AEW Dynamite 7/5/23: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved
We took a break from reviewing "WWE NXT" this week due to the fourth of July, but we are back to talk about the latest episode of "AEW Dynamite," live from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! While last Saturday's "AEW Collision" was all about the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament, this week's "Dynamite" was all about the Blind Eliminator Tag Team Tournament. Two tournament matches were set for the evening, along with Kenny Omega vs. Wheeler Yuta and Ruby Soho vs. Britt Baker in the Owen Hart match that was supposed to take place last week. Plus, AEW promised we'd hear from both Jon Moxley and Chris Jericho. What would they have to say? Would MJF and Adam Cole be able to co-exist? And most importantly, was AEW actually taking steps to blow off the six-month-old feud between Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland?
Our live coverage of the show has all the objective details, but we're here to provide an actual reaction. Here are three things we hated and three things we loved from the 7/5/23 episode of "AEW Dynamite."
Loved: Friendship is magic
Okay, so realistically we know there's a very small chance that this MJF/Adam Cole storyline ends with Cole realizing that he secretly has more in common with MJF than he does with any babyface, and he turns heel again and they become an actual team and do weird gym skits together forever, but we'd honestly be fine with it if they did, and we are going to enjoy the hell out of however long this lasts.
In one of the two major throughlines of this week's episode, we got basically four full segments related to MJF and Cole. In the gym, Cole calls out MJF's fatphobia (which, in a retroactively interesting touch, MJF also demonstrated on Collision last Saturday) and MJF is (obviously falsely) chastened; then they unexpectedly bond over their shared derision for Tony Schiavone before Cole gets under the bench press and blows MJF's mind with how strong he is. There's so much just in this one vignette — if MJF comes off as disingenuous while being lectured, Cole comes off equally disingenuous while doing the lecturing, as though this is learned behavior, not the result of actual values. Cole also looks briefly shaken after making a joke at Schiavone's expense, as though he'd forgotten he'd ever done or said things like that. And MJF was clearly prepared to exaggeratedly praise Cole's strength on the bench press, but just as clearly is actually impressed, and slightly unnerved — you can see the exact moment he thinks to himself "Wow, I should probably pretend to be friends with this guy as long as humanly possible."
But there's also the scene backstage where Roderick Strong is starting to get a little concerned at what's going on here; the Blind Eliminator tag match, where MJF gradually coaxes Cole into illegally assisting with an abdominal stretch, and where MJF plays the face in peril and makes the hot tag to Cole, who wins the match without ever tagging MJF back in, and the post-match birthday party celebration, where MJF (the heel, remember) laughs off the fact that Cole (the hero, you'll recall) just shoved his face into some cake, and which ends with Cole, apparently sincere, thanking his "friend" for the party. It's the best kind of manipulation when it comes to the idea of wrestler alignments, and it works because the audience has known Cole so well and for so long as a heel, and because they are desperate to be able to cheer for MJF. If there's a good lesson to be learned from the other company's Bloodline story, it's that we love it when we have no idea where a complicated relationship is going next, and while it's very likely that this one is going to the least interesting possible place (another match between Heel MJF and Babyface Cole) we are also going to lose our minds if they win their next tag team match with a double clothesline.
Hated: Learning bad lessons from the other company's Bloodline story
The thing about being compelled by character relationships is that it only works if the characters in question are established first. You know what doesn't work? Casting sudden doubt on Chris Jericho's established heel alignment for seemingly no reason beyond "we're in Alberta" and then trying to make us care about whether he's going to join up with Don Callis.
Now, we understand that this storyline is very likely a product of AEW being in a bind. With Blood & Guts two weeks away, it seemed as though we had our teams for the 5-on-5 match: Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, "Hangman" Adam Page, and Eddie Kingston vs. Jon Moxley, Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta, and Konosuke Takeshita, Callis' client, for whom Callis betrayed Omega. Now we're suddenly short a team member for both sides — Kingston's upcoming Japanese dates conflict with Blood & Guts, and Danielson broke (not fractured) his arm in his match with Kazuchika Okada at Forbidden Door, meaning he's also out. Obviously some different people need to be brought into this storyline as quickly as possible. That having been said, of course it's Chris Jericho. We couldn't just figure a way to add a person to each team whose alignment is already established; no, that would be silly. Instead, we're having Jericho cut an out-of-character babyface pro-Canada promo, tease a new reinvention of himself, and then try to create Uso-esque drama by answering "maybe" to Callis' offer of alliance. Because that was the easiest way to solve this problem.
