4 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dark (Feb 18)
A fun, comedy-heavy offering from AEW's B-show.
Last week's AEW Dark was an earnestly good B-show with decent in-ring action (particularly as Riho wrestled Shoko Nakajima and The Dark Order met Jurassic Express) and the right people going over in every spot, making it the brand's best all-round effort since the night Kenny Omega and Joey Janela worked that Lights Out banger.
Would this week's episode continue the upward trajectory? Not quite. This was, in all honesty, a pretty skippable show, though there was enough good content to ensure the 48 minutes put into watching it wasn't a dead loss.
The night's main event would see The Young Bucks go up against the unlikely jobber partnership of QT Marshall and Peter Avalon, with the brothers Jackson out to continue their recent two-on-two winning streak. They weren't the only tandem looking for a tune-up ahead of Dynamite's contendership battle royal, however, as Best Friends faced The Hybrid 2 earlier on. Elsewhere, we got two shorter women's matches in the former of Kris Statlander vs. Diamante and Big Swole vs. the debuting Christi Jaynes.
As always, all criticisms must be tempered by the acknowledgement that very little of consequence actually happens on Dark. Let's break it down, though...