the couple of reviews I checked don't seem to mention Sammy's appearance. It was probably sent along for the international feed or potential PiP ad break. Hence the silence.

[69MeDon]

1 hour ago, Infinity Land said:

I think they're just experimenting with things. See how well they can double dip. One set of plane tickets, production wise i'd guess they've left everything up. It's really just a couple of extra nights in a hotel and it's the DC area so there's plenty of options to get a decent discount.

The 7,000+ they'll get across two nights is probably going to be more profitable than an extra set of Orlando DARK tapings.

Ah, OK. I'm not complaining - live Rampage always seems to be better than taped.

[Infinity Land]

2 minutes ago, 69MeDon said:

Ah, OK. I'm not complaining - live Rampage always seems to be better than taped.

I didn't see it as complaining. Just trying to provide an answer. I've since seen it reported they were looking to run the DC NBA arena but it was booked up. Not sure how true that is since it's not like they had to run DC this week. However, it supports the idea they might have done the two nights to make up for running the smaller arena.

 

[Statto]

7 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Imagine if they did that over here? Norwich get 4 points because they managed to pull out a win over a top half team, but Chelsea only get 2 for putting 5 past Newcastle. There'd be uproar. 

That's not quite how it works though - if you wanted to map it to English football, the way to think about it would be to imagine you were asked to rank all 92 league teams after they have played the first 12 games of their seasons, playing their usual league fixtures.

After those 12 games a League 2 club might have won all 12 (we'll assume for the sake of this there are no draws as draws aren't a thing in college sports), while Liverpool have won 10 (beating Spurs, Arsenal & Chelsea among them) but lost to West Ham (in a slightly flukey way while Salah & VVD were both out injured) & Man City. Based on that body of work, who do you think is better?

You might argue the League 2 club are in fact better than a significant chunk of League 1 (and probably even that Championship side who have lost all 12 of their games by at least two goals) but you'd be hard pressed to make an argument that they are better than Liverpool.

It's actually more complex/easier than that (depending how you look at it) as teams will have played teams from other leagues so you have points of comparison, but I'll not derail the thread any more than I already have...

[Fatty Facesitter]

The promo dialogue is just so much more engaging compared to anywhere else - largely because of the talent delivering them, but definitely down to the looser scripting. That alone will make even the worst episodes of Dynamite stand up against anything WWE puts out. 

The Moxley and Cody promos were of the highest calibre. Absolutely nothing wrong with the insider references either. As long as it's done with a degree of sensibility and taste then it can work - nothing felt off base or irrelevant in what Cody was saying and it was all tied to his current goings on and it added a greater depth of realism to what he was spouting. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

13 minutes ago, Fatty Facesitter said:

The promo dialogue is just so much more engaging compared to anywhere else - largely because of the talent delivering them, but definitely down to the looser scripting. That alone will make even the worst episodes of Dynamite stand up against anything WWE puts out. 

The Moxley and Cody promos were of the highest calibre. Absolutely nothing wrong with the insider references either. As long as it's done with a degree of sensibility and taste then it can work - nothing felt off base or irrelevant in what Cody was saying and it was all tied to his current goings on and it added a greater depth of realism to what he was spouting. 

But.. what was he trying to say?

I get the overall vibe was ‘I built this company so I’m not going to turn heel because you should all love me’, I think…. But why the dig at Red Dragon? Whys he making out like Jay Lethal is the Hulk Hogan of the indies?

I just desperately wanted him to sell the match with Sammy…. And he spent his time trying to justify why he wouldn’t turn heel. Which, considering his gimmick is supposed to be ‘don’t care lads, I’m just going to win wrestling matches’ just felt very weird.

They should just use this contract thing in the obvious way, have him turn heel and say he’ll only re-sign if he gets a world title shot and put the train back on the logical tracks.

I appreciate he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But, a smarmy entitled executive in a suit winning world titles is way more sensible and logical than the knots they’re turning themselves in at the minute trying to justify what Cody has become.

[Fatty Facesitter]

10 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

But.. what was he trying to say?

I get the overall vibe was ‘I built this company so I’m not going to turn heel because you should all love me’, I think…. But why the dig at Red Dragon? Whys he making out like Jay Lethal is the Hulk Hogan of the indies?

