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AEW Dynamite - 10/2/2019


Dolfan in NYC

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28 minutes ago, iowanole said:

I’m very late to the party with AEW.  I just watched the All Out show and I have a question.  I wasn’t impressed with Adam Page, at all.  He seemed very generic and sloppy.  Was it just this match, or is he just kind of average?  What are some of his standout matches?

Best match of his I can remember would be vs. Cobb from last year's Final Battle. He has all of the tools, including the very rare ho hum All American babyface aura in today's game, but still is putting the pieces together. Another great Page match was vs. Ibushi from Supercard of Honor. Granted it's Ibushi but Page more than played his part. He had a very solid run in last year's G1 where I think he won a lot of people over too. He and Mjeff are the clear close but not quite there projects that AEW have invested in early and often. They could have two potential stars if it works out. Other guys beneath them but with similar potential in my mind are Darby Allin and Jungle Boy more obviously. Luchasaurus works extremely well as a hot tag but has a lot of growing to do before he won't get exposed in singles matches.

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I do appreciate that they are legit trying to build a collection of their own stars. They've got a lot to work with too. Janela's charisma and ability to promote himself may be something that works or he could just remain where he's at. 

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17 hours ago, quackhell said:

Skipped the main, but overall I found the show uninspired. It just felt too much like the WWE or Impact from a presentation standpoint and lacked much in the way of innovation. So outside of cherry picking matches i'll be skipping it the same as I do Smackdown/RAW. Thankfully the indies and international companies more than take up the slack for awesome wrestling.

This was my basic take after watching. It’s an alternative to WWE because it’s not WWE, not because they’re really offering something that different or groundbreaking.

I did laugh when they talked about how they were opening the show off with the Cody-Sammy, only to kick it to a hype video first. Pillman and Liger didn’t need a hype video.

I’m with Matt as far as looking forward to a Swagger/Dustin match.

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53 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

Best match of his I can remember would be vs. Cobb from last year's Final Battle. He has all of the tools, including the very rare ho hum All American babyface aura in today's game, but still is putting the pieces together. Another great Page match was vs. Ibushi from Supercard of Honor. Granted it's Ibushi but Page more than played his part. He had a very solid run in last year's G1 where I think he won a lot of people over too. He and Mjeff are the clear close but not quite there projects that AEW have invested in early and often. They could have two potential stars if it works out. Other guys beneath them but with similar potential in my mind are Darby Allin and Jungle Boy more obviously. Luchasaurus works extremely well as a hot tag but has a lot of growing to do before he won't get exposed in singles matches.

 

Would also recommend his match vs Jay White in NJPW.  Jay wasn't really the Switchblade yet, but was a coming out party for both of them.

I do think AEW needs more young up and comers, there's a lot of folks they could raid for from Impact/MLW/ROH that I'd like to see in AEW, esp from MLW.

 

Edited by alstein
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The one in the US where they went way too long and had to kill each other to get a crowd reaction? Once they started doing really dangerous stuff, they did win the crowd over but I don't know if I'd consider that a good thing or not.

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6 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Even though he's in his mid 30s, I normally think of him as older based on the company he keeps. 

You are not the only one.

He started at 19 which is part of the reason it feels like he has been around forever 

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3 minutes ago, JonnyLaw said:

 

This was my basic take after watching. It’s an alternative to WWE because it’s not WWE, not because they’re really offering something that different or groundbreaking.

I did laugh when they talked about how they were opening the show off with the Cody-Sammy, only to kick it to a hype video first. Pillman and Liger didn’t need a hype video.

I’m with Matt as far as looking forward to a Swagger/Dustin match.

Couple things here...

How you don't see them as offering something different is really confusing. Look at their two hour show and look at how many times people stood in a ring talking on a microphone, reciting a script, and trying to set something up for later in the night. How many times was an invisible camera used during Dynamite? Once? The majority of the show had a sports feel to it. Everything down to the hype videos, which resembled ones used in UFC or other sports programming, to the commentary, to the action in the ring was different.

And Pillman and Liger didn't use a hype video because such things weren't really en vogue at that time and also...WCW had been around for years.

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Edit: Sorry for the large text, C&P’d this from notes on my iPhone. Too busy at work rn to change it, if a mod wants to thanks in advance.

I enjoyed the show but am slightly conflicted in feeling like it was rushed and had way too much going on but also feeling like WWE shows are way too plodding, boring, and a chore to get through. Just like All Out weekend NXT has the best match but the shows feel too predictable and sterile. These two hours flew by and left me wanting more.  But three out of four matches had post match beat downs and at times it reminded me of TNA Impact and how they always had to cram too much shit in. Plus the other two matches had heels going over as well. I would have taken the Nyla Rose bit out and let Riho’s title win sink in more but instead it just felt like they were overly committed to establishing bad guys. The Moxley interference lacked foresight as well. They didn’t even attempt to explain why there was no DQ. You could say something like the refs are free to give leeway as they see fit and have the Bucks pleas with Knox not to stop the match but to then not even attempt to explain it again reminded me of TNA when I use to (try to) watch.

