Casual Friday with some Dynamite Details, 8/12/2022

Welcome to Casual Friday, my friends! One might say, “Hey Oso you just wrote a thing on Wednesday morning, why would we need a recap just a day later?” I would reply, because it’s Friday and if I don’t write something I’ll lose my many, many readers. Besides, we still have plenty we can chat about!

This week’s AEW Dynamite “Quake by the Lake” was all over the place! 

The show opened with a brutal Coffin Match between Darby Allin and Brody King of the House of Black. Earlier this week, I learned that Allin and King are actually close in real life, which is kinda disturbing if you look at what these guys are willing to do to each other. A skateboard covered in tacks opened Brody up early and bigly (really, spellcheck? Bigly?) and he wore the crimson mask throughout the match. It was a little hard to watch, but it was also cool as hell. Darby is so willing to get thrown around like a young Rey Misterio, and his offense is just adrenaline in human form. Sting made a great surprise appearance after the House of Black arrived to assist King, leading to a standoff between the Stinger and Malakai Black. The finish was cool as well, a nice callback to Brody’s win over Allin at the recent battle royale. Allin grabbed the chain King wears around his neck and basically hung him with it over the coffin before gently dropping him inside for the win. 

Great stuff, four stars!

The Tornado Tag Match between Andrade el Idolo and RUSH of La Faccion Ingobernable and the Lucha Bros. followed, and man, I have thoughts. I really wanted to like it, and for the most part it was a blast! Fenix flew around, Penta looked stiff in his offense, Andrade was good, and RUSH was really big - like, I hadn’t noticed what a large man he is! My issue is, even with the fun match around it, they went back to the story of RUSH ripping off Penta’s mask again, and it’s just not the best story because it’s not much of a story at all. Excalibur can push the importance and legacy of a mask being stolen at the beginning of every lucha match there is and it still won’t matter if the whole story being told is “hey I’ma take your mask.” Still, there was a lot more to like than to complain about, so who am I to judge? Three stars!

The Young Bucks asked old frenemy Hangman Page to join them in the upcoming Trios tournament, but he turned them down. Hangman said he’s got to stay loyal to the Dark Order, who stood by him while things were at their worst. He accepted Matt’s apology, though, and suggested they team up with someone who has never turned their back on him. Kenny Omega seems the logical choice, if he’s up for it, but who’s to say?

The middle of the show was populated by a trio of not-quite-squashes and a lot of promo work.. Luchasaurus defeated a poor, nice man whose name I didn’t catch in like 30 seconds. So, okay, one full-on squash. It did serve to set up Jungle Boy, who was doing commentary on the match. Christian Cage appeared on the big screen to taunt the young Boy of the Jungle, leading to Jurassic Express running to the back to attack Cage. Jungle Boy was stopped by security, Luchasaurus headbutted official Pat Buck, and we moved on. 

Miro did a promo where he decided to accept the House of Black as his personal savior (more or less), Powerhouse Hobbs accepted the help of The Factory, Jay Lethal and pals challenged Wardlow, who got an assist from FTR to chase the bad guys off, and the Jericho Appreciation Society made some threats.

A quick match where Ricky Starks picked up a win over former tag team partner Aaron Solo and ran away from a post match assault. Following that, a pep talk for the Ass Boys was interrupted by charming Stokely Hathaway offering his services to the Gunn boys.

 Jade Cargill defeated newcomer Madison Rayne, who was brought in as a coach for the women’s division after a long career on the independent circuit and in Impact Wrestling. She looked good in defeat, Jade got a win over a recognizable name, and Athena got an attack in after the match to maybe set up a program for All Out. 

We had Jon Moxley defend his interim title against “Lionheart” Chris Jericho in our main event, and it was really good! Jericho’s “Lionheart” persona, mostly from his days in Japan but also used in his time in WCW, was really positioned well here. Jericho did a great job making himself look a bit younger and more toned, and his moveset and focus on wrestling did a lot to sell the character. Moxley handled Jericho with a little more finesse than his usual brawling style allows for, and that ended up getting him the victory.

A post match attack by the Jericho Appreciation Society led to a save by Moxley’s Blackpool Combat Club mates, although the JAS still had the numbers advantage. Cue some static, “Cult of Personality”, a HUGE pop from the crowd, and the return of one C.M. Punk! Punk chased the kids off and Mox did a great job of no-selling Punk’s return, remaining seated in a corner of the ring and waving off the BCC. A nose to nose meeting in the middle of the ring led to Mox flipping Punk off and leaving the ring with his interim championship belt. 

There we are, all caught up in time for Rampage!

Some WWE musings

While nothing really happened between our last chat and today in the world of WWE, there have been so many developments overall that deserve mentioning. John “Johnny Ace” Laurinitis has been ousted from his position as head of talent relations. He’s most recently known for being the guy on whose desk the former Women’s Tag Team Champs laid their belts and walked out of the company, but he’s so much more! He’s also a former wrestler, and an on-screen authority figure as recently as a few years ago. He’s also allegedly a beneficiary of some of Vince McMahon’s hush money payouts, but I don’t want my little blog to get sued into oblivion so maybe read about that elsewhere if it interests you.

We should be getting a little more of Carrion Cross and Scarlett on tonight’s SmackDown after last weeks’ surprise return and attack on Drew McIntyre. We only had the one big surprise return on the Friday show after getting Bayley, IYO SKY, and Dakota Kai on Raw. Maybe there are some more familiar faces coming back? WHO’S TO SAY?

I proposed a sort of “primer” to help folks who don’t really know wrestling but know me (and thank you for your support!) and I’ll work on that over the weekend. I think I’ll release it as a series, and our first installment should probably introduce you to some of the players on the weekly shows. Since Raw will be the first big show after it goes up (assuming the whole weekend goes super smooth) we can start there. If you don’t know your KOs from your RKOs, or your Riddles from your Theorys, that should be a fine place to start. I didn’t plan on doing a full on Dynamite recap but it was a pretty stacked show, and even the promos all seemed like they were important enough to at least touch on. 

And I think that’s it for now! I’ll, of course, update you via Twitter and Facebook once I know when I post anything new to the blog or anywhere else. Also, follow my Twitter for updates as I continue my quest to watch #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days! Have a good one!