Thoughts on the MJF/Chris Jericho musical segment from AEW Dynamite 10/22/2020

Thoughts on the MJF/Chris Jericho musical segment from AEW Dynamite 10/22/2020

Even a few years ago I would have gotten really mad and said how they are killing the credibility of wrestling, but we see that weekly with AEW and I just expect it at this point. Last week's segment with Jericho and MJF was unbelievable and cartoony and this week's segment was taken straight from Family Guy.

There was nothing believable or credible looking out of this and I'm not sure how I was supposed to respond to this, because last week was silly too.

The only way this could have maybe worked, and that's stretching it, is if MJF and Jericho were pretending to hate each other (without letting us know that) and were just swerving the audience, but that wasn't the situation here. And even if it was, where do you really go with that?

I do have to wonder why the rest of the roster is taking top rope powerbombs and falling off of mechanical lifts when they could just be singing and dancing and saving their bodies instead. I know if I were a Matt Hardy(or his wife) or someone like Darby Allyn, I'd have to be questioning why I'm doing dangerous things instead of this.

AEW Dark Episode 56 10/13/2020

 AEW Dark Episode 56 10/13/2020

 I just wanted to share some brief thoughts on what I watched of it:

 - Why are there 14 matches? What's the point really? If its just to showcase new talent, fine I guess, but there's few who are going to watch all of it and be able to remember it after. And most of these are just squash matches, which really only serve as time filler...but this is a b-show on youtube that no one watches, so why is that even needed? Ideally, every match you put on should have some kind of reason for happening or else you are just doing matches for matches sake, which cost money to pay people to wrestle in and which increase the chances of injury.

 - Ricky Starks is freaking small. I heard all this stuff about him online, but man this dude is tiny. Even worse, Fuego is somehow smaller.  His opponent Fuego Del Sol, who I swear Taz called "Fredo", took a backdrop onto the ramp...on a b-show. Starks had a good lariat on him and won with a reverse powerslam called the "roshambo" in a quick match.

- Elayna Black comes out with a coffin with a face mask in it. Well, that made her the babyface in my eyes. Red Velvet is from "your mama's kitchen". Brandi Rhodes is on commentary and likes her, so expect to see her be made a VP too or something soon. Red Velvet is green and very sloppy. Velvet gets whipped into the ropes and hangs onto them, but Black is slow on the dropkick she is supposed to miss and basically just sentons herself. Velvet wins with some kind of flying kick to the head in a not good showing. Brandi verbally made out with Velvet over the mic during this one so expect to see lots more of her.

- Nick Comoroto fought Darby Allyn. He kinds of looks like a wildman or Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. He should not have a normal name. And Darby Allyn should not have beaten him. The visuals just looked so silly with Nick's arm being about the side of Darby's body alone.

- Griff Garrison has a good look and would be someone I would push without even having really seen him before. Naturally in the AEW world, he is doing jobs to freaking Colt Cabana and the Dork Order. Pizza Uno must give really good head to Kenny Omega or something because this dude and the Dork Order are easily one of the worst factions I've ever seen and have provided nothing after a year of constant tv time. Griff Garrison deserves better than this. 

- The Lucha Bros got a big fireworks entrance on a b-show in front of nobody. Cezar Bononi looks like Andre the Giant compared to the rest of this roster. Bonini catching the two Lucha Brothers and slamming them down was a really good spot. While WCW was where the big boys play, AEW is where the big boys lay and of course Cezar's team took the loss here, even though Cezar literally handled these dudes 2v1.

-  Brandon Cutler vs. Peter Avalon - Man Peter Avalon looks awful. So small and that haircut is so bad. How in the hell does AEW find these guys? Do they scout at hipster cafe's or something? I liked Cutler kicking Avalon hard  in the head from the apron and he does nice springboards. And just as I say that..he pulls out a multi-sided dice. It somehow gets worse, as Avalon tries to hit him with a damn book and then the ref takes a bump out of it. Both men then grab each others item, try to hit the other and it goes to a double DQ. Man this was bad. How can anyone defend this crap?

