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AEW Dynamite - 3/17/2021


Dolfan in NYC

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On 3/17/2021 at 7:50 PM, Curt McGirt said:

It really helps if you've watched enough Joshi. They even had the second helping out throughout the match, which was a very nice touch. 

BTW, if you liked that match you should really watch this (thanks to our own Elsa)

 

Thank you for reminding me to rewatch this, my favorite women’s match ever. 
 

I tried my playing my drinking game doing 1 oz pours of Hamilton Jamaican Pot Still Blonde rum for every cliche I listed on the first page, and then after 2 in the opener I realized I’m fucking 30 now and I might be on pace for cirrhosis by 7 PM. Decided to call it quits and just watch the show later. Glad I did cause I think I would have been way too wasted to pay attention to the main event.

Opener was bad, echoing what everyone is saying here. Cody has gotten progressively worse to me. Also didn’t really like the 10 man with the face teams fighting. I’m starting to worry with how much I agree with Cornette on some things, Marco Stunt especially is so god damn insufferable.

MJF’s promo was probably the best one I’ve seen from him. Really liked this segment. Only minor nitpick, since I’m a wrestling fan and you know I gotta, is that I find the “The Something” names for stables played out. Just feels really unoriginal since 10 or so years ago. It’s always The North, The Dynasty, The Embassy, The Acclaimed, The Revival, The Way, etc. Reminds me of how every promotion now has to be one word like Evolve, Progress, Shimmer, and so on. Minor complaint, but it seems derivative to me (I know I know, what’s not derivative in wrestling).

As someone who wasn’t excited for his debut, I found Christian’s promo really well delivered and made me remember how there are levels to this. Nothing crazy, but I felt like he could read my mind that I was skeptical and cut the fat and unnecessary dramatic pauses that I find cringey in so many interviews.

Another Sting promo interrupted is unforgivable at this point. If I were still playing my drinking game that would be a double shot. At least Darby addressed the elephant in the room and is gonna get some defenses in.

Fenix beating Angelico was the first segment that didn’t have an overt angle on the show, and I really wish they had just a few more of these. I’m not oblivious to the fact that you need angles to set up future bits, but sometimes the angle should be that this guy just won and is on his way to something greater. I would just keep Fenix building subtle momentum, have Darby beat all those established challengers, and have Fenix swoop in and beat him for the title.
 

Can’t say much more about the main event that hasn’t been said, but I would go so far as to say it’s the best women’s match I’ve seen since Akira Hokuto vs. Meiko Satomura in 2001. Of course I’ve only seen a negligible amount of quality women’s wrestling since then (haven’t followed joshi in a decade), but the compliment still stands. I do wish AEW cut back on the juice, thumbtacks, and gimmick matches in general so that this felt more special, but I do think it was all fitting here. That finishing was absolutely brutal, no idea how Baker’s neck isn’t broken. Great stuff. Now please no  intentional blood (and I say this as a BLOOD SUCKING FREAK) for like 6 months at least.

Edited by A.M.B.
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The Darby promo about only having three defenses feels like some reads these threads.

Also to go back to The Pinnacle vs Four Hoursemen

MJF - Flair

Wardlow - Arn Anderson (he's the enforcer)

Tully - JJ

FTR - The Minnesota Wrecking Crew

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I didn't like Christian's promo at all. He's their hot new signing, going straight for the world title, and he's talking about how he works hard in the ring and makes his opponents look good.

I can't wait for his big promo hyping up the title match. "Kenny Omega... you better watch out... cuz ask anybody, ask Jon Moxley... I'm a CARPENTER... I'm a MECHANIC... and at Full Gear... I'm gonna GET YOU OVER!!!!"

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1 hour ago, MapRef41N93W said:

I didn't like Christian's promo at all. He's their hot new signing, going straight for the world title, and he's talking about how he works hard in the ring and makes his opponents look good.

I can't wait for his big promo hyping up the title match. "Kenny Omega... you better watch out... cuz ask anybody, ask Jon Moxley... I'm a CARPENTER... I'm a MECHANIC... and at Full Gear... I'm gonna GET YOU OVER!!!!"

