8 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (5 April - Review)

1. Was It All Worth It?

No, not really.

FTR winning the AEW World Tag Team titles in virtually any context would have generated a pop. Analysing the specific context in which they won it drags the main event down.

Twitter is a bubble, and it clearly makes no appreciable difference to how fans react in a live setting. Still, if you use the app, was Dax orchestrating a worked shoot rivalry with the official AEW account a good way of telling the story?

The story on TV was simple: superior team show signs of fatigue as a result of intense schedule, young bratty upstarts take advantage, the good family men and superior wrestlers put it all on the line for vengeance. The babyface behaving like a petulant child on social media wasn't ideal, then, was it? The constant "Guys, we don't know where we're going next, honestly" grift absolutely reeked, too. The story on TV was also flawed.

The "You're meant to think the Gunns aren't deserving champions because they're still green" deal didn't work because they're still green and helmed the division for two months, and the results weren't great. Because they are green.

AEW has played a very tedious meta game on more than one platform over the last few months, all of which led to last night's main event...

...which was a rushed match bereft of real heat and drama, albeit with a very popular result.

Still, that very popular result could have been achieved in an infinite number of different ways. This way was one of the weaker FTR matches in their otherwise awesome body of work. It was a generous three stars at best. If this was all in fact a noble failure to help get the Gunns over, it was at least a couple of years too soon. The ref pull spot was magnificent, mind.

Not magnificent enough to justify Dax playing the oxymoronic passive aggressive babyface online, but magnificent nonetheless.