Another episode of "AEW Dynamite" has come and gone, this one with a distinctly international flair.
"Dynamite" was taped in Glasgow, Scotland, the last "Dynamite" before this weekend's Forbidden Door co-production with NJPW, STARDOM, and CMLL. A surprisingly strong episode of "Dynamite," there was still plenty to love and plenty to hate from AEW's trip to The Hydro. This column will not deal in the "What" of what happened on Wednesday night, as our fastidious results page already took care of that. Instead, we'll focus on the good, like the tag title eliminator tournament final, and the bad, like the finish to the tag title eliminator tournament.
There's only an episode of "Collision" left until Forbidden Door, and with emotions running high and time running short, let's break down the best and the worst of the August 20 edition of "AEW Dynamite."
Regardless of the steps it took to get to this point, the long, somewhat self-indulgent steps through drawn-out and contradictory booking, it cannot be denied that Cope and Christian are a pairing that needed to happen sooner rather than later. Assuming neither guy has a very long career in wrestling, and especially not a very long one as a focal point of wrestling at least you would hope then now seems like the right time to have them come back together and play their greatest hits.
The issue coming into their reunion was that Christian Cage had insisted that he was still The Patriarch, and rather than going the route of finding himself as a better man, as had been suggested when Cope told him to do so, he found the best version of himself to be the man he has become. It's not very complex, it's not a truly meaningful arc, but it is a Cope and Christian return, and they weirdly make the segment work.
As Cope so eloquently put it, Christian Cage is an a**hole, but he is his a**hole. Does that raise certain anatomical questions? Maybe, but at the end of the day, Cope and Christian are back together. And they haven't tried to shoehorn one character into fitting with the other's dynamic; they are just two true friends who now share common goals. This is a marriage of convenience between two messy divorcees. Like "Love After Lock-Up" but professional wrestling, and as long as they're doing this and not wrestling for world titles, it's all good fun. Play the hits, do your thing.
This has the potential to play as a dynamic akin to MJF and Adam Cole, specifically the first half of their arc, with the gradual building of their relationship or in the case of Cope and Christian, rebuilding it and there is certainly enough entertainment quality between the pair of them to deliver it and then some. Ultimately, time will tell, but there was something familiar and enjoyable about their segment this week, and one hopes it will continue.
Written by Max Everett
He's a wrestling dinosaur with a reptilian mask. Obviously, this masked wrestling dinosaur -this lucha dinosaur, if you will- should be called something that lampshades his luchaness and his dinosaurness. Dinodor...no...LuchaDino...no...El Hijo Del Raptor...no...I got it: Killswitch!
Yes, everyone's favorite wrestling dinosaur returned on Wednesday to chokeslam his former mentor, Christian Cage. Roughly a year ago, he was hospitalized with pneumonia, and now he's back, and I'm thrilled about that, and if he were to come out on "Collision"and say "I'm mad at Christian Cage for giving me the name 'Killswitch,'" I will forgive this whole thing, but it's a stupid name for a wrestling dinosaur. It just is.
I let out a massive groan when the Forbidden Door tag match was confirmed, and Killswitch's stupid name along with it. Killswitch is a great name for Christian's finisher. Killswitch Engage is a great band. The concept of a killswitch is a good one in the increasingly automated world. Killswitch is a bad name for any wrestler, let alone a wrestling dinosaur.
I don't care what mountains need to be moved, trademarks need to be bought, minds changed, etc., but something must be done to rectify the fact that the wrestling dinosaur is no longer called "Luchasaurus," one of the greatest wrestling names in the history of wrestling names. It's egregious.
Written by Ross Berman
The build to Forbidden Door has been an interesting one when you step back and look at it from a distance. The lack of New Japan Pro Wrestling presence throughout the build due to virtually all of their top stars being in the G1 Climax tournament was a big set back, but the AEW stories that have been presented have enough intrigue to make you guess what's going to happen at The O2 Arena. For my money, though, the AEW Tag Team Championship Eliminator Tournament has quietly been the most consistent thing on AEW programming these past few weeks, and the final between FTR and Brodido did not disappoint.
