Chris Jericho's partners revealed for debut episode of AEW Dynamite

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/10/01/chris-jerichos-partners-revealed-for-debut-episode-of-aew-dynamite/

It was revealed on Tuesday’s airing of “Countdown to All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite” that Chris Jericho will team with Santana and Ortiz against Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks on the debut episode on TNT.

The announcement came following weeks of promotion that Jericho would have two mystery partners. Santana and Ortiz, formerly LAX in Impact Wrestling, made their promotional debut at the “All Out” event at the Sears Centre on August 31st. They attacked The Young Bucks and The Lucha Bros. following their Escalera De La Muerte match for the AAA tag titles.

After their first appearance, AEW president Tony Khan stated the tandem would not be able to use their previous moniker of LAX.

Here is the full card for Wednesday’s debut episode of Dynamite from the Capital One Center in Washington, D.C.:
*Chris Jericho, Santana & Ortiz vs. Kenny Omega & The Young Bucks
*Riho vs. Nyla Rose to crown the first AEW women’s champion
*PAC vs. Hangman Page
*Brandon Cutler vs. MJF
*Cody vs. Sammy Guevara

They are also advertising an appearance from Jon Moxley.

The show will air live on TNT and TSN 2 in Canada at 8 pm Eastern and available to select international markets through AEW Plus on Fite TV.

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It was a good countdown/recap show to set up the first episode. With 5 matches on the card it will be interesting to see how they manage their time with commercials etc as they tend toward longer matches.

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I am bias, but I would think it’s hard to watch that Countdown special - patciularly the story of All In, and not be impressed by this group of guys betting on themselves and succeeding to this point. It’s a remarkable story regardless of wrestling. Question is who watched that isn’t familiar with it and have they told this story in a way to attract human interest behind wrestling interest.

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I agree that it was a great story. I knew most of it but I did not follow it super closely. So it was cool to see laid you. That said with this show being announced kind of late I would be surprised if anyone watched it that wasn’t already at least planning to watch tonight and following the company. So unless someone just stumbled across it I doubt it got a whole lot of new people.

I will say that after the last few weeks (maybe even months) of following the product I would say Cody seems like the key person as far as the EVPs go he seems to be doing a lot more media then the others setting up the show answering questions etc.

Very nice they had a scene filmed from All Out, in the can and held off until now, between Jericho and the former LAX.

Good preview. The barest of minimums paid to the women’s and tag team divisions, but the Road To build for Nyla Rose vs. Riho being reused here was good.

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Damn, I really thought it was going to be Edge & Christian. :pensive:

Not sure having your champion’s first appearance being in a 6 man tag, where he could just blend in with the others, is going to work but hopefully they have an in ring promo segment with him or an angle after Cody’s match where Jericho is standing tall. Preferably both. The main thing they need to do is make the champion’s spot come across as important as possible rather than it just being another component of the show. A mistake WWE make.

In ring promo, winning pin in the 6 man tag, attack Cody after Cody wins his match. That should be Jericho’s night.

I’m not sure he needs that much focus. I do think he needs to be on the winning side of his match, but they have weeks to build the Cody feud if they over book it tonight what is there for the next month of shows. I really don’t think they should book him as a Star way bigger than the rest of the roster though.

Booking an old face as a bigger star than faces that are there to take the promotion forward has obvious problems but they did make him the champion (which I think was a mistake) and they have to book him like a champion now. As long as they don’t have him hold on to it for too long it shouldn’t be that much of a problem.

Booking him like a champion, and booking him in 3 segments are 2 different things. He needs to be booked strongly so that when the lesser known talent rises up to knock him off that is a meaningful development (why I think he is the right champion.). He needs to look strong in matches and get some mic time, it doesn’t need to be every single episode or on every episode. They have 6 episodes prior to full gear if he is attacking Cody, and cutting a promo on him, and wrestling a match all this week, what is he doing the next 5? The same thing? That is WWE booking and burns out feuds quickly.

I’m curious who you think should have been champion?

Kenny Omega, Hangman Page? No one knows who the fuck those guys are, outside of hardcore wrestling fans.

Cody Rhodes? He may have a wider base, considering he’s done acting work, but people would just say he’s the booker and putting the title on himself.

PAC? No one knows him either and you arent gonna put the title on him yet after what happened with his match at Double or Nothing.

Moxley? He couldnt even compete at All Out and everyone would just say they’re putting the title right on the WWE guy.

