Coming from the Wintrust Arena in Chicago, IL, Dynamite was in CM Punk’s hometown the night before Thanksgiving Day. Generally, in my experience the vast majority of pro-wrestling shows done before a major holiday end up becoming a parody of itself just due to the inevitable involvement of some angle to pull in the holiday spirit. Fortunately, the one thing relevant was kept short enough so I will give AEW credit for not making this show too cringeworthy.
CM Punk vs MJF Verbal Joust
The show started off with CM Punk’s music playing and he, of course, received a huge pop. It’s still not as huge of the United Center one but that was a special night. Nonetheless, shortly after entering the ring, MJF came out and thus began one of the most anticipated verbal jousts in pro-wrestling in recent memory. This was definitely something a lot of people wanted because they knew you had two clear roles in opposition to one another where there’s a clear heel and babyface.
MJF started it off with referencing CM Punk’s short career in MMA but Punk had the best comeback by saying that MJF is a less famous Miz. That pretty much was a cold shot but ironically it would eventually lead to a Miz chant, which oddly makes Miz look both bad and good simultaneously. MJF tried to run through CM Punk’s credibility and his career in AEW, even referencing the “invisible man” with John Cena, which got another major reaction. Later, CM Punk would say that MJF could eventually get everything he wanted if Tony Khan spawned a daughter that he could marry.
Pretty much this was pro-wrestling at it’s finest when it comes to mic work. Some people denigrated it because AEW is mentioning the competition. But nothing that they said was false which is why it provoked such a huge reaction. There’s still a lot of doubters about CM Punk’s usage in AEW and while it’ll never be at its peak with regards to the “Summer of Punk” the difference here is that he’s going at a deliberate pace, telling the stories he’s probably been wanting to tell, having the matches he wants and making each situation unique. And it all works.
The thing with MJF vs Punk is that it’s pretty much a PPV caliber match where you have the two best mic workers in the business right now who are almost mirror images to a degree of each other with similar smarmy styles of speaking and who genuinely love the old of pro-wrestling from start to finish getting the chance to work with one another. And unlike the travesty that was the Jericho vs MJF/Inner Circle vs Pinnacle garbage, this focuses mostly on MJF vs CM Punk where both guys can get over because they understand what their roles are and not overly focused on how they appear in the end. They still haven’t locked up and are slowly teasing confrontation but this situation allows the feud to really simmer now that the basic verbal war has started.
CM Punk Vs. QT Marshall
Poor QT Marshall didn’t even get a ring entrance but I think the previous segment went on a bit long, although deservedly so for the top notch performance of both guys. However, QT Marshall apparently did have Aaron Solo and Nick Comoroto by ring side. Eventually, Punk got the ref to kick both of them out so that the match was fair. That portion got a huge pop.
The real question is how did QT Marshall get this match in the first place and why was this done? The only thing I can guess is that QT, as one of the TV writers from my understanding, possibly wrote this match in for himself. I suppose it served its purpose in giving Punk another midcard win as he slowly works his way up the ranks but it just felt odd and out of place in general.
Christian Cage, Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy Segment
The three got a backstage segment where Cage talked about their growing momentum. Mainly, he pointed out that Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy have moved up the ranks and are in position to have a tag title match by being in the #1 spot at the moment. That is a bit weird considering that the Lucha Bros have the tag belts.
Eddie Kingston Segment with 2.0 and Daniel Garcia
Kingston is in catering, having cake and wishing his bud Moxley a speedy recovery. Of course, he gets interrupted by 2.0 and Daniel Garcia who tell him he isn’t hungry anymore. Jeff Parker hurls Kingston’s coffee in his face to blindside him as they start to attack him but others actually rush to pull them apart. Well, at least for once they were somewhat correct in assuming there were people around in catering to do something about this.
Gunn Club vs. Bear Country
Short match. Gunn Club won and Sting showed up as a follow up to the previous week. Austin tries to intercept Sting but Darby Allin runs like a bullet straight into Austin and takes him out so that the two can head into the ring to chase away Colton and Billy.
January 8th Battle of the Belts
This will be a Saturday show but no mention yet of what the show will be. My guess is that this will be a Clash of Champions type of special with AEW’s various belts put on defense.
Bobby Fish and Adam Cole Segment
Cole tells Fish he’s pissed off on how badly things have been for the past few weeks. But he calls Fish one of his best friends where the keyword triggers the appearance of the Best Friends in Yuta Wheeler, Chuck Taylor and Orange Cassidy. There’s a bit of verbal sparring here mostly from Cole and Fish where they make fun of the Best Friends.
So apparently, Cole and Taylor have history together elsewhere but it’s not brought up. Cole does talk about Trent? who has been off because of surgery. But apparently, they made a match between Cole and Fish vs Cassidy and Yuta for Rampage.
