Welcome back to our weekly recap of the AEW Arcadia undercard. Dynamite will be airing Thursday this week, but join us now for all the pops & botches from the August 25 episode of AEW Dark.
Last week on Dark…
Occult Pro Wrestling Star Ryzin debuted, and did nothing. Faboo was here! Penelope Ford reacted poorly to Nakazawa’s antics with her fiancé. Ricky Starks, Lucha Bros and B&B all tested storylines that would continue in Dynamite. Check out our August 18 recap for more.
John Silver and his copper mug
Being The Elite this week opened with Dark Order celebrating Mr Brodie Lee’s win over Cody. You can read more about the match on our Dynamite Reacher Report or click over to episode 218 to catch all the skits. Leva Bates gets to clutch a D&D Player’s Handbook and look sad. It’s good.
The Bucks also mentioned we’re looking at 12 dark matches tonight. Good heavens. Your trusty correspondent took note and stocked up on White Claws for the occasion. Y’all ready for Episode 48?
Dim the lights, it’s time for Dark.
POP: Best Friends workout sess
Our first match of the evening is Storm Thomas and Demetri “Action” Jackson versus the Best Friends.
Trent and Jackson get us started with some hard-hitting and athletic back-and-forth. Chuck tags in and proceeds to get his ass kicked.
Storm Thomas has a big bad WWE style, and it’s boring.
Then Trent is back, kicking the shit out of Jackson again. This is like a rock/paper/scissors fight, except Trent is the guy who breaks the whole thing up with a suicide dive. Eventually the Best Friends take it with back-to-back piledrivers. Short but entertaining way to kick off.
BOTCH: Beaten, not broken
Veda Scott introduces Jessy Sorenson to us as a guy that can’t be broken. Taz helpfully reminds us that’s not true because his neck was broken. Shawn Spears is here to prove one of the commentators wrong – let’s not pretend, it’s gonna be Taz – and gets started with his usual Glove of Doom wrist locks and stomps and whatever. Sorenson chops him back.
This is two guys working the same slow, old-fashioned style. It looks like they should be on the same faction. Spears wins it with a Death Valley driver, then loads the glove and smashes Sorensen in his previously-broken neck. There’s no flock of medics and no stretcher, so I’m gonna with with Veda as the winner here.
BOTCH: The return of Mel
The first of our women’s bouts tonight is Red Velvet versus Mel. Mel still has a shaven head from the aborted Brandi-shaves-everyone’s-heads angle from ages ago. It makes her look even tougher than her size and garb already suggest. I got heart eyes. Red Velvet comes straight in with a flurry of strikes that Mel unfortunately sells like they hurt.
Mel’s comeback features plenty of the strong moves that hint at the monster she could be, but she’s not quite there yet. She wins it with a half-hearted chokeslam and I’m left wanting more. It wasn’t a bad match, but it definitely felt developmental. I think Mel needs a bit more time.
POP: Veda sells me a murderhawk
Lance Archer walks in carrying some mook he killed backstage. D3 is already in the ring and promptly gets squashed. The highlight of the match is Veda saying “oh no, don’t kick out”, selling the violence of the offense and the hopelessness of continuing.
This match is a great example of how commentary can make what’s happening in the ring more engaging. Veda’s reaction to the squash actually helped me to pity D3 (who we know from last week on Dark is an expert at being clobbered) and earns Archer his first POP from me.
BOTCH: Critical miss
Holy shit! Brandon Cutler rolled a 20! It’s a critical hit!
Ya wouldn’t know it from the start of this match. In the ring, Luther is spanking Peter Avalon. After the tags, Cutler softens up Luther’s partner Serpentico with some springboard offense, but it isn’t quite enough. The action continues with some very close near falls. Like, too close close. Come on, chaps, if you’re going to do a near fall, you can’t let it go to three and make ref Rick Knox un-count the last hit!
The benefit of no live crowd is that there’s no one to give the performers shit for the botchiness. I might have overlooked it, if I hadn’t been typing this out while watching the match.
I look up from my keyboard just to see The Initiative lose it when Avalon tries to swat Luther with a book and hits Cutler instead.
I’m interested how they will sell the natural 20 as a loss on Being The Elite. The current BTE storyline involves Avalon and Cutler at odds over whether to cheat or not. I’m hoping we get an angle where Avalon swiped Tully Blanchard’s infamous chip of kevlar to the load the die. I mean, if not, what are we even doing with this D20?
POP: Hoss fight!
Our second women’s match is a hoss fight featuring KiLynn King against “The Native Beast” “Vicious Vixen” Nyla Rose. It’s nice to see someone who looks like they can more legitimately stand up to the offense of Rose.
King starts things off fairly hardy, but falls behind once Rose gets it outside. King uses both smarts and brute strength to come back and Samoan drop Rose. It almost looks like there could be an upset! But Vickie Guerrero interferes, Rose lands the powerbomb and it’s all she wrote.
BOTCH: Excuse me!
