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It is Wednesday and AEW Dynamite, Championship Fight Night is coming to you from the El Paso County Coliseum in El Paso Texas. Our commentary team is Excalibur, Taz, and Tony Schiavone.
MJF (AEW Champion) vs Konosuke Takeshita title eliminator match
Tony lets loose our first swear word of the night. This is also MJF’s first match of the year, which is kind of amazing when you think about how AEW has the top talent work a lot on TV.
MJF does a lot of old school heel work here, kicking Takeshita during the handshake, pulling the ref in front of him with Takeshita is trying to attack, and jacking jaws at the crowd. MJF also spends a lot of time going after Takeshida’s arm, since his arm bar in his finisher. Takeshita, for his part, does a lot to win over the crowd, including the tribute to Eddie Guerrero before a frog splash.
Through the match, the commentary is interesting, with Tony constantly ragging on MJF, and Taz sticking up for him. Taz isn’t going the heel route, he talks like the veteran who sees MJF as someone using smart moves to win the match.
The match moves at a fairly standard TV match pace, with MJF cutting off Takeshita who mixes big power moves to stuff off the top rope. This isn’t a match about flashy moves, it’s like most of MJF’s stuff, old school heel vs babyface stuff. MJF is great at talking the crowd on that ride.
MJF does a spot that injures his knee, giving the crowd hope that Takeshita will win. After Takeshita gets in a few big moves, MJF locks on the Salt of the Earth, showing no injury, so he did it to lure Takeshita in, and Takeshita has to tap out.
Winner: MJF
After the match, MJF gets the Diamond Ring from the ref, pops the ref with it, and then attacks Takeshita with it, busting him open. Bryan Danielson comes down to make the save.
Solid TV match, and since MJF hadn’t wrestled in months, it reminded the crowd of how he works.
We then get a recap of Samoa Joe winning the TNT title.
Jamie Hayter (AEW Women’s champion) vs The Bunny
Each one comes out with their entourage.
Crowd is in Hayter’s corner. It’s odd that they are doing this match, since they are pushing the “originals vs invaders) story line for the women’s division. Pretty short match, with Hayter winning a minute after coming back for the picture in picture.
Winner: Jamie Hayter
This was just one step above a squash match.
Renee is in the back with Saraya and Toni Storm and they attack Leva Bates (who did a pretty poor job of selling) and spray paint an L on her because the AEW originals are Losers.
In the back, Lexi is outside of MJF’s locker room and he invites her in. MJF tells Takeshida he’s no match for him. MJF then says people are treating him like a scumbag. He then tells a story of taking his high school crush on a drive. They had a crash, and because he had too many speeding tickets, he moved his crush to the driver's side so she would get blamed for the crash.
He then explains that Bryan will never have a title match because he is a scumbag, and he’s proud of it.
Ricky Starks in a Gauntlet match.
First opponent: Angelo Parker
Parker goes after Starks immediately, but Starks beats Parker with a quick roll up.
Second opponent: Matt Menard
Starks immediately gets a quick roll up for the pin.
So they don’t mean anything and are comedy fodder now.
Daniel Garcia comes out and he’s quickly followed by Sammy Guevara. They play mind games by both getting on the apron, and when Sammy starts to get in the ring, Garcia attacks Starks from behind.
Third Opponent: Daniel Garcia
Garcia gets to dominate during the picture in picture. Starks goes to the top, and Garcia meets him there and hits a superplex, but Starks immediately grabs Garcia for a Northern Lights Bomb. As Starks is outside the ring and masked fan hits Starks with a back elbow. Garcia drags Starks into the ring and gets the pin and the win.
Winner: Daniel Garcia
The masked fan comes into the ring and unmasks to show it was Chris Jericho, but we knew that since Taz messed up and called the back elbow the Judas Effect when it was hit outside the ring.
For some reason, this didn’t quite work. I get the idea of Jericho’s team cheating to stop Starks, but the way Starks just wiped the floor with Parker and Menard, followed by the attack from Jericho from the crowd just didn’t rev up the crowd the way it should. Maybe because the crowd couldn’t see what happened at ringside, and maybe because the first two matches didn’t do anything to get the crowd into it.
Renee is with Billy Gunn and The Acclaimed. Billy says he will stay in the back to let the teams handle their business tonight.
In the back, Renee is with Takeshida and Bryan Danielson in the back and they are interrupted by Rush’s team locking Bryan in the locker room.
Rush comes to the ring and he’s followed by MJF, limping on his way to the ring. He tells the ref that according to the rule book, Bryan has a match and to ring the bell. We see that Bryan broke out of the locker room as the ref is counting. MJF yells at her to count faster and she counts slower.
