9 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (June 15)
Christian Cage, the Young Bucks and Dr. Britt Baker highlight a wild, momentous AEW Dynamite.
AEW needed to present a great show last night because the promotion has arrived at a low point.
A lot of things have converged to create a suboptimal public image. Dr. Britt Baker and Marina Shafir both liked a tweet suggesting that Thunder Rosa had sandbagged Shafir in a self-serving TV match last week. Thunder Rosa herself is rumoured to be frustrated with her perceived role as an afterthought. Jeff Hardy was arrested for DUI and was publicly suspended by Tony Khan in a sad, seemingly inevitable tale. That Khan booked Hardy in a stunt-heavy speed run posed troubling questions. Why did literally everybody else see, before the news broke, that putting Jeff Hardy in a ladder match after his strange, near-disastrous showing at Double Or Nothing was an ill-advised idea?
In parallel, the promotion hasn't exactly enjoyed a rich, acclaim-generating spell of late. The road to Forbidden Door's rearranged main event was convoluted, the meaninglessness of the rankings system was openly mocked by FTR, and in general, there's a sense that Khan is appeasing his massive roster more than he is telling great, focused stories.
Did Dynamite indicate a return to form...?