AEW Dynamite Week 9 - 27 Nov 2019

[Tim Evans]

Anyone else catch JR saying the guy from Statefarm during opener was from Allstate? He covered pretty quickly but JR was awful all night and Excalibur wasn't much better.

Statlander is going to be a star. I'm glad she didn't go to WWE because they have enough indie women and she's going to stand out in a big way in AEW. Beat didn't look like a total putz tonight so that was a plus. Also enjoyed the MJF match. Was surprised both Page and PAC lost so sorta clean.

[gordi]

3 hours ago, goodhelmet said:

 I love how AEW has no problem putting people in a position to succeed instead of a position to fail. 

 

That's my favourite thing about this promotion. That ECW-era Paul Heyman style of trying to book to your wrestler's strengths, of listening to your fans and making adjustments, of trying to help everyone get over... it's so damn refreshing after years of "any time someone I like starts to get over, they have their legs cut out from under them" troll booking. I hope they never lose touch with that ideal. I hope they are still trying to get new people over with their crowd ten years down the road. 

[Gulus]

Episode was kinda all over the place but in a good way - very entertaining. Progressing storylines throughout. Finally a decent women's match as well.

[SirEdger]

1 hour ago, Blehschmidt said:

The real question about the Butcher and The Blade is.... Why did Allie turn heel and attack Cody? 

She was the only semi-over American female babyface they had (cause the Dentist ain't over), so I have to question that decision. 

One theory thrown around online is that it's in response to Brandi sending Awesome Kong after her a few weeks back to cut her hair.

The way I see things right now, it seems like they're counting on Hikaru Shida and Shanna to be the top babyfaces along with Riho and Britt Baker. But Kris Statlander could quickly get there if they book her more often. Crazy talented.

[MoS]

Perhaps even they realise that the debut felt a bit flat.

[rovert]

10 hours ago, sek69 said:

How did WWE let Kris Statlander get away? Pretty sure she was at one of their training camps?

It is complicated. Will say more if she signs somewhere. I don't want to hurt her chances anywhere. But basically it seems like she was left in the middle of someone's paperwork on their desk and WWE never got around to her.

WWE's talent relations largely sucks every which way communication-wise and promising & underdelivering. 

[War is Raw]

I guess a bunch of people don't watch or remember AEW Dark, not even JR. Shida spoke English in her post match interview against Big Swole. She also speaks English on Instagram, and has at least two Youtube interviews in English. Yet JR said the fans are cheering for her even though she and the other Japanese women don't speak English. Very judgmental to Shida.

Pretty sad if this guy is also in the production/booking meetings making pitches and his opinions known when he doesn't even speak to the talent personally (it is the drawback to just showing up to work once a week for everyone) or do his homework as a salaried employee to watch Dark. At least Excalibur knows his facts and Alex Marvez does research for the announce teams. JR wings it, and it shows.

JR and many comments I've read in forums saw Statlander for the first time. Yet she was on Dark, and Dustin Rhodes on commentary put her over big time as a prospect. (Dustin also barely knew who Chuck Taylor was. So it's more evidence that not traveling on the road all week together takes away from getting to know each other.) 

And since JR is supposed to be such a stickler to keep kayfabe, you'd think he would have interrogated or at least joked about Excalibur knowing who Butcher, Blade, and Bunny were, and why Allie turned. It's a bad wrestling trope where the straight announcer happens to know the names of surprise debuting wrestlers. 

I am glad Tony Khan will tweak gimmicks that don't get over instead of banishing people to Siberia. Just wish he would offer an on-screen explanation to why characters change before they do (Brandi, Allie, even Dark Order) and to tighten up debuting wrestlers (Butcher + Blade).

The show was a fun holiday special in Chicago, so it's not a true representation a normal show. Still, it was the worst so far. Looked much better on paper. Thankfully had Omega v Pac had a great match and the women were passable, although it probably lost 50-100,000 viewers. Dark Order video was fantastic.

