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Pops & Botches: AEW Elevation & Dark – 3.22.2021 & 3.23.2021

AEW Dark Elevation Pops & Botches

 

It’s another large double-double, folks. Roll up the rim on this week’s Steel Ring Post recap of March 22’s AEW Elevation and March 23’s AEW Dark.

Last time on Dark…

Kenny Omega showed up on Elevation, which means I got to write about Kenny Omega! Diamante fans tried out a new chant. Maki Itoh fans were disappointed once again. Both Brian Cage and Sonny Kiss outshone their teammates. Catch up on all the pops and botches in our March 15/16 recap.

Elsewhere in the AEW Arcadia…

Dynamite last week was a fairly uneventful episode, right up until the headliner, which knocked everyone’s socks off. Britt Baker and Thunder Rosa had a brutal, bloody hardcore throwdown. Early match of the year candidate, for real.

Being the Elite episode 248 was a shorty. We finally found out what the Nun Squad of Nyla Rose, Vickie Guerrero and Ryzin have been up to – swiping ring gear and selling it back to the talent at a markup! Poor Matt Sydal. Dark Order shot a Darby Allin-influenced grainy student film. In storyline developments, Matt Jackson finally realized that Matt Hardy busted up his friendship with Adam Page all those months ago.

Sammy Guevara’s vlog (episode 312) graphically revealed that the chair shot he took a couple weeks ago at the hands of MJF’s “The Pinnacle” faction knocked a few of his teeth out. Fuego del Sol put on a sexy dance show “for Griff Garrison’s birthday”, but as we discover when Brian Pillman Jr comes in to watch, Alan “5” Angels is a little protective of that ass. Charlie is arrested by the COPS. Sammy won back the BTE Championship from Pam in a Floor is Lava contest!

Sammy also showed up on episode 7 of The Kip & Sammy Show! As usual, it’s a YouTube-a-rific mash-up of silly green screen antics and guys talking about nothing. Somehow, it’s my favorite wrestling thing on YouTube.

Let’s cue up episode 2 of Monday Night Elevation.

POP: Ray Lyn shows she can go

Straight into episode 2, we have Tay Conti versus Ray Lyn, who lost to Abadon last week.

Lyn shows a bit more pep this week. She’s mildly heelish, but technical enough to go toe-to-toe with the judoka. In some ways it almost comes across like a mirror match.

Conti is facing Nyla Rose on Dynamite, though, so it’s a bit of a foregone conclusion here. Conti hits some sharp kicks and a DDT for the win.

POP: Big Shotty shares the love

“Big Shotty” Lee Johnson is the next midcard guy to be given a jobber to squash. His opponent? Adam Priest.

Priest and Johnson have a wonderfully technical opening exchange. Big Shotty offers the jobber a handshake, but Priest bats it away and switches out to full-out heel tactics.

Much like the opening, this is a fairly by-the-numbers wrestling match, but it’s executed so well it doesn’t really matter. The pin falls are close. The moves are sharp. Lee Johnson gets his W, and we get a good show.

POP: You get a Tornado DDT, and you get a Tornado DDT

The Varsity Blonds are the next midcard talent to get a win. They’re facing Fuego del Sol and Jake St Patrick. I feel like these matches are booked even more predictably than OG Dark.

The Varsity Blonds are a perfectly cromulent duo who put together decent enough matches, but have settled into a midcard role which is hard to get excited about. The highlight of this match is when Fuego del Sol gets the hot tag and hits a bunch of moves on Brian Pillman Jr, including the fabled Tornado DDT, only for Griff Garrison to lariat him to death.

FINE: Big on character, small on action

Here’s how you don’t have Max Caster of The Acclaimed enter: with an already jobber-entranced Occult Pro Wrestling Star RYZIN. In order for the disses in the diss rap to land properly, you gotta get a look at who he’s dissing first!

