AEW Dynamite Review - January 19, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Jon Moxley Addressed the Audience

It was weird that AEW would advertise Moxley for this show only a day in advance and not last week. It makes sense that the company would want his first appearance back to be for them and not for GCW, but you'd think they'd want to hype it up in advance some more. That's merely me nitpicking, though. This was an outstanding promo, if you can even really call it that. He spoke from the heart and put everything out there. I still want heel Moxley at some point (which appeared to be the direction he was headed in before he took himself off television), but it makes sense for him to ride this wave for now. I'm glad no one interrupted and he got to have this moment to himself.

Adam Cole and AEW Women's World Champion Britt Baker def. Orange Cassidy and Kris Statlander

I could have done without so much of the silly shenanigans (i.e. pandering to the crowd every 10 seconds), but this was an enjoyable opener otherwise. Cole and Baker have a natural chemistry together and Cassidy and Statlander work well together, too. Cole and Baker winning was absolutely the right call, but despite Cole winning a majority of his matches against Cassidy, we haven't seen the last of them against each other. Cole challenged Cassidy to an Unsanctioned Lights Out match next week at Beach Break because he was angry that Cassidy inadvertently put Baker through a table. I assume that's a win for Cassidy because it won't count on the record, but I don't think the feud has been that personal to were such a stipulation is necessary.

CM Punk def. Shawn Spears

Spears is a perfectly competent wrestler, but he hasn't been remotely interesting since AEW botched his feud with Cody Rhodes in the summer of 2019. Rather, he's basically been the fall guy for The Pinnacle. The outcome of this contest was never in doubt, but I got a good laugh out of it ending in 10 seconds. Seriously, Punk hit a GTS and that was it. Realistically, Spears shouldn't be taking Punk to the limit, but it's bizarre that Punk would win so quickly here yet he'd go 10 minutes with QT Marshall. Oh well. The bottom line is that this was what it needed to be.

AEW TNT Champion Cody Rhodes Challenged Sammy Guevara to a Title for Title Ladder Match at Beach Break

From what I could gather from social media, this was a very polarizing promo. Some people loved it, others hated it. There was very little in between. Personally, I fell in the latter category. I thought this sucked. Yes, he spoke a lot of truth. Yes, he spoke with intensity and the delivery was great. But I'm not sure what purpose any of what he said was supposed to serve. This only existed to set up next week's Ladder match. Okay, cool. But all the talk about WWE developmental, Punk's pipebomb, the insider terms and everything else was incredibly random. Hell, even the "Gunther" line (referencing WALTER's stupid name change in NXT) was included solely to get a cheap pop. I maintain that Rhodes is one of the worst parts of this program on a weekly basis at the moment because nothing of what he does makes sense in the slightest. I want to like what he's doing, but it's clear he has zero direction right now and will say anything to get people to react.

The Kings of the Black Throne def. Varsity Blonds

Kings of the Black Throne is a badass tag team name for Malakai Black and Brody King, and they have a badass entrance to boot. We need less of the supernatural stuff with Black and more of this straightforward badassery. He and King are the current reigning tag team champions over in PWG, so it shouldn't have come as any surprise that their chemistry is top-notch. They made quick work of Varsity Blonds as they should have. Black's next program with Pac has been revealed and I'm ready for the matches those two are bound to deliver if their one-off encounter at WWE's United Kingdom Championship Tournament show in January 2017 was any indication of what they're capable of together.

Lance Archer def. Frankie Kazarian

This went way longer than it should have, and that's coming from a fan of both guys. Kazarian has barely been featured in AEW TV in recent months, so he had no business being in there with Archer for almost 10 minutes, especially at a time where they're trying to rebuild Archer as a dominant heel and a threat to the AEW World Championship. Obviously, no one actually expects him to beat Adam Page, but he should be squashing people in the meantime to at least make it look like he has a chance. I also don't understand the pairing with Dan Lambert. It's probably designed to give Archer more heat (the crowd was painfully crowd during the match), but then what is Jake Roberts supposed to do? And there was no indication last week that Archer had any interest in teaming up with the guy he had an issue with over the summer. Thankfully, the post-match angle with Page and Archer was well done, but I still say their their inevitable championship clash should happen on TV and not at Revolution.

Serena Deeb def. Skye Blue

Deeb destroyed Hikaru Shida's knee last week and sent her packing back to Japan for the time being, so the only logical way to follow up that angle was to have her win decisively here. That's exactly what happened. Blue is a fun underdog babyface and she has potential (despite not being officially signed yet as far as I know), but this was all about Deeb and continuing her momentum. It was a glorified squash as it should have been. Tay Conti wasn't on this show, but my guess is that she'll be Deeb's next rival based off what we saw last week.

Darby Allin and Sting def. The Acclaimed

This had a different layout than most matches Allin and Sting have in that Allin was injured by The Acclaimed beforehand and Sting was forced to go at it alone for a bit. Allin wasn't gone very long and resurfaced like he was perfectly fine. I assume that was done to make it look like Acclaimed had more of a chance of winning, but there was zero way Max Caster or Anthony Bowens were pinning Sting. It was a solid match on the whole despite the strange layout (and I'm not sure I would've had Sting in there playing the role of workhorse at his age), but it wasn't main event-worthy. The Moxley promo would've been a better way to end the evening in my opinion.

Overall Show

By Dynamite standards, I thought this was a below-average show, and it's a shame because it started out strong with that fantastic Moxley return and it was followed up with the entertaining mixed tag team match. Several stars were showcased with squashes, but it almost felt like there was too many of them. To me, it made this show feel like filler ahead of Beach Break next week. There were just a lot of little things I had an issue with on this episode that left me scratching my head and the dead crowd didn't help. Hopefully they can rebound with Beach Break and start to set things in motion for Revolution in early March.

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