HEYDORN’S DYNAMITE RECEIPT 5/5: MJF delivers on special Blood and Guts stage

This week’s episode of AEW Dynamite has wrapped. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and relive some of the madness.

-Well, I’ll tell you what. I was thrilled to see Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston no-sell for Nakazawa in the opening tag match. Too often we see upper card wrestlers selling for low-level talent and that was my worry going into this. They struck the right tone here and it made for a solid opener.

-Young Bucks vs. Moxley & Kingston looks to be all but confirmed at this point. I’m looking at the Double or Nothing PPV event as the canvas for the match. Kind of gives away the outcome of next week’s tag title match, but so be it. Stars gotta star and this is one of the bigger tag matches AEW can deliver at this point. There is a significant backstory between both squads as well.

-Remember that selling issue I was just talking about? I enter QT Marshall vs. Cody Rhodes into evidence. What business does Cody have selling for QT Marshall the way he did in this match? The match was entertaining, but Marshall has been positioned as a low-level guy for way too long to have him go toe to toe with the likes of Cody. Nothing wrong with going to this match or the feud, but AEW has to lay a better foundation and show the audience how and when Marshall all of a sudden got relevant and good.

-Great work from Britt Baker on the show this week. She didn’t have a lot of time out there, but she maximized each minute to the fullest. Her star power grows show-by-show and week-by-week. I wonder if they can get Baker vs. Shida hot enough to main event the Double or Nothing PPV.

-SCU is getting a tag team title shot next week, but the foreshadowing of Bucks vs. Moxley & Kingston severely hurts the intrigue around the match. The story with SCU is that the next time they lose, they’re breaking up. It’s a decent story to be sure, but the payoff appears to already be flat given the other story hovering around the championships.

-It looks like AEW is setting up Orange Cassidy vs. Kenny Omega for the AEW Championship at Double or Nothing. Cassidy confronting Omega tonight was a giant clue that he’s going over next week in the number one contender match with PAC. I’m on board. Cassidy is a unique act and one that is under utilized given the popularity. This is a smart way to heat him up and test the waters on what the fan appetite for Cassidy is in the main event picture.

-If you can’t do a top rope cage spot safely AND make it look realistic at the same time, don’t do said top rope cage spot. I liked the Blood and Guts match, but the violence that took place inside the cage greatly outdid the bump that Jericho took. They could have stayed in that lane and told the same story, but the result would have been more believable.

-MJF needed this Blood and Guts match. The visual of him bleeding at the top of the cage will be echoed throughout AEW’s history and his character needed this range to be fully taken serious as a heel that matters. This was a big night for him and he delivered.

NOW CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S RAW RECEIPT: HEYDORN’S RAW RECEIPT 5/3: Drew McIntyre a third wheel in championship program ahead of Backlash