On Saturday November 9th, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) will once again be on PPV with their next show titled "Full Gear." This week they decided to hype that show up with a great episode of AEW Dynamite on Wednesday. The show kicked off with a match between Trent and PAC which featured some devastating interference from Orange Cassidy. This match was a great way to kick off the show as it did a great job of getting the crowd involved and not making me feel like I was watching a PPV match. I’ve always felt that AEW’s tv matches were too PPV like as they would go on for way too long and have a ton of crazy spots but this one did just enough to get me hyped for PAC’s match with Hangman Page on Sunday.

     After this match came the promo Cody Rhodes did in preparation for his AEW World title match with Chris Jericho at Full Gear. Cody gave a very passionate, albeit profanity filled, promo reminiscent of his father Dusty Rhodes’ classic “Hard Times” promo. He spoke from the heart about how he felt about Jericho and managed to throw a few shots at him by mocking his book. What makes this promo so great is the fact that it is totally unscripted unlike WWE promos that are usually written beforehand by a member of the creative team. In theory scripted promos make sense but they come off as robotic and inauthentic making them the complete opposite of this Cody promo.

     The next segment of the show was a tag team match between Private Party and Dark Order. I think that this was probably the best match I’ve seen from Dark Order. They’re gimmick isn’t something that I’m a fan of because it just doesn’t work for me, but they really stepped up here in this match. It helps that they were competing with Private Party who are also pretty good in the ring as well. Private Party won the match adding themselves to a tag triple threat tag team match for the Tag Team Championship at Full Gear. Their other opponents in the match will be The Lucha Bros and champions themselves SoCal Uncensored.

     What came after this match has to be the funniest wrestling segment of the year: the Chris Jericho video package. The entire thing is just so absurd. The highlights of it for me are the cameo by former WWE star(?) Virgil and the comments from Chris’ aunt’s friend from church. Jericho maybe close to 50-years-old, but he still finds a way to be entertaining in and outside of the ring.

     After Jericho’s amazing video package, there was a women’s tag team match that saw Jamie Hayter and Emi Sakura take on Shanna and Rio. The AEW women’s division is slowly starting to improve and this match is proof. I never heard of Shanna until her debut last week and yet I find myself wanting to watch more of her in the ring every time she wrestles. Riho, the women’s champion, is also great and manages to get huge reactions from the crowd all the time despite not cutting any promos. My only complaint with this match was that the match went on a little too long. All of the best women’s matches for AEW seem to have this problem. When they go on for too long, my interest in the match starts to decrease. If they can put on more matches like this except shorter, then AEW will have found the winning formula.

     After this came a pretty unmemorable match between Shawn Spears and Brandon Cutler. The only highlight here was Joey Janela coming out to confront Spears and continue their feud. Following this was the main event featuring Elite members Kenny Omega and Hangman Page taking on Inner Circle members Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara. This entire match was great from start to finish, but the real highlight came after it was over. There was an all-out brawl between members of the Elite and Inner Circle and man was it something.

     I felt like I was watching an old episode of WCW Nitro. All that was missing was Sting randomly dropping from the ceiling. AEW really knows how to generate excitement. You can find the entire segment here and I suggest watching it because there’s too much going on to even describe. This segment and the whole episode itself made me even more hyped for Full Gear. My only complaint is that there was no need to have three tag matches. I’d like to see some other matches on Dynamite like a triple threat or a fatal-four-way. Despite this, I still enjoyed the show and cannot wait to watch Full Gear this Saturday.

      

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