Previously on AEW Dynamite: Rick and Morty, and Ricky Morton. Plus Chris Jericho dressed up as David S. Pumpkins while Inner Circle injured Dustin Rhodes, Jon Moxley got upset about his lights being turned out, and Brandi Rhodes turned into a witch. Like, an actual spooky witch. We think.
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, episode six: Retort of the Jedi.
All In: PAC vs. Trent
Want to know how much I love The Bastard PAC? He’s opening up AEW Dynamite by completely no-selling Orange Cassidy’s (wonderful, but) super dumb pretend offense and kicking him in the face so hard his glasses fly off, and I’m like, “GET HIM A BODY BAG, YEAHHHH!” Me, cheering against Orange Cassidy. Just goes to show that there’s a time and place for all kinds of pro wrestling expression, and the time for being funny and making people happy is in direct contrast to PAC time.
Trent (Beretta) and PAC (Man) tear it up for about 12 minutes, with PAC making Trent look like a singles wrestling superstar with devastating offense before completely shutting him down. Shout-out to PAC bringing back the Tyler Breeze DDT sell for Trent Question Mark’s tornado. I wish the camera man had caught it better, but I guess you never know when PAC’s going to sprinkle the match with something casually brilliant.
All this said, there was one thing that hurt the match:
All Out: Referees Not Counting The Three
https://twitter.com/Maffewgregg/status/1192389921702592512
I’m probably the world’s leading Bryce Remsburg homer — I’m in the top 10, at least — but even the greats make mistakes from time to time. Here, I don’t know if there was a miscommunication about the finish or if like, PAC was supposed to pull Trent up at the last second and just didn’t or what, but Bryce counts a big dramatic “ONE, TWO, THRooooh not actually three” off the Black Arrow. As it looks, Trent “kicked out” of the Black Arrow somehow, even though he’s clearly murked, and PAC has to quickly transition into the Brutalizer to save it.
They made up for the mistake and moved past it quickly so it didn’t really seriously “hurt” anything, but referees not counting to three when a guy’s not kicking out because they’re in their head and know this isn’t supposed to be the finish is one of the most inexcusably brutal things, pardon the wordplay, that happens in a wrestling ring. It can take 100+% of the wind out of an audience’s sails, and just makes everyone involved look worse. It happens, again, and it wasn’t some dramatic, show-ruining moment, but it always feels bad. PAC should’ve dragged Orange Cassidy into the ring and kicked him in the nose a few more times to make up for the missed communique.
All In: Here We Are, Face To Face, A Couple Of Silver Spoons
To say that Cody Rhodes delivered the promo of his life on Wednesday night is an understatement. Calling it his, ‘Hard Times,’ promo might be a disservice. This wasn’t ‘Hard Times.’ This was Cody perfectly combining the narrative of pro wrestling with the reality of his job at the head of All Elite Wrestling and the bubbling, undeniable passion in his heart to say exactly what needed to be said about Full Gear. It felt like a defining moment, not just for Cody, but for AEW. For Dynamite, at least. It was Dynamite’s first truly great moment.
If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Nothing I can type here will do it justice. There’s a lot of money in the promo — the references to the past, the suggestion that The Elite are going to come together soon to be the force we expected them to be upon AEW’s founding, AEW was the “Ellis Island” of pro wrestling, and more — but I think we can agree that him directly addressing Jericho’s criticisms of him and his family is where the monologue goes from “fine speech” to hot fire.
“If I do not defeat Chris Jericho at Full Gear, I will never challenge for the AEW World Championship again.
“Chris Jericho, that is a very big ‘if.’ It’s not an encumbrance, it’s not an albatross that is going to sit on your chest and weigh you down, it is going to vanish. You’ve taken to calling my lot ‘entitled millennials.’ You’ve called me an, ‘entitled millennial bitch.’ I’ve neglected to read in your best-selling book A Lion’s Tale, which you can get on Amazon for three dollars or at any flea market, I neglected to read about the upbringing you had that was so hard. You talked about my silver spoon, gosh, it must have been so difficult being the upper-class son of a famous hockey player. It is almost like we shared the exact same silver spoon, you stupid dick!”
