John Pollock &Wai Ting review AEW Dynamite: St. Patrick’s Day Slam featuring Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rosa in a steel cage for the AEW Women’s Championship
Plus: Scorpio Sky vs. Wardlow for the TNT Championship, the Jericho Appreciation Society’s commencement, The Hardys’ AEW in-ring debut, and more.
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The AEW Mexican wrestlers have the best entrances. I love that in AEW, minority wrestlers seem to be encouraged to celebrate their diversity and cultures.
The greatest moment of the night was obviously Thunder Rosa winning the title. Finally! The match itself felt like an attempt at capturing the magic of their first hardcore match together, and while it quite didn’t reach the highs of that match, it was nonetheless a very decent match. It definitely could be said it had flaws like being a bit sloppy, but I think that works out well for bloody hardcore fights such as this one.
The second greatest moment was obviously between Regal and Yuta. The slap from Regal was so hard it brought shades of the ruthless heel champion that Yuta once was in the indies. Judging by the faces of OC and Chuck, and the vindication Trent must be feeling at the moment since he never liked Yuta, the story seems to be going in interesting directions.
Private Party have really lost relevance since the early days of AEW, but they seemed pretty good coming out of tonight. Here’s to the rekindling of their relevance in 2022. The post-match seemed like deja vu, how many times have we heard Darby’s theme hitting when the heels have a babyface surrounded with only 1 minute left in the segment? Would love to see them do something different for a change.
Wardlow vs Scorpio was a good match until the predictable screw job happened. Not a fan of the predictability, but the story has me invested. Wardlow is money. It’s a shame Punk wasn’t here tonight to save him. Seems Wardlow needs to be making some friends.
The Jericho segment was a Jericho segment. Though some may say Jericho cuts the same promo every time, this time it felt quite intentional, calling back to 2019 when the Inner Circle formed in a similar fashion. Jericho even brought back his 2019 schtick of demanding that AEW respects him. It seems he’s retreading old grounds. This and the steel cage match were of two attempts tonight at recapturing past glory, and IMO AEW is too young to be falling into that. Still this is too early to be dismissing the potential of the JAS, although Garcia seems totally out of place in it if I were to be honest.
“I am a sports entertainer.” Goddammit Garcia, why are trying to commit sacrilege?
“Best manager there is.” With the Owen approaching it’s damn well time for Bret Hart to make his return to AEW. Fantastic tease that quote.