AEW DYNAMITE HITS & MISSES (8/16): Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cole and MJF, Omega interview, Cassidy’s selling, Hangman’s beer swig, more

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With less than two weeks to go until All In, and after a few days of more ridiculous drama backstage, it was important for AEW to come together and put on an entertaining show to get people thinking about the biggest event in pro wrestling history.

As a long-time fan of AEW, it makes me angry to read all the negative stories this week. The show in London should be a reason for everyone associated with the promotion to celebrate, and focus on giving the fans in attendance and the fans watching at home something to remember. Instead, we have this petty nonsense hovering around, and that’s a real shame. I’m hopeful this episode of Dynamite will give us all a reason to forget the backstage drama for at least a couple of hours. Here we go.

HITS

FIGHTING FOR THE FALLEN

Tony Khan gets both praise and criticism, but nobody can argue he should be given a ton of credit for his support of important causes. Giving proceeds from the show to the Maui food bank is a wonderful gesture considering what is going on over there.

ORANGE CASSIDY’S SELLING

Many older fans who (like Grandpa Simpson) enjoy yelling at clouds will tell you that selling is a lost art. It certainly is not a lost art to Orange Cassidy, who is one of the best sellers in wrestling today. His match on this show against Wheeler Yuta had so much more drama due to the fact that he was selling his injured hand as well as his knee. Many wrestlers will sell a bad limb until they need to do a big move, but Cassidy made sure he was attempting to climb the ropes one-handed and limped through many move sets. I also love the fact that the BCC does not interfere in matches and only comes in for beatdowns once there is a pinfall.

JERICHO AND CALLIS

The best part of this segment for me was the fact that there was no swerve. Jericho agrees to join Callis, then there is a legitimate reason why he goes the other way. No swerve for the sake of a swerve. Jericho should have a good match with Will Ospreay in London since Ospreay can help get the most out of a slower Y2J. They should be able to tell a great story. Bonus points in this segment for hitting Jericho with the picture. Roddy Piper would be proud. Captain Lou took it slightly better though!

It will be interesting in London as Ospreay will almost certainly be cheered and Jericho will have to wrestle heel, which of course he can do.

JOKER STING

LOVE Joker Sting. That is all.

COLE & MJF IN THE RING PROMO

Once these two got into the ring, it made me forget about the stupid vignette which is briefly mentioned below. I loved this segment. The two men told good stories to show how much the AEW Title means to them and sets up the stakes for the main event. What was apparent here was that MJF is getting solid babyface reactions while Cole was booed a few times. It would make perfect sense for Cole to be the one that turns heel in the main event and maybe even steals the title from MJF. That would cement Max as a face and have him chase the title from Cole in order to regain it at a later date to a huge reaction. We’ll see what they do, but the in-ring segment gets an A from me.

MISSES

COLE & MJF VIGNETTE

Dumb. Dumb. Really dumb. Even WWE thinks it was hokey. Roderick Strong is now a caricature rather than a real person. These segments make me want to see this partnership end right now. The in-ring stuff makes me want it to continue.

OVER-EDITING OF OMEGA INTERVIEW/BEATDOWN

I work in television and I edit sports interviews often. Yay, you have three cameras. That doesn’t mean you have to use all three of them every two seconds. I was immediately distracted by those camera changes. I know they were editing down some of Kenny’s answers, but there are other ways to do it. The interview was decent, but the camera cuts drove me nuts. It was WWE-like. The beatdown was also poorly edited as you could see Kenny in two completely different areas while they cut back and forth to J.R. doing nothing but standings around.

HANGMAN’S PROMO

The words in the promo were fine. The match at Wembley should be a good one. This was a serious promo to set up a grudge match. Why do you need to have some dumb beer drinking joke at the end? It kills all the intensity from the promo and reminds everyone this is just a bunch of friends having fun playing wraslin’. They should know better and be better than this.

Also, “outside of a hospital” looks a lot like every single arena garage door. Hangman should have found another place to do his promo… oh wait… too soon??

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE SOMETHING OR OTHER

I’m not quite sure what that was or why it happened. Obviously it happened because they got paid to promote the game, but that was something I could have done without. The first part was way too dark so you couldn’t really see what was happening. The rest was a cluster where at one point I thought Karen Jarrett was Jeff Hardy. I told a friend of mine earlier in the day that I’m sure “Leather Face” would make an appearance. I’m sorry I was right. Oh, and look, another title belt in AEW.

I know what they were going for here, but let’s chalk this up as a one-off where they got the money from the game and we move on and pretend it never happened!

FINAL THOUGHTS

While there were parts of the show that weren’t great, I was happy to see the All In card come together. I often wonder about the criticism Tony Khan gets in regards to when he reveals cards for big events and it’s just speculation, but I wonder if the past issues with injuries altering his long-term plans makes him a bit gun shy when it comes to announcing matches far ahead of time. So many times over the years, it seems like he has a plan and then an injury or issue will come about that makes him have to adjust those plans. Just a thought.

I liked the matches that were announced this week. Stadium Stampede is a great way to get a bunch of guys on the card in Wembley and have a wild and fun match. If they had all singles matches, there would be 20 of them on the show. They had to get some large teams battling against each other and I think they picked some really compelling match-ups (beer drinking at a hospital “parking lot” aside).

I also like the addition of Bullet Club Gold in the storyline with the Elite and that can last for a while, though it will have to last on Dynamite because… well…. you know.

Overall, I mostly enjoyed this edition of Dynamite, though I have no idea what to expect for Rampage and Collision because they didn’t seem to feel the need to promote those shows this week.

OR CHECK THIS OUT AT PROWRESTLING.NET: AEW Dynamite results (8/16): Powell’s live review of MJF and Adam Cole discuss the All In main event, Jericho’s decision, Cassidy vs. Yuta