All Elite Wrestling did the best they could to try and explain away the dud that marred the end of their pay-per-view Exploding Barbed-Wire Death Match on their weekly TV show last night, getting their two most charismatic wrestlers to riff on the moment early in the show and building a solid segment later on in which Kenny Omega and his cronies mocked anyone who was scared of the supposed "bomb" that was hyped to explode.
But even as they tried to slip past this embarrassing screw-up, AEW was hit with yet another. Though this one was nowhere near as debilitating as the enormous disappointment that served as a finale to Revolution, it was still pretty freaking hilarious, once you could get past the headache it caused.
Somehow, for a period of about 10 or 15 minutes during Wednesday Night Dynamite, AEW's TNT broadcast was invaded by what was apparently the in-arena audio from Spurs-Mavs on NBA TV, which is also operated by Turner. This bizarre mix-up meant that, while you could still strain to hear the announcers and the live sounds from Dynamite in Jacksonville, they were essentially overwhelmed by an excited PA announcer in Texas and all the musical bells and whistles that accompany the NBA fan experience.
The glitch—which, I'm just mind-blown that this kind of thing can even happen—didn't bleed into any other segments of the show, but it did completely torpedo a match between the newly signed Ethan Page and the low-card Lee Johnson. Page, a former tag team champ in Impact Wrestling, made his surprise debut on Sunday but saw his first opportunity to speak on AEW TV ruined by the build-up to opening tip.
The match went into a commercial break, which was not overrun by shouts of "DE-FENSE!" But again, when Dynamite returned, the problem had still not been fixed. An unsuspecting Johnson and Page were forced to build to the climax of their match while Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's classic hit, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," fought to drown them out. This is, to me, where the technical difficulties made the turn from aggravating to hysterical, though thankfully they relented once the match ended and the broadcast switched to a pre-recorded bit.
AEW president and CEO Tony Khan acknowledged the issue on Twitter and said he'd upload the clean version of the Page-Johnson match to YouTube as a make-good. In the meantime, we can all look forward to AEW's next broadcast, during which a pack of feral hogs will likely get loose inside the arena.
