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AEW DYNAMITE, JUNE 5, 2024
MJF RESET
MJF’s promo was much better, and much more focused than what we got at the PPV last week. This was a reminder of what MJF was before he got swept up in bad comedy skits. Was it perfect? No. I’m not a fan of pointing out flaws in other talent, especially in Swerve, as he is still trying to establish himself as a top babyface. But this set up some future, interesting direction for MJF. Him mixing it up with Swerve, Okada & Ospreay could be the shot in the arm AEW needs. I like Rush as a first opponent, simply to reset MJF. Would this have been better if there was an effort to build Rush on TV before this? Yes. But what I like is that Rush is a gritty wrestler. As we saw with the pull apart brawl they had, this is a good first match back for MJF, to tell people that days of Kangaroo kicks and sing alongs are over. It might take a while for MJF to redeem himself in the eyes of some, but this was a good first step.
MAKE IT IMPORTANT
Will Ospreay went through a gauntlet match featuring a host of international competitors last week to earn a world title match at Forbidden Door. Great. How did Roderick Strong get his? He shouted at Tony Khan on Collision and was rewarded with a world title match. Now, let’s ignore that Tony Khan was on TV, exactly three days after Christopher Daniels was introduced as the on screen mouthpiece for Tony. Roderick Strong just lost a championship a week prior, and is supposedly high up in the rankings. Rankings that matter one week and don’t the next. This did nothing but water down the importance of the world title, and tell the audience that nothing is really important. Why get invested in a title tournament, when a championship match might just be handed to the losers anyway? Why build excitement and suspense for a big important title match, when instead we can have random championship matches on TV, where the challenger has exactly zero percent chance of winning. Roderick Strong is an excellent wrestler, no doubt, but he is not an important TV character and is certainly not presented as the level of star that should be challenging for the world title, as we were reminded in his comedic promo package this week on Dynamite. Was the match good? Sure. Did it need to happen? No. Will anyone remember this next week? Probably not.
UNPREDICTABLE
That was the negative to the world title picture. But there are some positives coming from the show this week. Big stars want the world title. A long time criticism of AEW booking is that the big stars either never face each other, or show no interest in the world title. Everyone should want it, especially the top stars in the company. The AEW world title picture has been somewhat predictable for a while. But Ospreay challenging Swerve changes that. It could go either way, and throw MJF into the mix, and now Bryan Danielson, and things are becoming unpredictable, and make you wonder where this all might be going. Does Ospreay win at Forbidden Door and defend against an Owen Hart Tournament winning Danielson at All In? Will Swerve or Danielson be champion heading into AEWs Tacoma Dome PPV in October? Hopefully AEW are finally going to present Danielson as a top star, and not just a guy that is happy to have fun doing the matches he wants to do. Swerve does feel like the lesser of all the names in this mix, which says a lot about how he has been booked, so I hope this isn’t simply a matter of him dropping the title straight away. There is also a huge danger of the crowd turning on Swerve when he faces stars that are more over than he is currently, thus never really giving him a chance to establish himself. I also hope the Owen Hart Tournament, with a Wembley title shot on the line, will be loaded with top level viable world title contenders, and not the cast of Rampage to make up the numbers.
TONGUE IN CHEEK
Between Chris Jericho and The Young Bucks, when you watch Dynamite, you are beaten over the head with over the top, forced, tongue in cheek rubbish, inspired by internet perception. The content of these segments is too similar, and both are bad. I just don’t understand the logic of purposely putting out hard to watch, cringey segments with the purpose of getting heat. Has it ever worked? While at times it can be mildly amusing, probably more amusing to some than it is to others, none of it is very believable, because we know these guys are just hamming things up because of criticisms made against them. Jericho screaming at everyone and The Bucks shouting “next segment” over and over makes me want to press fast forward. It isn’t making me want to see the heels get beaten by the babyfaces. This level of silliness is not for me. And that’s before you even get into the massive logic gaps in EVP storyline, now that Tony Khan is back. They should now essentially have no power again. One major positive is that it is keeping Jericho far away from the world title picture.
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