RAW After Mania (April 2nd, 2001): It All Started Here

Oy… it’s that show.

Wrestlemania X-Seven has been touted as one of (if not THE) greatest Wrestlemania card of all time. It had top to bottom great matches, all the big stars, some exciting moments, and was the first stadium show in a good long while… and then Steve Austin turned heel in the main event and that began the downward spiral of the McMahon sports entertainment empire.

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RAW After Mania (April 3rd, 2000)- After A Bad Mania

Yep.

Wrestlemania 2000 (their branding, not mine) was a peculiar little show and not a particularly good one. It was perhaps most notable for its main event; a four-corners elimination match for the WWF Championship with a McMahon in every corner that saw reigning WWF Champion HHH become the first heel (bad guy) to walk out of ‘Mania with the championship. To send the crowd home happy, Rock Rockbottomed Steph and gave her a People’s Elbow.

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RAW After Mania (March 29th, 1999) – A Thing That Happened

It’s been a good long while since we did these and after the past couple months, I needed a break from anything wrestling-related. Fortunately, a lot of these were in the can and ready to go. So the plan going forward is to continue these until the 2012 edition, which is the final two-hour edition of RAW and the end of our journey. I’m not sitting through 3-hour RAWs again.

Anyway, on with the show…

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AEW Dynamite (August 27th, 2020): Matt Vs. Sammy In A Commercials Match

So here’s the deal; I’ve been fairly complimentary of AEW in these various write-ups. For the most part, they’ve put out some quality wrestling shows and even when the shows felt underwhelming, it was never to the degree where the shows felt off… until tonight.

So, for the folks who felt that I’ve been overly positive towards AEW as of late, you’ll be happy to know that I’m shifting gears today and will focus on the bad parts of the show, of which I’ll touch on three that really irked me and contributed to an episode of Dynamite that, while still somewhat fun, started to fall off the wagon a bit.

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AEW Dynamite (August 22nd, 2020): No More Papers

So, I’ll keep this short because there’s only a couple pieces of business worth mentioning; this was another fine episode of Dynamite that did a fine job of hyping up the PPV taking place in a couple weeks. And they made the most of the temporary timeslot running opposite whatever Takeover event was taking place by giving us a special show, even if the matches weren’t up there.

– Fuck The Revival is now joined by Tully Blanchard… but what about the ten guy? He beats the “Dead Ass” guys and then a backstage thing takes place where they propose a gauntlet match between the various tag teams to determine who challenges for the tag titles at the PPV.

– So the Jon Moxley/MJF feud continues with another quality Mox promo followed by MJF, his neck brace, and entourage challenging Mox to sign a petition to ban the dangerous and deadly Paradigm Shift (a double-arm DDT) from their All Out match or else he’ll SUE! Yeah, just one problem with that theory. What’s to stop Mox from dishing out a DEATH RIDER, which is also a double-arm DDT? Why not just say DDTs are banned and he can hit you with a piledriver, instead? Which is even worse than the DDT… all snark aside, this is more good quality promo work from both guys and it gives me a World title match to look forward to rather than “meh, cool, derpy funny mask thing.”

– They had the finals of the Women’s Deadly Draw thing take place. I didn’t watch the Youtube show, but if this match was indicative of the rest of the tourney, then I’m glad I didn’t miss much. But hey, Hikaru Shida vs. Thunder Rosa should be a fun match at the PPV, so that’s something.

– The Elite beat the Dark Order and Kenny goes made after a while, but who gives a shit about that? The main event saw The Exalted One Mr. Brodie Lee DESTROY Cody in a total squash to win the TNT Championship. Good job, AEW; you did a short match… after the other short match with Darby, but I digress. Cody is taken out on a stretcher, but the Dark Order geeks beat him up, they drag out Dustin and that other guy who were already beat up, and even Anna Jay gets in on the action by choking out Brandi. If you wanted a better way to put the Dark Order over as a true potential threat, then you’ll have to find it somewhere else because this did the job perfectly. Brodie looked like a monster, the Dark Order didn’t look like total boobs (this will last until the next BTE, I’m sure), and the bit where Brodie is sprinkling the broken pieces of the old TNT belt over Cody’s near-corpse was a nice touch.

So, yes, thoroughly entertained… and yes, regarding the bit where AEW is going to start having actual fans again in limited capacity… setting aside all the safety concerns, I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen the show take place. AEW usually does a good job with these limited capacity showings and I think they’ll be fine, but let’s wait and see with this one.

Smackdown (August 21st, 2020) – TUNDAH-DUMM!

Hey, look. I watched an actual Smackdown show… kinda, sorta…

This episode featured the first appearance of WWE’s new THUNDERDOME gimmick, which was built in a bigger arena that isn’t the Performance Center or Full Sail studios. Apparently, WWE payed Florida some pocket change to rent out an arena for a couple months with the caveat that there’d be no fans. So here’s the crazy concept where they have “virtual fans” watch the show and give the show that “much needed” vibe and energy it’s been lacking.

Or at least, that’s the theory.

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AEW Dynamite (August 12th, 2020): Tag Team Appreciation Night Doesn’t Appreciate Tag Teams

Sorry for the delay, folks… but here’s my quick Dynamite thoughts after the break. Probably won’t be covering the pre-emptied editions of the show ahead and I’m not even sure if All Out is in the cards at the moment, but we’ll get back to this one soon enough in some form or fashion.

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AEW Dynamite (Rest Of July and a bit beyond)

So here’s a bit of catch-up from the past couple episodes of Dynamite since… well, it’s not worth doing individual posts for episodes from the prior month. I’m not going to point out every single piece of business on the shows, just the notable bits.

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AEW Dynamite (July 15th, 2020): Fight For The Fallen 2020

A week after their 2-night Fyter Fest from an empty Daily’s Place, AEW held their Fight For The Fallen show on an episode of Dynamite, where proceeds to T-shirts would to COVID relief efforts, keeping in line with the charitable nature of the event. We’re getting a World title match on this show that we didn’t get the week prior due to COVID related reasons.

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AEW Dynamite (July 1st and 8th, 2020): Fyter Fest 2020

Full disclaimer: I had these written back in July shortly after the shows took place, but because of the self-imposed moratorium in regards to wrestling-related material, they were obviously not posted until now. So if there is no reference to anything that came afterwards (title changes and whatnots), that’s why… and the same goes for tomorrow’s Fight For The Fallen.

With July over and done, the moratorium is lifted and we begin the week recapping a couple big Dynamite shows, continue with a general follow-up post on Wednesday, do this week’s episode, and eventually follow up with some thoughts on this past weekend’s big Talk-N-Shop-A-Mania show.

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