[4.0] "The only thing I liked was Starks winning. The rest of the show was IMO very bad. Most storylines are barely existent, and in the case they do exist (like MJF vs. Mox) they make absolutely no sense at all. The in ring action was also not my cup of tea, the best match was Death Triangle vs Elite at ***."
[7.0] "Main event and trios matches were great, some decent wrestling in other matches and some storyline progression and some goofyness only wrestling can provide in The Acclaimed segment - all things concidered this was an average Dynamite in my mind."
[9.0] "A banger of a post-show epsiode. The card pretty ruled as the Trios and ROH title bouts were bangers. House of Black is finally back and the BCC is starting to explode : delicious. Crybabies are in town thanks to The Elite, that's great."
[4.0] "A very good main event carried by a beautiful dramaturgy. That said, the Elite's childish provocations, the lack of interesting spin-offs in the women's division and the absence of MJF and Saraya after their winning weekend greatly weaken this episode."
[8.0] "The night started off with one of the heated takeaways from the PPV in the Regal-Mox enmity & it had a great start. Cassidy & Hager had a fun contest with a mix of entertained comics & solid wrestling. House of Black's triumphant return was executed greatly & I hope they'll be a prominent piece of the roster. The Starks agenda reached its ultimate pinnacle of winning the contender's tourney. I feel happy for him getting the mainstream rise as most of the fans wanted. DT & Elite had their 2nd match in an even hostile environment where the focus was more on the storytelling towards the fans than the action. However, it felt great seeing them do their comfortable tricks and DT is shaping up their heel nature really well. Hayter started her golden run with a fun sprint of tag action which started to plant seeds for a Baker/Hayter implosive rivalry. The main event started off in a fine way, but time evolved to let them explore their best of strong style and exhibit a wild smash-mouth fight. Jericho delivering these kinds of matches recently stands himself out as one of the prominent acts of the year. This episode carried the amazing momentum Full Gear created & delivered in all cylinders. All the fresh stories had a great start to them while even fresher tracks were built that pique interest with ease."
[5.0] "This show didn't do the best job capitalising on the majority of the big stories/feuds coming off of Full Gear, though there was still some decent-to-good stuff on this show. The opening segment with Regal, Moxley, and Danielson was alright. Weird that the crowd hated Regal yet also loved MJF. Wouldn't they thank Regal for making MJF World Champ? Or wouldn't they similarly detest MJF for his underhanded actions? Danielson protecting Regal from Moxley was interesting, though Danielson was far too unrealistically apologetic for Regal's actions, unless that's foreshadowing him turning on Moxley. Cassidy vs Hager was pretty lame. Cassidy's usual attacks and gimmick spots were decent, but it was all his usual, done-to-death stuff. Hager was pretty limited aside from his fine powerhouse attacks. The nonsense with Hager's hat and the interference from Hager's seconds was pretty lame. **1/4. House of Black's return was nice to see, even if the resulting brawl was pretty generic. Hopefully Black and Buddy get some meaningful storylines/pushes now. Starks vs Ethan was alright. Starks showed really good babyface energy in his selling and comebacks, while Ethan was a solid arrogant heel to counter him. Good exchanges leading to Starks' win. ***. The Elite vs Death Triangle was really good. Yes, it was mostly another spotfest, but another really well-worked one, plus this had the bonus of The Elite's many entertaining digs at Punk and the whole All Out backstage fight drama. Poor Phil lmao. Even aside from that, there was also good storyline development with The Elite trying to fight dirty to avenge their cheap PPV loss, only for Death Triangle to once again 'out-heel' them for another undeserved win. If they can keep this sort of basic but engaging storytelling up in the rest of their 'Best of 7' series then I'll be quite impressed. ***1/2. The announcement of Jamie as the official Women's Champion was great -- very much deserved. The Jamie-vs-Britt feud that's clearly boiling could be interesting if it lets Jamie show off more character work. The 6-woman tag that followed was fine. Nothing great but certainly not terrible, just quite dull and limited for a good portion, resulting in a dead crowd for quite a whle. Jamie was obviously good, Tay was decent when not overindulging in her heel character work, and Skye had some good sparks towards the end. The others were pretty forgettable but mostly fine (Anna still needs lots of work). **1/2. The Acclaimed's segment was short but very entertaining as always. Jericho vs Ishii was very mediocre, just as I expected. Ishii's strikefest formula is already beyond uncreative and dull, so forcing Jericho to be treated like he's an equal to Ishii in that style was just absurd. Them going for purposeful no-selling, rapid german suplex trades, 1-count kick-outs, and 2.99 kick-outs was very needlessly overkill. It still wasn't outright bad or anything, but definitely only 'fine' at absolute best. **1/2"
[8.0] "House of Black Welcome back, I hope you have a plan to conquer this brand! Eliminator Tournament the tournament did not impress me and as a result, in my opinion, there is no one better than MJF right now. Danielson somehow strangely began to stand up for Regal and as if Mox is not so important to them, all this raises huge questions. Finally, the women's champions ceased to be temporary and each received a well-deserved entry into the statistics, I am glad for the British women. And finally, the most interesting thing is the behavior of the Elite and big jokes towards Punk, and now I'm sure that he will return and something noisy is waiting for us. A show that did not fully reveal itself after the ppv, but I think there is still a lot waiting for us, but alas, next week."
