Last week, Dynamite was poppin’ off with an almost perfect review. It was a show with a memorable debut, a chaotic brawl that took two teams all around the arena, and Lance Archer throwing a dude through the ceiling.
This week was also a pro wrestling show.
That said, a Dynamite that doesn’t match last week’s explosive show doesn’t have to be bad, right? Let’s see if it can carry its own weight as we break down the Pops and Botches of AEW Dynamite, July 29th 2020.
Speaking of last week’s strong outing, you can check out our review of that show here and our thoughts on this week’s double-size Dark here. The more you read, the more reason we have to keep on keeping on with these reviews.
And now, something completely different…
BOTCH: Survivor Schmozz
AEW chooses to start the night off with the ten-man tag between the Inner Circle and the Jurassic Friends. Cool; we don’t see tags this size on tv often and semi-important Inner Circle tag matches shouldn’t main event every time we have one. And after seeing the match, woof, you understand why it was as far from the main event as you could put it.
Hager squares off with OC (yes, I’m calling him that), but after a few pocket-spots the whole match breaks down into a melee. Everyone ends up on the outside, and we get a meandering string of dives from everybody onto a pile of guys who A) should not be beat up enough this early into the match to linger forever at ringside and catch everyone who jumps and B) include their own teammates because the dive is what’s important, not harming your opponents or winning a match. You won’t hear me on this train often, I hope, but this was just an egregious string of guys jumping to jump and guys catching to catch.
Orange sets up like he might join the dive train, but no, instead he’s the squishy center of a giant group hug. Sammy Guevara tries to ruin it by diving off the top at the lot of them, but instead they move and he finds himself surrounded by friendly foes. I didn’t like the match much, but that was cute. Also to the good, the heels managed to take over the match and isolate one man when P&P hit Trent? With a DDT? And a german suplex? On the mats outside the ring? And he takes a long stretch of beating from the IC? While struggling hard to make a tag?
The whole thing felt like a match again, and of course it was Luchasaurus who got the hot tag and tyrannosaurus wrecked the entire Inner Circle until Hager knocked his mask off. Look at Dinosaur Truther Chris Jericho and his thugs trying to expose this man! All ten guys get involved, again, in a spree of strikes, signature moves, and double teams, until Jericho (featuring Floyd) tries to crack a Luchasaurus skull, only to be heaved over the barricade by OC.
In the end, Luchasaurus and Sammy are the men in the ring. Sammy brings the dino down and goes to the top, and then…oh my god, is that Matt Hardy’s music!? Seriously, is it? Because I don’t think we’ve ever heard it before, on Dynamite. And is that Matt Hardy climbing up onto the ring to push Sammy Guevara off the top rope and cost him the match? Probably? Sammy takes a chokeslam, a Shining Lizard, and a pin.
After the match, Matt Hardy? retreats into the crowd? and tells Sammy “you’re mine.” Last time you two saw each other, Matt, you were telling him everything was cool. I know Matt’s whole gimmick is confused mess, but that doesn’t have to be his booking. There were a few signs of life in the match, but underwhelming would be my word to describe it.
BOTCH: Am I the only one here who gives a shit about the rules!?
Playing the role of Walter tonight (not the ring nazi, the other one. No, not Dominick Mysterio, the OTHER one) will be Jim Ross. Once again, the story of this match, according to commentary, is not about Jericho’s ongoing beef with Orange Cassidy. It’s not about Matt Hardy returning to cost Guevara the match and rekindle their little feud. It’s entirely about how all these wrestlers can’t follow the rules, and how Aubrey is completely incapable of enforcing them (but that she’s SUCH a good referee, at the same time, because Aubrey is best ref, no matter what she does).
