Wednesday’s five-year anniversary version of “AEW Dynamite” began off with a bang, as Will Ospreay defended his Worldwide Title towards Ricochet within the evening’s opening match. The match was stuffed with flips, finisher kickouts, and callbacks to their iconic NJPW match (you realize, the one that’s at all times captioned “if wrestling is faux, clarify this”). It was both a must-see match, for these of us who stay for the high-octane athleticism of wrestling, or a must-not-see match, for these of us preferring the extra traditional mat-work aspect of wrestling (this can be a protected area for each kinds of followers). That’s to say, this match was unapologetically itself, and it was a coherent efficiency, for higher or for worse.
Commercial
This was a coherent efficiency.
AEW has a very dangerous behavior of overcomplicating issues, and once you actually give it some thought, beginning off the five-year anniversary episode of “Dynamite” with an convoluted Tony Khan reserving is a good looking return to type. Will Ospreay went in for a pin on Ricochet throughout their highly-contested, back-and-forth contest, however…slipped slightly bit off of Ricochet, in order that his shoulders had been additionally pinned on the mat. Any sane referee would have simply counted the pinfall in Ospreay’s favor, and we’d’ve been accomplished with the match. Any sane referee would have simply given Ospreay the win, and we would not have needed to run fifteen minutes extra time.
This referee appeared so confused. To be honest, I used to be equally confused when this referee started counting…each males’s pinfall? Ricochet was nowhere close to being on high of Ospreay. What?
Commercial
Thus started fifteen minutes of pure shenanigans that led to the match getting known as a draw, getting restarted, after which being robbed of a cathartic end *anyway* due to Konosuke Takeshita. Maybe I do not perceive Tony Khan’s genius, nevertheless it’s simply very odd so as to add a great chunk of time onto an in any other case completely stable match simply to reach at a disqualification end. If you happen to wished to e-book Takeshita interference…simply e-book Takeshita interference. We needn’t undergo all of the hoops and obstacles related to an odd referee name, and we definitely did not want the bumbling makes an attempt by Ospreay and Ricochet to generate sufficient applause for a restart, like some odd “please validate us” encore.
AEW is at its greatest when its campy, however campiness must be purposeful in its absurdity. Whether it is unorthodox for the sake of being unorthodox, it simply turns into an disagreeable product to observe. Give it some thought for 2 extra seconds: would you reasonably watch the ring announcer fumble via his phrases as Khan publicizes a rematch, or would you reasonably have that point devoted to extra high-stakes wrestling? That entire odd pinfall to match restart sequence did not even do something to guard Ricochet, since anyone with half a mind cell’s price of wrestling data can see that Ospreay was pinning Ricochet. This was nonsense.
Commercial
There’s some benefit to take the scenic route. Sadly, this match end drove by a dumpster fireplace.
Written by Angeline Phu
