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Here we go.

I was just happy to see Gordy and Williams again. Had seen both a few times as a kid when UWF came to the area. Plus by the main event dad had a few beer in him and I was busy getting the keys and letting him know I would drive us home. Before the show started across the arena for us was a place set up for a bunch of fans from a local assisted living place. Saw Sting and a few of the other faces come out and talk to the people there. But the one that stood out was Ron Simmons he was there from whenever they opened the doors until a few minutes before the dark match started. I need to dig it out and scan it but got a blurry picture of Ron giving a little person a piggy back ride.

I know this can be hard to believe... but people are allowed to be fans of, and spend money on, both companies.

It looks like Danhausen's application to A&W Root Beer landed on AEW's desk after all!

It makes little to no sense complaining about a low card workhorse/teacher not having crediblity. The point of the Kazarian signing isn't to ready him at his excelled age for a title run or even a one on one feud. Kazarian's there to continue to help out backstage with the younger talent and when the time is right in ring to 'pass the torch' regularly. On top of that, his 'credibility' is he has good matches with capable partners - see the aforementioned Christian match and the one with Hangman, etc. I love Kazarian's generous contribution. I'm glad to see him continue to receive gainful employment.

Hobbs always looks like a dude in a side scrolling beat em up game and I LOVE IT. We need someone else his size to team him with that inexplicably wears a pants belt diagonally across his chest.

Man, that was a lot of wrestling. Sammy Guevara is the best wrestler in AEW? Him or Cody since, Man, they both show up for the big matches. The future is bright. I loved the Danhausen debut and I await the beatdown from the Ass Boys. The bleeding hand by Orange Cassidy made that match scrape by on Dean Demands Blood In A Street Fight new thing I've going through since the WWE brung it up. That was an effective use of throwing the entire kitchen sink at a match to get it over the finish line. Daniel Garcia should have gone over after Jericho deserts Santana and Ortiz. The women's division is treading water right now, but a good Serena Deeb match in the next ten days should remedy that. Jim Ross should thank his lucky stars that Austin Idol is an active annoucer in NWA, because Ross was deeply shooting for the most annoying announcer on earth tonight. I'm looking forward to the Gunn Club vs Jurassic Express and the Briscoes showing up at some point. YAY! AEW RULES!

Cody!

I guess the question is who are we dealing with that's not us. I want to liken this to me as a kid feeling differently about someone beating Jim Powers relative to Barry Hardy. But kids? Eh. Let's look at our pal @JLowewho is not super familiar with the intricacies of the product. He may not get Kazarian's whole deal, but he knows that Kazarian is signed and that he has a history and that he has theme music and a tron. It registers differently beating him than just some guy who is already in the ring when the match starts. And there's probably some difference in beating him than beating a Wheeler Yuta sort who's obviously young and learning. Moreover, they can book a longer match, a more intricate one, for the crowd. If Adam Cole gives too much offense to some jobber on Elevation, it makes him look worse. If he gave half the match to Kazarian, no one's going to question that and you can have a real Adam Cole match vs a squash.

PRO WRESTLING MOTHERFUCKERS! BEST FRIENDS 4 LIFE!

Y'all wanna know what makes my curmudgeonly ass giggle like a little girl? That Danhausen reveal. I laughed like someone just shoved a Jackson brother into oncoming traffic. That shit got me.

Oh man.

As someone pointed out - fanbases giving to charities after a big event is one of the best things to come out of sports in awhile

Brandon Bones is awesome. It never dawned on me that we may have just witnessed the break-up of 2 Fast 2 Fuego. It also would not break my heart if Danhausen was restricted to comedy relief at the commentator's booth and never set foot in an AEW ring.

Danhausen/OC vs THE ASS BOYS= SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!

Also Hobbs’s drip was off the charts. Dude went with the late 90’s mall airbrush overalls and Jamarcus Russell fur coat combo. Amazing.

Thanks to this board, Danhausen showed up as a "friend suggestion" when I logged onto FB. And apparently, we have one mutual friend.

Frankie Kazarian : The Elite :: Elmer Fudd : Bugs Bunny

Just remembered Leyla completely whiffing on a running knee in extreme close-up and JR pausing for a second, trying to think of what to say, then saying it had "pinpoint accuracy". That's one way to do the Corey Graves "he didn't get all of it"...

