AEW TV - 11/5 - 11/11/2025 - Fighting The Battle of Who Could Caster Less

[Curt McGirt]

38 minutes ago, Shartnado said:

Dragon, obviously! Has to call himself Mercedes in AEW for some reason and comes to the ring with almost all Women's wrestling titles across the globe, for some reason a lot!

Dummy (me) didn't get the joke again, of course.

Mercedes being the one in that match to get all Cibernetico over is the real laugh riot though 

[Curt McGirt]

1 hour ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Pretty lame promo here - ugh, don’t call your opponents old. WTF!?

Bobby is 49. Shelton is 50. In wrestler years they're up there. Now, whether you consider that a proper topic for insult is another thing, but he's not lying. 

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

54 minutes ago, Shartnado said:

Dragon, obviously! Has to call himself Mercedes in AEW for some reason and comes to the ring with almost all Women's wrestling titles across the globe, for some reason a lot!

Ultimo Hotty indeed.

[NoFistsJustFlips]

13 hours ago, just drew said:

Sounds like this can be defended across brands.

You mean like all the other belts in AEW?

Its a parody at this point. There are too many belts and it actively turns me off to the promotion. Titles add stakes to matches and make them feel important. Unless there's 30 belts and title matches happen all the time and it all just blurs together.

[worldcupfever]

4 minutes ago, NoFistsJustFlips said:

You mean like all the other belts in AEW?

 

This is my issue with the whole thing.  THIS TITLE CAN BE DEFENDED IN CMLL - yeah, so can all of the other AEW and ROH belts.  

[Curt McGirt]

Then they should just send it to CMLL and have it be their version of the WWF Jr. Heavyweight belt. Part of the promotion, never shows up.

[Zimbra]

Having to call their title designed to be defended internationally the National title because they already blew through the International title they had feels like some cokehead-ass behavior.

[porksweats]

8 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

Having to call their title designed to be defended internationally the National title because they already blew through the International title they had feels like some cokehead-ass behavior.

Should've went with Global!

[HumanChessgame]

They just unified two of the umpteen titles they had a few months ago which was I assumed in response to the too many belts criticism. Popping out another title for no reason is some backwards nonsense. It's like these matches they've been having for some cash prize. Do regular matches not have payouts, and who decides which match suddenly gets some larger bonus?

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

Dummy (me) didn't get the joke again, of course.

Mercedes being the one in that match to get all Cibernetico over is the real laugh riot though 

Sorry. I must not have been paying attention when you were telling people who it's okay to be attracted to.

[Log]

Here's my theory on all the titles: Tony is signing people and putting in their contracts that they'll get a title reign. Wrestler nears end of contract, point out to Tony that they haven't got their title reign. Problem is, he's got his booking for all his current titles laid out for the next few months. Oh no! Solution? New title! 

[TheVileOne]

AEW is adding another useless f'n title for no reason when they should be focusing on the women's tag team title tournament they just announced.

Oh, a title that can be defended across brands, like every other f'n title AEW already has? Oh, it will be defended in ROH? AEW is ROH.

They can't even make up their minds about the International/Continental/Unified garbage, and now they are adding another title. And if it's able to be defended in CMLL and NJPW, what exactly makes it a National Title? It's not. What does the Continental Title even mean anymore? How does the Continental Classic work as an annual tournament if there's a year-round champion? What is the Unified title then?

Once again, Tony Khan is a clueless idiot who has lost the plot. His go-to maneuver is creating another useless title. It's worse than Dana White and interim titles at this point. It's utter nonsense.

They're constantly creating new titles when there's tons of guys who haven't gotten booked or been on TV for months.

[HarryArchieGus]

2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Bobby is 49. Shelton is 50. In wrestler years they're up there. Now, whether you consider that a proper topic for insult is another thing, but he's not lying. 

Yeah, ‘proper topic for insult’. I’m well aware of their respective ages. 

[SovietShooter]

8 hours ago, hammerva said:

As much as I don't really want it,  HOOK needs to go to NXT because he isn't getting much better at all.  His promos are really bad given his personality and he is still pretty basic in the ring.  That is improving I will say.  Now HOOK in NXT won't be much better than let's say Lexis King who is just a filler on the show right now.  But he would be much better

My biggest issue with Hook's development is that he is a lil' fella, and has kind of been given a gimmick where he no-sells like Hawk, no matter who he is in there with. The absolute best thing for his development would be to be in a tag team where he has to take the heat and bump & sell his ass off before making a hot tag. listen, chicks dig Hook; Him learning how to be Ricky Morton while Eddie Kingston gets the crowd behind them for the hot tag could really fucking work.  Like, imagine a series of matches between them and the (heel) Acclaimed. 