Regardless of what decisions were made and why, we can't help but notice that there's one person who suddenly benefits from every version of this scenario. Each team has a hole to fill — either Jericho stays heel and joins up with Callis, or he turns face and aligns with the Elite, but either way, he's now part of the hottest feud in AEW, and isn't that convenient.
Loved: The rest of the Blind Eliminator tournament
To be clear: The Blind Eliminator Tag Team Tournament is a stupid idea, and it was a stupid idea 30 years ago when it was called BattleBowl. But to be honest, AEW could stand to be a little more stupid, and the more we saw this play out, the more fun we had with it.
Like many people, we initially scoffed at the notion of the tournament creating "random" pairings like the currently-feuding Adam Cole and MJF, or the split former tag team champions Swerve In Our Glory. But to their credit, AEW finally started giving us the odd random-feeling team, like Matt Menard and The Butcher, and with each new team announcement that came in, the formula shifted slightly — Matt Hardy briefly thought he'd been paired with his brother Jeff, only to find that it was Jeff Jarrett, after which we learned that Jericho Appreciation Society members Daniel Garcia and Sammy Guevara were the ones who actually got to be the tournament's resident "already a team" team. Yes, it's all very silly, but if you can get past that, it's enjoyable.
Beyond that, the other Blind Eliminator match this week was the aforementioned SIOG vs. Darby Allin and Orange Cassidy, and that match absolutely slapped, at least when it came to the in-ring action. Somehow, the Lee/Swerve Singles Match That Was Promised doesn't seem any closer to happening than it did before; following a badly-delivered backstage promo by Allin in which he said something about brining back the old Keith Lee (side note: everyone is suddenly doing this in multiple companies, please stop), Lee and Swerve actually worked well as a team for a while, and only lost because Swerve hit Lee with a couple moves accidentally. There was no follow-up or post-match angle, and Swerve is wrestling the debuting Nick Wayne next week, so it really doesn't seem like anything is happening there. But the match was incredibly well-performed, including an absolutely brutal spot featuring Lee climbing up the ringside stairs with Cassidy on his shoulders and Allin underneath the stairs, and climaxing with an absolutely insane move in which Lee powerbombed Swerve who was vertical suplexing Allin. Just an awesome spectacle of physical action, and sometimes that's — well, not enough, but close.
And at this point, who even cares if Lee and Swerve have a match? It's almost funnier if they don't.
Hated: Sigh
Well, here we are again.
In other AEW tournament news, last week's planned first-round Owen Hart Foundation Tournament match between Ruby Soho and Britt Baker, which had to be postponed due to Baker's illness, did occur this week, and unfortunately, it really has us wondering whether Baker came back too early. She seemed to have trouble moving properly in this one, as though she was a step slow and maybe not quite as strong as usual, and we wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that she was still recovering. It was also fairly obvious, to us at least, that Ruby would be going over, likely due to Outcasts shenanigans, and that's basically what happened, though AEW being AEW, they had to drag it out as much as possible.
One thing AEW loves is to do a traditional "heel wins by cheating" spot, only to have the cheating get caught, or the babyface kick out at the last second. In theory it's just good trope subversion, but in AEW it happens regularly, and it's beginning to lose some impact as a result. Not to go back to the Bloodline, but the Usos kicking out of the Sikoa/Reigns spike/spear combo at Money in the Bank, after previously getting a visual pin on Reigns while the ref was down, was impactful precisely because of the number of times we've seen Reigns (and the Usos, in fact) win matches in that exact way. They've done the trope over and over and over again, so when it gets subverted, it's meaningful. In AEW, these false finishes seemingly exist simply so the match can go longer and have more big moments, and eventually our eyes start to glaze over and we stop doing the audience's part in the storytelling. That's what happened in Soho/Baker; the number of times the Outcasts had to cheat to keep Baker down didn't take us on an emotional rollercoaster, it just made the Outcasts look kind of ineffectual.
