6 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (17 May - Review)
3. Roderick Strong Vs Chris Jericho
AEW
Perfection.
This was perfection. Roderick Strong and Chris Jericho battled for 14 scintillating minutes and every second of it was perfection. Juggling strong style with arena brawl chaos and just about every genre in between, the two had a war so epic that their names will be inexorably linked together forever.
A chop fight Gunther himself would be proud of spilled into the stands in short order as the Falls Count Anywhere stipulation gifted them the freedom of the building and their own creativity. Tables, stanchions and ice cream were all key weapons as the action never once let up, and a sequence on a stairwell somehow balanced heart-in-mouth terror with the comedic-feeling sensibilities of DDT and the last two minutes of an All Japan strike war.
The finish being exactly what everybody predicted was made sweeter by Jericho himself not seeing it coming. The battle needed to be out of the building for Adam Cole to extract some revenge for the JAS leader's recent crimes, and he got to do just that to steer Strong to a major win in his own debut. Run it back or just rerun it forever because if there is still such a thing as a spirt of AEW four years into the organisation's existence, it burst forth during every sensational second of this.
Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for 10 years. Alongside the production of daily written, audio and video content covering WWE and AEW, he also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years.
As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot on the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 10,000 episodes and 70,000,000 total downloads. He also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House!, Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast, and has guested on long-running Sunderland AFC podcast Wise Men Say.
With WhatCulture, he has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. He has also been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling.
Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.