Anyway, the rap has a couple of better-than-expected rhymes and exactly-as-offensive-as-expected lines. Dude’s consistent. Paul Wight’s contribution: “Ryzin looks like a demon, but now you’re telling me he’s a priest?” Oh lord, I don’t remember the Big Show being some goofy redneck, but that sure is the character he’s playing here.

The match is fine. Neither of these two guys are dynamite in the ring, but they work okay in a more traditional American style. Caster picks up the dub.

POP: The Librarian just can’t be mean

After a quick package to introduce the viewers to Red Velvet, we get her in a face team-up with Big Swole versus Madi Wrenkowski and “The Librarian” Leva Bates.

Bates is still a sweet and clumsy face, but Wrenkowski embraces being the heel here. Velvet pushes Swole to show a bit more urgency in her attacks. Swole’s definitely looking better here than she has the past couple weeks. The most amusing spot is Bates reprising her role with Peter Avalon as the goody two-shoes who is overly concerned by her partner’s cheating. But instead of sulking like Avalon did, Wrenkowski grabs Bates’ book and smacks her in the face with it. I laughed out loud, and then I felt bad.

Unfortunately that leaves Wrenkowski alone in the ring to be finished by Red Velvet.

After the match, Nyla Rose, Vickie Guerrero and Jade Cargill walk out to briefly glare at the faces in the ring. Then they walk back into the tunnel from whence they came. Wrestling, innit.

FINE: Team Taz celebrate getting something to do

Jorel Nelson and Royce Isaacs are back this week, being served up to the team of Powerhouse Hobbs and Ricky Starks.

Hobbs clobbers Nelson from the bell. Cool move – Hobbs pounces the jobber straight out of mid-air. Starks dances around Isaacs giving him irritating little slaps like a jackass. He subsequently gets a stunner and flying crossbody for his trouble.

Fortunately Hook interferes from the sidelines to help Starks hit his Rochambeau finisher.

POP: The Darkest match

Danny Limelight is up. I do like this new nickname “The Radioactive Papi”. He’s got “The Empbruh” Baron Black.

Both Wight and Schiavone struggle to come up with play-by-play commentary on “exotic” moves like Limelight’s corkscrew plancha. It’s so weird, it’s like I’m listening to commentary from guys who just teleported in from 20 years ago. Did either of these guys watch Lucha Underground? Hell, do they watch NXT?

Anyway, Baron Black hits a backbreaker but our commentators are too busy talking about that time they went to Iraq to do a show for the troops to notice a move they might be able to call. Oorah.

Commentary aside, this match is as good as you’d expect from these two, which is to say Good with a capital G. The crowd seem pretty into it too, even though it is just KiLynn King and her buddies. The hits hit hard. The facial expressions match the action. It’s pleasantly técnico right up to the end, when Black taps out. The Empbruh deserves a push at least as much as Limelight, in my books. Match of the Monday.

BOTCH: How did this get dubbed a main event?

We have a so-called triple main event tonight! Main event number one is Ryan Nemeth versus Orange Cassidy.

This match is boring. OC does all his usual stuff. Nemeth is quite a funny character too. But together, they are less than the sum of their parts. Calling this the first of three main events set my expectations way too high, guys.

OC gets the win.

Inexplicably, JD Drake runs in, and you can almost hear Schiavone shuffling his papers trying to figure out who he is. Hey, me too bro. I’d be happy to forget that guy. But I do know he has a solid fanbase amongst the folks who dig the brawler style, so it does him a bit of a disservice not to have commentary put the run-in over. Sigh.

BOTCH: All yawns

Second main event is Alan “5” Angels of the Dark Order versus new signee “All Ego” Ethan Page.

I can’t much decide if I like Page. I think he’s got some moves, but his character is so generic that I don’t care. Like, do we need another Ricky Starks? I’m not even sure we needed one Ricky Starks!

They fight. Page wins. Then he cuts a boring promo. Okay.

