Category: Wrestling Television Musings

So earlier this week, I saw WWE attempt to produce a three-hour RAW from their Performance Center with no crowd; the end result being a rather awkward and uncomfortably boring that had a replay of this year’s Rumble, a quick match, and a bunch of promos. And while I gave credit for their trying, I kinda wish they just did replays and I dread how they’re going to pull off an empty arena Wrestlemania… for two nights no less!

And then there’s All Elite Wrestling; a few months into the television business, lacking the backlog or the experience to deal with a crisis of this sort… and also emanating from an empty arena; in this case, the site where two of their prior events took place. And I will admit that a part of me was dreading this… because these guys and gals were taking a huge risk given the current atmosphere. And, if I would be completely honest, I’d much rather they just took some time off, focused on keeping safe, and pick things up when we’re at a point where things can be picked up. I didn’t want to have that awkward feeling that I got watching RAW.

That having been said, the lack of a crowd and having to work around the current coronavirus world that we presently live in did not deter All Elite Wrestling from putting on another outstanding episode of Dynamite. Opening with a heartfelt promo from Cody about standing together while standing apart, about not living in fear, and parlaying that into a promo for next episode’s Blood & Guts match between the Elite and the Inner Circle.

Even though there are no fans, there is an “audience” of sort comprising all the heels on one side of the ring (MJF, Shawn Spears, and a couple others who gamble on the matches and even invites ol’ Tony Schiavone for a cut) and some faces on the other side (Colt Cobana and others). This gives us some background noise to give the illusion of a crowd cheering or jeering the action in the ring. What also helps is the “hard cam” set up in front of the main entrance set, so that we can hide the fact that the arena is empty. It works pretty damn well for the most part as a set-up and does a fair enough job of making an empty arena show more lively than usual.

By the way, this company has done television since October last year… and they were able to make an empty arena set up look good. Meanwhile, the company that’s been around for over five decades can’t be bothered to make their empty gym look better than usual.

So… quickly running down the undercard, the Lucha Bros beat the Best Friends in a pretty good tag-team match, which caused the Friends to challenge the Bros to a literal street fight in a parking lot. Then we have a women’s four way featuring Hikaru Shida, Kris Statlander, Penelope Ford, and RIHO… a pretty decent little match won by Shida. And then the Jurassic Express beat the Butcher And The Blade (with The Bunny) in a fun little match that seems less so with no girls crying for Jumping Jungle Jack Hammer Perry Boy.

Main event featured a six-man tag match between the Inner Circle (Santana, Ortiz, and the Spanish God Sammy Guevara) and the Elite (Cody, Hangman Page, and Matt Jackson) with the man advantage for next Dynamite’s Blood & Guts match (it’s Wargames with the serial number filed off) on the line. Pretty fun match with Jericho on commentary, which makes it all the more fun… certainly better than Asuka screaming and raving on RAW (sorry, Kanachan). Match ends with Santana rolling up Matt for the win and the advantage.

Jericho then cuts a promo, banning all fans from future events, and taunting the Elite for their lack of teamwork and being down a man. Then the flying drone of Broken Matt Hardy shows up and we get the big debut of Broken Matt Hardy in AEW, which would’ve been a nice spectacle had there been a crowd… still, the lack of a crowd didn’t mitigate the moment and I can’t wait to see how Matt fares in AEW,

Speaking of debuts, the Dark Order’s Exalted One was revealed to be Brodie Lee – the former Luke Harper – who proceeds to beat up on Christopher Daniels, who refused to believe in an exalted one. Also, this Brodie fellow is a pretty good talker for the role he’s given. Wonder why he’s not allowed to talk in his former place of employ.

There’s also a quick interview with AEW champ Jon Moxley as well as a filmed vignette of Jake The Snake’s new charge, Lance Archer, beating up a bunch of nobodies in a backyard wrestling ring. Kudos to the short for featuring a Cheatum-like ring announcer… nobody is going to get that, are they?

So if this ends up being the last episode of Dynamite for a good while, this was a strong showing to end it on until the foreseeable future. And for what it’s worth, the board has been set for next time with the debuts of Brodie Lee as the Exalted One and Matt Hardy as part of the Elite team, the announcement of matches for the next episode of Dynamite – which they have been particular of saying “the next Dynamite” and not “next week’s Dynamite.” It also amazes me that AEW was able to put on a more entertaining empty arena show than WWE did that I was almost able to forget the current coronavirus world we live in.