This happens at least once a Dynamite, so I felt compelled to give it a special call-out. And I get it. Matches having rules helps suspend disbelief and make you buy into the match as a legitimate contest. Matches having rules gives heels something to break. Matches having rules gives structure to what we’re seeing. I get all the reasons you want to have them. But if you want to have them, HAVE THEM. Have Aubrey keep people out if they don’t tag holding the ropes. Have her actually do her ten count when people are in the ring illegally, and if they don’t get out, DQ somebody. Please, AEW, in some match, SOMETIME, DQ SOMEBODY.
Or if you don’t want to do that, because you don’t want to tell your wrestlers no or you just think it makes matches more exciting, then for the love of god, tell JR to shut the fuck up about it. I don’t think anyone wants the story of roughly one fifth of your matches to be “why aren’t these guys following the rules that we aren’t enforcing?” Crack down on your wrestlers or your commentary, I honestly don’t care which, just pick one.
POP: Mox is out of solitary!
Jon Moxley pops in for a quick promo again, but it’s probably the most babyface promo of his AEW career. He provides a handy in-character explanation for why he’s been disconnected from the rest of the roster; he leaves people alone as long as they leave him alone. But then he adds a wrinkle; he can’t let a guy twice Darby’s size bully him WITH help from Ricky Starks, so he had to get involved even though he thought his business with Cage was done.
Combine this with last week’s backstage shot of Mox and we get a sketch of Moxley’s character; he’s an unhinged sadist, but he has some decency buried beneath his violent obstinance. That is exactly what an anti-hero style wrestling face should be, y’know? It’s exactly what Steve Austin was; a borderline psychopath who directs his overflowing violent urges at people who actually deserve it, but could still help a girl out when she’s getting satanic married against her will. If AEW’s champion is going to be Luke Warm Jon Moxley, he should at least crib the entire playbook and not just the aimless aggression part like so many others who try.
POP: Got to give the people what they want!
Up front, I’ve never heard of Warhorse until this last week. But apparently there’s been a fan campaign to get him on Dynamite and challenging Cody for the TNT championship. AEW saw the fans wanted something, so they did that thing. What a revolutionary concept for a wrestling company. Is everybody on board with Cody’s open challenge, yet?
POP: MANOWAR-HORSE
So, Warhorse. He comes out looking like the Penultimate Warrior and headbanging to music that could be a heavy metal ode to Thor. He weighs four thousand pounds of heavy metal. Distinctive, if not wholly unique. Then we get to see him wrestle, and hoo, that boy is slick.
He’s pulling creative, fluid transitions and counters that give an inkling why fans wanted him on this show; holding a key lock on Cody, getting bodyslammed, but holding the lock through the slam and coming right back up with it. Ducking through an irish whip reversal, turning a criss cross spot into a mid-rope rebound clothesline, knee sliding to grease his way under a clothesline from Cody. Later in the match he runs the apron and drops a double stomp on a standing Cody’s back, then immediately rolls him into the ring for a Macho Man elbow drop. Okay, like his aesthetic it’s a bit more Macho Kid, but still, it gets him a 2.85 count. I’m starting to believe.
With a series of clever pin predicaments on Cody, I have a growing sense in my heart that maybe this will be the guy to sneak one past Cody. Maybe the guy that fans demanded will be the one who gets the job done. I didn’t think it coming in, but I had that sneaking suspicion growing, and that tells me the match was working.
It didn’t work for Warhorse in the end, of course. Cody had uncharacteristically targeted his leg for much of the match, and after the string of pins Cody wrangled him into a figure four. Warhorse tried to fight it off by catching Cody’s boot, a figure four counter I’ve never seen before, but Cody just stomped him in the face until he could lock him into the hold and send Warhorse to the glue factory.
It was a shorter, more focused match than most of Cody’s title defenses, and I think that was to its credit. Its downside was telling the same story as much of the open challenge; Cody underestimates a guy, does some push ups mid match and gets yelled at by Arn, then eventually gets serious after his opponent survives longer than they’re supposed to and hits back. But it was much quicker than usual, and we got to see a cool new wrestler than the fans asked for. That’s definitely a win.
