DYNAMITE- 12/21/2022!

[Matt D]

I noticed it on Dark but he has this weird way of recoiling with glee after hitting a punch in the corner that’s very offputting but he’s also had something like 17 matches in his career and no singles match over 3 minutes.

[Just Dave]

54 minutes ago, w. josh said:

Parker Boudreaux doesn't seem to get pro wrestling at all and I'll be glad when he gives up and finds his true calling, playing methhead Nazi goons in FX TV shows. 

It’s insane to me how a guy with such a legit athletic background has so little feel for pro wrestling. As an offensive lineman, contact was 90% of what he did on the field, yet he seems to hate contact. It’s baffling.

[MoeCristyV.1.6]

Also posing after every move. Did Penta taught him that? 

[eikerir]

Im calling it early in the reign but Hayter will be considered the best AEW Women's Champion for a while.

Edited December 22, 2022 by eikerir

[Krone]

Daniel Garcia in the shades looking like a badass.
Chris Jericho in the trench coat with a bat... Looking like Sting.

[Go2Sleep]

Hayter as the ace with Britt as the friend/goon is such a better alignment for those two. I hope they actually run with it for a while instead of doing the predictable Britt turn. Hayter as a tweener just screams superstar. Totally carries herself like a champion and backs it up in the ring. I get the same kind of vibe watching her now that I got from Sasha Banks in early 2015.

I have no idea what they were going for with that Swerve/Lee segment, but it was one of the most awkward and disjointed AEW segments since Cody left. Felt like a series of cut-scenes from a videogame story mode.

[Craig H]

Dynamite ruled so fucking hard. I was a little worried about Ricky doing an aww shucks promo. And then Jericho came out and he started roasting motherfuckers. Ricky is on the best run of his career. It's going to be hard to sustain this momentum until his next title shot, but I hope he can pull it off.

This is also I think my favorite rotation wrestlers being used, especially if Starks and Hook are going to start making weekly appearances. It took awhile, but TK has really hit his booking stride again. And honestly, it should have taken awhile with all of the injuries and what not. I started thinking about Adam Cole before Dynamite came on and was thinking that you could easily keep Cole on the shelf until the Dynamite after Revolution, but that's a long, long, long layoff for Cole. Having fewer "stars" to use is letting TK book better.

Hook on my TV! Again! Man, this crowd right around the time of this match just died and that was before that weird as hell Rick Ross segment. 

I had a feeling FTR were doing the job, but that's for the best to actually give the Ass Boys a signature win. Loved that they were getting their asses beat along the way. Austin and Colten are really good at selling. I know some people frown upon selling for the cheap seats, but they're putting so much into a lot of what they do that it reminds me a lot of John Cena.

That main event fucking rocked. I'm in love with Hayter so much. Everything she does is awesome. That finishing run of hitting a big move, going for the pin, only looking stunned at the kickout for a split second before going for another big move, looking stunned for another split second before saying fuck this and hitting the Hayterrade is what EVERY wrestler should be watching. THAT IS HOW YOU FINISH A MATCH. Not this WWE-ized bullshit where you sit there stunned like you saw ghost. No. You get fucking mad and you go for another big move to put your opponent away and you keep doing that until you kill the motherfucker. And I don't care if it sounds ridiculous, but I got teary eyed watching that finishing stretch. It sucks that the women still have to put in 2x the amount of work to draw a crowd into their match, but it's great when they actually have that crowd. Shida and Hayter both went in there with this mindset of "we're going to kill each other and we're going to keep doing it until these fucking fans are eating out of the palms of our hands." Whenever women actually get over the feeling of a big match with the live audience it just brings out a lot of emotion in me. Anyway, I could re-watch the finish of this match a million times. A million stars for Shida vs Hayter.

[The Natural]

[Jrag]

Just stopping in to say Rick Ross is an awesome promo and Swerve is my favorite heel in the company right now.   Fuck the haters!  The backstage promo was MUCH better than the live one, but how can anyone shit on Ross calling Keith Lee a big motherfucker on live tv!? That was great.  Who cares how much they paid him Tony Khan could set a billion dollars on fire and I wouldn’t lose a bit of sleep!

Seriously though Swerve has been extremely important to AEW programming over this last 6 months and I hope he gets rewarded with a big singles push at some point. He is unique in the ring and has great heel instincts.  He is more responsible for the Acclaimed being where they are now than just about anyone. Love him.

Overall the show was another very fun episode.  Hayter is so good and I have enjoyed this best of 7 way more than I thought I would.  

