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

3. Over-Ambitious Match With A Bad WWE Storytelling Device

AEW should be held to the highest standard. There's already one lazy, trope-plagued content farm on major cable. Nobody needs a second.

Dax Harwood, AEW World Tag Team champion, has just been pinned in his second match following the win. An AEW title holder losing a match used to be an event. Now, it would seem, it's a device to make a title match happen - and where have you seen that before for years and years?

Sonjay Dutt interfered, which was Tony Khan's attempt to "protect" his champion, but the lack of narrative discipline elsewhere made a poor, lazy booking decision even worse. It has been established that Khan doesn't endorse cheating. Is that why Cash Wheeler is facing Jay Lethal on Rampage? In a chance to equalise for FTR, negating a potential Planet Jarrett title match?

This wasn't explained.

If Khan doesn't like cheating, he can't be selective. It makes no sense and depicts the promotion as unfair. Either be consistent, hire better referees, or stop handing out manager's licenses out like flyers.

The match itself was probably too ambitious. Instead of a Memphis Heat approach, Dax and Jarrett went old school with a war on the mat, a few heel shortcuts, and a (really well-done) worked punched duel. It was a nice idea, a very different style of match to those promoted elsewhere on the show, but the more furious attempts at technical wrestling almost fell apart when it became clear that Jarrett - understandably - lacked the conditioning to maintain the flow of the action.

Dax wasn't quite at his lung-bursting best either, which led to more than one moment in which the immersion was broken.