We're now just into the seventh week of the Wednesday Night Wars and there were two significant developments that happened this past week on their sixth official duel, one that was factual and can be backed up by numbers and shit, and the other is more opinion-based, based on feelings and shit. BTW, I have not yet watched Full Gear, so I won't be discussing that here.
Let's start with the facts: both Dynamite and NXT rose from getting straight up rekt by Game 7 of the World Series in week 5, and Dynamite still won the ratings war by scoring 822,000 viewers. But perhaps either a boost given by their dominant appearance on Smackdown or their more lackluster, by-the-numbers appearance on Raw, really knocked on AEW's door having their smallest gap yet with 813,000 viewers. For those who have trouble with math, that's only a gap of 9 thousand viewers. Whether or not this will be more of an anomaly has yet to be seen, but if anything, this is about as even as you can call it since the WNW began in earnest. Let's face it; they're both still not pulling the numbers that either show was hoping for, but we are where we're at.
Now let's move to the opinion: for the first week, I felt like AEW put on a superior show to NXT. And for those who have read this column and/or know me know that I don't make that statement lightly. NXT was by no means bad, but AEW just had a better show last week.
Let's start with NXT and see how it dipped in quality despite its big coming-out party on Smackdown.
First up, we saw Undisputed Era get severely brutalized by The O.C. where Cole, O'Reilly and Strong got beaten down and Gallows threw Bobby Fish face-first into the side of a truck where the ketchup packet that Fish was holding in his hand must have exploded when he put it up to block the impact.
The O.C then came into the ring and it was instantly exciting because we've never seen A.J. Styles or Luke Gallows or Karl Anderson in NXT since they were so big in New Japan that they blew right by developmental. Tommaso Ciampa then made his way out to the stage and officially welcomed them to the "real main roster", and I applauded because that was just too damn good. It was their way of saying, "Yeah, we know you guys on the big shows get all the money but everyone knows that NXT is where the best storytelling and the best in-ring competition goes on". Ciampa was suddenly flanked by Matt Riddle and Keith Lee and we had our main event 6-man tag match. This segment was a little long, and I'll tell ya, I'm not all the way sold on Ciampa is a badass face again, but I'm going to ride this as long as it lasts because it'll be more impactful when he sends another trusted friend head-first into the LED board.
Then we got the rematch between Damian Priest and Pete Dunne, and man, Priest's stock has soared with me since this feud started. It's exactly what he needed to break out, and they were trying to one-up each other from the starting bell giving the match the urgency it needed. Priest is desperate to make a name for himself at the expense of the longest-reigning title holder in recent memory, and Dunne is just wanting to lay as much hurting as possible on Priest for the low blow Priest used to finish the previous match. With neither performer getting a clear advantage on the other, they found themselves in a familiar situation because Dunne backed Priest into the corner and this left the ref blind so Priest went for another low blow, but this time Dunne grabbed it and hit his own cock shot and then got Priest down and into his patented armbar/wishboning the fingers submission for the win. And it was only after the win that Killian Dain got involved, mashing both Priest and Dunne into itty bits, so now we have our grudge match triple threat for War Games.
After that was a match between Taynara and the recently-signed Santana Garrett, who I was familiar with thanks to WOW, and... this match was not good. While I was watching it initially, I was aware of two things. A: this kind of was part of the story as to the upcoming first-ever women's War Games match which was Team Rhea Ripley vs Team Shayna Bazsler and that both of their teams were missing a fourth person, and B: that there were already people panning it, but I felt that, "hey, this is still developmental, so let them develop". But even as a developmental match, it just felt so damn tentative. These two had zero chemistry and it just felt like a really poor attempt to give Taynara a win to maybe indicate she had some kind of chance to look good enough for Shayna to give her that fourth spot. Neither competitor looked terrible, but neither of them came out smelling like roses either.
But thankfully that wasn't all for the Women's division because immediately following came the match of the night which was Dakota Kai challenging Shayna to just a good old-fashioned grudge match. And I have to say that this is another rivalry that is making a star of someone I didn't expect to rise to the top. I've been somewhat lukewarm on the captain of Team Kick because she was feeling a little too much like Bayley 2.0, a plucky underdog who was always the bridesmaid but never the bride. But every time she's had to deal with Shayna, it's felt important because of how Shayna kayfabe put her on the shelf after dealing out that vicious elbow stomp last year. But Kai was super aggressive right out of the gate, and really put on the best match of hers that I've seen to date. I'm not ashamed to state that Shayna had been feeling a bit stale and I feel that she's had a stranglehold on the belt for a little too long, but with her interactions lately with the main roster as well as this match, she feels fresh again, and I couldn't be happier since Shayna was definitely one of my favorites but has just felt a little snoozy in recent months. And the thing that I really dug about this match was that it had a clean finish with Baszler catching Kai in the Kirafuda Clutch, and that would lead to the brawl afterwards where, after the numbers proved too much for the faces, it was Mia Yim who came out with a kendo stick to equalize and drive the heels away. And even better was Rhea's decision to put Mia in as the last member of the team despite Dakota fighting her little heart out. This leaves the big question of whether or not Dakota, after a few clean losses to Shayna and being snubbed by her pals for the spot in the War Games match, might just remember the old adage "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and end up being the surprise heel turn. That seems to be the way the story will go, but if they do that, I want it to just be a ruse to set herself up as an undercover agent in Shayna's stable and eventually do the turn where she betrays Shayna in order to get someone else over with the title or something.