BOTCH: Flat Cardona
Jesus, what is with the Matts tonight? I thought Hardy’s arrival was dull and vague, but Matt v2.0 over here was like “hold my Long Island iced tea, broski.”
The bottom of the Dark Order barrel, two guys who aren’t even good enough to get stripped of their names and assigned soulless numbers (on tv anyway), guys who are so irrelevant I only remember one of their names because he’s a famous pirate, come out for no raisin and shitcan Manowar before punching Cody. Arn gets in the ring, striking Sumo Dad pose and ready to fight, but before he can bust spines (does anybody think Arn couldn’t destroy these numberless wankers?) out runs Matt Cardona to make the…save? With no music, indistinct clothes, and a couple leg lariats, Cardona runs off the goons and poses happy with Cody.
I just…what? What the actual fuck were Dark Order doing attacking Cody? Why the actual fuck are we supposed to think Cody needed saving from guys who might as well be mystery opponent silhouettes? Who the actual fuck wrote this segment? How the actual fuck is this the debut they chose for a once mega-popular ex-WWE star that they want to give one more try at being a Big Deal? Where the actual fuck am I going with this bit?
POP: What’s “son of a bitch” in Spanish, Sammy?
Angry Jericho and the Inner Circle come back out for a promo when Tony mentions all out. Jericho is going to fight Cassidy again on Dynamite in two weeks, and demands Cassidy pay him $7,000 for the jacket when he wins. In addition, he challenges OC for a debate next week. Good table setting, elevated by Jericho-isms like saying his jacket keeps getting oranger each week because OC used “demon orange juice”, and the question in the header.
It’s “son of el bitch”, by the way.
BOTCH: For The Rules
Goddamnit, guys. Don’t make me write another paragraph.
FTR have their contract signing, because they can’t be ranked or get a tag title shot without being officially signed members of the company. I always enjoy a nod to AEW being a sporting company in kayfabe. But then FTR shatters that machine by specifying in their contract that in their matches, the rules will actually be enforced. In their matches, specifically. Fuck all the way off with this.
They bring in Arn Anderson as their tag team consultant, and I think everyone can hear the distant hoofbeat of horses just beyond the horizon. Hangman shows up with whiskey to congratulate his new drinking buddies; pouring three regular thin-layer glasses for them and Arn, one full to the brim glass for himself. Arn subtly pours his glass into Cash’s, and Hangman tries to down his half-pint of whiskey with a softly deadpanned “I poured too much.” Low-key funniest person on Dynamite, that cowboy.
POP: Thanks for showing up
Next up, Dark Order gets their chance at tag gold in a good match that could’ve been great if it had another five minutes. Expand this match and trim the Matt from the rest of the show, and you’d have had a poppin’ Dynamite.
It starts off interesting; Hangman starts throwing hands before Kenny even gets to the ramp, and a perplexed Kenny is looking at his tag partner like he’s me seeing Matt Cardona. Uno takes advantage of their arguing, jacking Kenny in the back then beating him down with some strong kicks. Kenny’s not down long, though, before Hangman is in and their team gets rolling with a chopfest on Uno. They’re all smiles, and as always, the story of their team is simple; the two of them don’t fit together, but like any team, winning solves everything.
The match moves into its second gear when Hangman dives onto Stu on the outside, but then gets his head PLANTED in the ringpost by Uno. Seriously, come autumn there’s going to be a harvest of hops and barley growing out of that thing. Dark Order take control of the match on Hangman, giving Cult Cabana time on commentary to talk up how great the Order is. How Mr. Brodie Lee demands nothing but wins, and how much Cabana has come to believe in the group. He’s moving past reluctant association, being with the group because he needs some wins, and into a germinating faith. All the while, his team is tossing Hangman around the ring and denying his attempts to escape. Good synergy between the story on commentary and the story in the ring, and a good second act for a match.
