AEW Dynamite - April 28, 2021

[kas]

Wasn't Alberto charged with kidnapping? Whatever happened to that? Either way, incredibly stupid of Andrade (and by Kalisto tbh).

[fakeplastictrees]

@kas Yes. I believe his court case is coming up soon. Kidnapping and other charges. This impending court case lead to another unfortunate Joey Ryan rant where he felt he just needs to point out a few things. Joey Ryan was on Twitter complaining that TK pulled AEW wrestlers from a show Joey was scheduled to be on (the one that was cancelled), and yet TK allows AEW wrestlers to be on a show with ADR. Fucking Christ!

There are some other things I really like about AEW that I noticed after watching the show a second time. I love that every faction has its own swag, purpose, and even colors! Dark Order has purple, Team Taz has black & orange, The Inner Circle has black, Best Friends have multiple bright and fun colors, etc. Its' also great that some of the weaker stuff involving some of these factions are not put at the forefront and is usually in the background and is quick and painless. No one wants to see a Shawn Spears match, but it's usually less than 10 minutes and actually moves forward the much larger narrative. The multiple factions also keep storylines and matches up fresh as TK isn't 'forced' to book Darby vs. Cage multiple times before their big blow off at the PPV. This has always been a problem with WWE TV for at least 20 years at this point. So it's refreshing to see TK not use TV time as an excuse to trot out the same matches every week. The entire show moves are a fantastic pace. AEW uses its 2 hours to the fullest and its good to see a pro wrestling promotion do that without padding those two hours with tons of recaps, 20 minutes of exposition that could have really be done in 30 seconds with JR making an announcement on commentary, etc. Raw hasn't done that in years, Impact was moving at a break neck speed and nothing stuck, AEW has found the balance.

 

 

[sek69]

IIRC the kidnapping case was dropped, the victim declined to pursue it. People tended to interpret how it went down as "Alberto wrote a check to make it go away". 

[MoS]

Clearly Darby and the Pinnacle-Inner Circle parley is no match for Big Biden as a draw. Expect him to headline next WM with The Big Dog. Maybe somehow Bryan finds his way in the main event yet again as some Bernie/crazy Green Party surrogate 

[Stiva]

Forgot to mention Ethan Page's Golf Dad ensemble. I assume this all leads to AEWs first Dynamite triple threat with Page vs Scorpio vs Darby but Ethan Page was out here looking like a dad enjoying a freshly mowed lawn in July. Darby should hopefully take them both out since Miro/Darby is the money match, baby. With the win records the way they are, they're definitely building to Darby/Cassidy as a TV main but part of me thinks they need to move past Moxley and Kingston fairly soon. Renee is about to burst so I assume there's going to be an angle to take Moxley out but you can do Omega/Kingston at DoN. Christian is being positioned so he takes out all of Team Taz one by one and Cage beating Hangman is purely designed so that when Christian beats Brian Cage, it sets him up for the Omega match. The problem is that Miro is clearly being established as the new big threat and the logical match is Miro/Darby with Miro going over. Maybe they do the program where Miro is constantly kicking the shit out of Kip and when it comes to the big match, Kip costs Miro the TNT title but who cares about Kip Sabian? Either way, the fact you can have such a far reaching conversation about who is ready for what title shot and who deserves what is a testament to the booking of AEW; even when they get things wrong, which they absolutely do, they still understand the art of protecting their top guys and that's something to be applauded. 

And that's before I mention Sammy Guevara. I've been 100% sure that this entire Pinnacle/Inner Circle feud was designed to push him to the stratosphere and now that he's first in Blood and Guts, he's going to be in there from the start, have a great shine in the first 5 minutes, showcase his selling for the rest of the time and i'll be amazed if he doesn't get the pin. Probably on Spears but that's the exact reason he's in the Pinnacle. I can only assume there's going to be an angle where MJF kicks him out for literally anybody else.

[sek69]

I mean 800k or whatever the final number was isn't too bad considering it was going up against a Presidential address. 

[strobogo]

46 minutes ago, Stiva said:

Forgot to mention Ethan Page's Golf Dad ensemble. I assume this all leads to AEWs first Dynamite triple threat with Page vs Scorpio vs Darby but Ethan Page was out here looking like a dad enjoying a freshly mowed lawn in July. Darby should hopefully take them both out since Miro/Darby is the money match, baby. With the win records the way they are, they're definitely building to Darby/Cassidy as a TV main but part of me thinks they need to move past Moxley and Kingston fairly soon. Renee is about to burst so I assume there's going to be an angle to take Moxley out but you can do Omega/Kingston at DoN. Christian is being positioned so he takes out all of Team Taz one by one and Cage beating Hangman is purely designed so that when Christian beats Brian Cage, it sets him up for the Omega match. The problem is that Miro is clearly being established as the new big threat and the logical match is Miro/Darby with Miro going over. Maybe they do the program where Miro is constantly kicking the shit out of Kip and when it comes to the big match, Kip costs Miro the TNT title but who cares about Kip Sabian? Either way, the fact you can have such a far reaching conversation about who is ready for what title shot and who deserves what is a testament to the booking of AEW; even when they get things wrong, which they absolutely do, they still understand the art of protecting their top guys and that's something to be applauded. 

And that's before I mention Sammy Guevara. I've been 100% sure that this entire Pinnacle/Inner Circle feud was designed to push him to the stratosphere and now that he's first in Blood and Guts, he's going to be in there from the start, have a great shine in the first 5 minutes, showcase his selling for the rest of the time and i'll be amazed if he doesn't get the pin. Probably on Spears but that's the exact reason he's in the Pinnacle. I can only assume there's going to be an angle where MJF kicks him out for literally anybody else.

I hope so for Sammy's sake, because taking him off TV for months just to bring him back sheepishly trying to get back in the good graces of the group that kicked his ass to the curb made him look like a putz and killed any momentum he had (which wasn't much at that point, coming off the Hardy feud). In general, the whole Pinnacle/Inner Circle feud seems very very rushed because TK still desperately wanted to run a War Games match but the Elite/Inner Circle thing had completely fallen off. I think this will be only the 2nd interaction between the groups in a wrestling ring, the other being Dax vs Jericho. 

[MoS]

The Sammy-Inner Circle thing is weird. When they initially did the angle where he came back and they swerved MJF only to get double swerved, Jericho said something like "You think we are idiots? We don't talk to each other on the phone all the time? We knew for months that you would try to break us apart." But then this week he said something like "You got us divided and Sammy out of the Circle, that will never happen again."

I thought Jericho cut a good face promo this week, esp by face Jericho standards, but it's being portrayed by so many as this incredible all-timd great promo, and I don't get it. He said a lot of silly stuff in it.