Previously on AEW Dynamite: Billy Gunn was suddenly Goldberg in a battle royal for a diamond ring, which is a very strange sentence to type. Also, Darby Allin took another star-making loss, and the Dark Order finally got some much-needed personality.
If you’d like to keep up with this column and its thinly veiled Best and Worst format, you can keep tabs on the Ins and Outs of AEW Dynamite tag page. Elle Collins is also covering AEW Dark for us, and you can keep track of all things All Elite here. Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter, where everything and everyone is terrible.
And now, the Ins and Outs of All Elite Wrestling Dynamite, originally aired on November 27, 2019.
All In: Chris Jericho’s Thanksgiving Celebra-shon for Le Champion
I thought this week was the weakest episode of Dynamite to date overall — it’s a holiday week, though, where even NWA studio wrestling can’t put together much of a show — but it opened and ended well. The reason for those things? Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Chris Jericho.
Jericho’s Thanksgiving Celebra-shon for Le Champion is a phenomenally absurd mixture of Jericho’s fun WCW easter eggs, love of exaggerated presentation segments like The Highlight Reel and the Festival of Friendship, and undying need to get everyone in the crowd to hate him while also kinda loving him underneath it all. The celebration features, and I stress that none of these are jokes,
- a marching band
- a bunch of inflatable cartoon characters surrounding the ring, including a triceratops, Humpty Dumpty, some hand-standing clowns, and, somehow, a cow-like creature with both horns and utters
- a giant Christmas present in “Chris Jericho is champion” wrapping paper they need to sell — bonus points for Jim Ross wondering if Abdullah the Butcher was inside — and a framed photo of everyone attending the party
- wrestling legend SOULTRAIN JONES as the host, because he just can’t stop tangentially joining large groups of heel wrestlers on TNT
- 50 cents-off coupons for Chris Jericho t-shirts under some people’s seats, but not all of them, when even offering everybody 50 cents off a $25 shirt would feel like an empty gesture
- a commercial for Chris Jericho-branded alcohol, which is actually available
- an appearance from Jericho’s father, Ted Irvine, who’s just there to insult the local hockey team and give his son’s friends customized hockey sweaters (Irvine once showed up on WCW Thunder, as well, technically giving him a “20-plus year wrestling career”)
- other gifts included an honorary Boricua gift basket from Santana and Ortiz, and a life-size standee of Sammy Guevara and Jericho hugging
- an unruly goat, presented by Jake Hager, known as “Chris Jeri-goat”
- the in-writing apology and expression of gratitude from AEW management Jericho’s been asking for, delivered by Justin Roberts, who Jericho seems to have never met or heard of before
The bit ends on kind of a down note, with SCU showing up as members of the marching band in disguise. It feels like maybe they were waiting to pounce at the end, but ran in to make the save for their good friend (?) Justin Roberts. Not exactly a successful sneak attack when you just hit the ring like normal. They could’ve just stayed dressed as themselves and ran past the marching band on their way to the ring, right? But yeah, no, the rest of this is so goofy and great that it gave me starry-eyes. I wouldn’t have been mad if the episode had just been this for two hours, as long as they actually turned on their microphones at some point so they didn’t sound like they were cutting promos from the bottom of a chasm.
All Out: It’s The Lucha Brothers, What Are You Doing
Just to say it, yes, I enjoyed Orange Cassidy in a turkey costuming diving off the top rope. And yes, I enjoyed Jim Ross making a wonderfully accurate ‘WKRP In Cincinnati’ reference and getting dumped on for it, because that’s the closest I’ve ever come to seeing my own personal brand on television.
What I’m not totally digging is AEW’s total misunderstanding of how cool Fenix and Pentagon Jr. are. Like, what are you doing, guys? This isn’t El Dandy and Silver King at the bottom of your roster on Nitro in 1997, this is two of the coolest, most dynamic, most interesting looking, and most, let’s just say it, objectively beloved performers on your roster. They are two of your biggest gets. Why in the fuck is Trent Question Mark pinning Pentagon Jr. on Dark to set up a comedy duo that is somehow the least important part of their own comedy duo pinning Pentagon AND Fenix on Dynamite? You know this is fucking Pentagon, right? I’m not gonna say it’s the equivalent of WALTER showing up at Survivor Series and getting dorked out of the match two minutes in, but shit, no amount of AEW fanboyism is gonna make me believe a pissed-off ninja skeleton and his brother who might literally be able to fly are losing to two guys I barely believe can be arsed to get through a YouTube video.