The Kevin Smith segment was unnecessary IMO and Pentagon and his stupid 0M bit makes me cringe as usual. Nothing will top him doing the 0M when Matt Jackson had his fingers on the title belt in the ladder match though. Peak stupidity. Tony Khan said they weren’t gonna try and fit every character in these shows and rotate people in but these bits felt a little shoehorned, especially when it felt like everyone was rushing their ring entrances to save TV time. SCU are fantastic tho so that helped at least.

Nyla/Riho was probably MOTN for me but it’s really gonna hurt the quality of the matches when the crowds get more burnt out, as they really encourage matches to come off better than they are. Nyla is pretty hit or miss but her presence does add a lot to the face/heel dynamic. She definitely belongs but I chortled when Cody and Brandi said in an interview that Kenny recommended her as one of the best in the world and that none of them knew she was trans until she disclosed it. Yes, Mr 6 star match who’s a joshi connoisseur thinks she’s better than the hundreds of more proficient girls there are in Japan. And then when Cody on the conference call said the women’s battle royal was far superior to the men’s, “soft bigotry of low expectations” comes to mind.

Also the Orange Cassidy kid made me pop. Somehow Cassidy and Jurassic Express are my favorite acts in a company that’s filled with elite level “pure” wrestlers and I can see them bringing in a lot of younger fans.

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I am glad AEW got this rating and really I hope they focus on their own stuff going forward like they did last night. They don't need to to "beat" WWE to have  successful company that makes money. It's a measuring stick but nothing more.

And I disagree somewhat that the ratings trend after this has to be down somewhat. There is always a chance that synergy trends this in an upward direction. 

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

Couple things here...

How you don't see them as offering something different is really confusing. Look at their two hour show and look at how many times people stood in a ring talking on a microphone, reciting a script, and trying to set something up for later in the night. How many times was an invisible camera used during Dynamite? Once? The majority of the show had a sports feel to it. Everything down to the hype videos, which resembled ones used in UFC or other sports programming, to the commentary, to the action in the ring was different.

And Pillman and Liger didn't use a hype video because such things weren't really en vogue at that time and also...WCW had been around for years.

It’s ok that we see things differently. So they didn’t have a lot of promos. That’s fine, but the ones they did weren’t great. The SCU hype video with a (pretty good) Obama impression segueing into a cliched catchphrase is the type of thing people would mock if WWE did it. That led to the on ramp interview (which I liked from a WCW nostalgia standpoint, but isn’t something that makes me think “oh, this is so different”) which led to the Lucha Brothers confrontation, which was setting something up for the future rather than that night. Not a huge difference to me. The invisible camera was used once, and they lampshaded it pretty hard which honestly made it stand out more to me, especially since they had said they wouldn’t use it. The Jay and Silent Bob ringside celeb thing was really bad and not even the announcers seemed to know what was going on, and again, would rightly get mocked if WWE did it.

I disagree about the real sports feel so far. To me, it seems like something they are saying more than they’re actually doing. That could obviously change over time, but nothing stood out to me when I watched it this afternoon. If it’s such a real sport feel and wins and losses matter, why  weren’t the rules enforced in the main event when Mox appeared. That should have been a DQ, and random enforcement of the rules is dumb no matter where it happens. That it happened in the first show main event just sets a bad precedent. Following Moxley and Omega’s brawl and neglecting the match in the ring for so long doesn’t seem like something that follows a real sports build. 

I don’t like JR’s commentary. He’s better than Mauro, but that’s about it. The lack of constant bickering was nice, but you can’t really say a three man booth with Schiavone and JR and somewhat undefined roles for everyone is some big difference from any other wrestling show, WWE or not.

Don’t get me wrong, the show was fine. I surprisingly dug Cody/Sammy most. I plan to keep watching and I even have tickets for the Charlotte show, but I personally don’t see it as some huge departure from WWE. 

Edited by JonnyLaw
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I think the commentary team needs a color guy with personality. I mean you basically have three straight play by play guys. I guess they sprinkled in a little bit of "humor", but it just didn't completely work for me. I understand the nostalgia thing, but JR has needed to ride off into the sunset for a long long time. Tony is fine and I think Excalibur has his moments, but there is a missing element in there.

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34 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I have no idea where to put this, but it's still crazy to me that AEW did that number with only pulling back 10K viewers from NXT's number last week. 

