obsessed with Shawn Michaels 💔 ~ commenting 90s wrestling like it's happening today ~ but also current wwe & aew || main (multifandom and drawings): @rory221B
What if Dominik handing Grande the metal plate was a way to test him?
Hear me out ⤵⤵⤵
Before the match, Dom and Grande had a little talk, and it looked like Grande was questioning Dom's loyalty, asking him if he would have his back, but I think the questioning went both way, in fact Dom wanted to know if he and Ludwig were on the same page.
But Grande went into the match trusting Dominik in the end (maybe for old time's sake or maybe he genuinely just wanted to believe that a guy who calls himself El Sucio de los Sucios wouldn't act like a rat for whatever reason), whereas it was Dominik who didn't fully trust Grande at this point.
Dominik and Grande hadn't been interacting for a while before the storyline of Los Perros Del Mal. The very last time was on May 11th when Dominik was defending his AAA title on RAW against OG Americano, and Grande came to help Dominik retaining, but mostly he was preventing OG from winning.
Before that, the real last interaction was during the celebration for Grande after he won Rey de Reyes on April 4th, when Dominik accused Grande of wanting to go against him for his title, he accused him of having changed and not being El Grande Americano he knew anymore.
Mind you, at this point in the story, Dominik had already lost his Intercontinental championship against Penta on March 2nd, and he fully blamed Finn Balor for that loss. Finn, a man whom Dominik called his family, and who promised to have his back, but the moment Dom needed his help, he chose to do "the right thing", wanting to teach him a lesson on winning on his own.
And El Grande Americano?
After he won Rey de Reyes he dove full into his feud with Original El Grande Americano, establishing himself as maybe the biggest babyface in the company (we're talking AAA and not the weird alignment switch WWE decided to have them doing on RAW).
I can't remember the last time Grande loaded his mask with a metal plate to win. He surely did during his last tag team match with Dominik against Rey Mysterio and Rey Phoenix at Guerra de Titanes, on December 20th 2025, and maybe he still did it during the Rey de Reyes tournament? I honestly don't remember. (edit: yes, he used it during the tournament)
But now that he emerged victorious against the heel OG Americano, he can't go back to the heelish tactics he used before (the gimmick was born as heel from the start on RAW, Grande took it from there and slowly transformed it into a hero).
He has to do the right thing, right?
And Dominik, oh, he's so tired of people doing the right thing! Finn wanting to do the right thing costed him his IC title!
So, now that he and Grande are back together, he needs to be sure that they are on the same page. That Los Gringos Locos 2.0 are actually back. He needs to be sure that Grande will choose him over some morality bullshit.
Hence the offering.
Maybe joining El Ojo was a backup plan for Dominik. Maybe he wanted to trust his former friend. All Grande needed to do was take the fucking plate and load his mask! Because, if he did, they would have won the match! And what would have been the point of betraying him after?
But Grande didn't take the plate. He didn't want to cheat. He wanted to do the right thing.
Great, another person who loves to stand on the moral high ground and do the right thing. Dominik clearly can't trust him. They are not on the same page anymore. Grande has, in fact, changed, just like Dominik accused him months earlier.
And Dom can't let it happen again, like it happened with Finn. So he had to turn on Grande before Grande eventually and inevitably would turn on him.
And I'm not saying that Dominik was happy that Grande would go against him for his title, especially after losing the IC title I think he is clinging to the AAA title even harder. But maybe we wouldn't have had the betrayal now. Maybe Dominik would have lied, cheated and stole during the match at Triplemania, maybe not even as a betrayal but just because, well, that's how he wins matches, he takes after his dad. Or maybe he would have, but out of necessity, not "just because".
Am I hallucinating and reading things into situations that are not that deep? Yes, probably, but whatever, I am filling in the blanks, sometimes a "I'm the bad guy so I do bad things" doesn't work well for me and I need to dig into characters a little more, and those little details I saw here and there had me connect the dots this way.
It's a shame that Dominik is a slimy little rat (/affectionate) because I actually think he and Grande have a great chemistry in the ring as tag team partners 😔🥀
This is gonna be a rant about Verano de Escándalo, I'm putting it under the cut because it's a long ass post of just me complaining.
I'm not against the idea of Dominik betraying El Grande Americano (even though I really like them together), also because they heavily hinted at it, and not only since Dominik returned on AAA two weeks ago, but also considering their history up until now. They never really went against each other, but they weren't exactly on good terms either, and it was all Dominik's doing, because Grande has always being friendly with him, at least until Dominik antagonized him after he won Rey de Reyes.
So, the betrayal was kinda obvious.
But, why now?
Dominik now has allied with Omos and Dorian, and that already is a weird choice to begin with since he won the title from Vikingo and then had a rematch against him, and Omos almost cost him his victory. Did Omos and Dorian turn on Vikingo? Has Dom allied with Vikingo too? We don't know. But, ok, let's just pretend that it makes sense.