For those of you who read these every week, you will have noticed that the self-made "Brody King Fan Club" I founded, where I would abuse my power here and just say how much Brody deserves a sustained singles push, has gained some new members in recent weeks. That is in no small part due to his partnership with Bandido, who started the tournament as a wildcard pick for some, as they could easily be relied on for good matches, but since they aren't a full-blown tag team, they were never going to make it to this stage. However, their victories over The Gates of Agony and The Young Bucks have established them as a force to be reckoned with, and that match with Matt and Nick was one of the best "AEW Dynamite" matches of the year.
Here, they got the chance to mix it up with FTR, the best tag team AEW has ever seen, according to some, who have also had a great tournament with matches against JetSpeed and The Bang Bang Gang. This was one of the breeziest 30-minute matches I've seen in quite some time, with all four men having great chemistry, while also pacing the match to make the final five minutes feel frantic and exciting. Are draws overdone in AEW? Probably, but when the action is this good, you aren't really going to mind seeing these four guys put on a tag team clinic, are you?
FTR playing their heel roles nicely, Brody bleeding all over the place to showcase how much he had endured throughout the match, and Bandido flying around the ring like a loose cannon, while also being able to pay off little story-beats from the weeks gone b,y like getting the mask that Big Stoke stole from him. Also, that moment where he literally changed his mask halfway through the match and seemed to become a new person was very well done.
It's understandable when people say they are burned out on FTR being in the title picture, but when they are this good, it's easy to see why Tony Khan always trusts them in these situations. Brodido were a fresh team to sink their teeth in to, and for 29 minutes, these four men blew the roof off of The Hydro...notice how I said 29 minutes there? Well...
Written by Sam Palmer
The reason why I said 29 minutes was that the final minute of this match might possibly be one of the stupidest endings to a match I think I've ever seen.
For once, AEW has nailed the idea of time cues in a time limit draw to build suspense and excitement. Five minutes left, four minutes left, and so on. They finally got the hang of it, and the final minute of this match should have been nonstop moment after moment of both teams trying desperately to win the tournament and the title shot. Instead, FTR decided to pull a table from under the ring and carefully set it up on the guardrail. Even the commentary team where like "Guys, you do know that you only have a minute of the match left, don't you?"
Don't worry, though, it could be for a post-match angle as Brody King is here to throw Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler back in the ring! Wait, no, he's not, he's throwing FTR around the ringside area and trying to do splashes into the guardrail, something that Bryan Danielson tried to justify on commentary by saying he probably didn't hear the time cues. That's it, Bryan, it's his poor hearing that is the problem. Finally, though, Bandido is here to finish the match off, except no, he isn't, he's going to try and spear Cash through the table on the outside, which Cash avoids, who then proceeds to torpedo himself through the table, only barely grazing Brody as the time expires. What on earth was that?
Seriously, all four guys couldn't have looked more stupid even if they tried. They had an arena full of people telling them they had 60 seconds of the match left, and they decided to start doing spots on the floor? Hello? Have they missed their own cues or something? To make it even funnier, Bandido then hits his 21-plex, thinks the match is still going nearly a full minute after the bell rang, and he had the audacity to look at referee Paul Turner and be like, "Amigo, why aren't you counting?" Like, are these four guys jetlagged or something, because this was a mess.
God bless Arkady Aura for trying to inject some life back into the fans by saying that both FTR and Brodido would be going to Forbidden Door and challenging The Hurt Syndicate for the AEW Tag Team Championships, but even that puts a stain on the tournament itself as a clear winner would have made the title match feel so much more important. Plus, this is literally the same thing that happened with FTR and The Acclaimed last year, a 30-minute draw that led to both teams challenging for the titles in the UK. It's not only a stupid ending, but it's lazy booking as well.
Overall, a fantastic match ended with a prime example of how to suck the air out of the room. Let's hope it was worth it come this Sunday.
