As my schoolwork has begun loosening up a little bit, I began trying to play catchup on all of the wrestling that I’d missed throughout the last month. Naturally, this would include TNAEWCW, and I got many a great chuckle out of the unimpressive fireworks display they constituted as an exploding ring at their last pay-per-view event that also makes me wonder how their PPV buyrates are in a day where so many people are now used to basically getting PPVs for free through the WWE Network.
Anyway that said, I blew through four episodes of Dynamite just because I wanted to see how a couple of things that I’d heard happened, happened, and as much as I clown on AEW for being TNAEWCW, I still like some of the things that they’re doing, and always do hope that things will eventually get better . . . someday.
A couple of things really stood out when watching a whole bunch of TNAEWCW at one time, and I will disclaim that I fast forward through a whole bunch of the matches themselves, because for a smark like me, the matches themselves don’t always matter so much as I like to see how storylines progress, guys cutting promos, and general flow of segments.
First: AEW really does operate like two separate promotions under the same umbrella. You have one chunk of the roster all in this weird sub-promotion within AEW that revolves around the TNT Championship, and then you have another chunk of the roster that’s entirely focused around Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, the Elite, and any and all remnants of any sort of Bullet Club/New Japan talents, even if they are Impact guys like Carl Anderson and Luke Gallows, and whomever they’re feuding with at the time, which appears to be Jon Moxley, Christian and for some reason, Eddie Kingston.
There practically no crossover between the two sub-promotions, and the show might as well swap out ropes and mats between segments, they’re so diametrically different from each other. The nepotism that AEW fought in year one is clearly no longer being held back, and now that the inmates run the asylum, they’re letting all their fantasy ideas come to fruition, even if it means lots of actual AEW talents are getting their TV time usurped by guys from other promotions.
Second: Rey Fenix and Britt Baker are the MVPs of AEW, hands down. I’ve been high on both of these talents pretty early on, because it was pretty prevalent that the two of them, regardless of their actual win-loss records or active storylines, are the top male and female talents on the roster, in terms of consistency, workrate and screen impact.
Fenix has been padding his resume over the last few months with easy stand-out matches with anyone, from his own brother Pentagon, to the big oaf Lance Archer, and to a more recent four-star match against Matt Jackson. It’s clear he can work with just about anyone, and brings a speed and intensity not seen in a luchador since like, a prime Juventud Guerrera.
AEW’s women’s division is often compared and falls flat against the WWE’s, but none of is by any fault of Dr. Britt Baker DMD, whom it’s abundantly clear is bigger than the promotion’s women’s title. Not lost is the irony of how she is a former WWE talent, and with her relationship to the WWE’s Adam Cole, it’s clear the overlap of movesets between the two. But she’s been a consistent force since the dawn of the promotion, and is as good in the ring as she is out of it, and it speaks volumes of any wrestler, regardless of gender, if they can get over and stay over without actually wrestling, which Baker did for months on end, doing the Role Model gimmick better than Bayley was doing concurrently in the WWE.
And few women’s matches in the history of women’s wrestling will probably ever come close to the hardcore brutality and memorability of Baker’s match against Thunder Rosa, which was the only match from four weeks of Dynamites, that I didn’t fast forward any bit of. It was a pretty legendary match, that probably will be like their equivalent to Foley vs. Funk in IWA Japan, and probably should be AEW’s match of the year, already.
Third: when will TNAEWCW introduce ten-man tag team championship belts? I rolled my eyes a long time ago when I found out Ring of Honor had a six-man tag team championship, but frankly AEW seems pretty destined to have to do ten-man blets, based on how many 5+ man factions that have emerged, especially with the introduction of MJF’s new faction, I guess they’re called The Pinnacle?
- The Pinnacle
- The Inner Circle
- Matt Hardy’s stable has five currently
- The Dark Order can currently cobble five jobbers together
- The Nightmare Family could probably cobble together five
- The Elite could easily hit five members
The point is, AEW seems to be a fan of five-man teams, and it’s only a matter of time before in their quest to constantly be different than the WWE, will introduce something so silly and extra, like ten-man belts. Imagine that, five guys all lugging around a mediocrely designed belt. But if it looks good, I’d probabyl still want it.
Funny thing is that I don’t think I’d have noticed any of these patterns if I were just watching everything a week at a time. I’d have time to digest and forget, and by the time the next week’s Dynamite hit the air, I’d be blank in the head again, and just kind of aimlessly watch while doing something else, or watch it the day after on demand where I could fast forward all the fluff and just seek out the stuff that intrigued me.
Frankly, it’s made AEW just a little bit more digestible, watching in this manner. Perhaps I should do this every month, instead of watching on a weekly basis.