GRRR: Bring back Excalibur!

Back when the Women’s Eliminator Tournament was still in its first rounds, there were was a lot of speculation on our Discord around which joshis – if any – would come over to the US to fight, and if they would stay. Riho seems to have returned stateside for good, and we now know that Maki Itoh was booked for a few shows too. But what of the winner, my fave, Ryo “Aniki” Mizunami?

Well, it looks like she’s going to be here a while too because she is main eventing tonight versus “Legit” Leyla Hirsch. This is pretty much a dream match-up for me – my favorite of the joshis versus my favorite newcomer out of the American indies. Can they turn this triple main event around?

Hirsch and Aniki kick it off with some grappling, then a good, old-fashioned off-the-ropes shoulder-block battle. It’s the sort of wholesome, hammy, simple wrestling that makes me feel like a kid again. Annoyingly Wight and Schiavone start off on some tangent about “I don’t know if I’d just stand there and let someone hit me”, like a bunch of sad-sack killjoys, completely and utterly failing to call the plays in kayfabe.

I honestly think this match would have been better if I’d watched it on mute. The lack of interest in the voices of our commentary team is palpable, meanwhile Hirsch and Mizunami are trading heavy blows and selling hits like it’s a PPV. The disconnect is real.

Aniki wins by submission.

Tony Schiavone was a bit more perked up this week than on the debut show, which helped to bring a bit of excitement and fill in the gaps when Paul Wight wasn’t much sure where to go. Wight himself seemed a bit more comfortable too. And yet, the commentary remains by far the weakest part of this show. I don’t get the sense either of the two really “get” what the less mainstream talent is bringing to the table, and they both fall back on the same sorts of references and old-timey stories, so there’s not much playful tension between them either.

In general this felt like a very midcard show. A lot of the workers are the same as on OG Dark, but the presentation here is more “serious”. It does help to give the talent a bit more time to speak for themselves, but on balance it’s still less entertaining watching than the weird, quirky, indie mess that Dark has became in the pandemic era. Elevation is a whole lot of aggressively okay wrestling, presented straight down the middle, without much spontaneity. Someone needs to light a fire under the commentary team’s ass.

Let’s fast forward to Tuesday night, episode 81.

Dim the lights, it’s time for Dark.

POP: Welcome back, Dark

Opening Tuesday night is Chaos Project, icons of our Tuesday night niche. Most over wrestlers in the YouTube live chat? Possibly! 👉🤪 They’re facing Dark Order’s John Silver and Alex Reynolds.

Serpentico does the Dark Order raised hand thing to say hello, but Silver doesn’t care and uppercuts him to the moon. It seems Serpentico is finally starting to get used to being a battering ram – at one point he even calls Luther over to drive his head into Reynolds’ body.

Luther screams. Serpentico gets smashed into things. Reynolds hits a tope, then calls for Silver to execute the Dark Destroyer and get the win. Fun match!

POP: I’m gonna miss these guys

Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian appear backstage to cut a fantastic promo that gets everyone up-to-date on their storyline. They’re maintaining the self-imposed stipulation that the next match they lose they’ll disband. But they won’t lose! They want to take the fight right to the champs!

It does take some tension out of these matches, but I do dig where this storyline is going. If you’re going to do a retirement storyline, this seems like the right way to do it.

So, who will be the next team to lose on SCU’s march to the gold? It’s Jorel Nelson and Royce Isaacs, pulling a double after Monday night’s loss to Team Taz.

CD and Kaz put on a clinic. The One Percent are pretty solid workers, and make this match a fun watch even though we know how it’s going to turn out.

SCU get the win.

BOTCH: Just superbad

Superbad Penelope Ford is back this week to fight Miranda Alize.

Alize gets off to a quick start, hitting a flurry of offense. Some other stuff happens.

Ford wins this, but it’s not a clean win. I’m not sure if it’s because Ford is a bit out of practice or if it’s because Alize wasn’t quite aligned but eh.