Written by Sam Palmer
In the past, there have been certain instances on "Dynamite" where it feels like the right match hasn't been the main event of the show (looking at you, Ricochet vs. Mark Briscoe from the July 30 edition of the show). The main event, pitting Mercedes Mone and Athena against Toni Storm and Alex Windsor, did not feel as though it was one of those occasions. Despite only having three matches total on the show, the match still felt like it was worthy of holding that position on the card, which speaks wonders about the star power that all four women combined hold within AEW as a whole.
As one would likely expect, the action throughout this contest was interesting, engaging, and actually told a story. While AEW audiences know the dynamic between Storm and Windsor now that they've joined forces or otherwise shared the screen with one another a few times now, they haven't seen Athena and Mone team really team up with one another before. It's rare to see someone tell Mone what to do in a match, but Athena did just that tonight, and it was interesting to see a team that was purely together for the sake of a common goal in a modern wrestling world where that isn't very common.
Beyond that, the ending of the match was something different to the interference and disqualification endings that tend to riddle AEW programming. Billie Starkz and/or Mina Shirakawa could've very easily interfered in the closing stages of the match. Instead, Windsor made Mone tap out to a Boston Cra,b not knowing Athena had tagged in, which allowed for Athena to land the O-Face on her. It made for a memorable ending that easily stood out from everything else on the rest of the show, and pushed the match as a whole just that much more over the edge in the best way possible.
Written by Olivia Quinlan
I think Tony Khan hates me because the moment I commend him for having an interesting Casino Gauntlet Match contract beat (even in the midst of a rant), he retcons it in a painfully underwhelming segment.
On Wednesday's episode of "AEW Dynamite," "Hangman" Adam Page was met with an arson threat. MJF appeared on the titantron with a bound and gagged Mark Briscoe, and, thanks to Ricochet and his assorted goons, twisted Page's arm with Page's own modus operandi: if Page did not agree to MJF's list of match demands, he would set the beloved Briscoe on fire. Page ultimately acquiesced, and as of writing, the AEW World Championship can now officially change hands via count-out and disqualification. The cherry on top? MJF does not need to use his Casino Gauntlet Match contract in order to get his title match.
When I tell you the only saving grace of last week's Page and MJF interaction was the contract mind games, I mean it. It was so interesting to see Page get one over the notoriously wily MJF. Now, though? The single good thing about that promo segment has gone up in smoke. It's been retconned into oblivion. Forbidden Door's title match was already nerfed when reports claiming that the Lights Out Cage Match was set to main event, instead of MJF's world title shot, surfaced. Now, combined with this contract retcon, nearly all the suspense MJF and Page's title match might have had is gone. I mean, isn't it inevitable at this point? If Page retains, MJF still continues to feud with him, as he now retains his Casino Gauntlet Match contract privileges, should he fail in Sunday's bout. If MJF wins, he wins, and while you might say that such a result is even remotely interesting, the long-term result is the same: he will probably still continue to feud with Page. We're almost guaranteed a Forbidden Door rematch, so what's the point of tuning into Sunday's title match?
It didn't help that MJF and Page were floundering on the mic. Page was huffing and puffing for the opening segment, and while rage and mental anguish typically look great on him, Page's whole arson preamble just felt like gratuitous swearing overall, it was far from Page's best work. While it might have been cool to see AEW try to recreate the drama of Page's infamous house-burning segment (it helps that MJF wasn't *as* bad on the mic this time around), MJF just lacked heart. In general, this feud has lacked the heart, the sauce needed to back up the Page of old's arson antics. MJF and Page don't hate each other nearly as much as Page and Strickland did, and the inclusion of Ricochet and Briscoe watered down the whole segment. The lackluster chair shot from Page to Ricochet (with no resolution with MJF and Briscoe) was the nail in the coffin.
We'll see how things pan out at Forbidden Door, but honestly? I'm not surprised this isn't main eventing.
Written by Angeline Phu
