AEW Dynamite Thread 2023

[HarmonicGenerator]

9 hours ago, Supremo said:

Jeff Jarrett at the Briscoe Farm. Ten stars. Strap him up.

This. Glorious segment.

[Nick James]

Jeff moaning about the smell as they're walking up the steps had he giggling, then Mark shouting boy got me full on laughing. Satnam and Sonjay acting like fools in their dungarees topped it off. Probably one of my favourute AEW skits of all time. More of this please.

[The King Of Swing]

And as usual Jay Lethal was the only downside.

Just fuck him off already. 

[Merzbow]

All it misses is a Jeremy Borash, but he's doing well in WWE the last I heard. To be fair it actually felt like something he would have helped put together.

[Infinity Land]

While it's nice to have Shida back, with no Dark and nothing on Rampage it maybe a while to see her wrestle. While the 4 Pillars World Title and Tag Titles looks set for Double or Nothing. The women's division is tied up in the Outcasts v. Originals storyline. Jade and Taya still off to the side for the TBS title. The PPV might see a multi-person match, which selfishly feels like a waste of Hayter's reign.

 

[Jazzy G]

I'm glad Christian Cage has that TNT title shot and not Luchasaurus, as I'll bet he can get a much better match out of Wardlow. I like Luchasaurus's heel look. 

[Supremo]

Good show. Nothing blow away, but I had a great time throughout. Hopefully they keep the momentum building. You’re a company selling 50,000 tickets in a fucking pre-sale! Act like it! Remind everyone how good you can be!

Fun opener. It’s became the most repeated, yet effective trope in this whole company to just throw Orange Cassidy out there at the start of every show. Banger theme. Big pop. Great match. Every time. Keep it up for Wembley! Are Jefferson Starship still knocking about? Fly them in to sing him to the ring live!

I’ve never been an Adam Cole guy, and Jericho these days is a 50/50 toss up on either being really good or absolutely dreadful, yet miraculously this thing they’re doing together is really clicking. It might be the best thing I’ve ever seen Cole do. Is this the first time he’s ever been a proper babyface in either NXT or AEW? Maybe that’s the big difference. He’s got great fire. I loved him immediately running up to tackle Jericho after concluding his business. Bosh! Fucking have it!

Roderick Strong looked good. Him and Kyle O’Rielly should run this tag division. Imagine the PPV openers they could deliver with this roster! Whew! Might even make me care about FTR again!

Good promo from the Blackpool Combat Club. The way they’ve turned this around since Regal left is incredible. Best gang of pricks going today. Danielson’s the best of all time. Can’t wait for the Mox vs. Omega cage match. They’ll likely have a belter, but more importantly is how much this reeks of a big angle. Don and Takeshita turning on Kenny? Hangman and/or Ibushi returning with a moonsault off the cage? My body is ready.

The Shida thing was good, if only because it was an actual storyline progression in what’s been a glacially slow Outcasts angle. Whole thing seems to have been in a weird holding pattern for what feels like forever. Super weird that the heels are seemingly outnumbered, too. It’s about 8 on 3 at this point, in favour of the babyfaces! What the fuck’s going on? Are they waiting for someone’s contract to expire elsewhere? Are Sasha’s dates limited? Or is everyone just waiting and hoping that Saraya re-injures herself so they can write the whole thing off? I wouldn’t complain. It’s criminal that Hayter’s reign is going to be remembered for this endless shite.

I like the new rules for the Trios Titles. I still maintain a consistent run of mad, spotty TV matches can really set this division apart. It’s just a shame the final new rule wasn’t, “stop killing momentum dead by having hot acts vanish for weeks at a time.” When was the last time Aleister Black was on TV? It’s got to have been at least a month!

Sticking The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn in the Trios division makes sense for how over they remain, but man. Imagine the pay per view match if Fenix, Pengaton and Vikingo had won and faced House of Black! Jesus! That would’ve been unbelievable! Nothing worse in pro-wrestling than when the teased match is more exciting than the one you actually deliver.