I just desperately wanted him to sell the match with Sammy…. And he spent his time trying to justify why he wouldn’t turn heel. Which, considering his gimmick is supposed to be ‘don’t care lads, I’m just going to win wrestling matches’ just felt very weird.

They should just use this contract thing in the obvious way, have him turn heel and say he’ll only re-sign if he gets a world title shot and put the train back on the logical tracks.

I appreciate he’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But, a smarmy entitled executive in a suit winning world titles is way more sensible and logical than the knots they’re turning themselves in at the minute trying to justify what Cody has become.

I think it ticked several boxes in one sitting. It would have been slightly odd had he come out only to promote the match with Sammy and nothing else, purely given the different news items that have been circulated recently. 

He addressed the speculation surrounding him and the direction on his character, with a teasing notion about his professional future (contract line). He spotlighted other talents and put them over (or put them down, which rather than being a 'shoot' style character assassination on them, I think might wind up being hints of a forthcoming rivalry between them. Possibly Cody and the Bucks against the former UE?). It's horses for courses on who your own favourites are - I've never been sold on Jay Lethal for instance - but he still put them over strongly, and ticked off several prominent AEW characters along the way.

But despite that and the little digs at other current events (i.e, WWE name changes), he still promoted the TNT title and the match with Sammy to conclude matters. We've been building to the match steadily by this point already, so it wouldn't have needed the full amount of promo time to advertise it as such. 

You're quite correct in that it's certainly not the most complex pathway for them to book and present - but while an entitled executive in a suit winning titles might be a more conventional booking mechanism that's simpler to digest, you're then damned by retreading the same character practices we've seen elsewhere. 

 

[Dai]

I dip in and out of AEW. I watched this week, and a few days ago stumbled on some James Elsworth clips. It's not even an exaggeration to say that Adam Cole and James Elsworth's physiques are almost identical. His back and arms are distractingly bad. Surely the worst physique of someone in his position in the last 30 years? 

[Jazzy G]

Wasn't it supposed to be Lee Marshall & Brock Anderson Vs FTR this week? What happened there? Maybe that's why Archer's match ended up going long. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

40 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Wasn't it supposed to be Lee Marshall & Brock Anderson Vs FTR this week? What happened there? Maybe that's why Archer's match ended up going long. 

It got pulled for a health issue, not on FTR’s side. Seemed to happen on the day so I think your right

[AshC]

1 hour ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Wasn't it supposed to be Lee Marshall & Brock Anderson Vs FTR this week? What happened there? Maybe that's why Archer's match ended up going long. 

Lee was probably at the Dynamite Party in the next week's town, surprised he didn't call in.

[mim731]

8 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Wasn't it supposed to be Lee Marshall & Brock Anderson Vs FTR this week? What happened there? Maybe that's why Archer's match ended up going long. 

It's a shame, because I suspect that match would have been grrrrrrrreeeeeat.

[Supremo]

The Cody segment was the promo equivalent of the match he had with Andrade. Mad, scatter-brained, panicked attempts to do whatever he can to fight against the tide and get the people to pop.

You can’t set yourself on fire during an interview segment but you can take potshots at the competition, make meta references to contracts and try to associate yourself with anything that’s actually hot or interesting at the moment. It was very Jericho in that sense. A floundering, ice cold act trying to suck some life out of whatever is working elsewhere on the show. I swear at one point there wasn’t even a logical thread to what he was saying, he was just listing acts that don’t have the crowd shouting, “shut the fuck up!” at them.

I don’t even know what Cody’s character is supposed to be anymore. Essentially, he’s John Cena without the confidence or thick skin. It’s genuinely uncomfortable watching him stumble over his words and twitch about trying to pretend he’s above the obvious direction this needs to go in.

A few months ago I would’ve been excited by the idea of Cody acknowledging the Young Bucks’ existence on the show but now? I worry he’s going to eventually link up with them and swallow them up with all this bullshit. The Bucks are already going to be fighting by an uphill battle playing babyface to Red Dragon. Add Cody to the mix and it’s guaranteed to be a disaster.