A little later than usual, I've had a long night and just finished watching the show on DVR... but regardless, here're my thoughts on this fascinating Dynamite show... still the easiest two hours of wrestling as far as I'm concerned.
Enough talk; let's get to it.
The show begins right off with a wrestling match; fuck the opening pyros, pal. We've got this second-round tag-team tournament to kick off and we better get to it. Holy balls, what a concept!
The Lucha Bros. (Pentagon and Fenix) defeated Private Party (Marq Quen and Isiah Kassidy) to advance to the finals in the tournament. If you want to watch a fast-paced match where everyone hits big move after big move with a healthy dose of "flips and flops" and the action never lets up, then this is the match for you. Purely for the first-time excitement and getting a show off to a hot start, this was fantastic stuff.
Apparently, Wardlow is coming. Cool. No clue who he is, though.
SCU (Scorpio Sky & Kazarian) defeated the Dark Order (Uno and Grayson) to advance to the semi-finals in the tournament. The match was perfectly fine; not as fun as the first match, but it wasn't a downer or anything. Don't get the appeal of the Dark Order, but I guess I'm not the only one if the crowd is anything to go by.
The only other thing worth noting is that Jericho and his Inner Circle appeared in the crowd during the match and headed straight for their private suite... you know, you'd figure a "private suite" would have an entrance that didn't require walking through the crowd to reach, but I guess that wouldn't have popped the crowd if they suddenly showed up in the luxury box.
Kenny Omega defeated Joey Janela in a pretty good match; not quite as good as the "Lights Out" match they had on AEW Dark a week ago, but still pretty fun and it's nice to see Janela outside the hardcore environment that's been his domain for the most part. Also, it's nice to see Kenny get a win that matters for once. He could use more of those if he's to maintain the perception of being the best wrestler in the world or whatever the venacular is used.
By the way, these TSN commercial breaks are inconsistent. Sometimes, they have the picture-in-picture deal where you can see the match in progress while commercials are airing and sometimes, they don't. Fuckers, either do one or the other... preferably the picture-in-picture. So fucking stupid.
So Cody comes out for a promo and teases a big announcement, but gets heckled by Jericho and crew. So then out comes Dustin Rhodes, MJF, and DDP of all people and they make their way up to the suite that is all locked up, Cody breaks the glass, everybody brawls, there's a crutch duel somewhere along the way, the Circle gets beat up, and security then pulls away Cody and crew because while they may be EVPs or whatever, even they don't have free pass in damaging private property or destroying Dippin' Dots. Jim Ross was particularly upset about that, almost as much as Tony Schiavone was about that broken coffee table three weeks ago.
By the way, I just realized this as I'm rewatching the scene; all the security guys are wearing red shirts. You'd think Cody being a Trekkie would know he could beat all those guys up easy.
During commercials, Jericho sticks his ticket on his forehead. This amuses me for some reason.
But yeah, that whole bit was a lot of fun. People wanted more "backstage" stuff so we get a brawl through the concessions and the good guys got the better of the bad guys, thus not looking like complete and utter GEEKS. It's like this company is trying get people to like the good guys and not completely shit on them when it comes to the big PPV match in a few weeks. Mind-blowing television, I'm sure.
The Young Bucks defeated the Best Friends in a fine little tag-team match while superkicking Orange Cassidy on the side and then accept the former LAX's challenge for a tag match at the PPV.
Dr. Britt Baker DMD defeated Jamie Hayter via Lockjaw submission in a perfectly acceptable little wrestling match to make her hometown homies happy... because that's a good thing to do if you want to maintain an audience in this market. Less a match and more a showcase of Baker, which I'm fine with.
The match between Jon Moxley and PAC began with PAC hitting Mox from behind with a chair to remind people that he's a bloody bastard and ended in a draw when TV time expired. Mox then Paradigm Shifted the ref's skull into the mat and the show ends. People weren't exactly thrilled with the time-limit draw, but I'll take that over a shitty DQ or other kind of fuck finish that helps no one. Done sparingly, it's a nice out; but once you start overdoing it, it becomes another trope that gets buried quickly. For this match, it was probably the best way to go, as it keeps both guys top-tier without making the other look stupid and it builds anticipation towards an eventual rematch that may have a more definitive finish.
And then the show ends. Could you imagine a WWE show having a main event of Dean Ambrose vs. Neville? I couldn't. AEW gave us MOX vs. PAC and it was fine.
This was a notably weaker show and I think we're starting to settle into a grove for the show going forward. Pacing was a bit of an issue here; as good as the tag-team wrestling was on this show, having two in a row (especially two matches to determine the finals in your tournament) felt a bit tiring. I'd figure alternate between tag and singles for variety, but whatever. I liked the video packages highlighting some of the wrestlers and factions; it was something they could've used this early on. I actually didn't mind the time-limit draw because that's something they could use to end a match between two guys that don't need to lose at this point.
Regardless, this lacked impact - no pun intended - but it was still very much an easy two hours that flew by, nothing was awful, nothing insulted my intelligence, whatever flaws were negated by the positive vibe that I got watching this show, and for fuck sake, TSN, fix your commercial breaks, you stupid bastards.
Fun show this week. See you next week.
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