AEW Dynamite 8/31/2022 Match Ratings and Commentary
Cult of Personality (courtesy of allelitewrestling.com)
Here’s where we landed with Dynamite this week. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.
AEW Dynamite - 8/31/2022
Bryan Danielson def. Jake Hager: ★★
Toni Storm and Hikaru Shida def. Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. and Jamie Hayter: ★★★
Wardlow and FTR def. Silas Young, Red Jones, and Vic Capri: ★
Wheeler Yuta def. Dante Martin, Rey Fenix and RUSH: ★★★
The Elite def. Will Ospreay and Aussie Open: ★★★★3/4
Mox (courtesy of allelitewrestling.com)
Show Highlight—
“You fucking get up!” These promos made the PPV. Punk and Mox had the added pressure of Matt Riddle and Seth Rollins doing an all-time classic segment on Raw to hype their Labor Day weekend show, and holy shit did they deliver. Ace Steel hyped up CM Punk to make Punk shift from sullen shouldered mope to Punk Rock Rocky. Punk is the greatest fire and brimstone preacher, when he needs to sell something, there’s nobody better. And Mox had a great heel promo to set the table, and came out again in the show to talk shit. This was an interesting build to say the least, but it worked.
What Worked—
Jericho’s threads. I, for one, loved the Jesse Camp inspired pants.
Tony’s a pillar. Listen to that pop when Schiavone and Stokely Hathaway had their little skirmish. The business needed another Mean Gene and I’d like to see Tony play the four cocktails in, dirty old man Okerlund from the end of WCW.
Jungleboy and Christian sit-down. With wrestlers getting their names back being in vogue, JR finally got his wish—Jungleboy is Jack Perry!
Women’s tag wrestling. An underrated gem of a tag match. They all click incredibly in the ring together and you’d be happy with any one of these women coming out with the belt. Jamie Hayter will be the breakout women’s wrestler of 2023. In Bret Hart’s memoir, he recalled a story of Pedro Morales encouraging him by saying you can’t hold down talent. Maybe not the best parallel, but she’s going to get another level of appreciation from her talent shining through with the right spotlight and angle (against D.M.D.).
Best trios match ever. It’s shame that that couldn’t be the main event of the title tournament. That was an all time, classic trios match and the best six man I’ve ever seen. Perfect spotfest. As a fan, I can be a curmudgeon about the cooperation spots and lack of rules in multi-man tag matches but that was an endless stream of holy fuck! And I loved the nice touch of Kenny not tanning and looking appropriately normal and not like he was ran five times through the spray tan machine. The chemistry Ospreay and Kenny have is incredible. Their eventual one-on-one match is going to draw gigantic money.
What Didn’t Work—
Open challenges. Can we put to bed the over-reliance on an open challenge? How many titles recently have used that as the inciting action in the past three weeks? Does any title have number one contenders that were ranked number one? Make the ranking system matter, it’s the simplest, logistical way to build stars and create championship matches and angles when fans can believe in a decided pecking order.
Show Cringe—
Stun Gun. Was Jose supposed to shock Ten in the belly? Did Ten know he he had to sell that? Jose’s handsome, brave, and strong, but doesn’t he know he’ll always get his man with a shock stick?
Will Ospreay (courtesy of allelitewrestling.com)
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