By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Dynamite Hits
Adam Copeland vs. Minoru Suzuki: A fun battle between two legends who had never crossed paths before. Copeland stated afterward that he’d never been hit so hard in his life and I believe him. This was a big upgrade over watching Copeland have needlessly long open challenge matches with undercard wrestlers on Collision.
Samoa Joe and Hook: A solid follow-up to last week’s hot main event. Hook came off well by admitting defeat and yet getting Joe’s face and making it clear that they will meet again someday. Just when it looked like Joe was going to give the kid some respect, he asked security to remove him from the ring and said he has to go to the back of the line of title contenders.
Hangman Page vs. Penta El Zero Miedo: A Hit for the expected quality match from these two. But Penta being a good wrestler isn’t enough. We’ve seen him lose so many times that beating him doesn’t mean what it should.
Swerve Strickland vs. Jeff Hardy: A soft Hit. Jeff has lost a step and it created some rough moments, but the fans still love the guy. Hardy could use some singles wins so that it packs more of a punch when he loses.
AEW Dynamite Misses
Overall Show: This is the first time that I recall feeling bored throughout the majority of an episode of Dynamite. The show consisted of mostly predictable matches without much in the way of storyline developments. I hope the return of the rankings isn’t going to lead to a bunch of predictable matches so that some wrestlers can pad their numbers to justify getting title shots.
Billy Gunn and The Acclaimed vs. Brian Cage, Toa Liona, and Bishop Kaun for the AEW Trios Titles: The teams put together a good match. I just don’t care about the AEW Trios Titles or the ROH Six-Man Tag Team Titles. I continue to hope that the Bang Bang Scissor Gang alliance is temporary and will lead to the two teams meeting in a unification match.
Thunder Rosa vs. Red Velvet: The morally obligated women’s match of the night. I hate to look at it that way, but that’s how most of the televised AEW women’s matches come off. That’s not a knock against the wrestlers, it’s all about the presentation. From a creative standpoint, there’s no reason to believe that there was any thought put into this match beyond who would go over. Rosa’s return from a long injury layoff has been lousy. She inexplicably teamed with Abadon in her return match and has been spinning her wheels ever since.
Wardlow vs. Trent Beretta: The match was fine, albeit a little longer than it needed to be given that there was no mystery regarding the outcome. The bigger issue is that the company’s new top heel faction Undisputed Kingdom feels ice cold.
I actually would be in favour of some wrestlers getting “predictable” and logical wins to get them up the rankings – the only problem is, with AEW you know each of those matches is going to go 20 minutes and be needlessly competitive.
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