AEW Dynamite Review - August 14, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

AEW TBS Champion and NJPW Strong Women's Champion Mercedes Mone def. Hikaru Shida (NJPW Strong Women's Championship Was Not Defended)

This was one of those matches I was looking forward to seeing when Mone signed with AEW and it delivered. There was no reason to think Shida would win right before All In and Mone's finisher still sucks, but this was an enjoyable opener otherwise. Britt Baker returned afterward and everything about it came off terribly. Mone turned too soon when she saw Baker coming, and Kamille botched dragging Baker out of the ring. That was bad.

"Hangman" Adam Page def. Jay Lethal

Page attacked Lethal backstage before bringing him to the ring, so Lethal had an out for losing. Then again, Lethal has never been protected in this company, so it hardly matters, anyway. Lethal doesn't get many chances these days to showcase his skills, but I was glad he was able to score some offense here before eating defeat. You can argue it should've been more of a straightforward squash for Page, but it's not as if he's currently in line for anything important at All In as of now.

AEW TNT Champion Jack Perry Attacked Darby Allin

I don't know what match Allin was supposed to have, but Perry attacked him while he was making his entrance, so we never got to find out. It was a pretty aggressive attack designed to put more heat on Perry, which was necessary after Allin embarrassed Perry at the end of Blood and Guts. It also served as simple build for their upcoming AEW TNT Championship clash (which will now be a Coffin match).

Orange Cassidy def. Kyle O'Reilly and Roderick Strong in a Three-Way Match to Earn the No. 1 Spot in the Casino Gauntlet Match at All In

The first two Casino Gauntlet matches were great, but both of them happened in the last four months. Now the third is happening at All In with a future AEW World Championship opportunity on the line. Would it kill Tony Khan to put a bit more distance between them? This was as well-wrestled as you'd expect given who was involved. These three have had a lot of matches together since the spring, but at least this had something at stake.

FTW Champion Chris Jericho Accepted Hook's FTW Championship Challenge for All In

By the time All In comes, Jericho and Hook will have been feuding for almost exactly six months. That's astounding considering the storyline hasn't been remotely interesting since the start. This was a decent segment to set up the rematch, but Jericho saying that Hook can never again challenge for the FTW title if he loses practically gave away the finish. Can an additional stipulation be put in place that dictates that Jericho has to leave AEW if he loses?

AEW World Tag Team Champions The Young Bucks def. The Acclaimed by Disqualification

The Acclaimed earned this shot by beating the Bucks in an Eliminator match two months ago, and even though we're two weeks out from All In, the title match was given away on Dynamite. Make it make sense. Worse yet, the match was okay at best. Before they could kick it into the next fear, FTR's interference caused the contest to end in a lame disqualification. FTR will face The Acclaimed in a number one contender's match on Saturday's Collision. Doing another non-finish would be terrible because we just got one in last week's Collision main event (and of course here as well), so my money's on FTR to earn the shot. A rematch between the Bucks and The Acclaimed does nothing for me, personally.

AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland def. Wheeler Yuta by Referee Stoppage (Non-Title)

The video package that aired for Bryan Danielson beforehand was fantastic. It's a shame they couldn't include footage from his WWE days, but that was to be expected. At any rate, Strickland vs. Yuta was a well-worked main event. Yuta was no threat to Strickland, but he was made to look credible in defeat. The post-match angle with Strickland laying out Danielson was even better. I wouldn't necessarily consider it a heel turn for him but rather another attempt by him to reestablish the edge he's always had.

Overall Show

There were more video packages than usual on this edition of Dynamite and all of them were effective in building toward several matches at All In. AEW doesn't do many video packages on a weekly basis, but the pay-per-view is a few weeks away and this was a good week for there to be an abundance of them. It wasn't a home run of an episode by any means, but it was a solid show on the whole with a lot more focus on the key storylines.

SEE MORE: Dynamite Reviews