7 Ups & 4 Downs From AEW Dynamite (Dec 18)

1. Corpus Christi Refuses To Join The Dark Order

Subjectively, this was good, or at least promising, but it fell flat for the crowd and thus must be considered a 'Down', looking at it objectively.

There remains promise in this Dark Order act, and I will happily admit that I am wrong if it fizzles to sh*t. The creepers-are-incels twist was inspired, in that it grounded the act in a coherent reality; Evil Uno and Grayson are recruiting the disaffected for their own gain, and the latest recruits, the Beaver Boys, add a real gravity to the overarching wins-and-losses-matter framework. The angle is - possibly - drawing on months of established build and continuity, which may add a human element to a programme with the Young Bucks: a creeper seen in a purple mask, which seems to indicate a tier of wrestlers, as opposed to the green-masked heavies, looked a lot like Nick and Matt's goober mate Brandon Cutler.

The Dark Order arrived on the scene of the main event finish, beat down SCU and the Bucks, and initiated the Beaver Boys before...reaching into Matt Jackson's throat and drawing blood. It looked hokey, it didn't get over, but it did act as a committed declaration of getting a new act over to a significant degree - but if anything, the Bucks should have won the World Tag Team Championships. That is the act AEW should have put over on this night.

Evil Uno's big line was drenched in too much irony to ignore.

"You'll never doubt us again," he claimed, at the precise moment people started to doubt the potential of an act weeks after they tentatively began to believe in it.