Dynamite is celebrating its one year anniversary of being on the air. AEW has been a breath of fresh air to the wrestling world and has delivered a lot of quality wrestling and entertainment during that time. It's not all sunshine and rainbows on the show though. Even without the pandemic messing things up there have been issues with AEW's booking in certain areas. The anniversary show is packed with every champion defending their title. I'm going to do a quick review of the anniversary show then do an overview of the first year of Dynamite.
Best Friends vs. FTR
Some back and forth in the beginning of the match and then Trent gets beat up by FTR for a bit as that's what he's best at. Trent hits Wheeler with a big clothesline, but Wheeler gets a tag and Harwood cuts Trent off before he can get the tag then gets him on the top rope and hits a huge avalanche belly to back suplex. Wheeler tags in for a two count then goes for a splash and Trent gets his knees up for a hot tag to Chuck. Chuck clears the ring then hits a big somersault plancha over the top onto FTR. Tully Blanchard interferes and FTR tries to get the advantage, but Trent comes in and makes a save for Chuck then they hit the Soul Food half and half suplex combo for a two count. Harwood takes Chuck off the apron and they double team Trent with an assisted powerbomb for two. Best Friends hit the Strong Zero and Wheeler barely breaks up the count at two for the save. Wheeler hits Chuck with a sick brainbuster on the outside and Trent hits a diving dropkick through the ropes sending Wheeler to the outside. Harwood ends up in front of an arcade cabinet and Trent charges and breaks through it. Wheeler carries Trent into the ring and Trent counters a shatter machine with a DDT. Rick Knox dodges out of the way and doesn't see Wheeler hit Chuck with the belt and Harwood rolls him up for a three count. Very good match between these two teams. I haven't been a fan of FTR in AEW so far, but they're definitely starting to fit in more and work with all the other teams better. The finishing segments were a little rough with some weird timing, but the idea of it was good. Definitely a great way to start the show. 9/10
Miro and Sabian beat up Best Friends after the match for breaking the arcade cabinet.
Miro & Sabian vs. Sean Maluta & Lee Johnson
Miro is just beating the shit out of both men. Sabian hits a splash then Miro locks in a camel clutch to get the submission victory. It's a whatever squash. 0/10
Miro and Sabian complain about Best Friends breaking the arcade cabinet and call them out. Then we cut to Archer beating up Moxley in the back.
After the commercial break MJF is out to make an announcement and brings out the Inner Circle.
We then cut to Britt Baker getting a massage alongside Schiavone who is interviewing her. We get her hyping up her comeback match and mocking Schiavone.
Cody Rhodes vs. Orange Cassidy
Cody knocks Cassidy's glasses off and Cassidy goes into the match pretty seriously with a tight lockup. Cody uses some amateur wrestling to take the advantage, but Cassidy uses some lucha rollups to get some close two falls. Cody hits a big front suplex and starts to bully Cassidy as we go to PiP. Cody hits a big hiptoss that sends Cassidy over the ropes to the outside. Cody gets mad at Cassidy's lazy kicks and shoves him back and gives Cassidy enough space to hit a real superkick that sends him to the outside. Cassidy hits a suicide dive that sends Cody near the Dark Order section of ringside and Silver steals the TNT title to hit Cody, but Cassidy stops him and the Dark Order get thrown out. Back in the ring Cody rolls through a crossbody block then sets Cassidy up for a cross rhodes, but he blocks it with a roll up. Cody hits a low dropkick then drags Cassidy to the corner and slams his leg against the guardrail. Cody hits a huge reverse suplex off the top and covers for two. Cassidy counters a ringpost figure four then climbs up to the top and hits a diving DDT for two. Cassidy hits a brutal Michinoku driver for a two count. Cassidy's knee gives out as he tries to lift Cody up and Cody grabs the leg and locks in a figure four. Cassidy rolls enough times to get to the ropes and break the hold. Cassidy lifts Cody up and hits an air raid crash on the apron. They get back in the ring and fight back and forth and Cassidy hits a bunch of his big moves, but can't get a pinfall before the time limit expires. A good match between the two men. I kind of started to lose interest when they showed Darby was getting a title shot at Full Gear and kept cutting to him in the stands because he has unfinished business with Cody and I figured Cody wouldn't lose the belt. Being the big powerhouse taking it to the smaller indy guys isn't really a style that suits Cody a lot, but it was okay here. Although it was also them seeming to go back to heel Cody that was teased in the initial title run then kind of went away when he started feuding with Brodie. 7/10
Moxley attacks Archer backstage to get revenge and let us know he's still good to go for the title match.
