Every Major AEW Show RANKED From Worst To Best

This is a very, very good wrestling company you guys.

Kip Sabian Jon Moxley
AEW

The 'Anniversary' edition of AEW Dynamite looms, and in typical form, lots of story beats are intensifying on the road towards it. This is a destination booking company; they make a match you want to see, set it for months down the line, and plot the most interesting route, one that often intersects with the other attractions on the card.

October 14 feels like it's going to be big.

The rumbling underfoot suggests as much; already set is a major AEW World Championship match between Jon Moxley and Lance Archer, promoted alongside the Team Taz Vs. Darby Allin programme to further the complex and gripping relationship between the two babyfaces and, inspiredly, to cast further doubt on the outcome via the arrangement made between Taz and Jake Roberts.

Mr. Brodie Lee continues to taunt Cody ahead of a TNT Championship rematch by beating down his extended Nightmare Family. The Best Friends, having vanquished Santana and Ortiz in that classic Parking Lot Fight, are primed for a better run at an FTR outfit who had a key advantage in the Gauntlet of August 27. It feels also like the venue of a big, game-changing angle between Kenny Omega and Hangman Page.

Who's turning on who, and where will the Anniversary rank among the best of AEW's big shows?

12. Fight For The Fallen 2019

Kip Sabian Jon Moxley
AEW

Has it finished yet?

Probably fairer to wait for it to end before analysing it.

Fight For The Fallen, just AEW's third show, probably needed to happen purely so that it wouldn't happen again. Set against a draining backdrop of peak summer Floridian humidity, where every match felt too long for the performers and audience alike, the results scan so strangely in retrospect.

That is to AEW's immense credit - the divergent paths taken by Hangman Page and Kip Sabian generate considerable trust in the process - but, in going 19:05 to tease the time limit draw, AEW attempted to get a dramatic device over at the expense of a star. What was damaging and boring then has at least informed the greatest arc in wrestling currently.

Elsewhere, the heavily promoted return of proper tag team wrestling materialised as merely good matches on a merely good undercard, a strange and poor Allie Vs. Brandi Rhodes match excepted. A sharp and inexplicable turn betrayed the one thing the match had going for it: Brandi's pre-show anxiety storyline delivered with heart-wrenching promos on the Road To.

And that's the thing with this promotion: you could not, in good faith, describe this show as "bad". The main event was a long but objectively bloody good tag team epic pitting the Young Bucks against the Brotherhood, and Kenny Omega Vs. CIMA told a rich story of a trailblazing legend striving too far to recapture old glories.

 
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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!