7 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (June 8)
Will Ospreay opens the Forbidden Door, Jon Moxley chooses violence, and ANOTHER new belt?
Chaos.
That was perhaps the most succinct way to describe how things felt in AEW less than seven days removed from a pay-per-view that set out to conclude several long-running stories, one of which included the crowning of a brand new AEW World Heavyweight Champion.
Double Or Nothing's build had played to mixed responses, but the show got enough right on the night that CM Punk's crowning felt just as big a story as the outside-the-ring scandal that had engulfed his newest legacy rival Maxwell Jacob Friedman that same weekend. MJF's contract dispute didn't get in the way of him putting over former charge Wardlow, but it overshadowed just about everything else, and the electrifying worked shoot promo he cut on the following Dynamite dominated much of the conversation there too.
All until Friday evening when Punk and the company (in somewhat shambolic fashion) revealed that he was taking time off to injury and there'd be need for a new interim Champion. The news was clumsily handled, the follow-through even more so, but Dynamite sought to clean up the mess and set some sort of clearer course for June 26th's Forbidden Door pay-per-view.
Did it achieve those stated aims?
Let's light the fuse...