This past Saturday, the landscape of All Elite Wrestling experienced a seismic shift when Mr. Brodie Lee defeated Cody to claim the TNT Championship for his Dark Order, and then perpetrate an assault on not only the former champ, but also upon Brandi Rhodes and Arn Anderson as well.
On top of that, Chris Jericho laid out his Mimosa Mayhem challenge to Orange Cassidy for their ALL OUT 2020 rubber match, NWA Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa challenged AEW Women’s Champion Hikaru Shida to match for ALL OUT 2020, Ivelisse and Diamante won the Women’s Championship Cup, Tully Blanchard signed on with FTR, and Eddie Kingston played peacemaker!
What a loaded edition of DYNAMITE it was, and the AEW faithful can expect more of that excitement this THURSDAY night when we hit the TNT airwaves at 8pm EST/7pm CST, and on AEWPlus.com for our International audience! The challengers for the World Tag Team Titles at ALL OUT 2020 will be set, the World Title match contract will be signed, we will get an update on Cody, and someone is going to taste the tables!
**RANKINGS AS OF 8/19**
TAG TEAM GAUNTLET…
**WINNER EARNS TAG TITLE MATCH AT ALL OUT 2020***
(#4) The Natural Nightmares vs. (#3) The Young Bucks vs. (#2) The Best Friends vs. (#1) FTR
With ALL OUT 2020 just over a week away, the entire tag team division is jockeying for their shot at World Tag Team titles that Hangman Adam Page and Kenny Omega have now held for over 215 days. Of the four teams competing for this opportunity, three of them have had previous opportunities to dethrone the champs, and all three have failed in their bids. Matt and Nick Jackson had their chance at REVOLUTION on 2/29, and although it was one of the greatest tag team battles of this generation, it proved a losing one for The Bucks.
The Natural Nightmares took their stab at becoming the 3rd AEW World Tag Team Champions back on the June 11th edition of DYNAMITE, and just as The Young Bucks before them, went down in defeat to the reigning champs. And most recently, Chuck and Trent had their opportunity at FYTER FEST 2020: NIGHT 1 on July 1st but would ultimately suffer the same fate as the five teams before them.
That leaves FTR, Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood, as the lone team in this quartet who have yet to vie for the biggest prize in tag team wrestling today. With an undefeated record in the tag team division, acquired by notching six straight wins against teams like SCU, Private Party, as well as The Butcher and The Blade, FTR sits at the top spot in the rankings. To further bolster their presence in the division, Cash and Dax have also enlisted the services of Tully Blanchard as their own manager. They have certainly made a rock solid case for deserving a tag team title shot, now they just have to take this final step to make it a guarantee.
As for the match itself, it is all about the rankings; Dustin and QT will compete against The Brothers Jackson to start the match off, with the winning team facing The Best Friends. The winner of the second match in the gauntlet will then go on to fight FTR, with the ultimate winner earning a shot at the AEW World Tag Team Titles on September 5th at ALL OUT 2020!
ALL OUT CONTRACT SIGNING…
AEW World Champion Jon Moxley and (#1) MJF
https://www.youtube.com/embed/2PL4KkAJQDg
Jon Moxley has never shown hesitation to fight a man, never backed down, and has never had a problem fighting fire with fire. It was only a few weeks back that MJF, after being confirmed as the World Title challenger for ALL OUT 2020, elected to crack Mox’s head with the title belt in hopes of seeing Darby Allin become champion and, at least in Max’s backwards thinking, offer him a lesser challenge.
So it was only fair that the World Champion give Maxwell a taste of his own medicine by pulling the incredibly devious move of coming out the entrance way while MJF was focused on the arena. Yes it was a deviation from the norm for Mox’s entrances, but as the saying goes, what’s good for the goose…and this time what was good for the gander was a massive Paradigm Shift DDT dropping MJF on his head.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Zp72zIok8o
In the aftermath of Mox’s retaliatory assault, the number one contender for the AEW World Championship has made his intentions clear when it comes to the title match slated for ALL OUT 2020; MJF is looking to handicap Jon Moxley in any fashion that he is able. The theatrics of his performance in the video embedded above are a clear indication that he is afraid of facing Moxley in a fair and balanced fight, hence this hard push to ban the Paradigm Shift DDT.
As if Jon is solely dependent on that one move to achieve victory, it certainly is not how he retained the championship over Mr. Brodie Lee or Brian Cage. This psychological ploy to deprive Mox of one weapon in his arsenal may seem like a good idea to a lawyer, or a petrified challenger, but he can still be choked out, made to submit, dropped on his head with that Gotch Style Piledriver, plenty of options here, and the ban is not going to stop Mox from signing his name on the dotted line so he can officially end MJF’s title aspirations.