Edited December 22, 2022 by Jrag

[Jrag]

Also Jamie Hayter vs Mercedes Varnado is gonna be so fucking great. Have the women ever main evented an AEW PPV before? If not this seems like the obvious time to do it.

[The Natural]

13 minutes ago, Jrag said:

Also Jamie Hayter vs Mercedes Varnado is gonna be so fucking great. Have the women ever main evented an AEW PPV before? If not this seems like the obvious time to do it.

Yes to the former and no in reply to your question.

[Dog]

Perfect choice for first non-gimmick women's main event. Hard-hitting, impeccable pacing. Hayter and Shida exceeded the already high expectations.

[tbarrie]

1 hour ago, Jrag said:

The backstage promo was MUCH better than the live one, but how can anyone shit on Ross calling Keith Lee a big motherfucker on live tv!? That was great.

It was great, but Lee's "that's fair" gesture in response was even better.

[porksweats]

1 minute ago, tbarrie said:

It was great, but Lee's "that's fair" gesture in response was even better.

The segment was a bit of a trainwreck but that exchange and the end attack made it all worth it.

[Greggulator]

Thoughts on last night's show that I watched in an insomnia haze:

1) That Ricky Starks promo was fire. I loved Team Taz Ricky. The Team Taz break-up was horribly done. The feud against Hobbs made Ricky look like a chump. He was struggling in his promos, on top of constantly eating it, and he won the blow-off Lights Out match in front of a dead tired crowd. But he found his voice with these past two promos as a super cocksure cool heel type who is so cool he's now a face. Putting him up against JAS for the next few weeks is the right thing to do with him. He needs to do something that's relatively high profile until he gets another crack against MJF. And he needs to do something where he can go over at the end. The JAS are a great gatekeeper group and there are some good matches ahead for him against Sammy and Garcia and Jericho. Interested to see how Andretti keeps up. But that was really great stuff to start the show. I also loved Jericho throwing fire at Andretti later on. That's a pretty huge escalation in violence. 

2) Elite/Death Triangle isn't for me. But man, where are their comedy spots like something with a Christmas tree and Brandon Cutler and Alex getting involved in what is a feud so big and so nasty it will need (up to) 7 matches to finish it? 

3) Danielson is a really good promo. I don't think I'm breaking anything by saying that. But he really is. I just friggin' wish they'd get away from the Regal stuff. The angle with Regal was not their best effort and truly terrible. I hope they do after this because we know Danielson's motivation now. Ethan Page is corny as anything. Stokely is pretty funny but Ethan Page is such a goober. I don't think that's the point. But he does get heat, I'll give him that. 

4) Mox right now is so incredibly interesting. I love the juxtaposition between him and Page and the types of people they represent. Their both fathers who overcame a lot of internal struggles to get where they are today. But Mox puts his baggage on the shelf and he wants to fight. I loved him saying how hurting his opponent means he did his job well. In kayfabe, the goal is to win a match of physical combat and sometimes that means people get really hurt. That makes Mox edgy and honest but also a bit of a badass/dick. Page got hurt via Mox and it resulted in him briefly not remembering his child's name and now he wants revenge like a modern day cowboy. Hangman leans into his emotions and his baggage as his fuel. But it also makes him a little bit of an honest man just trying to do right/crybaby. This is a really great face vs. face feud where the hatred feels real. (I hope it isn't in real life.)

The match against Darius Martin was a really welcome change of pace. Mox controlled about 80 percent of the match. AEW has a lot of "young talent gives established star a lot before falling at the end" matches. Mox beating Darius in what was essentially a squash was a lot of fun.

5) Hook's a snooze. I liked the blocking of Stokely addressing the camera while his goons beat up Jack Perry in the background like it was an ad for a used car dealership. Not too into the thought of this feud and eventual tag match but it's at least a different pairing.

6) FTR vs. The Gunns was great. Really good old-school tag match where the young prick heels attacked the weaknesses of the favorites fighting despite their injuries and still needed underhanded tactics to win. This should set up an even better rematch. The Gunns really need to study up on what heel FTR/Revival were doing with all of the crazy cut-offs like crawling under the mat and etc. That would get them to a n7ew level.

7) The Keith Lee/Swerve summit was something else. It felt to me like Rick Ross wasn't up on what was happening in the feud and just said "yeah yeah yeah, sure Tony, pay me" when he was getting caught up. Swerve is a great heel. I really loved him in Hit Row in NXT as the lead puppet master. Boudreaux looks fine enough as the meathead to hit people from behind and to eat a lot of losses while Swerve hides. The other dude looks like a wonderfully sketch meth addict who fights people in bar parking lots for rent money. We don't need another new heel stable. And I'm not sure taking in some new guy when you have a bunch of other people at your disposal is the right way to go. But Swerve having minions makes sense and makes him look stronger and gives him heat. The cinder block looked good but a lot of it was just goofy.