Can we please talk about that hometown pop for Wardlow. The crowd was begging for him to turn in that CM Punk beatdown, and I'm ready for the big man to take off. Assuming it happens either next week or during this Punk feud, I'd have to guess that means MJF's next feud might just end up being Wardlow himself.

I have deep tape study available here for Danhausen. Back when he got on my radar for the first time, I went on a dive through YouTube to figure out what the deal was all about. To me, this match is the perfect summation of everything good and bad about Danhausen’s act. The comedy stuff here is actually really funny IMO. It takes what starts out as a simple, dumb premise (Danhausen thinks “Psycho Mike” is actually “Psychic Mike”) but goes SO FAR over the top with it that, by the end, I couldn’t help but be kind of impressed. But ultimately, it’s a comedy sketch taking place in a wrestling ring, and the wrestling portions don’t really have much to do with it. Even worse, any time they transition to the wrestling bits, the crowd just DIES. The comedy doesn’t succeed in drawing people into the action. This kind of the fundamental flaw in his act right now. One of the many reasons to be disappointed in whatever happened to ROH is that I thought it was giving him a venue to work on that before getting called up to one of the big time promotions (sorry latter-day ROH). ROH actually had a pretty good idea to put him in a tag team with PCO, who could carry the wrestling bits. They also had some fun double teams that mixed PCO’s power with Danhausen’s comedy. It was just a much more cohesive act. I would recommend that AEW find him a good straight-man partner to help him with the transition.

I think he is implying that AEW somehow cratered in to fan demands given the popular support for Danhausen and then signed him. Some people would call that "giving the customers what they want."

If the Danhausen debut had happened in AEW year one, Excalibur would have gone: "Oh my god! It's Danhausen!" and Tony and JR would have gone "WHO?" and completely deflated the moment. Whereas on this show, the whole announce team was putting him over. He even made misery guts JR laugh, merely by walking up the ramp.

If you don't get the Svengoolie reference (we have a long line of cheesy, corny TV horror movie hosts on US television going back to the late great Vampira) then think of him as R-Truth. Personally, this is something I think AEW needs, considering a lot of the fourth wall breaking shit -- its own Ron Killings. Makes the funny funnier and keeps the serious serious. Vince isn't entirely stupid, you know. EDIT:

Very amused that a lot of people were expecting Gargano tonight and got Danhausen instead.

Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude at WCW Beach Blast 1992 is the best Iron Man match in the history of the stipulation. Gave it *****.

Yep. Someone was definitely headed to the club for drinks after the show. Those were not hanging around the hotel room shorts.

I think it's interesting to navel-gaze about "Do wins and losses really matter (to me)?" In some cases, like say Danielson vs Kenny, for me personally, "Who's gonna win this one?" becomes a big part of my anticipation and excitement. I buy into the nearfalls and pop several times and it makes it all cooler and more exciting. That's the best. I love when I get fooled by a 2.999... But it's not like I think the guy who wins is a "better" wrestler because they won. In a case like "seasoned veteran mid-card stalwart vs young up and comer" I guess there's a sense of "wondering if they will put the young guy over" but for the most part I'm just hoping for a good match. If Frankie Kazarian is in the ring, I am generally really confident that I am getting a good match. I joke about wanting to see Legit Leyla, JD Drake, and Bear Country run wild, win every match, and hold all the belts. But in fact their lower-card striver status is a big part of what I love about them. And, with Tay Conti as an example, we know that it's legit possible to climb the ladder from the YouTube shows to the main event in AEW. So that's exciting, but for me personally they can lose every "big" match and I'll still be stoked to see them. And Jeff Jarrett in TNA or HHH in, I dunno, 2004 WWE or whomever can win every important match and it actually makes me like them less. if Cody never lost, people would genuinely f'n despise him. His willingness to put other wrestlers over big is one of the best things about him as a professional wrestler. It's cool and to interesting to have a variety of opinions and takes. I'm genuinely surprised that so many people (here and elsewhere) seem to actually give two craps about who wins and who loses in the mid-card. I'd kind of assumed that we all cared more about seeing lots of good exciting matches, and that a good worker doesn't need to go over to stay over.

Fighting Spirit.