And in the meantime, there continues to be very little meat on this bone when it comes to narrative. Soho is up against ostensible Baker ally Skye Blue in the next round, and Blue came out to stare Soho down after the match, but she didn't come out to help Baker overcome the numbers game, and neither did anyone else, so it seems like the "Outcasts vs. Originals" thing is either over or on hold, and so far AEW has done nothing to replace it.
Loved: The Acclaimed have arrived, again!
The trios match with Max Caster, Anthony Bowens, and Billy Gunn taking on the Bollywood Boys and The Blade (the Bollywood Blades?) wasn't really anything to write home about (and it definitely didn't need to be long enough to run through a commercial break) but we're just happy to have The Acclaimed back on "Dynamite," at least for one week. Once staples of the show, this was the trio's first "Dynamite" match in two months and only their third one since AEW Revolution at the beginning of March; since then, they have largely been relegated to the floundering "AEW Rampage," an oddly rapid fall from grace for the team that won the hearts of Chicago back in September. As infrequent (at best) "Rampage" viewers, we were delighted to see them again.
Moreover, we have to assume that their presence this week, and the apparent continuation of the Acclaimed's feud with Harley Cameron and QTV, is a result of a recent "Rampage" segment that went viral and represented a truly inspiring moment of positive LGBTQ+ representation of the sort we rarely see in professional wrestling. We are, in general, less than enamored of QTV, but we can't blame AEW for trying to capitalize on the good will behind Bowens at the moment, and we largely trust Tony Khan to not take the story into problematic places. If more QTV is the price of getting the Acclaimed back on "Dynamite" in a storyline that's openly friendly to marginalized communities, we will gladly pay it.
Hated: Aw nuts fans we're out of time
This is now the second straight week that "Dynamite" has run over time, and while it wasn't ultimately a problem last episode, this one ended up cutting off mid-shot, just as we caught a glimpse of the Dark Order seemingly getting involved once again with Adam Page and the BCC/Elite feud. If you're someone who wants nothing more than for "Dynamite" to be "Monday Nitro," maybe this is fine — "Nitro" had a reputation for this sort of thing, after all. For us, it just made us wonder what possible excuse AEW could have for running long when multiple "Dynamite" matches this week would have done better with less time, including the main event.
From a purely in-ring perspective, Kenny Omega vs. Wheeler Yuta was excellent, an exciting, back-and-forth affair taking place within the context of AEW's biggest feud. Or at least it should have been; the reality is that this specific match seemed to be a direct follow-up from Double or Nothing, which was more than a month and two PPVs ago. It was also structured around Omega's injured neck, a decision that, if nothing else, was perhaps an overly blatant middle finger to those who have spent the last two weeks questioning Omega's decision to take a brutal-looking Tiger Driver '91 at Forbidden Door. And of course, it had one of the false finishes previously discussed, in which it looked like Yuta would defeat Omega due to heel shenanigans, but Omega kicked out (and in this case, ended up winning the match itself).
Now, if you don't want Wheeler Yuta pinning Kenny Omega right now, we're not going to quarrel with that decision. But time-wise, the moment where he nearly pinned Omega was about the perfect time to end that match, and as ever, it went a little longer instead. Then Claudio Castagnoli had to come out to attack Omega, which triggered a response from the rest of The Elite, which triggered the Dark Or— aw nuts, fans, we're out of time.
Omega vs. Yuta was a legitimately well-performed match, and BCC/Elite has several elements that are incredibly compelling (though we won't pretend it wasn't hurt this week by the absence of Eddie Kingston and, outside a pre-packaged promo, Jon Moxley). But one thing Tony Khan really needs to learn as a booker is that you don't have to do everything all at once, and not every match has to have the ingredients of a five-star classic. Sometimes, less is more.