Powell’s AEW Dynamite 6 Hit List: Dynamite 6 with Kyle Fletcher vs. Orange Cassidy for the TNT Title, Kenny Omega and Brodido vs. Josh Alexander and The Young Bucks

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

AEW Dynamite 6 Hits

Hangman Page, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Samoa Joe vs. Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Daniel Garcia: The usual crowd-pleasing, spot-heavy AEW trios match with the predictable outcome of Castagnoli taking the loss. The post-match angle was strong, with Joe taking offense after Page tried to hand him one of the AEW Trios Titles, only to have the belt fall to the mat in front of Joe. I was hoping that this was a quick build to an AEW World Championship match on the Title Tuesday show, but they saved it for the WrestleDream pay-per-view. I’m sure Page and Joe will have a strong match, but only time will tell if they can do something during the build to sell viewers on the possibility of Joe going over. Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland are major injury losses for the company. But it was known for a while that Ospreay was going to miss time, and it’s hard to believe that they were planning to go back to Page vs. Swerve. So I don’t know that those injuries provide much of an excuse for challengers not being built in advance of Page winning the AEW World Championship at All In. Joe follows Kyle Fletcher as a challenger who came out of nowhere rather than the company establishing an obvious top contender. Worse yet, I can’t really point to anyone presently who feels like they are being built up to be a top contender for Page in the near future. Take some of the time wasted on eight-person tag team matches and dedicate it to featuring wrestlers in matches that will help build them up as credible challengers.

Kenny Omega, Brody King, and Bandido vs. Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson, and Josh Alexander: The usual crowd-pleasing, spot-heavy AEW trios match with the predictable outcome of Alexander taking the loss (see what I did there?). This post-match was also more interesting than the actual match. I didn’t really care about the pushing and shoving between Omega and Jack Perry, but Andrade making his surprise return by attacking Omega was fun in the moment. I like the idea of having someone speak for Andrade, who was at his best in the United States when Zelina Vega cut promos for him in NXT. But just how many people are they going to have in the overstuffed Callis Family?

Kris Statlander and Darby Allin vs. Marina Shafir and Wheeler Yuta in a mixed tornado tag match: This didn’t strike me as the main event on paper, but it turned out to be a pretty good brawl. Toni Storm coming out afterward and brawling to the back with Statlander was fine. The latest Death Riders attack on Allin felt repetitive. Is Sting the only friend Allin has? No, that stupid flamethrower from last week doesn’t count.

“Gates of Agony” Toa Liona and Bishop Kaun vs. “The Swirl” Blake Christian and Lee Johnson: A soft Hit for a bounce-back win for GOA after they took a loss in last week’s AEW Tag Team Title match. Even so, it’s a little concerning that they are going right back to having The Demand face The Hurt Syndicate next week. Beating Hurt Syndicate at All Out was the biggest win for Liona and Kaun to date. They turned around and lost to Brodido last week, and now that All Out win could lose whatever impact it made if Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, and MVP get their win back next week.

Toni Storm vs. Tay Melo: An in the middle segment for a bounce-back win for Storm after she dropped the AEW Women’s Championship at All Out. The match felt a little flat because Storm randomly faced a fellow babyface, and there was no mystery regarding the outcome.

AEW Dynamite 6 Misses

Kyle Fletcher vs. Orange Cassidy for the TNT Championship: A good match that was still a soft Miss. There was no reason to think Cassidy would win, given that he was a late replacement for the injured Hologram. The angle with El Clon pretending to be Hologram was awkward, as it felt strange that Excalibur would automatically assume it was the real Hologram even though we were told last week that he would be sidelined through the end of the year. The interference of El Clon protected Cassidy, yet gave Fletcher a flat win at a time when they are supposed to be making him shine coming out of his loss to Hangman Page at All Out. It sure would be nice to see Fletcher get a dominant win over someone who feels like they matter. He claimed dominance coming out of his win over Komander on Collision, but there was nothing dominant about him winning what felt like a 50/50 match. If Tony Khan wants Fletcher or anyone else to stand out, he needs to do so by putting them over strong. It’s not enough to have great matches in AEW when everyone is trying to steal the show with their own in-ring performance. And while Cassidy losing one match isn’t the end of the world, his return is off to a sluggish start after he played second fiddle to Hologram last week.

Too many meaningless matches: Two trios matches, a tag team match, and a mixed tag team match all in one show. While the matches were, it was tag team match overkill with match outcomes that felt trivial. Maybe I should just be happy that we made it through a show without an eight-person tag team match.

Build to Dynamite Title Tuesday: I can’t blame Tony Khan if he’s throwing in the towel on this head-to-head battle with NXT Showdown. NXT loaded up its show with NXT vs. TNA matches, and it can be a tough sell to get viewers to remember a night change, even when a show airs unopposed. But it was still a letdown, as some of my interest in Dynamite 6 was the curiosity of seeing how AEW would build to next week’s show after NXT did a great job of setting up the NXT Showdown-themed episode.

(Jason Powell, founder and editor of ProWrestling.net, has covered pro wrestling full-time dating back to 1997. He hosts a weekly podcast, Pro Wrestling Boom, and also appears regularly on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. Reach him via email at dotnetjason@gmail.com and on social media via @prowrestlingnet.bsky.social or x.com/prowrestlingnet. For his full bio and information on this website, click here.)