Write Forever: Every match ever on AEW Dynamite for September 23
Three hours?? On a WEDNESDAY?! C'mon, Tony Khan, some of us have to get up for work in the morning and we know you're still going to have a 15-minute overrun!
Ah well. I slept extra last night because I was knocked on my ass from the updated COVID vaccine, so I guess I'm due for less sleep tonight.
Weeeellll, it's a big fuckin' show tonight as we are just days away from All Out – and that means I can almost stop seeing that Ospreay vs Mox promo shot where Mox looks like one of the Goombas from the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie.
The unending love story of Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland
Hangman and Swerve is a promotion-defining rivalry. It'll go down in history along the same lines as Raven/Tommy Dreamer in ECW, Steve Austin/The Rock in WWF, and Everybody vs the nWo in WCW. The twists and turns over the past few years and kept the story fresh, whether the two were partners or enemies.
Now, they sit in that uncomfortable frenemy zone. It feels like one wrong move or one line that cuts too deeply could set the other off and reignite a blood feud for the ages.
Tonight, Hangman teetered on jealousy. Or maybe "teetered on" is too soft of a phrase. He seemed bothered that Swerve found new tag team partners just as Hangman & Brodido won the Trios Titles.
But, is that the real reason he feels spurned? Or is it because Swerve found new partners and one of those partners wasn't Hangman Page himself?
The four other men in the ring – Brodido & New Level – could sense the jealousy, the broken heartedness, the unwillingness to move on from a relationship that can be just as detrimental as it can be positive for both Hangman and Swerve.
Ending the segment with Brody King & Bandido cutting promos at New Level while Hangman and Swerve stared each other down without saying anything else was a nice way to further tease the tension between the two. It also gave my partner the opportunity to start chanting "KISS! KISS! KISS!" at the TV.
A great segment, and a great few weeks leading up to All Out, that made the AEW Trios Titles feel as important as the World Title to the people feuding over the belts. Too long the Trios Titles have faded into the background and been forgotten, but hopefully the days of the belts being held and barely defended (cough cough Death Riders) are behind us.
As for the match? It was a bit messy and never really felt like it kicked into gear, but it's still wild seeing Kofi & Austin Creed in an AEW ring.
AEW is great, but I find myself checking out often
This isn't to say I'm burned out on wrestling as a whole or AEW specifically. Far from it. But, man, there is so much on these shows lately that I just can't convince myself to care about.
I am so over Jon Moxley and Death Riders. It's not that Moxley can't have great matches – he can. But matches like the one tonight with Dezmond Xavier just put me to sleep. No shade on Xavier at all; I've been clear about how into The Rascalz I am.
But these middle-of-the-road TV matches where Mox just feels like he's phoning it in and playing the hits put me right to sleep. I'm praying to all of the gods I don't believe in that we get the Continental Title off of him before the C2 and that he won't be in the tournament this year. Of course, the monkey's paw nature of this wish will be that he somehow beats Ospreay this weekend for the World Title.
I similarly could not give less of a shit about Tommaso Ciampa. At least when he was feuding with Jericho, it meant I could just leave the room or make a cup of coffee or put lit cigarettes out on my arms or literally a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g other than watch them take up time on my screen.
But I like Jake Doyle! I like him a lot! So now I have to watch him lose to the fucking Thin Blue Line dipshit.
A good first entry into the United Empire
I've been wondering who was going to be the first to make it into Will Ospreay's AEW-based United Empire, and Speedball Mike Bailey was as good a choice as anyone else on the roster. He's a wrestler who, as I've written about before, is constantly over and constantly putting on great matches. Aligning him with Ospreay will hopefully keep him in the focus even more week-to-week and maybe, just maybe, set him up for a run with one of the singles titles on the roster.
It's also a very important choice because now Ospreay can go into All Out against Moxley with his own shoeless wrestler to counteract Marina Shafir. Really getting it in under the wire there.
This may just be me, but something about Ospreay's presentation and promos just don't grab me a lot of the time. For some reason I'm just not bought into him as World Champion yet and I'm not sure where that wall comes from. His matches are all insane so it's not like he's not believable in the ring, just something doesn't connect with me – or at least, it hasn't yet.
With the announcement a couple of weeeks ago of Blood & Guts coming in November and Ospreay beefing up the ranks, I fear that we're going to drag this Moxley feud out even longer to get United Empire vs Death Riders in the double cage. If we're lucky, it'll be Mox's second loss to Ospreay in a row and there will be some kind of breakdown in the ranks of Death Riders. It's gotta happen sometime, right? Right?!
Wrapping Up
Another AEW show, another night of The Rascalz eating losses to Death Riders. Can we just get these guys doing something cool and winning matches?
Britt Baker really put me into honk shoo honk shoo mimimimimi mode on commentary. I know not every wrestler is cut out for commentary but god damn, her commentary is so flat and boring in a shocking way considering how much character she can have in promos. It just doesn't serve anybody, least of all the match going on in the ring. Props to Persephone for being the one wrestler ever to hold the ropes in a roll-up like that in a way that made it look like she actually had more leverage.
It was brief, but I loved the Roderick Strong/Conglomeration promo. Roddy finally broke the seal on his frustrations with trying to be happy-go-lucky fellas and told Kyle O'Reilly & Orange Cassidy that he could no longer do things their way. My hope is that we see a meaner, revitalized version of The Conglomeration rather than a split. Let's move from the teenybopper heartthrob Saved by the Bell into a moodier, more serious My So-Called Life.
On the other end of the spectrum, I appreciate the enemies-to-lovers story of Kyle Fletcher and Kevin Knight. It would have been easy to have these two continue on as begrudging partners who win despite their differences, but it's nice to turn the page and have actually begin to like and respect one another. I'm still holding a little hope in my back pocket that the two of them turn babyface and cause a rift in the Don Callis Family when they split off and somehow find their way back to Takeshita.
Did this need to be a three-hour show? Did the last hour do or add anything interesting or consequential? No, not really. Wrestling is great and I'm sure we get these long Dynamites to fulfill TV contract requirements more than anything else, but a lot of this show definitely felt like filler.
It was a much more high-energy show than the All In go-home Dynamite, at least, but it was a show that definitely felt its length before we got to the main event of PAC vs Ace Austin.