Dante and Team Taz Contract Signing
Tony Schiavone is with these people along with Lio Rush still on Dante’s side. Taz try to push Dante into signing with Team Taz while Lio does the speaking on Dante’s behalf to the point where he removes the pen from Dante’s hand. Dante though grabs the pen and signs with Team Taz (why would you need a contract for this? This isn’t even for a title….) and Hook offers him a chip which he actually accepts this time. They all exit except for Lio who seems devastated.
Bizarre turn of events. I’m wondering if Dante just ends up becoming this player character where he bounces from group to group until his brother returns. Hopefully, Dante doesn’t Marty Jannety Darius.
Thunder Rosa Vs. Jamie Hayter
This was another quarter finals match for the TBS women’s title. They actually had a reasonably loud dueling chant going for both women. Thunder Rosa honestly had a great costume here. They tried to wrestle stiff and do a few roll ups and I’m wondering if Becky Lynch vs Charlotte Flair had anything to do with it. The thing is that neither woman is as good as Becky nor Charlotte to pull what they did off at Summerslam.
Rosa had the bulk of the offense during the match, which generally irks me because I find that she doesn’t do enough to make her opponents look good. Also, Jamie Hayter is really underrated. Of all the young women in AEW, I think she’s one of the better ones just because she has more experience and a sense of identity. Also, none of her stuff looks like fake shit with too many tumbles and moonsaults, etc. Lastly, she’s one of the best talkers in the women’s division. Only Britt and Ruby are better.
The ending was overbooked with Britt coming in and “the corpse referee” Rick Knoxx somehow not seeing the interference right beside him while Rebel interfered. It was terrible because he was distracted for at least a minute which ruined the momentum. The only thing they needed to do was have Britt pull Thunder Rosa’s leg to kill her submission. But Rebel is awful and they let her get in on the action for god knows what reason. Either way, things backfired when Britt accidentally kicked Jamie’s face to allow Thunder Rosa to roll her.
Afterwards, Jamie got pissed at Rebel and Britt when they went to check up on her and she stormed off. Good. Jamie needs to go solo anyway because she hasn’t been given that many opportunities to speak and probably sounds more interesting than the bulk of the women there.
Chris Jericho and 2.0/Daniel Garcia Backstage Interview
Alex Marvez is with Jericho as he’s about to do his Thanksgiving thanks when, out of nowhere, 2.0 and Daniel Garcia show up. The segment pauses for a long bit while Jericho tries to find something (un)witty to say about 2.0, eventually settling on Matt Lee’s forehead being square shaped and likening him to Sponge Bob. Le sigh.
He talks about Eddie Kingston and kicking teeth down people’s throats. So does this mean that Jericho is going to ruin Daniel Garcia and Eddie Kingston next? Because we all know that Jericho likes to latch on like a blood sucking leech to anything that gets remotely popular then drain them of any heat or pops.
I mean where did Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page go? Marvez asked what’s next on Jericho’s plate. So Jericho’s little plan of getting Sky and Page over died because the heat went all to Dan Lambert while Jericho made everyone except himself look like a jackass? I would feel bad for Sky and Page here because they clearly got nothing again and just shot down even further on the totem pole from that shitty feud. They probably would be better off working against Brian Pillman Jr and Griff Garrison if they ever decide to show up again.
Bryan Danielson Vs Colt Cabana
Colt actually got a nice pop because of him being from Chicago. They tried to play up both men’s history but no one took Cabana seriously. Match wasn’t bad but Bryan continues to wrestle more aggressively with him supposedly kicking one of Cabana’s crowns out when he kicks Cabana in the face before applying a submission for the win. Not a long match but it served a purpose to further the Bryan Danielson heel turn (whether he publicly admits it or not).
Bryan Danielson Interview
Schiavone (aka the busiest man on Earth in AEW) comes down to the ring to ask a question where Bryan rips the mic away from Schiavone to cut a promo on Adam Page. Just as he mentions Page’s name, on cue (as JR half-way joked), Adam Page makes his way to ring side.
They tease a match but Bryan, after having wrestled, tells Adam Page that it’s “coward shit”, which Adam allows Bryan to have the first hit because he still wants a fight. So Bryan tells him “don’t insult me” before giving a nice slap and provoking Page into a fight. He hurls Page to the ropes allowing Page to step through and prepare to himself to hit his signature Buckshot Lariat where Bryan bails from the ring. But the key thing here, as JR points out, is that they made first contact tonight.
Cody Rhodes / PAC / Lucha Bros Vs. Andrade El Idolo / Malakai Black / FTR
The entrances felt as though they were as long as this match. I would insert the Opera “You get a…” meme here in terms of all the people involved but I want to get through this review asap. Not only did both teams have long entrances, both teams had two managers at ringside too with Arn Anderson and Alex Abrahantes on one side while Tully Blanchard and Jose on the other.
