AEW Dynamite 10/5/2022 Match Ratings and Commentary

#NationalScissoringDay (Credit: AEW)

Here’s where we landed with this week’s Dynamite from DC. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.

AEW Dynamite - 10/5/2022

• MJF def. Wheeler Yuta: ★★★

• Darby Allin def. Jay Lethal: ★★

• Wardlow def. Brian Cage to retain the AEW TNT Championship: ★★★

• Toni Storm, Athena, and Willow Nightingale def. Jamie Hayter, Serena Deeb, and Penelope Ford: ★★★

• “Hangman” Adam Page def. Rush: ★★

• Luchasaurus def. Fuego del Sol: ★

• Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara def. Bryan Danielson and Daniel Garcia: ★★

Aww shucks, Satan (Credit: AEW)

Show Highlight—

• The Pillars shined.  The homegrown AEW stars all got featured wins or figured into a prominent storyline.  Anniversary shows are a simple but effective way to promote the next generation.

What Worked—

• MJF looked great.  I don’t wanna come off Vince-like in saying that adding bulk equates to greater star power, but MJF is adding another dimension to his character with more muscle mass.  He’s clearly making a point to have his in-ring work land as impressive as his mic work.  Also, his sell of getting hit with the tope into the guardrail was great.  As was that brutal as fuck powerbomb into his knee.

• Wardlow vs. Cage.  Finally Wardlow has a defense of his TNT title on TV and looked vulnerable in the best sense of the word against Brian Cage.  I get there’s a segment of the audience that wants to see Wardlow squash everyone Goldberg style and doesn't want to see him have a competitive match, but who know who sold a shit ton?  Hogan.  Alright, maybe not the best person to make a correlation to these days but whatever, Hogan always made everyone look like they were killing him and it always worked in the 80s.  Cage made the most of his minutes and now there’s no reason why he can’t be on TV.  Holding him off for whatever is or isn’t happening with ROH makes no sense.  Shit, have him do a program with PAC for the All-Atlantic belt or give him and his new stable the ROH Trios belts.

• That Matrix into a cutter.  Nothing more to say, but a wonderful sequence by Penelope Ford.  She looked like she belonged on the team with Deeb and Hayter.

• Acclaimed Every Wednesday.  Anthony Bowens doing the Clinton thumb gimmick was fantastic.

• Moxley money promo.  With so much shit crammed in this could have got lost in the shuffle, and with the behind-the-scenes noise sucking all the oxygen out of the room it may have, but this was another money promo by Mox that made him look like the most important thing in AEW whilst elevating whomever he’s opposed.  Mox v. Hangman is a big deal and I loved how they played this off here.

What Didn’t Work—

• Low attendance.  Knowing the size of attendance for the first Dynamite in DC it made that crowd look minuscule.  The production blocked it well, what with the ring in the back corner of the arena not unlike they did when they were at the University of Miami some time ago.  Tickets indicate interest, sure, but there’s a lot of markets they could go to away from the Atlantic coast and South (that’s not fucking Chicago).

• Lethal and Dutt are breaking up?  Was anyone hankering for this marriage to end?  The sequence landed worse off too when you had too similar of a segment before, with the MJF/Yuta match ending in a will-he-or-won’t-he handshake spot.   

• Wrong response to FTR? I’m getting fucking paranoid FTR will be put back in the mothballs because the crowd responded more to them then they did to Wardlow.  On the WWE documentary of his career, Jake “The Snake” talked about how the crowd made the wrong response once when they set up a program with him and Hogan by giving Hulk the DDT and the crowd didn’t chant “Hogan!  Hogan!” but “DDT!”  He said that was the wrong response and they stopped the program dead in its tracks.  Hopefully that’s not the case here.  The only reason they got the bigger pop is because they’re not featured as regularly.

• 50/50 Willow.  Did Willow need to get her heat back?  I wrote that initially before seeing she’d be wrestling Jade for the TBS belt, but it’s too transparent of a finish to satisfy that ending.  Yes, I get that you can’t run Hayter and Jade now, but shit, have Athena win if you’re going to just sacrifice someone to Jade.  Willow and Jade is a rematch too where we all know how it’s going to end anyways.

• Calm Anna Jay down.  It’s like her facial mannerisms are Seth Rollins’s fucking obnoxious laughing tick.  Who is producing this shit?  Was that the best take they got?  Who’s saying, “No no no—go broader!?”  She showed so much progress with having an edge in the ring, she’s not hopeless or a terrible performer, but this iteration is a nauseating cringe not unlike Robin Williams making the yuk-yuks on a talk show.

• Picture-in-picture break again?  The whole purpose of going over is to be uninterrupted.

• Lotta ROH.  Is a TV deal hanging in the balance where a decision is due next week?  God, they were talked about more than they were before Death Before Dishonor.  Totally understandable if Warner Bros. Discovery just needed a reminder before paper is put to pen but yeesh…

Show Cringe—

• It’s more than X-Pac heat.  Sammy got booed outta the building the moment he spoke in the backstage promo and he was treated worse off in the match.  It’s so far beyond the X-Pac heat designation, it’s its own category.  To protect himself from himself and save his value in the future, he should have been sent home, too.  While Jake Hager made a nice hatrack during the backstage promo, put him in the main event instead.

(Credit: AEW)

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