By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Dynamite Hits
Bryan Danielson promo: Strong mic work from the new champion. Danielson provided clarity to his potential retirement by saying he would remain full-time as long as he holds the title. The portions of the promo that pertained to his family was touching, especially when Danielson got choked up. Jack Perry attacking Danielson didn’t do much for me. The company has gotten behind Perry since his return, but I just don’t buy him as a threat to beat Danielson to become the next AEW World Champion. Of course, Tony Khan can book it any way he wants, but this felt like the build to a good television main event as opposed to a pay-per-view title defense.
Swerve Strickland and Hangman Page: It felt a little awkward that two wrestlers who despise one another could have a long verbal exchange without getting physical, especially when Page’s ringside antics caused the distraction that played a part in Swerve losing the AEW World Championship at All In. Nevertheless, they showed great intensity and did a really good job of setting the table for their All Out cage match. Page is doing the best character work of his career while portraying a character that is consumed by rage, but I still wish he would lay into the fans for siding with his adversary. Swerve doubling down on being a stalker was a strange choice for a babyface. I’m all for Swerve being an edgy babyface, but his line about watching Page take his wife to the hospital for the birth of their second child made him seem like a weirdo.
Jon Moxley and Marina Shafir: A compelling show opening segment with Moxley coming out to new entrance music and taking a more dark and brooding approach. Moxley telling Tony Schiavone that it’s not his company anymore was interesting and seemed like it may have set the stage for some type of invasion angle. Either way, I like that they gave viewers a hook as opposed to making the mistake of giving it all away in one night. Regardless of where this is going, Moxley needed to shake things up. I’m not sure what to make of Shafir joining his act, but we’ll see where it goes.
MJF and Daniel Garcia: Garcia should have been a quarterback based on that perfect pass of the microphone from the ring right into MJF’s face on the entrance ramp. Anyway, this was a solid segment aside from the needless talk about the Dynamite Diamond Ring being pawned.
Jamie Hayter vs. Harley Cameron: A good return for Hayter. The match was nothing special, but Hayter got the majority of the offense and went over clean.
Hangman Page vs. Tomohiro Ishii: A soft Hit. A well worked match that left me with mixed feelings. Page is one of the top guys in AEW and it took him 17 minutes to beat a guy on loan from another company who has spent most of his recent AEW time in Conglomeration tag team matches. I enjoy Ishii’s work, but this felt needlessly long and overly competitive (a very common theme in AEW) for a match that was just thrown out there with no storyline build.
AEW Dynamite Misses
Ricochet vs. Kyle Fletcher: I assume the idea was to mirror Will Ospreay’s debut as a full-time wrestler on Dynamite because he also had needlessly long and overly competitive match against Fletcher. It may seem like a little thing, but it felt like a mistake to have Ricochet and the returning Jamie Hayter make their entrances before their opponents. There’s always energy and excitement in the crowd for the entrances of debuting or returning wrestlers that should carry right over to the match. In both cases, AEW brought the crowd down by having Fletcher and Harley Cameron come out second. Ricochet’s debut felt like an afterthought coming out of All In, and this match didn’t do him any favors.
Hook, Orange Cassidy, Mark Briscoe, and Kyle O’Reilly vs. Chris Jericho, Big Bill, Bryan Keith, and Roderick Strong: The “all-star eight-man tag team match” felt more like a time filler. AEW’s version of these matches never quite live up to the “all-star” billing and always feel inconsequential regardless of the match quality.
Konosuke Takeshita: He’s back after an impressive showing in the G1 Climax Tournament! Now tune in Friday to watch him work a random four-way on Rampage. Really? Yes, it will probably be a good match, but working a random four-way on the lowly Rampage show is not exactly a hot way to reintroduce Takeshita.
Mercedes Mone celebration: How was this approved to air on television? Awful.
All In follow-up: They failed to make All In feel like the major event that it is coming out of the annual stadium show. The only time they showed off the Wembley Stadium crowd was during the Ricochet video package. It’s one thing to turn the page coming out of a B-level pay-per-view, but this is AEW’s biggest show of the year. And, no, they don’t get a pass because of the quick turnaround for All Out. No one forced Tony Khan to book these similarly named shows so close together.
After some better Dynamite’s, that was a bad episode.
Will Garcia’s status have improved at all after MJF cheats to beat him at All Out?
Not only did Ricochet’s debut not make sense, it was bowling shoe worthy at times. He either needed a squash or someone he had worked with before.
Can we discuss attendance for a moment
I know Jason doesn’t usually include that in the show recap but what I read on line the show was poorly attended
My first question is, does it matter to the business plan? Maybe not right. I’m sure most of AEWs income (you know other than Shad) is TV money, ads and merch. People can buy merch online now so maybe it doesn’t make a huge difference to the bottom line if there are 1500 people at a weekly show or ten times that
Which leads to my second question. Why do we care? Well optics. I’m a big baseball fan and right now it looks like there are 115 people at the Cardinals game. That probably doesn’t impact their bottom line at all but as a fan it makes me wonder why I am watching if no one cares enough to go. It LOOKS awful
Also from a wrestling perspective, the “vibe” is part of the show right. If there are 1500 people in an area that holds 10,000 it looks bad and often sounds bad. And it also makes for challenging video production I’m sure
I am a proponent of AEW moving to MUCH smaller facilities to make the crowd feel more intense.
What are others’ opinions on the topic?
Of course they should move to smaller venues. It’s insane to keep running NBA/NHL arenas and drawing 2,000 to 3,000 fans in some markets. Maybe it hasn’t gotten much play on the website, but it’s something I and others from the site have spoken about in podcasts for quite some time now.
I live in RI and the URI campus has a 2500 seat facility which is really nice and would probably rock for an AEW show. I am sure there are other similar places
I am not advocating they start running at the old WCW sound stage but I think a small loud crowd would be much more pleasant for TV viewers
Jason. Give it a %. How important is weekly attendance to AEW right now?
Also. I lied! The hockey arena at URI holds 2500. The Ryan Center (the larger facility) holds 8000
Only Tony Khan knows the answer. This isn’t your typical business. He’s the son of a multi-billionaire and it doesn’t see like they always play by normal business rules. I’m sure the ultimate goal is to make money via the television deal.
That makes the most sense. I would say all American sports now are driven by “TV money” more than any other factor
Thanks as always for your input, Jason!