AEW Dynamite - August 25, 2021

[sek69]

I wouldn't say it was *bad*.....just really meh. 

[KawadaSmile]

Man, just my luck. I only had time to watch the main event and it kinda.... sucked? I did like Arn still being portrayed as a badass by blocking Black's finisher, but I'm not sure if it does Malakai favors.

Then one of the Nightmare family dudes just appears and you could hear a pin drop. Weird camera work.

[MoS]

The main event was a total massacre (as it should have been of course.) It was fine for what it was, but it should never have been the main event in the first place. Lee Johnson coming out to make the save should never have been the closing shot of Dynamite, that shit is just not hot enough. In hindsight, I would have gone with the trios match, although given they didn't have a single match involving exclusively stars, literally no match would have felt like a good main event. Very surprised at this show's booking. Felt so cold. 

[Timbo Slice]

Again, feels like this was a show that was booked a while in advance, but didn’t have the ability to pivot nearly as well given at the right moments. Like they had the card ready, we’re gonna do what the plan was, circumstances be damned. I don’t think I’ve really seen that from Tony yet as a booker, and I don’t know what the feedback loop looks like there, but it’s pretty easy to know that how you end a show the most important part, and that wasn’t it. 

[SirEdger]

Words cannot describe how was Red Velvet vs Jamie Hayter. That was seriously embarrassing on multiple levels. Everything felt so off.

As for the main event, I would've been fine with it if Dustin Rhodes had run in to make the save on the Andersons rather than Lee Johnson. This felt like a 1995 edition of WWF RAW where they put the big match first and the crap went there after. Seems obvious now that they were banking on Punk's first Dynamite appearance to pop a rating.

[Boss Rock]

Typically not what I would have chosen to end a show, but I thought the Black-Anderson squash ruled. Black looked like an absolute killer and the ending with Arn was great.

[sek69]

I wonder if Red Velvet got concussed when she necked herself on the ropes, she seemed out of it and that looked like a likely spot it could have happened. Seemed things really went off the rails after that too. 

[SirEdger]

I actually wonder if it happened on the first dive she did on Jamie Hayter. Looked to me like she landed a tad awkwardly. But yeah, she almost Enzo'd herself in the ropes.

[Blehschmidt]

15 hours ago, MoS said:

There's no reason why we can't have Hikaru Shida or Tay Conti in featured matches instead of Bruti Marshall v. Gunn Club. Britt got over because she was consistently given time and opportunity and she obviously knocked it out of the park. She wasn't an immediate ratings mover but as more and more fans saw how great she is, she became one. It's only fiar to let other women also have opportunities like that.  

I truly don't understand why Shida went from Honorable Champion who carried the pandemic era to..... never mentioned again outside of the YouTube shows as soon as they took the title off of her. 

Conti seemed to be getting a big build up, and then all of a sudden.... YouTube shows.

I know Deeb is hurt.

and I assume they are trying to postpone Britt/Rosa feuding again.

But the division seems to have died the moment Britt won the title, which should have been a huge moment for it.

[sek69]

Yeah AEW's women's division seems to be booked like WWE's main roster ones where there's one dominant presence and everyone else is either geeks or disappeared into the ether, 

Keeping Britt heel despite of how over she is seems like a "WWE trying to make Becky a heel" move as well. Plus doing that kills the momentum for someone like Statlander, who's supposed to still be cheered but no one is going to cheer her against Britt, and people don't really want to boo her either so it creates a weird heat vortex since the crowd doesn't have a third option to react. 

[strobogo]

Arn blocking the kick and then getting kicked in the balls was hilarious tbh

[MoS]

An almost record number of 18-49 viewers watched tired, wretched old acts like Matt Hardy and Big Show in cold programs. Again, I have to say that AEW dropped the ball here. I understand there were some last minute changes to the show, but they have enough of a great roster for this to not have come to this. 

[NintendoLogic]

Speaking of tired old acts, Gangrel said on his podcast that he was supposed to appear on Dynamite but that got nixed after the Broodbath on Smackdown. Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing as you. Gangrel has a podcast?

[sek69]

I saw that and my first thought was "wow, WWE helped AEW yet again" lol. 

[MoS]

Wow Coach Tony K REALLY loved the attitude era eh

[NotJayTabb]

18 minutes ago, MoS said:

An almost record number of 18-49 viewers watched tired, wretched old acts like Matt Hardy and Big Show in cold programs. Again, I have to say that AEW dropped the ball here. I understand there were some last minute changes to the show, but they have enough of a great roster for this to not have come to this. 

Makes me think of the old line about how your rating doesn't represent the show you've put on, but rather the show you put on the week before. People tuning in because of Punk debuting getting rewarded with such a bafflingly mid show might not come back next week. I'm really confused why they ended on a squash of Arn's not-over kid with a perennial jobber making the save, a hot ending would have at least left a good final impression.

