John Pollock and Wai Ting review the go-home Dynamite heading into AEW All Out and discuss the NXT & Raw ratings, Renee Paquette’s first interviews post-WWE, and Tuesday’s NXT Ironman Match.
Dwayne Johnson and family recovering from COVID-19
NXT hits its second-highest viewership and top demo rating of 2020
The 60-Minute Ironman Match on NXT
WWE Raw ratings from Monday night
Renee Paquette speaks about WWE’s reaction to COVID-19 tweet, leaving the company, and her future
Gabe Sapolsky confirms departure from WWN, retired from independent wrestling
On the final show before All Out, Jon Moxley took on The LawyerMark Sterling with an intense ending involving MJF and Wardlow. Plus, Chris Jericho takes on Joey Janela, The Young Bucks display an edge teaming with Luchasaurus & Jungle Boy, a large brawl hyping the Casino Battle Royale, Thunder Rosa makes her Dynamite debut, Hangman Page is conflicted, and Excalibur returns to the program.
John & Wai preview this Saturday’s AEW All Out PPV.
Plus your feedback, comments, questions from thePOST Wrestling Forum, and our weekly Patreon T-Shirt Giveaway.
Most people probably dont get your love of the IIconics.
Different things bump up ratings for people. Me personally, I thought the Moxley/Lawyer match was boring, but I enjoyed the aftermath. I thought the Thunder Rosa match, was kinda boring. I enjoyed the battle royal segment, probably more than most people did. I loved the FTR/Page & Omega stuff.
I think you are right in that they get a pass. I think you’re wrong that its based on it not being WWE. Its a new company, that has proven that they’re willing to change things up, when things arent going very well. They have some dumb moments, but then they have some killer segments. To this point, they’ve earned trust with their fanbase.
With WWE, its been 20 years of almost the same frustrations over and over and you cant help but get fed up. That’s why I cant be optimistic with them right now. When they bring up someone from NXT, I dont have faith in them. For as long as NXT has been around, for the most part, I feel like I’ve been told that these are midcarders on the main roster.
At the same time, I like some of the garbage too. I’m a Retribution fan. I like the angle. Its pretty lame, but I’m into it.
You do make a very valid point. I will say all elite seems like they’re willing to change things when WWE seems pretty stuck in their ways. That’s a fair observation.
I’m with Wai here. Doesn’t make sense to spend the better part of a year building up MJF as your top heel only to cut his legs out from under him. Moxley has had a good run. There are a lot more promising babyfaces for MJF to take down as champ than there are credible heels left for Mox to vanquish. Meanwhile Mox can give some less-credible guys the rub on the undercard for a few months. I think we see a title change at All Out.
Moxley is ratings. And at this point there is no general feeling that he has been champ too long.
MJF does classic heel schtick. This allows him to recast whatever happens even if he loses, to be a conspiracy against him by dictator Moxley.
This episode of Dynamite was not my favorite, but I don’t care for most tag team matches. I did like Thunder Rosa and Serena though I felt the fake crowd at ringside didn’t do their job (which was the case most of the night.) Moxley remains one of the better aspects of the show.
There’s merit in having MJF as champion as a mostly-AEW created star on top. I don’t think they lose much in putting him definitively at that level, above so many guys who have been one-off non-serious contenders for Moxley’s belt. Even if you take it off him at the next big card and put it back on Moxley, it separates him from the pack, which I think has been hard to do in-large (on a long-term basis) in the other divisions.
I think the main could go either way.
I mostly think they keep it on Moxley, as to eventually builds to Moxley / Omega II, where Kenny eventually wins the Championship.
That said, MJF works totally as a champion.
Either way, I also see this match pivoting to Wardlow vs MJF down the road.
Well they have been trying their best to fuck up an almost un-fuckupable team in FTR with their atrocious handling of them so far, so if that is the objective then saddling them with twinkle toes McFingerbang will certainly achieve that goal.
FTR has been a bit confusing but not terribly handled. Their matches are at least being booked well (ie: wins). Wai did a good job explaining exactly wtf was supposed to be happening in the storyline but it’s fair if you’ve been having a tough time following along.
Watched a whole Dynamite episode for the first time in a long time and it’s definitely a lot worse than it was when Jericho was champion in my opinion (talking about that period rather than just the world title picture).
Meaningless tag matches? Jericho against Janela to further a feud with Orange Cassidy? I guess at least Jericho buried Janela rather than going 50/50 with him. And Moxley v. Zack Ryder’s podcast buddy as the main event? The main event!?
I’m sure it’s not like this every week but this episode wasn’t very good. If it’s consistent with the level of regular Dynamite shows then wow.
Building heels up for a couple of weeks, beating them and moving on to do the same with someone else while making the heels you previous built up feel like nothing is shit booking. Brian Cage feels like a complete nothing. Can’t see them doing the same with MJF, they seem to have a plan with him unlike the others.
That’s why I mentioned the rating. Again, it’s all subjective but when I saw the extremely high rating on the forum, I questioned whether I was watching the right show. Always good stuff on any given Wrestling show, but there was some train wreck shit on that show last night.
As an inconsistent watcher of AEW these days, I figure out what episodes I have to see by narrowing down the poll scale to 8-10 instead of 0-10 and that percentage seems to help figure out the quality.
To what @AuthorOfPosts wrote above, I’d also add the treatment of Lance Archer to the mix of how they built him up for a tournament and he hasn’t had much since. On one hand, this is very reminiscent of WWF’s feuds for Hulk Hogan in the 80s, on the other, I’d hope that the result is some sort of transitive property for whoever eventually beats Moxley…which I see very little purpose for with Omega and an extreme amount for MJF. It seem to have helped the Dark Order to have Cody’s [for lack of a better synonym] momentum from beating everyone for a couple months to have that ended by Brodie Lee…so at least Archer hasn’t been used for no reason…but I’d feel similarly about Cage if Moxley just runs through their best built heel like he was any other 2D giant that’s done the same so far.