Guerrero cuts a promo after the match and announces her faction is called the Vicious Vixens, which, okay. Rose is fire in the ring and plenty good on the mic herself, so I don’t really get giving her a manager, especially not a cheating one. Perhaps there’s a story here, but it’s not working for me yet.
POP: Stone, Black and the Gunns
Baron Black is back with his twisted copper wire crown! He is teamed with Frank Stone this week, to go up against the recently-winning Gunn Club.
Black and Austin get it going. The Gunn Club has a cute take on oldskool offense, and somehow it’s working for me. They’ve turned the campiness up enough that stamping on the ring every time there’s a punch feels joyous instead of tedious.
Black and Stone feel like they could do a bit more, but it’s an adequate match. The Gunn Club get the win, and I’m keen to see where they’re going with the push. I can’t imagine Billy heading up to Dynamite, but perhaps it’s a way to help Austin establish himself? On the other hand, there’s something endearing about the earnestness of this father/son duo that could be lost if Austin went solo.
Its a POP for me because I’m invested in their story, and that’s a wonderful thing for a show with no promos.
POP: Kip John Woo raids Home Depot
Heather Monroe comes in to some classic Iowan underground techno and shows off her hand fan. Penelope Ford is back with her super bad punk rock and pink-briefed valet.
This match has a lot of arm drags.
Fortunately Kip Sabian interrupts it with dual-wielded leaf blowers. He is definitely the superest, baddest valet. Ford gets the win with her sharp fisherman’s suplex.
Monroe doesn’t really seem ready for prime time yet, but this match is well entertaining and earns a massive POP for the valet antics.
POP: Subway series
Chris and JC are the Metro Brothers. It’s a subway series: the Coney Island duo versus crosstown bros Santana and Ortiz. The commentators spend more time talking about Santana and Ortiz trashing Trent’s mom’s car than they do about the match, so it’s clear how this will go.
The Metro Brothers put up a great fight, totally selling the offense of the proud and powerful Latinos. Knowing how to stagger around convincingly is an underrated skill in wrestling. Santana and Ortiz show once again why they are one of the top tag teams in AEW: they have the ability to put on a great match with anyone! I look forward to the day they get to headline independently from Inner Circle.
After the win, Best Friends come out to throw the New York boys into a bunch of furniture.
POP: Hello! I would like one…
Taz said it right: it’s almost as if there are two main events tonight! Ricky Starks has the music and style of a top guy, and “The Captain” Shawn Dean has the chops to make this squash entertaining viewing.
I’d write more but damn, this episode is frickin’ long, y’all.
BOTCH: Hager does it again
Well, there are squashes, and then there are SQUASHES. Jake Hager versus Marko Stunt is destined to be the latter. Right?
Stunt has been on a roll the past few weeks – he’s shown that speed and smarts can put together a reasonably convincing kayfabe win. In this match he gets to do a bit of kickin’ and flossin’, but Hager never looks threatened.
Hager’s clearly not putting in a full effort, but he gets the win anyway. This leads to a run-in from Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus. Maybe some day that Hager/Luchasaurus fight that has been teased since 2019 will actually happen.
POP: Just good singles
Kip Sabian and Frankie Kazarian get up to some stellar técnico action to open their match. It’s a “serious” wrestling showcase and a great cooldown from the squash parade.
Are you finish? Yes we are. Penelope Ford trips Kazarian to inject some heelishness into the fight. They go back and forth with a strong, evenly-matched set of moves, but eventually Kazarian wins it clean. This was well-placed in the line-up and shows that both of the guys can go. Solid.
POP: Tag team wrestling
TH2 seem to have officially renamed themselves to The Hybrid2 – no space after the d – which is a typographic heel move. They’re facing Joey Janela and Sonny Kiss, who are now 7 and 1, surely the most dominant duo on Dark.
Kiss and Jack Evans show off their chemistry with some fun acrobatics. Janela tags in for some rough and tumble axehandle action. Angélico gets the brunt of the double team Joey and Sonny offense, then it’s back to Kiss and Evans. At one point, Janela hits a cool spot from the ring post while Angélico is slumped against Evans: Angélico goes down and inadventently DDTs his partner. Cute.
Like all great AEW tag matches, this builds to a bunch of crazy aerial shit outside the ring. Moonsaults, 450s and air, oh my! Evans takes the win for TH2 with a bendy backslide on Kiss. Great stuff, and it makes for the rare situation that the headliner is my match of the night. Enjoy.
This was a bumper-ass 2 hour episode of Dark, recappable only with the help of a sixer of White Claw. It did feel like less of a drag than some of the earlier long episodes, although the storyline work was less prominent this week. No doubt Veda helped by bringing a bit of depth and positivity to the booth. Well worth a watch, even if you just skip to the pops.
How did you feel about the show? Feel free to comment, or drop by the Discord to say hello. Dynamite is up on Thursday, but there’s a ton of great wrestling to catch up on in the mean time – check out our indie coverage or read the NXT Takeover P&B to see what the other side is up to. Toodle-oo, lovers of the undercard!
