Powell’s AEW Dynamite Hit List: Toni Storm and Mercedes Mone, Hangman Page, Swerve Strickland, and Will Ospreay, Adam Cole vs. Kyle Fletcher for the TNT Championship

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

AEW Dynamite Hits

Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland: Page delivered a passionate promo about winning the Owen Hart Cup tournament while vowing to win the AEW World Championship at All In Texas. Swerve Strickland confronting Page about the Young Bucks costing him the AEW World Championship at AEW Dynasty made for good television, but there were some flaws. Why would Swerve wait nearly two months to ask Page if he was behind the Bucks’ interference? In between then and now, Swerve even expressed some remorse for the things he’s done to Page during their blood feud, so it didn’t come off like he was upset with Page then. Hopefully, they can explain this away, because I like the idea of Page, Swerve, and Will Ospreay working together to stand up to the Death Riders and The Elite.

AEW Women’s Champion Toni Storm and TBS Champion Mercedes Mone: It was a wise move to close the show with their first meeting because it sent the right message about the importance of their All In Texas showdown match. Storm carried the segment with her wit and fun mic work. There’s a long time between now and AEW All In Texas on July 12, so it will be interesting to see how AEW manages the builds to the two world championship matches in terms of whether they can avoid peaking prematurely.

AEW World Champion Jon Moxley, Marina Shafir, and Gabe Kidd vs. Mike Bailey, Willow Nightingale, and Mark Briscoe in a mixed trios match: A solid brawl with the expected outcome of the heel trio going over. It would have been nice to hear from Moxley about Hangman Page winning the Owen Hart Cup to earn a shot at the AEW World Championship. Again, though, there’s a lot of time between now and the pay-per-view. Hopefully, this stretch will be the last hurrah for the Death Riders.

Josh Alexander vs. Brody King in a qualifier for the four-way match for the AEW International Championship: It’s hard to get excited about watching qualifiers to determine which three wrestlers will most likely lose next week’s four-way match to Kenny Omega. But if you can get past that, this was a good, physical match. I’m not sure how Alexander was sliced open while suplexing King, but that cut looked nasty.

AEW Trios Champions “The Opps” Samoa Joe, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Katsuyori Shibata vs. “The Frat House” Griff Garrison, Cole Karter, and Preston Vance: A crowd-pleasing showcase win for The Opps. The Frat House crew are Spirit Squad-like pest heels, as the live crowd seemed to enjoy watching the babyfaces destroy them.

Thekla attacks Jamie Hayter: Getting beat up by a newcomer and presumably being fed to the newcomer in her debut feud isn’t exactly the strong bounce-back program that I hoped Hayter would get when she lost the Owen Hart Cup final. But this was a solid debut for Thekla. We heard Excalibur’s brief comments on her background, but here’s hoping that there are some introductory vignettes or promo videos coming.

Ricochet’s new faction: Typically, I’d say the only thing AEW needs less than another faction is another title belt. But I’m more than happy to make an exception in this case. Baldness has been the butt of jokes in AEW for too damn long. Unite, my bald brothers, and we will take over the world! The candidates on the AEW roster include Jon Moxley, Ariya Daivari, Bobby Lashley, Brandon Cutler, Claudio Castagnoli, Dax Harwood, Don Callis, John Silver, Josh Alexander, Luther, Michael Nakazawa, Paul Wight, Scorpio Sky, Shane Taylor, Shelton Benjamin Sonjay Dutt, Stokely Hathaway, Taz, The Butcher, referees Bryce Remsburg, Rick Knox, and Stephon Smith, plus maybe Excalibur and some of the luchadores since we don’t know what’s going on under those masks. The Bald World Order is taking over, and we won’t stop until every match carries the hair vs. hair stipulation.

AEW Dynamite Misses

Adam Cole vs. Kyle Fletcher for the TNT Championship: As if the nearly 20-minute talking segment that opened the show and some censored “holy shit” chants weren’t enough to make me wonder if I was watching Raw or Smackdown, the shitty interference finish in this match made me double check to see what day it was. The match was fun before Josh Alexander ran in to stop Cole from hitting his finisher on Fletcher. This felt like a cheap finish that would save a heel champion and leave fans anxious to see the babyface get a rematch. But it was the babyface champion who was on the verge of winning, so there’s not even a storyline need for a rematch, even though one is clearly coming. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. At least the TNT Champion is defending his title, not getting caught up in a tag team feud like Cole was and Daniel Garcia did before him.

Megan Bayne and Penelope Ford vs. Harley Cameron and Anna Jay in a No DQ match: Hard work from the wrestlers, but there were some sloppy spots that led to hopefully only minor injuries. Tony Khan recently mentioned the possibility of introducing women’s tag team titles soon, and one can only assume that these teams will be a big part of the division.