Tonight All Elite Wrestling comes to the EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, VA for the latest episode of of DYNAMITE!! With less than two weeks to go before FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024, we are getting tonight started with a bout between MJF and RUSH airing uninterrupted by commerical breaks! On top of that, AEW World Tag Champions The Young Bucks face former champions The Acclaimed in an Eliminator Match plus “The Bastard” PAC takes on Claudio Castagnoli in the first Men's Owen Hart Foundation Quarter-Final match and Nyla Rose clashes with Kris Statlander in the first Women's Owen Hart Foundation Quarter-Final bout! Also “Timeless” Toni Storm and Mina Shirakawa sign their AEW Women's World Championship contract, and there's a huge eight-man tag featuring The Don Callis Family, The Undisputed Kingdom's Roderick Strong, and TMDK's Zack Sabre Jr taking on ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe, Kyle O'Reilly, Orange Cassidy, and Top Flight's Dante Martin!
The night starts at 8pm ET/7pm CT live on TBS, so drop on by AEW's YouTube channel prior to showtime to catch highlights from last week's editions of DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, and COLLISION, as well as a great deal more. Then come catch AEW's debut in Allentown, PA on Thursday night where you can catch COLLISION prior to the rest of the world on Saturday! We've already got Private Party versus “The Learning Tree” Chris Jericho and “The Redwood” Big Bill signed after what happened on “TV Time” last week, and there is plenty more going down!
NO INTERUPTIONS...
MJF vs. “El Toro Blanco” RUSH
There is not a whole lot left to say about this match; MJF and RUSH said it all with their fists last week on DYNAMITE when they fought throughout the arena in a heated brawl that took security, staff, and members of the locker room to break it up after it spilled into the halls of Des Moines' Wells Fargo Arena. RUSH has taken issue with the red carpet rolled out for the former AEW World Champion and how MJF feels he's owed the world because of the records he set as the champ despite having done nothing but talk since returning at DOUBLE OR NOTHING, well talk and kick Adam Cole in the groin. RUSH feels he's put in the work, so he deserves the attention and spotlight Max has been awarded simply for showing up. MJF, on the other hand, feels that everyone else is beneath him, that literally everyone holding a title from Swerve to Okada to Ospreay is beneath him, and that it's just a matter of time before he takes his throne back from the pretenders. Regardless of the fans cheers, nothing has changed about MJF being the one to sing his own praises the loudest, but will he still be singing them over the sounds of RUSH's chops making contact with his chest?
Now there's now denying that Maxwell Jacob Friedman went through some rough fights during his AEW World Championship reign. Regardless of how he won it, MJF had to survive Jon Moxley in order to even become AEW World Champion and then, in addition to several others, he had to fight Bryan Danielson for over an hour, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Adam Cole, Kenny Omega, not to mention Samoa Joe twice, before he finally lost the belt to Joe at WORLDS END in their second bout. He went through fights, his body paid the price for them all, but in all those defenses, in all his time with AEW, it may be possible that MJF has never fought a foe as sadistic as “El Toro Blanco” RUSH.
RUSH relishes inflicting pain and punishment, he enjoys making his opponents suffer, and is unquestionably one of the hardest hitters in professional wrestling today. He's the man who got hurt early in the Continental Classic and gutted out the pain for the rest of the tourney in hopes of becoming the first holder of the Continental Crown. There are battered bodies and broken dreams left in RUSH's wake over the course of his wrestling career, and now it is MJF's turn to see why RUSH is one of the most feared individuals in wrestling.
That being said, RUSH best not underestimate the fight MJF can bring nor the amount of punishment he can endure in order to win a match. Max has been beaten, bloodied, and battered, he's gone through Stadium Stampede and Blood & Guts, not to mention one of the bloodiest Dog Collar matches in the whole of wrestling history. He can take a beating, he can deliver a beating, and ultimately that is all either of these men want to dish out tonight on DYNAMITE!
ELIMINATOR MATCH...
AEW World Tag Team Champions The Young Bucks (Matthew & Nicholas Jackson)
vs.
The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens & Max Caster)
When The Acclaimed and The Young Bucks walk into the EagleBank Arena tonight, it will have been 1,274 days since the last time the two pairs faced off in tag team action. That night, December 20th of 2020 to be specific, it had been less than three months since Anthony Bowens made his AEW debut and just a few days shy of Max Caster's six month AEW anniversary, but as a team they hadn't even hit two months since their first match together! Yet in those fifty-seven days between their team debut and the day they walked into Jacksonville to challenge The Young Bucks for the World Tag Titles, Bowens and Caster racked up eight consecutive wins in their first nine matches, ultimately earning their shot by beating the SCU pairing of Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian. The Acclaimed gave the brothers Jackson a tremendous fight for nearly fifteen minutes before the defending champions beat their challengers. It should be noted however that The Young Bucks only did so after putting Bowens through a table at ringside, allowing them to isolate Caster for a BTE Trigger.
In the three-plus year since fans have watched The Acclaimed grow into the most dominant tag team in AEW history, holding the record for victories in the division with fifty-seven and just edging out FTR for most tag matches with seventy-one. They've captured the AEW World Tag Team Titles as well as the AEW World Trios Championship with “Daddy Ass” Billy Gunn, holding the former for 140 days and the latter for a record-setting 238, becoming one of the faces of All Elite Wrestling along the way through hard work, perseverance, and earning the respect of the AEW faithful along the way.