[sek69]

I mean, not every Nitro that beat Raw for 83 weeks in a row was stellar. There were more than a fair share of clunkers, but they built up so much momentum it took months after they were objectively sucking ass for the ratings to reflect that. I think AEW has enough goodwill that the occasional so-so episode won't derail things too much. 

[MoS]

AEW is definitely not harmed or anything, but I think this is a learning moment for a young promotion. I think we can conclude now that building two shows completely around a return and a promo makes for flat TV. Meltzer said that he thought one idea was to showcase their big talent but not give any big matches away. But it meant that not one match was really strong enough to headline a modern TV episode, especially when the main event ended with a jobber coming out for the big save and your featured star leaving instead of killing him. Brodie would never

[Coffey]

7 minutes ago, sek69 said:

I mean, not every Nitro that beat Raw for 83 weeks in a row was stellar. There were more than a fair share of clunkers, but they built up so much momentum it took months after they were objectively sucking ass for the ratings to reflect that. I think AEW has enough goodwill that the occasional so-so episode won't derail things too much. 

I agree about the goodwill part but why was it ever on the board to begin with ending the show, ANY SHOW, with that Arn Anderson & son stuff? Even if it wasn't immediately after the C.M. Punk shit. That should never, ever have been a main event. Even on a B-Show. It doesn't make any sense. They gotta stop trying to force fucking jobbers onto the show. Even as a curtain jerk, QT in example should not be on the show. He's taking TV time away from stars.

[sek69]

I don't get the hate for QT. I mean I *get* it in the sense that he's shit, but he's just out there to be player coach for the trainees and eventually get knocked out by Tall Paul. It's not like he's being shoved into main events. He's just there to get the caveman looking dude and Bayley's ex some ring time. 

[sek69]

Also its one of the things we learned in the Attitude Era: Raw frequently had shitty shows topped with excellent main events with Austin/Rock and everyone remembers it fondly as if the show was stellar from top to bottom (it wasn't). Nitro usually had excellent matches topped off with shitty nWo centric main events and everyone remembers it as the whole show being terrible (it wasn't). Having a flat main event sours people's impressions on the whole show. 

[MoS]

I agree about AEW being fine ultimately,  but there has to be something said about having clunkers when you have momentum and having clunkers when you are building it. AEW haven't found their NWO angle yet. When Nitro was having clunkers, they could point to NWO. Raw could point to Austin v. McMahon. This show honestly felt out of one of those early 2019 Dynamites where the formatting and structure of the card would be off. It's a one-off but a good reminder to not get complacent.  

The best part about the main event honestly was Arn doing a promo and basically shitting all over his kid. That really was great. They are very lucky to have Arn. 

[Hawkeye12]

1 hour ago, sek69 said:

I mean, not every Nitro that beat Raw for 83 weeks in a row was stellar. There were more than a fair share of clunkers, but they built up so much momentum it took months after they were objectively sucking ass for the ratings to reflect that. I think AEW has enough goodwill that the occasional so-so episode won't derail things too much. 

The thing with the Monday Night Wars is that WCW's ratings never really did suck even when they started losing, WWF's just went through the roof because they somehow found other viewers that weren't watching wrestling.  WWF had already taken a pretty consistent lead by early 1999, but WCW's ratings were still at the same typical highs (4.2-5) as during their winning streak.  Even through the spring/summer of 1999 WCW was drawing 3.5-4s, just as they drew the bulk of their 83 weeks win streak, it just wasn't good enough anymore to steal a win let alone win every week.  Honestly, WCW ratings were higher losing in 1998 and 1999 than they had been during most of their actual winning in 1996 and 1997, until the last quarter 1999 got back to original Nitro levels again at 2.5-3.1.  I should actually do the math and see how close those numbers really were just out of curiosity.  I feel like WCW took the lead because they did steal fans from the WWF, but WWF regained the lead by adding new fans more than actually taking back the WCW audience.  That was kind of backed up when WCW closed and those fans just disappeared instead of turning back to the WWF.

I don't know what the maximum viewers could be for AEW.  Since this episode only drew 1.172, albeit the third highest episode they've done, and the debut episode drew 1.4, I can't see the audience breaking through that.  Had they not been head to head with NXT though, I would guess they'd have beaten this number a few other times too but not sure if they'd have beaten that debut show .  When TNA was on Spike it basically had that loyal 1.1-1.5 million viewers that it could count on, and AEW seems to me in the similar boat.  Next week's number will be interesting. 

[strobogo]

All Out looks both over stuffed and undercooked as it's already looking like a 4 hour show yet like 60% of the big name under card guys don't or won't have a match at all. Feels like the Dynamite and Rampage before All Out are probably going to be more like extensions of the pre-show.

[SirEdger]

Seems that way already for Dynamite next week with Cage vs Hobbs and FTR vs Santana & Ortiz.