Reviews: WWE NXT (7-2-2024) and AEW Dynamite (7-3-2024)
A couple shows behind — this won’t be a long-term issue (knock on wood), but the short-term is a pain in the hindquarters, could be a few more weeks. But I am here! I am watching this wrestling! And I figured I’d just pop these two together for a single email blasted out to people instead of two.
Gonna do these shows in a shorter style than normal, just to keep things moving. Most of my Great Insights will remain, don’t worry, though I’ll probably zip through the filler junk that every show has.
WWE NXT
July 2, 2024
Orlando, FL
Jaida Parker vs Michin (Street Fight): These two are finally fighting over who is A Baddie. Michin cannot fit a bit of chain into a sock so she has to improvise and just throw it at nothing. “I don’t think this is a personal beef,” Booker says, because he watches the show every week, and if he denies any personal beef, he gets to say it’s about BIIIIIIIZNESS, which he loves to say. Jaida’s greenery gets a little exposed in this one, she’s a little awkward selling especially, but she’s plenty game, and once they really get rolling with the brawling and the plunder, this becomes an absolute blast. And since it’s NXT, where nothing actually matters but everything is treated like the biggest deal in the world, they really get to go nuts. Honestly, there’s a real “spirit of the 2000s indies” to NXT right now, you watch a match like this from the NXT program and you can hear some old fart moaning that they did too much. For this? A TV opener? On the C-show? But anyway it kicked ass and Jaida got the W, as she will still be here weekly for a while and Michin is only a tourist. ***¾
Backstage: Arianna Grace quietly tries to get attention while Karmen Petrovic fiddles with a weapon she’ll never use. One of these two has a main roster future! Jacy Jayne and Jazmyn Nyx arrive to turn Arianna and Karmen into a potential reluctant duo.
Hank Walker & Tank Ledger vs New Catch Republic: Booker misunderstands a very simple question from Vic and then gets mad at Vic because he misunderstood it and then bumbles through more words he could have just not said. He is the best. These Honk & Tonk fellas might become as good as Ryan Boz & Brad Bradley if they get enough time. Like Parker, they’re really game and that helps cover some of their remaining, normal flaws that come from inexperience. They’ve got a lot of energy and NCR are, like Michin against Parker, great opponents for the inexperienced, sort of Quadruple-A wrestlers in function. Unlike Jaida, they’re not in position to get a real NXT push yet, so they lose this sort of match for now. ***
Izzi Dame vs Brinley Reece: This is some brightly-colored gear. Tatum Paxley, who does not have brightly-colored clothes, appears ringside and does Spooky 101 stuff that just feels so forced with her, honestly. Booker’s voice cracks like Peter Brady at one point. Izzi wins. Paxley does more Spooky.
A Chase U Skit: Someday this type shit is going to be on the main roster. And even though I don’t much care for it, it’s probably the right call. They’re building a generation of fans that see this stuff as normal or even “good.” And if you’re going to have people learning this stuff on the developmental show, it should probably graduate with them at some point, especially now that so much of the NXT roster is in-house or so young they might as well be in-house. Anyway Ridge Holland won’t be accompanying Chase U to Heatwave.
A Face Off: It’s Roxanne Perez and Lola Vice. A lot of this is really quite bad! But you still want to see the match because otherwise this feud has been done quite well and they’re both interesting characters. It’s just that the writing stinks and the delivery is no better.
Backstage: Yeah, they’re pushing Damon Kemp out of Chuck Dempsey’s little group.
Backstage: Eddy Thorpe is a DJ? That’s the bit extra you’re adding for flavor? A DJ? Has someone been watching season three of “East Bound & Down” and trying to imagine Ivan as a babyface? Lexis King likes rock n’ roll like Whitesnake. Ah, he’s stuck in 1987, six years before he was born. Thorpe likes EDM. Boy. More great writing. Storytelling. I do find King kinda funny but this is not a great wrinkle to add for the sake of trying to make Thorpe seem more interesting as, like, a person.
Oro Mensah vs Myles Borne: Myles Borne is the blonde one with short hair. Lotta people scattered around ringside. Mensah appears to be getting a bit of a push. HEY! This really IS like 2000s indie wrestling as we have a really feeble attempt by a few people to start dueling “let’s go ___” chants about a match nobody cares that much about. This match is fine and doofus Damon Kemp costs Borne the match. A real dummy!
Backstage: There is a brawl! It’s Other Two Gallus and those fellas whose names I forget!
Backstage: Brinley Reece’s positivity is criticized and she assumes Idris and Malik don’t want her around now. “I’m gonna go work out.” Right on. Wrestlers on the NXT program have about three interests.
Backstage: The Good Brothers call out OTM.
