AEW Dynamite - 4/8/2026: 3 Things We Loved And 3 We Hated

This Sunday, AEW will present Dynasty, but until then, there's still "Dynamite" and "Collision." This week's last "Dynamite" before the big show had table-setting aplenty, but also plenty of action. As always, results can be found on the results page, but now it's time for the Wrestling Inc. Staff to get in our feelings, and explain what worked, and what didn't, from Wednesday's show.

There were plenty of highs, like the chaotic main event tag match, or the blistering TBS Title Match, but there were also lows, like the longest Kenny Omega promo ever, or whatever the hell is going on with Okada and Takeshita right now. Agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments section and keep the conversation going.

Otherwise, I'm going to stop introducing, so we can get down to the loving and the hating.

If there's one thing the women of AEW keep proving time and time again, it's that they deserve to have the spotlight shone on them and give more television time than they get on a weekly basis.

It was a pretty expected result to have Willow Nightingale retain her TBS Championship against Queen Aminata during this edition of "Dynamite," given that it doesn't seem like her reign is coming to an end for a little while, but that doesn't mean that this match still wasn't incredibly fun and engaging to watch. Nightingale and Aminata did not disappoint, keeping good pacing throughout the match and not holding back on one another when it came to the strikes. I particularly liked all the little reactions that Aminata had throughout the match when Nightingale would kick out of pitfalls, as it was a nice extra little touch and made you really feel just how increasingly frustrated Aminata was becoming as a viewer.

Having Hikaru Shida watching the action from the crowd also made the match feel that much more important, and made it clear that AEW wasn't done with the storyline between Nightingale and Shida. I've always been fond of both Nightingale and Shida, so I will never complain about getting them paired up with one another in a story, especially if it involves a championship. It added an interesting new dynamite to things and made something already enjoyable that much better.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

Darby Allin needs to be AEW Champion so badly that he can't stop talking about it. It is eating away at his soul, and making him write really bad free verse poetry.

Allin is running out of ways to say that he wants to be champion, and until the company actually puts him in a world title feud, it's getting really annoying. I understand that AEW is trying to a Sting-style longterm story, with Allin taking the place of his mentor, acting as avenging angel for AEW, but Sting was at least smart enough to let people miss him. He would go away for weeks at a time, so that the next time he showed up, it was a big moment. I've seen Allin every week, and every week he's brought up how badly he wants to be champion.

It's not exactly making him look the strongest. It's making him look like a petulant child with main character syndrome. Not everything is about Darby, but it's feeling more and more like everything is about Darby. He needs top find a slightly less baroque way of making his point.

Written by Ross Berman

As someone who was deep in the grasp of Chris Jericho fatigue the last time he was on TV, it was an almost deceptively welcome feeling to see him last week and feel even a modicum of excitement. I had convinced myself in the week since then that there was nothing he could possibly come up with that would resurrect the feelings I had for the Jericho of old.

After all, "The Learning Tree" had been as abysmal as "The Wizard," and that had been as abysmal as "The Painmaker" and so on and so forth. It was just easy to dismiss Jericho as not getting it anymore, something many veterans and legends go through in this wonderfully wacky world of wrestling. But then he came out this week to cut his first proper promo, setting the wheels in motion for his first feud since taking so much time off. There was a conceivable belief he would pop back up in his old stomping grounds. He spoke in a way that almost seemed too familiar, too wholesome, too... enjoyable.

Surely a swerve was coming. Surely Jericho hadn't managed to 'restore the feeling' for himself. And then Ricochet and the Gates of Agony made their entrance. It brings me no satisfaction or pride to say that the little child within chuckled at the line, "You're really bald." But they did. He continued to be too familiar, like someone had reached back in time and plucked 2016 Jericho into this timeline. And then it happened. He asked, "D'you know what happens...?" And there the little child was again, jumping for joy as the adult who takes himself way too seriously fought to calm back down. This is Jericho. He hasn't been good for years. Much less great. Passable, sure. Reminiscent of the brilliance of before, sure.

But here he was – here I was, enjoying the promo and the idea of a Jericho match opposite Ricochet. So then he hit the line he hadn't for almost a decade: "YOU JUST MADE THE LIST!" That was it. The moment that I was pulled back into the Jericho Vortex. Sure, it's recycled. Sure, it's a bottom-line bit that I can't truly reason as to why it's funny. But a wise man once said that there comes a point when every old metal band realizes that no one wants to hear the new stuff. Just play the greatest hits. He did that, and a match with a seller like Ricochet almost guarantees a good match, even if it is with a man who can't necessarily play his greatest hits in the ring on Sunday.

Written by Max Everett

While I like the direction AEW is presumably going when it comes to Kazuchika Okada and Konosuke Takeshita when it comes to Double or Nothing, I do not love the fact that they're teaming up once again in tag action to take on the Young Bucks at Dynasty on Sunday. Sure, it's a last-minute pivot, after AEW President Tony Khan said in his pre-show live stream that he wanted now former-TNT Champion Kyle Fletcher to team with Okada at "ProtoKada" to take on the former AEW World Tag Team Champions, but I still just don't like it.