At least Jericho has done work outside of the WWE for a couple years. New fans know him. Old fans know him. He’s done a ton of shit outside of the business. He’s the face of this company right now and he absolutely was the only choice to be their first champion. The job now is to build people and in my opinion, they are failing so far with Kenny Omega, going into the first show.

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A heel Cody Rhodes would’ve been the way to go in my opinion. Him being seen as the booker in real life would help with the heat in kayfabe. They’re gonna have to cross that bridge at some point, might as well do it when you can capitalise on it.

If people are going to tune in for Jericho then they’re gonna tune in for him regardless of him being champion or not. He’s the hook but this other guy is the champion and positioned above him and then people will be curious as to why this other guy is the champion and take a look at him. By giving it to Jericho because you don’t think anyone cares about any of the other wrestlers you’re basically saying “he’s all we’ve got, he’s our draw, he’s our champion, he’s our everything”. It also doesn’t help that he’s way past his prime (in my opinion).

Not doing the same thing every week. This is about starting off big. Doing a slow build isn’t a great idea in my opinion. And I don’t think it’s even that much to be honest. A promo, a match and kick start his angle with Rhodes. Ideally I’d say take out the match but they’ve announced that already so that’s not an option. After that you have the reaction to the angle which you can spread over a few of weeks without doing too much and then ratcheting it up again before the PPV.

No the reason you do it is because he has credibility so when he puts someone else over it means something. I think if he isn’t the first champ there won’t be a good time for him ever to be in that role. My thought is that he is here short term to get things off the ground as a recognizable name who people know, who will get built up as an annoying heel, so people will love the guy who eventually puts him down. That is harder to do with Cody, and you don’t want him as the heel authority figure so you cannot do the “he books himself into the title.” story, which is a story that destroys all credibility of the rules.

Except they just did that with Spears…and Hangman vs Jericho. I think you have plenty for the first night, you then can have Cody call out Jericho next week once he is past his match this week (which could cost him the title match), then go from there. As for it being not too much I think that is a view from the WWE style of booking where the champion is in 3+ segments on every show. But to me a performer having what will be a 15+ minute match, a promo (5 min minimum?) and an attack angle has him on 25+% of the show. I mean isn’t it already a big start with a title match on the card and 2-3 anticipated matches, and a Moxley segment? The issue with too much Jericho is that it will make the show look like too much of a one trick pony rather than showing off all the different guys on the roster.

Didn’t suggest that Cody should be “the heel authority figure” at all… just saying the shoot idea of “he put the title on himself” and the heat that comes with that can be used in kayfabe without actually mentioning the reasons behind it in storyline.

He may not be the greatest choice but he’s a better choice than Jericho. As I said, whatever attention AEW received because of Jericho they would’ve received even if he didn’t have the title. And in terms of “putting the title over”, I don’t see how an over the hill wrestler winning the title does that much for the title. Might as well give it to Bret Hart. It’d be bigger news…

You’re looking at it from the point of view of someone who’s already aware of everything AEW has done, with this just being another installment of AEW rather than this being the first episode of their weekly show where people that don’t know much about AEW will be tuning in. Not because of everything they’ve seen from AEW before and not even because Jericho is on the show. They’ll be tuning in just to see if this new wrestling show is any good without knowing much about it. You have to set things up for them to come back the following week and getting them invested in a storyline straight away is the way to do that. If not with the title picture then what storyline are they going to push the most?

I didn’t say don’t push the title picture, but they can do that any number of ways that don’t involve the champion being on for a large portion of the show. Especially if they want to be different than WWE.

I also didn’t say put the title over, I said put over whoever beats him as a big deal. I am assuming he will probably go away not long after this run is over and while he is champ they need to establish other guys and put over the guy to dethrone Jericho. That way it sets up the brand in the long run. If you have Cody (that people remember as a lower midcard act from WWE) as champ it is harder for him to be seen as credible to the lapsed fan, especially when they can think he “cheated” his way into the slot. Have the belt on Jericho, have other lesser known guys put on dope matches, have Jericho booked strong, and then put someone over on him for the title and make that a big deal.

So this special did 631,000 viewers. For a long time I was of the mindset that if Dynamite did 500 000 viewers or more it would be a success… Given that a recap show has done more than that, I’ve gotta think around 1M or more is possible for Dynamite.

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Is the 631k just a factor of no Smackdown? I’ll hang up and listen.

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Perhaps. But I also feel like it certainly feels like the progression of their last special, which had like 400K.

I may be way off… But regardless, it’s a solid number and has to be taken as a positive sign.