6 Ups & 6 Downs From AEW Dynamite (Jul 29)

1. The Amateurish Match In Dynamite History

AEW wrestlers
AEW

The opening bout pitting The Inner Circle against Best Friends and friends was one of the most poorly-executed since AEW's inception. Its existence made sense, as everybody on the babyface side has some kind of beef with Jericho and his gang of goons, but the execution was slow, plodding, disjointed, and did very, very little to raise excitement levels, with even the high spots failing to register more than the slightest spike in adrenaline.

Jungle Boy hurricanrana-ing Santana off the apron was a nice moment, as was the Best Friends mega-hug. Still, it felt like the wrestlers were going through the motions. Rather than delivering an explosion, all-action cloudburst, they were just running through spots, and rarely eye-catching ones. Just a mess with zero structure, little story beyond the Luchasaurus/Jake Hager teases, and a straight-up garbage finish.

Matt Hardy's theme music hit while Sammy Guevara was readying himself on the top rope. This led to Hardy, a babyface, interfering and shoving Guevara down, allowing Luchasaurus to take the pinfall. That Sammy did that incredibly tedious thing of freezing when the music hit made it even worse.

Such a harmful thing to open your show with. May it never happen again.

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Channel Manager
Channel Manager

Andy has been with WhatCulture for eight years and is currently WhatCulture's Wrestling Channel Manager. A writer, presenter, and editor with 10+ years of experience in online media, he has been a sponge for all wrestling knowledge since playing an old Royal Rumble 1992 VHS to ruin in his childhood. Having previously worked for Bleacher Report, Andy specialises in short and long-form writing, video presenting, voiceover acting, and editing, all characterised by expert wrestling knowledge and commentary. Andy is as much a fan of 1985 Jim Crockett Promotions as he is present-day AEW and WWE - just don't make him choose between the two.