Matt Hardy is interviewed by Schiavone and we see Sammy Gueverra burning some pictures of Matt so that feud is still going on.
Schiavone is in the ring with Bryce and Paul Turner and a spinning bucket to determine the four teams in #1 contender match next week. Private Party, Silver & Reynolds, Butcher & The Blade, and The Young Bucks are the selections. Unsurprisingly all four teams start fighting.
Hikaru Shida vs. Big Swole
Match started with some technical wrestling between both women that looked really good. We get the action to spill to the outside and Swole gets a short advantage shoving Shida into the cameraman, but she quickly turns the tables and drops Swole over the guardrail and hits a jumping knee off the chair to Swole. Shida suplexes her over the guardrail to the floor then the action gets back into the ring. Swole misses a sunset flip powerbomb but shoves Shida off the top to the ramp and hits an ace crusher off the bottom rope then rolls Shida into the ring and hits another one for a two count. Shida hits a sloppy straight jacket german suplex then hits a falcon arrow and Swole kicks out at two. Shida hits some strikes then Swole blocks and hits a ripcord elbow for two. Shida ducks out of a second attempt and hits a big knee then a couple other sliding knees to get the pinfall. These two were a bit sloppy at times and the intensity was there, but not the execution. It was also noticeably shorter than the other title matches tonight, weird. 5/10
Jon Moxley vs. Lance Archer
Mox hits a quick DDT for two, but Archer is fired up and takes Mox to the outside. Mox fights free and rolls into the ring to hit a suicide dive. A bunch of brawling outside they go back inside and Mox hits a bunch of strikes and Archer shrugs it off to hit a Pounce that sends Mox to the outside. Archer sets up a pair of tables on the outside. Archer dominates for a while with some hard strikes before Moxley makes some space and hits a release german suplex then gets a chair and clobbers Archer. He sets up two chairs facing each other and Archer chokeslams him through the chairs. Archer takes Mox to the apron and sets up for a move, but Mox hits a low blow then hits a double arm DDT off the apron through the tables. Mox gets him inside and hits a paradigm shift for two. Archer escapes the bully choke and hits a DDT of his own for two. Archer gets Mox in the corner and hits the Blackout for a two count and Mox rolls him up on the pin for three. I hate this finish and AEW has used it a bunch of times already. I don't really love this kind of slugfest match and have never been much of an Archer fan. If you're going to do a no-dq brawl I need more reason for it to be no-dq than a few chair spots. 6/10
After the match Archer attacks Moxley, but Kingston has the Lucha Bros come in and make the save and starts cutting a promo about how great Moxley is. Then of course hits a backfist to the future and starts choking Moxley out. Lucha Bros stop the refs from coming into the ring so Kingston can choke him out.
The show started awesome and trended downward from there. I'm always going to be sad when Best Friends and Orange Cassidy aren't getting wins though. Sadly the women's title match was pretty sloppy and the main event was more of a slugfest than I like. A bunch of the segments throughout the show seemed pointless and could have been used to give future storylines some juice. A Nyla promo or some of the competitors in the number 1 contender tournament would have been a good idea.
The Elite are the bookers of the promotion and have made themselves important factors in the company. As you would expect from the people who were the biggest names in the indies and in the company when they started the promotion. Kenny Omega coming in as the biggest deal in wrestling has kept a pretty low profile beside being the tag champ for a good chunk of that first year. He's had some great matches in the company and as the tag team relationship with Hangman started to fall apart the fact that he was AAA Mega Champion started to get highlighted more and he had a couple of defenses of that title on Dynamite. Hopefully he starts to become more of a factor in the singles scene as he's one of the best wrestlers going today.
Obviously Hangman Page has had a similar role as Omega as the other half of the tag champs, but his status as an up and comer has really been helped by the tag run and has led to some good singles pushes for him and has also let him showcase his charisma outside of the wrestling ring with his angles. Like Omega, I'm hopeful he'll be moving further up the card in the singles run.
