Another "AEW Dynamite" has come and gone. The final edition before Saturday's Full Gear PPV was a muted one, with plenty of ups and downs for the Reading, PA crowd.
It's time to talk about what worked and what didn't. This will not be a discussion of the "what" of Wednesday night's show, as that is what our results page has always been, and will always be for. From All-Star Tag Matches to the Costco Guys bringing "The Boom," there was plenty to love, but some of the other segments like Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly's woeful confrontation left the Wrestling Inc. Staff flat.
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Without further ado, here's the best and the worst of the November 20 "AEW Dynamite."
Your mileage may vary with Big Justice and AJ, the Costco Guys, and their cavalcade of supporting players, but it doesn't change the fact that this is their world and we are merely living in it.
The crowd in Reading, PA was not quite as lively as one might expect for the go-home show for one of AEW's original four PPVs, but when the AJ appeared with Renee Paquette, the crowd seemed to wake up. AJ's announcement that The Rizzler, the popular child sidekick who has begun to take center stage in their videos and interviews, would be the guest timekeeper at Full Gear got one of the louder responses of the night. People simply love to see "The Rizzler." They love to say his name. They love that little face he makes. Rizzler is hot and AEW has him.
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I'm not going to pretend this is some Rock n' Wrestling mainstream crossover that will turn the tide, but tapping into the zeitgeist with TikTok stars like Big Justice, AJ, and The Rizzler is exactly the kind of thing that will keep AEW for being too insular. This is a carnival sideshow after all, and sometimes you need someone who can cut a loud, concise promo like AJ to draw some rubberneckers who might not have noticed the Ospreays and Adam Coles of the world.
Written by Ross Berman
It's no secret at this point that AEW plans to keep the storyline between former tag team partners Adam Cole and MJF going after Full Gear, but there's a time and a place for new plot points to be added to it in order to progress the storyline further. Kyle O'Reilly essentially telling Adam Cole that his obsession with MJF has gotten too out of hand and that he's putting all his friends in harm's way was a prime example of the wrong time and place for a new plot point in the storyline.
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Given that MJF is set to face Roderick Strong on Saturday rather than Cole, any segment that involves Cole should be centered on generating hype for that match such as having him give some encouraging words to Strong and wishing him the best of luck. Having him instead be confronted by O'Reilly felt completely random and odd, as it should've been something that happened after Full Gear rather than before. On top of that, the content within the segment itself was boring (as evident in the crowd's total disinterest) and the words being spoken by O'Reilly almost felt childish and silly in juxtaposition to their intended purpose of being serious. It was all around a miss, and its timing in the storyline made absolutely no sense at all.
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Written by Olivia Quinlan
Wrestlers within the pyramid structure of a faction can and often do fall victim to the role in which they're cast, a middleman for the chosen hero to run through before getting the big bad, in this case, Jon Moxley. But that wasn't what befell Claudio Castagnoli tonight as he dismantled Darby Allin. The powerhouse of the group had the opportunity to cement himself as yet another threat by beating someone who has not only enjoyed much success in AEW but has also been positioned as a would-be revolutionary against Moxley's reign, but it was the way it was done that carried across so well. For better or for worse, fans have come to expect Allin to run through figurative and literal brick walls and still find a way to defy belief and score the win. Let's face it, it's an unrealistically overdone trope in wrestling. His match with Castagnoli excelled in defying those expectations, seeing the "Swiss Superman" throwing the "Daredevil" both in the ring and around ringside, swinging him into steel steps and pressing him off of the announcer's desk into the timekeeper's area before Allin rallied himself back into the ring. Tonight, raw perseverance wasn't going to be enough for him, though, as he ran straight into a stiff lariat to the sound of a sizable lady singing.
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What separated this well from the main event between Orange Cassidy and Wheeler Yuta was the idea of danger being conveyed by Moxley's Death Riders. If their entire gimmick is that they are for whatever reason technically superior and willing to go furthest to win, then that needs to be reinforced. It's part of why AEW needs to be building compelling and credible babyfaces before pitting them against the faction. There needs to be an element of danger to the group as a whole with Moxley as the crescendo. If you glance at the other side of things, part of the perception issue with Solo Sikoa in WWE was that he was hotshotted into a position vacated by Roman Reigns without having been established as his own core threat losing countless times and losing any sense of legitimacy in that role long before taking it. It's certainly one meager step in a long journey, but within the bubble of the moment itself, the match between Castagnoli and Allin did well to further the angle and the arcs of the characters within.
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Written by Max Everett
It feels really strange for me to be writing something for the "hated" portion of this article about Bobby Lashley and the Hurt Syndicate, but tonight just wasn't it. MVP had teased on social media earlier in the day that he had an announcement with the group arrived to the arena, and it was revealed that Lashley would be making an AEW in-ring debut, previously unannounced until that moment in the show, tonight on "Dynamite." Why the choice was made to do this and not save his debut for Full Gear against Swerve Strickland is beyond my comprehension. Lashley went up against Cheeseburger, a known ROH and NJPW talent, and Joe Keys. I'm not familiar with Cheeseburger's work, but I've only heard good things, but of course, I still don't know much about his in-ring style, because this was a squash match. As to be expected, I suppose. And though AEW had nothing to do with this and couldn't have known, this was absolutely not the crowd to debut Lashley in the ring in front of. You could hear crickets throughout the night.
