AEW Dynamite Preview for April 3, 2024

This Wednesday night, DYNAMITE hails from Worcester, MA and the DCU Center and we will witness AEW World Champion Samoa Joe and Swerve Strickland sign their DYNASTY 2024 contract, The Young Bucks face Orange Cassidy and Trent Beretta in the Semi-Finals of the World Tag Title Tournament, Thunder Rosa and Mariah May vie for the next shot at Toni Storm's AEW Women's World Champions, and The Don Callis Family continues to test itself with Will Ospreay facing Powerhouse Hobbs! All that and more comes to you this Wednesday night live on TNT starting at 8pm ET/7pm CT live on TBS, as well as at AEWPlus.com for international fans, but don't forget to drop by the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW's various social media platforms, for highlights from last week's episodes of DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, and COLLISION, as well as the latest CONTROL CENTER!

Then join Ring of Honor's Philadelphia homecoming this Friday night for SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2024 (https://www.allelitewrestling.com/aew-event/roh-supercard-of-honor-2024), live from the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple University, and available exclusively on Honor Club (www.watchroh.com)! Eddie Kingston faces Mark Briscoe with the ROH World Championship at stake, ROH Women's World Champion Athena puts her title on the line against 3-Time AEW Women's World Champion Hikaru Shida, the first-ever ROH Women's World TV Champion will be crowned when Billie Starkz faces Queen Aminata, Stardom will be in the house, and so much more coming your way this Friday night in Philly!

AEW World Tag Team Title Tournament Semi Final...

The Young Bucks (Matthew & Nicholas Jackson) vs. Orange Cassidy & Trent Beretta

***WINNER MEETS FTR/TOP FLIGHT AT DYNASTY 2024***

After escaping their Quarter-Final match against Private Party with a suspect victory, The Young Bucks made sure to be on the spot at the first opportunity to take a shot at Orange Cassidy and Trent Beretta ahead of their Semi-Final encounter. Leave it to Matthew and Nicholas to take those two Best Friends lending a hand to another individual, in this case “Daddy Magic” Matt Menard, and turning it into something terrible with their underhanded tactics.

Thankfully Orange and Trent don't have to wait long to even the score with The EVPs since this Wednesday night on DYNAMITE features their Semi-Final contest in the AEW World Tag Team Championship Tournament! Now Trent Beretta is extremely familiar with fighting The Young Bucks, between AEW, ROH, NJPW, and PWG, they've fought countless times, but OC has only ever met Matthew and Nicholas in tag team action one time, and that was with HOOK serving as his tag team partner. This is a rather unfamiliar experience for the former 2-Time AEW International Champion, but that's part-and-parcel of being a professional wrestler, one won't always have experience with your foes, but that just means learning as you go, and that feels like a situation where Orange Cassidy can thrive.

History shows how strong a team The Young Bucks are, and recent history shows how low they will stoop to come out on top, but recent history also shows how strong a duo Trent and OC have quickly become, unbeaten in five straight matches, and coming into this tournament arguably with more momentum than any other pair. Can this Best Friends pairing continue to roll that momentum forward into a spot in the tournament final at DYNASTY 2024, or will The Young Bucks continue to dig down into new depths in order to get their much-coveted third AEW World Tag Team Championship reign?

Sign On The Dotted Line...

Last week on DYNAMITE, with his victory of Konosuke Takeshita, Swerve Strickland cemented himself as the challenger at DYNASTY 2024 for ROH World Champion Samoa Joe. It's the position Swerve has been fighting for ever since ALL IN: LONDON, that he went through vicious clashes with Hangman Page to acquire (including that unforgettable Texas Death match), and now has finally earned  without having to worry about a third party as he did at REVOLUTION 2024.

This Wednesday night in Worcester, Swerve Strickland and Samoa Joe make their April 21st championship fight official when they sign their names on the contract, but professional wrestling contract signings are notorious for turning into chaos. Just look at the last time Swerve was involved in one of them, and how he got stabbed in the hand with the very pen Hangman used to sign the deal! Will this contract signing see a similar breakdown in decorum, or will professionalism actually be the rule of the night with Samoa Joe and Swerve?

One-On-One...

(1)Thunder Rosa vs. (2)Mariah May

Thunder Rosa has been red-hot since her return to All Elite Wrestling, but so too has Mariah May since her in-ring debut at the beginning of 2024. While Rosa's record is unblemished, May's shows one loss in tag team action, but not a loss that falls on her shoulders, in fact it came when Thunder Rosa pinned AEW Women's World Champion Toni Storm in their tag team encounter while May was occupied with Deonna Purrazzo.