Can I mention that, although I worship the Destruction Goddess that is Rhea Ripley, I'm still a little miffed that she's the team captain. Candice LeRae is right fucking there.
Then came the further rise of Angel Garza who beat Tony Nese for the #1 Contender spot for the NXT Cruiserweight title, and this match was really solid but it was taken from solid to fantastic with just one spot and you know the one I'm talking about.
Yes, that was Tony Nese giving a top-rope powerbomb to a pair of tearaway pants, and he didn't just stop when he realized it was pants; he powerbombed the fuck out of those pants. And it was perfect. We've yet to really get the fallout of the situation with Jordan Myles, but I think that it's ironic at this point that while Myles was technically the winner of Breakout tournament, a number of other competitors like Garza and Cameron Grimes have been the talent that's been pushed since then.
There are some matches where it's certainly "you got your peanut butter in my chocolate" kind of deliciousness as far as in-ring chemistry is concerned, and there are some where it's just not. I love Isaiah "Swerve" Scott and I love Dominik Dijakovic. These are two things that taste great on their own, but when you put them together, it just doesn't taste quite right. I certainly didn't hate the match because there were some really cool spots, but the spots felt like you could see them coming from a mile away. And hey, sometimes that's okay, but this one just felt a little too carefully planned.
In the main event, we just had... a lot. There was a lot of good wrestling, there was a lot of activity in and out of the ring, and Matt Riddle looked like a fucking world-beater in there, but it was just a mess at the end. When the epic ref bump occurred and Finn Balor came out and hit Matt Riddle with the Bloody Sunday (might as well go back to calling it that instead of the 1916 since this is Prince Devitt) and A.J. threw up the too-sweet and Finn shot back with the finger guns, that should have felt epic, but it felt forced. The wrestling geek and total mark for anything that renews New Japan stories and characters in WWE was jumping for joy, but it just totally fell flat because it just seemed like Finn didn't come out to help his old running buddies and just came out to fuck with the faces. But then that was kind of undone by Adam Cole coming back in and superkicking Styles before he hit the Styles Clash on Ciampa... and then Cole hits Last Shot on Ciampa. Nothing was making sense. I guess the biggest problem I had with this whole match overall is that it felt like main roster booking and I don't want that shit anywhere near NXT.
On the other basic cable channel, though, AEW was gearing up for their first PPV that took place while they were also on TV and had their first go-home show and it felt like a go-home show should always be.
Starting the evening off, they had Trent taking on PAC, and it was once again 50/50 booking as to whether or not JR would call him "Pock" or "Pack", which at this point almost seems like he's doing it just to fuck with us. But I was really enjoying Excalibur on commentary as usual since he was the one who kept trying to point out that, as one half of the Best Friends tag team, you have to first be a good solo competitor before you can be a good tag team member. And Trent was really holding his own pretty well, and again I must thank the wrestling gods that Orange Cassidy was able to come in and do his thing before PAC murdered him because anytime Orange Cassidy can make an appearance on TV, it's automatically better than everything else you might have otherwise been doing at that time. But Trent put up a good battle before a Black Arrow that should have put him away but thanks to a weird ref botch ended up with PAC putting Trent in the Brutalizer for the submission win. Despite that botch, though, this still ended up putting over Trent even in defeat. I'm not sure where this story is going, or if there even is a story to be had between PAC and Best Friends, but I'm almost guaranteed to love anything that has Orange Cassidy in it. His commitment to that character is better than just about anyone else.
As we all know, there's an art to cutting a great promo. We saw it last week with Mox, before that with Jericho, and we got it again with Cody where he cut a fired-up and surprisingly emotional promo from his hometown where he talked about how Jericho sees him as being "entitled" because he's also management and then declared that if he didn't win, he would never challenge for the world title again. That's a big deal for one of the biggest faces in the company to declare, particularly this early into this promotion. And yes I know how Full Gear turned out, but there's going to be a secondary belt in AEW before too long, and Cody will definitely win one of those. This also doesn't necessarily count because Cody could easily turn heel at some point in the future and decide to say "fuck it, I lied" and win the title anyway. It's not like Cody didn't spend most of 2017 and 2018 as a heel, so this is absolutely conceivable. But for now, it makes him look awesome and it gives the match very personal stakes, and nothing's more important than that for a good story to sell a match. I honestly think that the whole "we're going to have judges if this ends in a draw" thing is really super weird, but at least it's different.
