6 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (27 Oct)
1. Raw Comedy - But With A Great Twist
There was plenty to like about The Dark Order vs. The Elite. Colt Cabana was piss-funny in his Brandon Cutler costume and made a great hot tag around halfway through. John Silver's pop-pop-popping sequence was as hot as ever, and Adam Cole entered a particularly electric performance - as did Stu Grayson. The Hangman Page reveal, meanwhile, was very well done, as the World Title contender is believably daft enough to disguise himself as the Stay Puft marshmallow man to help his friends and outfox his d*ckhead enemies.
But the tone of this was completely off for what is supposed to be a deep-rooted personal rivalry.
Not everything needs to be all serious, all the time, but this is the World Title feud. This is the match. This is the biggest babyface and biggest heel in the promotion, and their respective factions going to war for them. And yet they marched down the ramps dressed as Ghostbusters, donkeys, and video-game characters, working what was ostensibly a comedy match built around toy proton packs and an egregiously long referee bump.
It's the kind of thing that undermines Omega's gravitas as World Champion - and the belt as a whole. It was over in the building and in a vacuum, a fun match, but the belt should be bigger than this - beyond this. The entire package came off like the kind of wacky Halloween-themed frolic WWE books on holiday shows for no reason. Wacky for the sake of being wacky, it was detrimental.