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whatifitscool · 4 years ago

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AEW Dynamite Impressions – Winter is Coming episode 02/12/2020

By Timmy Daytona

With their run of PPVs finished for the year, AEW still busied themselves and heavily promoted their TV special, “Winter is Coming”. Not content to ease their way into the holiday season, the company had several surprises in store throughout the evening. How did it all stack up?

Battle Royale

This was great. It didn’t have the pomp of the usual Casino Battle Royale. This got straight to the point with all combatants ring side and the majority running in as soon as the bell rang.

Given that this was a TV episode, maybe they wanted to streamline the presentation so they could get the audience to the main event ASAP.

But also, the Casino Battle Royales haven’t really hit despite AEW’s best efforts to differentiate them from WWE’s Royal Rumble. Part of that could be because the botch fest of All Out’s Casino Battle Royale is still in recent memory. Our producer once said that WWE have got the timing for the Royal Rumble down to a fine art and it is hard to disagree.

Again, none of the Casino nonsense tonight. Everyone threw themselves into the ring with vigour and storylines were progressed.

In the beginning, Scorpio Sky and Shawn Spears remained outside to stare each other down. Sky would be the one to eliminate Spears but was later hit with the loaded glove, which lead to his own elimination. Their feud continues to simmer. These two should have a great match to settle the score soon.

Silver and Reynolds continued to look impressive. They were especially hilarious in their efforts to get on Hangman’s good side. They have all the enthusiasm of those people at shopping centres trying to convince you to sign up for something. Fitting for a pair of cult promoters.

Despite their elimination, they remained with the rest of the Dark Order at ring side and caught Page when he was drop kicked by Quen, putting him back on the ring apron to allow Page to deliver a Buckshot Lariat on Quen! Fantastic!

Miro and Sabian continued their feud with Orange Cassidy sans Best Friends. Miro threw Orange Cassidy into the ring post at one point, leaving him out of the match until the conclusion. How loud was the simulated impact of his collision?

Miro also snapped and went on a four-man elimination streak, dumping Johnson, Quen, Hardy and Janela in short succession. What a beast! It didn’t end there with Miro withstanding a combined assault from Wardlow, MJF and Sammy Guevara. They also teased what a future match between Wardlow and Miro could look like. AEW, please make that happen soon!

Jungle Boy was the last non-Inner Circle member remaining in the ring. He and Sammy had a beautifully choreographed fight on the ring apron that looked straight out of a 2D fighter. It wasn’t on the level of the bar fight from Stadium Stampede but it was still awesome.

Orange Cassidy would “win” by delivering an Orange Punch on Wardlow and then dumping him outside, leaving him and MJF as the survivors.

Not exactly a definitive ending as it means there’s another match before a winner is truly determined but MJF’s supposedly unintentional elimination of Sammy Guevara was the next storyline nugget regarding the Inner Circle. Will be interesting to see how it affects them moving forward.

This was possibly the best Battle Royale by AEW and a great introduction to kick off the show.

Le Champion Chris Jericho vs Frankie Kazarian

This match highlighted that Frankie Kazarian is a solid worker. It’s nice to see the members of SCU getting singles matches outside of the stable because they all have years of impressive experience behind them.

They’re reliable workers and it’d be great if they get even more of a push as singles stars because they almost always improve the quality of matches they’re in.

The veteran Kazarian was resilient in this match against Jericho. He withstood a lot of offence and dished out a lot of his own. Seeing him use the Walls of Jericho on Le Champion was fun and while he could’ve won, he was understandably stopped by the Judas Effect.

Following the match, Daniels ran out in support of Kazarian but it seemed like an afterthought as the camera didn’t focus on them at all. The biggest story here was the Inner Circle’s miscommunication issues all match while trying to support Jericho. He has since given the group 7 days to prepare for an ultimatum next week.

Despite an ultimatum, it doesn’t look like the Inner Circle would break up. But it could get to a point where Sammy gets fed up with MJF throwing him under the bus and just leaving. Let’s see how this plays out.

Dr Britt Baker vs Legit Leyla Hirsch

Baker’s work on the mic is where she really shines but her in-ring work needs more polish. There was a segment where she rolled Hirsch backwards to deliver a kick to the face. This was agonisingly slow to the point that it was puzzling why Hirsch couldn’t simply have moved out of the way. Baker also attempted a slingblade that looked really sloppy in execution.

There were some really stiff looking strikes from Hirsch that looked convincingly hard hitting. Baker ended this with a smooth transition into the Lockjaw submission move that looked good so that’s positive. Her holds and submissions look good but her striking needs improvement.

Not wasting an opportunity to continue another simmering feud, the conclusion of this match marked the return of Thunder Rosa. Thunder was responsible for Shida’s most competitive-looking match to date in AEW and must remain a regular fixture as she is another incredible talent.

