4 Ups & 6 Downs From AEW Dynamite (1 Mar - Review)
1. Casino Battle Royale Lasts Longer Than Ganryujima Island Death Match
The Casino Tag Team Battle Royale was as uneven as every other match the genre has ever offered up. This review may be posted later than usual, as the bloody thing is still ongoing at time of writing.
Claudio Castagnoli was the best individual performer. Throughout a long stint - the idea of anybody performing as an 'Iron Man' in such a frivolous match feels silly - he effectively orchestrated several moments of suspense as he frantically grasped the bottom rope to save himself from elimination. His mirror man sequence with John Silver was also fun, in a cute way, but that was the core problem with this match and indeed the wider tag team division: it's so tongue in cheek that there's little emotional heft or credibility to it.
It didn't help that Tony Khan had telegraphed the finish by running an angle earlier in the night indicating that Orange Cassidy and Danhausen were to take the place of the injured Best Friends. This made an already long match feel predictable, and made little sense. Orange Cassidy was also injured, but then, he's a star, and Khan needed more of them on the Revolution card. Cassidy's inevitable arrival and win thwarted hope of an FTR or Darby Allin and Sting surprise, and so the match played out, to a detached hum, as a formality. Also: those intervals were all over the place, which made the match even harder to believe in.
The four-way at Revolution will be fun, in a more energetic than usual house show opener sort of way - and Danhausen will surprise a lot of people on Sunday at least - but the state of the division is abject. It's all so meta and lightweight.
Jeff Jarrett is a carny who might politick his way into winning gold!
The Gunns are green, and might drag down the quality of the match if they stay in there too long!
Fear them, workrate snob fans!
The faces meanwhile are comedy characters, ultimately, and while the Acclaimed and Orangehausen are among the four most over acts in the promotion, the division reeks of irreverent weightlessness. It's too cute and silly for its own bloody good. It in no way resembles a compelling title programme. It's not worth a premium fee.
When this all makes Dax Harwood less unbearable by comparison, you know they've f*cked up.