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AEW Dynamite - 3/29/2023


The Natural

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Big show with Adam Cole's first match in 9 months against Daniel Garcia, since AEW x NJPW Forbidden Dorr 2022 and Kenny Omega in his second reign as IWGP United States Heavyweight Champion defends vs. Jeff Cobb. Adam Cole has never done anything for me but I'm glad he's back as I don't like wrestlers getting injured and he's been out a long time. Definitely prefer Kenny Omega in singles away from the Young Bucks as the Elite. Enjoy everyone!

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  • Hey, let's see what Adam Cole can do as a babyface. I pretty strongly dislike his heel work but that's because of a lack of credible offense relative to most of the babyfaces on the roster and the fact that the fans want to cheer him anyway and despite what he claims, he never quite gets over that. I have cautious optimism that he might be ok as a babyface. What a sucker I am, right? Anyway, Daniel Garcia is a great test for this. If this doesn't work, he's doomed and we're basically stuck with him forever and therefore, we're doomed. Cole's a nice guy. I want him to succeed. 
  • Cobb can get a little Brian Cage-y sometimes, and I bet Omega brings out his worst tendencies but Omega vs a Base who can keep up with him sounds better than most "Omega vs" possibilities in theory. The things I dislike about Omega's work have really crystalized all the more as of late, and if anyone wants to hear them, I can go in detail, but no one does, so let's just move on.
  • Willow vs Ruby feels too soon but it's not like we're going to get any closure out of it. The story does need to move to the next chapter soon, whatever that is. The match should be very good! Hopefully Ruby works a body part? Or just outbrawls Willow? She's got to get heat on her somehow and Willow has both the size advantage and the rage coming in.
  • BCC vs Dalton/Boys will probably be a squash but it'd be nice to see Cesaro go at it with Dalton for a bit. 
  • OC vs Butcher will be yet another really good 15 minute OC match. Lots of big power cut offs and meanness. 
  • Hardy vs Jungle Boy is probably more of a Jungle Boy thing than a Hardy thing but hopefully we get some progression all around. The match should be good and no one should complain about it. 
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5 minutes ago, Matt D said:
  • The things I dislike about Omega's work have really crystalized all the more as of late, and if anyone wants to hear them, I can go in detail, but no one does, so let's just move on.

I'd actually like to hear this.

I'm not a huge Omega fan, but I've come to like him more lately and appreciate what he brings to the table. I feel like I'm finally seeing the in-match storytelling that I'd heard about with him, but had never been able to parse since I hadn't seen much of him, really. He is a bit go-go-go for my tastes, but I rarely see moments where hes no-selling.

Basically, I went from someone who was neutral at best on Omega, but now find myself enjoying him.

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22 minutes ago, Log said:

I'd actually like to hear this.

I'm not a huge Omega fan, but I've come to like him more lately and appreciate what he brings to the table. I feel like I'm finally seeing the in-match storytelling that I'd heard about with him, but had never been able to parse since I hadn't seen much of him, really. He is a bit go-go-go for my tastes, but I rarely see moments where hes no-selling.

Basically, I went from someone who was neutral at best on Omega, but now find myself enjoying him.

I'll make a very quick run at it and if you want more depth, I can provide it later.

With Omega, more than almost any wrestler I can think of, I can never not see the strings. He's like a magician who does amazing, complex tricks, but that's always winking at the audience and showing them how he's doing it. It's never about the suspension of disbelief or what's organic in the moment. It's always about complex spot and match architecture. The edifices he builds are impressive and creative but they never feel natural to me. He doesn't try to hide the strings because part of the point is to show them, to make the fans feel like they're in on the act and that they're seeing something special. It all feels like a bit of a cheat to me, however, one that misses (or more accurately) changes the point of wrestling. I want wrestling to be cooperative and collaborative and thoughtful but not to look like it is. I'm impressed by his ambition but I don't want him to let the audience in to the extent that he does. 

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12 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I'll make a very quick run at it and if you want more depth, I can provide it later.

With Omega, more than almost any wrestler I can think of, I can never not see the strings. He's like a magician who does amazing, complex tricks, but that's always winking at the audience and showing them how he's doing it. It's never about the suspension of disbelief or what's organic in the moment. It's always about complex spot and match architecture. The edifices he builds are impressive and creative but they never feel natural to me. He doesn't try to hide the strings because part of the point is to show them, to make the fans feel like they're in on the act and that they're seeing something special. It all feels like a bit of a cheat to me, however, one that misses (or more accurately) changes the point of wrestling. I want wrestling to be cooperative and collaborative and thoughtful but not to look like it is. I'm impressed by his ambition but I don't want him to let the audience in to the extent that he does. 

