AEW Dynamite BLOOD AND GUTS - May 5, 2021

[Edwin]

8 minutes ago, MoS said:

One bad-faith defence by AEW fans on Twitter is that the ones criticising it want wrestlers to take unsafe bumps and get injured. Like, no, not at all. Just shoot it better. Or at least TRY to hide the crash pad.

Yeah, the crash pad was visible before the match as someone who was there live tweeted a photo of it and it was noticeable it was a crash pad and a bit of a spoiler that someone was taking a bump off the cage onto it.

They are really struggling with these production blunders in big stipulation matches and of course they overshadow the matches themselves and it's not like they don't have the budget to improve it.

Edit: The off camera stuff needs to be planned out better as well. The Shaq ambulance disappearance comes to mind, for example. And yes, Jericho needs to go away for a while.

[Marksman]

Yeah, I really wish they'd do a better job of production. Other than that, pretty good episode, and sets up one for next week which sounds amazing. 

[sek69]

Could it have been shot better to not show as much of the crash pad? Of course. What I don't get is all the snickering this one got when every Big Bump in WWE/NXT also has an obvious crash pad that normally is just as visible.  It just seems like a lot of it is people trying to take a minor blunder and bad faith it up. 

[Edwin]

I don't think you're getting the point entirely... WWE has done a much better job when producing those (for the most part, at least) with the wide shots, etc. and they are usually not as obvious or low budget as this one.

Also, WWE gets clowned all the time when they do ridiculous stuff as well (Rey's eye, the puppet Fiend burning, etc.), stop trying to play it off as if everyone was trying to pick apart AEW always as that happens everywhere.

[MoS]

 

Just now, Edwin said:

I don't think you're getting the point entirely... WWE has done a much better job when producing those (for the most part, at least) with the wide shots, etc. and they are usually not as obvious or low budget as this one.

Also, WWE gets clowned when they do ridiculous stuff as well (Rey's eye, the puppet Fiend burning, etc.), stop trying to play this as if there was an agenda and AEW was being targeted solely because of it being AEW.

I would say my big disagreement in this topic is that I don't think this was much worse than normal similar stunts honestly. This was an average Shane McMahon/Jeff Hardy bump imo. There have been many better Shane McMahon/Jeff Hardy bumps. There have been as many, if not more, worse bumps. It definitely looked bad/funny. My only point of surprise is the extent to which it has been focused on and dissected. Most similar bumps in major wrestling looks similar to me imo, crash pads and all. I don't think it was embarrassingly fake, in that it wasn't much different from the usual kind of bumps of this nature. Of course, they should have never showed the close-up of Jericho falling. The money was in focusing on MJF's expressions. Letting fans imagine the Jericho fall would have been actually more effective. 

It's why I don't think it is fair to compare this to the Explosion dud. That one was a disaster. AEW had literally sold their most PPV buys ever on the premise that the ring was going to explode. Sure, there would be a match before it, but it was basically the setup to the explosion. And then the explosion never happened. This, though? Here the hook was the match itself. The stunt bump was supposed to be the unexpected cherry on top. It didn't work out, but it was not the main hook. Hell, they had a similar, much more dangerous bump an hour before when Darby went flying down the stairs. Actually, now that I think of it, the bigger issue is them booking two spots like this on the same night. Even if this would have gone perfectly, having two holy shit falls in one show would just dilute both

[KawadaSmile]

17 minutes ago, MoS said:

 

One bad-faith defence by AEW fans on Twitter is that the ones criticising it want wrestlers to take unsafe bumps and get injured. Like, no, not at all. Just shoot it better. Or at least TRY to hide the crash pad. They probably were really scared about a repeat of the All Out Matt Hardy situation and went in the other direction. J.R using his patented Owen Hart voice definitely hurt. 

100% agree. And I mean, taking big dumb bumps IS a way to get over, as we see with Darby Allin and Shotzi Blackheart. However, Jericho is over 50 and can't afford to bump like that.

And since you brought Matt up, that also makes me wonder if the bump was even necessary.

[sek69]

21 minutes ago, Edwin said:

Also, WWE gets clowned all the time when they do ridiculous stuff as well (Rey's eye, the puppet Fiend burning, etc.), stop trying to play it off as if everyone was trying to pick apart AEW always as that happens everywhere.

I mean, that's kind of what is happening tho. If people were mocking Jericho's obvious blading/spot calling I would say that's fair game for jokes. Mocking the same kind of bump that Shane does in every match seems a little disingenuous to me. 

If anything I would make the case if they were going to do a bump off the cage spot, literally anyone else in the match would have been a better call than Jericho. 

[MoS]

10 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

And since you brought Matt up, that also makes me wonder if the bump was even necessary.

The Jericho one or the Matt one? The Matt one was of course unnecessary and the fact that they continued the match after that might be the biggest black mark in AEW's history. 

The Jericho one..I don't know. They had a clear idea for the finish, but I guess, apart from wanting to write off Jericho, they probably als thought it was the wrestling eqquivalent of Chekov's gun. If you have teased a big spot, then you kind of have to do it, otherwise fans might complain. With the benefit of hindsight, I would just not do the rooftop finish at all. There was a clear point where the match started falling off, and it was when it took Jericho about 3 hours to slooooooooowly, gingerly climb the cage. Sammy Guevera could have climbed the cage, done a 630 degree splash from the top of it, got up and climbed up again in the time it took Jericho to climb the cage once lol. Jericho's historica, famous weakness has been trying to do physical, athletic spots that he is not capable of. So of course he was going to try this lol 

[fakeplastictrees]

It is true there are some bad actors out there that are looking to slam AEW, I am not one of them. I am not saying that anyone on this board is calling me one. Here's the thing though, if this was Shimmer, AIW, Freelance, etc. then people would go with it. However, when a billionaire owned multi-million dollar company does this on national TV for one of their biggest shows of the year, it's something different. AEW needs to get it together when it comes to delivering on big matches with big stunts. If this match ended with the threat and no pay off, I think everyone would have been okay with that (to an extent). AEW will slowly lose consumer confidence if this keeps up. Same thing happened to Impact. Granted, AEW is doing a million other things right, so they will be fine for a very long time, but something has got to give. This is the second big match where the big finale came off like complete shit. Fine, AEW had a dud bomb. Forgivable. But this? People remember finishes.