I’m being heated for effect, mind you, and yeah, I know that Trent’s really great and also Chuck Taylor’s a thing. I am of course all the way the hell in on Orange Cassidy. But guys … can’t you feed the Dark Order to the Best Friends or something instead? I don’t want to make any broad, sweeping statements about intent or whatever, but it’s starting to get concerning that practically every character of color on these shows is a henchman, an inhuman monster, or a total jobber. I get the argument that there’s only so much room and time on a two-hour show and you’re trying to get to everybody, but a whole bunch of average white dudes seem to be doing fine.
All Out: The Alternative Not Being The Alternative
I don’t want to go from one contentious statement to another, but I think the reason this Dynamite didn’t do much for me is because it felt … awfully familiar. With an emphasis on “awfully.” There were six matches on the show, and four of them involved a distraction of some kind.
Best Friends vs. Lucha Brothers had Orange Cassidy getting involved before and during the match, Bea Priestley and Emi Sakura defeat Hikaru Shida and Kriss Statlander when the ref gets pulled away and Sakura pops Statlander with her Freddie Mercury cosplay mic stand, MJF defeats Hangman Adam Page when the ref gets pulled away and Wardlow punches Page in the face, and the main event teased Jake Hager getting involved. On top of all that, the opening segment technically had SCU running in, and the Dustin Rhodes interview has the Inner Circle running in. The Cody match had a post-match run-in. That is a shit’s load of run-ins and distractions, and the kind of thing I openly and regularly give Raw grief for when I realize they’re doing it to tread water and not commit to any real finishes. Run-ins and distractions are a sometimes food, not the default setting for how every single wrestling match needs to go. When “normal wrestling match goes normally” is in this dramatic a minority, you’re doing it wrong.
All In: The Bears And The Maiden Fair
I will say that after consistently requesting more ugly-ass adult men show up as competitors on these modern wrestling shows where everyone’s lithe and hairless and beautiful, I liked The Butcher and The Blade showing up to attack Cody Rhodes. You’ve gotta feel weird about yourself when you’ve gotten your ass beaten by a dude in a monocle. I also loved Allie showing up in her costume for the Rapture New Year’s party like some kind of 365 Everyday Value Pieter. Also, they live in the ground.
Shout-out to Matt Knicks for being Dynamite’s first official Local Talent, as well. Good call to feed Cody a guy like this for a strong rebound win instead of, you know, having him kick the shit out of Kazuchika Okada or whoever because Stephen Amell wants another match down the road.
Whatever the opposite of a shout-out is to Jim Ross for saying the only people who care about questions like, “why is Cody still ranked if he’s ineligible for title contention,” are, “thinking too much.” Shows are better when you can think about them and find answers besides, “because we decided that’s how it worked.”
A Quick Recap Of Things I Mentioned In Passing
MJF defeats Adam Page for the Very Fancy Diamond Ring For Excellence In The Field Of Battling Royal, and is given diamonds by Diamond Dallas Page, who knows a lot about diamonds because his name is “diamond.” Page completely towers over MJF and makes him look like a literal child, a straight-up Linus with a blanket around his neck, and gets stepped to by Wardlow & Associates.
In a similar scene, Dustin Rhodes shows up requesting a carafe of Jack Swagger’s blood, and gets attacked by the non-Hager, non-Jericho members of the Inner Circle. He gets bailed out by the Young Bucks, which sets up a match for next week. Both of these segments were effective in their own ways, but, again, center around former stars from other companies making references to said other companies. And I love DDP and especially Dustin, but when the segments are close enough in tone and execution and are supposed to be the cool-down for a show that’s already 83% interference and run-ins, I start thinking, “women’s division? Young stars? New ideas? Maybe?”
I think the quickest way I can encapsulate my frustration is that one of the best parts of AEW so far has been the variety of performance we get on shows, and how bad it feels when that suddenly goes away, and Dynamite turns into a slightly more watchable episode of Smackdown.