“You dismissed every accomplishment I’ve made. You’ve talked about my father. Well you call me an ‘entitled millennial’ I call you a carny succubus because the dirty secret about you – the dirty secret is that you need this generation the more than it needs you and you surrounded yourself with impressionable youth. This isn’t about my dad. This isn’t about the dead, it’s about the living. It’s about my mother, it’s about my sister, it’s about my wife, it’s about the 14 years it took me to go from undesirable to un-goddamn-deniable!
In short:
THIS is what’s going to set them apart from WWE. Not the production quirks of the show, not the specific names they do or don’t bring in … the ability to evoke true emotion from observable, recorded history and utilize that emotion to tell compelling, believable wrestling stories that go somewhere and have a payoff. It’s the difference in two hours of TV a week and however much WWE runs at the time of publication, and it can be a real strength for All Elite. Don’t be afraid to speak from the heart. Don’t be afraid to use real points of view and real emotions to tell the story, even if (and ESPECIALLY if) it’s all “worked” and for the benefit of the show. We want to see these characters at odds, and they can’t be at odds, at least not believably, if all of their voices are written by the same guy. Master work here.
Chris Jericho, not wanting to be topped, fires back with a Cody Rhodes “big match” championship video package that is an absolute riot. I was seriously laughing throughout the entire thing. Highlights (aka me telling you everything that happened, in order) include:
- Chris Jericho gently kissing Sammy Guevara on the side of the head while being asked about his bubbly preferences
- amazing chyrons for everyone who speaks, like “Spanish God” for Guevara, “Street Thug” and “Ruffian” for Ortiz and Santana, “The Big Hurt” for Jack Swagger. Might I recommend Nugenix®? The last person you want to dick around with is Frank Thomas
- The best chyron of all was, of course, “Chris’ Aunt’s Friend From Church” Patricia Bobski, presumably the wife of Southpaw Regional Wrestling interviewer Clint. She believes Chris will “beat the shit out of Cody” at Full Gear
- Guevara noting that at 48 years old, Jericho is the youngest AEW Champion ever
- Jericho in a bath tub in leather pants, a hat, and a scarf
- this being Jake Hager’s entire comment and contribution to the piece
- an appearance from wrestling legend SOULTRAIN JONES, aka nWo Vincent, aka goddamn Virgil. He also gets the very best line of the entire video: “I don’t know what a goat is, because I’m not a farmer, but I know what Chris Jericho is: the greatest of all times.” He also gets the SECOND best line: “Jericho’s talent is like the Olive Garden breadsticks. Unlimited.”
- Jericho getting emotional talking about how hard it is to choose the right place to drink a small amount of said bubbles after his match
Just … perfect. I wish the pay-per-view was farther away so we could get more of this. Don’t think I’ve ever thought that before.
All In: The Dark Pecking Order
There’s a pay-per-view coming up this Saturday, and AEW wants to add a third team to the SCU vs. Lucha Bros. AEW Tag Team Championship match. They could either add the super hot young team that had such standout performances in the tag tournament that it honestly kinda felt like bullshit that they weren’t involved in the finals who could kill it with both teams, or, you know, put the Dark Order in there. I’m still not sold on the Order’s ability to contribute to these shows whatsoever — their names are “Evil Uno” and “Stu” for God’s sakes — but I’m fine with them being a Royal Flush Gang who show up pretending to be Big Bads when they’re just local dorks in costumes and pave the way for the teams we wanna see. Private Party has it, the crowd wants that specific version of it, and that tag match will be a coo-coo crazy way to open Full Gear.
All In: Sakura Blossoms
AEW hasn’t put a lot of effort into really explaining who the competitors in the women’s division are as people, beyond their histories and character descriptions, but the performers are still making it work. Plus, it’s nice to get a week away from, “do you realize that Britt Baker is a dentist?” Britt Baker’s dentistry is the “RELLIK is KILLER spelled backwards!” of Dynamite’s young life.
