I was initially so excited to see that women were main eventing a “Dynamite,” since that doesn’t happen often, but when we got to the street fight AEW World Championship rematch pitting Jon Moxley against Cope, things started to feel off in terms of pacing for me. Moxley and Cope had a match that had all the makings of an AEW main event, for better or worse. It was certainly a better match than the pair had at Revolution with even more storyline implications by the end of it all. The fact it was a street fight with a pretty gruesome bump when Cope’s Spike, basically a baseball bat with nails, got stuck so far into Moxley’s back the referee could barely pull it out, just spelled “main event” to me, so seeing it by 9 p.m. was kind of jarring.
Outside of the Spike spot, there wasn’t much to write home about on the Moxley versus Cope end, but the interference from the Death Riders, FTR, and Willow Nightingale was good, albeit extremely expected and almost the standard for these men anymore. Wheeler Yuta had a pretty good table spot, and the general chaos of everyone around the ring made it feel like a big, well-overbooked, main event match. After Moxley defeated Cope and he and the Death Riders had taken their leave, it was Nightingale, Cash Wheeler, Dax Hardwood, and Cope in the ring. Despite being called “Rated FTR” for their trio and the fans being told how close of friends the three of the are, Hardwood refused to help Cope up and left the ring, and shoved Wheeler when he confronted him. Breaking up FTR for a bit certainly seems like a big story, and, to me at least, that felt like something that AEW would usually end the broadcast with.
With the brutality of a street fight done for the night, the pacing of the rest of the show for just under the hour left felt weird after that. It would have no matter who main evented, so this is absolutely not me taking a shot at Megan Bayne and Kris Statlander. The Will Ospreay versus AR Fox match felt slow after the street fight for the company’s top title. The “Hangman” Adam Page interview with Renee Paquette also felt a bit out of place.
I’m interested to see why Tony Khan made this decision. If he was trying to make up for the crap finish of Cope versus Moxley at Revolution, this wasn’t exactly the way to do it. The match could have easily traded places on the card with Bayne and Statlander and made things flow a bit better. If I can take anything good out of all this, however, it’s the fact it’s Moxley going on to Dynasty to hopefully be beaten by Swerve Strickland. The Death Riders story continues to not be exciting, and tonight, it wasn’t doing it for me even on a different spot during the night.
Written by Daisy Ruth