Then, during the commercial break for some reason, Hangman manages to tag out and the match moves to a higher gear. Kenny heaves Uno into a thunderous german suplex from Hangman. Stu goes flying over the corner, which we get to see in delightful corner-cam view. Uno strikes back with a boot on Kenny and a huge swanton. I personally pop for Uno getting to actually DO stuff, as his “EVIL, INDEED” in-ring style usually limits him to cheap heel offense and preening.
In this third act of the match, the offense and double teams just keep getting bigger, which is perfect for the crescendo they’re building. Dark Order execute an electric chair lift into an assisted powerbomb. They monkey flip Kenny onto Page in the corner and follow it with a crossing-paths cannonball and 450. Uno catches Kenny’s kick and feeds his foot to the ref so he can catch Kenny in a neckbreaker. Kenny comes back with a snapdragon on Uno, but the moment Kenny lands the suplex he’s getting splashed by Stu. Hangman takes over with a pop-up powerbomb on Uno, and right after -he- hits, here comes Kenny with a back of the head V trigger. A great spree of offense from both teams, that ends in a Last Call on Uno when Stu can’t quite break up the pin.
The match started with character work and offense from the faces, moved into the heels dominating and isolating Hangman, then the desperate tag shifted things into an explosive offense free-for-all until one team hit the most move and won. Great structure for a tag match. My quibble is just that I wanted more out of that final stretch. I think both teams could’ve gone bigger, and longer, building towards the climax. More double teams, more believable near falls.
Nitpicks, though, in light of a fine tag title defense. The champs put away another set of challengers with some effort, but not the desperate fight they’d get from, say, the Young Bucks. Or some other top guys.
BOTCH: Did somebody say “Top Guys” ?
After the pin, Mr. Brodie Lee is clearing Cult Cabana and Anna Jayy away from commentary and into the back, because he doesn’t want his precious babies to see the bad things Daddy gets up to. Oh, I didn’t mention Annna Jayyy was here? She puts in her first appearance as an official member of Dark Order, still sans number but with an Eyyes Wide Shut look, and gets about as much attention on the show as she got in this recap.
Lee smacks Uno in the face with some papers and berates him, before pointing out the Bucks in the audience and thanking Kenny for showing up this week. An army of Creepers materialize in the stands as the Bucks come into the ring to help their Elite compatriots fight off the incoming attack. The Numbers Game are set to overwhelm the Elite with fingers in their mouths and phantom punches again, until FTR come out to spare us all and smash another styrofoam cooler of beer onto Brodie. Everybody fights, Brodie laughs while commentary insists he can’t like this outcome.
Next week we’re set for a twelve man tag match between a whole bunch of Dark Order, Hangman, his exes, and his hot new action. I would be more excited if this week’s giant tag match hadn’t been a let down, but it should at least advance the tag title story. Not terrible stuff, I just thought AEW was the company where we wouldn’t get “FTR saves Hangman from Dark Order with a cooler of beer” two weeks in a row.
POP: BEAT RUSH
Tonight’s token women’s action features Diamante “challenging” Hikaru Shida for the Women’s championship. At least Diamante gets a quick vignette to introduce us to her before she loses? And her bullet hole gear is sweet.
But this is Shida’s match all the way through. Maybe I’m late on this train, but Hikaru Shida finally feels like THE woman in her division, to me. She’s the first AEW women’s champion to really feel like the champion. She fought long and hard to get to a championship match. It took everything she had to topple Nyla Rose. Now she defends it week in and week out, from instant squashes like Red Velvet to knock-down drag outs like Penelope Ford, and to people like Diamante in between. She’s built the aura, now. If they can get her some stories worthy of her, we may really have something.
Diamante’s aura is….less impressive. Her maneuvers are too slow, her strikes are either timid or too fast for her opponents to properly sell them. She manages to hit a hesitant wheelbarrow bodyscissor into a stunner; neat move, poor execution. Similarly, she tries twice to hit some kind of yoshi tonic pin on Shida; the first just doesn’t happen, the second turns into a Canadian Annoyer. She’s not bad, but you get the feeling she’s not ready for the women’s title scene.