-Wardlow is here and that's the main reason I turned this on. He needs a new haircut because pony tails don't really suit big monster hosses. Dean just looks really gay in his pink zebra pattern outfit. Maybe the Bucks could pull it off, but not this guy. Wardlow wins abruptly with an unusual move where he puts his opponent kneeling on the top turnbuckle then drops him into a knee. 

- Eddie Kingston vs Baron Black - While Peter Avalon gets 20 minutes or whatever for his nonsense, Eddie got about 3 minutes here and won with with a guillotine choke randomly in a silly finish.

Overall thoughts - Typical AEW from what I saw. Some of the most indy wrestlers ever having matches with bizarre finishes. As I ask every time I watch this - How can anyone enjoy this trash? Reddit loved this show by the way which was just mind-boggling.

AEW Dynamite 10/7/2020

AEW Dynamite 10/7/2020

I'm just doing some selected matches here

Will Hobbs vs Brian Cage

I heard a lot about Hobbs and wanted to check this out.

The FTW title thing is stupid. It got a bad start as Cage lost almost as soon as he debuted it, without the title changing hands.  There was just no real storyline reason for it, nor was there the time to give it a storyline.

An FTW title could have worked if say Taz showed up and started having matches for it. Maybe something like a tournament or an open challenge series. Then you have a match for it at the end and it has some credibility. Or if Cage had won matches for months and couldn't get a shot at the AEW title for some reason. Then maybe Taz could have started making pitches for him to get a shot or protested for him to get a shot for a while, until he just decided to give him the FTW belt. That could have worked. Instead they just debuted it without much storyline.

I'm not really a fan of Cage. I want to be. But he's just not a Sekimoto, Shuji Ishikawa, Yuji Okabayashi or any of the other great hosses. He's just an indy guy that does power spots instead of head drops or flips. His forearm strikes are bad. He doesn't really build matches up and his gear looks awful(Why the heck is a big scary heel wearing neon?).

I didn't like this match. The match shouldn't have happened yet. Hobbs is still green and has a lot of work to do like getting better strikes and other things and Cage was not the guy to teach him to do it. And even if somehow was, this was about 2 years too soon. This should have been some King of the Monsters type of stuff that was built up for months, instead it was just thrown out here IN THE OPENING MATCH. Not even the main event for a guy who everyone thinks is the next big thing. Not good, not good. This arena was also not the right setting. There's just a sound vacuum and the people who usually yell either weren't yelling as loud or the micwork wasn't as good.

AEW needs to take Hobbs and send him off to New Japan for a year or two where he can learn the basics and get some experience, then bring him back and do this. Then you will see a much better match. Unfortunately, I think he's going to end up as Brian Cage 2.0 since he's hanging around a promotion full of people who don't know the basics.

And I also had to comment on the end here where Darby Allyn runs off Cage and Starks. It'd be bad if Allyn ran off Cage, but he ran off Cage AND Starks. Little 150lb Darby Allyn ran off a hoss and his friend. Who the heck booked that?

FTR vs Jack Evans and Angelico

This was a mess. Evans was either drunk or injured, or both.

Evans did two flips just getting into the ring and then he does a capoeira move that the camera cuts away from. He goes onto botch 3 moves in less than a minute and completed botched some flip from the top later on, along with hitting his own partner on a dive JR awkwardly brought up. This match went 100MPH with so much done that I couldn't keep up with it. AEW is exposing FTR weekly and instead of making other teams better, is just making them worse. The Rockers vs The Brainbusters, this was not.

The Young Bucks then superkicked a cameraman after. They said the cameramen were spying on them, but the camera's were there during the whole match. How couldn't they notice them? Best Friends then came out with a graphic of FTR in hot dog costumes. That was an immediate fast forward for me. If this was WWE this would be ripped to pieces, but this AEW and reddit will love it.

Dog Collar Match - Cody Rhodes vs Brodie Lee

The one thing I can say that AEW does well is that when they have a big gimmick match or a gimmick show, they do hype it and get you interested in it. Greg Valentine being there was a really cool touch. Cody's whole entourage is just weird with Brandi and Arn. It doesn't flow at all. John Silver may have the worst look in wrestling right now. I did not like that they didn't show them putting on the dog collar.