That's an excellent point. It makes sense why some people would be very into his style, seeing as how he's inviting them in. I'm not putting any sort of judgement on those people. It just makes sense as to why some would be more passionate about Kenny's matches than others.

Like I said before, I'm enjoying him more now after this recent run of fun tv matches. I'm still what you might call an Omega agnostic. I'm not all-in (no pun) on him, but I do look forward to seeing him. I, however, can't see myself getting emotionally invested in an Omega match like I might for maybe an Eddie Kingston match. He's just not going to draw that out of me, and I'm not sure he's really trying to.

 

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Dalton and the Boys are on paper the perfect foil for the BCC right now. With any luck this should end up looking something like, say, Doc, Johnny Ace and Richard Slinger/Johnny Smith vs Tamon Honda (clearly Dalton's spiritual predecessor), Kikuchi and Shiga. 

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BCC vs. The Boys should be the match that makes even the most diehard Moxley fan turn on them. I'm talking buckets of blood and refusal to stop and/or release holds. Maybe even reverse the decision to show they care more now about making statements than winning. 

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6 hours ago, Matt D said:
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  • Hardy vs Jungle Boy is probably more of a Jungle Boy thing than a Hardy thing but hopefully we get some progression all around. The match should be good and no one should complain about it. 

Oh! I thought of a type of complaint people could make if the are so inclined. Didn't even take very long. 

 "Why is Jungle Boy's role in this company to feud with members of pretty-boy brothers tag teams from the Smackdown Six era?"

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That would be valid if he was feuding with Matt Hardy, but he’s not and won’t be. And besides that, Matt & Isiah are babyfaces and in the process of turning Ethan Page into one as well if Dark is anything to go by.

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12 hours ago, Casey said:

That would be valid if he was feuding with Matt Hardy, but he’s not and won’t be. And besides that, Matt & Isiah are babyfaces and in the process of turning Ethan Page into one as well if Dark is anything to go by.

Lee and Big Bill got a big babyface reaction, too. Happy for Bill in particular. Really looks like he's having fun.

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Omega to me is like the Dolph Ziggler problem from ten years ago, where people rightfully pointed out similar issues about being able to see the strings, and not finding the character of someone who just wants to put on the best match on the card to be entirely conducive to whatever is left of kayfabe.

He's just not as overstated in that mission statement, the bumps aren't quite as show-offy and he's got a Smackdown vs Raw CAW moveset instead. 

I often wonder what AEW would be like if we had the Omegaverse instead of the Codyverse. The Omegaverse works in the storyline sense that you've constantly got all these guys coming through the Forbidden Door to get these ridiculous dream matches. It doesn't work so much when he's the company titleholder and it feels like its in the back seat to the star ratings. Whereas Cody suffered as a result of not having that character motivation to succeed and you constantly had to come up with these goofy reasons for why you should care about Cody vs this other guy for no real stakes at all. Everyone bought into Cody chasing Jericho for the title as they are now with Cody chasing Roman for the title (your thoughts on Zayn aside).

 

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21 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Omega to me is like the Dolph Ziggler problem from ten years ago, where people rightfully pointed out similar issues about being able to see the strings, and not finding the character of someone who just wants to put on the best match on the card to be entirely conducive to whatever is left of kayfabe.

Look, I'll be honest too. Back in the day, Dolph was always "most underrated." People would gripe about him not getting pushed but that was kind of the end of it. Some of the problem is the notion now that Omega's idea of wrestling is progress, that it's the ultimate evolution of what pro wrestling can be, that it's far superior than everything that's come before it, so amazing that it breaks the scale. And it just leaves whole elements of what I value in wrestling behind to get a leg up in other aspects. I get that it's just people's opinion but we're in a society here, right? It's hard to escape that. Even if he was just "most underrated" instead, it probably wouldn't be so bad.

It's kind of like my deal with Brody. I wouldn't be half as frustrated with his ringwork if he wasn't put on a pedestal as the all time legend, best brawler, most fearsome, etc., when he was a guy who had shitty looking offense and broke the rules in the most selfish way possible by bumping big and then refusing to sell. If people took a more nuanced approach to him, it wouldn't bother me as much. I get that's not the most helpful thing, but I'm human.

Edited by Matt D
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Let's not sleep on Orange Cassidy vs. The Butcher. It might be one of the better 'big man vs. smaller man' matches in awhile. Although I hope Jarrett does a Memphis style run in and give about 20 piledrivers to OC while the ref is knocked out only for OC to kick out.

