Category: Wrestling Television Musings

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”