-A hot brawl to start the show this week between Team Rated FTR and The Death Riders. It brought energy to the product, which was a nice breath of fresh air. It’s a little against the current Jon Moxley character to duck a challenge like Adam Copeland, but they’ve got a lot of weeks until Revolution, so it’s an understandable way to fill TV minutes.
Shocking!
-Shocker! Mark Davis was the special opponent for Will Ospreay in the opening contest and the new member of The Don Callis Family. This wasn’t a surprise, but it was the absolute right move. Davis has connections with Fletcher and is a fledgling talent on the roster. Putting him with Callis doesn’t change his jobber status, but it’ll make the jobs he does more high profile.
-Some mixed feelings from me on the Kenny Omega promo. I liked that Kenny cut a promo. That’s a positive and he used his time to really sell the match between him and Ospreay against Fletcher and Konosuke Takeshita at Grand Slam. He still has a terribly awkward delivery and presence. Omega is quirky, but he’s got to figure out a way to make the quirkiness stand out without the awkwardness. In five years on national television in the United States, he hasn’t mastered that yet.
-AEW may want Hurt Syndicate to be heels, but they aren’t. That’s a cool group and the audience is ready to cheer them.
A thumbs up return
-The Gunns are back and that adds good depth to the tag team division in AEW. It felt like they had chemistry with the Hurt Business, so a long-term rivalry is on the table for AEW if they want it. A thumbs up segment that helped both teams come across as important.
-Takeshita and Fletcher needed to get a win this week, so Hounds Of Hell had to do the job. Broadly speaking, Hounds of Hell have some upside as a tag team in the company. They’ve got a cool entrance, are away from the darkness that was Malaki Black, and can work. You aren’t going to build the company around them, but they can be more than a team that just gets run over.
Party pooper
-Man, I don’t want to be a party pooper and the attack by Samoa Joe and Hook on The Patriarchy made laugh, but it isn’t good business. Cage is a chicken heel, but his work got a pop — a laugh. For as fun as it was, it undermined everything.
-From MJF vs. Jeff Jarrett to MJF vs. Dustin Rhodes. I’ll give AEW it’s props, the latter is certainly better. Rhodes cut a really passionate promo on MJF and it did a nice job of selling the match for next week. All of this seems to be a holding pattern for MJF ahead of a showdown with Adam Page.
-Speaking of Page, hunting Max Caster was pretty damn funny. Like Christian Cage, though, it was almost too funny and was dangerously close to undercutting the serious nature of Page. Big picture, it’s wild that Page is trending babyface after all that work to make him a heel.
-Toni Storm was damn near perfect wrestling as Mariah May and on commentary, May sold well enough to tell the audience that Storm needling her on stuff is bothering and impacting her. May also did a nice job getting heat by refusing to get in the ring with Storm. They could have used a big angle here — one in which May viciously attacks Storm, but they may be leaving that for next week ahead of the big match at Grand Slam.
Congrats Renee!
-Ok, congrats to you Renee Paquette. There were multiple times that Paquette could have cracked up laughing on tonight’s show and she held it together. Harley Cameron as a ventriloquist was one of them. Hilarious stuff. That said, Cameron can either be The Acclaimed or Swerve Strickland at this point. If she leans too far into the schtick stuff, she’ll burn hot, but then fade like The Acclaimed did. If she can find some depth to her work and her character, she can create a long-lasting gimmick and character that fans will invest in and root for.
-A strong main event between Ricochet and Swerve Strickland that was built well throughout the show. The Ricochet bump on the ring barrier was vicious and the Ricochet win was surprising. There are issues with a star like Strickland losing there, but Ricochet seemed like the priority. If AEW follows up properly, they’ll get some good heat on Ricochet for stealing Jimmy Rave’s old coat from Prince Nana.
What did you think of this week’s episode of AEW Dynamite? Let us know in the comments!
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