The rest was meh. Cody was wasted. MJF vs Page was killed by commercials. I'm fine with MJF channeling Piper or Zbyszko- all character work to get over instead of in-ring work so far in AEW. Lucha Bros must not have been happy about the job (Pentagon already did one for Trent on Dark). Scorpio and Jericho were just getting warmed up. The main events need to be 20+ minutes of ring time instead of wasting it on pre and post match stuff. At this point, yes, a 2-hour Jericho on the mic show would probably have a higher TV rating. Mox vs Jericho at least keeps all the company's momentum in the right direction. The show felt like an hour, so that's good.

Ultimately, JR distracted me on commentary like he does with the PPVs, and the show was silly and some segments ended flat. In fact the opening segment felt like a WWE parody, yet it probably had over 1 million viewers which may encourage Khan to do stuff like that again to start strong. I thought AEW was against 20-minute promos to start shows? I guess we can make an exception for the holidays. Just blowing off some steam right now. I get that it was a booked as "fun" show. But with all the Jericho super heat at the beginning, the SCU run-in was a fart in church and the ref should have DQ'ed Jericho when Jake came to ringside (he was "banned").

Just my humble opinions. Happy Thanksgiving.

[World's Worst Man]

The Butcher and the Blade kind of have an aesthetic that would fit in perfectly with a certain villain. Just saying.

[Stiva]

The Jericho bits were fantastic but it was probably the first week that it really felt like he was carrying the show. Sky's little month or so push was really fun, however and the main event was a perfectly fine WCW Saturday Night Ric Flair title defence. What I will say is that there had to have been some timing issues with this show; the opening angle ended really flatly with the Roberts beatdown and SCU coming to the ring happening so quickly and with no impact and the MJF/DDP/Wardlow stuff just kind of took off and ended. Not giving MJF the after-match promo seems like a real mistake. The guy has plenty of heat already but I think he needs to speak every week to sustain it. Even the Dustin interview barely got started before they built the match for next week. It just seemed like they were rushing to get to the endings of the angles and everything sort of suffered because of it.

Still though, the actual ring-work is becoming more diverse with each week with a better mix of short and long matches. It seems a long time ago that every match was stretched past breaking point and it's making the show far more easy to digest.

[SomethingSavage]

I've only seen Jericho/Cody from Full Gear and none of the weekly stuff, but I always make it a point to check out Jericho's promos from these shows on YouTube.

The man's sense of style is king-sized and should be celebrated accordingly. That is all.

 

[SirEdger]

Tony Schiavone's absence this week made it painfully obvious that he is the glue gelling this team together. I love Excalibur but he seemed to try doing too much last night. I have the feeling since day 1 that Jim Ross absolutely doesn't want to be at commentary in any way, shape or form.

[SomethingSavage]

I haven't heard enough JR in AEW to give any kind of fair criticism, but I did try to watch some of that Moxley/Omega match and heard Jim shout about how these two guys are doing everything in their power to "put on a great match."

I thought that was both a clear indication of what I hate about modern wrestling's presentation AND representative of what I don't ever want to hear from Jim Ross.

Even in forgettable (but super fun) matches like the TLC 4 from Raw Roulette, JR was always a fucking master at putting over risk, danger, and damage. He emphasized bodily harm and physical feats.

Seriously. Go back and watch any garbage plunder match, and you can find JR increasing the enjoyment level exponentially. Because he isn't normally babbling about "toys" or "play time" or whateverthefuck.

Here he is now, trying to fit in and be contemporary to the same modern fans he hate Tweets back & forth with, spouting bullshit about great performances and stealing the show. It's not what I want from anyone. And it's especially not anything I'd want from Jim Ross.

[El-P]

19 hours ago, gordi said:

That's my favourite thing about this promotion. That ECW-era Paul Heyman style of trying to book to your wrestler's strengths, of listening to your fans and making adjustments, of trying to help everyone get over... 

This. See : the Dark Order vignettes, which are terrific and actively turning what was a complete miss into something you can actually sink your teeth in now.

I feel like 20 years of WWE shit booking has messed up some people's mind. Mystery can be good. The only thing odd about The Butcher & The Blade debut is that Excalibur acted like he knew who they were, yet didn't explain. But of course we're gonna get the explanation and story-arc. It's not WWE, they do things for a reason and will change the directory if things don't go well. People need to get back some patience/faith, I do get after two decades of mainstream US wrestling that has made no sense, it's not always easy.

