6 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (28 February - Results & Review)

Ups...

6. Ultimately Passable, BUT...

Heel Hangman Page
AEW

There was some good, some bad in the opening segment.

Hangman Page can affect a hell of a limp. Were it not for the clarification from Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp last week, you'd think Page was out for several months or up to a year with a serious ankle injury. Page also successfully verbally manipulated the crowd into thinking he was too hurt to work Revolution. The very real wrinkle of the personal issue affecting Page obviously helped, but his cracked-voice delivery was understated enough to achieve that "this one's real, guys..." effect.

To the bad: it was a bit convenient that Swerve Strickland walked out there and then, and that Page would anticipate that. You could ask what Page would have done, had Swerve not emerged to gloat in Hangman's face, and it would be a fair question - but the story AEW has told is one of pure, dangerous obsession. Page and Swerve cannot stay away from one another even to the detriment of their stated ambitions. Of course Swerve was going to gloat over Page's "injury". That part of Hangman's plan made sense.

What didn't make sense is that, with Swerve's back turned to take in the words of an interrupting Samoa Joe, Page "took out" Swerve with his crutch. Swerve sold this for ages as if he'd been cracked in the skull with a brick. You can't really do a Texas Death match and an angle like that in the same storyline. The former made the latter difficult to take seriously.

These TV angles are often left to linger past the point of credibility, but this was especially unconvincing. Joe coming out made this feel like a wrestling angle too. Joe basically spoke as if there was never a chance that Page wasn't wrestling. They're having a three-way match at the PPV AEW wants you to buy, you see.

God forbid you aren't allowed to forget that three men are wrestling in the same match even during an angle when you're meant to believe that there's only two men in it!

AEW has this annoying tendency to insult the intelligence of the fans, and that tendency undermined a segment that was performed just well enough to earn a passing grade.

Just: can wrestlers please stop talking about being hungry and starving and the like? It's fast becoming one of the more irritating clichés.

Advertisement
Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!