Cody Rhodes and Darby Allin vs Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs

The closing sequence to this was poetry. People should remember this sequence – Cody made a call for Darby to tag, which was done while Cody’s springboard cutter was in motion. Cody hit the cutter and promptly ran out with a crossbody onto Powerhouse Hobbs while Darby delivered a Coffin Drop onto Starks for the 3-count. For an impromptu team, Cody and Darby looked like an experienced pairing.

But most people will be talking about how things played out following the end of the match. After everything devolved into a slug fest and Taz’s team got the upper hand, the lights went out to make way for STING’S ARRIVAL IN AEW! The significance of this was highlighted well by commentary. Back on TNT for the first time since 2001, Sting silently made his way to the ring to stare everyone down. This was a legitimately goosebumps-inducing moment. Simply WOW!

The stare down gave the feeling that he was measuring each of them. And right now, they’ve all been found wanting by The Icon. It’d be great if he joined them as their mentor. He’d certainly be a good foil for Taz as they lead their respective factions in a battle of might vs right.

Taz and his goons have been fed up with not getting what’s supposedly theirs. Who better to tangle with than Sting and the people who want to be the face of TNT? What’d be even more amazing is if this lead to Blood and Guts in the future seeing as Elite vs Inner Circle has mostly concluded since Stadium Stampede.

Taz has a stable of monsters and the Absolute and the ranks on Darby/Cody’s side just need to grow a little more so they could have a Wargames style match to settle this feud. Maybe the mentions of Taz’s son are teasing that he will join Darby/Cody?

Alternatively, this could lead to the introduction of the Trios division that has been talked about for some time. Tony Khan recently mentioned that it has been on the agenda and if it happens, it would most likely be in 2021. Taz’s group, Cody/Darby/?, Death Triangle, Kingston/Butcher/Blade, SCU – the seeds for a Trios division are already there.

Kenny Omega vs Jon Moxley (AEW World Championship match)

Don Callis returned as a guest on commentary for this match. During said commentary, they highlighted that Omega and Moxley’s Lights Out match last year played into Moxley’s hands.

This was going to be Moxley vs the Best Bout Machine and for the majority of the match, it certainly looked like Kenny was treating the audience with a performance on the level of his best work in NJPW. Moxley’s work was nothing to scoff at either as he was smoother than ever here. It wasn’t as intense or as emotionally charged as his match against Kingston at Full Gear but it demonstrated how much more of a versatile player he is, which is what he set out to prove since joining AEW and something that WWE failed to recognise.

In what was an initially slow-moving and evenly paced match, this eventually hit its crescendo and delivered an amazing concluding sequence.

Before that though, there were multiple hard-hitting exchanges lending credibility to the big match feel of the main event, where the most important prize was at stake. Highlights included the chair segment, which looked real in how heavy those open-handed strikes were landing. At one point, Omega landed an incredible V-Trigger to counter Moxley’s tope suicida while he was in flight. There were multiple V-Triggers and Paradigm Shifts. One Paradigm Shift took place outside the ring into a heater.

Looking concerned, Callis came out and had a microphone in his hands that made its way into the ring after Moxley knocked Callis down. Kenny picked up the mic and after hitting Moxley with it, he unleashed 4 consecutive V-Triggers on Moxley before setting up for the One-Winged Angel. He landed it and “earned” the 3-count.

The language here was so appropriate. JR would refer to it as a screw job. Schiavone would call it bullshit. They talked about being jobbed.

Callis’s run looked hilarious as he and Kenny escaped to their getaway vehicle and when questioned by Marvez, he said they could find out more this Tuesday night on Impact Wrestling.

What a mic drop.

Similar to the ending of the tag match that preceded this, most people will be talking about the conclusion of this match but the overall quality of what was on display shone brightly.

Closing Thoughts

Some weeks ago, Tony Khan promised that the balance of power in wrestling would shift. He wasn’t lying. How many more aces does Khan have up his sleeve?

This was simply an incredible episode of TV. From the introduction of Sting, the revelation that he’d signed a multi-year contract to the closing moments of the show with Callis and Omega taking off with AEW’s top prize. AEW are out to show that they are shaking the foundations and the notions of separate establishments in the wrestling industry.

What’s clear is that they chose not to keep its doors closed to other promotions. They’ve done this for some time with NWA wrestlers performing on AEW but now, this has teased the beginning of a collaboration with Impact Wrestling.

Perhaps this will lead the way to more inter-promotion competition to be settled in a Survivor Series style PPV, which would make more sense in the battle for brand supremacy. WWE’s has felt hollow for years so this could shake the foundations even more.

AEW and Impact – Please schedule a match between the Virtuosa Deonna Purrazzo and Shida at some stage as that would be fire.

But what’s clearer than ever is that AEW is a company that is not going to dial it in as the year starts to wind down. They’re going to continue hitting home runs and that includes doing whatever they can to surprise their fans.

To say that they achieved that tonight is an understatement. This has been a stellar year for AEW and tonight’s show was yet another treat for wrestling fans worldwide.

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