7 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite Grand Slam 2022
Downs...
2. F*ck Finish City
The first three matches of five all ended with chicanery of some sort. All three finishes made sense in the context of the respective stories.
Chris Jericho is the sports entertainer carny sullying the purity of Ring Of Honor. He had to cheat.
The Acclaimed and Swerve In Our Glory first associated as mates. Swerve Strickland then broke the gentlemen's agreement at All Out by targeting Anthony Bowens' suspect knee. In the sequel, Billy Gunn avenged that - and equalised Swerve's attempt to cheat with the boombox - by influencing the outcome, thereby creating scope for another sequel.
PAC cheating to win the competitive, serious match he asked for over two years ago was great character work from a proper bastard.
The issue is that doing this across three consecutive segments detracted from the old AEW ideal that there's no shame whatsoever in clean, hard-fought defeat. Also, it was redundant.
Too much of anything is bad; too much WWE sh*t is inexplicable.