Rush vs Bryan Danielson
MJF joins commentary. Rush goes after Bryan and stomps him down in the corner. Bryan finally starts to fight back and sells his shoulder as being useless. The match is basically7 just Rush beating the hell out fo Bryan.
Bryan is busted open and Rush licks the blood off of his hands. I hate that. Hate it.
This isn’t a match, it’s a storyline beat down, which is a shame since a match between Rush and Bryan would be well worth watching. Bryan comes to life and they fight on the apron ending with Rush hitting a suplex from the apron to the floor. The fight through picture in picture and Bryan fights to try to lock on the Labell lock, and Rush escapes. Bryan keep up the pressure with a charging leaping kick on the outside and then a shot gun drop kick off the top in the ring.
They each get a series of chops and kicks in the corner. Bryan kicks out of a straitjacket pile driver. Bryan is able to get the psycho knee for two. The crowd is into the match more than any other so far tonight. Bryan gets a second psycho knee for the pin and the win.
Winner and going on to face MJF at Revolution: Bryan Danielson
MJF comes to the ring and waits for Bryan to get up. MJF nails Bryan with the Diamond ring and then mounts him to beat him down. MJF then locks in the Salt of the Earth on the injured arm. MJF attacks officials when they come to break it up. The second group of officials are able to get into the ring and try to break it up as we go to break.
The crowd loved this match, but I did not. Too much blood, Rush always looks bored when he has to sell, and after so many crazy kick outs and violence, for Rush to get pinned to a psycho knee in the middle of the ring just felt anti-climactic. In some ways, it was like the Darby Allin matches where he gets beaten down for 90% of the match and pulls out a fluke win.
In the back, Tony is with two of the men from Practical Jokers. Nice to see some cross promotion. They have Chris Jericho’s bat and talk about Jericho’s appearance on their show tomorrow.
The Elite (AEW Trios Champions) vs Top Flight and AR Fox
Glad I’m not doing play by play for this one, since it’ll be a spotfest.
After the fast paced high flying opening, we move to Kenny Omega taking apart AR Fox, slowing the pace. When we come back from picture in picture it’s the Bucks and Kenny dominating, still. AR Fox is able to get a spotlight as he takes the beat down but works in some big moves himself.
Dante is the one who tags in and some of his leaps are just amazing. It’s almost as if he does front and back leaps where he twists to the side in air. Matt Jackson does a bit where he has Dante hooked, and then suplexes both Darius and AR Fox to pin all three which looked cool. Top Flight gets in the Nose Dive for a near fall, and that’s when the crowd explodes.
We then move to near falls, and a lot of them, with more big moves like the Meltzer Driver, moonsaults to the outside, V Triggers, and the rest. Kenny finally gets the win with a crucifix, but AR Fox got the most ring time and looked impressive.
Winners and still AEW Trio Champions: The Elite
We get a video package for Hook. We then get Stokely Hathaway running down Hook. Hook comes up behind him and gives Stokely and arm bar before walking away.
Billy Gunn said he is staying in the back, so I look for him to cost The Acclaimed the titles.
The Acclaimed (AEW Tag Team Champions) vs The Gunn Club
The crowd HATES the Gunn Club.
As Max Caster works over Austin, his work has improved a lot over the last six months, and his moves look big and strong. The Acclaimed dominates before we go to picture in picture. There’s only about ten minutes left for the show and the rest of this championship match.
The problem with these “championship” shows like this and Battle of the Belts is that they haven’t switched titles and many of the matches are against people who you know don’t have a chance. This is really the only match where there’s a question in our minds as to who will win, and it has to be story line, since The Gunns got beat so easily by The Acclaimed in the past.
We come back to the Gunns keeping Max from tagging out. Max is able to get the hot tag and he batters the Gunns. He’s really got a way to connect with the crowd like a baby face champion, and I like how he knows the flow of a match. All four men start fighting in the ring until everyone is down. Bowens hits the ref as Austin gets out of the way of a punch. Austin takes out Bowens and waits to attack.
Billy Gunn comes to the ring, and stops him from attacks. Colton attacks Billy from behind with the belt. The Acclaimed are back up and they are all fighting without a ref. The Acclaimed get the Mic Drop and Caster tries to get the ref back into the ring, and he’s tossed into the ring. The ref only is able to count two before Colton pulls Bowens out of the ring. Bowens gets back in the ring and gets a two count. As Austin kicks Bowens off, Colton nails Bowens with the belt and Austin gets the pin and the win.
Winners and NEW AEW Champions: The Gunn Club
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