Previously on the Ins and Outs of AEW Dark: Janela Claus came for Christmas, and Sammy Guevara won a match.
If you’d like to keep up with our ongoing coverage of AEW’s YouTube series that showcases the dark matches from the previous week’s Dynamite, you can follow the tag here. You should also be keeping up Brandon Stroud’s Ins and Outs of AEW Dynamite for recaps of AEW’s flagship show.
First of all, you can watch AEW Dark here:
And now let’s talk about the Ins and Outs of AEW Dark for January 7, 2019:
Holiday Hangover
After a week off I was looking forward to AEW Dark this week, and then it was barely half of an episode. All we got was two matches (one of them a squash) and a Christopher Daniels promo. Not even any in-depth interviews or new video packages. I’m hoping this is the last of the Holiday doldrums and we get some excitement next week. One thing this episode did have going for it is the Kentucky Gentleman Chuck Taylor on commentary, which was a lot of fun.
All Out: They Didn’t Even Cut Her Hair!
I can’t be the only person who thinks about the “Tammé has back trouble” subplot from GLOW every time Awesome Kong’s in the ring, right? And while I realize that was a fictional story, Kong is still getting on in years, and it’s hard not to notice how little they have her actually doing in AEW. And that’s fine, she works great as a looming threat who nobody can take off her feet. I don’t even mind her having squash matches, like this one against Skyler Moore.
What bothers me here is that the actions of the Nightmare Collective seems incomprehensible here, when that’s the narrative this match should be serving. Mel Cruise (the audience member who pledged to the Nightmare Collective a few weeks back) attacks Skyler after the match, apparently as some sort of initiation rite. But then they all just leave? Brandi and Kong never cut out a lock of Skyler’s hair, which has previously been their entire M.O. I don’t know what purpose it served, but it was important to me that it seemed to serve some purpose. Now that they’re not doing it, I have to question why they ever were.
All In: Christopher Losing Faith
The six-man tag match between SCU and SuperHybrid2Bad did a great job of furthering plotlines, on the other hand. Specifically the plotline of an aging Christopher Daniels losing confidence in his in-ring abilities after botching a big move on his return from injury a while back. The moment in this match when he considers the Arabian Press and can’t bring himself to do it is told in big broad theatrical gestures, but that works in a wrestling ring. Beyond that there’s a long stretch with Daniels as the face in peril, and you can really sense his frustration as a veteran that he can’t move the match along, even as his opponents can’t keep him down. So in a sense it only makes it worse when he finally manages to make a tag, and his partners quickly win the match. I’m interested to see where this goes.
That’s all for this week! Join me next week for hopefully considerably more wrestling that’s too elite for TV.
