Powell’s AEW Dynamite Hit List: Darby Allin vs. Miro for the TNT Championship, The Young Bucks vs. Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian for the AEW Tag Titles, Jon Moxley vs. Yuji Nagata for the IWGP U.S. Championship

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By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

AEW Dynamite Hits

Darby Allin vs. Miro for the TNT Championship: A great main event. Allin was beaten up from being thrown down the steps last week, and then they doubled down by having Miro brutally attack him before the opening bell. So Allin was given two outs for losing and I would argue that his character gained something in defeat despite losing the title by putting up a hell of a fight. Meanwhile, Miro is finally back in the badass heel role that he played so well early in his WWE run. No more Rusev Day, Best Man, or video games. Sure, Rusev Day was catchy and had its moments, but this is the real money version of the Miro character. The only thing I didn’t care for was the needlessly crowded post match scene with Sting, Ethan Page, Scorpio Sky, The Dark Order, Lance Archer, and Jake Roberts all coming out. The image of Rusev holding the TNT Championship would have been a great way to go off the air, and AEW could have saved the Archer confrontation for next week.

Jon Moxley vs. Yuji Nagata for the IWGP U.S. Championship: We now interrupt your regularly scheduled Jon Moxley storyline for this IWGP U.S. Championship match. No complaints, as this turned out to be a highly entertaining match. Nagata can still go and this was even more fun than anticipated. It’s great to see the relationship between AEW and NJPW growing, and I can’t wait to see what will happen once the world gets back to normal.

The Young Bucks vs. Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian for the AEW Tag Titles: A very good match with Daniels bleeding heavily and becoming even more sympathetic as a result. The storyline is that Daniels and Kazarian vowed to split up as a tag team if they lost another match. As such, I’m surprised that they didn’t give them more time coming out of the match, but I wonder if there’s either another storyline twist coming or if they will get a big sendoff to their team and possibly’s Daniels’ in-ring career on next week’s show.

Cody Rhodes promo: A polarizing promo based on some of the online reaction that I’ve read. Ultimately, it worked for me because he did a nice job of bringing up some hot button issues without actually taking sides. The emotion that Rhodes showed while speaking about his daughter really put this over the top. That said it is strange that he’s playing the patriotic card for a feud with an Englishman. I’m surprised that he didn’t save the American Dream monicker for an eventual match with Miro.

Thunder Rosa vs. Jazmin Allure: A basic squash win for Rosa. One can only assume that the idea is to keep Rosa strong so that she can be first in line for a shot at the AEW Women’s Championship coming out of Double or Nothing. My guess is that Britt Baker takes the title at the pay-per-view and then resumes her blood feud with Rosa.

AEW Dynamite Misses

Pac vs. Orange Cassidy for a shot at the AEW World Championship: I didn’t realize that Cassidy was injured while reviewing the show last night. So while the match ended up being understandably underwhelming and therefore in the Miss section, AEW actually deserves a lot of credit for the way they called an audible by having Kenny Omega come out and hit Pac with the title belt to set up the double knockout finish. It’s not ideal to have a champion and his manager be the only people who didn’t see the Triple Threat possibility coming out of the match as I pointed out last night, yet given the circumstances they did a really nice job of getting to the finish they needed.

Chris Jericho returns: AEW went with the big stunt bump to close the Blood and Guts match. And while it was hard to suspend disbelief while watching Jericho land in a heavily padded area, it still felt premature to bring him back for this segment. I also can’t say that the return of the Stadium Stampede match excites me. They did a great job with the cinematic match last year, but it was also at a time when there were no fans in attendance and companies needed to think outside the box more than ever. AEW will be playing to a full house for the first time since the pandemic started at Double or Nothing, so it seems odd to ask those fans to watch the big screen. My biggest concern is that the heated faction feud will take a comedic twist for the football themed match, but obviously we’ll have to see where it goes.

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Readers Comments (11)

  1. Jason. No comment about 2 potentially dangerous situations on the same show?

    Now granted if these were works then A&W successfully worked me. But if Daniels and Orange were both hurt on the same show that really needs to be discussed and addressed, doesn’t it?

    • Not sure on Daniels, but Cassidy was hurt. It happens, just as we saw on Monday’s Raw.

      • Freak injuries are one thing. It can happen anytime (wet mat, tweaking a knee). But either PAC or OC really messed the kick up and PAC should have been quicker on his feet to recognize OC was hurt. (Note these are two of the few AEW wrestlers I really enjoy so I don’t feel like I am being overly or unfairly critical).

        • There’s only so much I feel comfortable saying about things that happen during the course of a match as a non-wrestler. I tend to avoid calling out what seem to be one-time accidents. I’m tougher on crazy bumps (Darby taking the powerbomb on the stage while inside a bodybag comes to mind) or cases of repeat offenders, especially if I hear from peers that they don’t feel safe working with certain people. Or if a company handles an injury poorly (see Matt Hardy’s big bump). To each their own, of course. Call it out. I’m just telling you why I opted not to go there.

  2. 936k viewers. Right where I said they’d drop.

    I think they’ll settle in here, in the 900-950k range, but considering how objectively bad the show is, they might lose another 100k before bottoming out.

    • TheRealThotless May 14, 2021 @ 6:21 am

      Go back to your bridge troll

      • Ask Jason why every week until this one the AEW overnight ratings have been posted on Thursday. Is he trying to figure out what to blame the 154k drop on (no Sleepy Joe, no NFL/NBA/NHL, no NXT on the other channel) and has run out of excuses for them?

        AEW slid right into the place that many of us thought they would, with less than 1 million, and have now put up 4 weeks of really bad wrestling TV in a row. Will next week drop again? Can they get 1 million without hotshotting a bunch of big matches or bringing in a celebrity? Will they drop all the way back down to their 700-750k they were getting with NXT still on Wednesdays? Does AEW have fans outside of their small hardcore base and the dirt sheet writers?

        There are a lot of good questions that real journalists would be asking in the position, and I don’t think you’ll see a single one of them brought up here.

        • Are you sitting down? What I’m about to tell you could be very jarring for you in a Sixth Sense sort of way. You write more than anyone about AEW in this comment section. You clearly never miss an episode of Dynamite. You even listened to a QT Marshall podcast to learn more about what happens behind the scenes in AEW. This may be hard for you to wrap your mind around, but the truth is that you have become everything that you claim to hate. I am sorry to be the one who has to tell you this, but you are an obsessed AEW fanboy.

  3. One of the main and (I say this as an AEW fan) totally justified criticisms of Dynamite is they can never have a big match that isn’t followed by some kind of post-match angle. Both SCU (maybe) retiring and Miro’s big win are acknowledged for about 5 seconds before rushing on to the next thing. Much as I enjoy the show and a lot of the performers, they could really do with someone outside of their bubble on the team as a kind of ‘Quality Assurance’ to put the brakes on this stuff.

    • You should hunt down the interview with QT Marshall on the Wrestling Perspect Podcast.

      He literally says that he’s the one laying out the show every night, but Tony doesn’t always tell him what each segment will be until they’re already at the arena and that they are actually texting while everything is going on as changes are made.

      That’s the issue. They don’t show up for the TV show and tapings with a plan in place, so they get 5-6 segments in a row where they’re doing variations on interference and interruptions and don’t let anything sink in.

      What they need is for one of the veterans they already have signed to be the booker and for Tony to just be the owner of the company and nothing else. They’ve got guys like Arn, Tully, Jake, Malenko, etc. working for them. Turn the reigns over to one of those guys with the others as a committee and then let them run with it for 8-12 months to see what happens.

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