HEYDORN’S AEW DYNAMITE RECEIPT 12/21: Ricky Starks gets proper time and delivers after last week’s loss

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

-Ricky Starks was perfect this week on AEW Dynamite. Just perfect. First, props to Tony Khan for recognizing his momentum and following up on this loss from last week. Starks deserved the opportunity to talk it over with the fans that supported him and he did it while in line from a character perspective, staying likable, and woven within a mission statement for the future too. Just great work on his part. The guy looked like a damn star out there.

-Chris Jericho vs. Ricky Starks is the smart feud to go to for both guy. Jericho can bring out the best of anyone when he wants to and Starks can play nicely off of him in a way that keeps him positioned as a strong babyface. Good booking here.

-Glad the Action Andretti got time on television right out of the gate. Last week he got a jolt of momentum and the follow-up needed to be there with him. It was on multiple levels. First, he helped Starks out in beating away the JAS. Second, the feud with Jericho continued thanks to the fireball and beating he took backstage. Checking boxes here, but all important steps to continue his movement in the company.

-A lot of the same from Death Triangle and The Elite, but the no disqualification stipulation at least gave them another tool to use when they wanted. The injury storyline with The Elite is working. That’s the angle here and the audience should be hot for it and for The Elite to take the series when it goes to match seven.

-Bryan Danielson was doing some classic pro wrestling work out there on the microphone this week. Not a lot of meta stuff, but a straight story with MJF that is going to inevitably lead to a championship match. Danielson tied the pieces of the story together well and even addressed Regal costing Jon Moxley the AEW World Championship. Good stuff.

-Ethan Page got a nice heel reaction out there and though working opposite Danielson certainly helped, but he showed why he may deserve a little more time with a microphone and a lot more character development.

-Jon Moxley, thank you. That’s a promo. That’s a promo from a real person and from a talent that understands the business that he’s in. He respected his audience too in calling out the elephant in the room concerning Adam Page and the fact that he injured him when, well, he was kinda supposed to. Really well done.

-More Hook, please. Just more. The guy gets one of the biggest reactions on the show. It’s silly to hide that away.

-The continued misuse of FTR is baffling. They are jobbing to The Gunn’s now? Like, what are we doing here? Even if FTR is leaving the company, Tony Khan needs to soak any equity out of them that they have left. Losing to The Gunn’s is a Dean Ambrose losing to EC3 type moment. It makes no sense and is a move that just openly downgrades one of the bigger acts that AEW has.

-Alright, let’s talk about that Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee segment, shall we? Yeah, I don’t want to either, but we must. Not good. The MF bomb was funny, but the entire thing was incredibly flat. Keith Lee basically no sold the arrival of Parker Boudreaux, which severely hurt the impact of his arrival with Swerve. Rick Ross was obnoxious and cringeworthy and things took way too long to develop. They got to their spot with the cinder block, but I’m not sure people cared by the time they did.

-An excellent main event between Jaime Hayter vs. Hikaru Shida. Great action and a really nice story of the former champion trying to secure gold again. One of the better women’s matches in AEW in recent memory. Great stuff.

CATCH-UP: 12/21 AEW DYNAMITE TV RESULTS: Keller’s report on Hayter vs. Shida, Elite vs. Death Triangle, Swerve-Lee meeting