8 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (6 April)
Downs...
3. Show Ploppers
Sammy Guevara and Tay Conti are extremely talented. The former is one of the most explosive, engaging athletes in the business earmarked by the company as a Pillar of its future on merit, while the latter demonstrated more in-ring growth in her first few AEW months than most growing wrestlers muster in years, combining blazing strikes with genuine babyface charm.
Their current act is rotten.
Positioning anybody opposite Dan Lambert and The Men of the Year should be easy. Lambert's character is loathsome. An anti-AEW troll and card-carrying Cult of Cornette member, his antithetical values and vulgar promos theoretically make him impossible to root for, yet Guevara and Conti are coming off even worse.
They brag about exchanging bodily fluids over the TNT Championship and trash cars for the hell of it. Last night, they ran Sammy's cue card gimmick to disastrous effect. "Plop Team," "American Talk Team", and "American Walk Team" were the impossibly lame barbs they came up with for Lambert's MMA stable.
Guevara and Conti's current presentation undermines everything that has ever made them likeable. It is a betrayal of their strengths as performers and must be nipped in the bud now, before lasting damage is done to their popularity.
The crowd reactions are already souring.