Shida comes back from Diamante’s fiendishly complex offense with a stalling falcon arrow, a running knee to the face, and a tight stack on Diamante for the pin. The outcome was never in doubt; a dominant win for the champion that didn’t make Diamante look like garbage. Don’t step to Shida unless you’re on your A game, ladies.
WEH?: Girl… hi?
Backstage, Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero are drawing Nyla’s color token for the women’s tag team cup. Apparently the “Deadly Draw” will be just that; a lottery of the lethal variety, with tag team partners assigned randomly. Nyla gets purple, which means she’ll be teaming with the woman who already drew purple off camera…Ariane?
Oh, it’s…right. That girl who used to be a dinosaur cheerleader. That girl who thought Melina vs. Alicia Fox was the best match ever. That girl who pins people lying on their chest. Isn’t it? She said “Girl hi” like it was a thing, “Girl bye” was her thing, right?
Gotta love segments that send me to wikipedia to sort out fuzzy memories of WWE’s comedy undercard seven years ago. Then again, I’m the guy who throws laurels at Chris Jericho for dredging up bits three times that old, so maybe this is a me problem.
Incidental botch for AEW debuting the women’s tag cup on youtube. I’d hoped that the whole point of this was to get more women’s stories onto Dynamite. You’ve gotta commit at least a -little- bit if you want to have a women’s division, guys. Three minutes of shit-talking Britt and Shida murking somebody every week is truly not enough.
POP: WE DESERVE BETTER
I couldn’t sum up the 2020 election better if I tried, Max.
MJF officially moves to the big league this week, starting his campaign for AEW champion in 2020. Gimmicky, but I’ll allow it, because AEW’s commitment to the bit makes it work, as usual. He walks down a hall with MFJ political posters bearing his “We deserve better” slogan. His tron now features a plaid united states map. Ringside is canvassed with MFJ 2020 signs. If this is going to be his thing, going forward, I’m kind of into it.
MJF’s passion comes through the cheese, here, and he makes points that feel solid against Mox, even if they really aren’t. He compares Mox to Hogan as the ex-WWE guy who comes in and lords over the main event, doing and saying whatever he wants, wrestling whoever he chooses. That’s not remotely the story we’ve seen on TV, but it feels like something MJF could believe? It is true, though, that Mox is in many ways same-old wrestling, not the paradigm shift he claims to be. That he is, as MJF says, cosplaying a wrestler of the past, and that’s the Stone Cold truth. He claims people justify Mox’s spot because he draws ratings, but MJF actually draws higher minute-to-minute ratings. Is that true? I”m not gonna let this promo be dictated by fact-checkers. None of it has to be true, it just has to feel true enough that MJF and people who want to support MJF can believe it. Damn, he’s got this politics thing down.
He continues calling Mox out as a member of the old guard, even blaming the problems of the world on the old guard that Mox embodies. You may want to pull that back or end up a huge babyface, Max. He hits the line of night, stating “My talent outweighs your tenure” and promising to turn AEW into the premiere pro wrestling organization. He declares his candidacy for champion and says it will happen, finally, at All Out.
If this is where you’re going, AEW, you’ve got about a month and a half to make us buy this guy as a champion. For me, at least, tonight set him off to a strong start. Keep him on TV every week. Let Wardlow make up for his relative weakness in the ring (MFJ is actually pretty dope in the ring, but he’s smallish and doesn’t have an impressive repertoire in kayfabe). You’ve kept him undefeated as a single for a reason. Let’s see what you can make of it.
POP: Tornado Taz
Dynamite closes with the warm contentment of Darby Allin being a crazy motherfucker on Dynamite once again. He’s back, and he’s still just as reckless, and he still absolutely works. Darby’s going to be okay, everybody. He’s gonna be okay.
