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AEW DYNAMITE, MARCH 28, 2024
AEW continued their Canadian tour with a stop in Quebec City for AEW Dynamite. Let's take a look at the talking points from the show.
HEAVYWEIGHT OSPREAY
Will Ospreay vs Katsuyori Shibata was an extremely physical, hard hitting affair, very much inspired by the New Japan style of wrestling. One of the great things about AEW is that you will see different styles of wrestling. This is the Will Ospreay I want to see in AEW. His last Dynamite match with Kyle Fletcher saw Ospreay revert back to a style he had moved away from in recent years, and one that in my opinion has become somewhat dated, because who doesn’t do reverse rana’s now?
I would have liked to have seen Ospreay get a stronger, slightly quicker win, because again, just like the Fletcher match, Ospreay is struggling to beat a guy that should be a tier beneath him, and I would also like to see no one ever kicking out of the Hidden Blade, because it's one of the most devastating looking moves in wrestling, that absolutely nobody should be getting up from.
It's always amazing to see Shibata, a man who is lucky to be alive, again able to wrestle at this level. His past two matches with Ospreay & Danielson are the closest he has looked to the Shibata of old.
SWERVE IS NUMBER ONE
The result was never in doubt as Swerve Strickland clashed with Konosuke Takeshita in what we were told was a number one contenders match for the AEW World Championship. We were told that Takeshita was here due to his record in the rankings. Rankings that were brought back some weeks ago, and seemingly forgotten about again, until they are again being referenced and used to determine title challengers. The problem is numbers and statistics are not a substitute for momentum, something that Takeshita has very little of. He lost his last high profile match to Will Ospreay, and despite being well protected in the past year, and delivering many impressive in ring performances, he often disappears from TV for weeks at a time and endures periods of having no clear direction. A small number of important wins over major names in prominent positions are a lot more important than picking up 8 wins on Rampage.
These two men are outstanding talents in the ring, however I would love to see Takeshita stay away from doing dives that encourage the crowd to chant his name and focus more on his intensity and ferocious striking. Whereas the Swerve Stomp can often look contrived when his opponent has to awkwardly sit up and get in position to take the move.
Swerve will now challenge Samoa Joe for the world title at Dynasty, and I’m hoping next week we will see some great promo work to build momentum for Swerve’s title chase, something that has been overshadowed by the new arrivals in recent weeks.
WILLOW WINS
It was a foregone conclusion that Willow Nightingale would become number one contender to the TBS Championship and face Julia Hart at Dynasty. This was a very strong match that showed the improvements of everyone involved here, as AEW continues to try and build some depth to their women’s division. Mercedes Mone added very little on commentary, and had a very unmemorable role here after her hot debut just two weeks ago. It looks like we may not see her in-ring debut until maybe after Dynasty.
TOO MUCH WRESTLING
This show had a LOT of wrestling, and a lot of matches that in my opinion were too long. By the time we got to the main event we had already seen three matches that had all the big near falls, and we had seen two apron bumps by the time Swerve nailed Takeshita with his stomp on the apron in the main event. It was too much and by the time the main event hit the ring, I felt my eyes were starting to glaze over, which hurt my enjoyment of a match I was looking forward to, and one that should have been the one “epic” match on the show. This show had no in-ring promos (something that added a lot to the flow of last week's show) and no major angles or storyline progression outside of people earning title shots and advancing in the tag tournament. All important things, but the past two weeks of Dynamite had seen an encouraging change that was seemingly moved away from this week unfortunately. I hope this is not a permanent change and we continue to see new elements added to the show that break up the in-ring action.
I can be reached at matthewmacklin90@gmail.com
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