8 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (16 Feb)

4. Pillars Face Off

It's incredibly appropriate that the first Dynamite main event of the post-Cody Rhodes era saw two wrestlers he helped elevate squaring off for the belt he minted in the first place, the TNT Championship.

Sammy Guevara vs. Darby Allin was testament to the good Rhodes brought to AEW. Both were helped immensely by their interactions with Cody, in victory and defeat, and that they were contesting a strap so deftly built-up by Cody's talent-enhancing initial reign was the cherry on top. In a way, this bout was almost poetic.

Guevara and Allin have worked all-out bombfests in the past, though this match started more conservatively, showcasing the growth both have experienced since coming into AEW. Things got wilder after Guevara dropped Darby across the top rope, sending him to the outside, and the big, giffable moments were all there, from a Nyla Rose style rope-draping moment to a stunning suicide dive countered into a cutter on the outside.

Inconsistent knee selling from Sammy let the match down a bit. Allin targeted the joint after it was tweaked during a picture-in-picture break, giving him a pathway to victory, and while Guevara occasionally sold the damage with a limp or a bum step, he neglected to do so at other times. Not ruinous, but detrimental to the bout as a whole.

Nonetheless, this was a great pro wrestling match beyond that complaint and the finish.