The Young Bucks have been really low key in most of their work in the company. They're always there and having good matches, but haven't been the focus of much except the feud with the Inner Circle. Currently they're feud with FTR has seen them attack somebody backstage and throw some money at AEW officials to pay their fine. Like Omega they also haven't had as much focus and chance to have great matches as I'd expect although their feud with FTR has been stretched out as it seems they're hoping to have fans for their inevitable confrontation. The biggest downside of that to me is the effect it has had on the Best Friends and their ability to win the belts. Best Friends have had big feuds, but they're not the biggest and they don't seem to have much chance of winning the belts as that's a minor issue in the bigger picture feud.
Cody Rhodes has had a lot of attention with big feuds and has been very over during his promos. I'm not a huge fan of Cody, but I can't deny that his work on the mic is very good and his work in the ring is good, but not something I'm a huge fan of. His style is largely like the WWE's that he left. Which isn't surprising, because he never changed much while working the indies or NJPW. He has wisely not put himself in a main event position and that is smart, and the crowd reactions to him justify his heavy usage. His big matches generally live up to the hype as he knows how to utilize bleeding and theatrics to make the matches work.
Outside of the Elite there are some talent I love that aren't being utilized as much as I'd like that I'll get to later, but the biggest problem with the promotion so far is the way they woman's division is booked. This obviously isn't a new observation about the company, but it needs to be stated. The women's roster started pretty strong, but a lot of the top tier talent are now stuck in Japan because of the pandemic and have left the company pretty devastated. However that's not a great excuse when there is a ton of great talent on the indies they can bring in and have started to do now. Hikaru Shida is one of the my favorite talents out there so I was excited when she won the belt, but her run as champion has been pretty uninspired despite having some really good title defenses against Penelope Ford and Thunder Rosa that kind of came out of nowhere. The matches have been good, but many of the storylines leading up to them have been lackluster and there only seems to be one feud focused on at a time for the the division. Nobody really has much experience running a promotion and a lot of the other divisions have been booked pretty half heartedly, but have a bigger roster that they have managed to make work with longer match times and better talent. WWE has done a great job signing the best talent they can find and Impact has an strong Women's division as well. AEW will have to spend a lot of time building up younger talent and they haven't really managed to do that yet.
Undeniably my biggest disappointment with AEW's booking is that the Lucha Bros are just a random midcard team. Part of that does seem to be due to the pandemic as they were set to team up with PAC and probably be a bigger factor, but they have always been on the periphery and haven't seemed to come back from that at all. They are two of the best workers with Pentagon being an amazing brawler and Fenix is probably one of the best all around wrestlers and the preeminent high flyer and rope worker right now. I'd have built the company around them so pretty much anything AEW did was going to disappoint me with them.
As I previously mentioned the Best Friends seem to be in a holding pattern along with Orange Cassidy. The Best Friends have been built up as big deals in the tag division and gotten their title shots only to be shunted aside for other feuds. First with FTR showing up in the company and now with the inevitable Young Bucks vs. FTR feud over the titles taking precedence. Their popularity has continued to grow and don't get their title run. It's a similar move to WWE where you have a very over group of wrestlers and you know you can just keep them near the top and the crowd will always pop for them whether they win the belts or not. It will work for awhile until they've just never won anything for long enough and the crowd gets embittered by it.
The World Championship has been booked really well. Jericho was a good idea as a first champion since people know who he is and Moxley as the second champ is an even better choice as he has been on fire in the ring and on the mic since leaving WWE. I don't always love his challengers and the matches they produce, but a lot of good stuff has come from the run so far, especially the recent hm Moxley since he didn't give up title match from Moxley since he didn't give up title match from Moxley since he didn't give up.
MJF is getting a push and I don't care for MJF so that sucks. I guess a lot of people really enjoy him so I don't really have a problem with it, but I just like to point out that I don't like MJF.
They do seem to like bringing in ex-WWE guys in too much and aren't really pushing the younger indy wrestlers they've signed enough. Kind of a weird complaint after talking about them pushing MJF, but it is what it is. Joey Janela, Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus, and Sonny Kiss have gotten stand out matches, but no real push despite a bunch of fan support. Cody's TNT title defenses against random indy people was cool as well as showcasing the less pushed talent on the show.
AEW is a good promotion and their shows have a lot of good wrestling on them and have produced some great matches in its first year. Maybe my expectations were too high, or were just different from what AEW was going to deliver. It's my second favorite promotion behind NJPW right now so it's in a good place, but it hasn't really gone the way I'd hoped and hasn't hit the heights I wanted just yet, but there is plenty of run left in AEW to improve.
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