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Kenny's two big singles matches this year are at least a little bit different than his usual formula. The Ospreay match, which I dreaded going in, was much more of an extended beatdown than any big Kenny match ever. And while there's examples of Kenny being the base for a flashier guy, like some of his old junior heavyweight work or maybe the PAC matches?, I can't think of a time where he based as hard as he did for Vikingo. I'm not sure if the injuries have really affected Kenny's aproach to match structure but this Jeff Cobb match will be telling. Maybe they'll slow it down and work more control 'n comebacks. Maybe they'll just throw bombs.

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Be interesting to see how Kenny Omega wins. The best finishers can be applied to anyone. A One Winged Angel on someone Jeff Cobb's size would be a legit holy shit. Probably a combo of V-Trigger's put Cobb down for the three.

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4 hours ago, Matt D said:

 Some of the problem is the notion now that Omega's idea of wrestling is progress, that it's the ultimate evolution of what pro wrestling can be, that it's far superior than everything that's come before it, so amazing that it breaks the scale. And it just leaves whole elements of what I value in wrestling behind to get a leg up in other aspects. I get that it's just people's opinion but we're in a society here, right? It's hard to escape that. Even if he was just "most underrated" instead, it probably wouldn't be so bad.

 

This is so well put and pretty much reflects my feelings, less about Omega specifically, but more about the highly athletic style that has become the new gold standard since Omega and Ibushi became the big WON darlings around 2011 or whenever it really became the prominent "critic's choice" style.

This was all I could think about during the Vikingo match last week, just like...are we really pushing for athletic ability alone to be the key metric of determining who deserves praise the most? I seem to be alone in actively hating the Vikingo match so I'll chalk that one up to maybe my needing to revisit it (if everyone is a dummy except you then it almost for sure means you're the dummy is a good rule of thumb for these things), but like...what about that match made people want to see Vikingo again right away? Just all the crazy dives he does? It's weird to me, especially when you have a guy like Bandido who can do all that crazy stuff but still has that super likeable character and is so expressive (also the difference between, say, Rush who oozes scary heel charisma vs Fenix who...goes in there and does all his stuff every match).

And more to the point, do we start to disqualify guys like Kingston (or, say, Max Caster for a less extreme example) from high praise because their level of athleticism prevents them from having a "Kenny Omega-level match" in terms of the athletic feats of gravity defiance we've come to expect? I realize these types of arguments are dangerously close to the reactionary Cornette/Disco positions but I see it more like a binary distinction where on the one hand you have morons like Cornette who don't want any innovation and then the people who are basically cool with all different styles but reserve all their highest praise for Omega and Ospreay and people like that. It's the kind of thinking that warped everyone's perspective of the four AJPW pillars where Taue is always seen as the weak link of those four (or five, after Akiyama) but he was actually in a lot of respects the second best wrestler (after Kawada) of the three on many occasions, especially post-1995 when Misawa and Kobashi's stuff got more and more patterned.

I think people are starting to tire of the repetitiveness to a certain degree. The shrug reaction to Action Andretti seems to suggest you need more than just the ability to do a standing moonsault to be seen as a (future) star. This post isn't as eloquent as it seemed in my head while I was writing it but basically I like most Omega matches a lot but I think his success is symptomatic of a bigger problem of which Will Ospreay is the final and most extreme manifestation of (the Return of the Repressed where Teddy Hart/DX-era Shawn comes back, is even worse, and main events the Tokyo Dome)

 

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RIP Dalton Castle and the Boys.

And while I knew some people are thrilled at the prospect of Adam Cole getting sucked into the Chris Jericho Booking Vortex, as an Adam Cole fan, it's disappointing to me. I'd rather see him take on bigger fish at the moment. Plus, it's yet another storyline abandoned into the abyss. Cole, Fish, and KOR turn on the Bucks, before that there was dissention between Cole and Kenny, and now...it's just totally forgotten about. With Matt on the shelf for awhile, why not feud Nick Jackson against Adam Cole?

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1 hour ago, Belgian_Waffle said:

This is so well put and pretty much reflects my feelings, less about Omega specifically, but more about the highly athletic style that has become the new gold standard since Omega and Ibushi became the big WON darlings around 2011 or whenever it really became the prominent "critic's choice" style.

