Category: AEW Television Musings

This past Thursday, TNA aired their first live episode of Impact in eight years and while I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet, I will give it a watch this weekend and hopefully have some thoughts up shortly after posting the Genesis PPV musings this coming Wednesday.

But in the meantime, we have this baffling AEW Dynamite show that continues to chug along. Nice that they’re embracing smaller, more intimate arenas… though I’m sure some will scoff as to how far they’ve fallen since their early years. Let’s be fair, though; some of AEW’s best work happened when there were no crowds in the audience; something that couldn’t be said for WWE or TNA for that matter. (And I tried re-watching those 2020 COVID shows… they are not pleasant for a variety of reasons.)

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (January 22nd, 2025) – Death Television Riders”

Welcome back, neckbrace Tony. You’ve been missed.

Tonight’s themed show is brought to you by Maximum Carnage – which apparently has nothing to do with the Spider-Man comic book event from the 90s or the hit video game that spawned from it. Instead, it’s just a name of a random Dynamite show from a smaller theater house, which is actually quite a nice setting. One thing I will credit AEW on is finally reading the room that maybe half-filled arenas is a bad look and opting for smaller, more intimate locations. Some might see this as a step down – and certainly the stragglers will declare AEW DED BY NATIONAL DILDO DAY or something like that – but a smaller setting with a hotter crowd always makes for a good atmosphere and if you can make the smaller setting seem much better – TNA used to have a knack for this back in their prime years – all the merrier.

As for the show itself…

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (January 15th, 2025) – Minimum Carnage”

Happy New Year from your friends at All Elite Wrestling. Celebrate the occasion with a special “Fight For The Fallen” edition of AEW Dynamite from Asheville, to help support those recovering the hurricane last year. Well, that’s a rather nice gesture for them to do. I’ll give them that much.

Besides that, this is the first Dynamite show to be simucast on both TBS and the MAX Streaming Service as part of the new AEW/WBD TV deal that will let them do more of these things. Admittedly, I have been down on AEW as of late, but you know what? It’s a new year (yes, it is) and since I’m making a point to watch all the first shows of the year and doing musings on them, I might as well kick things off with Dynamite.

For those wondering, Impact will be up tomorrow. Smackdown will be up on Sunday. If I have the channel that Collision is airing on (a former Discovery channel redubbed USA Network – no relation), there will be that going up on Monday. And of course, the first RAW of the Netflix era will be covered on Tuesday… and then Wednesday will be stuff. Don’t expect regular weekly write-ups on these things or anything like that unless I happen to like the shows and dub them worth the effort; this is just a one off to see which of these shows kicks off the new year with a strong effort. Dynamite, of course, is the first one up… so it’ll have to be a real “banger” of a show (as the kids say) if it’s going to maintain its crown or something.

Anyhoo, here are some observations I’ve made during the show – not a blow for blow show recap because that requires a commitment that is well above my non-existent paygrade, but just notes on some stuff that I noticed or something. The usual output for this blog.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (January 1st, 2025) – Fight For The Fallen”

Still recovering from a nasty cold that has left me mostly bed-ridden overnight, but well enough to move around at least. I’m mostly doing this from my laptop, so I haven’t touched a proper machine yet.

In any event, Dynamite aired last night for some reason and I decided to give it a watch. Dubbed Title Tuesday, it featured one title match – TBS Champion Mercedes retaining over Emi Sakura in a fairly pedestrian match. There was also a four-way match that saw Willow Nightingale earn a Women’s title shot, a match between two masked dudes that was… a thing that happened, and the main event tag match between Bryan/Yuta and Claudio/PAC that was fun while it lasted, but did not leave much of an impact in terms of interest in this upcoming PPV.

Honestly, a lot of this show was just a blank slate afterwards. Is this the kind of show you put on as the go-home for your PPV this weekend… or is this the kind of show you put when you’ve been pre-empted and you realize more people are going to watch the new NXT on CW show instead? Because this certainly feels more like the latter.

Either way, it’s more people watching this than whoever is watching Billy Corgan’s NWA show on the CW app.

P.S. – Apparently Daniel Garcia also came out and announced that he re-signed with AEW… and the crowd went mild… oops.

It took a burning house to produce some intrigue, but at long last, Hangman Page cut perhaps one of the best promos of his entire career to build to this cage match with Swerve at All Out. I mean, the whole thing with Swerve buying his “childhood home” and airing it on TV, only for Hangman to find out about it and burn it down was a bit hokey, but I’ll be damned. I’m almost convinced to buy this All Out PPV just to watch this match… almost.

That one angle alone was enough to produce one of the better Dynamite shows in a while. And you can tell that I enjoyed this Dynamite show moreso than the usual output because I’m using the generic Dynamite musings banner rather than anything with a bemused Shaq, anti-AEW bots, or Tony Khan in a neckbrace. Unfortunately, we’re still trying to get Jack Perry over as a top heel and I’m still not buying it, but Mariah May vs. Nyla Rose was a fun match with a slow start, Okada finally put his working boots on for a free TV match with Kyle Fletcher that was pretty great, and the trios match between the BCC and the Ospreay/O’Reilly/Orange express (for lack of a better term) was a fun party match. Even the Mercedes segment was somewhat tolerable, even if it was every boring Mercedes promo I’ve seen her cut in WWE for years. You’d think having an Emmy Award-winning writer to personally write all your verbiage would be more creative than that, but alas…

So… yeah. Not much to say about this one. This was a genuinely good episode of Dynamite. Probably the first one I’ve seen in a while. I’m almost tempted to buy this show now… almost.