POP: Gunns and jobbers

The Gunn Club are here! Outside of pro graps land, Austin Gunn released a collab album with an R&B singer called Saiflove last week. It’s pleasant enough, I guess? I am an R&B ignoramus, so I invite all you slow jam fans to take a listen and let me know if it’s good.

The Gunners are facing jobber trio Adam Priest, Jake St Patrick and Baron Black.

This is a far better match than it should be, given everyone worked the Monday show already. It’s very short, but all the jobbers get some moves in, and they don’t look bad. It’s just bad luck that week on week The Gunn Club are proving to be an ever-better oiled machine.

POP: Passing the torch

Jack Evans “From The Heavens” is having another solo outing tonight. His last match ended with Preston “10” Vance bleeding all over the ring. Let’s see if the dragon killer can be a little kinder to his opponent tonight. It’s Dante Martin of Top Flight!

Evans is a bit sharper this week than he was last week, but the actual highlight of this match is Ricky Starks on commentary getting bamboozled by Excalibur and Taz in some damn conversation about jello, Gumby, Mount Sinai and cyanide. Remember when I was saying I wasn’t sure if we even needed one Ricky Starks? Yes. Yes we do need one Ricky Starks. This is how you digress from calling the plays in a way that adds color to the action on the screen.

And there is a bunch of action on screen, including somersaults, destroyers, 450s and more. Amazingly, Dante wins this! But as he celebrates, Angélico runs in to issue a beatdown, then injured brother Darius comes out! We might have a TH2/Top Flight feud on our hands, folks. Future of the business etc etc.

POP: It’s main event time!

According to Taz “it’s main event time!” On the card is “The Machine” Brian Cage, finally putting his FTW belt on the line against Brandon Cutler.

Cage and Cutler are a great match-up. Cutler looks a bit tall and gangly next to most competitors, but Cage is big enough to let Cutler’s rangey springboard offense connect in a stiff and convincing way. Cage is also by far the best-selling big man in the promotion. He’s not afraid to react to the hits that connect with him, while still being a bad enough dude to do stuff like catch his opponent in mid-air and Drillclaw the shit out of him.

“The Machine” Brian Cage retains.

POP: Answering the casting call

What have we got here? Two unsigned talents! “The Reel Catch” Ashley Vox versus “The Pink Dream” Alex Gracia.

If it’s an audition, both of these women are giving it their all. Gracia connects with a flurry of drop kicks. Vox hits a smasher of a headbutt. Near fall, then another, who will win?

It’s Vox! She gets Gracia into a fishhook submission and our Pink Dream taps out. Through the magic of television, Gracia also appeared on NWA Powerrr on Tuesday, where she also lost. The Dream has no memory of that.

POP: A whole lot of nonsense

Next up we have Joey Janela and Sonny Kiss! Janela runs to the commentary booth to scream some shit into an unconnected headset, much to the amusement of Excalibur. Vary Morales and Seth Gargis are the opponents.

Janela is in a real perky mood this week, tossing his leather jacket out to the crowd. Then he attempts a kip-up, and entirely fails. Thrice. Whatever special sauce he took this week, I hope he takes it every week. Eventually he gets back up and kicks the politely-waiting Morales in the face. This is hilarious.

Sonny Kiss briefly comes in, then leaves Gargis woozy and wobbling in the middle of the ring as Janela dances around him prolonging the torture. It’s the most cartoonish match they’ve had on AEW since forever, and it’s brilliant. Match of the night.

Sonny and Joey win.

POP: Drake sticks the boot in

Check out this long-term storytelling. JD Drake is now coming to the ring, accompanied by new friend Ryan Nemeth! He’s facing Fuego del Sol.

I gotta say, Drake leaning more into comedy works better for me than the brawling he’s tried to push on his previous appearances. Dude still acts a bit gruff tonight, but with Nemeth at the side and del Sol responding to the offense more cheerfully, it brings a new dimension to this overgrown babe’s hits.

