Yeah this show has been weak. Two Elite/Dark Order segments make sense, but a Christian match AND a promo? A promo where he is..singing?

On the other hand, Miro is amazing

Leyla Hirsch is green but she has potential. Looking different from everyone else always helps. Bunny otoh is just bad. Again, they have better women on the roster! Use them!

Huh.

Well that happened. 

I will say I was impressed that AEW fucked around and made Tommy End a star though. Kinda took the edge off the closing angle considering the crowd was behind him so much though.

Lmao they chanted the Goodbye song as Cody made his tearful speech. That was so weird. If you just need a hiatus, get beaten down bro, what is all this drama. So happy when Black hit him at the end. 

This was the weakest Dynamite episode since they came back to Wednesday nights. The Elitw Dark Order angle is melodramatic but it is still intriguing and I want to see where it goes. Most other stuff was just a bunch of workers and storylines I don't care about at all. The main event was great and made Malakai look like a million bucks, but that speech was a lot of drama on a show which already had a lot of drama

 

Funny thing is Cody was asked at the press conference thing they did if he would consider going heel again and his answer was basically he's already done that and doesn't see the need to. 

Bro, you've been constantly booed as the guy brought in to be the new evil menace got cheered like crazy.  One week I could see just being the new guy pop, but he's been the clear crowd favorite every time. 

I don't know if this show has been weak as much as its impossible to follow the chaos and violence of the past month.

18 minutes ago, joeg said:

I don't know if this show has been weak as much as its impossible to follow the chaos and violence of the past month.

This is a good point. When you come off a Nick Gage death match the prior week it's hard for anything to not feel like a letdown. 

Also the Cody deal almost made me forget the face off between Kamille and Layla Hirsch looking like Big Show vs Rey Mysterio. 

Sting looks like he is having the time of his life. Good for him

It was definitely more of a down show but that was always coming after the insanity of the last two weeks and it makes sense for them to save stuff when they have so many huge shows coming in the next six weeks. They’re debuting a new Friday show next week, running the United Centre likely with Punk’s debut the week after that, they’ve got a PPV in early September and then just after that their first New York show which is in a packed tennis stadium. A breather show is perfectly fine right now.

Cody running a retirement angle at 36 in his own promotion as the fans are getting sick of him so he can take time off to do TV shit no one is going to watch and can get a pop when he's "dragged out of retirement" in 9-12 months is such a Rhodes move. It will probably be for War Games and he'll find a way to redo the Dusty/Dustin seal it with a hug and a kith promo with some random Nightmare Factory dweeb.

It's weird that this week was seen as a downer, because I watched most of the first half live and enjoyed it more than I've enjoyed anything AEW in nearly a year.

2 hours ago, strobogo said:

Cody running a retirement angle at 36 in his own promotion as the fans are getting sick of him so he can take time off to do TV shit no one is going to watch and can get a pop when he's "dragged out of retirement" in 9-12 months is such a Rhodes move. It will probably be for War Games and he'll find a way to redo the Dusty/Dustin seal it with a hug and a kith promo with some random Nightmare Factory dweeb.

People like to say Cody is the HHH of AEW, and I can get where that idea is coming from, it's kind of crazy to think about all the people he elevated in the short history of the company. He made MJF, made people care about Shawn Spears for the first time probably ever, Brodie Lee, and now Black. You can certainly argue he inherited his daddy's self confidence to be sure, but Reign of Terror it is not. 

7 minutes ago, sek69 said:

People like to say Cody is the HHH of AEW, and I can get where that idea is coming from, it's kind of crazy to think about all the people he elevated in the short history of the company. He made MJF, made people care about Shawn Spears for the first time probably ever, Brodie Lee, and now Black. You can certainly argue he inherited his daddy's self confidence to be sure, but Reign of Terror it is not. 

Yeah, the HHH comparison doesn't make sense to me, Cody consistently gets others over at his own expense. If anything the Bucks are more like HHH. They beat every tag team that AEW brings in and never put anybody over. Even when the Bucks lose, its usually a flukey type of loss that doesn't hurt them and doesn't help the team going over.  

I wonder sometimes if that comes from people on the internet not thinking Cody "deserves" to be an EVP. The Bucks are one of the best teams and had great matches/won titles everywhere they went, and Kenny is Kenny, and here's a guy who was a midcard WWE guy last seen cosplaying his big brother coming in on the same level as those guys. I always got the impression people didn't think Cody should be seen at the level of the other guys and him putting himself there must be a HHH level ego move.

