All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite: March 27, 2024

March 27, 2024 4:41 PM - Season 5, Episode 26

Dynamite begins preparations for the next pay-per-view in four weeks, as tonight features two separate tag-team qualifying matches, a women's four-way for a title shot, and Swerve Strickland battling Konosuke Takeshita for the #1 spot against Samoa Joe. But the show-stealer might be Will Ospreay having a match against someone he hasn't faced in the ring since 2017.

The announced card for tonight:

AEW World Tag Team Championship Tournament Quarterfinal: Best Friends (Orange Cassidy & Trent Barretta) vs. Undisputed Kingdom (Matt Taven & Mike Bennett)

4-Way Match for TBS Title shot at AEW Dynasty: Kris Statlander vs. Skye Blue vs. Anna Jay vs. Willow Nightingale (with Mercedes Moné on commentary)

My "pretty please" for this match: Willow goes full hoss heel and trucks through Kris Stat, Stokely switches sides to be with her, and then Anna Jay rejoins Dark Order to make them functional again

AEW World Tag Team Championship Tournament Quarterfinal: Matthew and Nicholas Jackson (f/k/a The Young Bucks) vs. Private Party

This trend of "The Elite are smug assholes now" has yielded some fun dividends: first Okada in his Ferrari and now this Succession-biting poster.

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Swerve Strickland

Although this hasn't been stated explicitly, the winner should be the one facing Samoa Joe for the Championship at Dynasty.

Will Ospreay vs. Katsuyori Shibata

The last time these two met was in 2017, when Shibata succesfully defended his RevPro Heavyweight title in a four-star match.

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (6 comments total)

Ospreay nearly got out-wrestled and out-muscled by Shibata, but in the end was able to pull out enough of the aerial assault (plus the Hidden Blade elbow strike) to get a win. This has implications, after all Ospreay's going to face the greatest technical wrestler on the roster at Dynasty. Raise your game, bruv!
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:52 PM on March 27

LOL that the Bucks/Private Party match came down to a race to see who could cheat the most effectively. Did the Bucks screw up the EVP Trigger or was that some kind of deliberate business?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:17 PM on March 27

Haha, I got what I predicted for the women's match with a Willow victory (and a setup for Mercedes having a TBS Championship Match down the road), but I had not expected the Best Friends to take victory here, nor for the Bucks to interrupt by jumping out from their centerstage hidey-hole.

(PS If you watch carefully you can see that they crouch as they exit and re-enter the hole, to create the illusion that it starts from deep in the ground when in reality it's probably 4-5 ft. deep at most.)
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:43 PM on March 27

What a great main event, Takeshita seemed to shrug off practically all offense until Swerve hit that final gear and delivered all of his finishers practically in a row. That could have been on a PPV all by itself.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:20 PM on March 27

We were watching on record but since it went over, we missed the end of the main event! The wailing, the gnashing of teeth!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:28 AM on March 28

Yeah, TNT DGAF if TK runs into OT, so you gotta set your DVR for about 10-15 minutes extra to be sure, YKWIM?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:52 PM on March 28