6 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (16 Nov)
AEW blurs the lines before Full Gear on a go-home show that sold EVERYTHING, if not all of it well.
All Elite Wrestling understandably doesn't want all of its existence to still be determined and defined by if something happened before or after CM Punk - not least because of more christ-like connotations the former AEW Champion certainly doesn't need - but until at least after this Saturday's Full Gear, that's what will happen.
He's an emblem of the type of chaos that has defined AEW's 2022, and Dynamite has been almost as illustrative of it on a weekly basis. The new signings don't stop, the Ring Of Honor overlap continues to jar, and the nagging sense a lot of your favourites are being underserved by booking failures lingers unglamorously underneath the hundred mile-an-hour wrestling show never taking its foot off the gas.
Yet, since All Out, the top programmes have been tight enough that we find ourselves approaching the weekend pay-per-view staring down some of the biggest and most intriguing matches of the year. Full Gear looks every bit the quarterly supercard it absolutely needed to be. But did another busy Dynamite fulfil its role as vital go-home show with similar aplomb?
Let's light the fuse...