The Aug. 12 edition of AEW Dynamite featured the ‘Rematch of the Century’ between Chris Jeircho and Orange Cassidy
Welcome to ‘Diffusing Dynamite’ week three, hosted by Joseph Casciaro and Gavin Axelrod. A weekly series where Gavin and Joseph give their takeaways from All Elite Wrestling’s (AEW) weekly show, Dynamite.
This week’s episode was advertised and promoted as ‘Tag Team Appreciation Night.’ Therefore, there were two high profile tag team matches announced, The Young Bucks vs Dark Order and an AEW Tag Team Championship match with Kenny Omega and ‘Hangman’ Adam Page defending against Jurassic Express.
Some other announcements included appearances from The Rock ‘N’ Roll Express, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, AEW World Champion Jon Moxley, and AEW Women’s Champion Hikaru Shida in action.
Wednesday’s episode of Dynamite featured a clash between Scorpio Sky and Cody for the TNT Championship as well as a ‘$7000 Obligation Match’ between Chris Jericho and Orange Cassidy.
AEW put on another pay-per-view quality show, so keep reading to find out how this week’s episode came to fruition.
The Best Tag Team Division in Wrestling
AEW continues to show they have the best tag team division in all of professional wrestling. The division is lead by AEW Tag Team Champions ‘Hangman’ Adam Page and Kenny Omega and features standouts such as FTR, The Young Bucks, Jurassic Express, Dark Order, Santana and Ortiz, Best Friends and more.
All these teams are composed of quality wrestlers whose matches always leaves you speechless. This is exactly what we saw on Dynamite tonight, the opening match of the evening between The Young Bucks and Dark Order was so well done.
Dark Order and The Young Bucks, foes since Evil Uno and Stu Grayson’s days as ‘Super Smash Bros.’, always put on amazing matches against each other. Both teams shined and looked strong, Dark Order has really found its footing recently while The Young Bucks have been globally known for as long as I can remember.
The Tag Championship match was still scheduled for later in the night, and I had very high hopes for the bout.
For the third week in a row Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) proved he is the future of AEW. The 24-year-old once gave another campaign speech and talked about how he is going to end the reign of current AEW World Champion Jon Moxley.
He is gold on the microphone and is a believable champion with his mouth alone, simply put he oozes charisma. MJF called Moxely a rabid dog that got lucky by catching the nicest car around, but he told the world it’s only a matter of time before he gets those keys from Moxley.
By talking so much about the champion, Moxley decided to join MJF in the ring and deliver a vicious Paradigm shift. Moxley then promised at AEW’s upcoming pay-per-view, All Out he would teach MJF a painful lesson in humility and that it’ll be a very bitter pill for MJF to swallow.
This feud has been amazing in the short time it has gone on and every week these two get us more and more invested. I can only imagine how much better this feud will get and I’m ecstatic for their match at All Out.
Matthew Hardy has gone insane
A week after Matthew Hardy announced to the world that he would be dropping all gimmicks and being his true self, it seems he has lost it once again. In a backstage interview, he vowed to destroy Sammy Guevara and said he loved the taste of his own blood last week.
He then went on to attack an AEW referee that somewhat resembled Guevara, showing no remorse. When these two men finally meet in the ring I am expecting an absolute bloodbath of a brawl.
Cody retains over Scorpio Sky; The next challenger arrives
After a very gruelling match between Cody and Scorpio Sky, Cody wasn’t even able to celebrate retaining his title. On the big screen the leader of Dark Order, Mr. Brodie Lee appeared carrying the old version of Cody’s TNT Championship.
Lee let Cody know his time with the title is running out, and next Saturday on AEW Dynamite it’s his turn to get a shot at the title. Dark Order’s leader said he would take the brand new title from Cody, and then give Cody back the old unfinished TNT title as a downgrade.
Despite Lee and Cody being the headline to finish this match, I need to give some credit to Scorpio Sky. He really shined in this match and his wrestling skills are no joke, he is without a doubt a future champion in AEW.
Omega and Page retain over Jurassic Express
Tag team wrestling continued to shine on this week’s AEW Dynamite when Kenny Omega and ‘Hangman’ Adam Page retained their AEW Tag Team Championships over Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus of Jurassic Express.
The match was great start to finish and Jurassic Express showed what an impressive team they are with the young Jungle Boy and veteran presence of Luchasaurus. Omega and Page have sat atop the tag division for over 200 days now, so I always expect a great match from them.
Jurassic Express gave the champions more problems than they were expecting and Jungle Boy is one of my favourite wrestlers in AEW right now. The match ended when Omega and Page hit their Tag Team finisher the ‘Last Call’ for the pin and win.
FTR and Young Bucks feud is heating up
When Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard,The Rock ‘N’ Roll Express, The Young Bucks and FTR joined together in the ring, chaos ensued. Rock ‘N’ Roll Express were firm believers that The Young Bucks are the best team in the world, but Arn Anderson said that FTR was the best team in the world.
However, Tully Blanchard agreed with nobody and he said that without the gold no team is the best in the world. This led to him and Arn getting into it, which made Arn leave and then Rock ’N’ Roll Express and Blanchard got into it.
All these men ended up taking their battle on to the ramp and left in the ring was FTR and the Rock ‘N’ Roll Express. FTR was not too happy about them calling The Young Bucks the best team in the world, and they showed their anger.
FTR attacked the older Express and delivered a spike piledriver to Ricky Morton, fleeing the ring shortly after. This was a clear shot at The Young Bucks and the slow burn to this feud has been amazing.
Another odd fact to this segment was it seemed like Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard and Shawn Spears all worked together to get The Young Bucks out of the ring. As my co-host, Gavin said, “I hear the hooves!” Are there some Horsemen on the way to AEW?
Cassidy scores the upset victory despite all the odds
‘Demo God’ Chris Jericho and ‘Freshly Squeezed” Orange Cassidy put on an amazing main event to close this week's Dynamite. Cassidy showed his no-quit attitude and Jericho went to many lengths to try and defeat Cassidy.
Even prior to the match Chris Jericho tried to convince his longtime friend, Mike Chioda the referee in the match to allow him to bend the rules. However, once in the match Chioda did not let this happen and when Jericho tried to use his bat Chioda stepped in to stop him.
To no surprise, that was not all Jericho had planned and Chioda was distracted by Best Friends and Santana and Ortiz brawling on the ramp. With the distraction, Jake Hager ran into the ring to hit a spine buster on Orange Cassidy.
Even with the spine buster, Cassidy still kicked out! That’s when Jericho went for his third shortcut of the match, he grabbed Chioda’s shirt and hit a low blow on Cassidy. He went to follow the low blow with a Judas Effect, but Cassidy reversed and got Jericho in a mousetrap for the pin-fall!
Cassidy was able to overcome all the obstacles and defeat the legendary, Chris Jericho. However, this match was not too clean so I expect there to be a rubber match between the two, my bold prediction is a steel cage match at All Out and that will be a masterpiece!
Next Week: FTR vs Private Party, The Elite vs Dark Order, the Women’s Tag Team Cup Tournament Final, Darby Allin in action, Lucha Brothers and The Butcher and Blade vs Jurassic Express and The Natural Nightmares, and a TNT Championship match with Cody defending against Mr. Brodie Lee.