So it’s BLOOD AND GUTS III… featuring the All-New, All-Different ELITE (Bucks, OKADA, Hangman Page, and Jack Perry) up against the AEW team of reigning World Champion Swerve Strickland, reigning ROH Champion Mark Briscoe, resident Crazy Man DARBY ALLIN… and the Acclaimed. All due respect to the Acclaimed – they are/were an entertaining act – but two of these things are not like the other. And if you want to toss Jack Perry into the mix, then make it three.

It’s been no secret that the build up to Blued and Goots has been underwhelming. The EVP Elite storyline that’s been going on is kinda lame, Jack Perry comes across as more of a geek than the next big star in the company whose push is seemingly designed as a proverbial FU to Phil, who is apparently much happier in WWE these days when he isn’t getting injured. And other than the World Champion and maybe Darby Allin, the team opposing your big heel faction seems to be pulled out of a hat. Are we that low on big stars that we need to fit the Acclaimed in there? Again, no disrespect intended, but they didn’t exactly get me hyped for this match.

And when all was said and done… well, the match was already, but as others have noted, the ending was underwhelming.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (July 24th, 2024): Bored And Gortz”

I guess Tony Khan doesn’t believe in Joe Hendry.

He probably should; guy’s been doing great numbers for NXT lately. Wouldn’t surprise me if TNA pulled the trigger on him – not that I would expect them to.

Alas, we’re not talking about Impact – even though we probably should – but rather it’s this past Wednesday’s Dynamite show, which is the last show before next week’s big Blood & Guts match, which is a regular annual thing we do rather than something that’s needed to raise the stakes in a hot feud. I’ll be honest with you, folks; I am not feeling this Elite Vs. Team AEW thing that’s going on. The whole thing comes across as totally lame and also confuses me; so the Elite take out Tony Khan so that they can take over AEW, but now that he’s back, they… still have power and we have a limp dick commissioner in Christopher Daniels. Meanwhile, we’re trying to make the former Jungle Boy into a big time heel act and we even gave him the TNT title, but he comes across as such a wannabe tough-guy sounding geek that I can’t help but laugh. Then there’s Okada, one of the New Japan greats, who’s more than content to phone it in while racking in the dough. He must have learned a thing or two from Shinsuke Nakamura.

Just about the only guy who feels like a major heel is Hangman, who’s only in this match so that he can continue his feud with Swerve, who also happens to be the only major face on the AEW side of the match. Making up that group is Mark Briscoe – a guy that people actually like, but hasn’t done much of anything on AEW television… the fact that he happens to be the reigning ROH World Champion seems to be more of an afterthought than anything. And then we have the Acclaimed – good tag team, but not quite a major force for this type of match – and the returning Darby Allin, who seems to be perpetually punished for his wanting to climb Everest by suffering enough injuries to put off said climb and on top of that, going from one crazy match to another where he will undoubtedly try and kill himself to get more time on the injured list.

Right now, this Wargames, er, I mean, Blood & Guts match has no reason for existing beyond “it’s a thing we do every year.” It’s become the new “Hell In A Cell” where every year we do a Hell In A Cell match whether the matches warrant it or not. Hell, WWE stopped doing that with their Hell In A Cell match, but then turned around and turned Wargames into a Survivor Series thing. I mean, can we not just have these matches happen when we need them to happen to further the story? Must we have a match for the sake of a match? Do we have to pick up every discarded and hated WWE trope just so we could be the alternative to the other company that’s doing all the stuff we used to do? You know, the stuff that made us worth watching?

As far as the rest of the show goes… eh…

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (July 17th, 2024) – I Said His Name And He Didn’t Appear…”

Emanating from the great wrestling city of Calgary, …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Alberta, Canada… it’s AEW Dynamite and the finals of the Owen Hart tournaments, which will feature Bryan Danielson and ??? going at it in the mens tournament, while Willow Nightingale and ??? will battle it out in the bussoms tournament… what’s that? It’s not the…? Oh… well, okay, then… never mind…

On with the show, I guess…

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (July 10th, 2024) – Am I Really Supposed To Be Excited About This?”

It’s the Forbidden Door post-show edition of Dynamite and it also happens to be the first episode of Dynamite (or any semblance of AEW – TV or PPV) I’ve watched since May. And yes, we’re sticking with the TK Neckbrace banner for now… because it amuses me.

But did this show amuse me?

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (July 3rd, 2024) – I Guess Chicago Is Not Swerve’s House”

The saga of All Elite Wrestling being run by the Elite continues with this week’s episode of Dynamite and apparently, news broke that Eddie Kingston may have suffered an injury during a New Japan show last week and his status for the show is as questionable as my waning interest in the current direction of this promotion. This show continues to confound me and… well, you know what? I’ll save my thoughts for after the break, because there’s also a bit of an announcement regarding future content as it relates to the wrestling side of things.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (May 15th, 2024) – Jumping Off Point”