AEW DYNAMITE HITS & MISSES (7/18): Ospreay vs. MJF goes 59:58, All About Mariah, Blood & Guts hype, Jericho-Susuzki hype, more

What a card set up for Dynamite 250. This show continues a run of Wednesdays where I’ve been fired up and looking forward to watching the show all day. Not only do you have huge matches that should be amazing, but you have some talking segments with a lot of intrigue like Mariah May explaining her heel turn and, of course, more TV time with Chris Jericho! (kidding about Jericho!) Going into the show, it’s my hope we don’t have disappointing finishes in both of the big matches, but it’s unlikely either of them will be clean. Let’s see if this show was able to live up to expectations!

HITS

OSPREAY-MJF

Wow.

Where do I begin with this one? I suppose at the beginning. MJF had some quality crowd work right off the bat in order to make sure he was booed throughout the match. It further shows his intelligence about the business and dedication to telling the story and not looking for ironic cheers to be a “cool heel”. He used old school heel and stalling techniques to perfection.

The spot just before the commercial break was great with Ospreay yelling that his shoulder was out of its socket. Usually if I’m not watching live, I’ll skip the split-screen, but this time I watched the entire time to see the follow up to the “injury”. What an image for Ospreay to have the little girl in the crowd punch MJF and then Max gives her the finger. That’s just great stuff.

For such a long match, it can be easy for large parts of it to be boring, but they kept my interest throughout with innovative ways like talking to the camera, talking to each other, and mixing up the pace. The fact that both guys could still pull off the acrobatic moves nearly an hour into a match is just nuts.

There were just so many amazing moves pulled off, I just sat back and enjoyed every moment. At one point in the second half of the match, I just ended up rooting for a draw just so we could run this back at All-In. That’s how good it was. And I was expecting the draw, which is what made the finish so fantastic and surprising. Sure it wasn’t a clean victory, but they could have taken the easy way out and made it a draw. Instead, they increased the heat on MJF and furthered the “no killer instinct” storyline with Ospreay that should pay off in a big way down the line.

“Easy dub” — Yeah, right MJF!

ALL ABOUT MARIAH

Now that’s some long-term storytelling. Mariah May played the role of Eve Harrington from the 1950 movie “All About Eve” to perfection. Yes, most people saw this storyline and its cinematic origin coming, but that’s not a bad thing. Mariah intimated that from the start of her promo. She made her point and spelled out her goal and now it’s up to Toni Storm and Mariah to continue to build this into a must-see match at the biggest show of the year.

QUICK HITS

– The lighting behind the ring was very well done. You could see plenty of fans. Perhaps it was the venue, but I’ve been asking for them to better light that side for months now!

– I’m looking forward to the Minoru Suzuki vs. Chris Jericho match next week though perhaps it would have been better to do it the following episode to avoid two hardcore matches on the same show. I did feel it was positive to have the Jericho segment rather short. This is the sweet spot for it in my opinion.

– I loved that when Mercedes Mone went for the lock jaw finisher, Nyla Rose easily got out of it. It makes sense that Mercedes would not know how to apply it correctly. Smart booking there.

– “We hear the “B”-word enough here on Dynamite” — Excalibur (That one’s for you Wade Keller!)

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW…

MISSES

NO MJF FOLLOW-UP

When a match lasts for the first hour of the show…. and is that good…. and there’s a title change… how can you not follow-up with both competitors backstage at some point during the rest of the show? This has become something that bugs me the most about how AEW stacks their show. When people watch sports, many enjoy watching the postgame shows to hear from the players after a big game. Even if you need to keep it short due to the length of the show, the fact that the announcers didn’t even mention the match or the participants in the final hour is a major misstep. Please learn from this and fix it moving forward.

BLOOD & GUTS MATCHUP

Blood & Guts is a big deal and I’m really not feeling it with the Acclaimed involved in the match. Nothing against Max Caster and Anthony Bowens, but they have cooled off a lot over the past 6 months and I don’t believe they belong in this match. If this is a battle for “power” behind the scenes as the Young Bucks alluded to, then the top guys in AEW should be a part of it. You should have Jon Moxley or Claudio or Samoa Joe or even Will Ospreay be on the team. And there should also be stakes. Just saying they want “power” isn’t enough to get people into that building or watching at home. I attended Blood & Guts in Detroit in 2022. I could not wait to watch it in 2023. Of course I’ll be watching next week, but I’m not as pumped up about it as I should be and that’s on the company.

I didn’t mention the Swerve vs. Okada match above because it pretty much went as I expected it to. I did not like the finish, but since AEW does it very infrequently, I can get past it. The match was good, but nothing could come close to what we witnessed in the first hour of the show, so it was probably best that it went 10 minutes before the DQ and not 20-25.

I’d say this was a very memorable episode of Dynamite and I enjoyed it very much.

Continued thanks to everyone listening to The All Elite Conversation Club on the PWTorch Dailycast podcast lineup. Joel Dehnel and I have a great time breaking down all things AEW! Subscribe free by searching “pwtorch” and subscribing to the PWTorch Dailycast. Send questions and comments for the show to allelitecc@gmail.com.