A good show. Cody vs Sammy was fun, the women’s title match was way better than I’d expected. The main event was angle heavy I guess but it worked for me. Excited for next week. Excited for wrestling.
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Jeremy from the suite
Had a lot of fun watching the show tonight. Haven’t watched a wrestling tv show live in years, and forgot how jarring commercials can be, but I thought they did a good job with the picture in picture ads. Commentary was really good tonight. JR especially seemed to elevate his performance and I thought Tony Schiavone was excellent.
For a first episode I thought they did a great job. Now it’s time to build.
Extra points for the Bubbly sparkling water commercial on one part of the screen while Jericho beat down Cody on the other side. Intentional or not, I laughed hard at that juxtaposition.
8 Strangely-positioned VIP areas out of 10
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Neal from Northern Ireland —
I watched the show through AEW Plus. The broadcast was completely uninterrupted on the FITE platform.
When TNT was on commercial break, either the matches continued complete with commentary, or there was pretty good filler stuff — including the full Jericho attack on Cody, Pac insulting fans, and Kenny and the Bucks addressing the crowd before the main event.
This lack of downtime seemed to keep the live crowd really engaged. (No four-minute chin locks, Wai.)
K.T. From the Hammer
The debut episode of AEW really delivered! I thought the pacing overall was very good. I loved the brawl between Moxley & Omega in the main event, that table spot was an absolute highlight. It seems like I’m not alone in saying it was great to hear Shiavone’s voice again! Match of the Night for me was the women’s match, maybe it was that nuclear crowd, but I loved it, it’s great to see Joshi style wrestling getting some good screen time. A good debut for AEW a sold 8.5/10!
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I was there in person. A solid 10/10. The best of the 3 AEW shows I’ve seen in person. Dynamite premiere > Double or Nothing > All Out. An electric crowd, a great women’s match that shocked the hell out of me, and the wildness of that final match and Jake Hager’s out of nowhere debut. I look forward to flying home to see how the TV broadcast of this special show came across. Even the dark matches before and after the show (nearly 45 minutes post show) were good. I wonder if those matches are going to be on B/R Live?
Adi from NY
I was a little frustrated by the show, because I thought it could have been better had they kept it simple. A large percentage of viewers probably are seeing The Bucks and Kenny for the first time, so I would have liked if had they established them simply by going out and having a killer match. The braindead ref ignoring Ambrose and not calling a DQ made this feel more like WWE and less like a competition-based alternative. You have win loss records, yet you don’t call a DQ for interference? Which is it?
Brett in Vancouver
Pretty decent show, nothing earth shattering. As a person who doesn’t watch BTE or other AEW events almost all of these characters are new to me. What really helped that though was the crowd heat. I didn’t think any match was a blowaway performance but nothing was bad either.
Some minor hitches with the production, but that’s to be expected I suppose.
What I DID really like was the commentary, as much as I think it’s dumb for Excalibre to wear a mask at commentary, listening to the 3 guys was pretty good.
Enjoyed the closing angle. I’ll tune in again next week, but this was the first wrestling show I’ve watched live (or even on PVR) in a long time, it’s painful, there seemed to be so many commercials. I’ll probably go “alternate means” on delay next week.
I’m curious to see what the ratings will be on TSN specifically, Leafs/Sens/Oilers/Canucks were all on in their openers during this show, and I know my priorities were hockey first today, throw in a Wild Card baseball game and it might be tough sledding, but just for tonight.
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