Darby’s music plays, to start, but he’s nowhere to be seen. The guy in the truck gives up and moves on to playing Mox’s music instead. Mox comes alone, and we’re teased with a mirror of Darby’s famous solo tag match against the Inner Circle.
We cut to the back where Taz and his men cut a promo; Taz likening Cage’s muscles to slabs of rock and machine parts (sledgehammers! mountaintops! pistons!) before he passes the mic to Starks. Ricky gets some promo time on Dynamite and yeah, he’s got it on the mic. But Cage’s music plays, so that means it’s time to go destroy Mox two on one. But as the Taz men hit the stage, Darby hits the Taz men, with a coffin drop off the rigging!
Maybe I’m late to the party noticing, but we see Darby’s picked up a skeleton arm sleeve and a bit of muscle in his time off. He looks as good as we’ve seen him, mostly in selling other people’s offense; early in the match bounces off of Cage on a suicide dive, then he gets destroyed by a running spear on the apron from Starks, but before long he’s back up with a slew of seated dropkicks. Maybe he should’ve learned better from his injuries, but it’s a joy to see him Darbying it up again. JR encapsulates it by calling Darby “a slinky with a heart.”
But the Taz men aren’t to be completely outdone. Cage eventually muscles Mox into a fall away slam hold, until Darby leaps off the top rope OVER mox to land on Cage in hurricanrana position, only for Cage to block it, carry them both, and drop them BOTH with a powerbomb and the actual world’s strongest slam. With ease. Look at this nonsense. Cesaro might actually have competition, everybody.
Mox later introduces a chair to the match, and Cage’s face, to save Darby. Darby manages a flipping stunner on Cage, but then eats every last crumb of another spear from Starks. The Taz men set up a trash can and smush Moxley with a double Alabama Can Slam. But team anarchy have some coordination in their arsenal, too; when Cage tries to buckle bomb Darby, Mox heartwarmingly runs himself into the corner and catches Darby instead! And after that save, they wrangle Cage into a DDT from Mox combined with a coffin drop from Allin riding Cage’s back to the ground. Taz’s guys are nasty, effective athletes, but Mox and Allin are just too cool. Credible heels and faces you want to see win. Sorcery, I tell you.
And win they do! With Cage down, Allin sneaks his tack-bedazzled skateboard out from under the ring, mounts the turnubuckles, and ollies the thing onto Starks. It makes a gnarly mess of his back, and it also gets Darby the win. Almost unprecedented, really, that the gimmicky foreign object spot in a street fight actually wins, but that’s AEW for you. Buckin’ trends by making sense!
Anarchy rules, but Luke Warm Jon Moxley believes you Don’t Trust Allin, so the unlikely partners close the show with a staredown. They don’t know about next week’s match, yet, but they both know Darby still wants that title. Commentary confirms that it’s going to be Allin vs. Mox for the AEW championship next week, and we’re quietly making a little history in AEW: Darby Allin will be the first man to have a second AEW title shot. The company has been around for over a year, now, and this will be the first time a guy has tried twice at the world title. And even though it’s a rematch, the first match was so good, and both guys are so over right now, that I defy anyone not to be excited. A great ending for a less than great Dynamite.
POP: AEW Dynamite – 7/29/20
In the end, this week’s Dynamite more than carried its weight. It wasn’t top tier like last week, but as you can see, the highs significantly outweighed the lows and, the more I look back on it, it could’ve been tremendous with just a couple tweaks.
Pieces are moving into place for All Out; the tag title story has to take shape with the 12 man next week, MJF’s campaign is going to gather steam, Mox will settle his beef with the Taz men only to face down this new, very loud challenger.
Cody has an old friend sniffing around his TNT title, no matter how benign he may have been tonight. Since they’ve gotten used to the corona world and ironed out the kinks, things are back to pre-Revolution form in AEW, moving smoothly up the hill towards the next mountaintop.