Almost.

Like I said, I’d have no problem with a suspension of live wrestling for the foreseeable future if it meant the folks could stay safe. But if they’re able to pull this off for as long as they can while staying safe, then I can only wish them all the best.

Be safe.

AEW debuts a steel cage match and two big hosses are in matches against the hot babyfaces in AEW… also, the continuing adventures of Hangman Page… yeah, that’s all I got for this one… but hey, it was a fun show, at least.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (Feb. 19, 2020) – Dat Dere Is A Tall Kage, Kid”

So this will be brief… because I really only want to touch on a couple quick bits. For the sake of disclosure, I thought that last week’s edition of Dynamite was top-notch stuff from top to bottom, beginning with a match to build one top-level feud and ending with one of the best non-wrestling wrestling segments I’ve seen in years to build another top-level feud.

So I will bring up five random points about the show overall after the break.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (Feb. 5th, 2020): Whip ‘Em, Boy.”

Well, it’s gotten to that point, kids. But this is the end of the weekly AEW Dynamite musings on this here blog. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on the show or anything, because they’ve been fun shows and continue to be the easiest two hours of wrestling on television… but I want to actually enjoy the shows without having to worry about gathering thoughts for a blog post a day or so later. So from this point on, it’ll be every once in a while as opposed to every week.

With that in mind… what a show to end this run on.

The Lucha Bros. defeated Hangman Adam Page and Kenny Omega in a pretty fun and exciting little wrestling match where miscommunication and an accident lariat has Kenny eating a package piledriver to give the Luchas a win. Hangman and Kenny argue before THAT MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD PAC shows up on the screen and finds that Nakazawa fellow in the locker room. Kenny rushes to help, but is cut off by the Lucha Bros and we have a brawl in the Picture-In-Picture commercial break… which annoys me.

Listen, guys. I appreciate the PnP gimmick during matches because I can follow the action somewhat and one of my pet peeves with TV matches are the commercial breaks that make you miss part of the action. So the PnP thing for that purpose is fine. The PnP to run important angles that further the story, on the other hand, is not a good idea and it completely and utterly SUCKS.

CODY and Darby Allin defeated The Blade, The Butcher, and the Bunny… wait, that doesn’t sound right. Anyway, whatever. Cody and Darby beat the other guys, revenge is attained, and now we can expect Cody/Darby II somewhere down the line. Cool. This was alright. Probably not as exciting or engaging as the opening match, but for what it is, that’s perfectly fine.

Awesome Kong kills some girl in half a minute. Not much else to say there. Next.

The ten-minute time limit match between Le Champion Chris Jericho and the Jungle Boy Jungle Jack Packard Perry Boy ends in a time limit draw. Jericho is not thrilled with that and demands five more minutes, because that worked so well in the past. However, after a couple minutes of action that sees the Jungle Jack Boy fellow get the upper hand, Jericho bails and promises big things for Jon Moxley on New Year’s Day… presumably he got another pitcher plant or something.

The match itself isn’t much, but served two purposes. It gave Jungle Boy a bit of credibility by having him be able to hang with the champion for 10+ minutes, making him a bigger deal than he was before… though I doubt he’ll be more over than the dinosaur, but that’s okay. And the second thing is to give Jericho a bit of a chink in his armor without flat out beating him. This is the kind of thing where the time limit does wonders for a match rather than detract from it, as was the case with that one Moxley/PAC match from a month or so ago.

Kris Statlander defeated Dr. Britt Baker DMD via tombstone in a perfectly acceptable wrestling match to earn a title shot at Riho’s Women’s title on New Year’s Day. Then Brandi shows up and invites Statlander into her Borg Collective or whatever. Stat says no, Brandi gives her shoe, and leaves. The match itself was fine and went by quickly enough, but I’m still not sold on this Brandi stuff.

AEW World Tag-Team Champions SCU (Scorpio Sky and Kazarian) defeated The Young Bucks in what I thought was a pretty good match until the sudden ending where Sky hits Matt with a TKO and they do the finish to retain the titles. And then the Dark Order shows up and attacks everyone, with more guys showing up to get beaten down. I can appreciate AEW trying their best with this Dark Order thing, but I’m just not sold on it. The vignettes were kinda neat, I suppose, but when it comes to the actual in-ring sports entertainment part of it, it comes off as a big huge pile of “meh.”