[tbarrie]

32 minutes ago, SovietShooter said:

My biggest issue with Hook's development is that he is a lil' fella, and has kind of been given a gimmick where he no-sells like Hawk, no matter who he is in there with.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? I may have missed something, but I don't recall his no-selling anything Powerhouse Hobbs did last night. I'd also say his no-selling in general has declined greatly since his early matches.

[Curt McGirt]

3 hours ago, Yo-Yo's Roomie said:

Sorry. I must not have been paying attention when you were telling people who it's okay to be attracted to.

Jeez, I'm not saying that. Maybe I should have put a winky face or something. Didn't mean to come off like a prick. 

[SovietShooter]

18 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

That's a bit of an exaggeration, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. I mean, he has always taken bumps and such, it just seems like his comebacks are always just that he stops selling and hits a couple suplexes, before locking in the kata hajime (illegal in judo, illegal in MMA, but LEGAL IN ECW!!!). 

[Technico Support]

Kingston’s House of 1000 Corpses-inspired Jun Kasai shirt fucking ruled.  I need AEW YouTube to do a feature on Eddie’s wrestling shirt collection.

Gravity just out here casually killing the business by moving at regular speed.  
 

I feel like AEW lost the plot with belts in 2020 with the creation of the TNT title and the absurd claims that it wasn’t a secondary belt.  First, “TNT” implies neither gimmick nor geography, so what the fuck is the belt supposed to represent?  And if it’s not secondary, that devalues your world title.  I blame dumbass Cody for all that ridiculousness.

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

[Zimbra]

Buddy, if that title was prestigious you wouldn't be holding it.

[Technico Support]

The idea that anything in today’s zombie “NWA” promotion has lineage to the actual NWA’s heyday is laughable.

[Niners Fan in CT]

 

[The Green Meanie]

ROAD REPORT (not with Lee Marshall for 1-800-Collect)

Show was held in the Bayou Music Center, constructed in 1997. I had never been in it before. You could tell that in it's current state that it was more suited for the boozing crowd, as concessions were pretty minimum (but not too bad, didn't get gouged on food/drink.) Two levels, very intimate. I originally thought our seats were on the first raised level (if you see the section with restaurant booths, I thought it was there) but they actually turned out to be on the floor, about four rows back.

Also, sorry for the delay in writing this as I had to go to bed as soon as I got home due to work, and only watched the TV version this afternoon.

Doors opened at around 535 CST, this was where our seats were:

 

AEW Heels had a booth set up outside our arena entrance complete with Aubrey (And Cheesecake!) My wife got to meet Aubrey (she was really, really nice!) and took a picture with her, and gave her free swag:

We got to make jokes about notorious Houston traffic:
(Aubrey)"Our shuttle was stuck in traffic for 50 minutes" 
(Both my wife and I) "Yeah, that's about right for here."
(Aubrey) *laughs* "Yeah, we all kinda learned that this week."

Wife tried to get me to take a picture with Cheesecake (I would have) but he was busy guarding Aubrey, and I didn't want to bother him. I was surprised to find out that I'm taller then him. Definitely a nice guy, though.

There was an ROH dark match taped before Dynamite:
 

Spoiler

Deonna Purrazzo defeated Trish Adora in an ROH Pure Rules match. Crowd was super pro-Trish.

 

Opening segment:
Will Hobbs is a big dude. Crowd was very pro-Tony Schiavone (especially my wife, who was super excited at seeing how close we were sitting to him.)
I was very pro-Hook and Eddie. Wrestlers from Booker T's local ROW wrestling federation were the security guards. I think Eddie is intentionally trying to get people to corpse, as at the end of that segment he kept trying to get Tony's attention, and he didn't notice it. That's why Eddie was making goofy faces at the end.

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Orange Cassidy
Was a super fun opening match. Claudio is DECEIVINGLY TALL. I'm 6'3, and even I was like that's a big dude. His entrance on TV was amazing (as usual) and it's amusing to see all of us looking around, trying to figure out where the Death Rider's entrance spot was going to be. Turned out it was to the right of us, near the merch stand.

Athena and Mercedes Mone vs. Harley Cameron and Willow Nightingale
When Mercedes' belt holders lined up whilst in commercial, I thought it was the DCF at first (lights were out, but then I saw the belts.) Crowd was about 90-10 for Harley & Willow. Cameras didn't pick it up that well but there were both "Dallas sucks!" and "Boston sucks!" chants during the match. Great reaction for Stat's appearance, and the win, genuinely surprised that Athena and Mercedes didn't win. Wife and I were slightly disappointed that Willow is slightly smaller in person.

