Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s weekly review of "AEW Dynamite," the show thatdefinitely didn't continue AEW's longstanding trend of following up a great PPV with a mediocre episode of television! If that description didn't make it clear, the majority of the WINC crew were not huge fans of this particular installment, though we did find three things to love about it and the most important of those things absolutely ruled. But in terms of our hates, we were somewhat spoiled for choice. We can't get into everything that went down you can check out our "Dynamite" results page for a comprehensive show recap but if we felt a little more strongly than usual about everything on this episode, that just means that we had to limit ourselves to the things we feltstrongest about, and that's good for everyone!
So, are we excited to see Will Ospreay challenge for the International Championship? Were we thrilled bySwerve Strickland's first appearance as AEW World Champion? And most importantly, after eating a piledriver (like a champ) from the Young Bucks, will TonyKhan show up at the 2024 NFL Draft wearing a neck brace? Only time will tell! Here are three things we hated and three things we loved about the 4/24/24 episode of "AEW Dynamite."
O April 21, Swerve Strickland won the AEW World Championship in the main event of the first-ever Dynasty PPV. He's the company's first Black world champ, a point he and AEW hammered during the Dynasty broadcast and the weeks leading up to it, and his win was celebrated by the industry partly for what it represented for Black wrestlers and fans, partly for what it meant in terms of AEW's youth movement, a fast-rising star grabbing the brass ring and taking his place at the top of the card.
Three days later, on "Dynamite," Swerve was not the main event; that spot, understandably, went to the segment where Perry and The Elite beat up Tony Khan. Swerve wasn't the opening segment, either; that spot, less understandably, went to the storyline involving the Best Friends break-up. Swerve only came out after that was done, and he didn't come out to give a speech, or do a championship celebration. He didn't speak at all, in fact not once during the episode. Nor did he wrestle a top-level star he went up against Kyle Fletcher, the least prominent member of the Don Callis Family and the current Ring of Honor Television Champion. Fletcher hasn't won a singles match on AEW programming since October, but he gets a world title eliminator match, because this is the show with the rankings and everything.
Which, you know what, fine. At least Swerve gets to follow up his big win by squashing someone who isn't on his level. Only that's not what happened. The match went 15 MINUTES. Between Fletcher's offense and a worked leg injury, Swerve wrestled from underneath for much of the contest, narrowly escaping after a match that made Fletcher look like the stronger fighter. Beyond the misalignment of stars, the match was also just ... bad. It had seemingly no coherent structure beyond Swerve playing the role of scrappy underdog (which is a role he does not need to be playing) and felt more like a match rehearsal than the finished product, particularly when you factor in at least two extremely visible botched spots, including one that saw Fletcher go under the ring for a weapon, only to seemingly abandon the idea for no reason and get back in the ring. Swerve also spent a large portion of the match selling a leg injury, but then miraculously recovered long enough to hit two leg-related moves the Swerve Stomp (which Fletcher kicked out of) and the House Call (which he did not). He didn't even sell the leg after the pinfall.
From the booking to the execution, this was amateur hour stuff that made the new world champion look both profoundly beatable and no more important than any random member of the locker room. I simply cannot fathom booking Strickland like this after he's just won your top championship. And for a title reign AEW themselves are touting as historic, it was a pretty terrible look to go with a pretty terrible match.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
If you were confused at all about the Casino Gauntlet match during or after you weren't at all alone. A quick look through social media shows there were plenty of you, and it also confused the lot of us here in WINCland. For one, we didn't know this match was coming (and apparently, neither did the announcers). Two, it wasn't clear, at first, as to which title for whom the winner of this match would be challenging (the announcers initially said it would be the world title, then switched to the International title). And three, nobody knew what the rules were for a Casino Gauntlet match until the announce team hurriedly spat it out in a manner that was difficult to process (and required actual research). In a nutshell, we got a Gauntlet Eliminator match (which, raise your hand if you remember seeing one before, because there was apparently one at "NXT" Stand and Deliver 2021 that I do not recall), where only the surprise appearance of Will Ospreay presented us with someone who had a shot to get the win.
Indeed, Ospreay prevailed over Jay White, Dante Martin, Penta El Zero Miedo, Kyle O'Reilly, Lance Archer, Komander, and Jay Lethal, and will now challenge Roderick Strong for the International Championship at Double Or Nothing. I'd have given White a chance had he not been beaten to a pulp by a 60-year-old Billy Gunn recently. As for Ospreay, cool that his momentum rolls on, I suppose, after his highlight reel match against Bryan Danielson at Dynasty, but it seemed like he was immediately poised for much bigger things after that, and now, ho hum, midcard title it is. Nobody else made sense here whatsoever, which kind of eliminates any match theoretically built on surprises (as AEW's "Casino" gimmick matches have been through the company's entire existence).
The announcers mentioned several times that they didn't know this match was coming, or how many wrestlers might eventually enter, and at one point, Taz offered up, "Who the hell knows?" When you hit us with that kind of stuff all too often, I tend to believe that it might have actually been true that nobody really knew what was happening. In the end, this was a wild match with all kinds of crazy spots, so you could argue that it was fun, but confusion ruled the day once more in AEW, and that happens far too often.
Written by Jon Jordan
Tony Khan has become more and more of a presence on AEW programming, often being seen on headset backstage directing traffic, sometimes delivering big announcements about upcoming events or debuts, and occasionally telling people he feared for his life and had to fire CM Punk. On Wednesday, Khan crossed the Rubicon and became an actual part of an AEW storyline in the most explicit way since he founded the company in 2019.
Following the reinstatement of Jack Perry, Khan was ambushed and punched in the gut by Perry, knocking him to the ground. The Young Bucks and Kazuchika Okada came out, feigning shock and horror, before setting up Khan for the Tony Khan Driver (formerly known as the Meltzer Driver). Khan said very little during the segment he simply got beat up and left for dead. The Bucks, Okada, and Perry quickly retreated as medical staff attended to Tony Khan. Several of AEW's least prominent babyfaces came out to check on their boss, and then Shad Khan himself, Jacksonville business magnate and Tony Khan's father, came out to survey the horror. It was all pure theater, pure soap opera, and I am desperate to know where they are going with this.
Is Tony Khan going to be in the Jacksonville war room in a neck brace? Is it possible that Khan may not be as prominent a figure anymore? Could this be the end of post-PPV media scrums? I was left with a ton of questions and the sick glee of watching a divisive non-wrestler eat a finishing move named after him. Everyone did exactly as much as they needed to do and not a second more. It might be my favorite ending the company has done in some time, if ever, and I can't wait for next week.
Written byRoss Berman