Now the two top women in the AEW Women's Rankings will lock up for the very first time in singles competition, and to the winner will go the spoils of a World Championship opportunity against “The Timeless One”! For Thunder earning this shot is a matter of redemption, of getting closer to the title she never lost, and getting it back from the woman who stepped up in Rosa's absence. For Mariah May it's about facing off with the woman she idolizes, a veritable dream match for Mariah no doubt, but it is anyone's guess what Storm will expect from her understudy should that clash come to pass!

Intruder Alert...

AEW World Trios Champion Billy Gunn vs. ROH World Six-Man Champion Jay White

It wasn't all that long ago that a Gunn family reunion could be looked at as a joyous occasion; after months and months of Billy, Austin, and Colten being at odds with one another, the union of the Bang Bang Scissor Gang seemed like a way for fences to be mended, for a father and his sons to become a family once again.

Well that idea went to hell the moment The Bang Bang Gang decided that assaulting Darby Allin, that putting him on the shelf for an undetermined amount of time, was more important than keeping their six-man power group together. Perhaps it was a group destined for failure from jump street, given the egos and attitudes involved, but if there's life there is hope, and there's nothing wrong with hoping for the most favorable outcome.

Unfortunately that's not what The Acclaimed and Daddy Ass got for their time, for the willingness to trust the Bang Bang Gang, in fact Daddy Ass got a home invasion for his hopes of long-term reconciliation with his sons, so as a consequence of that, Billy Gunn has got a beating in mind for “Switchblade” Jay White!

Gunn doesn't often dabble in singles matches at this point in his career, preferring to ride in trios action with Max Caster and Anthony Bowens, but he's got decades worth of experience in that role to pull from when it comes to teaching Jay White a lesson in respect and humility! This is just the beginning of  what is sure to be several heated battles between these two dominating trios...

A Battle Of Will(s)...

Powerhouse Hobbs vs. (4)Will Ospreay

For better or worse, Don continues to pit members of his family against one another inside the squared circle under the belief that the only way to get better is to fight the best, and that since his family is the best, they just have to fight one another to get better. While there may be some merit to Callis' thinking, we've already witnessed tension within the ranks with Ospreay fighting ROH World TV Champion Kyle Fletcher on DYNAMITE and Takeshita at REVOLUTION 2024, and now he's signed up to facing the monster of The DC Family, the strongest man in all of All Elite Wrestling, Powerhouse Hobbs!

Ospreay's schedule since fully devoting his time to AEW has been rather mad; in addition to those two matches, he's heading into this fight with Hobbs after just having faced Katsuyori Shibata last Wednesday on DYNAMITE and he's got the impending bout with Bryan Danielson at DYNASTY 2024! That's just the in-ring portion of his last couple weeks, it says nothing of his travel schedule back-and-forth between the UK, Canada, and the United States. That being said, Ospreay does have some experience with demanding travel schedules from his time in NJPW and weeks consisting of, as an example, five matches in seven days.

Ospreay's been through it, but fighting a foe like Powerhouse Hobbs is such a unique endeavor; the former TNT Champion possesses such a rare combination of power and speed, as well as strength and agility, plus a sheer ruthlessness to back it all up, that makes him one of the most dangerous men in All Elite Wrestling. He's a man who can throw around any individual in the company like they are rag dolls, just look at how he treated Paul Wight in the Like a Dragon Gaiden Street Fight last November, and while it takes a tremendous feat of strength to even rock Hobbs much less get him off his feet.

They may both be part of The Don Callis Family, but that doesn't mean Ospreay or Hobbs are going to take it easy on one another, in fact it seems the hope from Callis is that the exact opposite be true. He wants to see his men go to war with one another, to sharpen each other's iron so to speak, and to get one another at the peak of their game. Well, he will certainly get that this Wednesday night when Will Ospreay clashes with Powerhouse Hobbs as we continue down the road to DYNASTY 2024!

JERICHO CALLS OUT HOOK!

After falling to FTW Champion HOOK in singles competition two weeks ago, “Lionheart” Chris Jericho extended the offer to essentially serve as a mentor for the young man. Jericho himself pointed out he's never been a trainer, never ran a wrestling school, never been a manager, but yet he was willing to try to be those things for “The Cold-Hearted, Handsome Devil”. Now HOOK may be young, both in life and in terms of time as an active competitor, but he's not a stupid human being, as HOOK said, he knows who Jericho is. He knows the leader of the Inner Circle who caused Sammy Guevara to walk away from the group, and who tossed aside Ortiz and Santana as soon as they questioned how Jericho operated. He knows the Jericho who built his own Appreciation Society, but was ultimately abandoned by all of those associates because of his behavior as their leader. HOOK knows “The Ocho” and “Le Champion”, but what Chris seems to want to show him is the “Lionheart”, a man of integrity and worth who actually cares about the future of AEW, who knows it's bigger than just Chris Jericho, and who actually wants to see it grow beyond Chris Jericho.

