All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite: March 19, 2025

March 19, 2025 4:53 PM - Season 6, Episode 25

A freak March blizzard in Omaha might have affected the travel (and therefore, the booking) plans of the AEW roster, so Tony Khan is making the absolute best out of whoever shows up. Two women's matches (including a title bout), Will Ospreay, a four-way to determine Omega's opponent, and Moxley and Cope could finally (fingers crossed!) settle their shit in a definitive way.

The announced card for tonight:

Megan Bayne vs. Kris Statlander
Will Ospreay vs. A.R. Fox
TBS Championship Match: Mercedes Moné (c) vs. Billie Starkz
AEW International Championship #1 Contender Final Four-Way: "Speedball" Mike Bailey vs. Orange Cassidy vs. Ricochet vs. Mark Davis
AEW World Championship "Street Fight": Jon Moxley (c) vs. Cope

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (4 comments total)

The four-way opens the show, and Mark Davis becomes this stochastic distributor of violence as he tackles and clobbers all three opponents with no regard for heel-vs.-face dynamics, in other words a perfect Stan Hansen homage. Ricochet keeps getting ejected from the ring, spinning faster each time, before finally taking a powder hiding behind the announce desk.

Some of the watch party was pissed about the finish, where Speedball and Ricochet both get a pin to turn the Dynasty match into a three-way, but I'm for it. It teases two new opponents for Kenny Omega but preserves his next singles match until... All In Texas, I bet. Sell those tickets, Tony!

It must have been a great recruitment pitch to bring Speedball to AEW: "Sign with us kid, in less than 30 days you'll have a guaranteed five-star match against Kenny!"
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:38 PM on March 19

So, the Moné/Starkz match had a bit of mixed messaging. The commentary is telling me that Billie is a wrestling prodigy, having done it all at the age of 20, but the in-ring work doesn't really back it up. After two very daring sentons, including a nasty one to the outside, Moné sees the third one coming and leaves her to splash on the apron.

Billie nearly gets a win after a move where Moné goes up on her shoulders -- the Two-Winged Angel? -- and looks like she took the impact on the crown of her head. (Was that supposed to look so nasty?) Then she's surprised when Mercedes gets a foot on the ropes, and two minutes later is trapped in a submission in the same corner under the same ropes. She has more intergender wrestling experience than any other woman on the AEW roster, I have seen this girl wrestle Daniel Makabe on her birthday, does she suddenly get the yips when it comes to championship matches?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:05 PM on March 19

Unfortunately for the Cope/Moxley match, the opening minutes where they brawled in a production truck brought back involuntary memories of Copeland's match against Randy Orton at the pandemic 'Mania. I was really hoping they'd take advantage of the weather and brawl outside into a snowbank or something.

The match itself is decent in a vacuum, but what is the damn difference between this and the finish to Revolution last week? Cope has the match won until shitgoblin Wheeler Yuta interferes, then it becomes a bunch of run-ins until Cope gets choked out. AGAIN. WHY?

I suppose two distinctions -- Christian's "boys" i.e. Nick Wayne and Kip Sabian showed up to interfere without their patriarch, and FTR's Dax (a/k/a "the bald one") showed his anger to Cope at the loss and even teased animosity with his own partner now.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:43 PM on March 19

Statlander and Bayne make the most of their main-event match, doing absolute hoss stuff. The two women clobbered and threw each other around the ring while Toni Storm sat at ringside and made bisexual hay while the sun shined on commentary. Bayne eventually hurls Statlander into the seated champ, resulting in her win, then a pull-apart brawl with Toni, and now a date with Dynasty. Meanwhile Toni is 100% feeding the audience fanfic writing prompts.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:18 PM on March 19