What benefit does Dominik get from it, heading now into Triplemania against Grande?
It was Dominik who offered Grande his help against Los Perros, it was Dominik who challenged them to a match with his former tag team partner. Betraying Grande now doesn't do him good, story wise.
I assume he knows Grande a little bit by now, since they teamed up for at least three matches (including this one), so he should know that this behaviour will only rile Grande up, sending him to Triplemania with a fighting fire that will be hard for Dominik to beat.
Did Dominik want to have Grande beaten up before his own match with him? Great! Then all he had to do was... Do nothing! Let things go as they were already going! Los Perros had already targeted Grande, they had already attacked him, so Dominik could have just waited for Los Perros to do the dirty work for him.
Why putting himself in it? What did he gain from it?
Now Grande knows that Dom is a rat and he will arrive twice as prepared at Triplemania for their match!
So, story wise, I don't understand Dominik's plan.
Here's how I imagined it would go, instead.
Considering that Dom will have inevitably betrayed Grande in the end, I would have waited for the betrayal to happen during their match ar Triplemania.
Hear me out.
Dom sees Los Perros are targeting Grande and sees an opening to get back to him (this, if you don't consider that he may have sent Los Perros himself to set his trap).
He offers him his help, he promises him that he'll have his back, he reunites Los Gringos Locos 2.0 for a match against Los Perros. Grande is wary, rightfully so, we already saw him not completely trusting Dominik right before their match (unfortunately he is a kind soul and ultimately he trusted him), so Dominik has to make him trust him, he has to back up his words. He fights alongside Grande, he take bumps for him, he put his body on the line for him, he bleeds for him, he says that nobody will lay a finger on his hermano until he'll have air in his lungs and blood in his vessels. He works for a full month only to gain Grande's trust up until Triplemania.
And Grande will completely trust him in the end, why shouldn't him, Dominik had shown him that he can count on him. That their relationship is based on mutual respect, and it's with that mutual respect that they'll head together towards their match at Triplemania.
And then, just then, Dominik can lie, cheat and steal his way to the victory, pulling out his worst dirtiest tricks to retain the title.
Not to mention, Dom has never been a full heel on AAA, he's always been more of a face with heelish tendencies, if that's a thing, so they could have also played a bit with it, like "will he will he not", maybe not letting us understand his intentions until it was too late.
Maybe, his new allies, whoever they could have been (I still wanted Los Perros instead of Omos and Dorian but, eh) arrive in the middle of their match. Grande and Dom are in the ring, Grande is standing by the ropes closer to the ramp, he thinks both of them are a target and thinks they have to temporally team up in order to send the intruders away and get back to their match, Dominik is behind him, and that's the moment when the betrayal should happen. (a shield chair moment??)
Dominik would have the surprise advantage because Grande was really trusting him and wasn't expecting this, he would have some time before Grande realizes what happened and reacts accordingly, not to mention the emotional distress Grande would find himself in at the moment, and the identities of the allies would be a surprise too, so Grande is unprepared to face whoever will come to help Dominik because he didn't know any of it, he couldn't even imagine something like that would happen, he trusted the little rat!
Now, instead, Grande has the time to elaborate the negative emotions after the betrayal (he looked so broken when he watched Dom walking away 🥲), he knows who Dom's allies are and can prepare accordingly, and, least but not last, he is also very pissed off. And he's somebody you really don't wanna piss off.
So. Again. What was the point? Story wise.
Because, yes, I know, company wise, they need to built their feud starting from now heading into Triplemania. Ok.
But.
I want things to make sense, I don't care about feuds if they don't align well with the story.
The Grande vs Grande feud was great because it came out naturally, it didn't feel rushed or forced, and that's why it lead to a great match.
WWE now took the habit of having to absolutely build feuds before big events even if they don't make sense or feel unnatural and rushed. (sounds familiar?)
I love a good feud, but not at the expense of the continuity of the story.
And hey, I trust both Dominik and Grande as workers, I just know they're gonna pull off something incredible out of this, both on the road to Triplemania and on the match itself. (At least Dom has a serious match on an upcoming PPV)
I just wanted things to go differently, maybe not necessarily as I said, but at least in a way that made more sense.
Sure, Dom betraying Grande and then aligning himself with El Ojo may create a nice viral moment for their nice little social media accounts, but I'm sick of the fact that going viral to sell tickets is the only thing that dictates the direction the stories now take.
And I also agree with people that say that Dom is handled waaay better on AAA than on RAW, as a character, because he is, I've always said it. But being cool alone isn't enough to be considered a well written character, I need his actions to make sense, because they have always had, at least up until now. (I'm talking about AAA. Dom on RAW is a different story.)
Of course I'm gonna enjoy their heated interactions from now until Triplemania, but the whole thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I don't even understand how this wrestling thing should work after all, all I know is that I, as a viewer, didn't really like what I saw because it didn't click with me.
