AEW Dynamite 12/7/2022

AEW Dynamite 12/7/2022

Last week's show is here: https://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2022/11/aew-dynamite-11302022.html

Dynamite Diamond Battle Royale

Ricky Starks ended up winning this one over Ethan Page. It was pretty obvious from the start that it would be him or Jungle Boy. It didn't overstay its welcome and it wasn't that bad, but it was a battle royale and wasn't anything special. I'm not sure how this will work with Starks winning since it would seem to imply we will see these two fight twice.

MJF came out after.  We had a Ricky Starks and MJF talking segment. It was really nice to see two people who can actually talk interact with each other for a change. That's something you don't see a lot in modern day wrestling. I don't think criticizing MJF's fashion choices during this segment was the right call and they could have improved it a little, but it was an overall good segment.

Samoa Joe vs Darby Allin

This sounded like it might be good on paper. It was what you would expect with Joe ragdolling Darby and throwing him all around. Darby took some awful looking bumps here with a powerslam on the concrete, missed a dive where he flipped into guardrail and the cement and a neat spinning bump from being rammed into the post. They ended up doing too much here however. You just shouldn't be kicking out from floor bumps. If those can't finish you, what will?

We had a really bad segment with Orange Cassidy and Kip Sabian. Kip Sabian made it seem like he wanted a title shot, but got mad when he was offered one and then seemingly walked away from it. I have no idea if this is happening or not, and I hope it doesn't as I have no desire to see it.

Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta vs Daniel Garcia and Jake Hager

Look, we've seen variations of this one for months. It's never awful and this wasn't bad either, but we've done this too many times and I can't wait for them to move on to anything else.

They had William Regal do a promo to try and explain why he turned on the Blackpool Combat Club and to give some thoughts on MJF attacking him. Regal claimed he did what he did to the BCC was to show them that they didn't need him anymore. It didn't make any sense as Mox lost the title, so clearly he does need him. Regal said he was BCC for life, completely ignoring him not being with them for the last few weeks.

Jade Cargill, Leila Grey and Red Velvet vs Skye Blue, Madison Rayne and Kiera Hogan

They didn't explain Kiera getting kicked out of the Baddies well at all. Kiera losing here just kind of proved Jade right for kicking her out and this just buried Kiera even further. This wasn't anything special.

AEW Tag Titles - The Acclaimed vs FTR

This one was kind of a lose/lose situation. Both teams are champs so they have to look strong and win or else they shouldn't be champs. The Acclaimed ended up getting the win here. I think there's cons to both teams winning, which is why so many of these matches just go to draws or other non-clean finishes. FTR's one of the few teams ever that were given title belts and somehow got less over with them and this did little to fix that one. The match wasn't a classic, but it was a fine main event and The Acclaimed held up their end of the bargain.

After the match, The Gunn's appeared on the tron. They had christmas presents in stockings and brought them out. The presents were a card from the Briscoes to FTR challenging FTR to a match at the ROH PPV this weekend and then dog collars, to signify a double dog collar match. I didn't get this at all from a kayfabe perspective. Why were The Gunn's involved in this? Why would they care. Either way, it's a crappy way to build up a big gimmick match like that. The PPV is only a few days away and AEW gave no hints or builds to that match happening.

Overall thoughts: A wrestling heavy show with no lack of in-ring content. The show was fine in-ring, but AEW's failures always come outside of the ring and they had that here. The Regal turn explanation was bad as was the OC/Sabian segment and the Briscoes/FTR set-up. They have an ROH PPV this Saturday and the line-up for it doesn't look good and the build up to it here was not good.