Roderick Strong Attacks Kyle O'Reilly, Will Defend AEW International Title On Dynasty

The first-ever AEW Dynasty has an eighth match, and a sixth championship match, following the events of "Battle of the Belts X." Roderick Strong will take on longtime friend Kyle O'Reilly for the International title at the April 21 pay-per-view, a match that took shape very suddenly after Strong won his Eliminator match against Rocky Romero.

Following Strong's victory, O'Reilly came out to congratulate him — the two have appeared to be on cautiously friendly terms since O'Reilly returned to AEW but didn't immediately elected to join the Undisputed Kingdom, the stable that includes both Strong and age-old O'Reilly frenemy Adam Cole. Strong, Cole, and O'Reilly were also members of both the "WWE NXT" stable Undisputed Era and the subsequent AEW stable known as The Undisputed Elite; their history goes back more than a decade to their days in pre-Tony Khan Ring of Honor. However, after O'Reilly helped Romero to his feet, Strong and the Undisputed Kingdom attacked Romero in a gang beat-down. When O'Reilly tried to stop them, Strong suddenly delivered a jumping knee strike, laying him out. The announcement of the match at Dynasty came shortly afterward.

It's been more than nine years since Strong and O'Reilly faced each other in singles action, with their last one-on-one contest coming during the ROH Winter Warriors tour in 2015. They also met as opponents in a Four-Way Survival match, Strong's third-to-last ROH performance before departing for WWE. He and O'Reilly were eventually multi-time "NXT" Tag Team Champions as part of Undisputed Era, both as a tag team and as part of the stable as a whole via the Freebird Rule. Dynasty will mark their first time sharing the ring together in AEW, as Strong's AEW debut came after O'Reilly suffered the injury that put him on the shelf for 18 months.