Then came a match that I thought had really bizarre stakes and that was Private Party vs Dark Order for the Bronze Medal as well as entry into the tag title match at Full Gear as a third team against SCU and Lucha Bros. and I always enjoy watching Private Party because they have such a fun, high-energy offense. Dark Order on the other hand... doesn't. They're pretty much your standard heel tag team where their offense is painful but is frankly a little on the dull side, and as a tag team, I just don't get them. I know they have their "creepers" but I don't care. They do feel like the only tag team that is AEW's afterthought to a division they obviously care deeply about. They might have been Super Smash Bros or whatever before they got off the indies and couldn't use that name anymore, but right now, they're just kind of boring. But Private Party got the win with Gin and Juice (one of my favorite tag finishers), some bronze medals and were also inserted into the tag title match at Full Gear. Good for Private Party. They are going to be the other breakout stars of the tag division other than Jurassic Express once Luchasaurus is 100% again and competing because those dudes are way fucking over. Hell, even just with Marko Stunt being Littlesaurus or whatever they're calling him, they're still super over.
And as the evening came to its center, it was time for the lone women's match, and it was a tag match between champ Riho and newcomer Shanna vs Jamie Hayter and Emi Sakura. This match was better than a lot of the women's matches that have been on Dynamite lately, and that's thanks largely to Riho and Sakura, because they can fucking go. I am really digging the whole student/teacher dynamic between these two, and I'm just really liking what I'm seeing out of Sakura and her heel Freddie Mercury thing. It's just fun. This was a strong match and I was pleased to see Sakura get the win clean over Riho instead of her picking up the pin on Shanna, which would have absolutely been the WWE ending to the match because God forbid you have the champ look potentially like they could lose prior to the big match.
The only real snooze fest of the night happen immediately after where it was Shawn Spears with Tully Blanchard vs Brandon Cutler, and after last week's first episode of AEW Dark, it was clear that this match was not the story. I'm really fucking confused, though, as to what Shawn and Tully were supposed to have tried to do to Joey Janela as Dark went off the air because what it seemed to me that Shawn was holding Joey's tongue out with pliers as Tully put Joey's cigarette out on said tongue, which is super fucked-up, but also sounds like something that Janela would be totally willing to do to himself. But commentary kept saying that Spears and Tully were trying to pull Joey's tongue out. So I don't know what the hell to believe. What I do believe is that I'm not fully into this idea of Spears as this Hulk-esque ass-kicker and I don't know what to think about Brandon Cutler yet. He's been put out there as someone who is a scrappy underdog but when it the moment comes, he folds like a steel chair. Anyway, Spears ended this match with a Death Valley Driver and got the pin but that was followed by a beatdown where Janela shot out from Gorilla and Shawn and Tully hightailed out of there. I think Janela vs Spears could be a really good match, and I hope to see it relatively soon, because this one was middling at best.
And now it's main event time and we had Elite members Hangman Page and Kenny Omega vs Inner Circle members Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara, and I fucking loved this match. I'm loving the crowd chants of "Cowboy Shit" when we see Page in action, Kenny almost always makes me pop, Jericho is the fucking GOAT and I'm really digging what Guevara has been doing since joining the Inner Circle; he's been a little dick and it's just fun. And I knew how the show was going to go off the air way before the match was over, but I ended up not caring because of how fucking pumped it got me for Full Gear. Eventually Jericho hit Page with the Judas Effect and got the pin and of course this led to a beatdown on the Elite members, but Cody came racing out to make the save, with backup from MJF who hit Jericho and Jake Hager with a chair and sent them both back into the ring, where Cody hit Jericho with the Cross Rhodes, and then came Santana and Ortiz to beat on the faces while Jon Moxley made a beeline for Omega. Then the Young Bucks came out to join in the fracas and it was just all so awesome and well done and everyone furthered their story before their big matches and it just worked so well. Despite a lot of episodes of Dynamite ending in a big melee between the Inner Circle and The Elite, this one worked the best. It was everything that a go-home should be in the sense that it made almost all of the upcoming matches seem important, and you should definitely want to fork over the $50 in order to see what happens.
This is something that WWE so often fails at because they, understandably, don't really push their talent terribly hard for fear of them getting hurt before the bigger show, but also perhaps more importantly, since all of their PPVs are on the Network, they don't need to work as hard for your money as they should since it only costs $10 a month and that includes all the PPVs and all the TakeOvers. So seeing AEW really put their all into a go-home feels really vital and exciting and unexpected since pretty much all of the go-home shows we've seen over the last few years have been decent at best and total snoozefests at their worst because WWE knows they've already got your money. I'm almost hoping that AEW doesn't have a network any time soon.
The only problem is that not a lot of people have the disposable income to watch these shows so I do think that AEW needs to think about providing some additional incentive for the purchase of these shows or a less-expensive price point on the shows. For Chrissakes, the Khans are billionaires. They can afford a $20 PPV and still pay their performers the same amounts. As far as incentivizing the purchase without reducing the price point, they could offer like a free program or a towel or an AEW armband or something that can be mailed out to you to show how cool you are, or hey, why not send a $10 promo code to use at Pro Wrestling Tees? Or Hot Topic? It's not that tough.
Well, hopefully I'll have the ability over the next few days to see Full Gear the same way I was finally able to watch All Out (I'll leave it to your imagination as to how that can happen).
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