9 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (2 Nov)
1. A TV Title Match, But Not A TV Main Event
Though it’d be unfair to label Samoa Joe’s TV Title defence as actively terrible, it also didn’t do much to assuage the feeling that the entire episode had slid off the rails in the final half an hour.
The headline contest didn’t go longer than it needed to, but that’s the sort of praise that scans as a burial, and the lack of even one truly memorable moment will consign this to the lower end of Dynamite main events forever. Joe is an icon and a legend, but he’s not Wardlow in 2022. Which, incidentally is why WarJoe is such a cool tag team more than it is a vehicle to splinter the two into blah singles matches like this.
Speaking of the TNT Champion, the post-match beatdown that motivated his appearance was so predictable that fans couldn’t really pop for it. Hobbs got more reaction for beating him down, and this was at least encouraging that homegrown AEW standouts haven’t totally drowned in the ROH sludge.