All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite: April 10, 2024

April 10, 2024 5:03 PM - Season 5, Episode 28

Tonight, in response to CM Punk’s incendiary comments on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour last week, Tony Khan has decided to show the footage from backstage at All In that led to Punk’s firing. It’s a bizarre, ballsy move that has the wrestling world wondering what Tony is thinking. Besides that, we have Adam Copeland defending his title, The Rainmaker getting some TV time, Mariah May and Toni Storm throwing a champagne toast, and Dustin Rhodes trying to earn a title shot at Samoa Joe.

The announced card for Dynamite:

AEW World Championship Eliminator Match: Samoa Joe (c) vs. Dustin Rhodes

AEW TNT Championship Match: Adam Copeland (c) vs. Penta El Zero Miedo

Mariah May vs. Anna Jay

Chris Jericho, HOOK & Katsuyori Shibata vs. Shane Taylor Promotions

The Young Bucks reveal backstage footage from All In

Toni Storm’s "Charleston Championship Champagne Toast"

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (5 comments total)

Whoa, Joe not even making it down to the ring before Swerve comes out to throw him through a table as payback for last week's beating at the contract signing. The production hit all the usual signs of this being a "legit" injury, focusing away from the ring while Joe is escorted out, so at the very least this bodes poorly for Dustin's eliminator match.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:12 PM on April 10

Copeland took a ton of offense from Penta el Solo Luchador, enough that I'm really starting to hunger for Penta to get into contention for a title somewhere. The post-match attack by Brody King and Julia Hart leads to Willow Nightingale showing up to make the save, and that leads to... Stokely demanding Willow to get a TNT title shot? YES PLEASE. DO IT, GIVE STOKELY THE PENCIL.

OK, we're getting a mixed tag match next week instead. I'm slightly disappointed, unless Willow is actually going to throw some stiff arms at Brody King. Mixed-tag rules leave me cold the more strictly they're enforced, so I'd rather the entire thing degenerate into a street fight.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:51 PM on April 10

OK, so the"CM Punk at All In London" footage turned out to be exactly what was promised: he walked up to Jack Perry, jawed with him for a minute, then started throwing hands, got him in a choke, and crashed into a production table before other talent (including Samoa Joe and a blurred-out Chris Hero) separated the two.

But the clever thing is that this was all in service of the Bucks turning it into a heel promo on FTR, that "their friend" disrupted the company's biggest show and affected the Jackson's mindset pre-match, how dare they.

Interestingly, this is not the only shot AEW is making on WWE tonight, with FTR cutting a response promo on the Bucks that also makes reference to Vince turning them into a comedy tag-team, followed by Will Ospreay jabbing at Hunter for claiming he chose AEW because he's "not in it for the grind". In the words of a Discord friend: "I was not expecting lunch room food fights on Dynamite today."
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:13 PM on April 10

I looked away for FIVE MINUTES and when I look back Tony Khan brought in Stardom's Mina Shirakawa and turned Dynamite into a yuri showcase.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:44 PM on April 10

What a bookends set for the episode, starting and ending with Swerve ambushing Samoa Joe. At the opening, it was an oddly heelish tactic after we saw him put out brave energy at the close of last week's episode, plus it seemed to derail Dustin's shot at a title match. But the context changed after we saw Dustin decline to cheat to win the match only for Joe to clobber him with the title when the ref's back was turned; now Swerve's second attack serves as deserved babyface retribution.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:44 PM on April 10