I totally understand the criticism, and it's not necessarily unfounded, but I've always just personally been really forgiving of matches that have lots of wild bumps like the opener and main, so it's entirely within the realm of probability that I'm overrating them hard. For example, I totally agree with like @Technico Support 'S point about Sammy's selling or all the people noting the absurdity of the lights out finish, but I just had so much fun during the rest of it that I'm largely unaffected.

It was on the record that Kazarian was the only person Khan trusted with Christian's first match back, for instance. Frankly, they have way more mid-level heels than they have mid-level faces, so it's good to have him there. Everyone's problem currently is with the Elite Hunter gimmick and the fact that the Archer match was a situation misfire (and I have my theories about that).

Now we're just making up things to be outraged about.

That Baker promo was the worst thing she's done since turning. Awful, long, meandering, lacked confidence at times (you could hear her voice crack, she was understandably nervous), and accomplished nothing. Not to mention she buried the division. Just as bad as the Hirsch/Velvet match. Not a good week for the division other than Nyla with the cool interruption (and Excalibur with the nice adlib). Oh and Julia's promo was good for reasons mentioned. She's showing a lot of personality lately. Impressive because she didn't seem like she had much other than potential early on. Maybe she can really pull off the House of Black stuff if this is indeed where we are headed. Sorry to be a pedant, but can we please not casually use the term "spirit animal"? Indigenous people have been asking/telling non Indigenous people to cut that out of their lexicon. ?

Julia is so young - She just turned 20. I assume she is getting some serious coaching/advice in the back. But yep she is living the gimmick off camera which is pretty unusual these days.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sammy wasn't pissing blood last night after the ladder senton. It's funny, my wife was half-watching with me and was certain that those ladders were cheap wood painted black, or heavily gimmicked. I conceded that with 5 ladders, it was possible that they had a couple of them gimmicked to break or at least more flimsy, and then a couple for actual climbing. Then that spot happened and I rewound it to make sure she saw that the ladder not only didn't break, it barely had any give at all, and made a huge sound.

That cutter by Sammy, tho! Crazy opener! Wow! Layla Hirsch vs Ivy Nile is quickly becoming another unattainable dream match for me. Apparently, I'm one of the many co-TNT Champions now. Just like with Cody, previously, Sammy, you don't even know me! Stop pandering. 2.0. really get to do stuff, but here, they had no chance. Will this lead to the end of Inner Circle, finally? It is a bit odd that Wardlow was willing to powerbomb Punk on that chair at the behest of people who snubbed him on his birthday, but I'd think that was the last time he'll agree to it. Duelling promos were good. PAC&Penta vs Black & King? Don't mind if I do! And make it a double! C'mon Cole, did you have to DRAG Danhausen into this?!? Great main event, excellent show!

Good thing Orange countered, because if my calculations are right, he would've gotten about 8 feet of height on the piledriver.

The ladder match pretty much just became "let's see how many finishers we can do off the ladders". Glad Sammy won and there was no Cody gaga afterwards. I'm not sure who the heels and faces are supposed to be in the Jericho/P&P situation. I'm not sure that I care either, just get Jericho away from them. I was pretty indifferent on the OC/Cole match, especially with the No DQ stip that it seems AEW does way too often. It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by how much you enjoy a match, and I was highly entertained with what they did here. Danhausen showing up got a total mark out from me, especially the way he just...happened to be under there like it was completely normal. He didn't get involved with the match or do his teeth spot or anything, it was just like he was a random audience member who happened to have a seat under the ring. ...and it's official

Eddie looks like the type of guy that would convince me that the two of us could re-roof my house and I would 100% go along with it.

They're shouting out Dead Presidents

This was the best Dynamite in a good long time. Everything just clicked for me. Opener and main event were both insane. Big win for Leila. Though long, I thought the MJF/Punk segment was pretty good, and different enough from their other encounters that it wasn't terribly repetitive like I thought it was going to be when it started. Britt's promo warmed my shitty little Steeler heart. Last but not least, I'm breathing a sigh of relief Chuck Taylor's still with them. And how great was that House of Black package?

The only negative to watching this match on streaming is that you probably don't get the amazing picture-in-picture commercial break with a Domino's Pizza ad playing while Gage slices Jericho with a pizza cutter.