Here’s how we rated the Dynamite emanating from Dayton, Ohio. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.

Jon Moxley def. “Hangman” Adam Page: ★★★★
The Acclaimed def. Turbo Floyd and Truth Magnum to retain the AEW World Tag Team Championship: ★
Konosuke Takeshita def. Brian Cage: ★★
Bryan Danielson def. Timothy Thatcher: ★★★
Jade Cargill def. Red Velvet to retain the AEW TBS Championship: ★★
Samoa Joe def. Darby Allin to win the AEW TNT Championship: ★★★★

Show Highlight—

Joe vs. Darby. It’s been an exceedingly long time when a TNT title match had an outcome everyone could live with. Darby deserves an awful lot of credit, he put on a hellacious title run and elevated the belt with good to great matches week after week. I was surprised he lost the belt to Joe here—not that I mind—as maybe that nod would go to someone else who needed a bigger moment whilst allowing the TNT and ROH TV belts to be separate. Nevertheless, an ungodly brutal match and as much as I dislike hardcore wrestling, this had so much drama, high stakes, and a perfect layout that I couldn’t help but be swept away by its magic. Even the one thing you could criticize about the match (the time it took for Darby to cut up the ring apron) had the happy accident logic of Darby falling into his own trap to give Joe time to recover.

What Worked—

Moxley vs. Hangman. They’ve had better matches, and aesthetically there’s more drama in Hangman being conflicted on how far he takes it to Mox vs Mox doing his Popeye on amphetamines schtick. People hated the finish, but the more I think about it, I can give them an “A” for effort in that you have to stretch a series pass a trilogy sometimes and if both guys are unhappy with the finish—that wasn't a fuck finish at least!—then a death match or last man standing match does seem justified for a larger stage.

What Didn’t Work—

No more JungleHook! I’m shocked the internet didn’t create some sort of wacky, Yaoi memes of Jungle Boy and Hook a la Tweek x Craig.
Boom mic blunder. It’s not as egregious as anything from episode 2F09, but Jesus Christ, do another take. How does any national televised show make that mistake today?
Jade vs. Red Velvet. I fell a little for the symmetry of Red Velvet being the first, so now what’s the next remotely interesting milestone for Jade? Does she become part of the nWo-y women’s civil war?

Show Cringe—

Mox’s Blading. It’s not the blading that bothered me, it was the horrible job by the production crew of capturing it. This is the problem of cutting erratically like a WWE show: shit like this slips through the cracks, and his gigging was easily one of the more egregious on-screen blade jobs that’s somewhere between Piper in the Boston cage match against Sammartino and Sandman in the Stairway to Hell match against Sabu. I couldn’t recall the last time Mox got color on TV, but the immediate reaction from a far too loud portion of the audience was that it was getting ridiculous and that’s something considering the patience the audience naturally has built up for the guy based on his selflessness during 2022.

AEW Dynamite 2/1/2023

AEW Rampage 2/3/2023