I can already see the general population doing the “Dynamite was still pretty good” thing but, let’s face facts. Obviously, this was a post pay per view show, and it was a bit ad hoc, a little bit vibe deficient. A trifle middling.
The bane of the Dynamite reviewer is precisely this; a mid Dynamite. No real hook. Not horrible, not great. Nothing to particularly sink my teeth into.
Tomorrow’s discourse, today
Look, you got four thousand words about this dumb wrestling nonsense we all subject ourselves to, like some mass shared hallucination, from me on Monday. Tonight, you just get some bullet points, instead:
- Surely I’m not the first person to think of this, but: if “War Dogs” can’t be trademarked, can they be the Dogs of War? The Hounds of War? The Hounds of Love? IT’S IN THE TREES, IT’S COMING
- Gabe Kidd and Darby Allin probably shouldn’t have matches together. Not because I’m worried about SAFETY, but because they both have the same kind of dumb ideas. Mmmmmaaaaaybe don’t START your dopey match with a literal flipping car crash. Like, SAVE THAT SHIT FOR THE END, DOG
- What a shitty crowd. Don’t go back to Rockville, and don’t go back to Fresno. “We want tables” chants are at least 79 percent as bad as “What” chants, but holy hell, not only did we get the latter, we also got the former. At least they didn’t particularly pop for decrepit Edge
- Darby seems like a pretty safe person for Maxwell Jacob Friedman to beat but I can’t say it moves me. It’s fine, I suppose. Doesn’t feel like a PPV draw
- Minor gripe; if you are gonna do a no holds barred barbed wire deal, maybe show up in your BUNKHOUSE ATTIRE, not your fancy joshi togs
- Similarly, if NO HOLDS are, y’know, BARRED, I’m not sure how that extends to the use of a barbed wire bat. Love, amirite
- Mark Davis rules. I spent YEARS bagging on Aussie Open. Now Davis and of course, my beloved Kyle Fletcher are two of my favorite dudes in AEW and wrestling in general. Davis in particular brings back a type of wrestling I had thought lost… the hard hitting, extra large, burlyman who can move
- Will Ospreay looked good. The commentary was annoying; talking about how he may have come back too soon, but after he won, switching tracks IMMEDIATELY to tell us “WILL OSPREAY LOOKS BETTER THAN EVER.” They’re gonna run with Ospreay’s neck being the secret weakness, same as Kenny Omega’s TUM TUM. ‘S fine, and PAC versus Will down the line gives me something to get up in the morning for
- Blake Christian has come so far from the days of doing backyard flips with the likes of Alex Zayne and whoever the British kid who became Nathan Frasier was in GCW. Great gatekeeper dude and a good, solid pick up for AEW
- I don’t think people care about “who is an EVP” type storylines. We don’t even know what Kenny Omega’s ACTUAL duties include, let alone what he does in character. Something to do with videogames? More Swerve Strickland and Kenny is good. A “POWER” storyline… meh, Also, Swerve seemed confused he was the new number one contender. This, THIS is the kind of shit AEW needs to tighten up on
- I dunno if dick biting makes for a great match. It does for some, of course. Lotsa chomping on this show. Very tooth forward
- Mrs Convoy on the eleven minute overrun: “THIS is what they WASTED the overrun on?” Her instincts, as always, are unerring. Edge and Christian paraded around, claiming that not only were they the best tag team of their generation, which is laughable, but the best of this generation, which is so ludicrous that my soul left my body
- For that certain someone: Darby buckled Gabe into a straitjacket with a sober closeness that bordered on intimacy. Darby fastened a second buckle. And a third, each buckle pulled taut. Gabe found himself bound not merely by cloth, but by gravity’s pull itself, the space between them receding to nearly nothing. The two men stared deep into each other’s eyes… …and then they started to bite.
So that’s about it. Not my favorite Dynamite by a long stretch. Not real excited by the seeming PPV direction (Max and Darbs, FTR, Edge slash Christian and, hell, probably the Bucks to do the bumping for them).
HERE. IS. THE. THING.
If you come across a person today who didn’t love Dynamite… IT’S OKAY. You don’t gotta convince them of their wrongitude. It’s okay if we all didn’t love it. AEW can field a stinker on occasion. We’ll survive. Of course, if you genuinely liked the show, then grace be with you.
Here’s to next week, and I think I heard someone say Swerve and Kenny is next week? Hell yeah.
La Zona Muerta 
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