AEW Dynamite Thread 2024

[BomberPat]

I don't think I've ever seen a wrestler regress as much as Britt Baker. The whole women's division needs refocusing and rethinking, but I don't think she'd be missed if she wasn't part of it.

Though having Jamie Hayter actually wrestle, rather than doing constant backstage promos, would be a start too.

 

On the WCW 2000 comparisons, I think they're generally really overstated, though the Dynamite before Full Gear I was really reminded of WCW 2000 when there were two segments where the announcers cued something up that they shouldn't have known yet - there was an Orange Cassidy interview interrupted by the rest of The Conglomeration, except commentary introduced it by saying "the Conglomeration are standing by backstage", and, more egregiously, they announced (complete with match graphic) that Bobby Lashley would be wrestling in a handicap match a good ten minutes before MVP made his big announcement that Bobby Lashley would be wrestling. The booking is nowhere near the levels of WCW 2000, but production and formatting errors like that really put me in mind of the worst of that company, and suggest some frantic last minute rewrites and booking on the fly going on.

[Hannibal Scorch]

@Chiliive been mixed on the death riders stuff, it’s been hot and cold, but I thought the way they forwarded it on was good. I am also interested in the Max Caster stuff. Forgot to mention how great the sub 3 minute squash is and how the break up the Acclaimed will go down. And I liked the stuff with hook and spooky goth girl. I’m interested to see where those go. 
 

But if you don’t care about those stories or what’s going on in the CC I can understand your position.

[LaGoosh]

The death riders is in theory a perfectly decent mid card story except it's unfortunately become a messy, inconsistent main event story. Mox and co versus the AEW lower/midcard is a cool story if you had a strong main event scene on top of that. In fact, if you had Deathriders as the midcard story, the C2, a half decently booked womens division and a certain handsome cowboy whose lost his way on top as Champion I'd say AEW would be cooking right now.

Edited December 5, 2024 by LaGoosh

[HarmonicGenerator]

There were parts of this week’s show I liked - Swerve beating up Caster, mainly - but I think my problem with AEW is how disconnected everything feels from everything else.

Example from this week - Juice Robinson being injured and being out of the CC. Juice’s friend is Jay White. Jay White is fighting with the Death Riders. One of the Death Riders is also in the CC.

You could link those together by Jay or Claudio making reference to Juice being injured - one less person for Claudio to beat / one less friend for Jay. You could really link them together by having the Death Riders take credit for injuring Juice - it happened after Collision last week or something.

But nobody mentioned anything and the CC exists in its own universe and Jay fighting the Death Riders exists in its own universe regardless of any overlap. It’s only a small thing but small things can make these different segments feel like part of a whole.

Edited December 5, 2024 by HarmonicGenerator

[BomberPat]

On the Continental Classic, we're constantly told that there's "no outside interference", which I absolutely hate as a way to explain that rule, as it's telling you how it's booked not how it works in-universe. The clunkier explanation of "everyone is barred from ringside" was at least more fitting. But why not go one further in explaining how it works by showing us what happens if someone does get involved? Why do the Death Riders care about the sanctity of the rules of the Continental Classic? Why would they not just assault Darby Allin during one of his matches? 

 

[LaGoosh]

Also if you can just ban outside interference then why wouldn't you do it for all matches.

[Hannibal Scorch]

34 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Also if you can just ban outside interference then why wouldn't you do it for all matches.

The only reason as far as I can see, is to have some difference for the tournament against regular matches, but yeah it’s a fair question.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

Any interest I had in Britt Baker disappeared when the lovely Rebel stopped showing up with her. Comedy gold that girl.

[Chili]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Alan Grant said:

Any interest I had in Britt Baker disappeared when the lovely Rebel stopped showing up with her. Comedy gold that girl.

Yeah what actually happened with Rebel? I know her on-screen stuff was essentially a second gig from her backstage job, but I think she just quietly left the promotion. Brilliantly lackey, a career best role for someone not that great in the ring. Classic hide the negatives.

[HarmonicGenerator]

1 minute ago, Chili said:

Yeah what actually happened with Rebel? I know her on-screen stuff was essentially a second gig from her backstage job, but I think she just quietly left the promotion. Brilliantly lackey, a career best role for someone not that great in the ring. Classic hide the negatives.

I'm not sure she did - she's still listed on their roster page!

[Chili]

11 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

I'm not sure she did - she's still listed on their roster page!

Ah fair, I didn't look as I don't have a week spare to go through their roster.

[BomberPat]

57 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Also if you can just ban outside interference then why wouldn't you do it for all matches.

Exactly! And by saying it, you're just drawing attention to that point. At least by saying "everyone is barred from ringside", it pretty explicitly just means that managers, seconds, tag team partners and so on aren't going to be allowed there. 

Rules only mean anything to the point that they're enforced, and the way to demonstrate that is to have them be broken. Show us what happens if somebody does interfere, and it has to be more significant a penalty than just a DQ - because "if anyone interferes you'll be disqualified" is just how any wrestling match works.

So what is it? Does the person interfering get fined? Suspended? Fired? What about the person you interfere on behalf of? If that person gets penalised, then what's stopping someone interfering and attacking their own partner, to get their opponent punished? They all point to possible stories if they did anything with it, but just saying "there'll be no outside interference" because that's how you've booked the tournament is nonsense.

[Supremo]

The Jamie Hayter thing just depresses me. She originally got over by brute force, just being so fucking great that the crowds gravitated and turned her into a star.

The problem now is that crowds aren’t there anymore. She’s performing to empty, echoey buildings. I’m not convinced you can make that connection, or become organically over, when there’s so few people there. No matter how great your matches are.

[BomberPat]

19 minutes ago, Supremo said:

She’s performing to empty, echoey buildings.

Half the time she's barely performing full stop! She's wrestled on Dynamite five times since returning in August, and four of those matches went under five minutes. She hasn't been on PPV once since she came back. Most of the time, she gets a backstage promo and that's it. 

She is a star, but they're completely failing to present her as one. She should have walked straight back into a top spot, and a meaningful feud, and she hasn't. The last time we saw before injury, she was losing the Women's Title, why isn't she walking straight into a title feud? We're fucking about with awful Mariah May promos and Anna Jay getting matches for both women's titles, and the best they can come up with for Jamie Hayter is trying to pretend there's a feud we care about between her and Penelope Ford, and then blowing it off in one nothing match?

Jamie, Willow and Statlander should be the backbone of the women's division, and a women's division built around them should be a staple part of the show. Instead there at least as much of an afterthought as every other woman in the company.

[Merzbow]

Jamie was aruguably the best wrestler on American soil before her injury, it's wild that they're not playing up to her strengths in the slightest.