Charlie Davis: It’s been ONE WEEK since the Revolution Pay Per View. We had our very first PPV recap column last week and while I personally think having exhaustive All-Elite Wrestling aka AEW coverage would be just fine, I do recognize that there are other wrestling things happening. In fact, some might say there is too much wrestling. So uh. I’ve assembled a team? A faction? A stable? Unsure. Anyone wanna take a stab at this one? Do we need a name? I think we need a name.
Vishal Gullapalli: Vishal here, NXT viewer. While the Wednesday Night Wars aren’t a real or significant thing, NXT won the war in my heart. And some big stuff happened this week!
Thomas Cummins: I’m an occasional NXT viewer, but AEW is my weekly joint. You’re right, Charlie. Every good faction needs a good name. This is Shoot Monday after all, maybe something with shooting or… bullets? We’ll have to workshop this one.
Robert Secundus: New seasons, new signings, alliances, and pains,/ We leave our Rev and speed toward Fast Lane
Mikey Zee: Thomas, technically we have both. Me, I’m just here because I like this dang sports entertainment, and I love to talk about all the wild things that happen in it week to week. Also apparently fashion.
Monday
CD: Is there wrestling on Mondays? I heard some sort of folk tale that there used to be this big wrestling show on Monday that everyone watched and rejoiced in, but I don’t see it. But honestly, I am not sure where Monday Night RAW went wrong, but oh man. I think the most interesting thing going on on Monday’s is that The Fiend seems to be slowly possessing Randy Orton and making him throw up black slime? I’d heard a rumor that the USA Network wanted WWE to make their product edgier. Maybe that meant sexy black slime? Anyway, it’s wild that the flagship show is so bereft of anything. Especially with people like Asuka, Charlotte Flair on their roster. Am I off base here?
VG: I’m certainly not watching any wrestling on Mondays, but from snippets I catch on social media, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Which sucks, because I want to enjoy Bobby Lashley’s title reign, and Drew McIntyre, and the Fiend going after Randy Orton, and Asuka! These are all quantifiably good things to have on a wrestling show, but both the length of the actual show and the quality of the writing and booking just drives me away.
RS: I am told that Alexa Bliss has been doing Rituals Of Dark Magicks, and I hear that Rhea Ripley is on her way, and so at some point I will return to watching at least a couple segments of RAW per week. It is not yet that time. As I type this, I have just awoken on Sunday morning of March 14. That is, I have just awoken to discover that an hour of my life has been stolen from me. Again. I look in the mirror and I see greys that were not there on my last March 14. I remember it was a Saturday. The school where I teach was on Spring Break, and the break was nearing its end. I had told my students to bring their books with them; being Terminally Online, I had been warning them that we might go full online soon the moment I saw Worried Tweeting about a viral outbreak in China. By now it was clear that this was going to a problem, and that we would not, in fact, be returning to in-person classes.
On that Saturday a good friend of mine, a woman who recently earned her PhD in biology, assured me that if our country just took proper precautions, this would all blow over shortly. (We did not take the proper precautions). When she asked about what was going on in my life, I mentioned the most recent wrestling PPV, ELIMINATION CHAMBER. My roommates and I always break out the projector and invite folks over for a PPV party, whenever one comes around. I can remember how excited I was for the RAW’s women’s title shot match, how excited I was for Wrestlemania, how excited I was for wrestling in general. I saw new main roster arrivals like Shayna Baszler, and I could not believe how the WWE women’s division, the best division in the world, was somehow becoming more exciting. I was still in my 20s then. I had no grey hair. I had hope. And I watched RAW every week (though on Hulu, an abridged cut).
Now? I see how little time I have left. When I wake up, sore, broken from an hour’s shift in our clocks, I know that my time is coming when I won’t wake up at all. And in that context—how could I bring myself to watch Monday Night RAW?
