All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite: June 12, 2024

June 12, 2024 5:20 PM - Season 5, Episode 37

Dynamite has a lot of heavy lifting to do tonight: not only do they need to compete in the ratings tonight with NBA finals, Tony Khan wants to put up good ratings numbers against NXT headed into TV rights negotiations. So let's do that with two title matches -- both featuring champs vs. luchadors, interestingly -- plus California vs Texas in a TNT qualifier!

The announced card for Dynamite tonight:

AEW International Championship Match: Will Ospreay (c) vs. Rey Fenix
Chris Jericho's "TV Time" with guests Private Party
TBS Championship Match: Mercedes Moné (c) vs. Zeuxis
TNT Championship qualifying match: Dustin Rhodes vs. Jack Perry
Rush in action
Mark Briscoe, Orange Cassidy & Kyle O'Reilly vs. Kyle Fletcher, Konosuke Takeshita & Roderick Strong

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (6 comments total)

The Elite are wisely trying to get ahead of the "fifth man" narrative for an upcoming "Blood & Guts" match by offering Swerve Strickland a place on the team, but the joke about hearing "the injury bug" buzzing around Swerve Strickland is some real whistling past the graveyard.

and frigging of course Dustin didn't even wait until the first commercial break to start blading.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:25 PM on June 12

SHINGO TAKAGI is coming for the Owen Hart tournament. Here's to Shingo popping open Moxley's head like a winepress.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:06 PM on June 12

My new favorite recurring segment on AEW is Hook and his new adoptive father Samoa Joe having causal Tarantino-esque conversations (with Shibata's auto-translate contributions) right before opening up massive hurt on some unsuspecting strangers.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:16 PM on June 12

My other favorite recurring segment is how furious Taz gets at Jericho having the FTW Championship. Tonight he's all "FTW doesn't mean 'For The World'! It stands for exactly what you think it does!"
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:35 PM on June 12

Those who can't watch the international feed of the Ospreay/Fenix match are missing Excalibur giving Tony Schiavone a bunch of grief during the commercial picture-in-picture over the way he pronounces "Rey Fenix":

"You realize his name is not 'Ray'? He's not a plumber from Poughkeepsie! His name is Fenix, Rey is a title, it means 'king'!"
"...What about Dean Malenko? Was that his name, or did he work for a university?"
TAZ: (laughing) "No disrespect to plumbers from Poughkeepsie, of course."
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:58 PM on June 12

If it sounds like I'm trying to avoid talking about the main event, I assure that I'm not: you put two performers of this much talent in the ring and (even if the outcome is kind of a certainty) the match will be so good that someone in the audience probably got pregnant. Fenix wisely tried to target Ospreay's arms when the two were evenly matched in kicks, and Will was saved by his ability to sneakily strike even from out of a transitional move.

Interesting that Ospreay finished by stealing Swerve's Stomp as a finisher, with the champ himself watching from the ring. It's kind of a heelish thing to do, and since Swerve is definitely a face now (as seen in the opening segment), I'm wondering how heelish Will Ospreay can get in the build toward Forbidden Door.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:25 PM on June 12