I just rewatched it to see if I missed anything and there’s not really anything there that breaks kayfabe at all. He said he’s a workhorse, Moxley realized how little he knew about wrestling when he got in the ring with him, and that he makes wrestlers level up. These kind of lines all have real sport parallel if you look at UFC, where people don’t realize how little they know till they grapple with Khabib, how a guy like Kamaru Usman is a workhorse, or how when facing a champ like GSP you level up. I mean when OSP faced Jon Jones they were talking about him getting the rub just by getting to experience what an elite fighter is like. It’s more a “rising tide lifts all ships” line rather than a “I’m gonna get you over” comment. 

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Christian's promo absolutely blurred the line between fiction and reality--the Jon Moxley reference was to an out-of-character interview where Moxley was praising him as a worker. If you want to say that's not technically "breaking kayfabe", OK. In that case, I'll say that I think a promo that technically doesn't break kayfabe can suck very bad in the same way that a kayfabe-breaking promo does.

GSP, Jones, Khabib, and Usman were/are dominant fighters. They are not analogous to Christian Cage.

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With MJF not being champion yet I thought he was a lot more like 4H Tully than the top dog spot.  Flair always had fans in 80s kayfabe who wanted to cheer him.  Even prior to the 89 Steamboat series it felt like Flair was only a competent heel challenge away from getting a majority cheering fan base.  Flair and Tully were pretty close in their vices.  If we were counting virtues Tully would lag faaaar behind Flair in the hearts of wrestling fans.  
 

At this point MJF doesn’t appear to have the history or complexity in his character to be THE MAN...as the leader in the newest attempt at playing Horrsemen.  
 

MJF shows some diversity in his character as he shmoozed and then plucked TIC. Maybe after a future face turn he can turn heel again and have the leader qualities of a Flair.  As it stands now he is more like a true Tully 2000 than he is Next Gen Naitch. 
 

Watching him in the 80s I could never picture Tully as a babyface.  Now that I see him as an old man I can go back and tell my past self that Tully could do it.  

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6 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Invisible Hand pulling the strings? EVP Kenny Omega using that position?

Maybe they convinced the commission by letting them know the end explosion would be a dud, it all makes sense now.

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On 3/18/2021 at 9:13 AM, Sex Machine Gun said:

e in on why everyone shits on Shawn Spears? I don't think I've even seen him wrestle on TV in a year and can't remember at all if he's any good. He hasn't gotten any promo time and they've barely remembered he had Tully working with him. In terms of visibility and record he's the weakest member of the Pinnacle sure, but in my eyes I see him that way because I have absolutely nothing to work with. He hasn't been doing anything! Still, he's got good size, looks like a threat in a promotion of sub-6' guys, and has one of the best mouthpieces working for him. I don't get it. He could very well suck but there's so little data from which I can draw. I never watched him in NXT or anything. Way I see it, that motherfucker already won the game by marrying Peyton Royce. Why should I be making unflattering comparisons to Mongo or Roma or whateverthefuck?

I think a lot of it is AEW has this bloated roster that has people disappearing from their TV show for weeks at a time (how long ago did we see Hobbs wrestle?), yet there's always time for this guy (and Marko Stunt) who people see as a charisma vacuum. Personally I would have no issue with him being the muscle of The Pinnacle but the presence of Wardlow kinda makes him redundant 

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For those of us that actually watch Dark, Hobbs wrestled on Elevation this past Monday. Which is where we always say these green workers should be to hone their craft or whatever. He last wrestled on Dynamite in December, at the Brodie Lee tribute show. But let's not act like he hasn't been on Dynamite damn near every week during that build up for the Sting/Darby Allin program with Team Taz. 

I also think it's funny that AEW supposedly "always has time for" Shawn Spears, even though he spent a really large chunk of 2020 on Dark, a show nobody watches or "has time for".

Edited by Casey
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Up until Shawn Spears showed up for the Pinnacle reveal last week, he'd been off Dynamite (and Dark) for like two months.

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58 minutes ago, alstein said:

 

It was a world title defense- those have to be sanctioned.

