Guys and girls even tho as pretty much all of you will know i'm a huge wrestling fan and yet i've never actually reviewed a wrestling show before. Well i'm hopefully going to be changing that because if this post does well i'll look into reviewing more wrestling episodes and since this is basically a pilot how this review might not be how the other reviews go should this review do well that is and so join my as I review the first ever episode of "AEW: Dynamite" enjoy.
Firstly i'm doing this review based of the ITV version of the episode which I didn't realise cut the episode in half and so half of the matches are missing. This right here is a huge issue for me personally because when i'm doing a review I like to watch the whole product start to finish and as it turns out the ITV cut of the episode is the only one that's online which means I can't view all of the matches which is a shame because alot of the talent on this opening card is really good and so I wish that ITV had aired the full two hour show instead of cutting it down to forty six minuets.
The set for AEW: Dynamite while it is indeed a very nice looking set to me it looks like the set that TNA / Impact Wrestling used in the mid 2000's. However tho TNA / Impact Wrestling used that set better in my opinion because they had it where if you were a face you'd come out of one of the set's two tunnels and if you where a heel then you'd come out of the other AEW tho doesn't do that instead having both faces and heels come out of the same tunnel which to me makes the other tunnel pointless because it's just sitting there doing nothing.
There's also a chandelier type object above entrance way which as far as I can tell is there simply to cover up the gap between the two main video screens. Like I said the set isn't that bad and it does look very nice but at the same time they could have done alot better with the set so that there using as much space as they can and not just having large amounts of empty set to waiting to be filled in but for the brands first set it's not that bad.
Our opening match is "The American Nightmare" Cody Rhoades who is being accompanied by his wife and future mother of his kid Brandi Rhoades as Cody takes on "The Best Ever" Sammy Guevara. Out of the two full matches (damn you ITV) that I was able to see this was the better match in my opinion just due to how technical the match was plus the feeling that I got from this match is that it could possibly lead to something down the ling which I can't recall if it did or not but based on this match I want to see Cody and Sammy Guevara wrestle each other again just because the two have great chemistry together in the ring.
One thing that really sort of stood out for me personally is the fact that for the first match at least Tony Schiavone cannot stop talking about the last time WCW was on TNT. We get it Tony Schiavone you worked for WCW back in the day you don't need to bring it up every chance you got speaking of the commentary Jim "It's Ross Time" Ross , Tony Schiavone and Excalibur do a solid job altho it's mostly just Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone talking while Excalibur just stands there saying nothing for large portions of both matches.
The matches that I sadly didn't get to see at least on the copy of the episode that I have are MJF vs Brandon Cutler. As well as PAC vs Hangman Page and Riho vs Nyla Rose altho I did get to see the final few minuets of the Riho vs Nyla Rose match due to those few minuets being up on Youtube but in really bad quality , it's a shame that I got to miss these matches because most of the wrestlers involved are really good wrestlers and I would have liked to have seen those matches.
I really cannot find any faults in this first show because in terms of debut shows this is honestly one of the more better ones. I know that this will make alot of die hard WWE fans angry but to me this episode of AEW Dynamite is alot better then alot of the stuff that WWE was putting out when this show debuted in 2019 so much so in fact that I believe AEW Dynamite bear WWE NXT several weeks in a row in terms of ratings but I could be wrong there so don't quote me on that.
One of the other travesties is the fact that ITV cut the Kevin Smith appearance I say it was just Kevin Smith's appearance because just after they do the intro to the show and we go live to the arena for the first time I could have swore that we saw Jason Mewes in the crowd. So ITV cut Silent Bob's appearance on the show but they kept Jay's which to me makes no sense since Kevin Smith is the bigger name and so it would have made alot more sense to keep his appearance on the show in the UK / ITV cut of the episode.
Like I said at the start of the review this episode at least in the UK runs for forty six minuets and thirty two seconds. Which in my opinion is a decent amount of time for a debuting brand / company / wrestling show just because it gives you enough time for your wrestlers who are wrestling on that particular show to show what they can do and the audience at home isn't left bored the issue that I have with the episode is the fact that ITV cut down a two hour show to forty six minuets and thirty seconds and so alot of stuff ends being cut and there's a few awkward cuts because of it.
The final match on the show is a six man tag team match with The Elite ( The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega) taking on Chris Jericho , Santana & Ortiz. In my opinion this match suffered due to the fact that it was on last and the fact that ITV only but this show on for barely fifty minuets which sadly means there are a few awkward cuts here and there but the match it self is honestly really good with both teams getting in alot of good high impact moves and it's here where the commentary team do a good job of selling the Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley since when Moxley does interfere the commentary go insane as well as make it point to point out how destructive and violent Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley are when they are wrestling each other plus we get to see a cool spot where Kenny Omega suplex's Jon Moxley through a glass table which was awesome in my opinion.
Overall this is a solid first episode you can tell that AEW (All Elite Wrestling) is going to be some competition either for WWE or for TNA / Impact Wrestling which in the end can only be a good thing since competition is healthy since it forces you to keep your product fresh and exciting. I'm not going to lie and say that this episode was perfect but alot of the faults that I found with the episode tended to be more from ITV's side of things rather for AEW's (All Elite Wrestling) side of things as such this episode gets a solid 8.5 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Pro Wrestling fandom wiki page (which is just called Pro Wrestling) or Google Images. Honestly I cannot say where it's best to get images from this particular episode of AEW Dynamite from since even tho the official Pro Wrestling fandom wiki page has more of a verity of images the one image that I got of Google Images which was of the AEW Dynamite set was over five megabytes so I say use whichever website you want to use since image quality wise chances are there going to be the exact same on either website.
So there we have it guys and girls my first ever wrestling show review is done and in the can I admit I wasn't quite sure how I was going to tackle this review since i'm more use to reviewing movies and other TV episodes but once I started writing this review it just came to me so please let me know how you think I did on this review and if there are things that I need to improve upon and please note that if I do do more of these wrestling show reviews they will only be episodes of the weekly shows just because they are alot easier to watch where as with a PPV i'd be sat there for three and half hours if not more.