Review: AEW Dynamite 12/11/24

Another so-so episode of Dynamite last night. Nothing really grabbed me on it. Next week I’ll try to lock in a little bit more, but I still haven’t really even found an act to latch onto. Even guys I like are involved in a lot of nonsense. And yeah, I know I’m being a downer right now. I’ll talk about it after the review.

Review

I will edit this a bit more later.

Moxley/PAC vs. White/Cassidy: Wasn’t really into it. Well worked but Cassidy is so much smaller than Moxley and works like he’s the same size. Hangman jumping in made no sense. (3 stars)

Death Riders attacked White/Cassidy: Fine enough I guess?

Jon Moxley promo: A little bit over the top for my taste.

Christian Cage segment: Alright promo, Hook attack was okay, Hook gets the upper hand.

Castagnoli vs. Ospreay, Gold League: This gear does not work. They might have lost it with Ospreay. Terrible haircut. Starts hot. What’s going on with Schiavone’s commentary? Not really a fan of all this outside-the-ring stuff. Are they doing some sweetening on the cheers? Out of nowhere finish, it was okay. Post-match attack, eh. (3 stars)

Ricochet promo: It was okay. Thanks for hitting us over the head with the MVP shit.

MJF showed up to work: Finally. Of course he had to make a whole segment of it but that’s Max.

Cole vs. O’Reilly: Does Cole really need two things? Can’t he just do the Adam Cole Baybay thing? Also did we have to smash in more fuckin Kingdom drama? Who cares about this? Worked really slow. MJF tried to get involved, Cole dodged it, then they bumbled into their roll-up finish. More dinner theater afterward. (3 stars)

FTR promo: Solid.

Graphic note: All of AEW’s graphics look so cheap. They’re what I’d do if I was trying to mock something up for an e-fed and I was maybe two steps better at Photoshop than I am.

Jericho/Keith promo: Pretty fun.

Darby Allin interview: Is this greenscreened? Ehhhhhhhh promo. It’s fine but I didn’t really need it.

Ricochet vs. Brody King, Gold League: It was okay? I was honestly distracted for most of it. NR.

Private Party segment: Rush & Andretti coats looked so fucking stupid. Private Party won the belts and they immediately are just feuding with other midcarders. So much for that push.

Mone/Jay segment: Was okay.

May vs. Shirakawa, Women’s World Title: What is this gimmick where Thunder Rosa is acting like a fan? What’s that about? Okay match. (3 stars) Thunder Rosa at ringside sucked. The “WTF” sign made Storm’s return feel so corny. I guess they want to get her back in the mix but really bad stuff.

Reprise

This was another show that did not really connect with me at all. I’m not sure that I have an overarching thought.

One of the reasons I decided to start writing about wrestling again, and specifically covering AEW Dynamite, is to figure out where my antipathy towards it is. I both want to be involved in it, want to sit with it, study it, become engrossed in it, and I want to never see it again. It’s the most interesting thing in the world and the most pathetic thing you can do. Why is that? Why do I feel like that?

I’m also trying to figure out what promotion I should cover for Voices of Wrestling, if I cover one, and running into a wall there. I think it has a lot to do with how I’m covering AEW now. If I was to talk about a promotion as sort of my beat, I’d want to have some level of investment in it. I’d like, ideally, to enjoy the promotion on some level. That’s proving difficult to lock down.

I just listened to a Flagship Plus from Rich about a show in Illinois, POW Entertainment. It sounded fine as a wrestling show. He talked about the kinds of angles that were run on the show, though. And in this tiny wrestling promotion that most likely does not have any TV and apparently barely has a presence on YouTube, they ran an angle where someone got attacked backstage. They seem to have turned on projectors just for that. And everybody accepted it as a normal thing and just moved on.

A lot of times on the Flagship, Joe talks about wanting to run wrestling where everything took place in front of fans. I think that’s a little much but I kind of get the sentiment, I just come at it from a different angle. I think what’s at stake here is verisimilitude. This has a lot to do with suspension of disbelief, which I talked about last time, but it’s slightly different. Suspension of disbelief is about my investment as a viewer. Verisimilitude is about the presentation of the product.

To put words in Joe’s mouth here, what I think the goal of having no backstage segments amounts to is not allowing people to chalk things up to camera tricks and the like. There’s no extra set-up. It’s like watching a magician. You really want the magician to do magic on the stage in front of you. If you watch it on TV, you’re always thinking “did they do that in editing?” All the extra tricks etc. that get used when something is shot and edited, or even just pre-planned and staged, tend to fall away when you have to do the same thing live. You can’t have someone just say they were attacked without something happening if it’s in the ring.

For me, the bigger loss of versimilitude is… everything. The entire way that pro wrestling is presented these days. Again, these are things I talked a lot about in the previous review, things like backstage attacks and overwrought personal drama. Cinema-brain, things like that. It’s not only that I have a hard time suspending my disbelief, it’s also that what’s presented doesn’t really warrant that suspension.

It’s hard for me to stay engaged because every other thing that happens makes me roll my eyes.

I feel like I’m just repeating the last review, so I’m gonna tap out here. At present I dread watching AEW and I’m only doing it once a week. I may take some time out soon to talk about “clean wins”; that’s probably what I should have talked about in this reprise, but I wrote this when it was late and I was annoyed at spending two hours on this again.

Why am I doing this to myself? I’ve gotta get my reps in. It’s AEW or WWE and WWE would make me feel even worse. But this kind of reaction (from me) is why I never covered this stuff before and why I wouldn’t feel comfortable covering a lot of wrestling for another site. Maybe I’ll have to do projects. I’ll think on that.

For reviews, like I said, I will try to lock in going forward. It’s just hard. I don’t like this show and it sucks to spend two hours on it after an 8 hour working day. When I first started this I thought I’d be unemployed for a while, but these last three weeks I’ve been on temp work on Wednesdays which just saps any will I have to be generous. It’s my problem, obviously, but that’s why I’m glad to be starting this out on my own blog rather than doing this nonsense on someone else’s pages.