This was all I could think about during the Vikingo match last week, just like...are we really pushing for athletic ability alone to be the key metric of determining who deserves praise the most? I seem to be alone in actively hating the Vikingo match so I'll chalk that one up to maybe my needing to revisit it (if everyone is a dummy except you then it almost for sure means you're the dummy is a good rule of thumb for these things), but like...what about that match made people want to see Vikingo again right away? Just all the crazy dives he does? It's weird to me, especially when you have a guy like Bandido who can do all that crazy stuff but still has that super likeable character and is so expressive (also the difference between, say, Rush who oozes scary heel charisma vs Fenix who...goes in there and does all his stuff every match).

And more to the point, do we start to disqualify guys like Kingston (or, say, Max Caster for a less extreme example) from high praise because their level of athleticism prevents them from having a "Kenny Omega-level match" in terms of the athletic feats of gravity defiance we've come to expect? I realize these types of arguments are dangerously close to the reactionary Cornette/Disco positions but I see it more like a binary distinction where on the one hand you have morons like Cornette who don't want any innovation and then the people who are basically cool with all different styles but reserve all their highest praise for Omega and Ospreay and people like that. It's the kind of thinking that warped everyone's perspective of the four AJPW pillars where Taue is always seen as the weak link of those four (or five, after Akiyama) but he was actually in a lot of respects the second best wrestler (after Kawada) of the three on many occasions, especially post-1995 when Misawa and Kobashi's stuff got more and more patterned.

I think people are starting to tire of the repetitiveness to a certain degree. The shrug reaction to Action Andretti seems to suggest you need more than just the ability to do a standing moonsault to be seen as a (future) star. This post isn't as eloquent as it seemed in my head while I was writing it but basically I like most Omega matches a lot but I think his success is symptomatic of a bigger problem of which Will Ospreay is the final and most extreme manifestation of (the Return of the Repressed where Teddy Hart/DX-era Shawn comes back, is even worse, and main events the Tokyo Dome)

 

So I agree with big chunks of this. The AJPW bit in particular exactly mirrors my feelings about the pillars and I've went on and on about the fallacy and dangers of Meltzerian/post-Shawn line of thinking and criticism that deems athletic exhibition more important that storytelling.

The Kenny/Vikingo match... there were aspects of it that don't always show up in other boom-boom go-go spotfests. I like that the pace was immediately set as a fast one with Vikingo's pre-bell dive, because it made sense for Vikingo to do that. Move were generally sold/registered as being painful in the moment, and there was enough urgency put across when they were going from spot-to-spot (with the exception of Vikingo having to get his balance a few times). It looked like both guys had some interest in trying to win the match. They didn't taunt too much. They teased the table well and brought it back at the right time/with the right spot. The finish made sense. The years-long establishment of the V-Trigger as the thing you must have an answer for in order to beat Kenny continued to pay off. It's not gonna finish in my Top Ten at the end of the year but all things considered there aren't THAT many nits to pick.

You bring up an interesting point in the part I bolded in the quote. I don't want to see Vikingo again right away. He's a special attraction. He is the opposite-side-of-the-coin Twitter .gif Andre the Giant. His shtick is spellbinding in front of a crowd who hasn't seen it, and it's great to watch big hot crowds react to it instead of a dimly-lit, poorly-mic'ed AAA audience that can't begin to fill out the way-too-big arena they booked. But it goes without saying that Vikingo's moves will have diminishing returns the more crowds are conditioned to them. I think they're using him brilliantly to pop some subscriptions and interest for the RoH PPV. I only want him on AEW Dynamite a few times a year, maybe he could pop a Rampage rating in a couple of months. When he starts putting together other parts of his game they can think about storylines and belts, but if he remains a special attraction as the Flippiest Dude In The World that's a fine way to use him.

Edited by John E. Dynamite
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2 hours ago, Belgian_Waffle said:

The shrug reaction to Action Andretti seems to suggest you need more than just the ability to do a standing moonsault to be seen as a (future) star.

Wait until Nick Wayne and his shitty punches show up this summer

The truth is that there's a place for Ospreay clones like Andretti and Wayne, but it's NOT IN THE SAME COMPANY. If you already have one of them, you don't need two more.

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18 minutes ago, John E. Dynamite said:

I don't want to see Vikingo again right away.

Where I always make the mistake is that I want to see these guys against a real base. That was my House of Black/Elite mistake. With Vikingo, I want to see him against Keith Lee, or Christian, or Brody King, or Orange Cassidy, or Jeff Jarret, or Ethan Page. I want the contrast.

Edited by Matt D
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6 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Where I always make the mistake is that I want to see these guys against a real base. That was my House of Black/Elite mistake. With Vikingo, I want to see him against Keith Lee, or Christian, or Brody King, or Orange Cassidy, or Jeff Jarret, or Ethan Page. I want the contrast.

Or Claudio (drools).

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