By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Dynamite Hits
MJF, Daniel Garcia, and Will Ospreay: Dynamite peaked with the strong opening segment. MJF and Ospreay singing the praises of Garcia in front of his hometown did more for him than any of his matches have in 2024. While it was odd to see them setting up things for next week and future pay-per-views on the final Dynamite before Forbidden Door, it was effective and set the table for some big upcoming matches while also adding to the tension between MJF and Ospreay. It was also nice to see Garcia stand on his own and not have Matt Menard at his side or sitting in on commentary for no good reason. Their on-air relationship has been downright strange. Garcia came out of this segment in a better place than he was going in. The big question now is whether the company will truly get behind him or if he’ll simply lose to Ospreay and MJF and end up right back where he started.
Jay White vs. Rey Fenix in an Owen Hart Cup tournament match: An enjoyable television match. White is so versatile and can work with a wide variety opponents who use different styles. I don’t expect White to win the tournament, but he really needed this win and hopefully he can get back into the top singles mix and stop wasting his time in throwaway trios title matches. While I’m wishing for things, here’s hoping that AEW will finally give Fenix and Penta El Zero Miedo a real push in the tag team division. Forget Death Triangle going after the trios belts. Pac should be a high level singles wrestler while the Lucha Bros should be featured as one of the company’s top tag teams.
Toni Storm, Mariah May, and Mina Shirakawa vs. Saraya, Anna Jay, and Harley Cameron: They told a good story with Storm and Shirakawa heading into their title match on Sunday. Shirakawa trying to take out Storm with a champagne bottle only to mistakenly hit May with the bottle was a nice go-home development. The build to Storm vs. Shirakawa is second only to the build that AEW has given the Swerve Strickland vs. Will Ospreay main event. Unfortunately, there’s a major drop to whatever is third on the best build list.
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kyle O’Reilly: The well worked match one would expect from these two. The crowd was slow to take to the mat based style, but the wrestlers seemed to win over the majority of the crowd by the end. Orange Cassidy’s intentionally monotone approach on commentary didn’t help when the crowd was flat for the first half of the match. Taz nailed it when he said there was a lot going on after the match. It seemed like a nice way of Taz saying there was too much going on. They had Gabe Kidd, Matt Taven, Mike Bennett, and Roderick Strong all sitting in the crowd. I’m still not sure what Kidd and Strong were bickering about. Heck, I wouldn’t have even known they were bickering had Excalibur not said they were on commentary because their interaction was hardly shown. Robbie Eagles and Shane Haste showing up just because they are in an NJPW faction with Sabre felt unnecessary. Tomohiro Ishii coming out afterward to a flat reaction was par for the course with most of the NJPW wrestlers on this show.
AEW Dynamite Misses
Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay vs. “Gates of Agony” Toa Liona and Bishop Kaun: A soft miss for this not feeling like a main event. Sure, it had the Swerve and Ospreay star power and that was enough for some viewers, but there was zero mystery regarding the outcome and it shouldn’t be that way. The Gates of Agony have real upside, but they are one of those promising young AEW acts that never seem to get out of first gear. At least the post match angle was strong with Ospreay taking Swerve’s title belt again only for Swerve to clip his leg and hit him with a House Call kick.
Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta vs. Shingo Takagi, Hiromu Takahashi, and Titan: The match was fine until the lazy finish that saw Moxley grab a chair and hit one of his opponents with it right in front of the referee for no good reason. Takagi is in an Owen Hart Cup tournament match with Danielson. Why not have him beat Danielson’s little buddy Yuta rather than go with a finish that didn’t help anyone? The post match angle with Tetsuya Naito coming out was also forgettable. The build to the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship match at Forbidden Door has been poor. Moxley is a great talker and he should have been tasked with selling the match through promos even if they had limited access to Naito.
The Learning Tree segment: On the bright side, it was nice to see Jericho show his displeasure with Minoru Suzuki rejecting him as opposed to remaining happy to lucky. But this was another confusing segment with Suzuki challenging Jericho to an FTW Title match that apparently won’t happen at Forbidden Door because they are still going with Jericho, Big Bill, and a third person facing Samoa Joe, Hook, and Katsuyori Shibata in a trios match on Sunday.
If AEW history has shown us anything, the follow up for the Daniel Garcia segment will be Garcia in random matches, lost in a faction, and not booked for three months.
I know the ratings were better but to me, this show was worse than last week. Mainly because it was suppose to be a go home show to sell people on the upcoming PPV. Some of the segments just felt pointless, especially in the short term. The overbooking and over reliance on NJPW guys that the average viewer probably knows next to nothing about certainly don’t help. Crowd engagement and reaction can have such an impact on how special a moment feels and there was very little, if anything, that felt special in this show. Attendance reports weren’t encouraging either. Hopefully after Forbidden Door, they can get back on track and stop focusing on stop outside the company.