7 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (June 5 - Results & Review)
MJF returns as the babyface he should have played last year on a promising episode.
While AEW is in the process of building towards Forbidden Door, it is Blood & Guts that can't come soon enough. (The annual Dynamite special has yet to be announced, but by AEW standards is a ratings hit and hot ticket. AEW would be daft not to do it, even if the match has never reached its artistic ceiling).
This Tony Khan Vs. the Elite power struggle angle simply isn't working. AEW didn't commit to it. It scanned as a ratings stunt - a well thought-out ratings stunt, but a stunt all the same. Hasn't it already been resolved?
Tony Khan is now back, healed, and manning the Go position. The Young Bucks apparently signed an ironclad contract stipulating that they'd run the show in Khan's absence, but he's no longer absent. That he couldn't run Dynamite remotely was a stretch to begin with, and the Bucks didn't bother to shape Dynamite in their image, much less Collision. The shows, largely, have unfolded as they would have had Khan never taken that Tony Khan Driver.
As a heckled Dax Harwood discovered on Collision over the weekend, the fanbase would rather be shown that AEW is still great, and not told. This war for AEW's soul angle is passé.
What's frustrating is that, were the act not linked to this illogical slant on a tiresome authority figure angle, the Elite would be tremendous. Kazuchika Okada maximises his seconds, Nicholas Jackson is a delightful ham, Jack Perry feels refreshed, and Matthew Jackson - "Every time this song plays it costs us like $200,000" - has never been funnier.
It's time the Elite simply become a gang of pricks.
Is the end of a failed experiment in sight...?