5 Match Star Ratings For AEW Dynamite: Winter Is Coming
1. Jon Moxley Vs. Kenny Omega - AEW World Championship Match
A structural and storytelling masterclass executed brilliantly when it exploded, it did take a touch too long to get there.
Jon Moxley is the hard brute bastard, Kenny Omega the artist. Mox is the good guy, like his father said. Omega is the heel who masterminded a scheme to exploit the good within the now former AEW World Champion.
So when Moxley threw Omega around the ringside in the opening third, giving him the advantage to lead to an early Paradigm Shift, he looked within. He ventured to the outside and retrieved two chairs. But he underlined that he wasn't the death match psycho by setting them up, and asking Omega to sit-down in a moment of beautiful visual parity. It was a great character touch, too. Omega requested a sporting contest. Moxley eventually agreed. This sporting gesture informed with such great pathos the earnestly-felt fury of the swerve, which Omega in a remarkable use of nuance obscured so well. He did not bring the "dancing girls with brooms," as Mox had requested.
Before the balance of power in pro wrestling shifted, the match unfolded as advertised into a stunning, pure war: a fight not with weapons but with hands. And knees. So many electrifying, disgusting knees propelled into Mox's skull with an awesome velocity. Omega was in unreal form countering a suicide dive with engineer precision; Moxley found a counter for the deadly One-Winged Angel in moments of awesome, heart-in-mouth drama.
The finish has proven divisive, but AEW earned an elusive, transgressive, what-the-f*ck shock when Omega schemed with Don Callis to f*ck Moxley out of the belt. You don't do that without so many clean and definitive finishes creating a fair benchmark. The blitz of V-Triggers was performed with such brutal majesty that Omega, in the end, convincingly put away the invincible. And left scope for the rubber match.
Awesome.
Professional wrestling rules.
Star Rating: ★★★★¾