I’m still laughing about Planet Jarrett dancing in the background at the farm. One of the best things they’ve done in ages. Pitch perfect. I’ll forgive everything Matt Hardy has put us through the past few years if The Firm Deletion features a Jeff and co. Cameo in the background at the Compound, still wearing overalls, still dancing like idiots.

But yeah. Stars are aligned for the PPV. Manifest it.

Taz accusing Schiavone of wearing a wig during the ad break really made me laugh. Taz is the best. Imagine what they could charge in London for a meet and greet with the funnest commentary team of all time! Those three gems should host a bar night somewhere on the Saturday.

Wardlow looked good again. Baby steps in the right direction. There’s no-one in the business I’m rooting for more. Come on, Big Man! Get hot again! Feuding with Christian has potential. Countdown starts now on Christian trolling Wardlow about his dead Dad. I’m surprised he’s lasted this long without mentioning it. Wardlow still needs to bring the ponytail back ASAP, though. Get a hair piece! Ask Taz to ask Schiavone where he got his wig!

Best Juice Robinson match in AEW thus far. Some great bumps. Ideally, Juice continues to improve and Ricky cheers the fuck up. Feels like he’s been the walking embodiment of the Randy Orton Sulk Face all year long. Not that I can blame him considering his booking, but still. It’s impossible to invest when guys make it this obvious. Give us a smile, Ricky. Could be worse. You could be Action Andretti.

Great, action-packed main event. It confirmed what we already knew; no matter how much they’ve fucked the angle, the match at Double or Nothing is still a guaranteed banger. Genuinely think it has the potential to be a match of the year contender considering the talent and chemistry involved. MJF and Darby in particular. It’s liquid wrestling every time they interact.

Also, fair play to everyone involved. You can at least sense they’ve tried to course correct this. Nothing was ever going to truly save it though. Even MJF and Sami having ridiculously good comedic timing together. They’re swimming upstream regardless. You almost wish the pay per view was next week so we could get it over with. Similar to Cody in WWE, there’s no going back. What’s fucked cannot be un-fucked. I’ll spend the rest of my time viewing this through the Sliding Door lens, wondering what could have been if they didn’t lose their minds that one night. Hopefully Tony Khan has deleted the number of whichever dealer gave him that bad bag.

I cannot stress it enough though. Jefferson Starship singing Orange Cassidy to the ring in front of 90,000 people. Get Sue and Danhausen on the tambourines and maracas and you’re probably looking at 100,000! Does Wembley even hold 100,000? It will that night.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Supremo

[Fatty Facesitter]

Overall - Some great takes already on what I thought was a smasher of a Dynamite throughout. Even some parts I wasn't as keen on weren't terrible and you could quite easily watch the full show without feeling the urge to manically tap the skip button. Double or Nothing is shaping up nicely, but so too are the next few TV shows. 

👍👍👍👍👍  Briscoe farm funsies - As someone who was born in county famous for its farming heritage, it warms my cockles to see Double J and his mates doing their bit for the agricultural way of life. A segment up there with the Jericho/Sammy parody of Cody and Brandy all those years ago. I've been raving about this business with Mark Briscoe since it started and it keeps getting better and better. If you didn't enjoy this, I worry about your zest for life. Wholesome entertainment. 

👍 Pillars Business - A brilliant recovery with all of this after the absolute shower of a couple of weeks ago. All the backstage stuff was nicely done and the match itself - despite reeking of a foregone conclusion - delivered and renewed the sense of hope for the four-way itself. 

👍 Opening 8-man tag - A Fatty Facesitter tag cheat code opening special. Top action from all involved. One of my pet peeves recently across WWE and AEW is when they build up a rivalry that's supposed to be deeply intense, personal and grudge-match esque, but the actual matches themselves lack intensity and a true physicality. But Cole's beatdown on Jericho post-match was superbly done, and I think that's a match that's going to surprise a lot of people.