Drake gets the win after hitting a big boot that spins poor del Sol completely inside-out.

POP: QT heels it up some more

Here’s an interesting fight. Nightmare Factory alumnus and new AEW signee “The Captain” Shawn Dean is up against Nightmare Factory trainer and recently heel-turned QT Marshall. Where is this story going? Will there be civil war in the ranks of the Nightmare Family?

QT is a real shithead here, mock-saluting our vet. He coaxes The Cap outside, then clotheslines him on the floor. Then, back in the ring, dude steps on Cap’s face. And Probably Austin Gunn starts his fucking “USA” chant again. I feel like he’s doing it on purpose to be a douche now.

Dean hits a huge tope con hilo, then a drop kick, but it’s not enough. QT wins.

POP: 🐇

The Bunny is back! She hasn’t been in the ring since beating Red Velvet back in September. She’s facing Jazmin Allure.

The match gets straight to hair-pulling, like this is WWE circa 2002. Allie’s current schtick is to hit her opponent as hard as possible, then spike the camera to put an exclamation point on the hit. It makes for an odd tempo, but Allie is so charming as an unhinged baddie that it kinda works anyway.

Not the most technical match, but entertaining for sure. Bunny wins.

POP: Rando trios

The Nightmare Randos are back this week – Carlie Bravo, Brick Alridge and Dean Alexander. They’re facing Dark Order’s Colt Cabana, Evil Uno and Stu Grayson.

Carlie Bravo goes for a comedy “boom boom” spot with Cabana, but Cabana is having nothing of it, and instead sics the whole Dark Order on him. When he escapes, the Nightmare Randos combine to form a Negasonic Teenage Nightmare Rando, then clobber Grayson.

It all deteriorates by the end, bodies fly everywhere, Dark Order wins… fatality!

POP: On his way to becoming Caesar

It’s more Nightmare Randos! This whole show is a Nightmare! Nick Comoroto and Aaron Solow are here representing the faction with the skull tattoo. They’ve got D3 and Angel Fashion.

In a nice change of pace, D3 doesn’t get immediately killed. Fashion and Comoroto face off in a meaty sequence that sees Fashion thoroughly slapped. Solow tags in to put Fashion down, and D3 escapes to live another day.

POP: And we’re out of time!

Cezar “Daddy” Bononi is fighting John Skyler this week.

Bononi no-sells exactly as much as Brian Cage doesn’t. That somehow works, in his character as big dumb henchman for Pretty Peter Avalon. While Bononi adjusts his moustache, PPA informs us that this is Beautiful Bononi. I have no idea where this silly stable is going, but they’re fun.

Skyler doesn’t get to show off much of any ring skills this week. Bononi Death Valley Drives him through to the closing credits.

This week saw an even greater contrast between the somewhat more staid show we have in Elevation, and the mud show mayhem we get on Dark. Trying to look at it objectively, the matches aren’t all that different between the two shows, but the overly earnest and disinterested presentation of Elevation has an impact on the overall vibe. I always used to shake my head when Certain Other Wrestling Writers complained about commentary, because it shouldn’t matter that much, but right here we have an A/B test that shows that it does matter. Very much. I want Wight and Schiavone to do well, for the sake of the talent, but right now I am fully team Taz and Excalibur.

Coming up tonight we have a special treat on Dynamite – AAA’s Laredo Kid will be appearing next to Lucha Bros to take on The Young Bucks plus Brandon Cutler! Matt Sydal is also going to be getting his absurd match versus Kenny Omega, which if he wins then he earns a title shot versus Kenny Omega. Tay Conti, Varsity Blonds, Dante Martin, Shawn Spears – there is loads of action lined up that should be fun for us Dark fans. Tune in, enjoy, then join me back here next week for more of the undercard goss.

     

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