Dynamite - 2/23/2022

[ExcellenceofAirPollution]

22 hours ago, AxB said:

Jade Cargill did a straight arm lift. It’s a World of Sport move from the 70s. Not used much in America Wrestling, unless Lord Steven Regal is in the match.

That was the best power spot in that match and I was racking my brain trying to remember the last time I saw that.  On this side of the pond Ricky Steamboat used to do it.....

Jade is a work in progress but in every match there's something she does where I'm like "wow."

[Ramo2653]

On 2/24/2022 at 10:21 AM, (BP) said:

Page’s angles are usually the most traditional pro wrestling segments on these shows (which isn’t the worst way to protect him) but he feels isolated from everything else going on much of the time. 

I've often felt like when AEW had a heel champ, the show revolved around them but their face champs feel like just a part of the show. Granted the heel champs have been part of factions so there are more moving parts, but the show isn't centered around Page for better or worse.

[Go2Sleep]

10 hours ago, ExcellenceofAirPollution said:

That was the best power spot in that match and I was racking my brain trying to remember the last time I saw that.  On this side of the pond Ricky Steamboat used to do it.....

Taker used to do it in the 2000s on smaller guys as part of his "work the arm" routine to set up old school.

[Curt McGirt]

That show seemed to just get better as it went on, and it started with an Andrade match. And he never has a bad TV match. 

EDIT: It was also another "we will progress all the storylines right now" show, and even that worked. Spears is such a weasel. Serena has turned into Regal. DMD gave the best promo of her life. HEELS~!

Edited February 26, 2022 by Curt McGirt

[Shartnado]

Dynamite was excellent. But let me just say that seriously, fuck current Geo-Political bullshit and the responsible party all the way to hell, for ruining my enjoyment of first ever physical contact between Pac and Buddy Matthews! I needed this to take my mind off things and even this didn't work. It had so many great things.

Also, guys, you DO realize that MJF is going to use this against Punk SO much, right? Tugging on heartstrings of the audience like that and getting Punk to question himself a little bit and them BOOM! Do NOT trust that walking reason why millennials don't want children for a second!

[Leonidas]

16 hours ago, ExcellenceofAirPollution said:

That was the best power spot in that match and I was racking my brain trying to remember the last time I saw that.  On this side of the pond Ricky Steamboat used to do it.....

Jade is a work in progress but in every match there's something she does where I'm like "wow."

If you watch British indie wrestling you'll see a straight arm lift in every match where someone works an arm, very common over here.

6 hours ago, Go2Sleep said:

Taker used to do it in the 2000s on smaller guys as part of his "work the arm" routine to set up old school.

He did, and it was awesome. His matches with Rey are worth re-watching, underrated David vs Goliath matches. Rey would sometimes counter the arm lift into a hurricanrana and Taker would sell it awesomely bumping into a turnbuckle or onto the 2nd rope for a 619 attempt.

 

Also on MJF/Punk:

It's interesting because the promo seemed to be about gaining MJF sympathy from Punk himself. But if Punk goes easy on him in the Dog Collar match then he will lose again. So at some point, Punk has to say "That may all be true but I have to show you the old Punk and fucking make you bleed regardless". Which is what I think we're going to see, a hyper violent bloodbath with Punk winning and MJF coming out looking stronger, still being able to brag about his win in Chicago over Punk.

[peterien]

I think Eddie Kingston has become my favourite AEW talent and I think is a guy who has benefited from the bloated AEW roster in that he’s used sparingly enough. (I know he’s had injuries as well)

IMO if Eddie was on every Rampage or every Dynamite I would grow sick of the shtick but ever since he got to AEW he’s been gold. The Cody feud, then Mox, Punk and now Jericho are some of the best promos around. That line where he said what “kind of Jericho” he wanted at Revolution was the rubber stamp for me to order the PPV. 

My hope is that he beats Jericho, MJF beats Punk and Eddie rubs his nose in it straight after so we get back to that feud.

Edited February 26, 2022 by peterien

[TheVileOne]

On 2/25/2022 at 6:59 AM, JLowe said:

To be clear, my concerns with the anti-Semitic bullying motivation angle are:

1. Wrestling storytelling isn't known for execution of nuance

2. Wrestling plays heavily into stereotypes because they stereotypical wrestling audience is prejudiced.

I recognize that AEW is generally a little better at these things, but it's still requiring a lot of faith (pun intended).

Fair, IMO.

[The Natural]

[Jenalysis]

DG chooses violence even on Twitter. 

 

[Web Conn]

Danielson vs Garcia was awesome. This whole show was awesome. The card for Revolution is shaping up nicely. Also I didn’t recognize 2.0 in actual gear in the battle Royal for a couple seconds. 

[Coletti]

3 hours ago, The Natural said:

Christ do I hate the internet for denying me the ability to live a long, full life without hearing fucking Mike McHale's opinion

[Curt McGirt]

You have to give him that the crowd seemed pretty quiet, if not exactly dead. In a vacuum it was a fine match, but "in a vacuum" doesn't always equal a great crowd response. 