And that’s it for me. On a whole, a perfectly fine show with some good wrestling matches, some solid story progression, and the usual easy pacing that makes this a joy to watch. I’m done with these things on a weekly basis… though I may touch on the New Year’s Day show if I feel it. We’ll see.

So last week was radio silence on my end. Sorry about that… fortunately, that means two Dynamite musings for the week. Today will cover last week’s episode, which was a fine episode of Dynamite and that will lead us to Thursday’s final weekly Dynamite musings for tonight’s episode, which promises to be big.

But that’s later. Let’s get last week’s show out of the way first.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (Dec. 11th, 2019): That’s Better”

Yeah, it’s another episode of AEW Dynamite… and another brief write-up… this is why I’m stopping these things. When you get to the point where stuff happens and you just feel tired of saying the same thing over and over again, that’s when you realize that it’s for the best.

That having been said, this was another solid episode of Dynamite that was fun to watch, but probably had nothing worthwhile happening beyond a couple teases for matches down the road. Considering there isn’t a major PPV event to build towards for another couple months, we’re in the awkward position of trying to get things moving along until there is a PPV to build towards. That’s probably why these shows have felt a bit aimless and purposeless.

Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (Dec. 4th, 2019): It’s Still A List, You Jack-Ass”

Welp… this isn’t going to be a long write-up. Not even bothering with the page break… could this be the end of AEW? No, but it could mean the end of these write-ups sooner than later… but I digress.

So we open the show with the big Chris Jericho celebration… because Le Champion keeps to his commitments. We get clowns, marching bands, balloons, gifts, Soul Man Jones has a job again, there’s cardboard stand-ups, flip-flops, a little bit of the 40, there’s a goat that scared out of its mind, there’s former New York Ranger Ted Irvine (aka Chris’ Dad) coming out of a box (so you know he’s instantly over) and berating the Blackhawks while giving the Inner Circle custom Rangers jerseys… and then just for good measure, let’s have Justin Roberts read a prepared statement and then beat him up because he sucks at his job, which prompts SCU to make the save while doing their marching band part time skit.

If you can find the segment online or catch the replay, it’s actually a pretty entertaining little piece due to the fact that Jericho and his buddies work pretty well together and even ol’ Ted manages good stuff. I like these sorts of things when they entertain me, not so much when they bore the shit out of me. I suppose that’s why I didn’t mind the length, though if someone were to argue that this went too long and almost reeked of being WWE-esque, I wouldn’t argue that point, either.

This would, of course, be bookended with our advertised title match, where Le Champion Chris Jericho made Tag-Team Champion Scorpio Sky his Le Bitch to retain the title in what I thought was a pretty decent little match. The story was straightforward; SCU countered the Jake Hager factor, but even that wasn’t enough for the Tag-Team Champion to overcome the World Champion… which makes the whole 50/50 booking thing actually make sense.

Beyond that, everything else about the show was just kinda, sorta there. There was a match between Best Friends and Lucha Bros that was okay, seeing the Friends beat the Bros in a surprise upset. There was a serviceable women’s match. MJF gets a Diamond Ring and gets in DDP’s face. There was a pretty decent Kenny Omega/PAC match that saw Kenny get a much-needed win. And then Cody won a quick match before getting ambushed by the Butcher and the Blade, a new tag-team that I’m supposed to know.

This was a very uninteresting show for the most part that is bookended by a fun opening segment and a perfectly fine world title match. Still very much an easy watch for me, but it’s starting to feel like a chore. Let’s hope this was a one-off thing and not a sign of things to come.

Another week, another AEW show… and this one promises an ANNOUNCEMENT from Le Champion du AEW! How exciting.

By the way, for the few folks enjoying these write-ups for some reason, don’t get to used to them because they’ll be a thing of the past soon enough. Fact of the matter is while I like getting my thoughts on good shows up, I also like to just enjoy the shows without worrying about how to convey those thoughts afterwards. I’ll keep up with these for the moment, but from then on, it’s every so often.

But that is then, this is now… Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (Nov. 20th, 2019): Coughing Shifts… Or Something”

It’s the follow-up to FULL GEAR… a couple days later than anticipated, but better late than never, I suppose. Look, I posted an Impact musings on a [REDACTED] match a week after it happened, so this ain’t too bad, folks.

Anyway, we have a tag title bout on this here show to go along with a really awesome MJF promo and the debut of… some guy. Here we go. Continue reading “AEW Dynamite (Nov. 13th, 2019): Aucune “Bubbly” Pour Le Champion Du AEW”