[8.0] "Good show overall. Strong main event to follow the four-way from Full Gear. As I indicated in a previous comment for the match, Jamie Hayter needs to assert herself as champion and put Britt Baker in her proper place. Ricky Starks persevered and won and the House of Black's return has put everyone on notice. The next couple of months should be exciting."
[8.0] "It was a good show as usual. The women did a good job, the trios match was great and had some Punk references which made the match funny. Ricky's victory was killer and the main event was the best of the night."
[9.0] "This show was great fun overall, I was there live on the floor and I had a great time, especially seeing Starks win and the bloody great main event. Personally I did not like the trios match despite the unruly crowd reactions, too much cutesy Punk references and "comedy" moments for me, but even so it was really fun to be there the whole night long."
[6.0] "The main event saved the show from being a massive disappointment. As the follow up to Full Gear, it failed miserably with top stars and new champions absent altogether. Not at all convinced with Danielson's positioning in the opening segment. The Ethan Page experiment has been a big mistake as everyone sits on their hands, but at least Starks won. The woman's match was both weak and short of time yet again. Death Triangle vs. The Elite was good but not anywhere close to what they're capable of and are clearly holding back a lot for the next five matches. Jericho and Ishii had a brilliant physical war in the main event which left everyone happy. A pretty good show by the end, but to rate it any higher is overlooking it's many weaknesses."
[6.0] "2 really good matches in Elite vs Death Triangle and Jericho vs Ishii. Although the trios match was not as spectacular as the one at Full Gear, the CM Punk trolling from the Elite was great. House of Black being back is wonderful. Rest of the show was medicore to bad. Especially Danielson completely derailing the Regal and Moxley segment. Weak dynamite that is saved by Jericho and Ishii chopping each other for days."
[1.0] "One of the worst episodes of Dynamite I've seen in recent memory. Literally every match sucked, the commentators not named Ian Riccaboni either bickered, laughed, or otherwise behaved unprofessionally throughout, and the only good part of the show, Regal's promo at the beginning, didn't really say anything and was mostly Jon Moxley looking fake mad. Even the Starks match has some weird injury angle going on so it seemed hamstrung and kinda buried Ethan Page. Skip this episode."
[9.0] "A program with very good promos and stories, the truth is that I liked it above all for how entertaining it makes you, that despite having many decent fights, some of them surprise you even more."
[5.0] "I liked The Elite vs. Death Triangle and Jericho vs. Ishii but... It is the episode after PPV on which Jack Perry defeated Luchasaurus and it was his most important win in career. And after that Jungleboy gets one minute of backstage video. Samoa Joe became a double champion at Full Gear and he didn't appear at this Dynamite at all. Where's Wardlow? Where the hell is MJF? However we have a random women's tag team match and a random All-Atlantic championship match. I don't understand why bookers find it more important on the first show after PPV than pushing a future star or just saying something about TNT championship."
[6.0] "Maybe it's because I saw this episode rated 9+ before watching it but I was expecting something a bit more. The opening segment was pretty good. The main event was okay enough. I'm already over seeing Death Triangle vs The Elite (unless they can pull off something really new and interesting) and the other matches were middle of the road. AEW just crowned a few new champs and it felt like an opportunity to completely re-colour and reboot the show, but it didn't feel so much like that in practice. They could have really made a statement about this being a new era but we had no MJF, no Samoa Joe, and Hayter continues to be Britt's mute lackey. By no means bad but a missed opportunity in my opinion. I wish the Rosa call had been made prior to the PPV to add a little more spice to Hayter vs Storm but I think it's a nice move to retroactively make Storm's run legitimate."
[8.0] "Very good episode coming out of Full Gear. Two great matches and some good angles. I could do without the Baker-Hayter set up. No MJF was a little disappointing."
[7.0] "A good show but I felt the lacking of something. MJF? The female division? Anyway the show is good with good matches and storyline continuations."
