How AEW Taught WWE A Lesson Last Night

Wardlow continued to kill the guy by throwing him into the mesh with an assortment of brutal power moves. He scraped Cody's battered body into the mesh at his will. It was simplistic, but brilliantly so. This was an expertly laid-out lesson in re-training an audience.

Under this spell, the inevitability of the result lay, like the best magic tricks, in plain sight. Cody was always going to win, but by furnishing a classic dynamic with a modern flourish, it felt in doubt. Wardlow was all aura before last night, but his stunning senton and the resulting, cracking near-fall put him over as an invincible hoss threat and a freakish athlete.

Cody again used his experience to blindside Wardlow with a cutter, before taking us directly back to the 1980s with the ten-punches-in-the-corner spot. He punched his own face to spread the blood around it, make himself look more vulnerable, and manipulate the crowd into a fever. On the perfect babyface platform, he entered the perfect babyface performance. Wardlow, smelling that blood, rushed to put Cody away, in the process revealing his inexperience. In the big, levelling moment, he side-stepped the charge, sending Wardlow hurtling into the metal, after which he drilled the monster with Cross Rhodes. Wardlow kicked out at the death. This was a fabulous near-fall that put Wardlow over in defeat.

AEW deftly incorporated the ancillary figures in the storyline, making excellent use of every available story beat without relying on overt interference. Cody paid further tribute to the old power of the Cage when MJF pleaded with Arn Anderson to show his true colours and ram the door into Cody's face. Anderson subverted this, to a huge pop, by smashing it backwards into MJF's - and later hurling him over the barricade after he had motioned, despicably, to punch Brandi in the face.

The finish was superb.

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