By Chris Vetter, ProWrestling.net Contributor (@chrisvetter73)
Dot Net contributor Chris Vetter attended the AEW Dynamite event on Wednesday, November 29, 2023 in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Target Center and sent the following notes.
Attendance was over 4,000 (WrestleTix had the pre-walkup ticket sales at 4,608). The stands opposite side of the hard camera were fairly full, but they did NOT open the upper deck at all. I had really good seats, one section over from being straight across from the ring.
* The first match started at 6:40. (When I went to the Chicago taping at the end of August, it started right at 6:30, so I was starting to wonder if we were even going to get a pre-TV match.)
1. Colt Cabana and Brandon Cutler defeated Jacoby Watts and “Man Scout” Jake Manning at 5:18. I’ve seen plenty of Jake Manning, who dresses like an adult Boy Scouts leader, and he had his wrestling manual. Watts is tall and shaved bald; from a distance, you might think it was a bald Frankie Kazarian. (Both Watts and Manning were among the five security guards later during the Christian-Adam Copeland segment. Watts was easily the tallest of those five.) Watts had a cowboy hat on, and he did some pre-match mic work, essentially sounding like Brother Love, doing a southern drawl preacher promo, but the babyfaces cut him off.
This match was all comedy with Man Scout running the ropes while reading his book, and the babyfaces just stepped aside and watched him keep going and going. They knocked the book out of his hand, but he pulled out another one. Cabana loudly shouted “flying asshole!” before hitting a buttbump into the corner and that drew some laughs. Cutler hit a clothesline to pin Jacoby, with Cabana piling on.
* We heard briefly from Tony Khan just seconds before we went live.
* We didn’t see the Ric Flair-Sting segment that was shown on television (presumably because we were seeing them both live later). So, ring announcer Justin Roberts was passing time and made (what I truly believe was) a passing remark about a ring crew member named Bob (probably about age 50), and thanked him for his work. Again, I think it was just a killing-time off-the-cuff remark. But the crowd started chanting “Thank you, Bob!” So… seconds later, Bryan Danielson ran to the ring, presumably to thank us for coming. He had just done commentary.
As Danielson jogged down the ramp, the crowd started chanting “you’re not Bob!” Danielson had a quizzical look on his face and asked, “What are you chanting?” He walked to a person in the front row and asked. He rolled into the ring… and I truly believe this was all unscripted, said on the mic, “You are chanting for a member of the RING CREW? Instead of me?” He went into a heel promo, declaring he’s taller than Bob, better than Bob, better looking than Bob, and getting annoyed as the crowd chanted even more for Bob. He stopped the heel promo to thank fans for coming. He left the ring. Justin Roberts waved for Bob to come back into the ring, which he did. Danielson RACED back to the ring and put his arms up, fists curled, ready to fight, but Bob didn’t get in the ring. This was all silly fun, and I doubt any of it was recorded.
* The only other thing I want to add about the live show … I’ve seen more than 100 live shows from WWE to AEW to WCW to indies… and I’ve never heard chops louder than what RUSH hit. And it wasn’t just because “the ring was mic’d.” They rolled to the floor and he hit some loud ones against the guardrail, too.
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