MZ: I’ll be honest, the first and last time I tuned into RAW a couple weeks ago, I saw an amazing women’s match with an awful, soul-crushing finish. Since then, I basically just catch Bad Bunny and Charlotte clips on YouTube. I so wish Bad Bunny and Damian Priest were on a product I could stomach watching. (Can they do a stint on SmackDown? As a treat?)
Wednesday
CD: For the past year and some change Wednesday’s have been the wrestling day. AEW and NXT put on shows weekly that both dazzle and delight. AEW had some heavy lifting to do this week, but they put on one hell of a show. The two things coming out of this week for me are Matt Jackson being just as good at wrestling as he is handsome (he’s very handsome)
AND Kenny Omega’s continued decay from the inside out. Kenny also gave us maybe the funniest line that’s been uttered in wrestling so far in 2021. Also not for nothing, but Eddie and Mox are one hell of a power couple now that they are together. Oh and I guess AEW’s version of the Four Horsemen was born on Wednesday night. I am very happy for them. That’s not what I tune in for though.
TC: This was a pivotal episode of Dynamite for me. If anyone was waiting for a good place to jump into AEW, this is it. I’m not sure how intentional it was, but everything about this week’s show felt like a refresh for the brand. A new season, in more traditional TV terms.
AEW has had two big ex-WWE wrestlers added to their roster in the last few weeks: Paul Wight and Christian Cage. Christian’s debut at Revolution was brief but impactful, and his first appearance on Dynamite was not different. He was able to spark a potential feud with Kenny Omega without saying a single word. The whole sequence gave him this air of gravitas that was almost on par with Sting’s debut. It’s worth your time to watch just that segment, even if you don’t have time to watch the whole episode. Seeing Christian center himself in the company like this is just another reason why this is the perfect jumping on point for new viewers.
The other moment that stuck with me from this episode was Penta’s promo, with an incredible assist from Spanish commentator Alex Abrahantes, on Cody. I’d been wondering who Cody could go up against after the angle with Shaq was finished, but this was better that I could have ever hoped for. I’m missing Death Triangle as a single unit, but between this and the incredible singles match with Rey Fénix and Matt Jackson, I’m not sure I care as long as we’re getting compelling stories out of it.
RS: Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston have the hearts of poets (albeit hearts that pump to the rhythm of the 3 count more-so than anything iambic). It’s an absolute delight to listen to them just feed off of each other’s energy, and I hope they work together for a long time. This one story now has ramifications, to varying degrees, for Mox, Kingston, the Butcher/Blade/Bunny, Matt Hardy and Private Party, Kenny Omega, the Good Brothers, the Young Bucks, Brandon Cutler, the ELITE as a concept, the Bullet Club as a concept, and IMPACT Wrestling as an entity.
This is my favorite kind of story in something like wrestling: something that feels like it matters because of the ripple effects it has throughout a company. There is real heart at the core, there is real consistency in continuity, and there are real ramifications of the results. Jon Moxley wanted to create the most glorious wrestling violence he could, and that meant showing up to Double or Nothing and hitting the Paradigm Shift on the best wrestler in the world. Kenny Omega’s first moment in AEW was one of failure. These two facts have defined their stories, but also the story of AEW from that first PPV to the present. I’m extremely excited for this new season.
VG: I, unlike my beloved peers, spent this Wednesday night watching a much-hyped episode of NXT. Regal had two major announcements – one was the two-night NXT Takeover: Stand and Deliver, taking place the Wednesday and Thursday before Wrestlemania. Rumor has it this will be the last hurrah of NXT’s place on Wednesdays, as it’s apparently heading to Tuesdays. I’m not complaining.
What I am complaining about though, is the other announcement – that we have new NXT Women’s Tag Team Championships, awarded to the first-ever winners of the Women’s Dusty Classic Tournament. Which is great! Dakota and Raquel have been on fire for the better part of the last year, and I love to see them getting that shine. But then they got challenged by the other Dusty Cup finalists, Ember Moon and Shotzi Blackheart, and dropped the belts – establishing the first NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship reign at around 1 hour, and making them look like chumps. I’m genuinely annoyed about this – either give them the belts when they won the match the first time, or don’t give them the belts at all. Don’t give them these token reigns that make everyone involved look bad.
