Dynamite - 5/31/2023

[The Natural]

The first Dynamite since Double or Nothing 2023. Only things confirmed are Adam Cole/Dr. Britt Baker vs. Chris Jericho/Saraya which I couldn't care less about and a Tony Khan announcement about Collision. We also hear from Konosuke Takeshita/Don Callis.

Much bigger, this Dynamite falls on my Dad's birthday. Happy birthday, Dad. Thanks for everything you do for me. Have yourself a good un and I love you xxx.

[JLowe]

Crash TV time?

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

8 hours ago, The Natural said:

The first Dynamite since Double or Nothing 2023. Only things confirmed are Adam Cole/Dr. Britt Baker vs. Chris Jericho/Saraya which I couldn't care less about...

Yikes. Really?!?! They have only announced ONE match, and it is a combination of the least-liked match from the PPV and the outsiderz storyline? I really want to stop being negative, but.. Anyone else remember when actual pro wrestling used to be the focus on these shows? 

Happy birthday to Natural Senior, though! We are all wishing you nothing but the best and I personally am going to refrain from making an "I hope you like crap!" Norm Macdonald reference .

[Zakk_Sabbath]

15 minutes ago, JLowe said:

Crash TV time?

That's a very good question. The months-long build to DON felt like a friggin' eternity at times, let's see if three weeks feels like a (comparative) blink; surely there's a happy medium. I tend to think you're on the right path with the crash TV inference, if only because I'd imagine they're going to also be thinking about planting seeds for the Collision debut as well as All In fairly contemporaneously 

[Casey]

Let’s fuckin’ go, announce that brand split baby.

[Dolphman 3000]

1 minute ago, Casey said:

Let’s fuckin’ go, announce that brand split baby.

AEW recently trademarked "Transfer Portal" for wrestling purposes, so I'm guessing we'll see some sort of a draft soon

[Infinit]

I think that coming off the PPV, it's ok not to have alot of pre-announced matches. They shouldn't do it every week, but fine in this instance.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

5 minutes ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

AEW recently trademarked "Transfer Portal" for wrestling purposes, so I'm guessing we'll see some sort of a draft soon

A couple of weeks ago, I was all like 'Eh, a soft brand split is fine - as long as they don't do the total WWE thing and try to pop a # with a draft episode'

How's TNA been lately? (I kid)

[Dolphman 3000]

That actually brings up a good point - can't have drafts without authority figures!

Who should be the GM's for Dynamite/Rampage/Collision/ROH?

[Zakk_Sabbath]

6 minutes ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

That actually brings up a good point - can't have drafts without authority figures!

Who should be the GM's for Dynamite/Rampage/Collision/ROH?

Dude I thought YOU posted this but I guess I confused you with someone else - there was a video here where Stokely was taking over TK's office (it was really, really well done - for example, taking a pic of Tony and his parents off the wall, and replacing it with a portrait of George & Weezy Jefferson) leading some to believe he may be that guy. FWIW, I know The Firm was supposed to be heavily involved with Punk before...stuff happened... So while it's not necessarily a meaningful connection, it's entirely possible.

https://twitter.com/StokelyHathaway/status/1660684357051219968?s=20

 

Edit: found a link

Edited May 31, 2023 by Zakk_Sabbath

[EVA]

Yeah, I would expect Stokely to be involved in a big way with Collision. And it kinda seems like the Firm might be done as an ongoing concern.

[Casey]

Authority figures suck, but Stokely is amazing so fuck it, let’s do that. That makes Collision even better.

[Zimbra]

Man, Big Stoke is too good a manager to get wasted as a GM.

[Greggulator]

I might be crazy. But here is why I think tonight might be a good show:

1) A lack of anything announced so far likely means TK hasn't thought much of all about what's going to happen for the next PPV yet in terms of specifics. Maybe he has a few ideas for matches. I'm assuming he knows who Max is going up against, and the basics of any kind of Collision split. But that's it.

2) That means there's a lot of time to chew up with matches.

