Pops & Botches: AEW Dynamite – 05.13.2021

AEW Dynamite News Pops & Botches Recaps & Reviews

 

It’s Thursday. You know what that means.

‘Sup, nerds?! The Irish One has the week off as he embarks on an exciting baseball road trip… Which is a great segway to our first POP of the night!

POP: Wild Thing, I think I love you.

Tony Kahn is bringing sexy licensed music back to pro wrestling, and it’s about damn time. I’m not sure if Mox coming out to this tune is a forever thing (I hope it is), but this ruled either way. Plus, you gotta love how well this match lines up with strike this mother fucker out. Because, you know, these dudes struck the shit out of each other.

Nagata looked great in this, for the most part. I’m not overly familiar with him outside of his occasional appearances on Monday Nitro & WCW N64 games, so I can’t say this was a personal dream match or anything. What I can say, though, is that Nagata rates much closer to the Jericho or Flair than Goldberg when it comes to dudes in their early 50’s bringing it on TV.

Lots of fun, and if you didn’t catch it live – find a stream that includes both entrances.

BLEH: All Entertainment Wrestling

The Inner Circle and The Pinnacle are the most WWE thing that AEW does, and for the most part, it’s the kind of tolerable-if-reductive-and-annoying type of WWE stuff and not the OMG-why-do-they-hate-their-audience WWE stuff. This falls somewhere in between. It’s the beer bath gimmick again. Fun?

I’m hoping the Four Horseman-ness of The Pinnacle eventually wins out and we get some old school, overly cruel responses from the heels. On paper, it’s a terrible idea for AEW to be doing another Stadium Stampede™ match, but I’ve got enough faith in these dudes to anticipate them subverting our expectations and turning the match’s format on its head. If nothing else, maybe Jericho will make that Jag’s mascot tap this year.

AMERICAN: Fuck Yeah?

I’ll be honest, I don’t really love nationalism in pro wrestling. It’s okay when a heel does it for cheap heat, but I never like it when it’s the basis for a feud. That said, I’ll admit that Cody is pretty good at making almost anything work on the mic. He got me with the “American Dream” reveal at the end. YOU GOT ME, CODY.

Speaking of Tony Kahn licensing music…

As for the match they’re hyping up, I guess I’m into it? Kind of.

I’ve got a lot of issues with Ogogo’s ‘finishing maneuver,’ and I’ll get to that later when we cover what happened with Orange & Pac, but the bigger issue here is the set up for this feud. All of the momentum has been building toward Cody & QT, which I guess was paid off in that last match? I’m not sure. Am I missing something on Dark & Elevation? I’ll ask Alison to be sure.

POP: S-C-U-Later

This was fucking great. For free. On TV.

Again, if you didn’t watch this live – find it. Watch it.

My only gripe here is that the post-match didn’t get enough attention. I assume it’ll get its proper attention on next week’s show.

LITERAL BOTCH: Orange Cassidy gets squished

I’m not crazy about using Kenny’s championship spot at the next PPV for a three-way with PAC and Cassidy. As a main event on Dynamite or one of the many Clash of the Champions style shows AEW loves to do, sure, but as the centerpiece for one of their Big Four shows… I just don’t feel it.

While the match itself is sure to be entertaining, the obvious reason for my disinterest is that I just don’t believe AEW is going to put the title on either challenger – and that’s something I should never be thinking about as a viewer. Orange Cassidy asks a lot of an audience when it comes to suspending our disbelief already, and I just don’t think they’ve done enough to present him as a credible representative of the marquee championship. He can get there, and he’s on his way, but as of right now I’m going into this with the same expectations I did for Brock/Undertaker at WM 30.

We need to talk about KOs in wrestling

When PAC nearly killed Cassidy with his Liger Bomb, the ringside medical team did exactly what they should have by checking him out and reportedly calling an audible on the match’s ending.

That said, we need to work out some consistency to how KOs work in wrestling. There’s absolutely no reason why the aforementioned Anthony Ogogo, should have a match immediately end after punching a dude in the stomach, but PAC isn’t immediately declared the winner after putting Cassidy’s lights out.

I get it. Shit happens. Sometimes the shit in question might affect the scripted outcome of the match. But this is a live show and the consistency for how the rules of this universe work come as a close second to the health and safety of the performers.

Figure out how to fix it in post.

So, to keep things simple, here are my three rules for how a KO should work in today’s modern MMA-inspired pro wrestling world:

  1. If a wrestler is knocked out and cannot defend himself, the ref must immediately stop the match and declare the non-knocked-out competitor the winner
  2. If a referee needs to stop Wrestler A from beating up Wrestler B to check to see if Wrestler B is okay, then that means Wrestler B is – in fact – not okay, and Wrestler A should be declared the winner
  3. If a wrestler has beaten their opponent so decisively that they’re able to purposefully stop a pinfall from happening in order to inflict more damage, then the match needs to be called on the spot

These rules allow for a more realistic in-ring product while only sacrificing the dickhead heel move outlined in rule #3.

POP: The Face of the Women’s Division

Britt Baker is a treasure and I’m throwing a fucking party when she finally wins the gold.

This might even be a big enough to deal to call for a full sized belt to commemorate the occasion.

I like Shida just fine, and she’s been a solid champ, but I’m gettin’ the floss ready for May 30th.

Also, Thunder Rosa is damn force and I’d pay $5 a week to watch her squash somebody.

When AEW gets their second weekly TV show, they’re going to have one hell of a women’s division ready to bring it – and they’ll finally have time to show them off. Good times are enough, my friends. Be ready.

POP: Line Them All Up

This was, admittedly, cheapened a bit by having Ethan Page & Scorpio Sky soften Darby Allin up for Miro. I know it’s all in service of protecting him or whatever, but I don’t think anybody needed to see Darby get beat up so much before the bell to believe that motherfucking Miro was enough to put him away.

I would have accepted a 10-second annihilation and been very happy. I’m actually sort of surprised that I enjoyed the match being competitive, and it was down right poetic seeing Miro escape every tactic that Allin had previously used to squeak by in his previous defenses.

Something that has to be noted, though, is how completely useless Sting was during the pre-match beatdown. Miro kicked the absolute shit out of Darby, and Sting just stood on the other side of the ring like an NPC with ‘allow interference’ turned off.

Was he talking to somebody on his airpods? Did he tell Darby before the match that he wasn’t going to interject unless Darby said the magic word? Was that NWO Sting all along? I’ll go with the last one, but only because I want him included in the AEW console game.

This is the third match on this show that gets my full on GO FIND THIS AND WATCH THE WHOLE THING treatment. Another great TNT Championship match given away for free on TV. Keep ’em coming, guys.

     

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