As far as Allie turning into the Bunny already, great. Yeah, I love the Pieter look, although much less strippery. Hell, as much as I know the character, she may show up as smily Allie next week and pretend not knowing what happened, since Allie's thing is that behind the smiling babyface, she's basically batshit crazy. Anyway, a team looking like characters from Gangs of New York managed by the sexy Bunny, I'm all in. I wonder if Marty Scurll is that far behind, because as far as look goes, he totally fits with the three of them... 

PAC vs Omega was the equivalent of Guerrero vs Benoit on Nitro. Give me PAC every week. 

DDP should get Waldrow & MJF do an extreme session of DDPY. They would die even trying Living in the Red Zone. Which I'm doing without dying (although it's close).

Statlander was on Dark the other week. Yeah, she has shitloads of potential. Sakura is awesome when she channels the inner Taichii. The women division is shaping up slowly but surely, with girls like her and Shanna being thrown in the mix.

Jericho may be the wrestler of the year, between this AEW Le champion stint and his NJPW big matches. Ted Irvine was quite funny.

I guess Janela tweeted one week too early and then realized it, because they indeed did not show how he was eliminated. 

They need Tony Schiavone back and have him every damn week. That's all I'm gonna say about the announcing... (fucking oriental...asian... JR, really ?)

[gordi]

2 hours ago, El-P said:

 

I feel like 20 years of WWE shit booking has messed up some people's mind. Mystery can be good.

 

 

I agree, but it's not just WWE booking. I think maybe it's comic book movies (which I also generally love) too.

After watching the first episode of The Mandalorian, about half of the reviews I read seemed to be implying that the reviewer was disappointed that we didn't learn enough about the main character's background, that we didn't clearly know whether he was a good guy or a bad guy after one episode, that we didn't see his face or hear enough of his voice... That pissed me off. The mystery is clearly a feature, not a bug. Not everything needs to start with an origin story. Give us a compelling character in medias res once in a while, we can fill in the backstory later.

I think it's perfectly OK to feel like, "Who are these people? What are they doing here?" once in a while. It can be satisfying to find out later, even if it does come at the cost of diminishing the initial impact of their appearance. 

The WWE style seems to be to build someone up before they appear, give them a big splashy introduction and a decent first program, then about 80 percent of the time just let them drift into obscurity and irrelevance. It might be refreshing for someone to get a low-key introduction that keeps building over time, instead. 

Almost everything I love the most about AEW is the stuff that they are doing differently from the past 15 or so years of atrocious WWE booking.  Frankly, I am pleasantly surprised that I haven't seen more people online complaining about those very differences. It would make sense if people wanted more of what they have grown used to, but in general it seems that people get what AEW are going for, and appreciate it. 

 

[Dale Wolfe]

If they have to use JR as part of the TV deal as was rumoured, maybe switching him to hosting & interviews could be the way forward. A Mean Gene style role. 

I can't handle much more of his commentary it is actively turning me off the product. I knew it would be a problem. 

[gordi]

2 hours ago, Dale Wolfe said:

If they have to use JR as part of the TV deal as was rumoured, maybe switching him to hosting & interviews could be the way forward. A Mean Gene style role. 

I can't handle much more of his commentary it is actively turning me off the product. I knew it would be a problem. 

That sounds like it would, at the very least, be worth a try. 

 

Edit: for all the crap that we justifiably toss JR's way, I have to give him credit for that quick aside of "Abdullah?" when everyone was speculating about what might be in the giant box. That got a legit lol outa me. 

[El-P]

2 hours ago, gordi said:

for all the crap that we justifiably toss JR's way, I have to give him credit for that quick aside of "Abdullah?" when everyone was speculating about what might be in the giant box. That got a legit lol outa me. 

Yep. He was right on point with that one.

