Tonight on Wardlow's World: sleeping cowboy - AEW (YouTube)

Pops & Botches: AEW Dark – 6.15.2021

AEW Dark Pops & Botches

 

All Elite Wrestling is still on funny time, as the NBA playoffs continue to disrupt the regular scheduled television shows. Good news: this column is about the YouTubes, which drop like clockwork Monday and Tuesday each week. Click on through for our June 15 AEW Dark recap and vlog roundup!

Last time on Dark…

Cezar Bononi and Cyrus the Destroyer slapped meat. JP and Tommy Grayson were adopted by a Jacksonville convenience store chain. Dante Martin and Matt Sydal rocked the freakin’ house. Catch up in our June 8 recap.

Elsewhere in the AEW Arcadia…

Last week on Dynamite MJF looked like Woody Woodpecker. Angélico had a decent match with Christian Cage, but lost to further the Christian/Matt Hardy feud. Brandon Cutler became the whipping boy in Young Bucks’ trios match versus Penta el Zero M, PAC and Eddie Kingston. The Original Cage (The Machine) continued to tease a face turn, or at least a turn away from Ricky Starks. What’s next for Team Taz? Stay tuned.

Being The Elite episode 260 opened with Ryan Nemeth’s movie trivia bit. I’m not sure if I’m just completely ignorant of the movie industry, but it’s amusing to me that I can’t picture even a single one of the (incorrect) guesses of which celeb starred in whatever Hollywood Hunk appearance. We also got an update on The Bucks and Kenny Omega being assholes in the Impact Zone. Marko Stunt won the BTE title…

…and brought it to Sammy Guevara’s vlog! Also in episode 324, Cody Rhodes pulled a douche move (surprise!) by jumping in his truck to win the next heat in his own Friendlympics, denying any of the competitors a chance to earn points. And someone finally called out BTE for their incessant dick jokes – an unmasked Alan “5” Angels!

Time to cue up episode 93.

Dim the lights, it’s time for Dark.

BOTCH: All Ego stuck in his rut

Opening our show tonight is “Radioactive Papi” Danny Limelight versus “All Ego” Ethan Page. Scorpio Sky joins on commentary, but it doesn’t add much.

All Ego is in full-out grumpy heel mode, slapping Limelight out of the air and then backbreaking him. After eating a ton of punches and kicks, Limelight comes back with a flying neckbreaker and some impressive top rope bouncin’, but Page hits the Ego’s Edge and finishes him.

Ethan Page still hasn’t really clicked for me yet. He goes through all the motions of being heelish, but the in-ring style doesn’t tell enough of a story. Scorpio Sky seems stronger on the mic, but he works better for me as a Bond-esque supervillain character than the cocky baddie we already have plenty of in AEW. This duo seems stuck in TH2 land, waiting for a bucket hat and a Hardy Boy to help rocket them to the moon.

POP: Sonny broken in half

Hey! It’s a face on face matchup! Dante Martin and Sonny Kiss! If there was a full house of fans here they’d surely be hype. As it is, whoever they have in the (small) audience are at least giving plenty of applause and attempting a few dueling chants.

In the ring, there is plenty of back-and-forth. They both hit their cool escapes and flexible splits and athletic leaps. It’s fine, but all fairly by the numbers, especially after the barn burner that was Dante Martin versus Matt Sydal last week. But then Martin goes for his flipping-over-the-top stunner. And Kiss folds himself entirely the fuck in half to sell the power of the move. That pushed a good – if unremarkable – match into epic win territory. Martin picks up the W.

A bit later on in the night Joey Janela and Alex Marvez have another chat about “nips”. Sonny Kiss interrupts to ask what the deal is, and the two Jersey Boys break up! Sadface. But also it’s hard to stay mad because Janela is such a clown.

BOTCH: Not the good kind of squash

Next up Nyla Rose versus Charlette Renegade.

This is a thorough beating, y’all. Rose just grabs Renegade, tosses her around a bit, then hits the Beast Bomb.

POP: IRONBEAST. THEY ARE A BEAST. MADE OF IRON.

Dark Order’s Evil Uno and Stu Grayson are up next, facing Shane Mercer and KTB, who are known on the indies as IRONBEAST. Best tag name since Milk Chocolate.

Mercer has the first wow moment of the match, smoothly throwing Grayson up in the air for a slam, but he immediately loses control and Grayson counters with a roll-up. After taking a bit more of a beating he gets Uno up in the air and lets KTB come in for a big pump kick and diving headbutt. These guys are fun!

Uno eventually escapes and tags Grayson into a vicious showdown with KTB, who takes Grayson outside, then flips him back in for Mercer to bomb. So much going on! Grayson hits the Knightfall backbreaker for the win, but IRONBEAST looked fantastic. I think it’s my match of the night!

POP: Party time, excellent

On Dynamite Wardlow let us all know there is a thing called WARDLOW’S WORLD, and I can’t decide more if I want it to be a kids’ puppet show or a public access classic rock show. Either way, in two words he got me thrilled about his character.

Tonight Wardlow is about to kill cowboy jobber Chandler Hopkins.

