And we are live. Hello, everybody. It is John Pollock here along with Bruce Lorde who is stepping in for waiting and Bruce. We have like

a hundred things to go through on this episode of Dynamite. So thank you for joining me like many Wednesday nights. My head is spinning. So forgive me, but here we are. Thank you for joining me.

You're definitely not the only one. I mean, it's a lot to get through as if, you know, filling in for way wasn't enough of a tall order. And then there's the fact that I'm coming in kind of in like the bathroom break spot like right after a really hot Nate Milton spot on Monday. But I guess that sort of balances out, you know, you had a yet a mediocre show on on Monday that needed to be brought up by Nate. And then, you know, you've got a pretty hot show here that's probably going to be cool down by me. Let's know. No, no, no. I think everyone is looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts on tonight's show.

I will say this. And it's, it's one of the many thoughts I had watching this program is that we have battle of the belts coming up on Saturday night. And the idea is these, you know, quarterly big events in the style of a clash of the champions or a Saturday nights main event.

Bruce, I think it's really hard to get people up for these kinds of specials when tonight was your weekly Dynamite show. Like this was on, great. This was an incredibly deep card. We had tonight.

But it just seems like there's no way that your one hour on Saturday can compare to the lineup you had tonight that this audience is regularly exposed to.

Oh my goodness. I mean, you've got that on the same, at the exact same time as the NJP W show coming after a live rampage the night before, which is going to have a title match.

I think we got two more matches announced for the Saturday, a W show I should clarify. Maybe two thirds of the way through this show. I mean, I remember last time I wrote up the review on post for the last battle of the belts. And I was sort of thinking like, geez, it's a week beforehand. And I only know one match. It's now, you know, three days before that that that card on Saturday. And we've just finally found out what's going to what's going to be on there.

I kind of feel like and we'll probably talk a little bit about the kind of ROH adjacent stuff that was happening here. But until the ROH situation kind of settles in or we get a sense of what's happening there.

There's just going to be a lot of matches, a lot of moving parts and a lot of maybe these kind of somewhat hastily put together cards that AW viewers are going to have to contend with.

Tonight had to have been the record for the X caliber push at the end of the show, because he had three cards to promote. And I counted between matches and announcements that he had to plug 12 things that they had to promote for rampage battle of the belts. And then pretty much a full lineup for next Wednesday on top of it. It was just one thing after the other with an angle involving Thunder Rosa and Naila Rose. At that point, I was just.

My head was spinning and I was just trying to furiously type.

He has his hands full and you know, he still was able to manage that incredible task November to remember pull. But all anybody is going to be talking about. I'm sure is him just, you know, flooding on Kazanina Ray when JR just asked him to translate that live on air. So poor guy, you know, he's.

But no, I mean, I think a show like this really really highlights how valuable a presence that someone like that who can keep all of those things organized.

During a live broadcast while also making those deep historical polls and still pretty much covering the play by play. It's. Yeah, he has his hands full definitely.

So we are going to get into dynamite a packed edition of the show from the UNO Lake Front Arena in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Russell takes today had it at around like 3,500 tickets that were out for the show. And you know, not not the biggest AEW dynamite crowd. But again, like this just continues the streak of some incredible crowds that they have been getting. And this was 3,500 that sounded like triple that. It was just a red hot audience for a significant majority of the show. They were pretty hot for this.

Absolutely, they really, really showed up. I'm glad that you had the number of actual of pre sold tickets because I was kind of wondering if the last minute announcement of or edition of punk and Penta was maybe to sort of, you know, get some last minute walkup tickets being sold.

Yeah, that was as of this afternoon. So I don't know if it may be the number ends up being a little bit higher tonight with a walkup. Certainly, this was a card that I would say if you were on the fence about it, it was a pretty compelling card to want to go and check out.

And that is the match that began things with CM Punk taking on Penta oscuro. And the idea here is that punk is ranked 5th and Penta is 4th. And for those curious, the others ahead of them from 3rd all the way up the 1st are Frankie Kazarian, Sammy Guevara, and then Adam Cole is ranked 1st. So maybe, maybe charting a bit of a path for CM Punk as he is moving towards this title match. But immediately this crowd, they're going back and forth with chance for a pretty long period of time.

So already setting the scene and they get into a chop battle. We get a fry takiyama reference. And then they just go to an AEW chant like this crowd. They were here for a good time. And they got a hell of an opener here.

Penta targets the ankle and knee of punk, which would come into play throughout this. Punk avoided a tope suecita and then hit his own. And we come back. And there's a spot where punk looks to be going for a Frankenstein or off the top.

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