The one thing about these AEW people, is that they are smarter. They have studied and learned, which has not been the case of people in WWE or the old TNA (apart from D'Amore). For instance, one thing that cracked me up, during the break after the Young Bucks showed up, Nick challenges Proud & Powerful & Hagger to a six-men tag for *next week*. And of course, it doesn't get over well with the crowd, as these things never do. And would you know ? Matt jumps in and tells his brother "I told you not to say that, I told you they are gonna boo that one !", which was so funny and smart. These people are aware, and they aren't afraid to show you and don't want to insult their audience intelligence, and that's a huge difference. Considering your audience is smart can be tricky sometimes, as the idiots are gonna complain, but it's way more fun and rewarding when it works. And it usually does, because when you talk to people like they are actual intelligent people, it stimulates their intelligence. I never got why "smart marks" was an insult. We all are the product of the smart mark culture. We are pro-wrestling geeks, so I dunno why we should not enjoy the fact a promotion is being done by and for pro-wrestling geeks.

[Blehschmidt]

When the Power Hour first debuted, they had Gordon Solie hosting a small segment going over the main angles, counting down the Top 10, and then giving his opinion on one of the main angles. The whole thing lasted like 3 or 4 minutes, and I think this would be a perfect use of J.R. at this point.

[Dale Wolfe]

5 hours ago, Blehschmidt said:

When the Power Hour first debuted, they had Gordon Solie hosting a small segment going over the main angles, counting down the Top 10, and then giving his opinion on one of the main angles. The whole thing lasted like 3 or 4 minutes, and I think this would be a perfect use of J.R. at this point.

Yes this would be the one I think. He does have uses as a character but lead comms isn't it. 

[sek69]

JR calling Cody/Dustin was legit one of the best announcing performance of all time.  Added so much to what was already a great, emotional match. 2019 JR is like how Ric Flair was on his last WWE run as a wrestler, obviously he's past his prime but still able to show you why he was one of the greats on occasion. Like Flair in those later years, he's not able to carry the broomstick anymore but you put someone with a pulse in there and sometimes you can still make magic. 

 

[Coffey]

JR can make good moments great but he can't make mediocre moments good. His disinterest comes through. Which, I mean, that's fair. He's seen a lot of shit. Going from calling Stone Cold at Wrestlemania to calling an undercard Joey Janella match isn't going to spark a lot of motivation.

Sometimes he comes off aloof & ignorant of the product though, which that is definitely on him. I mean there's a big difference between not knowing who a debuting tag team are & messing up the names of people that have been there the whole time. 

When Ross channels his old WCW announcing & starts talking about motivations for main eventers & their credentials he's still really damn good. But sometimes he gets hung up on things like Jungle Jack or Riho weighing 98 lbs and he just beats a dead horse.

[The Thread Killer]

A lot of AEW fans have been complaining about JR, but I don't see AEW pulling him out of the booth any time soon.  From what I understand, Cody Rhodes is a friend and admirer of Jim Ross so barring some major incident, I don't see AEW putting JR out to pasture.  One of the funnier things I have read recently was when some AEW fan was bitching about JR on Twitter, and asked Cody Rhodes why AEW had even hired him.  Cody responded "because he's Jim Fucking Ross."

[El-P]

12 minutes ago, Coffey said:

Going from calling Stone Cold at Wrestlemania to calling an undercard Joey Janella match isn't going to spark a lot of motivation.

That's understood, but he's paid to do a job. If he can't do it properly, he has to pack his bags and fucking contribute in other ways.

I mean, Tony Schiavone went to make the greatest call in the history of our sport (you know the one) to be super enthousiastic calling garbage matches with Mance Warner in MLW. So there. To me Excalibur & Tony together would be just great. If AEW proves anything, is that JR is and always has been an overrated announcer (including in Watts, including in WCW, including in WWE) and Tony Schiavone, in the grand scheme of things and on a day to day basis, always has been much better.

[sek69]

Honestly, Tony's probably happy working for a wrestling company that isn't a complete clusterfuck.

[El-P]

Yes, but what I got from Schiavone doing those ECW watch-along podcasts with Conrad is that he's way more open minded than most of his generation's counterparts and loves to actually have fun and make what he's announcing fun. Which, if you listen to JR's podcast, is really not JR's case. You can feel Tony is legit having tons of fun calling those insane matches of today, like he has a blast watching these old ECW shows. And it comes through. Meanwhile, JR is making stupid calls about "orientals" and flubs people's names, just like he was mixing up Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit in 2000.