By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Dynasty Hits
Kenny Omega vs. Mike Bailey vs. Ricochet in a three-way for the AEW International Championship: A wild three-way spot-fest with strong work from everyone involved. The crane kick spot was one of the highlights of the night. The only thing working against the match was that there was no reason to think Omega would drop the title. In fact, AEW has done so much foreshadowing of Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada for All In Texas that it’s hard to believe that either man will drop a title before then, which will make for some title matches that feel more predictable than they should. Ricochet taking the loss surprised me, as he’s now taken back-to-back pay-per-view losses. But he’s over enough as a heel that these losses shouldn’t be too harmful as long as there’s a plan to have him get his heat back. Meanwhile, it was nice to see Bailey come through with the type of performance that should win over a lot of fans who were unfamiliar with his work before he arrived in AEW. On a night where the show went needlessly longer than usual, why was the Omega and Okada confrontation so rushed?
Will Ospreay vs. Kevin Knight in an Owen Hart Foundation men’s tournament quarterfinal match: A fun fast-paced opening match. Ospreay going over felt like a slam dunk, but Knight gained something in defeat. Is Knight a rising star or will he be the latest new toy that gets forgotten about once the owner brings in newer toys? It’s all about the follow-up.
Toni Storm vs. Megan Bayne for the AEW Women’s Championship: The usual Storm fun with a quality win over the new monster of the women’s division. More importantly, the inside cradle finish gave Storm a soft win that protected Bayne far more than if she had taken Storm Zero and been pinned clean and decisively. Will Bayne do something to get a rematch or will both wrestlers go in different directions?
Pac, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta vs. “Rated FTR” Adam Copeland, Dax Harwood, and Cash Wheeler for the AEW Trios Titles: While I still couldn’t care less about the trios titles, this was a well worked match. Yuta had strong heat and is so much better when he plays the role of weasel heel as opposed to being framed as an in-ring badass who can hang with top babyfaces. The FTR turn was easy to see coming and that’s fine. But what was the point of Wheeler shoving Harwood to the mat before picking up the chair and attacked Copeland with it? Copeland was down and out, so it wasn’t like Wheeler was swerving him. Rather, it was a case of strangely swerving the fans even though it didn’t make any storyline sense.
Kyle Fletcher vs. Mark Briscoe in an Owen Hart Foundation men’s tournament quarterfinal match: Another good outing from Fletcher and Briscoe. Their Collision bouts felt hotter, but that’s partially due to the Dynasty live crowd showing their first signs of fatigue during this match. In other words, the same match likely would have been better received had it taken place earlier in the show. Fletcher going over was the obvious and right call, and he continues to look like a future world champion.
TBS Champion Mercedes Mone vs. Julia Hart in an Owen Hart Foundation women’s tournament quarterfinal match: It was slow and a bit choppy to start, but the match got better as it went on. This wasn’t one of Mone’s gems, but it was a decent win for her while Hart looked pretty good in defeat.
Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin vs. Big Bill and Bryan Keith for the AEW Tag Team Titles: A soft Hit for a match that was fine for what it was. The champions made Bill look good, but they didn’t seem to have much interest in selling for Keith. MJF punching Bill from the front row furthered his story with the Hurt Syndicate. Lashley and Benjamin didn’t seem very pleased with MJF, so the follow-up should be interesting.
AEW Dynasty Misses
Jon Moxley vs. Swerve Strickland for the AEW World Championship: Another Moxley main event with a bunch of run-ins. If it generated the right kind of heat, so be it, but the fans are clearly rejecting the dead end Death Riders saga. When you make fans sit through a show that went past midnight in the host city’s timezone, you should have the decency to give them a satisfying main event finish. But AEW went with the return of the ice cold Young Bucks hitting the BTE Trigger on Swerve, which led to Moxley stealing the pin. Yes, it will be a moment when Will Ospreay presumably beats Moxley to win the title at All In Texas, but hopefully Moxley’s lousy title reign won’t run off more fans before then.