3) That means we might get some peak level random matches coming our way. Come on man, give us Swerve/Big Bill vs. OC/Kommander for 35 minutes you coward! 

[Log]

Maybe I should save this for the navel-gaze thread, but if AEW does a brand split/draft and GMs, I'm going to probably lose significant interest in them. Two of my absolute least-favorite things in wrestling right there.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Log

[Casey]

1 hour ago, Gordlow said:

Anyone else remember when actual pro wrestling used to be the focus on these shows? 

I’m sorry AEW isn’t what it used to be or what made you love it initially, but what a weird fucking take.

 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

18 minutes ago, Casey said:

I’m sorry AEW isn’t what it used to be or what made you love it initially, but what a weird fucking take.

 

Put me in the weirdo camp with Gord too, I guess. The jury's still out on tonight which, y'know, hasn't happened yet, but I definitely agree with aspects of what he's mentioned over the last few months of changes. I'm probably still a little higher on the show than he is, but even myself, I can't deny that certain things (like attempting a 30 min opening promo with the pillars a few weeks ago, nearly all of the visual changes to the show, though they brought my beloved black ropes/guardrail back) definitely have a bit of Stamford flavor to them. 'Setting up' the main event at the top of the show, for example, is something I never wanted to see here, but could easily happen again today. I don't wanna put words in anyone's mouth, but I could get behind the idea of those changes feeling a bit jarring for a day one fan.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Zakk_Sabbath
Not to mention the likely forthcoming TRANSFER PORTAL SPECIAL

[Matt D]

One of the first comments I remember making about AEW on the board (as I kind of ignored it for a while, so goes my memory - don't quote me otherwise) was being impressed that they had the Shaq tag planned right AFTER a PPV, that they had so much depth that they were able to do that. In truth, it was probably a scheduling thing, but it still stood out. For the last many PPVs, however, there was usually one post-PPV Dynamite match that was planned in the days ahead and the reset of the card filled in after that. The Daniel Garcia title win in Buffalo after All Out last year comes to mind. That's what they did with the mixed tag. It's a "big enough" match to sell things on its own while the smoke clears and Khan regroups. It's often like this after a PPV.

Would I rather there be more of a card by now? Yes. I was excited about the possibilities Monday night and right now the possibilities have shaped up to be a Khan announcement and Callis/Takeshita speaking.

On the other hand, at the very last second, right before the show last week, they added Roderick Strong vs Daniel Garcia, so.....

I'm not super worried.

[Casey]

14 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Put me in the weirdo camp with Gord too, I guess. The jury's still out on tonight which, y'know, hasn't happened yet, but I definitely agree with aspects of what he's mentioned over the last few months of changes. I'm probably still a little higher on the show than he is, but even myself, I can't deny that certain things (like attempting a 30 min opening promo with the pillars a few weeks ago, nearly all of the visual changes to the show, though they brought my beloved black ropes/guardrail back) definitely have a bit of Stamford flavor to them. 'Setting up' the main event at the top of the show, for example, is something I never wanted to see here, but could easily happen again today. I don't wanna put words in anyone's mouth, but I could get behind the idea of those changes feeling a bit jarring for a day one fan.

Yes, I can understand the idea of someone being turned off by these changes. But at the end of the day, over half of Dynamite on a regular basis is in-ring focused. Compare that to just RAW last week, in a three hour show, that had 4 more minutes of wrestling than last week’s Dynamite. Smackdown (last week anyway) is even worse in-ring time wise.

@Gordlow’s comment was about “remember when these shows were about wrestling?” when the fact is it still has a lot of fuckin’ wrestling for an American pro wrestling TV product that’s two hours long.

