AEW Dynamite Review - August 22, 2020

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

FTR def. Private Party

I love the move to have Tully Blanchard manage FTR. It's been teased for a while with Blanchard scouting FTR from the crowd, but now it's official as he accompanied them to ringside here after The Rock 'N' Roll Express disrespected Blanchard last week on Dynamite. This was another display from FTR as to how terrific tag team wrestling can be and that they don't need to do a million high spots for matches to be entertaining. Private Party looked great in defeat here as well.

Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) and The Natural Nightmares def. The Butcher, The Blade and The Lucha Brothers

What a random mash-up of teams. It's well documented that AEW has a loaded tag team division, but I sometimes feel like the company almost has too many teams it knows what to do with. Case in past, all four of these tandems are floundering at the moment. The in-ring action wasn't exciting enough to justify it happening, either. In fact, it was all over the place and featured a slew of sloppy spots. The sole purpose this served was setting up that post-match promo from Eddie Kingston where gave a pep talk to Butcher, Blade and Lucha Brothers. I'd be down for him aligning with Pentagon Jr. and Rey Fenix while Pac is away, but Blade and Butcher being a part of this mini faction does nothing for me.

Inner Circle Attacked Orange Cassidy and Best Friends

Considering Chris Jericho and Cassidy are now tied one win apiece, I assumed a rubber match was likely for All Out. I have no idea what that means for Jericho's rumored match with Mike Tyson and when AEW plans on paying that off, if ever. At any rate, this Mimosa Mayhem match could either be a blast or incredibly stupid. Given who's involved, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Additionally, Santana and Ortiz helped beat down Best Friends here, so this segment furthered that feud as well.

The Elite (The Young Bucks and AEW World Tag Team Champion Kenny Omega) def. The Dark Order (John Silver, Alex Reynolds and Alan "5" Angels)

I'm ready for this rivalry between The Elite and Dark Order to be over. This was decent and all, but I can't imagine anyone took the trio of Silver, Reynolds and Angels seriously against The Elite. Thus, this didn't need to last as long as it did. They worked a chaotic pace and it had its moments, but I had a hard time getting into it because of the outcome being so obvious. Omega once again teased going heel afterward by nearly brutalizing Angels with a chair, so you know that turn is coming.

Darby Allin def. Will Hobbs

Hobbs is the same dude who got squashed by Cassidy in under 10 seconds on Dark last month. In other words, he has no credibility whatsoever. Hobbs scored his fair share of offense, but Allin went over in the end. Ricky Starks mocked Allin afterward by dressing up as him, and while I wasn't sold on the angle at first, I thought Brian Cage ambushing him from behind and Starks cutting the strong promo he did were really well done.

Matt Hardy Attacked Sammy Guevara

I absolutely loved how this was executed. Guevara has been doing this gimmick on Dynamite for many months where he'll hold up cue cards during the picture-in-picture commercial breaks with messages on them. As he was doing that here, he realized Hardy sabotaged his cards which led to Hardy coming out and getting a measure of revenge for what he did to him two weeks ago. This was an excellent angle that left me looking forward to their Tables match on next week's episode.

Ivelisse and Diamante def. The Nightmare Sisters to Win The Deadly Draw

I prayed to God that Brandi Rhodes and Allie wouldn't win this tournament and I can't stress how happy I am that they didn't. Seriously, they suck as a team and not even Ivelisse and Diamante could get a good match out of them. This was a below-average effort and couldn't have been over quick enough. The only positive thing I can say about it is that Ivelisse and Diamante emerged victorious, but fingers crossed they can maintain this momentum and that Brandi and Allie won't continue to be the focal point of this division.

Brodie Lee def. Cody to Win the AEW TNT Championship

This gave me major John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar from WWE SummerSlam 2014 vibes, except that it was significantly shorter and Cody didn't get in any offense whatsoever. Lee hasn't done anything of note since failing to defeat Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship at Double or Nothing, so this was the type of move AEW needed to make with him in order to establish him and the rest of Dark Order as a dominant force. It feels like Dark Order has lost more often than they've won lately, but this could be a turning point for them depending on what the followup is. A Dark Order vs. Nightmare Family rivalry doesn't do a ton for me, but we'll see where it goes. If nothing else, this was a hell of an angle and ended the night with a bang. Does this put the teased Cody heel turn on the back-burner for now?

Overall Show

Moreover than anything else that happened on this show, my favorite part was NWA World Women's Champion Thunder Rosa cutting a pre-taped promo and essentially accepting Hikaru Shida's AEW Women's Championship challenge at All Out. Sign me the hell up! The rest of this special Saturday night edition of Dynamite was pretty damn entertaining and accomplished a lot in regards to setting up All Out in two more weeks. I found the second hour to be much better than the first and the title change was a newsworthy worthy of closing out the episode. Dynamite will be airing on Thursday night next week before I believe it returns to Wednesdays the week of All Out.