9 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Dynamite (Apr 15)

1. Big Fight Flop

What a disappointment. Jake Hager vs. Jon Moxley was a betrayal of its excellent build.

Tony Khan promised that when this bout aired, fans would call it the best empty arena match ever. This was already a bold claim, given that Terry Funk vs. Jerry Lawler exists, and that this clash ended up being one of the most hard-to-watch things any wrestling company has produced since lockdown made it worse.

Everyone involved did a great job of making this feel like a big, important fight. The recent vignettes have been effective and entertaining, while Hager had looked big, dominant, and fearsome in his run of squash victories. The stage was set for a banger. Unfortunately, we got a flop.

Overlong and overambitious, there are parallels with Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano’s ‘One Last Beat.’ Moxley vs. Hager wasn’t as heavy on amateur dramatics, but the failure is similar: a high-effort disappointment of an epic too bloated to thrive in wrestling’s new minimalist setting. They tried hard - they threw bombs at each other - but it wasn't enough.

With the opening stages ponderous and sluggish, the mat work far from snug enough, and the first and second act pacing doing nothing to put Jake over as "the most dangerous man Mox has ever faced," they got to the violence way too late. The bout had already become a sad plodder by the time Hager was drilled with a Paradigm Shift onto a steel chair for the pinfall.