AEW Dynamite (July 7th, 2021): Road Ragin’ Party

Well, AEW is back on the road, holding a show in Miami.

I considered doing a joke banner and call it “WWE Dynamite” in honor of Jim Ross’ latest botch that people have railed him over, but decided against it. Hey, it’s live TV, kids. And sometimes, you do something for so long that it almost becomes force of habit. Everybody fucks up. It happens. It’ll happen again. And dumping one guy to replace him with another is no guarantee that commentary will be “better.”

Unless you want to put Alex Marvez back in the booth… anyway…

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WCW Slamboree 2000

For the uninitiated, this is the show that featured the sole main event of one-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion and once big-time Hollywood actor, David Arquette.

Some background is in order; once upon a time, World Championship Wrestling had a movie called Ready To Rumble, which starred David Arquette. Someone at WCW (not mentioning names) had the bright idea to have David Arquette win the World title in an effort to drum up some much needed good press. And so David Arquette won the title in a tag-team match on Thunder by pinning Eric Bischoff, who was not the champion, but rather the (now former) champion was David Arquette’s tag-team partner, Diamond Dallas Page.

Long story short – the move got one mention on some rag nobody cares about and the television ratings for Nitro continue their plummet into obscurity while the top prize in WCW – once something that mattered – meant a hell of a lot less… which, in the year 2000 where WCW was being overseen by the creative “genius” of Uncle Eric and Vinny Ru, wasn’t saying a whole lot.

A lot can be and has been said about the move and I will reserve my thought for another time down the road, but for now,  we have ourselves a cage match between current champion Arquette, former champion DDP, and Jeff Jarrett.

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Ring Of Honor – JOE VS. KOBASHI (October 2nd, 2005)

Those UWF shows were a chore to sit through, kids. Fortunately, those were the only UWF shows we had to sit through and I thought that I had picked a nice little palette cleanser for this week’s musings. And that’s where today’s show comes into play… from Ring Of Honor circa 2005 and aired on The Fight Network ages ago – thus allowing me to preserve the event onto DVD-R, including commercials – today’s show doesn’t shy away from what the main event is going to be: Samoa Joe vs. Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi.

At the time, this was hailed as one of the best matches on U.S. professional wrestling soil. And seeing this match for the first time, it certainly had enough to live up to that hype because I had a ball with that match. However, much time has passed and one has to ask; Is Joe Vs. Kobashi still one of the best matches in U.S. professional wrestling history? Or has it lost its luster?

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AEW Dynamite (June 26th, 2021): The Night The Jungle Boy Grew Into A Jungle Man

The most amazing thing about the Kenny Omega/Jungle Boy match wasn’t the fact that it was a really good match. It wasn’t the fact that it proved Kenny Omega was more than capable of elevating younger talent to another level. Nor was it the fact that it proved that Jungle Boy was more than capable of going the distance and taking it to that next level to be a big-time main event star, thus establishing to the audience that his time will come and he’ll be ready for it.

No, the most amazing thing about this match was that there wasn’t a fuck finish.

No countouts, no DQs, no bullshit outside interference from the Bucks or the Jobber Club (that came after), nothing that would constitute a shit finish that you’d expect from a free TV title match on WWE or TNA, for that matter. No, this was a very old-school, very compelling match that saw two guys bring their A-games, busted their asses, and made each other look better than before. You didn’t come out of this match thinking Jungle Boy was some loser after taking the fall like you would a Roman Reigns match in WWE; you came out of it thinking Jungle Boy hung in there, took it to the champ, and yeah, he didn’t win, but his time will come and it’s only a matter of WHEN, not IF.

To me, this was the first truly great Kenny Omega match of the year. Probably not to the level of his legendary New Japan classics, but still pretty damn good. It certainly cemented his status as the “best bout machine” and proved that he is more than capable of elevating younger talent to that higher level. This was Sting almost beating Flair and not quite making it, but people got a better impression of the Stinger than they did before. I got that same feeling with Jungle Boy.

Somewhere in Louisville, someone named James is having a conniption fit over that comparison.

The rest of the show wasn’t too bad either. A fun match between Hangman Page and Powerhouse Hobbs, a really fun match between Matt Sydal and some kid named Dante, and another brawl between MJF’s group and Jericho’s group. Nothing blowaway or anything like that, but a good example of this being a one-match show.