The cool thing about Hopkins is that he doesn’t just die. He sells every hit by flipping and flying all over the place. That’s how you make the most of a squash! Wardlow puts him in a headlock for the submission victory.

POP: Wingmen antics

Next up we have Nightmare Factory alumnus “The Gaytriarch” Dillon McQueen versus WWE Performance Center alumnus “Brazilian Daddy” Cezar Bononi.

McQueen slaps Bononi in the face, and he is not amused. Bononi gets big, bad and angry. Once McQueen is tangled up in the ropes, Pretty Peter Avalon and Ryan Nemeth come in from the outside to spritz his face and comb his hair. Bononi does an Orange Cassidy hands in the pockets routine, except he’s wearing trunks, so he puts his hands into his trunks like he’s adjusting his junk. As you do. This is chaos!

Bononi wins. All of the Wingmen pose in the middle of the ring. Bononi fixes his hair. This is so ridiculous that it doesn’t matter how scrappy the actual match was. Consider me sports entertained.

Don’t forget to get vaxxxed n waxxxed, y’all.

POP: Serious pro graps

Getting back to the serious side of things, we have Frankie Kazarian versus “The Mother Lover” Jake Tucker.

Tucker and Kaz get straight into it with some aggressive chain wrestling. It’s a solid, hard-hitting match from bell to bell. Kaz wins it with a crossface chicken-wing. (Who the hell came up with that name?)

Anyway, solid wrestling.

DEVELOPMENTAL POP: Eeeey

KiLynn King is back in solo action, entering the ring without her clique this week. She is facing debuting Valentina Rossi who appears to have some kind of sexy Mafiosa gimmick.

She pulls the ma che vuoi hand gesture (🤌) and builds it up like she’s Pentagón Jr at the height of his popularity, then slaps King across the face with it. I can’t decide if it’s comedy or not, and Excalibur and Taz can’t seem to figure it out either. I guess that’s kind of a good sign.

Rossi takes some epic punishment from King, kinda no-selling it a bit to be honest. King comes off as the veteran in this matchup, which really speaks to her progress over the past year. She hits the Kingdom Falls for the win. For Rossi, might be something there. Curiosity: piqued.

POP: Classic Dark good times

Time for some Dark faves to go at it – it’s Chaos Project versus Gunn Club!

Billy and Luther have a big, manly exchange to start. Luther tosses Serpentico into Billy, and he just bounces off. Next tag, Billy picks up son Colten and drives him into Serpentico, stealing the Chaos Project gimmick! Luther is so upset he charges in for an elbow drop, but Colten moves out of the way and Serpentico has to take the bump anyway. It’s perfect.

Serpentico has a few more amusing spots, like accidentally falling on top of Colten for a near fall, then getting slammed on his face by Luther when Colten rolls out of the way again. It’s like a Roadrunner cartoon!

Billy hits the Famouser (outta nowhere) to pin Luther for the win.

POP: Just good wrestling

Tay Conti is getting some ring time too tonight. She’s facing Willow Nightingale.

Nightingale looks pretty good in this match. She avoids a few of Conti’s classic attacks, and gets some hits of her own in too. The final sequence is all Conti, though, kick, kick, kick, DDTai, the end.

POP: The top tag team, if you know what I mean

It’s main event time! We have Dark Order’s Colt Cabana and Alan “5” Angels paired up to take on The Acclaimed!

Max Caster’s entrance rap is fairly uncontroversial this time around, but he caps it off by doing some “sword fighting” finger gestures, as part of an ongoing Twitter storyline where apparently the AEW production team told him to stop “scissoring” Anthony Bowens’ “The Acclaimed have arrived” inverted V finger gesture. It’s spectacularly childish and it’s brilliant.

The match starts with a bunch of tandem offense, on both sides. Eventually ref Bryce Remsburg gets back control and Caster and Cabana get it on. But, hey, it’s Remsburg, so The Acclaimed set up a distraction and Bowens thwacks Cabana with their ghettoblaster.

Cabana takes a beating, then hits Angels for a hot tag, and 5 runs wild! Standing sliced bread, but Bowens kicks out! Angels hits a solid chain of offense, but Cabana is wiped out on the side and ultimately The Acclaimed as a duo are too much for him. Bowens gets the pin.

This week was a fun episode of Dark, with a very digestible running time of just over an hour. Hovering around 10 short matches feels like the perfect wrestling smorgasbord – if you don’t like a match just wait a few minutes for a better one to come along. It’s also really nice to get our own storylines, like the Sonny Kiss and Joey Janela breakup, or the Wingmen hijinks.

Speaking of Wingmen, on the upcoming Friday Night Dynamite, Cezar Bononi will be facing Orange Cassidy! The outcome is not in doubt, but there should be some entertaining shenanigans nonetheless. Jake Hager will be entering WARDLOW’S WORLD, in the biggest “everyone is going for the heel” showdown since Cody Rhodes faced Anthony Ogogo. Cody will be in action too, with Arn Anderson’s son Brock at his side to face QT Marshall and Aaron Solow. Should be a fun one for midcard and undercard fans! Stay tuned to Steel Ring Post for the recap, then come back next week for more Dark recappery.

     

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