All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite: April 2, 2025

April 2, 2025 5:33 PM - Season 6, Episode 27

RESET THE CLOCK: It has been ZERO days since AEW announced a tournament! The Men's and Women's brackets for the Owen Hart Cup will be announced. Speaking of men and women, Dynamite has its first "intergender tornado tag match" as Swerve and Willow team-up to fight Jon Moxley and Marina Shafir. Elsewhere, Cope and Claudio have there first singles match in (checks notes) EVER? Can that be right?

The announced card for Dynamite:

Men & Women's Owen Hart Foundation Tournament Brackets Revealed
Cope vs. Claudio Castagnoli
Tornado Tag Match: Jon Moxley & Marina Shafir vs. Swerve Strickland & Willow Nightingale
Timeless Toni Storm vs. Penelope Ford
Will Opsreay returns

posted by The Pluto Gangsta (4 comments total)

Made is home just in time to watch Swerve & Willow open the show, and it's so great to see. For certain, a televised intergender match is a rarity because of sexist concerns about "what will it look like on to the audience?" but Willow's stock goes up for every moment she goes toe-to-toe with Moxley. The match booking smartly makes her the hoss of the match, giving her the double suplex spot and also making her the blocker who throws Moxley off the apron and makes the pin on Marina.

Even the post-match implies that Moxley takes her seriously, choosing to single her out for the castigo puts her out of commission so Swerve can announce (to a very tense-looking Renee Paquette) that he's hunting Moxley for the rest of the night.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 5:48 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]

Turns out Ospreay's appearance is actually a tag team-up with new signee Kevin Knight, triumphing over the team of Lee Johnson and Blake Christian (who looks like Ospreay's sleazy Yankee cousin). It really speaks to what a giving performer Ospreay is when he's the least flippy boy in the match, giving space for Christian to hit a corkscrew topé through the ropes and Kevin Knight to make giant frog splashes. And since Knight will now face Ospreay at Dynasty on Sunday, he's having the best "first two weeks" on the job ever.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:27 PM on April 2

I am pretty sure I head Excalibur on commentary tell Don Callis "We know you're a size queen" because of his reaction to the Lance Archer/Brody King match.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 6:44 PM on April 2

Adam Copeland is really putting his body on the line for a TV angle, huh? A massive bulldog of the top turnbuckle, I thought I could hear his ankles snap and crackle. Going by the strange interaction Dax and Cash had earlier in the episode, and Copeland finding his victory by sneaking a nutshot on Claudio, it wouldn't surprise me if Rated FTR's path to taking the trios title off the Death Riders leads them away from pure babyfaced-ness.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:22 PM on April 2