AEW DYNAMITE HITS & MISSES (1/10): Samoa Joe confronted by challengers, Daily’s Place setting, Sting & Darby, Young Bucks, Preston Vance

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After another week of unneeded distractions that only hurt the product, it was important that this episode of Dynamite put the focus back on the wrestling. With a sold out crowd at the company’s home base, the ingredients were there for an exciting and fun episode that shows what AEW is all about and how they can start to grow more in 2024. Here we go.

HITS

MEN’S EIGHT-MAN TAG MATCH

It started a bit slow, but after a few minutes, this match of “randoms” really got going and got the crowd into it by the end. It was a nice showcase for Preston Vance, and while he has an uphill battle to get over with the crowd, I have always rooted for him as a fellow Crohn’s Disease sufferer. The dedication to Brodie Lee was well done and it ended up being a nice feel good moment.

JOE VS. HIS CHALLENGERS

You see, there was this movie in the 80’s called ‘Joe vs. The Volcano’… nah… forget it. Nobody would get the reference and it’s thin anyway. Moving on. It was great to see Samoa Joe come out and deliver his mission statement and immediately a couple of challengers made themselves known. I’m not sure I would go with Swerve first though as you would not expect Joe to drop the title this soon and Swerve seems destined for a big year so an early loss would not be wise. Either way, this is setting up for some cool title matches.

STING & DARBY

I did have an issue with the promotion of this match (see below), but watching a 64 year old team with a 31 year old and both of them leaving you shaking your head in amazement is tough to do. Every bump Darby takes makes you think it may be his last. Every big spot Sting performs makes you think it may be his last. But I was on the edge of my seat the whole way and I’m very much enjoying the last charge of Sting and his immortals. (‘Tombstone’ reference – slightly more recent than “Joe vs. The Volcano”… slightly).

I do like the “evil twin” Young Bucks being the final match for Sting. Just looking at their mustaches gave away that they’ll heel it up real good and get some heat on themselves as we get closer to Revolution.

QUICK HITS

– It was nice to see “Hangman” Page go back to taking a swig of a fan’s beer. He really got over doing that four years ago and if he feels safe doing it again, it will only aid in his resurgence.

– Toni Storm continues to stand out when her segments are short and sweet. She accomplished a lot in 2 minutes. Nice callback to her mention of Wendi Richter from the World’s End post scrum, insulting Deonna Purazzo, and feeding Mariah May chocolate and furthering their story.

– Clean finishes. I want to give credit to the booking. Over the past two months, we are seeing very few bad finishes. There seems to be a focus on avoiding the cliche interference and distractions that became the norm for a while. Keep it up.

MISSES

PROMOTE THE MAIN EVENT!

After a few weeks of doing a great job of promoting the main event during the show, they fell back to old habits. After mentioning it in the first 10 minutes of the show, there were no promos or video packages to not only remind you of the main event but get you excited for it. About 90 minutes into the show, I had totally forgotten what the main event was. Promote it!

THE PRESENTATION

I know the layout of Daily’s Place makes it challenging to present the show like you would at a normal venue, but I remembered it being a lot better lit and more crowded than it appeared on this show. I know they sold out the place, but you really never saw 90 percent of fans that were there. There had to have been some better options for camera placements to really emphasize that there were a lot of people there and it seemed like they were loud and engaged.

I know many were expecting a big surprise, but this was a pretty run of the mill show. It was entertaining, but likely won’t be entirely memorable outside of Darby and Sting nearly maiming themselves. The Undisputed Kingdom segment was okay but they really need to get them into a meaningful feud or have Roddy Strong win the International Title so they can be taken seriously quickly or they are going to have a tough time establishing themselves as a big deal. All in all, a good show, but not a great show.

Oh, and Tony Khan… please stay off Twitter and concentrate on producing good wrestling shows. That should be your only focus.

OR CHECK THIS OUT AT PROWRESTLING.NET: AEW Dynamite results (1/10): Powell’s live review of Sting and Darby Allin vs. Konosuke Takeshita and Powerhouse Hobbs in a Tornado Tag match, Hangman Page vs. Claudio Castagnoli, Sammy Guevara vs. Ricky Starks