That's something Don Callis mentioned in storyline tonight, and he said he had come up with a different plan for others in the Don Callis Family to take on the Bucks this weekend. I guess I should have seen it coming, as Callis mentioned earlier in the night that he didn't want to hear about how everyone wants to see Okada and Takeshita fight. I had just been thinking earlier in the day that I wondered what happened with that build, so maybe it's a good thing we're getting this story furthered, even in this way.

The thing is, these guys recently, at least in the past few months kind of recently, teamed together, back at WrestleDream in October. They took on Brody King and Bandido for the AEW World Tag Team Championships, and of course, were not successful, and it only furthered tensions within the Don Callis Family. Callis said earlier in the night that he liked running his stable like a professional sports team and didn't mind some of the guys not liking each other, but Takeshita and Okada really do not like each other. You'd think Callis would be smarter and put one of the other ten (maybe twelve?) family members in a team with Okada, instead. Sure, it wouldn't be as interesting of a story, but it would make sense that Callis would think of protecting his own, instead.

Takeshita said he wanted to challenge Okada for the International Championship, and Callis agreed that it could happen at Double or Nothing if they worked together at Dynasty. So, of course, the Bucks are getting the win here, as Okada isn't going to let that happen. I guess this is the best possible outcome for a story since Fletcher is injured, but I still don't know if I like the way Callis went about it.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Will Ospreay needed some backup to help him fight off the Death Riders on the April 8 episode of "AEW Dynamite," and after his recent trip to Japan, he ran into some old friends of his. Fresh off of reuniting with the United Empire at NJPW Sakura Genesis on April 4, Ospreay managed to convince Francesco Akira, HENARE, and the new IWGP Heavyweight Champion Callum Newman to take a trip to Canada to create some chaos in Edmonton, and that's exactly what they did.

Much like the Mile High Madness match we saw back in February, this was essentially a mini Anarchy In The Arena built for a TV audience, only with fewer split-screens and music playing over the loudspeakers to accompany the action. However, that didn't make this match any less fun than some of its predecessors because this was great.

All eight guys got their licks in here, with the MVP award of this match from yours truly actually getting split three ways between Akira, HENARE, and Claudio Castagnoli. Those three guys knew they had to get their stuff in and made the most of every second they were the center of attention, to the point where Tony Schiavone probably dropped a text to Tony Khan saying, "If you have any money left over from the Jericho contract, give it to Akira." Massive table spots, including a Newman double foot stomp that would make the ECW version of Tajiri extremely proud, Alex Windsor and Marina Shafir got involved. It seemed like everywhere you looked, something new was going on.

I was hesitant about this match going into it, mainly because this would have been a great fit for the actual Anarchy In The Arena setting, or even a Forbidden Door match, but sometimes when you get the chance to do something, sometimes you just have to do it there and then. I also would have liked to have seen more from Newman, considering he just made history over in Japan, and maybe it ran a little long, but it's a multi-man AEW plunderfest, it's going to be long, and I'm okay with that these days.

It also sets up the Jon Moxley/Will Ospreay match for Dynasty to be more unpredictable, as Ospreay and Newman both got the pin on Moxley. Does this mean Mox is retaining? Does it mean Ospreay has another summer title run in his sights? All of that will be answered this Sunday, but this was a rollercoaster of a match that built hype towards a marquee pay-per-view title match while making everyone involved look like a million bucks, and even in Canadian dollars, you can't ask for much more than that.

Written by Sam Palmer

I know it's partially me just being cranky, but I think the massive overruns for "Dynamite" are getting beyond overplayed. Maybe tonight's wouldn't have felt so bad if we hadn't had quite a few weeks of long overruns, but Kenny Omega's promo felt unnecessary, and by the time AEW World Champion MJF came out, I was tuned out of the entire segment, knowing it was going to be everything we've heard before.

Sure, I guess it was necessary, considering this was the go-home show to Dynasty, but maybe AEW could have shortened the United Empire vs. Death Riders match a bit to cut off some of the overrun. I felt like Omega didn't have the attention of the crowd after that insane trios match, as the crowd was likely tired and ready to pack up for the night after it all. At one point, the guys in the crowd right behind Omega's head were noticeably goofing off to the point that the camera had to zoom in on "The Cleaner" a bit more. And, overall, the crowd sounded dead, which is wild when we're talking about Kenny Omega.

Omega and MJF should have had their confrontation earlier on the show. I don't think it would have felt out of place at any point, but before the United Empire match would have made so much sense, to make that bout the true main. While nothing was necessarily wrong with this segment, it just felt like we had heard it all before, and it was just done before it had to go into a pay-per-view. AEW needs to use its time wisely, as these constant super overruns are starting to feel redundant, especially when the segment that closes the show doesn't need it.

Written by Daisy Ruth