AEW Dynamite - 8/19/2026: 3 Things We Hated & 3 We Loved

There are only 11 days between now and AEW All In. Baltimore, MD was home for tonight's episode, which saw two men advance to the semi-finals of the AEW Continental Challenge Cup, as well as all the other action that can be read about on the AEW Dynamite 8/19/2026 Results Page.

As always, there was plenty to love and plenty to hate, and we have a whole column dedicated to just that. There was plenty to praise, like Jon Moxley's blistering contest with Jay White, or the TBS Title match. There were also things that gave us pause, like the dependency on sitdown interviews, or the show-closing brawls that seemed to kind of negate said sitdown interviews. You might agree, you might disagree, and either way, the comments section will be open as always.

Without further ado, here's the best and the worst of Wednesday's show in Baltimore.

There's not a lot of time left for AEW to add any last-minute beats to their storylines that they may want to throw in there for whatever reason it may be. With such limited time left, I don't think it was a great use of airtime for them to feature two separate sit-down interviews with Renee Paquette for AEW World Champion Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay, as well as Mercedes Mone and AEW Women's World Champion Willow Nightingale.

The AEW World Championship and AEW Women's World Championship matches at All In are the two biggest matches on the All In card, so it wasn't really the move to try telling stories by having all four of them just do a lot of talking with one another that didn't take place in front of a live crowd. AEW has done similar things to this before. I've never been a fan of this because I don't really understand the logic of not taking advantage of the live crowd by doing these in front of them in order to add excitement to pay-per-view matches by being able to hear the reaction of the fans firsthand as a viewer at home. I also don't really think that there was anything of note that was said in either of these sit-down interviews, nor did I really find them to be that interesting to watch – something that was especially prevalent in the one between Omega and Ospreay (the worse of the two in my opinion) given that Nightingale and Mone at least had the intense brawl that spilled into the ringside area.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

The four-way match pitting TBS Champion Maya World against Kris Statlander, Hikaru Shida, and Persephone was a solid bout tonight that I really enjoyed. On a night packed with trios matches and promo segments to help set up the two main event matches of All In, I thought they got just enough time for this one. I was also happy to see World retain, as I think she deserves the opportunity to walk into a pay-per-view as champion, whether that be All In or, more likely, in my opinion, at least All Out.

I'm a big fan of Persephone, and I thought she was great in this match. If World was going to lose the gold tonight, I thought it might be the CMLL star to take it. I thought Persephone worked really well with Statlander, as well, and I loved the spot where she went for the BT Bomb on Shida, and Statlander straight up took Shida out of Persephone's hands as she had her up for the move, then hit a powerbomb of her own.

There were quite a few solid spots in this one, including Statlander's impressive kip-up off a kick-out that sent the champion flying into a knee strike from Shida. I even liked Persephone going for a Tower of Doom at one point, a spot that's wildly overused, especially in women's matches, though it would have been impressive to see her pull it off, but Statlander intercepted and took out World with a suplex before Persephone could get the move off.

While I don't necessarily love that AEW's women's singles champions are winning matches off of roll-ups, and in Willow Nightingale's case, backslides, I thought this was a good women's match, despite it being the only one of the night. I'm glad World retained to continue her story, and I'd love to see her defend her title one-on-one against Statlander, and I wouldn't be mad at her for seeing her face Persephone once again, for the CMLL star to get the win. If she's going to defend at Wembley Stadium, which would be crazy amazing for her, I hope to see something get set up with one of these women following her AEW Women's Championship match against Nightingale on "AEW Collision" on Saturday.

Written by Daisy Ruth

It's become a tradition in AEW to have some sort of sit-down interview with someone like Jim Ross or Renee Paquette ahead of a big match, and it doesn't get any bigger than the main event of AEW All In London 2026.

Kenny Omega and Will Ospreay sat down and went through their history to try and get the fans excited for the AEW World Championship match at Wembley Stadium, and honestly, it was fine. It wasn't bad, but it felt like it went on for such a long time that by the end of it, I'm kind of sitting there waiting for something to happen. Words can only get you so far before people start asking why these two guys aren't swinging at each other.

Then the closing angle of the show happens where Ospreay just says, 'I've had enough,' and injects some much-needed urgency into a feud that has felt a bit stagnant since the show after AEW Redemption. Omega hits the One-Winged Angel through a table on the outside; security guards are getting laid out, people are loving it. So the question I have to ask is if they were going to do this at the end of the show, why have the sit-down at all?

Sure, you have the end of the sit-down being Omega bringing Ospreay's family into things, which ties into how the show-closing angle started, but Omega could have said that in the ring, and it would have saved so much time. This show didn't need a 32-minute overrun, but when it does have that long of an overrun, you start looking at things on the show that could have been shaved off, and the sit-down interview could have absolutely been scrapped.

Look how much Willow Nightingale and Mercedes Mone got done in their segment. You didn't need a sit-down, two matches, and then another angle to get the point of them hating each other across to the audience. The story is right there in front of you, being told in the simplest possible way. The fact that the main event feud is being told in such a backwards way makes you grateful for the fact that there are so many matches on this show that will make up for the fact the creative direction for this match has been scattershot.

We all know the match will be great, but space out the segments and make each moment feel worthy. Have the sit-down last week and the brawl this week; that would have people in Scotland desperate to see Omega and Ospreay at each other's throats, but no, it happened this way instead.