8 I started to fall asleep during the main event. That's not because it was bad. It was, of course, excellent. It was the first AEW women's match that felt on par with the higher end of the WWE women's division. The match also established really good hierarchy with Jamie Hayter beating Shida at the end of a tough match. She had the distraction help but she didn't really need it. I'm "eh" on Toni Storm and Saraya but whatevs. Jamie Hayter looks like she was born to hold the title and is a main event act. 

[John from Cincinnati]

1 hour ago, Dog said:

Perfect choice for first non-gimmick women's main event. 

Not a great sign that people have forgotten this was Baker vs Soho at the first Grand Slam. If we're not just talking Dynamite, it'd be Baker vs Red Velvet from the first Rampage IIRC. 

[John from Cincinnati]

13 hours ago, DreamBroken said:

The Three Hundred Thousand Dollar Three Kings Christmas Casino Trios Royale is my new favorite gimmick match name. 

It's so so good. It also helps that it was introduced in the most AEW way possible: First mentioned by a breathless Excalibur who's plugging an entirely different match (Mox vs Darius) while we're all left to wonder what he just said. 

[Pete]

3 hours ago, just drew said:

It’s insane to me how a guy with such a legit athletic background has so little feel for pro wrestling. As an offensive lineman, contact was 90% of what he did on the field, yet he seems to hate contact. It’s baffling.

That would definitely explain why he isn't in football anymore.

[tbarrie]

55 minutes ago, Greggulator said:

2) Elite/Death Triangle isn't for me. But man, where are their comedy spots like something with a Christmas tree and Brandon Cutler and Alex getting involved in what is a feud so big and so nasty it will need (up to) 7 matches to finish it? 

It was a Young Bucks match. You can't think too hard if you want to enjoy a Young Bucks match.

[TheVileOne]

I actually like the Swerve/Lee feud, but that segment last night was all kinds of awkward. Everyone was missing their cues. Rick Ross looked like he was trying his best to improvise and fill in the dead space, but Parker Boudreaux just bombed that segment. It's almost like that early Paul Heyman endorsement was like a Danhausen curse.

That said, I don't put all that on Boudreaux. Swerve was off last night too, and the timing was just all wrong. Even Keith Lee looked like he was half-assing that segment. My general thought was no one came off looking good there. Boudreaux barely even attacked Keith Lee, got next to no offense in, his offense looked terrible, but Lee's offense didn't look any better.

[Leonidas]

4 hours ago, Craig H said:

And I don't care if it sounds ridiculous, but I got teary eyed watching that finishing stretch. 

You're not alone, I got teary eyed when Hayter won the title and got that massive pop, and again today when they started that extremely well-deserved "this is awesome" chant. 

My reaction after watching the main event:

 

[Cobra Commander]

6 hours ago, StuntmanCrowley said:

I don't have much knowledge about him, but last night was one of the first times I've ever been watching wrestling and was taken aback with how bad someone's strikes looked.  His looks absolutely horrific.

The phrase i'd use to try and cover that? "Unorthodox strikes"

by unorthodox, I'd mean "bad"

this is where you'd need to ask JR to lie and claim that Offensive Linemen actually hit people like that (or ask Harland to just do shitty palm strikes like he's blocking the dude instead of shitty strikes)

[Lawful Metal]

Lawful Jr. and I were there and it was fucking nuts. Hella main event. Haven’t watched it on tv yet so I hope the molten crowd came across. I think it did at least during the Ethan Page promo.

Rick Ross stuff was pretty weird as we really couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. Also not sure why Swerve is now aligning with meth head nazis but whatevs.

Rampage battle royal was fun and far more star studded than I would’ve thought. Rush really stood out in this. 

Main event was Bowens / Daddy Ass vs Jarrett / Lethal which featured entirely too much Jarrett / Ass who are a combined 120 years old which is probably way too old to be wrestling.

Fun Dark Elevation match was Athena v. Kiera Hogan and a fucking top rope powerbomb for fucks sake.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Lawful Metal
Christmas season

[Cobra Commander]

a tag match with Jeff Jarrett and Billy Gunn in 2022 is the most Memphis legends house show sort of thing possible (I know Billy didn't do much/any Memphis, but it's like the 90s WWF version of Bill Dundee and Jerry Lawler working each other in the 2010s)

[Infinit]

Interesting tidbit regarding last night's ratings: