Wednesday saw the last "AEW Dynamite" before next week's big Blood & Guts event. While there's still plenty to sort out on Saturday's "Collision," the show was a bevy of table-setting for the big show.
As always with "Dynamite," there was plenty to love and plenty to hate. We won't break down the "what happened" of it all, since that has already been handily done by Olivia Quinlan on the results page. Instead, we'll get into all the good and the bad of Wednesday's show from Houston, TX. There were dizzying highs, like the revelatory performance from Daniel Garcia in his match against Darby Allin, or the women's tag title tournament surprise, and there were also perilous lows, like whatever FTR think they accomplished in that back-and-forth with Bandido's Abuela, or the way Athena had to eat the pinfall in said tournament shocker.
Enough bloviating, let's get to what the Wrestling Inc. Staff loved and hated from this week's edition of "Dynamite."
Women's tag team wrestling may be so back, as Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron took an extraordinary victory over the seemingly unbeatable team of TBS Champion Mercedes Mone and ROH Women's World Champion Athena on Wednesday's episode of "AEW Dynamite." This match had everything you could want: hard-hitting action from Nightingale, agile technical work from Mone and Athena, a lovable protagonist in Cameron, and a shocking ending that ultimately makes sense.
The match was one of Wednesday's better ones, with Nightingale and Cameron getting some serious offense on the untouchable Mone and Athena. The match started with typical heel shenanigans, and Cameron took some good offense before Nightingale came through and cleaned up shop. Nightingale is such an explosive performer, but just because she's a good in-ring powerhouse does not mean she's lacking in the story department, as she had a nice callback to her long-standing rivalry with Mone during their in-ring stint together. Granted, it was more Mone trash-talking Nightingale, but I'm glad both women decided to acknowledge their history together nonetheless.
I have to give credit to Athena, because while Nightingale was clearing house, Athena was flying. At some point in the match, Athena literally leaped from her corner of the ring to break up a pin attempt on Mone with a Senton, and how her little body managed to cover that much ground, I struggle to comprehend. Athena proved how much of an all-around in-ring god she is when she landed a double Suplex on both Nightingale and Cameron. Athena is almost 40! How is she still moving like this?
While I love that Cameron got the win off "Her Finishing Move," it sucks that Athena had to take the pin. Athena hasn't been booked the best on AEW programming, but honestly, this loss doesn't sting as hard as others. There was no way AEW was going to let Mone take the fall, and the Babes of Wrath progressing in the tournament is the right long-term call. The likelihood of Athena and Mone actually becoming the inaugural AEW Women's World Tag Team Champions was slim, so even if Athena didn't take a loss on Wednesday, she would eventually have. Putting the Babes of Wrath over was the correct decision: Cameron and Nightingale are the babyfaces to put against the Sisters of Sin, and I feel like they are the prime faces to stick onto the AEW Women's World Tag Team Championships. They're beloved enough to give the titles some attention, they have the skills to put on some good defenses, but they're not so famous that the titles look like a downgrade for them.
Good match, with a brighter future for our underdogs. Women's tag wrestling is so back.
Written by Angeline Phu
In a genuinely surprising result this week, the Babes of Wrath, Willow Nightingale and Harley Cameron, got the win over "Forever" ROH Women's World Champion Athena and longest reigning TBS Champion Mercedes Mone; Cameron pinned Athena after some botched interference, equalized by Kris Statlander, from Billie Starkz.
It's not to say that the Babes of Wrath don't deserve to advance in the tournament, nor is it necessarily the end of the world that this happened. But at the same time, it ensured that once more, Athena is made to look fallible when she comes over from ROH. It screams unnecessary that Mone and Athena were booked in the tournament to compete for further titles if they were only to lose at this early stage, especially since Mone is in the unique position of challenging for the AEW Women's World Championship at Full Gear.
It is undoubtedly a huge victory for Cameron, and by extension Nightingale, but it could even be argued that it would have been more significant in her story to have pinned Mone; once again, that wouldn't be a good idea because Mone is supposed to be challenging for a title, having only been felled by one person thus far. That person is Toni Storm, who also beat Athena at Forbidden Door. Storm and Mina Shirakawa are competing on the other side of the bracket.
Outside of the surprise element and the risk of Mone and Athena spreading themselves thin across the titles, everything really lent to the idea that at least getting to the finals for that showdown was on the cards. Otherwise, everything seems to indicate that maybe they shouldn't have been put in the tournament to begin with. Injuries and other absences should be taken into account, but it just feels like the wrong decision was made at every turn.
Cameron's win over Athena would theoretically stake a claim to the ROH Women's title down the line, so there is a possibility there, but it really feels like there is a continued failure to convert Athena's ROH dominance into any form of AEW prominence, with each and every gambit for gold coming up short. That's just a shame. As said, this is nothing against either Nightingale or Cameron, and on any other da,y there may not have been an issue with the result, but at this current stage in time, it feels wasteful to have Athena, and by extension Mone, take a loss here.
Written by Max Everett
Thanks to his feud with Jon Moxley being so over the top when it comes to the violence level, what with the Molotov Cocktails, coffins, and aquariums being involved, Darby Allin hasn't really had the chance to showcase what made him perhaps the best TV wrestler in the world in 2024. When you take away the hardcore deathmatch stuff from certain wrestlers, they fall flat on their face and aren't able to transition into a role where they can have consistently good performances on a weekly basis. That isn't the case with Darby as he is just as good at being technical as he is being a lunatic.
This match with Daniel Garcia is a perfect example of that. A match to potentially level up the Blood and Guts advantage series that is easily one of the best matches we've seen on "AEW Dynamite" in the past few weeks. Right from the jump, you can tell that Garcia's whole game is to outwork Darby on the mat as he is, on paper at least, the more technically sound of the two. However, knowing that Jon Moxley is not only in a position where he wants the advantage for the Death Riders next week, but in a position where he might not want to wrestle Roderick Strong on "AEW Collision" this Saturday, Garcia is more than happy to bend a few of the rules in order to get the win.
With Darby being the freak that he his when it comes to sustaining punishment, guys are often allowed to go a little further with him in putting themselves over as major threats, and this match right here might just be Garcia's best individual performance we've seen from him in a long time. When I think about it, not since the matches he had with Bryan Danielson in 2022 have I been more engaged with a Daniel Garcia match than I was tonight. He was mean, vicious, and for the first time since joining the Death Riders, believable when it comes to being the little savage that Moxley wants to mould him in to. If we get this Garcia in something like the Continental Classic at the end of the year, it could be a great run for him.
As for Darby, he was once again on top form, with this performance being more in line with his Continental Classic run in 2024 than any of the violent bloodbaths he has been involved in as of late. My easy pick for match of the night, and given how this build has been going these past few weeks, the Blood and Guts match next week is lowkey shaping up to be something wonderful.
Written by Sam Palmer
On a number of occasions in the past, FTR have proved to be great at drawing heat from the fans through a number of creative and unique ways. While I commend Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler for trying something different tonight by conducting an interview of sorts with Bandido's grandmother, I just don't think that it quite landed in the way that they intended for it to.
Now, don't get me wrong: I thought that Stokley guarding the door of Brodido's dressing room only for Brody King to break through it was super fun and over the top in the best way possible. It was very easily my favourite part of the segment, and had that ended up being the overall focus of this segment, I think this would've ended up being a loved for me. The interview portion of this segment took up too much time for me, however, and felt like it was just a really cheap way for FTR to be able to garner more heat from the fans. It wasn't necessary for this segment to have any chance of working for me, and it was the lowest point on a "Dynamite" I otherwise thought was fairly solid all around.
Written by Olivia Quinlan
I will fully admit I completely missed the Tony Khan memo yesterday that the advantage for both the men's and women's Blood & Guts matches would be determined by a best-of-three series. Now that I have that all straight in my head (and I was VERY confused for a second, though for good reason), I actually really like and appreciate it. I think I was so confused because I often find myself complaining about all the multi-person matches across all promotions when it comes to booking things just prior to a premium live event or pay-per-view, or other big event like Blood & Guts.
We see it all the time, where it's some kind of "can they co-exist?!" tag team, or a combination of a team, with wrestlers pulled from a bigger team, in a match leading up to an event. Tonight, it would have been easy to book a tag match or a six-person tag to determine the Blood & Guts advantage for both the men and the women's side of things. I thought we'd see something like Orange Cassidy and Darby Allin taking on Daniel Garcia and Claudio Castagnoli, but instead, we had singles matches between them. I wasn't entirely sure I was about it at first, as it was pretty obvious that the men's series was going to be tied when commentary announced that the third match, if needed, would be on "AEW Collision" on Saturday and would feature former AEW World Champion Jon Moxley taking on Roderick Strong.
Even though it was pretty obvious what was going to happen, I actually didn't mind it. It was something that felt a bit fresher, rather than a combination of smaller teams agreed upon by the larger Conglomeration and Death Riders teams, nominated to compete to get their team the one-man advantage. With the Women's Tag Team Championship tournament ongoing on the night, plus the World Trios Championship main event, the best two-out-of-three concept fit nicely on the show, even if we didn't get all those matches tonight.
We're also getting this concept with the women's match, which I also love, and I was glad it was separated into two men's matches and one women's match tonight, with the opposite happening on "Collision." There was just enough Blood & Guts build-up on the show tonight, and there will likely be plenty on Saturday's show to get that audience hyped. I was already really looking forward to the matches, especially the women's, and the way the advantage is being determined helped that just a bit, due to it being something different.
Written by Daisy Ruth
It's been a topic of discussion for so long, but there are too many belts in wrestling. After the introduction of the AEW Continental Championship in 2023, it looked as if Tony Khan might have actually realized this problem and decided to finally retire the FTW Championship, and the AEW Continental and International Championships were unified earlier this year to form the AEW Unified Championship. Now we're getting the AEW National Championship and I'm sitting here thinking "what is the actual point of it besides NWA nostalgia?"
Sure, the argument didn't really pop up when the AEW Women's World Tag Team Championships were introduced, but that was because the women's division needed another goal to strive for. This championship however, the AEW National Championship, is just really unnecessary.
The concept sounds fun, a belt that is designed to be defended in companies all over the world similar to what happened with the original NWA National Championship back in the 1980s. You can give it to someone who likes traveling to CMLL or New Japan Pro Wrestling, RevPro or Maple Leaf Pro up in Canada, and they can fly the flag for AEW on an international level, but there are a few things wrong with it. First, calling it the AEW National Championship and having the main appeal of it being that it's going to be defended internationally is very silly. Secondly, that was the original concept for AEW All-Atlantic Championship (which of course leveled up to be the AEW International Championship) and that lasted about three months before it became another TV title, and thirdly, you already have three male solo champions in your company Tony. You don't need a fourth.
On top of that, the performers who have declared themselves as entrants into the Casino Gauntlet match that will determine the first champion are a little uninspiring. Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin certainly rock and have done great things as a team, so the thought of seeing them wrestle each other in AEW is interesting, but then Ricochet comes out and tells us all that the feud between The Demand and The Hurt Syndicate isn't over and you just think that the ideas backstage are running a little thin. I get that when AEW gets to the end of the year, the booking does become a bit flat as Tony really likes to have a big reset at the start of every year, but much like a lot of feuds heading into Full Gear, it should have ended weeks ago. Adding more titles is not going to fix any sort of creative slump, but I hope to be proven wrong.
Written by Sam Palmer
