6 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (7 June - Review)

Ups...

6. Orange Cassidy Doesn't Miss AGAIN In Electrifying Opener

Orange Cassidy at this point wrestles classic matches as easily as he puts his hands in his pockets. He is the greatest Television champion ever, but he's something more than that, too.

The hit rate, the effective long-term story of his accumulated injuries, the fact that in every match he engineers at least one incredible near-fall: he is the best babyface champion in wrestling by a country f*cking mile, and the best since Jon Moxley in 2020. His match against Swerve Strickland was superb, the second half particularly, and it was elevated by the hand injury that Cassidy has sold for months. Great wrestling, great anything, is all about build.

And because Cassidy has effectively told the audience that his hand is f*cked, he can use that foundation to get his sh*t in. Swerve took some awesome, gnarly bumps near the finish of a maelstrom of a chess match. He kicked out in the sort of near-falls that might have stretched suspension of disbelief even in the modern context - had Cassidy not built the logic and credibility of the hand injury.

OC couldn't hook the leg nor apply all of his weight to the lateral press. This allowed Swerve to justifiably kick out of several gruesome-looking kill-shots. The result was a special-feeling, exhilarating white-hot opener that didn't take the piss. The Orange Punch/Beach Break combo was as great as false finishes get, and the finish was unreal. It protected Swerve without relying on a carny device - turnabout was fair play when Orange grabbed the tights after Swerve tried it first - and it was easy to forget, lost in the story, that Orange still has one good hand.

OC won, again, but this isn't a case of OCWinsLOL. The man is simply too great at playing babyface. Who will eventually dethrone him?

Whoever it is will feel closer to a World champion than a TV champion: the idea to stealthily elevate the International title as a Trojan horse for the Collision main event scene feels like one of Tony Khan's most inspired ideas ever.