[9.0] "The best Dynamite in a decently long time. Matches delivered, promos delivered, storyline development was exciting. This is what I want from AEW every week."
[5.0] "I enjoyed the Death Triangle match, the wrinkles in the Britt/Jamie promo ( I did not watch the match that followed) and the excellent Chicago crowd. Everything else was a swing and a miss. Mox looked an absolute chump for not punching Regal in the face, if he can't be physically touched then don't allow Mox to be near him. I will never understand why TK insists on crowning a champion and then immediately cooling them off by not having them central to TV every single week. A show so mediocre I am about to apologise to Big Nose and go crawling back to WWE for my weekly yank wrestling."
[9.0] "Great show. It feels like the start of a new era for AEW. Im super happy that we finally got rid of interim championships. The trios match was really good and im interested to see where theyre going. I hope it? s not super predictable like the elite being down 3-0 then winning four in a row. And that Chicago crowd was great, the elite had so much heat. And the main event was really good."
[10.0] "just a good fullout , refreshing the roster and storylines but the best thing is the playing field between the elite and Chicago crowd that was hilarious and perfectly entertaining. Also Jericho performance tonight was his best in Aew"
[9.0] "People love doomsaying. It's an evolutionary element of the human brain - recognizing negative patterns kept our monkey grandmas alive, all intelligence after a certain point makes for low-down pessimists. So this is AEW's sixth or seventh "comeback" show. "Righting of the ship"? After the nadir of the Dark Order punch-whiff run in + Brandi's botched faction, after the pandemic, after Matt Hardy busted his brain, after they lost Cody, after the bad build to Forbidden Door, after the All Out brawl, and now after a spate of like three or four iffy Dynamites? There's still things to grumble about in AEW but the fact remains that Dynamite always rebounds. Big props to a Chicago crowd who could have been a lot more snotty but were very willing to be entertained. Big props to a Tomohiro Ishii who's like that band who make nothing but great albums for twenty years even if they never top the charts. Props to the Elite for recognizing the right way to heel it up, props to Mox for committing to every scene he's been in since breaking free, props to Jamie Hayter for staying over. This was great TV."
[10.0] "THIS is the Dynamite I've been longing for the past few weeks. The previous 3 Dynamites were very meh. This was a Dynamite that did a lot of things right. Returns, resets and really good wrestling. The crowd was also wild, which elevated everything. AEW is back on track, it seems."
[8.0] "Started off with a very weird vibe off that opening segment. Crowd didn't give a shit about Danielson's heartfelt story, and I just didn't know what to take away from the whole segment. Also Moxley's gum chomping was all I could focus on the entire promo. CM Punk chants were expectedly starting early. Starks looked amazing, selling so good, a tad bit surprised he won. The SIOG segment has potential, but I'm not sure why Keith is humoring Swerve at this point, but I'm certainly interested. The AA match was a nice little comedy change of pace. Keep the House of Black A MILLION MILES AWAY from the Factory, for fuck's sake. The Trios match had the whole damn audience in an uproar and the energy was just amazing. Ladies match was good, and Jericho getting his chest chopped in half - good god! Tempted to give this episode a 10 just for them finally eliminating the stupid "interim" women's title reign."
[9.0] "I thought this was an excellent Dynamite. The opening segment was great, the character work by Mox in particular I really enjoyed. The Elite had nuclear heat in Chicago, and now I am just completely confused about the Punk situation since they were not subtle about mocking him whatsoever. The match itself was very fun though and DT and the Elite have amazing chemistry in the ring. The hammer continues to be a story in the seven match series. I thought for sure Ethan Page was winning the number one contender match considering he was in the firm, but I am fine with Ricky winning. Happy for Jamie to be recognized as an official champion. The main event was an absolute banger, credit to both performers but Ishii is an all time great along with Jericho. He destroys Jericho? s chest with chops to the point of blood, just a brutal, awesome main event. Such a fun show with a hot crowd. Also welcome back Malakai Black!"
[8.0] "Solid Dynamite post PPV with some returns to shake things up. I admired how good and comedic the opening match was and it being a vehicle to get House of Black back into AEW. Ricky Starks gets a world title shot. The Elite/Death Triangle trios was good but not quite on the level of the PPV even if there was some nice trolling throughout the match. Main eventing Ishii is always a bonus and everything else seemed fine to good. Hayter and Storm are no longer considered interim champions which should make some feel good."
[10.0] "Best Dynamite episode since the forum. Trios match and the main event were incredible in terms of atmosphere, and a lot of great storyline advancements."
[10.0] "Now that's how you start fresh after a PPV. Hot crowd, great matches. Dropping the Interim title. This was one of the best Dynamites in a long time."
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