Written by Sam Palmer

Nigel McGuinness came into this Wednesday's Continental Cup quarter-final against Hechicero injured, having been sporting a walking boot since his win in the opening round. This immediately established the narrative of the match: Hechicero, a renowned grappling expert and submission technician.

Thus, the match felt less like a contest and more like a quest for survival for McGuinness, better known these days for his commentary and wrestling only a smattering of times in the past couple of years since returning to the ring. For all intents and purposes, his next match could always be his last. And the injury compounds that factor.

Hechicero himself is a bit of a sleeper when it comes to AEW, coming more on the losing end in the USA while he is revered as the CMLL Light Heavyweight Champion in Mexico. But McGuinness might still have been too injured to go over him this week. That just added a little bit of tension as someone rooting for McGuinness to perhaps go all the way and even maybe take the Continental Cup and Championship.

Hechicero was in control for much of the bout, and even when he wasn't, his opponent's own control always felt wobbly, literally depending on one foot at times. He just needed to wait, as he did, and strike, as he did. McGuinness needed to just ride through it all in what became a battle of attrition.

When all was said and done, he got the win by holding on to dear life and choking exactly that from Hechicero. The Cinderella run continues. Much as this writer supports Bishop's Stortford, the minnows that they are competing in the FA Cup, he supports McGuinness and wants him to somehow, someway, win the Continental Cup. So this match was gripping, solidly worked, and rooted in the psychology of pro wrestling. Two of the best grapplers in all of wrestling doing exactly that.

Written by Max Everett

As excited as I am to see Andrade and MJF square off in the casino gauntlet match at All In, the build to that is yet another build I don't think AEW is doing right ahead of the big event. Tonight's segment was entirely missable, and really rather odd, and if MJF is to be believed, he won't be present at next week's show, either. This is something that probably could have been cut from the show, as, and I'll forever complain about it, the main event didn't begin until after 10 p.m., which is getting beyond ridiculous.

At one point of the show, the broadcast went to Jonathon Cruz standing in the middle of the ring. I thought to myself, before remembering Cruz is loosely affiliated with MJF, that this was going to be one of those skippable things on the show, and something that was going to help extend it well past its advertised end time, or even its old usual overrun time period of just 10 minutes or so over.

Cruz briefly addressed Andrade in Spanish on behalf of MJF before switching right back to English, running him down, saying the usual things you'd expect: that MJF is more handsome than Andrade, the AEW National Champion isn't a "Real Latino Man," etc. That brought out Andrade, and then, suddenly, the segment was actually a match. It was the strangest thing, and Andrade squashed Cruz off the DM for the win.

Then, MJF popped up on the tron, in a video from a hot tub in Long Island, obviously filmed on an iPhone and sent in. I don't think I would have minded this as much if he had actually come out in person to confront Andrade, who he's now calling "Andrew," as we had already seen one pre-recorded confrontation tonight and another interview segment. The pair just straight up brawling after Andrade downed Cruz would have been fine, but MJF didn't travel to Baltimore.

MJF said that the next time Andrade is going to see him will be at Wembley Stadium, and I sure hope that's not the case, and he's going to show up next week to get the upper hand in a surprise attack. In the video, he also had his "Triple B" with him, and if he's going to continue this "real world champion" thing that I've already said that I hate, you'd think he'd want to be as annoying about it as possible and parade around "Dynamite" with the gold. For a long episode tonight, this was missable and did nothing to help the build for their face-off in the casino gauntlet.

Written by Daisy Ruth

The AEW Continental Challenge Cup continued on the August 19 episode of "AEW Dynamite," and the first quarterfinal match to take place was one that many thought would end up being the final.

Jon Moxley vs. "Switchblade" Jay White is a match that could, and probably should, headline an AEW pay-per-view at some point in the future, preferably for the AEW World Championship because these two guys are fantastic at what they do. We've already seen it once in AEW, with that match taking place in the Continental Classic tournament where White picked up what some newer fans would see as an upset victory considering how much Moxley has been in the main event scene. So having this match so early in the tournament felt like a wasted opportunity to have these guys go at it at Wembley Stadium, but if anything, having it here worked even better.

Giving Moxley and White a good 20/25 minutes on television allows them to have more freedom, more room to move, more space to breathe. If this happened on pay-per-view, you would think it would get all of those things too, but given the nature of AEW pay-per-views these days, where every match is 20 minutes at the very least, it would get lost in the shuffle and not get the appreciation that it deserves.

This worked especially well for White, who works so much better at slowly built matches that peak at the very end with a dramatic conclusion. He's got such a protected finisher in the Blade Runner that when he hit Moxley with it, you automatically lean in and think, 'They might actually do this, they might actually have Moxley lose here.' Doing that after a carefully built 20-minute match does so much more when it's on a show not full of 20-minute matches.

Obviously, Moxley did get the win, and so he should. Every time he has a high-stakes match, he proves why he is still one of the best in the world. He did it with Jack Perry last week, and he did it here with Jay White; Moxley is just that good at what he does. He just grinds opponents down at every turn, and when he sees an opening, he just leaps at it and takes no prisoners when the title he values the most is on the line. Moxley is going to go down as the greatest AEW Continental Champion, and it's not even close.

The post-match stuff, I could have done without, to be honest, but what happened in between the bells was the good stuff we know Jon Moxley, Jay White, and AEW can produce.

Written by Sam Palmer