It’s week 35 of my roundup of the wrestling I watched this week! Didn’t actually watch much this time around, but I did catch Dynamite.
AEW Dynamite (22nd February)
I skipped the opening match of this because it was another zero-build Orange Cassidy title defence for the All-Atlantic Championship, and I’m kind of cool on Orange Cassidy these days. I don’t dislike him, but also I feel like I’ve seen all I am going to see from him and one more match won’t offer any great revelations.
Things perked up with Ricky Starks coming out to the ring to cut a promo. He addressed all of Jericho’s chicanery he’s done to avoid a rematch with Starks, and declared that he was fine to move on from it. He also had an open contract for anyone who wanted to come get a match with him at Revolution, and lo and behold Jericho came out, mocked Starks for not being on his level, and made like he was about to leave.
Then Pretty Peter Avalon came out as though he was about to accept the open challenge, and Jericho took offence and dropped him – having decided that actually, Revolution without Chris Jericho wouldn’t add up to much, so Jericho would take the open contract after all. Starks did a little psychology, talking up how Jericho’s wins were down to JAS interference to manipulate Jericho into signing the contract with an addendum that said the JAS couldn’t come out. A bit more back and forth continued and eventually Jericho signed the contract. Should be good, but I feel like we’re already past the boil on this storyline.
There was an Acclaimed match vs. Lee Moriarty and Big Bill, continuing the trend of pairing the hottest tag team in what is left of the division against utterly uninspiring opponents, which I skipped after Max Caster’s rap. Tony Schiavone came out onto the stage to interview Christian, who was promptly ambushed by Jungle Boy Jack Perry, who then got smashed because he didn’t have the grit to finish the job with a chair and Christian took advantage. The whole segment absolutely failed to rekindle my interest in the storyline.
Speaking of angles which have lost their momentum, next up was Saraya against Skye Blue, which saw Toni Storm give Saraya some assists on the way to a victory. This did nothing for anybody, though things did perk up when Jamie Hayter and Britt Baker came out to stop the heels from spraypainting Skye. Then, however, Tony Khan succumbed to the desire to overbook by having Ruby Soho and direct a challenge for the belt towards Jamie Hayter. Later, Hayer set up a three-way championship fight at Revolution for the women’s championship between herself as champ, Ruby Soho, and Saraya, which seems like a daft move if Ruby is leaning towards siding with Saraya’s faction, but maybe there’s a plan there.
Bryan Danielson came out, cut a more or less acceptable promo on MJF, then MJF came out, showed a little emotion and vulnerability, dropped a little reality by disclosing that his fiancée had just left him (prompting, hilariously, a “you deserve it chant” from the crowd), and then went on a rant about how his AEW World Championship was the only thing standing between him and suicide.
Then, just as he might have got us onside, he came after Danielson’s family – arguing that with his concussion history, every time Danielson goes in the ring he’s basically putting wrestling above his own family. Danielson eventually lost his cool when MJF addressed Danielson’s children directly, telling them he was going to hurt Bryan so bad he’d never be able to play with them again.
This was electrifying. MJF is pretty much the only thing holding AEW together for me at this point in time; every other character and storyline is ice cold at the moment, and the promotion as a whole is colder than I can ever remember it being, but MJF added some welcome heat, and thank God for that.
There was an overstuffed and confused tag team battle royale which did nothing for me. Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett won to get into the world tag team championship match at Revolution, largely because Satnam Singh was on the outside catching them whenever someone tried to eliminate them and the referees didn’t even try to stop this. Ew.
The main event was Jon Moxley vs. Evil Uno, who the past few years of booking has established as being comprehensively not on Moxley’s level because the Dark Order are now well-established as unimportant filler talent. The whole thing was framed as a bid to reclaim relevance for the Dark Order, but yeesh, you really can’t rush that sort of thing – maybe build a bit of momentum before you put someone in a match like this, Tony?
Give Uno points for trying, though – he ended up bleeding a gusher under his mask, leading to torrent of blood streaming from its eyeholes. Moxley ended up getting his own crimson mask after the match when Hangman Adam Page broke out some cowboy shit to punish Moxley for his viciousness towards Uno, which I guess sets the tone for what should be a vicious Texas Deathmatch at Revolution.
Nothin' Means Nothin'! 