AEW Dynamite 1/4/2023

AEW Dynamite 1/4/2023

Last week's show is here: https://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2022/12/aew-dynamite-12282022.html

Ricky Starks vs Chris Jericho

The crowd was great for this and was better than the match probably was. They did too much here with baseball shots to the face and apron suplexes to the floor which weren't even part of the finish. Starks did a lot of generic babyface stuff here including a nice dropkick, but despite its length, there wasn't a ton to it.

Starks got beat up by the JAS after then Action Andretti made the save. Tay and Anna ended up coming in and lowblowing AA, then he got beat up too. Starks was then powerbombed off the apron through a table and it was kind of funny, because him getting powerbombed off the apron to the floor would have been much more lethal if you really think about it.

Adam Page came out for an interview with Tony Schiavone and thankfully left his pink butterfly jeans at home. He said he isn't cleared to compete this week but talked about being able to compete soon. He said he will knock Mox's d!ck in the dirt and Mox came out. They had mic problems and the crowd chanted they couldn't hear him and there were visible sound switches over the broadcast. He said Page is playing the victim for getting knocked out and it makes him sick.

Page accused him of feeling threatened and basically confirmed all that Mox had just said. Mox said next time, he would make sure Page doesn't get back up. This segment made Page look like a real crybaby and sissy.

We got a Joe promo on Darby Allin. He told us a tale of the dead boy who could, Darby Allin. He said he is the one true king of tv and Darby will pay the price for insolence.

AEW Tag Titles - The Acclaimed vs Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal

This went long and it wasn't that special. We had multiple ejections as Billy Gunn and Satnam Singh were sent out then we had a dirty finish with Sonjay Dutt pushing Bowens' leg off the rope. This lead to a restart as Aubrey Edwards came down to tell the ref what happened then Bowens picked up the win. 

Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter were interviewed. Tony asked who Saraya's mystery partner would be and the heels said Saraya just doesn't get it. They said they are AEW originals and didn't get why she didn't know who her partner would be yet.

Jungle Boy did a promo. He said he didn't think he had anyone to count on then said for one night only, he and Hook will team together to fight Big Bill and Lee Moriarty. It looked like two high schoolers challenging someone to a fight.

Bryan Danielson vs Tony Nese

Bryan basically won in a short squash as he should have.

Bryan called out MJF after as he wanted another fight. MJF came out, said no and called him a mark. They talked about each other's mothers and Bryan asked how many people there had been MJF's mom's suitor. MJF told him he has to become #1 contender to get a shot at him. MJF said that Tony said if he can win all of his matches up until February 8th, he can get a shot. Bryan said no as MJF pulls this kind of stuff all the time. Bryan told him he will agree to that set-up if Bryan can make his own stipulation for their match. Bryan then said it would be a 60 minute ironman match. MJF agreed, as he said Bryan is a choke artist and would never make it past week one.

I hated this. They used shoot terms like mark, the stuff about each other's mothers was silly, we have already seen MJF's trials thing, Tony Khan was brought up and MJF agreeing to this is out of his character.  

They had a quick package on Orange Cassidy vs Kip Sabian.

Swerve Strickland vs AR Fox

They said AR was Swerve's mentor. Would have been better to do promos about that or push it on TV instead of just throwing it out here before the match.

This was ridiculous. Fox took top rope death valley driver on the apron and we had a spinning brainbuster plus a 450 kick out. Fox should have never took some of the damage he took here in this meaningless match. They did all kinds of silly flips and rolls here that resembled a gymnastics routine and looked absolutely nothing like pro wrestling.

Saraya, Toni Storm and Hikaru Shida were interviewed. Saraya said Britt was trying to gatekeep the AEW women's division and Toni agreed. Toni said they screwed her out of the AEW women's title.Saraya said she was sitting next to the best wrestler in the world and therefore Toni storm would be her partner. This was a weird and lame segment.

The Gunn Club came out and had funeral music and an FTRIP message on the tron. They put portraits of them in the ring and said they would all remember the legacy of FTR with a moment of silence. They said them beating FTR caused FTR to lose their remaining sets of tag titles. They then played their music and said they would never work in AEW again. They then said, "Top Gunn Out". This was a fun little segment.

Red Velvet and Jade Cargill vs Kiera Hogan and Skye Blue

Jade got the win over Kiera Hogan here. This continued the Kiera Hogan burial job that has been happening the last few weeks. Usually when someone splits off from a group, you'd want to push them and make them credible with wins. AEW decided against that and has had Kiera lose every TV match since she left.

They one upped themselves here though with the double burial, which is becoming more and more common on AEW TV. Red Velvet got mad at Jade for talking down to her and walked away. Jade still picked up the win though, proving the point that Jade is better than her and making Red look exactly like the chump Jade thinks she is.

This was short and half of it was all commercial. There were too many people involved as well for how little time there was.

Jeff Jarrett and his crew were interviewed. JJ is mad about having a no holds barred mad against The Acclaimed. He says it's a bunch of crap and says his team will be the new tag champs.

AEW TNT Title - Samoa Joe (c) vs Darby Allin

They had Nick Wayne out there hugging Darby. He's from the area and they signed him at age 16 because he's one of Dave Meltzer's/Bryan Alvarez's friends and he can do flips. Joe grabbed Nick Wayne before the match and was tope'd.

Darby ended up getting the win here. It was what you would expect and was a decent big man vs little man match. The booking just made no sense though. Wardlow lost to Joe just so Darby could beat Joe. It continues the burial of Wardlow and they blew a chance to get Wardlow some revenge on Joe by not having him interfere here. Darby has done nothing basically since his last TNT title reign, and while maybe this will get him on track again, it's still not putting him in a better place than he used to be.

Sting came out to celebrate with Darby after.

Overall thoughts: It took me 6 days to finish this, so you know I wasn't a real fan. Darby beating Joe didn't make much sense booking wise and Red/Kiera got buried. The Acclaimed's match was a mess. The Swerve/AR Fox match was stupid and missed an obvious program and Starks/Jericho was probably the best thing on the show.