Okay, rant over.
Beyond the announcements and bad booking, there was some really good stuff! Io Shirai defended her title against Toni Storm, winning via submission – is Io Shirai now a submission machine? Because I’m here for it. Finn’s title defense against Adam Cole was both a fantastic match and a great story. Kyle’s return didn’t interfere in the quality of the match, and only served as a cherry on top of an already delicious ice cream sundae.
The rest of the show was filler matches and some solid teases for upcoming feuds/matches. We had Io challenge Raquel, which I’m hoping leads to Raquel finally getting the rub they’ve been priming her for. Breezango returned, and teamed up with MSK to fight Legado del Fantasma and Grizzled Young Veterans. And in my favorite bit of the night, Imperium’s Marcel Barthel tried to get Timothy Thatcher to join his faction, as Barthel and Thatcher were part of a faction together in Europe. This led to Tomasso Ciampa challenging the leader of Imperium – WALTER. I am really hoping this match can happen! WALTER’s one of the best big men in the world and I always love seeing Ciampa strut his stuff.
Friday
CD: It’s Wrestlemania season and SmackDown is so much the better show out of the two main brands, but for some reason the main event isn’t exciting to me. I love Daniel Bryan, but I know that he’s not winning the title and fighting Edge at Mania. I want that. I want it to be true, but you can only be burned so many times. For me, SmackDown is where I watch for Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens reconnecting. That’s what I am zeroed in on here and it seems like that just might be where we are going. Other notable things. Seth had a bad suit on and his hair was pulled into a very harsh ponytail and Bianca and Sasha at Mania is a wonderful thing and I wish WWE would stop making the both of them lose to the tag team champs CONSTANTLY.
RS: Unlike RAW, SmackDown is a show that I’m very happy to spend some of my time watching on my way to the grave. Unfortunately, this is always a weird time of year for even the best of WWE programming, as we approach Fast Lane, aka the PPV that exists to mostly maintain the status quo for Wrestlemania. I haven’t yet caught up on Smackdown as a result, though I plan to soon. I will say that, for the most part, that status quo is extremely engaging. There’s nothing that I expect to surprise me at Fast Lane, but I think, with the Smackdown segments, we’re going to have a good time; how could we not with Roman, Bryan, Edge, Zayn, Owens, Belair, Banks, and Bayzler involved?
I’m also going to say that though I haven’t seen it, I can safely assume whichever segments involved Bayley this week were/are going to be my favorite out of all wrestling programming, given that Bayley is the greatest wrestler in the world.
Vishal’s Stat Corner
After Christian Cage’s debut at Revolution, I was among countless viewers who saw something fascinating in that his last appearance was at WWE’s Royal Rumble. As an entrant, no less! So I decided to dig into this phenomenon, and find out how many Royal Rumble entrants later appeared on AEW-branded programming. The results are… pretty interesting to say the least. Let’s dig in.
There are 35 separate entrants into any Royal Rumble that made their way onto AEW on a Wednesday night. Not all of them were in-ring talent, so let’s separate them that way – it’s sure to be interesting.