[DreamBroken]

Catching up on things. Tag battle royal was fun - loved all the big pops for all the old rivalry face offs that popped up (Ortiz/Santana vs. Best Friends, FTR vs Bucks, etc.). Great touch in those teams not having run those matches since those feuds.

MJF promo was great. Thought it added more emotion to the PPV match which should be epic.

Absolutely loved the Jericho/Kingston segment. My favorite part of the night. Laughed out loud at Kingston's "what's a babyface" line, classic. Great stuff from both guys. 

Don't care for Buddy Matthews much at all so that signing doesn't do anything for me. I liked his and Black's first match years back, then they kept doing it over and over and Black just won every time. Black, even faking, fear at first was comical.

Liked the little Keith Lee/Team Taz bit. Acknowledged Lee/Starks history and teased the future Lee/Hobbs showdown. Effective segment. 

Main event was solid, great ending to the show. Wild Thing!

[Shartnado]

This needs to be "The big one" that Eddie finally wins, right?

Going back to Matthews for a second, I heard it said that he was extra juiced to the gills these days and you sure weren't kidding! Where do you get off making F'n PAC look like he's only moderately into that sort of thing?!? Statuesque isn't even the Goddamned word for it! To me, AEW is complete now. Bring on anyone else and it's just a nice bonus, but you have PAC, Buddy and Tony Nese (What? Well, fuck you, then!) under the same banner and you've made a fan until WW3 wipes us all out (which hopefully isn't before Revolution PPV can happen)!

[Matt D]

It's great that Jade is drilling with Danielson but I'm not convinced she should be doing that rolling mat grappling. The lifting arm yank oucher thing, sure, but even if she got the rolling stuff smooth (and it wasn't), is that really what she should be doing with the Bunny when trying to hurt her arm? Did it fit the characters? Did it fit the match? Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I can see situations where it might make sense, like if she was wrestling Serena Deeb and had to try to specifically counter her and it was built up in backstage promos/video packages that she was training, that sort of thing, but in general.. "Lift good, rolling locklock bad" for this specific situation.

[(BP)]

I think they’re looking for something for Jade that’s supposed to tease some mat bonafides similar to Goldberg’s rolling leg lock or Hogan’s three extra grappling moves when he’s in Japan. The problem is that Jade is considerably taller than most of the other women, so it’s going to look awkward no matter what. Sometimes the height disparity does work, like her last match with Red Velvet didn’t look cooperative but still had some great exchanges. 

Part of the fun with AEW is young wrestlers being able to work on figuring themselves out with the agents and trainers while on national television. Jade as a project is always one of the most interesting portions of the shows. 

[supremebve]

4 minutes ago, Matt D said:

It's great that Jade is drilling with Danielson but I'm not convinced she should be doing that rolling mat grappling. The lifting arm yank oucher thing, sure, but even if she got the rolling stuff smooth (and it wasn't), is that really what she should be doing with the Bunny when trying to hurt her arm? Did it fit the characters? Did it fit the match? Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I can see situations where it might make sense, like if she was wrestling Serena Deeb and had to try to specifically counter her and it was built up in backstage promos/video packages that she was training, that sort of thing, but in general.. "Lift good, rolling locklock bad" for this specific situation.

I agree 100%.  It makes perfect sense for a guy Bryan Danielson's size to be a super well rounded, wrestling machine, but Jade doesn't need to be trying to out mat wrestle anyone.  If she is in the ring with someone who is trying to out mat wrestle her, and then she breaks out a couple slick counters to show she's not out of her element, that's perfectly fine, but she shouldn't be leading the match to the mat.  Brock Lesnar is both a former NCAA champion and UFC champion, so he could very credibly take every match to the mat and work holds, but why would he do that when he can pick people up and drop them on their head?  His biggest advantage is that he's bigger and stronger than everyone.  Jade is in the same boat, but even if she's the best mat wrestler on the roster, the margin between her size and strength and her opponent's size and strength provides her best advantage.  Not only that, her character is directly tied to her being physically dominating, so that is how she should be wrestling.  It reminds me of an interview Rampage Jackson did when he was fighting in Pride.  They asked him his fighting style, and he said, "I have a whoop your ass style.  That is when you try to impose your will upon me, and in turn I impose my will upon you, and in doing so, I have whooped that ass."  That is how Jade should be wrestling, whatever they try to do she can just impose her will and physically overpower her opponent.  He even went on to say that he doesn't want to win by knockout or submission, he wants the ref to have to pull him off of his opponent.  "You can make a mistake and get knocked out or submitted, but when you are beating someone so bad the ref has to step in they can't say, "I just slipped up." you can't slip into an ass whooping."  

[JLowe]

What if this is building to Jade versus Deeb? I mean, I kind of like the idea of "My potential weakness as a wrestler is someone who is going to go mat-based so I need to learn that as well".

[John E. Dynamite]

There's also the matter of Jade's insecurities as an unpolished rookie being a part of her character. It comes up enough in her promos, it's the reason she dyed her hair "green". When I see Jade try to get fancy, I don't see it as a bad utilization of her strengths as a worker, I see it as a young brash heel with a chip on their shoulder and an interesting weakness.

Edited March 1, 2022 by John E. Dynamite