All of the things you mentioned are outside of the ring and presentation stuff. The in-ring product and how long matches get, etc haven’t changed that drastically since day one of Dynamite. In fact, Dynamite is pretty consistent over the years with the amount of in-ring time. Some episodes have more, or less, but on average it’s about 45 minutes of a two hour show.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

6 minutes ago, Matt D said:

One of the first comments I remember making about AEW on the board (as I kind of ignored it for a while, so goes my memory - don't quote me otherwise) was being impressed that they had the Shaq tag planned right AFTER a PPV, that they had so much depth that they were able to do that. In truth, it was probably a scheduling thing, but it still stood out. For the last many PPVs, however, there was usually one post-PPV Dynamite match that was planned in the days ahead and the reset of the card filled in after that. The Daniel Garcia title win in Buffalo after All Out last year comes to mind. That's what they did with the mixed tag. It's a "big enough" match to sell things on its own while the smoke clears and Khan regroups. It's often like this after a PPV.

Would I rather there be more of a card by now? Yes. I was excited about the possibilities Monday night and right now the possibilities have shaped up to be a Khan announcement and Callis/Takeshita speaking.

On the other hand, at the very last second, right before the show last week, they added Roderick Strong vs Daniel Garcia, so.....

I'm not super worried.

Also a great point. Mystery is just possibility, right? I'm certainly guilty of the occasional overreaction when I get the sense that there isn't as much of a 'road map' as there has been in the past - or, in this case, a map where I may not necessarily like the direction we're driving as much as the last trip - but long-term vision aside, the depth is certainly there to make this an A++ show from an in-ring perspective even if they sent 7 cold matches out there with nothing behind them.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

6 minutes ago, Casey said:

Yes, I can understand the idea of someone being turned off by these changes. But at the end of the day, over half of Dynamite on a regular basis is in-ring focused. Compare that to just RAW last week, in a three hour show, that had 4 more minutes of wrestling than last week’s Dynamite. Smackdown (last week anyway) is even worse in-ring time wise.

@Gordlow’s comment was about “remember when these shows were about wrestling?” when the fact is it still has a lot of fuckin’ wrestling for an American pro wrestling TV product that’s two hours long.

All of the things you mentioned are outside of the ring and presentation stuff. The in-ring product and how long matches get, etc haven’t changed that drastically since day one of Dynamite. In fact, Dynamite is pretty consistent over the years with the amount of in-ring time. Some episodes have more, or less, but on average it’s about 45 minutes of a two hour show.

That is true, most of what I said was presentation based rather than directly in-ring - I should have articulated this in my post, but the reason I focused on those things is because they (IMO) have strong potential to be indicative of a philosophy change with the in-ring at some point, too. So, while you're correct I did focus mostly on visual/presentation/formula stuff, I was doing so with the idea that they may be a harbinger of sorts

Edited May 31, 2023 by Zakk_Sabbath
Ya know, just good ol' fashioned knee-jerk IWC pessimism:)

[JLowe]

I think my mostly joking comment made while tired and cranky started something more than I intended. I was mostly referencing that they're basically going to be doing another reset working towards Forbidden Door and Collision debut, so a lot more surprises.

[worldcupfever]

1 hour ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

That actually brings up a good point - can't have drafts without authority figures!

Who should be the GM's for Dynamite/Rampage/Collision/ROH?

Rick Ross for the GM of Dynamite.

[Gorman]

2 hours ago, Dolphman 3000 said:

Who should be the GM's for Dynamite/Rampage/Collision/ROH?

I can clear my schedule.

[Gordi the recovering AEW f]

I can't help but feeling like a "This show has more actual pro wrestling per hour than WWE RAW" argument is roughly equivalent to making a "He's less evil than Hitler" or "This restaurant is healthier than McDonald's" argument, in the sense that it really isn't proving much of anything about the topic under discussion. But my "take" is based on the simple fact that (as of 6.5 hours before showtime) AEW has announced ONE match, and THREE talking segments (Tony announcement,  "hear from" Don & Lard Lad, and "Find out what's next for MJF." ) In my opinion, talk segents are not "actual pro wrestling" and also I believe that three is more than one. Hence, my take that the focus no longer seems to be on actual pro wrestling. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised by the unannounced matches, though.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Gordlow