[Johnny Sorrow]

3 hours ago, strobogo said:

Shame he looks like a teenager in that get up

Good. Normally he looks younger. 
Kidding, Sammy is awesome. So since I can't watch Dynamite since it streams nowhere, can someone hook me up so I can watch this match?

[MoS]

6 hours ago, Blehschmidt said:

Does anyone else think the sound was strange in that first match? 

The crowd seemed super mic'ed, and the in ring action was almost nil. (The chops were silent, no sound on bumps, etc.)

So apparently, the reason for this is that the prelim matches were taped but they were using the live crowd reaction to the matches. So what we were hearing was the match being shown on the big screen, and the crowd reacting to it

[Ed.]

Thought the match was great until Jericho entered, not so much for his performance (although he didn’t do much until he got on the roof) but how the match structure changed and there was a bunch of stalling.  The match beyond really didn’t need to go 15 minutes long, and the finish did come off weak.  Match of two halves for sure.

next week’s episode looks STACKED.  I’m here for killer Miro winning the title off of Darby.

[cubbymark]

Miro needs to kill I Like Turtles dude in 30 seconds like he did Mojo Rawley in NXT.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

Blood and Guts was everything I want from a Wargames match but as stated in the thread AEW has production problems that need to be corrected asap. Jericho looked like he landed on a bean bag. 

[Enforcer]

9 hours ago, MoS said:

LMAO at anyone who works in the QAnon capital of wrestling making fun of anything in wrestling for being funny or embarrassing 

Any wrestlers who works for a compagnie that just had a guy kick a rose up someone’s butt needs to just STFU. The Jericho bump was what it was but that rose stuff is just putrid embarrassing garbage.  If I was working in wwe, I would restrain myself from mocking other compagnies after this crap. 

[strobogo]

What if Jericho is the problem all together, not production, not giant lolsy crash pads. Just Jericho seemingly having completely forgotten how to be a pro wrestler.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

A very strong possibility,  I was lumping it together with the explosion mishap at Revolution. He was the weak link of the match. 

[Tim Cooke]

They did a lot of things right in this match.  Wargames 1992 is a top 10 match of all time for me.  1994 and the original 1987 fantastic matches as well.  This didn't reach those heights but it came damn close especially in 2021.  Sammy starting the five minute period was absolutely the right call and that segment felt like a blend of the old school and new school coming together.  Rope tricks, when they make sense, which was the case here, can really elevate something stupid like a flying cutter.  A tad disappointed that they didn't pull a few more general spots:

Double submission move

Head between rings

A 2021 version of the Steamboat/Rude rana from 1992

But overall, I really enjoyed this.  I enjoyed the Road To segment where they hit the WCW nostalgia hard and that sits well with me as a WCW fan.

[strobogo]

Jericho came in as the final guy, the captain of his team, the guy with the true bloodfeud hatred, and he entered the ring with zero fire whatsoever as if it were a Dynamite match against Marko Stunt or something. The more I think about it the more I think that might have been the worst performance of Jericho's career. Just embarrassing. 

[Enforcer]

The more that I think about it, this has to built to Stadium Stampede 2 at DON. Maybe a more serious version this time. It would make sense and I think that Jericho talked about bringing it back on WOR. With a weaker world title match, they must have something big planned for the ppv. 

[Manatee]

I got this without the commercial breaks and watched it this morning and I still thought the pacing of the blood and guts match was awful. There was like a 10 minute stretch where the only thing that happened was someone getting a fork to the forehead. Everyone knows that Wardlow is not good in the ring and they had so much time to plan around his limitations, then he comes into the match and wastes his team's advantage by just standing around looking like a moron and then proceeds to spend the rest of the match rolling around on the mat with Hager and botching moves. Hopefully this was Jericho's last match. He had to stop and catch his breath after every step he took climbing to the top of the cage. Really surprised so many people here liked this.

[MoS]

A friend of mine texted me saying "That Jericho bump was more padded than the directors cut of The Hobbit movies" and that honestly might be the most brutal insult I have read so far of that bump

[Marksman]

2 hours ago, Enforcer said:

The more that I think about it, this has to built to Stadium Stampede 2 at DON. Maybe a more serious version this time. It would make sense and I think that Jericho talked about bringing it back on WOR. With a weaker world title match, they must have something big planned for the ppv. 

That makes sense. I'm desperate to see Orange vs Omega, but either Orange vs Omega or PAC vs Omega doesn't seem like a PPV main when you're only running a few PPVs each year, so Stadium Stampede would definitely seem like a good plan. 

[strobogo]

Moxley vs MJF and Moxley vs Kingston were PPV main events last year 

 

Surely Omega vs PAC/OC are on the level of those

[MoS]

AEW topped the 18-49 chart for the first time ever and did so by a huge margin for a show literally titled Blood and Guts. Maybe it's time to definitively retire the narrative that blood and violence is chasing away women viewers