And maybe it was! Still, the guy's put more guys over in AEW's brief history than HHH did in his whole career. 

This is an incredibly hot promotion. Next week I am sure will see some drop because last night was a breather show and I don't think anyone is intrigued by Christian-Omega, but this has a very summer 1996 Nitro feel where they are throwing so many things at the wall and a lot of it is sticking. I really hope they finish the Hangman arc well

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

People like to say Cody is the HHH of AEW, and I can get where that idea is coming from, it's kind of crazy to think about all the people he elevated in the short history of the company. He made MJF, made people care about Shawn Spears for the first time probably ever, Brodie Lee, and now Black. You can certainly argue he inherited his daddy's self confidence to be sure, but Reign of Terror it is not. 

Sure but I wasn't comparing him to HHH at all. There are comparisons to be made, intentionally by Cody, but I was just talking about how that feels like such a Dusty bullshit thing to do to get some sympathy back from the crowds that have grown bored or tired of him.

6 minutes ago, strobogo said:

Sure but I wasn't comparing him to HHH at all. There are comparisons to be made, intentionally by Cody, but I was just talking about how that feels like such a Dusty bullshit thing to do to get some sympathy back from the crowds that have grown bored or tired of him.

I know you weren't, but your post just reminded me of all the people I've seen comparing the two, Every time I see someone say Cody=HHH on Twitter my brain immediately thinks "tell me you're too young to remember Dusty Rhodes booking without telling me you're too young to remember Dusty Rhodes booking". 

Which was why I was surprised to see someone like Bix kind of bite on Cody's retirement tease (there was some kind of statement released before the angle that closed Dynamite), where I could see if it was anyone else making that statement but for someone so clearly following his father's footsteps it seemed pretty obvious what was going on. 

I take umbrage that he's elevated people. Especially dudes like Brodie or Black who did not need elevation and were arguably immediately more popular stars from their debuts than Cody. I don't think he did much for Darby either, as Darby got over on his own just doing Darby things and Cody would pop in to be "taken to the limit" every 6 months and Darby would have to start over from the bottom again. I'd argue that the association with Moxley in the early AEW days did more for Darby than anything involving Cody. Darby just toiled around in the undercard for a whole year before he beat Cody and by that point he was already super over. After the MJF/Cody feud, MJF did damn near nothing for a whole year before getting paired up with Jericho. 

 

Nothing Cody does elevates anyone or anything because he is so completely disconnected from the rest of the show that he feels like he's in his own little pocket universe where nothing matters. 

 

 

Also lol Spears

Cody is seen as a star by the AEW fans (well at least he was at the start, lol), and seeing someone the audience may not have been familiar with hanging with a guy seen as a star helps that person look better. Now if he was doing it WWE booking style, yes, but he did everything possible to raise their profile. 

Also I don't see how anyone could argue he helped Brodie Lee, him being announced as the Exalted One didn't bomb but it wasn't like it set the world on fire. Heard a lot of "lol the Wyatt family guy?" type stuff after all the build up. The feud with Cody established him as as serious threat and not just the head guy of a comedy faction. 

Brodie was a long established guy, especially to the particular AEW audience. However his whole run was just keeping Cody's vanity title warm while he went off too shoot something and then immediately drop it back when Cody returned. I'm not sure where the elevation was in that. 

I popped big for Black hitting Cody with the crutch.  Expected the show to end with the retirement angle and didn't see it coming.  Kind of obvious in hindsight the way they set up the crutch, but it was great

I get the HHH comparison in terms of Cody's self-important vanity booking sucking the air out of shows and making me want to change the channel.  HHH was the king of that.

I continue to maintain that everything started going downhill when he got the tattoo.  If EWR had a "get a horrible tattoo" angle he would have been like -25 overness after he booked that

I give him credit for getting QT kinda over as a heel, I didn't think that was possible.  But his character is so douchey, and he's booking his own shit, so he kinda deserves whatever crap he gets these days

He's also never maintained as a babyface for any sustained period of time for a reason.  Everything will be fine when he ditches whatever this Son of a Son of a Plumber American Nightmare character is.  Hopefully Black is here to kill off that Cody completely and turn him to the dark side

Who on earth has any emotion in any direction towards QT Marshall? I don't want to be too mean about the guy, but it really seems like he was some random indie dude that Dustin met in one of his dark periods and helped him get sober and now he has a job for life.