👍 Also, can we have Orange Cassidy just open every AEW show form now on? His whole aura and his music just hit different. 

👍 Starks/Juice - Fair play, this was a ripper. Fully support the notion that Starks needs to crack a smile more often, otherwise this was thoroughly enjoyable. 

👍 Penta doing his Cero Miedo gesture only for Anthony Bowens to scissor him. Inspired. 

👎 Saraya/Willow - I like both of them but they didn't really gel here in my estimation. The post-match shenanigans with Shida were good fun, however. 

👎 Trios battle royale - One or two funny spots aside, this felt a bit cluttered and lacked the sort of excitement you'd normally get from watching a regular trios match. 

👎 It hasn't even happened yet and I'm already dreading the Firm Deletion.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Fatty Facesitter

[BomberPat]

18 hours ago, Infinity Land said:

It was maybe on my mind because I listened to the recent My World podcast which brought up Robert Fuller being a manager despite being so tall. With some of the tricks to emphasise the wrestler.

So this was my funniest moment. JB flexing and cross arms to start, Renee backed up so she's looks tiny in comparison to the pair of them.

Jarrett is at his carny best when doing this kind of stuff too, whenever he's on camera in backstage segments, he has his arm as close to shot as possible, flexing in a tight-fitting shirt, to make his biceps look as massive as possible. 

I did a Zoom seminar the other night with Scott Armstrong, and he was talking about doing exactly that in photos to try and look as big as possible, but how as a referee, if you're taller than the talent, ways to stand back from them as you raise their arm to make them look bigger and you smaller. All interesting stuff. 

I think I've told the story before on here, but when I was at a Tatanka seminar, we all did a group photo afterwards, and he said how whenever you see mid-90s WWF group shots, everyone is always simultaneously standing on their tiptoes while pushing down on the shoulders of the guy next to them to try and make them look smaller, and how Undertaker always used to do it to him. Once you know that, any of those group photos become a lot funnier now you can try and spot who's doing what.

[WyattSheepMask]

As I don’t watch Rampage I may have missed it, but why do House of Black get to make their own rules now?

[LaGoosh]

54 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

As I don’t watch Rampage I may have missed it, but why do House of Black get to make their own rules now?

Maybe they spoke to Tony Khan off camera about it first and he approved it. But also who cares? Why does it matter really? 

It's like Raven's US title matches being "Raven's Rules" back in the day. Some stuff can just be fun.

[Supremo]

At this point, I’d rather not know why things are, than have them meticulously explained, somehow involving Matt Hardy and CONTRACTS.

[JLM]

Haha exaaactly. My first thought when I read the question was "if I have to hear Mark Sterling explain it then I'd rather not know". 

"Because pro wrestling" is fine for the smaller stuff. Sometimes that's a cop out but for something like this where they're just doing themed open challenges I can just go with it. I guess they're also offering people the chance to jump the queue in exchange for doing it under their rules. They've said anyone can go for it at any time even if it's just three randos, but they have to agree to these rules. 
 

Thought it was one of their better promos in this style. Had a clear message, they all sounded good and it sets their trios titles run apart from anyone else’s. 

If we get more HOB trios slobberknockers I will not concern myself with the minutiae. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by JLM

[LaGoosh]

Hey you know that absolutely awful Anna Jay/Julia Hart match from Rampage a few weeks ago? Well they're doing a no DQ rematch on live telly on Dynamite next week. Absolutely bonkers decision. Rest of the card looks great though. Garcia vs OC, yes please.

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

Hey you know that absolutely awful Anna Jay/Julia Hart match from Rampage a few weeks ago? Well they're doing a no DQ rematch on live telly on Dynamite next week. Absolutely bonkers decision. Rest of the card looks great though. Garcia vs OC, yes please.

Yeah but it's probably gonna be Deathmatch Anna so it's all good.