I think by this point, WWE fan and non-WWE wrestling fan have mostly split, and the non-WWE crowd just looks at WWE with total indifference for the most part.

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1 hour ago, quackhell said:

I think the commentary team needs a color guy with personality. I mean you basically have three straight play by play guys. I guess they sprinkled in a little bit of "humor", but it just didn't completely work for me. I understand the nostalgia thing, but JR has needed to ride off into the sunset for a long long time. Tony is fine and I think Excalibur has his moments, but there is a missing element in there.

It was amusing when JR kept harping on Tony calling PAC a bastard and referencing the TV-14 rating and Tony finally just said “it’s in his twitter handle!” as a way of getting him to shut up. Then for all the talk of Tony saying prick and bastard, JR dropped “shit” during the post-main event brawl.

Two bad JR moments that were amusing (and may not totally be on JR): First, he talked about how cautious/careful Cody was being, and then immediately after Cody started doing the mocking pushups. Then later he talked about Sammy’s balance being off right as Sammy leapt to the top rope.

Edited by JonnyLaw
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1 minute ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

I like how Khan continued in his scrum to harp on the desire for long matches. If you want to really differentiate yourself, run in the other direction. 

That was my main nitpick with the Cody match, I felt like the Brandi shoe shot was a good natural end to the match and the match lost a little steam after that. However, I dug that it ended with a counter rather than a finisher.

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Thoughts from the show -

I bought tickets for the second-level corner on some questionable secondhand website. When I had my tickets scanned I was redirected to the box office, I didn't let that induce a panic but I was very much prepared for the worst. Turns out my seat had been designated for a last-minute camera placement and I got relocated to just above the camera-side hard cam. So yeah, sweet.

I realize there's concern about the depth of AEW's roster but they were able to give Darby Allin/CIMA away as a dark match (good match and I loathe CIMA, at least when he's booking himself) as well as not needing to use any of their tag team tournament people on any of the televised matches. I think with a steady drip of RoH, Impact and WWE contracts expiring they'll be able to stay ahead of the curve. 

I feel like Orange Cassidy has a much higher ceiling than people realize. It's not breaking weird internet forum kayfabe to discuss his time as Fire Ant in CHIKARA, right? I don't think they realize what a high level tag wrestler he was as far back as ten years ago. I think OC can and should coast on charm + gimmick for awhile but when the time comes to put him in big matches and feuds he's going to come through huge. Looking forward to it.

What a crowd. You can't ask for and really can't ever expect a crowd that good every time. Every match was elevated by their presence, nobody benefiting more than Riho. No need for cynicism on that one, warts and all they still told the story they needed to tell. I had Riho pegged to win since they've got a heel World Champ, but I guess Bea Priestly takes the belt sooner than later.

I expected something on the televised show to go terribly wrong but nothing sucked. Nothing even approached bad. Having a two-hour wrestling show based around good wrestlers having good matches is a really, really sturdy model. I can't believe we've forgotten about that fact for nearly 20 years.

LVP goes to Britt Baker, who botched three straight nearfalls and looked like the least-capable participant of the night's worst match. The non-Japanese women on the AEW roster already had the most work to do, but now they're going to be compared to the NXT women every week. That's some uphill stuff.

Jake Hager (or did they call him Jerk Strong or Jack Straw or something?) doesn't know what to do with his face. I swear the monitor show him looking around nervously when the show ended, and then right afterwards he started screaming and looking all intense. If that's the case that's the most Jack Swagger thing I've seen in my life.

People say the show seemed heel-heavy but The Elite, Riho, A Boy and His Dinousaur, Orange Cassidy, and Penta are over. Really really really over. AEW has this WCW-style presentation that might lend itself to long heel reigns, but with HHH so dedicated to that style of booking and with most NXT top faces historically being booked like dipshits (save Dream, I hope), it'll be interesting to see which direction AEW goes with their World Champions in the long term.

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The rating is in my predicted range, excellent number,and weel see the +3s this weekend, it's nearly 4x their YouTube subscribers, which i based my guess on. I can't wait for.the tag tourney and for my twin bro to see pentagon. im in love with riho, just from her segment on road to, and  yesterday, all I know of her. The only thing id have rather seen live on nxt was the return of blackheart TC. Grand slam day one overall I'd say, what more could we expect day one T.V., They'll work out the kinks. And again, thank The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes whatever you watched last night

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On 10/2/2019 at 10:13 PM, Craig H said:

BTW, I wish they kept Kevin Smith out there and I wish he was on the hard cam. He was going crazy for shit and it was pretty fun to watch.

I'll have a lot to say about the show live tomorrow. But unless somebody pointed this out already (still going through the thread) he was there the whole night. Not only that but on the way out he was taking selfies with people on the floor as he left during the 1st post show dark match. 

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