Wendy Choo vs Carlee Bright: I can’t get over how perfectly shitty Carlee Bright’s music is. Fuckin’ awful. The sleep demon wins with relative ease.
Karmen Petrovic vs Jazmyn Nyx: The karate fighter does OK for a bit, but she gets distracted by Jacy Jayne and then eats a bad Pele kick for the Nyx win. All filling time before our main event contract signing.
Backstage: Nathan Frazer and Axiom are still not on the same page! I wish fucking one of them would hit the other because I’m tired of listening to these geeks have the same squabble every week!
Backstage: Once again, a key point of Ava’s existence is the idea that if you are on your phone, you’re busy and/or important. Arianna Grace and Karmen Petrovic will team against Nyx and Jayne at Heatwave. Arianna is really good at what she does. It also helps that the other two on the scene are so bad.
Main Event Contract Signing: It goes how they always go. Je’Von Evans has really got to learn how to express emotion at some point. Or not! Fuck it. I don’t care if he does or doesn’t. His ceiling is probably Ricochet and he never learned it either, has made a lot of money. The babyfaces put the bad guys through the tables at the end of this, but they’re also in a competitive fire with one another, too. They don’t throw hands, they’ll save that for Heatwave.
GRADE: B-
A totally fine edition of NXT, as is the general standard. Jaida vs Michin was a hoot, the rest of the in-ring was forgettable but fine, and there wasn’t a terrible amount of Ava, so you have the ingredients for this show to be about what it can be week-to-week, especially just ahead of a “PLE.”
Three Stars of the Show
Jaida Parker: Big win for her momentum-wise, at least if they actually do anything with it, which they might.
Arianna Grace: She is simply very funny, at least at wrestling TV level. She has such confidence in her delivery, which stands out from so many people on this show, including the women’s champ, who is so good in other ways that for her it shouldn’t be too big a hindrance, although in all reality Roxanne should be on the main roster at this point and that’s probably the one thing holding her back. Anyway, no idea if Arianna will ever become a WWE Women Champion or whatever, but if nothing else I could see her with an authority figure type role down the line. She’s just too good at talking to never find something to do here, she gets the style and what she’s doing.
New Catch Republic: I guess them. They were the best wrestlers on the show and had a good one with Honk & Tonk, who showed some promise but were also wrestling two guys who can do Good Matches in their sleep.
AEW Dynamite: Beach Break
July 3, 2024
Chicago, IL
Backstage: We start with Renee Paquette insisting to us that Daniel Garcia is “quickly becoming the backbone of AEW.” This is telling, not showing. Garcia says he respects Will Ospreay but he’s going to win tonight. MJF arrives for the interview and encourages Garcia, and asks to be in his corner tonight. Garcia accepts. Daddy Magic is less trusting of MJF than Garcia is, but they shake hands as Magic believes MJF has proven himself trustworthy. Well, wrestlers are very stupid.
PAC vs Bryan Danielson (Owen Hart Foundation Tournament): These two had a match in ROH in 2007 and one in IPW:UK in 2009, and haven’t had a match since. PAC will probably get more offense here than he did in the ROH match, which I vaguely remember. Ah, good, a “this is wrestling” chant for something we get, like, five times a week on TV at this point. You don’t have to chant that anymore — it’s closer to the standard than some exception you’re trying to convince people of, this style has taken over American TV wrestling. It’s not 2009. But Chicago wrestling fans are how they are. Waiting on a “wrestling, YAY!” call. And yes, PAC is on the offense for most of this match, because Danielson is so giving now. But obviously PAC is going to fall short of actually winning at this level, because we have established that he just doesn’t do that. It is an excellent match, though, because Danielson is so good at selling and PAC is so good at being a motherfucker, plus when Danielson does fight back, he has the credibility to make it count as something more than babyface valiance; he is also, in truth, a motherfucker. PAC hitting an avalanche brainbuster from the very top is a great move and gives Danielson extra chance to assure people his neck is broken. Doesn’t lose him the match, though, and he out-foxes PAC for a crucifix pin in the end. An outstanding match and Danielson advances to the tournament final. ****¼
Backstage: Willow Nightingale gets me other than her insistence on smiling through her misery. Maybe I’ll try it. Between Willow and the 2017 film Lucky, the idea does make sense to me.
In the Ring: Mark Briscoe is here with a mic. True story, first wrestling show I ever went to in Chicago (well, Chicago Ridge) was headlined by the Briscoes vs CM Punk and Colt Cabana just over 20 years ago. Mark’s here to talk about Shark Week because he’s so impossible to not like that you can insert a plug through him and everyone’s fine with it. Mark signs up for Team AEW for Blood and Guts against The Elite. That little weasel fuck Jungle Perry sneaks in to attack Briscoe. And now Kyle O’Reilly is here to kick Perry, and then punch him. And now it’s Okada. RAINMAKER. Okada is so tremendously amused by himself. Best work of his career. The Bucks join, but the Elite are chased off by The Acclaimed. Man, this roster is so fucked up and this Elite business so not “the main event” that we’ve got Mark Briscoe, Kyle O’Reilly, and The Acclaimed plus some fifth person as their main rivals for a big gimmick match.