Mostly In: About Wins And Losses
The best match of the night is PAC and Kenny Omega, of course, but even it’s got some issues. I liked the pace they had and the finish, which saw Omega beat PAC not with a big anime finisher or whatever and just coming out on top in a series of counters because of his size and leverage. In theory, Omega should be able to hold PAC down if he gets him in the right spot.
My only concern, I guess, is that Omega got his win back awfully quickly. The story as I’ve understood it is that Omega’s been struggling since losing to PAC because it showed him a side of himself he didn’t like, which is why he sorta lost his mind on Being the Elite and ended up in a glass-eating and bed-of-barbed-wire match with Jon Moxley. Having him just kinda win in 12 minutes with a well-timed crucifix in the middle of a random Thanksgiving episode of Dynamite felt odd. Plus, PAC losing to Adam Page also hurt that story. If PAC hadn’t lost to anybody yet, Omega’s win would’ve felt really important. Now it just kinda feels like PAC’s on an Omega-style losing streak, where they say it’s a “losing streak” but he’s honestly still not losing that much? It’s hard to articulate. Basically, one of the reasons WWE fell into 50/50 booking is because they got really into “protecting” everybody for some reason, and because if you hand out wins and losses that you insist are VERY IMPORTANT, they complicate your booking down the road in ways you wouldn’t expect.
So yeah, it’s a good match. It just felt like maybe the wrong match to have right now, for a lot of really abstruse reasons that probably aren’t important to anyone but those of us who are over here thinking too much.
Finally there’s the main event, which is a good turn for Scorpio Sky, even though he lost. I don’t think anyone though they’d pull the trigger on a Scorp win here, especially when the entire plot going intot is is that he’d pinned the champion in a tag team match. Talk about feeling familiar, Jesus Christ. Hager and SCU showing up were fine, as it was more of a tease and a counter to interference than interference itself, and the post-match appearance from Jon Moxley was welcome. Are we gonna get Death Match Chris Jericho now? That would be an awfully weird reinvention for Jericho, wouldn’t it? If suddenly he’s just Onita?
So yeah, that’s Dynamite. Definitely my least favorite episode so far for all the reasons I laid out, but nothing a company this young can’t right with minimal effort. Even the bigger problems I mentioned can be fixed by just moving some pieces around and prioritizing what truly makes AEW different from WWE, rather than feeling like they’ve gotta do the same basic stuff WWE convinced themselves wrestling promotions “have to do” to appeal to the broadest group of people. Don’t stop the wheel. Break the wheel.
All In: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
TheBazz
I will give Cody and the Bucks all of my money if they pair up Statlander and Wardlow, and all they do is hang out in a balcony and heckle the other wrestlers.
BeatoPuente
I feel bad that they put Golden Boy on commentary three minutes after he found out that his childhood dog died.
Clay Quartermain
Last month: “The Dark Order looks like a bunch of geeks”
This month:”OMG, the Dark Order specifically recruits geeks, they’re awesome!”
Dave M J
We are now at a 15 minute promo segment on Dynamite.
You know what helps? It being good.
The Real Birdman
I like the look of The Butcher guy because he looks like a mean threat
I also like the look of The Bunny because I have eyeballs
Pdragon619
You know you’d think openly calling yourselves “the Dark Order” would hinder your recruitment efforts, but they ended up getting recruits that were way more evil when they called it “the White Order”
“what are you doing here Moxley?’
*Under his breath* “Mitch….”
“What?”
“FOR MIIIITCH!”
PatsShredShack
Petition to rename MJF’s variation on Cody’s finisher the “Double-Cross-Rhodes”
SexCauldron
SCU confirmed band geeks
If Hangman wins that ring he can finally make an honest woman out of that horse
try not to break anybodys neck on your way to the parking lot
That’s it for this week’s Thanksgiving edition of the Ins and Outs of AEW Dynamite. Thanks for reading. I hope you aren’t mad about me calling average white dudes average! They’re my people. Some of my favorite people are average white dudes! I wouldn’t have work if average white dudes didn’t occasionally prosper without explanation!
Make sure you’re here for next week’s open thread, live results, and wrap-up columns. Drop a comment down below to let us now what you though to the episode, give us a share on social media to help us out, and enjoy whatever leftovers you still have in the ridge. See you next week!
