AEW Dark Review - March 7, 2023

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Skye Blue def. Mylo

Blue is a good person to have work in the opener because crowds like her and are into her offense. As I've said before, these matches she's having on the Dark shows are basically reps and opportunities for her to improve. This was a fairly straightforward squash match, though I will give Mylo credit for holding her own and especially for that clean cutter. Blue sold it really well. Giving Blue more of a character beyond being an underdog would help with her development.

ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Champion Brian Cage def. Bad Dude Tito

Tito gave Cage more of a fight than the guy Cage fought on Elevation this week. I mean, it makes sense since Tito is a bigger dude and could believably take it to Cage. I assume that was the reason why this was more competitive and not because AEW actually has plans to sign Tito. They had a nice little hoss fight and Cage won clean. Is he going to continue to pull double duty in both AEW and Ring of Honor?

Lance Archer def. Cody Chhun and Guillermo Rosas in a 2-on-1 Handicap Match

AEW doesn't do Handicap matches often, but it worked in this case because it was designed to put Archer over strong. He's still doing the gimmick where he brings someone out from the back and beats them up before his match. It's been done to death, but crowds still react to it, so whatever. I've always enjoyed Archer, but I'm skeptical that AEW brought him back with a plan in place instead of having him continuing to pull jobber duty on the main shows. He's practically a lost cause at this point, so these matches don't mean much.

Konosuke Takeshita def. Jack Cartwheel

Cartwheel's gimmick is that he does cartwheels. Yes, that is a real thing. Ugh. The crowd seemed to like it, but it came off pretty silly to me, especially when he did some cartwheel crap to the outside and botched a move. Thankfully, Takeshita's a pro and was able to keep this thing together. Cartwheel scored way more offense than Takeshita, which is why I wasn't a fan of the match, but at least Takeshita went over decisively in the end. More Takeshita, the better.

Big Bill def. Julius Coleman

Bill is coming off an impressive outing last week on Dynamite where he unsuccessfully challenged Orange Cassidy for the AEW All-Atlantic Championship. I hope he gets more chances to showcase his skills because he had a great run in IMPACT and should be more than just a background player in AEW. This was a simple squash to get him back on track. He didn't play around this week as he made quick work of his opponent as he should have.

Willow Nightingale def. Zoe Dubois

Nightingale is so damn fun to watch and is already very over with these AEW crowds despite not being a consistent regular on AEW TV yet. She's currently more of a mainstay in ROH, and on this Thursday's show's, she'll be challenging Athena for the ROH Women's World Championship and this gave her a victory before then. Speaking of Athena, she attempted to attack Nightingale afterward, but Nightingale thwarted it. That was smart hype for their upcoming title match.

AR Fox def. Ryan Nemeth

Nemeth does nothing for me as he's pretty abysmal in every aspect, but he was a fine person to put in there with Fox, who was the real star. I love that Fox has made a handful of appearances on Dynamite and Rampage in recent months and that he hasn't faded into obscurity since signing with AEW. This was a quality contest and the crowd was behind Fox. He and Top Flight will face Jericho Appreciation Society's Chris Jericho, Daniel Garcia and Sammy Guevara this Wednesday on Dynamite.

Overall Show

I don't know when this was taped exactly, but it had a regular live crowd and didn't emanate from Universal Studios. I assume it was taped before Rampage along with the four-match edition of Dark that aired on Saturday. This featured a lot of the same faces as Monday's Elevation, so if you watched that show, there's really no reason to watch this, too. If nothing else, I appreciate that it didn't run nearly 90 minutes this week as it has the past two weeks.

SEE MORE: Dark Reviews