AEW Dark Review - November 19, 2019

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Best Friends def. Private Party

I'm a big fan of both of these teams and therefore I thoroughly enjoyed this outing. The in-ring action was very entertaining and the crowd was hot for most of the match. Best Friends haven't had the greatest win-loss record recently, so I was actually slightly shocked that they won, not to mention that Private Party beat The Young Bucks on Dynamite last month. I feel like they haven't benefited from that victory as much as they should have, but maybe that's just me.

AEW Women's Champion Riho and Britt Baker def. Kris Statlander and Big Swole

I had the pleasure of seeing Statlander compete in person at a Big Time Wrestling show in August and I was really impressed. Thus, I'm not surprised she has so much buzz right now and is reportedly on the radars of WWE and AEW. She and Swole dominated a majority of the match and had strong showings. There was virtually no chance of them winning here (especially since Statlander hasn't officially signed yet), but they looked good in defeat. This was one of the better women's matches I've seen from AEW yet.

The Young Bucks def. #StrongHearts

Tony Schiavone mentioned in the studio that this was taped before last week's Dynamite, where Matt Jackson was injured at the hands of Santana and Ortiz. Meanwhile, I have no idea why Strong Hearts have a hashtag in front of their name, but that was how they were introduced, so that's what we're going with. The episode was already running long by the time this started, so I was glad that it was kept short and sweet. The Bucks hit their signature stuff and Strong Hearts were made to look like their equals before losing.

Overall Show

This edition of AEW Dark was a tag team special and all three matches delivered. The women had a much better bout than usual, Best Friends vs. Private Party was a ton of fun, and Bucks vs. #StrongHearts was exactly what it needed to be. On a side note, Dustin Rhodes did well on commentary and I like the idea of new faces being brought in to do commentary every week alongside Excalibur.