Did you hate the ending of WrestleDream with Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson?
GOOD. You were supposed to hate it.
Do you watch dramatic television to always see the good guys win in a neat and tidy way? No, that would be boring. You need adversity for the hero to overcome. Of course, wrestling is different. There are varying levels of heroes and villains all over the shows. The majority of rivalries are contained between individuals or feuding teams. Sometimes, a force of evil becomes so strong that unlikely alliances are formed.
While Jon Moxley and his crew were destroying Bryan Danielson after taking the AEW Championship in an excellent main event, a host of babyfaces ran down to save him, including Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy, Private Party, Adam Cole, Jeff Jarrett, Daniel Garcia, and Hook. Some of them had loose connections in the past, on Saturday night, it was about coming out to do the right thing and protect Danielson regardless of how they felt about each other. The final shot of the show was a dejected pair of AEW stalwarts, Allin and Cassidy, as a tearful Excalibur tried to sum up what happened on commentary. You couldn’t make the future of this story any clearer if you tried, but Wednesday’s episode Dynamite had me scratching my head a few times.
Jon Moxley fallout
There was no other way to start the first episode of Dynamite after WrestleDream than with Moxley. He provided his so-called reasoning for what happened to Danielson. In yet another beautifully shot promo, Moxley called out the AEW locker room for cashing fat checks without having real drive or motivation, and that he hated what the company had become. This is supposed to justify the heinous behavior we saw from him and the group. Much like the promotional graphic for the show said, “Jon Moxley is AEW World Champion. No one is safe.”
That’s the tone that should have been set for the rest of Dynamite. The announcers did their best to convey that, it was almost immediately lost during Adam Cole’s in-ring promo. Despite coming to Danielson’s aid at WrestleDream, Cole didn’t acknowledge anything about the post-match attack. We’ll get to Cole’s obvious focus, MJF, in a little bit, but completely omitting the biggest happening from WrestleDream was a miss. Even something as simple as Cole wishing Danielson well before moving on to his issues with MJF would have sufficed.
Jon Moxley’s first act as AEW Champion
I was a little surprised at how long it took for Moxley and company to make their presence felt violently. They eventually did by attacking The Conglomeration during their trios match with The Elite. As the Young Bucks and Kazuchika Okada watched on from the aisle, Cassidy, Kyle O’Reilly, and Rocky Romero were decimated. This brought out lower card AEW wrestlers including Top Flight and Dark Order with Alex Reynolds. They pleaded with the Bucks to do something before he was destroyed with a belt and the ring stairs.
Later, the same group of wrestlers brawled with Moxley’s crew before they escaped in a pickup truck with John Silver chasing behind. It was an unfortunate bit of comic relief that didn’t fit the seriousness of the situation. We then got challenges from Dark Order and Top Flight, with the latter specifying they wanted Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta, and Pac for the AEW Trios Titles on Collision.
We’re just getting started with this story. Based on some of the missteps on Dynamite, I hope things get cleaned up heading into the next set of TVs.
MJF vs. Adam Cole
Ignoring Cole’s presence at the end of WrestleDream, he still had the unenviable task of explaining how he and MJF would be picking up their feud with the babyface/heel dynamic flipped. I didn’t have a problem with the change, as it doesn’t change the hatred or motivations. Cole did his best to explain that he needed to fight evil with evil. It would be stupid to let Max turn first. It made total sense and was pretty much the basis of their story when they were friends and tag partners last year. The bottom line is that MJF is far better as a heel and the fans want to like Cole. This is certainly not what they had planned with the culmination of the Devil angle. However, it will likely lead to a far more enjoyable feud. Having both guys back and healthy is a big boost to the roster.
Shelton Benjamin
If you were like me, there was some skepticism about how Shelton Benjamin would fit into AEW.
He wiped that away in one night.
With a lot of credit to Benjamin’s opponent, Lio Rush, Benjamin looked like an absolute beast in his AEW debut match. While Benjamin battled plenty of people of similar size in WWE, the reality is the AEW roster has far less wrestlers who look as big as Benjamin and they leaned into that with Rush. While I would have cut the amount of offense Rush got in half, everything Benjamin did looked fantastic including what might have been the meanest, most impactful superkick thrown in AEW history.
After initially thinking Benjamin would be relegated to a background player in The Hurt Syndicate, I’m now very much looking forward to the run, including the Fright Night Dynamite match with Swerve Strickland in two weeks. Could that be the night of an all mighty appearance?
Next week, I’ll cover the babyface contenders Jon Moxley needs to meet before he eventually loses the AEW World Heavyweight Championship.
Until then, when I’ll be back to talk about wrestling even more…
You can watch and listen to Matt every weekday at 1pm Eastern at thewrestlingmattshow.com. Matt is also one of the hosts of Busted Open Radio on Sirius/XM. He is regularly featured as a streamer for Bleacher Report’s pro wrestling content.