5 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (April 17 - Results & Review)

Ups...

5. Weirdly Effective Opening Match

The AEW base appears to have very much taken to Adam Copeland. The rah-rah speeches might have worked, but you'd hope his lovingly crafted series with Christian Cage informed the reaction he received last night.

He was meant to face Brody King alongside Willow Nightingale, but his tag partner was laid out before the bell rang in a continuation of a new mystery storyline in AEW's women's division. Copeland himself was blindsided by Brody King, whose heat sequence was as meaty and as fun as ever. Copeland's comeback generated a volume so loud that even Tony Schiavone was taken aback - and nearly five years in, incidentally, his genuine sense of wonder is the lifeblood of the promotion.

Copeland measured it well and played it to the back row. He attempted several times to remove King from his feet. His facial expressions elevated an incredibly simple match structure: Copeland looked as though he couldn't believe that he eventually did it. Copeland did a lot using his broad but evidently effective body language to portray King as a tough match.

Willow eventually entered the ring, and in an awesome sequence flew into Brody with a splash and then a cannonball. AEW isn't the most disciplined of promotions generally, but Tony Khan has largely preserved the inter-gender match and the pop of a thoroughly unexpected ass-kicking. With great dramatic timing, Hart struck Willow with the chain before applying Hartless, at which point the ref called it. Khan usually blends two programmes into one tag on a go-home show.

This was a neat and very fun tweak on the method: King and Nightingale had displayed chemistry with their interactions on Collision previously, and this was the first time that the TNT and TBS champions had each participated in the same match.