So what is it that Jericho intends to call out HOOK for this week on DYNAMITE? Is it for a public workout? A training match? A lesson in technique? There are a great many lessons that a man with the tenure of the original AEW World Champion can teach to a young competitor like the FTW Champion, but what will that be this Wednesday night?

MURDERHAWK VS. DRAGON...

“The Murderhawk Monster” Lance Archer vs. “The American Dragon” Bryan Danielson

Bryan Danielson has been a very busy man the last week, and it's not over yet. It started with The BCC and Matt Sydal heading to CMLL in Mexico last Friday for an eight-man tag team loss to Blue Panther, Mistico, Ultimo Guerrero and Volador Jr. as part of their HOMENAJE A DOS LEYANDAS 2024 event, continued with COLLISION in Canada for a Trios victory over The Righteous and Lance Archer, and then takes Bryan back to CMLL for their SUPER VIERNES event for a 2/3 Falls dream bout with Blue Panther, but before he can return to Arena Mexico, Bryan has a stop to make in Worcester, MA for a fight with “The Murderhawk Monster” Lance Archer!

There has been a great deal of hostility between The Blackpool Combat Club and the Archer/Righteous trio over the last several weeks, and even after their fight last week, the issue isn't anywhere near settled. That's why this Wednesday night on DYNAMITE, for the very first time in their careers, Lance Archer and Bryan Danielson will go one-on-one! It's another in a line of bouts this year that will test “The American Dragon” in different fashions than the previous, but this one could very well put him in a position to forfeit his Blue Panther dream. Lance Archer doesn't care if Bryan is on the cusp of getting a match he's been wrestling over-and-over in his mind for years, he just wants to put a hurting on Danielson that the multi-time World Champion will never forget, and if it costs Bryan his ability to fulfill a dream than all the better!

That's who “The Murderhawk Monster” is after all, a remorseless machine of destruction who does not care for the welfare or long-term health of the individuals standing across the ring from him. Lance Archer is simply there to hurt people, whether or not they get up after the match isn't really his concern...

WILLOW TALKS TBS CHAMPIONSHIP...

Last week Willow Nightingale defeated three other women, including best friend Kris Statlander, to earn the TBS Championship match against Julia Hart at DYNASTY 2024 on April 21st! With that match on the books, we will hear from Willow this Wednesday night on DYNAMITE regarding her thoughts heading into this rematch of their November 10th COLLISION clash that put Julia Hart in the FULL GEAR 2023 TBS Title match in the first place!

THE TNT CHAMPION ADDRESSES THE HOUSE...

Matt Cardona shocked the wrestling world when he walked out onto the COLLISION stage to answer The Cope Open Challenge last Saturday night. “The Deathmatch King” gave his former mentor one helluva fight, but ultimately Adam Copeland emerged with the TNT Championship still around his waist, but it didn't take long for another figure to emerge from the shadows with designs on his championship.

Malakai Black, former AEW World Six-Man Champion, has yet to hold a singles championship in All Elite Wrestling but from the looks of things on Saturday he's decided that the TNT Championship is going to be the first one. So this Saturday on COLLISION we will hear from TNT Champion Adam Copeland in regards to what happened following his hard-fought victory over Matt Cardona, and about the Trios Match that he, Eddie Kingston, and Mark Briscoe are set to fight against The House of Black at DYNASTY 2024!

This Wednesday night, DYNAMITE hails from Worcester, MA and the DCU Center and we will witness AEW World Champion Samoa Joe and Swerve Strickland sign their DYNASTY 2024 contract, The Young Bucks face Orange Cassidy and Trent Beretta in the Semi-Finals of the World Tag Title Tournament, Thunder Rosa and Mariah May vie for the next shot at Toni Storm's AEW Women's World Champions, and The Don Callis Family continues to test itself with Will Ospreay facing Powerhouse Hobbs! All that and more comes to you this Wednesday night live on TNT starting at 8pm ET/7pm CT live on TBS, as well as at AEWPlus.com for international fans, but don't forget to drop by the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW's various social media platforms, for highlights from last week's episodes of DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, and COLLISION, as well as the latest CONTROL CENTER!

Then, this Friday night, Ring of Honor returns home to Philadelphia for SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2024, available exclusively on Honor Club, and featuring ROH World Champion Eddie Kingston battling Mark Briscoe, ROH Women's World Champion Athena and 3-Time AEW Women's World Champion Hikaru Shida locking horns, Billie Starkz and Queen Aminata going one-on-one to determine the first-ever ROH Women's World TV Champion, Kyle Fletcher defending the ROH World TV Title against Lee Johnson, the women of Stardom coming to blow the roof of Liacouras Center, and plenty more in store for ROH's homecoming!