By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Dynamite Hits
Kazuchika Okada vs. Kyle Fletcher for the AEW Continental Championship: The best match of the night. There was no reason to expect a title change, but they made things interesting by approaching the 20-minute time limit before Okada won with a cheap nut shot finish. Will the usual rules of no one being allowed at ringside during Continental Championship matches apply at All Out given that there are no disqualifications in four-way matches?
MJF and Daniel Garcia: More good than bad. They went really over the top with all the talk about breaking necks and ending careers, and then took an eye rolling turn when MJF went the cheap heat route by implying that Garcia’s mother is a whore. On the bright side, Garcia has come a long way on the mic and seems more poised and believable.
AEW Trios Champions Pac, Wheeler Yuta, and Claudio Castagnoli vs. Will Ospreay, Kyle O’Reilly, and Orange Cassidy in a non-title match: The usual good work with a bit of a pay-per-view teaser when Pac and Ospreay were in the ring together. The angle with Castagnoli and Yuta challenging the Young Bucks to a tag team title match at All Out felt random and out of nowhere.
Mariah May vs. Nyla Rose for the AEW Women’s Championship: A solid match and a nice television win for May. A big flaw in AEW’s approach was on display in that they had two title matches on the show that were given the same level of hype as the other matches. AEW has to do a better job of making their televised title matches and main events feel important as opposed to just throwing them out there with little or no fanfare.
Jamie Hayter vs. Robyn Renegade: A minor Hit for a quick showcase match.
AEW Dynamite Misses
Hangman Page burns down Swerve Strickland’s childhood home: A wrestler committing arson in a residential area while appearing on worldwide television and not being arrested is a real turn your brain off moment. It’s not for me, but I acknowledge that some fans can overlook the massive logic gaps and enjoy it for what it was. Heck, I was at Smackdown in 2017 shaking my head in disbelief when the Xcel Energy Center crowd cheered wildly for a main event segment that played out on the big screen and consisted of Randy Orton burning down Bray Wyatt’s shack in the woods. Putting the arson silliness aside, the big problem with the Page and Swerve angle is that it all played out in one show. This would have been so much better had the footage of Swerve announcing that he purchased his childhood home had aired even just a week or two earlier. Rather, they aired the Swerve video on the same night that Page burned the house down, which made the whole thing feel rushed and contrived.
Jon Moxley: A weak follow-up to last week’s thought provoking line about how it’s no longer your company. I’m all for AEW slowing down and telling an episodic story (see above), but Moxley saying Jack Perry is a good kid and expressing his desire to speak with Darby Allin made for a flat week two.
Hikaru Shida: She’s an ace and she wrapped up her promo by calling her adversary a bitch. I’m all for AEW giving Shida mic time and an actual character, but is it too much to ask that they come up with a character that isn’t already taken by Kazuchika Okada?
Go-home Show: The intensity of the Page and Swerve feud and the MJF and Daniel Garcia’s segment to some degree are the only things that left this viewer more excited about the All Out pay-per-view. Bryan Danielson vs. Jack Perry felt like a weak title match when it was announced and they did nothing on the go-home show to change that perception. Part of the problem is that while Tony Khan added an extra week in between All In and All Out this year, the shows are still too close together. It’s pushing it for fans who only watch AEW, and just plain overkill for the majority of fans who watch AEW and WWE content given that WWE had two premium live events in between All In and All Out. And don’t even get me started on airing three-and-a-half hours of programming the night before what will presumably be another five-hour-plus marathon pay-per-view and pre-show.
Wow, ANOTHER “hit list” for AEW where the “hits” all have a negative-slanted comment within. The fact if you go read WWE “hits” and notice that RARELY happens (NXT’s hit list the day before, for example, if you need proof) is, I’m sure, just a “don’t believe your eyes” situation.
As for the “arson” thing, I agree, it was ridiculous, but ITS PRO WRESTLING…..nothing is ‘real’>
Great, find a new website, Angry Mike. You bitched for years about TNA being slighted, now it’s AEW is slighted. At least your crazy ass manifesto emails to me and the staff stopped once we started this comment section.
I think Jason was pretty kind to find ANYTHING hit worthy in that two hours of complete garbage/Attitude Era ripoff programming.
Yeah yeah, the PPV will have 19 seven-star matches. Hopefully no one burns the arena down in the process
I am probably the only person optimistic that the Mox stuff ends up going someplace cool. Otherwise, yuck.
Aew diehards should be kissing Powell-a-mino’s feet. He moved mountains to find 5 hits in that mess of an episode.
So im not the only one to notice this then. Negatives within a hit.
I agree with Jason however on misses. I defend Aew, but this show did nothing for me. Disappointing. All those tag teams yet none of them in a tag title match or on the card. Purrazzo and Rosa not on the card and not on All In. Kyle fletcher feels like Garcia to me. Placed in big matches but loses. No title defence for Hook. So much talent but no long term plans for most of them.
Build to WD and Full Gear needs to be better.
Then I suggest you read Hit Lists from other companies. As I’ve told Angry Mike, it’s called constructive criticism. Every company gets it. It’s what we do here. If you want gushing praise for any company, then I politely suggest you look elsewhere.
As i said, i agree with you on all the misses. I just didnt like this show and All Out just feels like an afterthought this year.
With regard to hits and misses … a hit for me is something i enjoyed. A miss not so much. I wouldnt add praise to a miss and the opposite for something i loved.
With this show … there really wasnt much i liked. The ppv’s are too close together and they really didnt do much at All In to set anything up for All Out outside of Garcia turning up. The tag division really is poor. I cant stand the children, but with Ftr, hob, Acclaimed, the gunns, private party, outrunners, mxm, grizzled vets etc theyve got teams to get the division hot, but we get the match nobody wants
As the guy who has written the Hit List for over twenty years, I’ll continue to do it my way. I can like something and still have constructive criticism, and I can find silver linings in things I didn’t care for.