I didn't like this at all. There were no basic holds or strikes or anything and they went straight into the spots. John Silver bled for some reason and they put Brodie through a table DURING THE BREAK. Cody threw around Brodie like nothing, even though he's supposed to be this big bad dude and they rushed through everything. And even though both guys were all bloody, they were still able to do all kinds of flips and and cool moves without any trouble.

I'm going to stop here as I've had enough of this wretched show. Can you believe some were calling this the best Dynamite ever?

CMLL - 10/5/1990 - Los Hermanos Dinamita vs Lizmark, Sangre Chicana and Rayo De Jalisco Jr.

 CMLL - 10/5/1990 - Los Hermanos Dinamita vs Lizmark, Sangre Chicana and Rayo De Jalisco Jr.

Dinamita's take the 2nd fall

The 3rd fall finish

Post match brawling

The Dinamitas won the 2nd and 3rd fall here and in the 3rd won when Lizmark jumped off the top and accidentally nailed Sangre Chicana. The majority of the match wasn't that bad, though it tailed off in the second half. This was all lucha brawling though. Lucha brawling is never super great, but they atleast have some passion in their strikes and they sell them, even if they aren't super great. Even though Cien Caras couldn't do that much in-ring and wasn't a great worker, you can really see his charisma in the way he moves and the way he heels it up, which offsets his limitations. Sangre looked good in what we saw here, but he was clearly the 3rd wheel and I don't think it helped him. The match was mostly just the rudos slapping and kicking the technicos for the first half, then they went after Rayo's mask for a while, and I was checking out until the finish. After the match, they brawled a little in the first row and were laying on everyone which I thought was okay.

UWA 2/9/1992 - Dos Caras, Tinieblas and Tinieblas Jr. vs Canek, Kokina and Gigante Warrior

 UWA 2/9/1992 - Dos Caras, Tinieblas and Tinieblas Jr. vs Canek, Kokina and Gigante Warrior

Kokina is Yokozuna, when he could still move. And he was good then. Gigante Warrior is Giant Warrior. He didn't do too much in the US for some reason but was one half of Island of the Giants with Nitron in All Japan. He had Dominic Dijak-itis, where he was tall but kind of thin.

 

The foreigners and Canek won the first with Yoko kind of just falling on Dos and Gigante hitting a bad side slam on Tinieblas.

Anybody want some Alushe-pancakes?

Techincos grab the 2nd fall

The rudos were DQ'd for this

The technicos won the 2nd and 3rd falls here after losing the first. The rudos were DQ'd in the 3rd when Kokina accidentally splashed the ref. Then the other Samoans came in and beat up Tinieblas Jr. This wasn't bad at all. Kokina looked really good and there were some pretty decent dropkicks by everyone. I loved Kokina squashing Alushe and then Alushe getting revenge on him. I just wish this would have went longer and had a clean finish.

AAA Triplemania III-A 4/26/1994 - Los Payasos vs Los Hermanos Dinamita

 AAA Triplemania III-A 4/26/1994 - National Trios Titles - Los Payasos vs Los Hermanos Dinamita

Dinamitas grab the first fall

The Payasos would then grab the 2nd fall right after this in quick fashion by rolling up Universo and catapulting Cien into the top turnbuckle.

The Payasos go under the cover and out pops 3 identical orange clowns!

Payasos win!

Lucha matches are usually not real easy to cover due to their format and this was just odd. The entrances were just as long as the actual match, which I hope was clipped and not just 8 minutes long. There wasn't much to talk about here. They zipped through 3 falls with the Dinamitas winning the first with a cool leg pin and then losing the 2nd and the 3rd. During the 3rd fall with one of the Payasos  was pinned and out, they all grabbed orange masks under a sheet and tricked the Dinamitas to win. The entrances were the only real highlight here with the Paysos getting a kid in a Superman costume and a guy on a unicycle while the Dinamitas had two girls with big sparklers and fireworks. Sadly, the match didn't live up to its entrances.