Chris Jericho vs. Bandido in an ROH Championship vs. mask match: The match quality was Hit worthy, but the finish was a groaner. On back-to-back nights, AEW viewers saw Dax Harwood get hit over the head with a hammer that didn’t leave a blemish, let alone prevent him from wrestling 24 hours later, and Bandido take a baseball bat to the head only to win the match just minutes later. It’s bad enough that modern pro wrestling has desensitized fans to the impact of big moves, now it’s desensitizing fans to the impact of weapons. Worse yet, the match was restarted because a referee came out and spoke with the losing wrestler’s family members, who pointed out that Jericho used the bat to steal the pin. Rather than go with “referees can only call what they see” line that we’ve heard for decades, Edwards easily convinced the actual match referee to restart the match. If I thought they were going to be consistent with this going forward, fine, but we couldn’t even make it through the next match without blatant outside interference costing a wrestler his world title shot. Where was Edwards when the Young Bucks hit Swerve Strickland with the BTE Trigger? Did Swerve not have any family members close enough to the ring to smarten up a second referee?
Daniel Garcia vs. Adam Cole for the TNT Title with no time limit and no outside interference: I have complained about AEW having three secondary men’s singles titles that all feel equal in value. Garcia’s run with the TNT Title solved part of the problem by being so disappointing that the TNT Title now feels like the least valuable of the three secondary titles. Call me crazy, but I don’t think this was the goal. Garcia is a good wrestler who was poorly booked. They rushed into his title win over Jack Perry, and then Garcia followed up his title win by going a weak 2-2-1 in the Continental Classic tournament, which made him look mediocre and brought down the value of his title. So while the actual match between Garcia and Cole was solid even if it was not as good as their draw on Collision, it was hard to care about which cold wrestler would leave with what now feels like a throwaway title belt. It also didn’t help that this match was placed in a spot on the card where pay-per-view audiences typically die because the booker has no restraint.
Tony Khan vs. time management: The 90-minute pre-show had just two matches, which is actually better than the usual overstuffed four-match pre-shows. I still don’t know why they feel the need to go 90 minutes and I was even more baffled while listening to the hosts attempt to fill that long gap in between matches (yes, tribal fans who play the what about game, WWE countdown shows are also needlessly long at two hours, but they typically don’t include matches that wear down the live crowd). Four hours is pushing it for pay-per-view events to begin with. Throw in the 90-minute pre-show and a main card that actually went past the four-hour mark and this made for a ridiculously long night. Khan has the “more is better” sickos and they’re not going anywhere. He should be thinking about fans who live outside the pro wrestling bubble who simply want to enjoy a night of wrestling without making a nearly six-hour time investment that keeps them up past midnight when they have work or school the next morning. But the longer Khan takes this approach to his shows, the more I’m convinced that he’s not booking with the idea of adding as many fans as possible. He’s not even booking for the sickos. I used to think that Khan took the “more is better” approach because he thought he needed to give the fans more bang for their pay-per-view dollar. After six years, he’s heard the feedback from fans who don’t need six-hour shows to feel like they got their money’s worth. Surely he sees that there comes a point during every one of his pay-per-view events where the live crowd becomes fatigued from getting too much of a good thing and how that puts the wrestlers in bad spots with flat crowds. The truth is that Khan holds marathon shows because he enjoys it. If you do too, great, welcome to the sickos club. If not, too bad, it’s not about you anyway. It’s great that Tony Khan loves pro wrestling. I just wish he loved the nuances of structuring cards that leave the fans wanting more as opposed to leaving them exhausted.
Great points.
We sold our World’s End tix as soon as I told my wife it would be 4+ hours.
Not only does Aew not fit casuals, imagine a fan trying to get their wife, child, parents, etc to watch/attend with them.
Regarding the ppv length, I must admit when I started watching AEW the PPV length felt good as they only had 4 PPVs a year so it made a bit more sense to try and stack the card. But now there’s 12(?) they feel bloated and we’re starting to see many matches that shouldn’t be on a PPV.
Jericho v Bandido could have easily waited until the upcoming RoH PPV, The Trio’s and the Mercedes Mone matches could both have been Collision and Dynamite main events respectively.
Too many PPV’s with too many matches dilutes the importance of many matches on the card.
I get wanting your top stars to feel like they belong in the company but if you want 75% of your roster to feel like top stars then no-one feels important and instead drags everyone down.
AEW also needs to start booking title matches that feel like upsets (and not when a wrestler calls an audible due to injury). Yes the ‘Hot Potato’ of the WWE Women’s title between the then Sasha Banks and Charlotte Flair went on too long but it presented a fragility to those title reigns and allowed the fans to believe a title could change hands in any match.
Totally agree on the time part. I am not an AEW critic, but four-hour, now four-hour-plus, shows are just not necessary. There were plenty of matches on this card that could have instead been used to strengthen episodes of Dynamite or Collision.
Is Tony Khan ever going to learn the basic lesson that sometimes, and more often than he might think, less is more?