7 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (June 8)
6. Interim Solutions
The Casino Battle Royal to determine an opponent for Jon Moxley later in the night was one of several imperfect solutions to the problem of CM Punk's injury, but the match itself spoke to the company's ability to gradually fix a broken format and still think about tomorrow.
Folding in several short and long-term stories featuring rivalries old and new and details between performers that couldn't have been forecast without prior notice of the field, AEW at long last made the best of this bad situation in a layered - if occasionally clunky - opener.
Kyle O'Reilly's victory generated an unexpected gem of a main event, but there was more to the match than that. The future health of the Swerve Strickland/Keith Lee unit was explored, Eddie Kingston and Jake Hager continued the JAS/BCC war, Wheeler Yuta returned to television and was presented as an immediate threat to to the top of the card, and O'Reilly's battle royal ability and/or future babyface prominence was as pronounced as its ever been. These elements and more spoke to the ambition at the core of the company. In the face of a number of unexpected obstacles, a battle royal existed to build rather than simply get them out of a jam.