Tony interviews The Hurt Syndicate
Tony with one of the loudest pops of the night (consistently!) interviewed The Hurt Syndicate. We literally could NOT hear a word Ricochet said, and the boos were so loud and constant, I had no idea what he said until I watched the show today.

Daniel Garcia vs. Darby Allin
This was the first time I'd seen either of the two in person. Darby is smaller and more wiry then I expected. We didn't get to see most of the outside ring brawling as they were right in front of us and everyone was standing (for most of the matches, the whole crowd was standing the entire time). Pac was not as big as I was expecting him to be, Mox was bulkier then I remembered, but I *think* the last time I saw him was as Dean Ambrose in WWE. I can't remember if he appeared on the Dynamite we had back in 2021. Roddy was SUPER OVER and got the biggest pop of this segment.

FTR & Brodido
Bandido's family were ushered to ringside right before this segment. Had a very hard time hearing what FTR had to say as the crowd was nuclear on them. Several people in the crowd mentioned Dax's Spanish was a good as Don Callis'. A lot of us were asking "Where's Stokley?" High quality heelin' from FTR. Legitimate laughs in the whole audience when Stokley told Renee he was watching "The Wire." I was super excited to see Gravity. Brody punching through the door was just as amazing in person as it was on TV. The camera adds some height in this case as Brody wasn't as big as I was expecting.

Megan Bayne (w/Penelope Ford) vs. Mina Shirakawa
We definitely had to watch this match on TV due to missing Toni's commentary, and it didn't disappoint! Interesting contrast in this match, as most of the cheers for Mina came from the children in the audience, everyone else was for Megan. Sad to say that Megan isn't as big in person as she was on TV, she's actually fairly skinny. Pretty good match, but the brawl at the end was more exciting.

The Opps (Katsuyori Shibata, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Samoa Joe) (c) vs. Adam Page, Eddie Kingston, and Hook
Not captured on TV, but tons of "Joe!" and "Joe's gonna kill you!" chants. I chanted for Hook and Eddie. It's not shown too well on TV, but when Hook suplexed Hobbs, he immediately went down and everyone in the audience let out an audible gasp when he collapsed, like everyone saw it right away and we all got super bummed. Doc Sampson was outside of the ring with him for a VERY long time. Wife (a paramedic) has called it either a back or core injury. Due to our seating section, we didn't see what happened to Hobbs and Hangman till today, they went through the old cable table. When the match started, we had a feeling Hook was going to be the one to eat the pin. 

After the show ended, Tony Khan came out, and asked a few questions (Who has never been to a AEW Dynamite before tonight? Who was here when we came in 2021? Who is going to be coming back Saturday? etc) Tony put over Full Gear in New Jersey, to loud boos.  Crowd was bloodthirsty, chanting "AEW!" and "PPV!". Tony briefly thanked us for supporting the company, mentioned to keep watching it on television. At the end, after very consistent and vocal "PPV!" chants, he said "sooner then later, I'm going to bring a PPV to the great town of Houston" and thanked us for being such a great, consistently loud crowd.

Watching the television version, the audience was definitely a bit more quieter then it really was, but I think we came off as a pretty good crowd overall. It was a sellout, and they did a really good job making the arena look bigger then it actually was. Those two hours of Dynamite went by in a flash!

Edited November 8, 2025 by The Green Meanie

[username]

I don't know that Hook needs to go to NXT per se (I do think it'd help him) but he clearly needs to be learning elsewhere/additionally. There are people who will only learn so much at a given place, I would like to see him tossed into different situations where he will have to adapt/grow be it CMLL, NJPW or just a tour of the indies. I also maintain that protecting him so heavily from day one undercut his growth (selling has been mentioned, but people often need the chance to fail to grow).

There is also the chance that this is simply what he offers, I'd hate to write off someone as young as him but eventually you are what you are.

[Curt McGirt]

9 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Kingston’s House of 1000 Corpses-inspired Jun Kasai shirt fucking ruled.  I need AEW YouTube to do a feature on Eddie’s wrestling shirt collection.

I couldn't find a pic of that but GOOD LORD does Kasai have some killer movie and music-homage shirts. 

Spoiler

(HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT)

Crass? On top of Abigail? I mean, c'mon. That's too cool. 

Different Rob Zombie movie, but close enough

EDIT: Hook on excursion wouldn't be a bad idea. He'd get a huge pop for a return. Maybe switch up that damn music again. Send him to Japan? Mexico might be an odd fit. 

Edited November 7, 2025 by Curt McGirt