A lot of action in this match. Cody at one point took off his white leather belt and tossed it into the crowd but someone in the crowd tossed it back almost hitting Aubrey. JR responded in a low breath “embarrassing” where I couldn’t tell which person he was referring to here. Andrade grabbed the belt and shoved it under the ring for a nice little reaction.
Cody continues to get booed through the match. There was some good stuff between Cody and Dax. These two really compliment each other. The Lucha Bros are just all over the place. I think Rey Fenix just is really inexperienced. He may have good moves but his timing and placement are off.
They eventually did one of those stupid sequences where each person would show up and do a single major move then another person, etc. Eventually that would clear the ring to allow Arn to hit the ring apron so that he and Tully could have another in ring confrontation. Neither hit each other, just teased it. But Jose showed up and tried to seemingly break it up but both guys hit him because it’s their business. Afterwards, Alex took Jose out into the crowd and we never saw either man again for the remainder of the match. However, FTR and Tully ganged up on Arn to allow him to back them up so that Fenix could hit his move.
Somewhere in the match, there was a hot tag that was being setup but this is where I’m saying how Fenix has bad timing and positioning. He looked behind to make sure that one of FTR was in position but just leaped to hit his brother. The kid has no feeling for the crowd, no timing, no sense of building drama because he just wants to go, go, go. It really kills all the things that FTR want to do for them but I have a feeling Rey Fenix is stupid on top of being sloppy.
Anyway, somewhere Malakai Black mists Pac so that Andrade can hit his move for the right team to win. The “heels” gathered together successfully to celebrate, which felt odd considering that Cody’s team were the faces here. Or so we think. But it was the right move since Cody is a detriment in terms of his public role in AEW. Also, supposedly, Cody teased going down the heel tunnel on the way back.
Lastly, if there were any tensions being setup between Malakai and Andrade, they certainly didn’t show them here. The only tension was between Cody and Pac, which is fine because that was the only one worth keeping. Also, it bears noting that the Cody also accidentally kicked his partner like Jamie Hayter getting a boot to the face by Britt. So you have a redundant finish in a way.
Final Thoughts
I think the other thing here was the little Thanksgiving (Friendsgiving?) dinner with Britt, Rebel and Schiavone. Schiavone ruined the mood by showing past footage of Riho not being properly thrown over the top rope yet being eliminated in the battle royal which allowed her to get a match against Britt on Friday’s Rampage. Britt didn’t allow Schiavone to do the DMD with her which almost is like Britt going full heel to face Riho.
Anyway, the Thanksgiving bit was kept to a minimum and didn’t overly distract from much since it was kept short and reasonably relevant. And that was nice considering how bad Survivor Series sounded with the whole Golden Egg fiasco storyline and the embarrassing RAW that followed.
For the most part this wasn’t a bad program. I didn’t care for the matches since most felt like glorified squashes. The segments though were not bad. CM Punk and MJF had the best segment of the night and possibly one of the best promo segments in a very long time. Also the Bryan Danielson vs Adam Page stuff was good.
The main event was bizarre and I had no idea what to make of it. The only thing that seemed relevant is an inevitable Cody turn. Really hard to say what that might be like or if it’ll happen. But other than that the match just felt there. I did like the belt spot just because of the crowd reaction. I cannot condone fans tossing things into the ring but in this case, it was quite humorous just because it’s the dynamic part of a live event that was sorely missing during the quarantine crowdless days.
I’m not sure what they’re doing with Bobby Fish and Adam Cole but I really hope they don’t end up becoming Matt Hardy 2.0 with his stupid HFO group and the endless feud against Orange Cassidy. At least when Cole was feuding with Jurassic Express and Christian Cage, they had Christian Cage involved along with those Jungle Boy matches. I don’t understand why Adam Cole wasn’t able to follow up with a good singles match against Christian Cage where Christian could have put him over. But perhaps they’ll keep Fish and Cole as a tag team for now.
The TBS women’s tournament is shaping up to most likely be Ruby Soho vs Thunder Rosa. The brackets seem to suggest that Rosa will beat out Jade Cargill while Ruby beats Nyla Rose. It would be utterly absurd for either Jade or Nyla to win on their side. But from this I suspect that Ruby will take the tournament to really piss Rosa off. But Rosa will probably go on to face Britt Baker and take the women’s title down the road.
The Riho match on Friday shockingly saw Riho win (spoiler alert). So I’m guessing that for one of these upcoming events before the next PPV, we’ll be seeing Riho vs Britt Baker, possibly at that Battle of the Belts event on December. But I think that’s to just feed Britt another win. The only person that will beat Britt is Thunder Rosa at this stage unless Ruby negotiated a bigger contract. But unless you’re Charlotte Flair or Becky Lynch, I doubt anyone will have a bigger contract with that kind of clause in it at this stage for the women’s division.