Signed AEW performers on Dynamite and/or Dark:
- Arn Anderson: 1 appearance
- Awesome Kong, formerly Kharma: 1 appearance
- Billy Gunn: 7 appearances
- Brodie Lee, formerly Luke Harper: 4 appearances
- Chris Jericho: 11 appearances
- Christian Cage (has been advertised as in-ring): 6 appearances
- Cody Rhodes: 8 appearances
- Cash Wheeler, formerly Dash Wilder: 1 appearance in the Greatest Royal Rumble
- Dax Harwood, formerly Scott Dawson: 1 appearance in the Greatest Royal Rumble
- Dustin Rhodes, formerly Goldust: 12 appearances
- Jake Hager, formerly Jack Swagger: 6 appearances
- Jake Roberts: 7 appearances
- Jon Moxley, formerly Dean Ambrose: 5 appearances
- Matt Hardy: 8 appearances
- Matt Sydal, formerly Evan Bourne: 1 appearance
- Miro, formerly Rusev: 5 appearances
- PAC, formerly Adrian Neville: 1 appearance
- Paul Wight, formerly Big Show: 11 appearances
- TAZ, formerly Tazz: 1 appearance
- Tully Blanchard: 1 appearance
- Shawn Spears, formerly Tye Dillinger: 2 appearances, plus 1 where he was beaten down before entering
Irregular appearances, or currently signed to other companies:
- Doc Gallows, formerly Luke Gallows: 2 appearances
- Erick Redbeard, formerly Erick Rowan: 3 appearances
- Karl Anderson: 2 appearances
- Matt Cardona, formerly Zack Ryder: 4 appearances
- Tommy Dreamer: 2 appearances
Cameo appearances, or minimal presence in the programming
- Bret Hart: 5 appearances
- Bully Ray, formerly Bubba Ray Dudley: 1 appearance
- Diamond Dallas Page: 2 appearances
- Gangrel: 2 appearances
- Greg Valentine: 2 appearances
- Hurricane: 6 appearances
- Lance Storm: 1 appearance
- Raven: 1 appearance
- Virgil: 3 appearances
Some conclusions to be drawn from this: Dustin Rhodes is the AEW signee with the most Royal Rumble appearances at 12, with Jericho and Paul Wight close behind at 11.
Next time we’ll take a look at each Royal Rumble individually, to see if we can find any pattern across the years. Who knows what we’ll find?
Steal Their Look, by Mikey Zee
Hello everyone, and welcome to this inaugural edition of Steal Their Look, where we look at and review particularly, uh, vibrant fits in the world of wrestling and try to match them to their real-life counterparts. Today’s subject is one Kenny Omega, from this week’s AEW Dynamite (3/10/21).
Shortly after acquiring the AEW World Heavyweight Championship title and new manager Don Callis, Kenny has experienced a level up in his fashion sense as well.
Well, maybe “level up” is being generous.
Regardless, if you want to look like an AEW World Champion who is secretly a sad sack full of bugs and who engages in underhanded tactics to take and keep the title, I’ve got your back.
This Week’s Look:
Timepiece: Raymond Weil Women’s Maestro Diamond Leather Watch in Purple – $2,750
(near exact match, almost definitely a Raymond Weil)
Shirt: Selected Homme Slim Fit Allover Print Shirt – $85
Pants: J Brand Tyler Seriously Soft Slim Fit Jeans – $198
Shoes: Fiesso by Aurelio Garcia Black Metallic Floral Multicolor Pattern Slip On Loafer – $149
(exact match)
Sunglasses: Fossil Trace Aviator Sunglasses – $75
Pretty sure the exact match is knockoff Ray-Ban x Ferrari aviators but I am sure as shit not linking to the site I found them on.
Review:
Now while I know I do not, in fact, “have to give it to him,” I do appreciate that Omega’s outfit here has a certain unity of colorways. The purples, reds, and yellows are carried throughout the whole look, and while I’m not normally a fan of patterns with patterns unless done very tastefully, I think there’s enough visual space between the shirt and the shoes to make it work in theory.
However.
A luxury watch with a purple band, set with diamonds and mother of pearl set in the watchface? Really, Kenny???
Also, merely wearing things that have the same colors does not equal matching. I’m begging someone PLEASE steal Kenny’s look, if only so we can go back to the red boots and patch jeans of yesteryear. Or at the very least, please teach him how colors work.
3/5 stars. ✨✨✨
Charlie Davis is the world’s premier Shatterstarologist, writer and co-host of The Match Club.
Mikey is a writer, graphic artist, and tabletop roleplaying designer based out of Columbus, Ohio. In his free time, he watches wrestling and indulges in horror media. Find him on Twitter @quantumdotdot.
Robert Secundus is an amateur-angelologist-for-hire.
Thomas Cummins
Vishal Gullapalli is highly opinionated and reads way too much.
