8 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Dynamite (18 Oct)

5. Shida & Storm Fight Like Hell

AEW's women have been kicking a lot of *ss lately, using their weekly Dynamite slot to full effect, fighting hard and snug, suggesting, perhaps, a brighter future yet lurks beyond the cloudy horizon.

Hikaru Shida vs. Toni Storm continued this trend. While short, with its eight-minute runtime gobbled up by a picture-in-picture break, the wrestlers made the most of it. Tie-ups and jostles for position and control took them to the mat, then back to their feet, before Shida got cooking, delivering her usual fiery performance. A Hip Attack sent her to the floor before nice, starchy strikes came out, with the wrestlers hooking a crowd that, up to this point, sounded likely they were either poorly produced or in poor song.

A brisk, no-fat encounter concluded shortly after Shida blocked the swinging DDT and hit a version of a Gourd Buster. The Storm Zero won it for Toni in her latest successful Interim Women's World Title Defence. A hoot of a match that could have touched greatness had it gone 15 minutes.

Storm was beaten down by Rebel and Jamie Hayter after the bell. Britt Baker's entrance was then interrupted by Saraya, whose own arrival preceded Riho's return to AEW for the first time since May. A welcome re-addition, the Japanese star aligned herself with Storm, setting up a ripper of a TV match with Hayter for next week in the process.