TABLES MATCH…
Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara
https://www.youtube.com/embed/fS6ZZ2VALvs
It may feel like an eternity, but it really wasn’t that long ago that Matt Hardy extended a hand to Sammy Guevara. The veteran saw the potential in Sammy, despite Guevara attacking him when Hardy arrived in AEW, but also saw the path the young man was headed down in aligning himself with Chris Jericho and The Inner Circle. To the surprise of none, Guevara rejected the hand and the escalation of hostilities began. Sammy has been hit with a golf car in what has certainly been one of DYNAMITE’s most legendary moments, was injured during the Stadium Stampede and put on a mobility scooter, and has found Hardy to be a thorn in his side the last several weeks. Hardy was directly responsible for Sammy getting pinned by Luchasaurus on July 29th in the Inner Circle’s ten man tag match, thus a week later, as Hardy declared his desire to focus on himself rather than his Multiverse, the retaliation by Sammy proved more vicious than even The Spanish God likely intended.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZiHlxbG88R4
The blood that oozed from the skull of Hardy was unsettling to say the least, and certainly not the kind of injury a man already teetering needed to suffer. He attacked AEW Referee Mike Posey thinking it was Sammy, and then last week, as seen in the video embedded at the top of this piece, Matt attacked Guevara before ultimately tossing him off the stage and thru a table. The only thing that stopped him from using a chair to inflict the same damage to Sammy as he suffered was the arrival of AEW referees to restrain the man.
But this week on DYNAMITE, there is nothing to hold either man back as each one aims to inflict as much bodily harm on the other as possible via Tables Match. It is almost a certainty that The Inner Circle will use the rules to insert themselves into this fight, but Hardy has the support of Private Party in his corner to even those odds up.
Neither man is going to emerge from this one unscathed (although if this week’s BTE is any indication Hardy is already quite damaged) so the question is more which one will walk away and which one will find a new home among the rubble of decimated tables?
HANDICAP MATCH…
(#2) Big Swole vs. (#5) Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D, (#3) Penelope Cruz, & Rebel
https://www.youtube.com/embed/v-xZTCYmREs
This is one that fans have been waiting to go down for quite some time…just not exactly as anticipated. See the tension between Big Swole and Britt Baker has been building for quite some time, even before the injury that has kept the good doctor on the shelf since May 20th. Their only in-ring meetings were in the Casino Battle Royale at ALL OUT 2019, and on AEW DARK in tag team competition, but those were very different circumstances, and in the case of Baker, a very different person being presented to the masses.
As the cracks in Britt’s facade began to show, the woman began to come at one another verbally while jockeying for position within the women’s division. Yet it wasn’t until after Baker’s injury that we’ve truly seen the vitriol between the two exposed. Baker’s mouth, her general disrespect to Swole has seen her end up inside a dumpster, and seen Britt essentially feed her assistant Rebel to the wolves by foisting a match with Swole on her. It did not go well for Rebel, but it served Baker’s needs of putting obstacles in Swole’s path and giving the injured doctor more time to heal up.
Apparently that time has come, and this week Britt Baker returns to action for the first time in over three months to finally answer the challenges of Big Swole. But, in typical Britt Baker fashion, she will not go into this fight alone. Rather she has used Rebel once again, not only as a forced tag team partner, but also to enlist the services of Penelope Ford via free make-up for a year.
More roadblocks, more obstacles, but for Big Swole overcoming those things has been par for the course throughout life, not just career. There is a goal to accomplish here though, to get Britt Baker inside the ring, and if taking on this decidedly unfair situation gets Swole closer to that end game, than so be it. When the time comes for the doctor to face Swole on her own, Britt is going to end up regretting all the games she played and the insults slung in the process…
RESPECT HIS NAME…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/0O7nC60mHas
Mr. Brodie Lee told Cody that he would be made to put some respect on the name of The Dark Order, and on Lee’s name as well. As all can see in the video embedded above, Lee made good on that by first dethroning “The American Nightmare” as TNT Champion, and then by further decimating Cody, Arn Anderson, and even Brandi Rhodes in the aftermath of the title fight. It was heinous and unnecessary, the attack on Arn Anderson particularly beyond the pale, and Anna Jay choking out Brandi was insult to injury. Yet as uncalled for as the entire situation was, it sent an effective message to the entire AEW locker room. The Dark Order has acquired its first AEW championship, and it was akin to a challenge for anyone to come try and take it.
Who will be the first man to step up to the plate and try to wrest the TNT Title from Lee’s powerful grasp? That remains to be seen, and this Thursday night is apparently not the night for that concern as Mr. Brodie Lee informed AEW that it will be the night for a victory celebration! What does that look like in the world of The Dark Order? If what fans have seen in recent BEING THE ELITE episodes (Watch Here), it may involve some baby back ribs and plenty of cursing.
CODY’S CONDITION…
And in relation to Mr. Brodie Lee’s victory and the ensuing chaos, we expect to have an update on the condition of Cody following that vicious assault from collective forces of The Dark Order. At this point, we are uncertain of the immediate future of The American Nightmare, and it would be inappropriate to speculate as to his condition. We will know more Thursday night, so tune into TNT for the latest update on Cody’s status.
We already know that Hikaru Shida has been challenged for her AEW Women’s Title by Thunder Rosa, and by the end of the DYNAMITE, both the AEW World Tag Team Title match and the AEW World Title match between MJF and Jon Moxley will be locked in!
We are ever closer to ALL OUT 2020 on September 5th, and the pieces are falling into place for AEW’s next foray onto pay-per-view! Don’t miss out this week as the TNT Title reign of Brodie Lee begins, we get closer to the Mimosa Mayhem Match, Big Swole aims for bit of comeuppance for Britt Baker in her return match, and a whole lot more! It’s almost DYNAMITE time, and don’t forget that because of the NBA it is coming to you on THURSDAY night at 8pm EST/7pm CST!
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