 

I'm pretty sure classic NWA had title matches that were "unsanctioned". Never made much sense to me, mind you.

More to the point, if there's a committee or something that decides whether they will or won't sanction a given match, you'd think that body would have the authority to say that no, you can't defend the title in an exploding barbed wire death match.

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On 3/20/2021 at 1:04 AM, zendragon said:

The Darby promo about only having three defenses feels like some reads these threads.

Also to go back to The Pinnacle vs Four Hoursemen

MJF - Flair

Wardlow - Arn Anderson (he's the enforcer)

Tully - JJ

FTR - The Minnesota Wrecking Crew

Yeah there are a few points being picked up on here that are reflected in promos/booking a few weeks down the line. Not for a moment suggesting that this is a reference point, however it is good to see that there are others in the company picking up on some similar trains of thought. Thank god, too, that they got Butcher and Blade out of that white ensemble; could do with getting rid of those silly Bloods imitation rags, but the reversion to black half-outfits is at least a good start.

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I thought BB&B explained the white outfits on AEW Unrestricted.  Originally the white was supposed to be their super ass kicker alternate “uniforms”.  They only wear them in street fights or grudge matches.

It was a riff on the “butcher” vibe.  They like trying things that are not quite wrestling related but add to their overall presentation.  

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13 hours ago, Casey said:

For those of us that actually watch Dark, Hobbs wrestled on Elevation this past Monday. Which is where we always say these green workers should be to hone their craft or whatever. He last wrestled on Dynamite in December, at the Brodie Lee tribute show. But let's not act like he hasn't been on Dynamite damn near every week during that build up for the Sting/Darby Allin program with Team Taz. 

I also think it's funny that AEW supposedly "always has time for" Shawn Spears, even though he spent a really large chunk of 2020 on Dark, a show nobody watches or "has time for".

Hobbs has been standing in the back of Team Tazz while Tazz rambles every week. That's hardly character development, yet here we go with another Shawn Spears reboot. I'm not even really that against the guy, he's just way down the list of people on the roster i'm interested in.

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8 hours ago, Ryan Faulconer said:

I thought BB&B explained the white outfits on AEW Unrestricted.  Originally the white was supposed to be their super ass kicker alternate “uniforms”.  They only wear them in street fights or grudge matches.

It was a riff on the “butcher” vibe.  They like trying things that are not quite wrestling related but add to their overall presentation.  

Yeah concept / execution are two different things. I hadn’t heard that story-narrative but it reads OK-ish (even if it was presented after the fact — I have no idea). The execution however was ridiculous; they looked poor and lurid. A couple of 1980s Miami clubbers who’d been frozen in time in an alleyway for the past few decades. But I doubt we see those again, so all good.

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On ‎3‎/‎20‎/‎2021 at 1:50 AM, Kev said:

The pedant in me demands to know, how come the main was not sanctioned but an exploding barbed wire death match was?

The simple kayfabe answer is that an Exploding Barbed Wire match has a stipulation or a set of special rules / conditions that both wrestlers have to agree to before the match is signed and the parties are allowed to compete.  So yes, even deathmatches have to be sanctioned.

The match between Rosa and Britt was the blow-off to a blood feud and AEW management feared that they might actually legit kill each other if they were allowed to compete, so they both had to waive their right to hold AEW liable for the injuries the opponent might inflict in order for AEW to allow them to wrestle a "lights out" match.

Unsanctioned matches are cool because it gives the impression that the governing board of the fed is trying to protect both wrestlers by not making the match, but the wrestlers hate each other and want to settle things in the ring so badly that the fed books the match anyway and turns a blind eye as the two competitors beat the living shit out of each other.

There's also the idea that unsanctioned matches do not count for or against your win / loss record, so you can still have Britt eat a defeat and allow her to keep her ranking in the AEW Womens Division.

Unsanctioned matches are usually No DQ, but not all No DQ matches are unsanctioned.  Unsanctioned matches tend to be No DQ because if the match is the blow-off to a blood feud, THERE MUST BE A WINNER~!

Edited by J.T.
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