AEW Dynamite
Broadcast on TNT
Live from Indiana Farmers Coliseum, Indianapolis, Indiana
November 21st, 2019
For me, it was the tale of two shows tonight. The first half of the program was hot. Opening with an amazing Nick Jackson v. Rey Fenix match that on paper felt strange but delivered handsomely. Matt Jackson was injured on last week's show at the hands of Proud-n-Powerful, and unable to perform this week. Cagematch.net has Nick listed as 67 career singles matches, with 25 ending in victory. Really entertaining battle as both men got their highspots in - the match didn’t suffer as much as I thought it would with Matt and Penta not in the match. I just imagined both men outside the ring, catching their breath from a crazy move. I do think if needed, Nick could go on a pretty decent singles run himself at some point.
In what I feel is a pretty big win, Hikaru Shida upended everyone’s favorite Dentist, Britt Baker, in what I thought was a really strong match. At some point, Baker got kicked in the nose and bled a bit, with Ross claiming her nose was broken. I’m not sure the validity of that, if the ref got word to the back about it and relayed the message to JR, but it didn’t seem to be broken to me. If it is, man, Britt is having some bad luck in the ring. Earlier in the year she suffered a concussion at Double Or Nothing. I don’t really understand the backlash on Baker. Is she Charlotte Flair? No .. But she shows a lot of promise. There’s a reason why she’s not wearing the AEW women’s belt. They know she’s not read - this loss is indicative of that as well. But what they do know is, she’s got that “it” factor and getting her on TV and in the fans minds right now will pay off down the road.
I feel like AEW should probably just stop with the battle royals at this point. If you count ALL IN as part of AEW, that’s the only time AEW has gotten a battle royal right. Tonight’s battle royal just came off as a big waste of time - and if fans didn’t turn the channel on the Shida/Baker match, which, I feel like there will be a drop in numbers on that segment (to no fault of the women) this match definitely pushed some viewers back to NXT for that segment. I’d like to see creative come up with something totally new, something their own. I like the concept of a ring being part of the trophy case in AEW, it’s different. I believe the AWA did this in the 80’s as well as ROH in recent years. I think that’s important. To create some difference between AEW and WWE.
AEW World Champion, Chris Jericho, came out for his “big announcement”. That announcement? He was going to finally get his thank you from the higher ups of AEW. He basically promised the Chicago fans there’d be a circus, an aquarium, the greatest party on planet earth. He also had The Big Hurt, Jake Hager, say sorry, in a very contrived, non funny skit. Not everything is going to be “A little bit of the bubbly”. SCU came out and Scorpio Sky was in a good mood. Sky let Jericho know that he noticed that Jericho didn’t mention how Sky defeated him. His first defeat in AEW, no less. They bantered a bit and then Jericho said Sky’s high school crush had gained a lot of weight. That’ was a pretty funny line. Using a little reverse psychology, Sky goaded the goat into a world title match next week in Chicago. Sky said he’s been waiting for this for fifteen years. The two got into a brawl which brought out the Inner Circle and some wrestlers from the back ending with Jericho hitting Scorpio with the Judas Effect. Really solid segment.
Another ref botch in the Private Party/Proud-n-Powerful match up. This is starting to become inexcusable. This is like the third or fourth time a ref has botched the ending of a match, to my understanding. Maybe it’s the talent’s fault. I’m not sure - but one thing it clearly does is kill the flow of the match. This was an okay match. Party is still a little green in the ring, in my opinion, and something isn’t clicking right now for me and PnP. Maybe it’s the fucking name.
In the main event of the night, Jon Moxley and Darby Allin had a really solid, typical Mox/Darby brawl with all the usual suicida’s, STF and black hole slams we have grown to love and appreciate. Match left me wanting more - not sure if that’s what they were going for, but here I am, wanting it.
Results: Rey Fenix defeats Nick Jackson … Hikaru Shided pins Britt Baker … MJF & Hangman Page win the Dynamite Dozen Battle Royal … Luchasaurus destroys Peter Avalon … Private Party over Proud-n-Powerful … Jon Moxley defeats Darby Allin.