Backstage: Toni Storm’s breast is cuddled by Mariah May. Luther stares but not like a pervert. Toni advises that Hikaru Shida is “dangerous” and not someone she wants to face, so she’s counting on Mariah to eliminate Shida from the Owen.
Willow Nightingale vs Kris Statlander (Owen Hart Foundation Tournament): The fight starts on the ramp with Stat charging at Willow, but Willow pounces her into rolling down the ramp back to ringside. It’s a fun, full energy start. Willow’s always barely-contained rage is fully unleashed before we even get the bell. Good, physical match. Stokely places a chain in a corner for Statlander, who charges forward with all the purpose of a leisurely stroll through a half-abandoned mall, misses, and gets rolled up. Can’t get enough roll-ups and pinning combinations! Glad there’s 19 hours of wrestling TV a week and that the cursed fucking Monday Night War made it so that we expect to constantly have meaningful matches thus necessitating an overwhelming percentage of them ending with roll-ups, crucifixes, inside cradles, and the like, thus not terribly “hurting” anyone, an idea that itself might be dated because nobody watches this shit thinking it’s a real competition anymore nor do they particularly care how anyone wins or loses, they just like the act or not, they don’t “buy” them in any certain position. You can just do what you want now, really! But we hang on to some things. Ah, well. A good match anyway and probably just the start of these two settling their issue. ***¼
Backstage: Jeff Jarrett and his crew (wife, giant, Jay Lethal, Sonjay Dutt) are ready ahead of Jeff’s big match. Jarrett is not here to talk, so Jay Lethal talks for him and says that this truly is about honoring Owen Hart for Jeff.
We Hear From Britt Baker: Tony Schiavone, her great friend, intros her but doesn’t do an interview. She starts with a rehearsed line about how she’s not going to be doing rehearsed lines, she will instead speak from the heart, after which she goes into the most pre-written dialogue you’ve ever heard in your life, it literally starts with her reading off a list of ideas. At least the crowd isn’t insulting her listing off her real life issues like with Serena Deeb. Are we sure we haven't moved beyond the need for Britt Baker? Up on the screen, an SUV’s horn honks a lot. You know who’s in the backseat, without access to the horn? Mercedes Mone. She is so powerful that she can make some guy honk a horn. She meets up with the EVPs to fully establish that she is, in fact, a heel, something she’s done fine with but hasn’t been made 1000 percent clear, maybe, which you do need to do with wrestling fans. So we’re interrupting Britt’s deal with Mercy Money’s deal.
Mercedes Mone’s Double Championship Celebration: Oh this is some ACTING, baby! You KNOW one of these people has had a bit role in a Star Wars spinoff! You can tell right away! Chicago yells at her. It’s pretty good the more animated they get. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH! BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!
Backstage: Will Ospreay is with his friend with the horrendous hairdo. Don Callis approaches. Ospreay thanks Callis for the past opportunities but wants out of the Don Callis Family. It’s not exactly surprising that Ospreay wouldn’t know that these things just don’t work this way, nor is it surprising that Ospreay would believe Callis when Don says he’ll do just that. Kyle seems to know, but he won’t say anything because he knows Will is too dumb to believe or understand him anyway. And Kyle is still with Don, so, well, off he goes.
Chris Jericho Segment: you know what, not now. OK I’ll stop to note that Taz has been banned from AEW or whatever thanks to Jericho.
“Cage of Agony” vs Samoa Joe, Katsuyori Shibata & Hook: Jericho joins commentary which is exactly too much of the bit, so it’s officially over here. There’s a nice physicality to this match but it’s filler. The work in the match is solid. Joe, Shibata, and Hook win, of course. Jericho claps for them after, leading to Big Bill and Bryan Keith attacking from behind. Shibata gets his arm busted and everyone gets beaten up pretty good because GODDAMN I NEED THIS TO GO FOREVER
Hangman Adam Page vs Jeff Jarrett (Owen Hart Foundation Tournament): The non-surprise of all non-surprises, it’s Hangman Adam as the choice of the EVPs, once again exposing their lack of wider scope business sense, since a protected Jarrett run would be great stuff, but they just want to help a friend. Page is all scowling and sneering, which I guess is better than being the Tumblr Cowboy. Jeff realizes fast that he’s gonna have to fight this guy, because Page is not here to scientifically wrestle, and Page is the younger, more energetic, angrier man. Page is ruthless and vicious on offense, there’s a monster chip on his shoulder here and he’s brutalizing an old man. I’ve watched Jeff Jarrett for the bulk of my life, man, I’ve been watching this dude for over 30 years on TV now. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him as the true sympathetic babyface as he is here. I know he worked babyface a bit in TNA and some in Memphis, of course, but not like this, because he couldn’t, he wasn’t this old then or wrestling as a tribute to his beloved friend. This is simple, Memphis-esque work, lots of punch-kick and meanness. And it’s great. I love this match. Jarrett works in some Owen tribute stuff — an enzuigiri, a sharpshooter — but it’s just not enough. Buckshot hits. Page just won’t finish, he’s just miserable here, it’s a hoot. Deadeye (second of the match) finishes it and Page moves on to face Jay White. ****
Backstage: Hook is injured, but Big Bill and Bryan Keith attack again. HOOK GETS FIREBALLED! MY GOD WRESTLING IS BACK!
