6 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (26 April - Review)

Downs...

4. A General Lack Of Narrative Discipline And Too Much Repetition

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Tony Khan - who is ordinarily a very good to excellent booker - gets obsessed with strange quirks and does them over and over again.

Weapon shots leading to near-falls. Beating Brian Cage every week. And now, his new thing in 2023 is the blindside attack.

Bryan Danielson, Chris Jericho, Stokely Hathaway: all, over the last seven days, sometimes more than once (!), have a cut a promo on the big screen to distract the babyfaces from an incoming attack from the other side of the ring. This is absolutely basic stuff that Tony Khan should not be doing all of the time. It's not just repetitive and thus ineffective; it makes the babyfaces look like morons.

Khan also appears to have written himself into too many corners, having seemingly lost track of who is aligned with whom and creating new alliances to replace the ones he's forgotten about.

He probably gets a pass this week, when Roderick Strong suddenly became available, but why didn't Keith Lee help out Adam Cole?

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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!