Right, you know what? I was gonna hold until Sunday, but then decided… nah, fuck it. I’ve already seen it last night and ramifications are too large to hold off, so let’s get it out of the way.
Darby Allin defeated AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman via low blow and four coffin drops to win the title in the minute and change long main event. Max tried to cheat his way by hitting Darby low, but you can’t trick a man who climbed Everest and the above occurred and here we are. Darby Allin is your new AEW World Champion, everyone comes out and celebrates, and Max is apparently off to do another movie if the rumor mills are to be believed. Alas, I watch Dynamite for the first time in a long while and my first show features MJF fucking off and a title change. Go figure.
So I made the case that they should have kept the belt on MJF a little while longer, but Darby winning the belt here in this fashion was a nice surprise. Did it invoke flashbacks of that one time when Mox killed Punk in a World title match a couple years back? Well, when I really think about it, it did come up and that’s why I mentioned it here… but I don’t think Max is going to be go nuts about this as Phil is. Everything Max does is part of the gimmick. He can maintain face. And when he comes back, he’ll be compelling once more.
How do I feel about Darby winning the big one? I’m okay with it, actually. Part of it feels overdue to give him a nice run with the belt, even if it only lasts until the next PPV or something (which turns out to be Double Or Nothing) and part of it is also a new face on the top spot. Sure, Darby has been around since the beginning, but it’s his first World title of significance and that means something in a time when the major wrestling promotions have its top stories focused on mutli-time World champions vying for double digit title reigns. Oh boy, he gets to win #15. Yippee. Who cares? Give me someone new in the top spot that actually matters. Good for Darby.
Not to say that the rest of the show is without merit. There’s a pretty fun match between Will Ospreay and CMLL Champion Hechicero (only took me a couple tries to spell it correctly – yay me) with Ospreay coming out on top, Kevin Knight retaining his TNT title over Claudio in another good match, Tomasso Ciampa kills a dude and makes his World title intentions clear, and apparently, the feud between Ricochet and Jericho must continue with Ricochet’s crew beating on Jericho and teasing that the former World champion might need some back-up… please don’t tell me that he’s going to create another faction. That’s like, what, ten of these fucking things? Let him pair up with the other old Canadians and have them beat up this fucking idiot Ricochet and then they can go for trios titles or something. No more stables for Jericho, please. People actually like him now. Don’t ruin it. Thanks.
Oh and Kamille challenges Willow for her TBS title and loses… so much for that big comeback. Meh.
Yeah, you know what? Let’s keep this thing going for a little while. The show hit me with a couple big surprises, the matches were good, and it was a largely fun watch. It almost reminded me of the early days of AEW when it had that spark. I don’t know if it’s found that spark again, but for now, it got me hooked for the short term… so let’s see how this goes.
dtm666 