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I'm not sure why this booking choice was made, because it didn't make Lashley look any stronger. We all know he's "The Almighty" and his match against Strickland on Saturday is going to be one of the highlights of the night. I just didn't need this tonight. The one cool visual to come out of this nonsense was Strickland appearing from underneath the ring to beat down the Hurt Syndicate after Prince Nana distracted Shelton Benjamin on the stage. He delivered a brutal House Call to Lashley, making him look strong ahead of Saturday, which he needed, but I feel like this could have been done in a regular ol' go-home show beatdown, and Lashley's in-ring debut could still have been saved for Saturday. I wanted their match to feel special, and maybe I'm overreacting a bit about it, but this segment just didn't hit like everything else the Hurt Syndicate has been doing lately. I'm sure I'll forget all about this on Saturday, but for now, it stunk, on a show that wasn't too thrilling to begin with.
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Written by Daisy Ruth
I'm forever a person who hates go-home shows for both major companies because they always end up being pretty lame and go nowhere, as the feuds for the pay-per-views are already set, of course, but, even my cranky self enjoyed the opening match of tonight's "Dynamite." It saw Team Babyface of Will Hobbs, Ricochet, Mark Davis, and Will Ospreay take on Team Heel, also known as The Don Callis Family's Kyle Fletcher, Lance Archer, Konosuke Takeshita, and Brian Cage. As a big fan of both Ospreay and Ricochet, I was already sold a ticket, but seeing Davis return to the ring after so long was really cool. AEW also worked the fans pretty good, with Hobbs' leg being targeted, and the "powerhouse" even being helped to the back, only to come back out during the match and beat down the opposing team, all while selling the leg. He certainly had us some of us fooled here at WINC, and that doesn't often happen, so props to him.
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Getting to see the heel team work together was interesting as well. I'm a big Takeshita fan, and this match helped Lance Archer grow on me a little bit more. It also helped that all the stories within the match meshed well together. Both Davis and Ospreay are looking for revenge against former United Empire stablemate Fletcher. Ricochet is gunning for Takeshita's International Championship. Hobbs is no fan of Cage, and he also helped Ricochet take down Takeshita and Fletcher two weeks ago.
So, while it was obvious AEW and Tony Khan were trying to get all these big guys with big matches on Full Gear on tonight's card, this worked well and in my opinion, was the match of the night. The entire thing was pretty inoffensive with just a lot of good wrestling. It even ended with a bit of drama at the end, which I love to keep me interested on nights like tonight, with Ospreay accidentally taking out Davis with a Hidden Blade meant for Fletcher. The Don Callis Family won after Takeshita hit a running knee on Davis for a win. While it stinks a bit that Davis was the one to take the pin, it wasn't enough to make me hate this match, which ended up being the best thing on a pretty lackluster show. While it didn't make me any more or less excited for Full Gear on Saturday, just put Ospreay and Ricochet in anything, especially on the same team, and it will probably work for me.
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Written by Daisy Ruth
There is a lot of negativity for me to unpack when it comes to the fumbling of Mercedes Mone, Kamille, and the TBS Championship picture over the past few months. But fortunately for me (not so much for the product) tonight had glowing examples of each and every reason why it's been this way. Mone's Full Gear challenger, Kris Statlander, defeated Hikaru Shida in a tune-up match for her title bout this weekend.
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After the bell rung, out came Mone with a sling-wearing Kamille to cut a very copy-and-pasted promo complete with cheap Boston Celtics heat with the Reading, Pennsylvania crowd, and how and why she is better than Statlander without actually offering anything new or remotely layered to this feud. It was steadily mild until this point, and I was willing to just say it wasn't my flavor of ice cream. That was until Mone actually unironically turned and ordered her one-armed enforcer to get in the ring and deal with not only Statlander but also Shida as if she couldn't see why that was a bad idea. Kamille then, like me and probably every other viewer, looked back at Mone almost as if to say, "You're kidding right?" and then she still got in the ring and proceeded to have her behind handed to her. As if that alone didn't make Mone look like the Dr. Doofenshmirtz to Statlander's Perry the Platypus, she then tried to jump Statlander only to be driven into the mat. It was the go-home show for Full Gear and the best that could have been done was Mone literally handing herself to the challenger in the most mundane way. Moreover, it was the go-home show and the best build for Statlander to make the challenge was to face Hikaru Shida in a random face vs. face TV match.
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It's been a steady decline of sense and thus immersion within Mone and Statlander's run over recent months, the former stuck in the mud as the same Sasha Banks parody since winning the title and the latter reverting to her character from before aligning with Willow Nightingale, turning on her for a blood feud, getting a big win and then inexplicably turning face again. Neither characters in the story are compelling, the story itself is virtually non-existent and quantified by a championship that hasn't felt the same since it was dropped by someone who is now a champion in WWE. It hardly gets one excited for PPV.
Written by Max Everett