Backstage: Hangman Adam is going to talk to Renee, but the Bucks intervene and have her leave. He’s so angry! Look at his face! It’s angry all the time! Bucks offer him their fifth spot for Blood and Guts. Page does not fuck with the Elite, though. This is an intimidating man. He growls. He shoves. He grabs suit lapels. He is here to win the Owen and that’s it.
Will Ospreay vs Daniel Garcia (AEW International Championship): I still never remember who has the International and who has the Continental. It’s more my fault than anyone else’s. This is just what happens when you get old. The third truly outstanding match of the night, Garcia is such a magnificent opponent for Ospreay because he’s one of those guys who — I won’t say he “reins in” Ospreay, it’s that Ospreay sees the style matchup and knows how he has to work and what doesn’t make sense with this guy. Listen, if Ricochet comes in, they’ll do an Ospreay vs Ricochet match updated for 2024. I know that. I think a big thing that changed about Will over the years is the deeper understanding of what he’s doing, deepening his skill set so that he can do different stuff based on the situation, and do it well with his physical gifts and, you know, insane disregard for his own body. He’s basically just become the most you could have ever hoped for from him. In the end, MJF’s presence provides the crucial distraction that leads to the Ospreay win. MJF didn’t mean to do that, of course, but it happened that way. ****
Post-Match: Ospreay encourages a crying Daniel Garcia and surely makes clear that hey, five or 10 more years, you might get to win one of these as a favor like when Claudio beat Rollins at WrestleMania. After Ospreay leaves, MJF takes responsibility for Garcia’s loss and encourages the crowd to applaud. And then it’s a nut-kick and the beginnings of a brutal ass-kicking. Magic Dad gets one off the kisser when he tries to run in to help, MJF sporting the big ring that he cracks Garcia with, too. Blood everywhere. Second rope tombstone piledriver. This gets time and it’s just a thrashing. Chris Daniels is in there begging MJF to stop. Eventually Ospreay runs back out and MJF runs away. MJF going nose-to-nose with a fan. Garcia gets backboarded out of here. Aubrey gets to act.
GRADE: A
An excellent Dynamite, not just because of the trio of fantastic matches, but it was just a great show other than the Jericho stuff, and even that wound up including a fireball so even that was still decent AND included a perfectly fine match. Really just an outstanding bit of wrestling TV with a killer climax after a great main event, and we have some big developments such as:
Mercedes Mone is a dick, confirmed.
MJF is a dick, confirmed.
Hangman Page is back and he’s a son of a bitch.
Britt Baker is back and we’ll see what that turns out to be but honestly Britt vs Mercedes is one of the few possible big matches on American TV that I can see turning into some weird political shitshow anymore, so I’m excited. It’s not that I think that will happen; I’d put it at about 12 percent that it does, low odds. But better odds than you get anymore.
Three Stars of the Show
Daniel Garcia: I consistently rip on this “always a bridesmaid” type booking we see so often in wrestling now, but all things equal, Garcia had an excellent showing with Ospreay and really might be someone AEW can fashion into a top star. There’s more to Garcia that we really haven’t seen dug into much in AEW, too. This could be the jumping off point. Or he might just be a guy for MJF to win a feud over while MJF isn’t in the world title picture for a bit.
Jeff Jarrett: This is how good I thought Garcia was, because Jarrett had one of the best, most unique nights of his entire career, bringing everything he had physically to this match, and pouring in a lot of emotion to boot.
Dr. Britt Baker DMD:BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITCHactually I’m gonna go with Kris Statlander: Stat hasn’t had a lot of chances to remind everyone how good she is in-ring lately, and the match with Willow was good for her, even with the loss. I assume they’re not done. You don’t end a blood feud with a roll-up. Or maybe you do now (scoff) in this modern age (eyeroll) remember when Jim Cornette fantasy booked the long-past busted ass Road Warriors into a WCW invasion WrestleMania