Anyway, Riho teams up with Portugal’s Perfect Athlete against Emi Sakura and Jamie Hayter, who is the best*, and we get almost a full quarter-hour of women’s tag team action. The result is Sakura using her understanding of a pupil she trained and a size and weight advantage to come out on top in a series of pin reversals. You may know blank has pinned the women’s champion to build momentum to a match against the women’s champion from one of WWE’s only two ideas for their women’s divisions — “battle royal” is the other — but, like the lack of character development, I like the performers and the matches they’re having enough to let it slide in the show’s first six weeks of existence. Hope it picks up going forward, though.
*I’m upset that the two times Jamie Hayter’s tried to do the Wet Willie camel clutch on TV, it’s happened on a tiny side-screen during commercial break. Jamie Hayter has put too much work into making her rest holds entertaining to be stuck as a side-show for Nugenix commercials, thank you very much.
Speaking Of That …
Brandi Rhodes has already gone from normal human being to OCCULT MONSTER in the past couple of weeks, and this week she turns into … well, for lack of better phrasing, Cersei Lannister? She puts on fancy clothes to sit around drinking wine and threatening people. I think I love it?
Also On The Card
Guy who looks like this in red defeats Guy who looks like this in blue in 3:10 using Wrestling Hold. Not rated, but somewhere in the ballpark of two and three-quarter stars. Tuly Blanchard is the three quarters.
All In: THE ROYAL RUMBLE IS THIS SUNDAY FOLKS
It wouldn’t be the end of the go-home show for the first pay-per-view of WCW’s descendant’s TV era without a combination everybody fights and aw nuts we’re out of time. That’s what happens here, as the tag team match between the Inner Circle and Kenny Omega and Adam Page ends with PAC showing up and cheap-shotting Page to give Inner Circle a victory. Adam Page is having a … tough time with all of this, you could say.
Anyway, this of course turns into a fight involving upcoming pay-per-view opponents — PAC and Adam Page, Chris Jericho and Cody Rhodes, the Young Bucks and Ortiz and Santana, Jon Moxley and Kenny Omega, Jake Hager and anyone’s desire to see him do anything ever — that ties together NUMEROUS ongoing one-to-one or two-to-two narratives and plot lines with a larger, overarcing “Inner Circle vs. The Elite” beef. It’ll be interesting to see how side characters like PAC and Jon Moxley shake out, and whether or not The Elite gets embarrassed of Adam Page at some point and brings in Marty Scurll to break his fingers about it. But regardless, the fight ends up on the stage, with Nick Jackson coming off one of the entrance tubes with a … well, a stage dive.
Full Gear’s gonna be a trip. Can’t wait. And for the next pay-per-view, did somebody say, “The Match Beyond?” Now where have I heard that term before …
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Pdragon619
Seth Rollins goes on Twitter to complain about his haters.
Brandi Rhodes learned voodoo magic to summon monsters and lay curses on them.
That’s another L for the architect.
JayBone2
Ok who told Cody and the other members of the Elite to release Calypso Bradi from her bondage via their 9 pieces of eight/merch?
Jericho7820
If I don’t beat Chris Jericho, I will never challenge for the AEW championship again.
*Nov 13th Dynamite opens with the introduction of the AEW Super Duper championship *
Aces
Did anyone watch AEW Dark with MJF on color commentary? Holy shit I almost want him to quit in-ring wrestling and see him fulfill the long-lost roles of Bobby Heenan and Jessie Ventura. Seriously his commentary was worth watching the whole show (which was pretty weak, but again this made up for it). He could definitely be a heel stable manager too. Obviously he has a lot to prove still, but the dude is like Bobby Heenan regenerated. Xcalibur even said, “WILL YOU STOP?!” at one point. It was great.
AshBlue
I can honestly say that’s the best promo I’ve ever seen Jake Hager/Jack Swagger do.
SexCauldron
Jericho wishes he had a jacket that lit him up as much as Cody just did
AddMayne
Isla Dawn: “what’s her problem”
Darth_Emmel
The number 1 best thing about AEW, wrestlers having matches with people they aren’t feuding with. No weeks on end of the same match ups
North99
“Carny Succubus” Is gonna be a great Halloween costume next year.
Thanks, Jake.
And thank YOU for being here and checking out our AEW Dynamite column. Things for you to do: share the column to get more eyes on it and help us out, drop a comment down below to let us know what you thought of the show, and make sure you’re here on Saturday for our complete Full Gear coverage. See you then!