On the other hand, those same AEW faithful watched The Young Bucks go from being an essential part of All Elite Wrestling's foundation, fan favorites who produced spectacular matches against every team they faced, while fighting with a mission to “change the world” and becoming the worst possible example of “corporate suits”. They may be the only 3-Time AEW World Tag Champions, as well as the only 2-Time AEW World Trios Champions, but Matthew and Nicholas Jackson have devolved into the worst versions of themselves, abusing the power granted them as EVPs, assaulting AEW CEO Tony Khan, and stacking the deck against anyone who even slightly questions their authority.
Thankfully they are not the sole entities in power, that moment came and went quite quickly (even if it still felt all too slow), and AEW CEO Tony Khan granted temporary EVP powers to “The Fallen Angel” Christopher Daniels after The Young Bucks terminated him from his original backstage role. Daniels is the reason Matthew and Nicholas are in this position tonight on DYNAMITE, but that's just step one. The rest of the steps have to be taken by The Acclaimed, and they are not the same man The Young Bucks faced back in 2020! Whether The EVPs like it or not, Max Caster and Anthony Bowens are the tag team division in AEW, they are the workhorses, and the one who've taken on all-comers. Are The Young Bucks prepared for who Max Caster and Anthony Bowens are now in 2024, or are they expecting the same 2020 team that even then they only barely defeated? Will The Acclaimed earn their first AEW World Tag Title match since REVOLUTION 2023, and will this place a role in the shape of Blood & Guts coming to Nashville on July 24th?
EIGHT-MAN TAG...
ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe, Dante Martin, Kyle O'Reilly, & Orange Cassidy
vs.
Don Callis Family (ROH World TV Champion Kyle Fletcher & Konosuke Takeshita), Roderick Strong, & Zack Sabre Jr.
The last few weeks have produced some wild Trios and Multi-Man matches here in All Elite Wrestling! Last Saturday night's 8-Man bout pitting The BCC against Lio Rush, Rocky Romero, and TMDK was a wild fight, as was The BCC's victory over the CMLL contingent ten days prior, but perhaps the craziest of these was the Roderick Strong/Don Callis Family victory over ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe, Kyle O'Reilly, and Orange Cassidy!
Not only was it thirteen minutes of non-stop action, but it culminated with ROH World Television Champion Kyle Fletcher pinning ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe in the middle of the ring! That marked a huge moment for the career of the self-dubbed “Protostar”! As a frame of reference, a protostar is a very young star still in the earliest phase of its evolution, and at just twenty-five years of age with his ROH World TV Title reign just passing its six-month anniversary, it is a label that fits Kyle Fletcher.
That victory is just one of the things that brings this eight-man battle to tonight's edition of AEW; not only does it pit the two ROH Champions against each other once again, it also throws former 2-Time International Champion Orange Cassidy into the ring with Roderick Strong, the man who dethroned him at REVOLUION 2024, but also his FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024 opponent Zack Sabre Jr! Then we've got Konosuke Takeshita on one side, Dante Martin on the other, two of the men who have qualified for the TNT Championship Ladder Match on June 30th, and the potential x-factor of the entire bout in Kyle O'Reilly! Despite the recent rough history between Kyle and The Undisputed Kingdom, Roddy Strong is still trying to convince Kyle his place is with The UK, making him the potentially deciding factor in this whole situation!
The only thing for sure about this eight-man tag, based on those that have gone down in the last few weeks, is that chaos will reign, the action will be jaw-dropping, and it will absolutely have an impact on AEW's next PPV presentation in eleven days time!
MEN'S OWEN HART FOUNDATION TOURNAMENT QUARTER-FINALS...
“The Bastard” PAC vs. Claudio Castagnoli
It's been almost seventeen years since the first time Claudio Castagnoli and “The Bastard” PAC went one-on-one inside an American Legion Hall in Hellertown, PA. Since that August night in 2007, they've battled in Burbank, wrestled in Winter Park, clashed in Columbus, stepped into a Steel Cage with Blood & Guts, tussled in Trenton for the ROH World Title, grappled in the Casino Gauntlet for that FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024 World Title match, and even been allies around the United States. In all their meetings, only five have been one-on-one, and it's Castagnoli who holds the advantage there with four wins over PAC.
Only perhaps matched by their ROH World Championship match at DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR 2023, a bout in which PAC was a last-minute substitute for an injured Mark Briscoe, this is the most important match in which these two men have ever faced off. This bout marks the beginning of the Men's Owen Hart Foundation Tournament, the culmination of which takes place in Calgary on July 10th and which awards the winner with an AEW World Championship fight at ALL IN: LONDON 2024! Both of these men have only had one opportunity to become AEW World Champion, Claudio very recently against Swerve Strickland while PAC's was over three years ago at DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2021, and each needs another crack at becoming the top man in All Elite Wrestling. It's a long road that starts here; who will be the first man to move forward in the third year of this historic tournament?
WOMEN'S OWEN HART FOUNDATION TOURNAMENT QUARTER-FINALS...
Nyla Rose vs. Kris Statlander
In their fourth one-on-one clash, the first since a 5/31/23 TBS Championship bout, Nyla Rose and Kris Statlander will go head-to-head in the first bout of the Women's Owen Hart Tournament! The former TBS Champion holds a 2-1 advantage over the former AEW Women's World Champion, but with “The Native Beast” having just achieved a milestone 100-victory mark, she's looking to continue building on that en route to standing inside Wembeley Stadium as the challenger for the AEW Women's World Championship!
Statlander, having turned her back on Willow Nightingale and aligned with Stokely Hathaway, is looking to prove to the world she made the right decision about her future, and that means advancing in The Owen, match-by-match, until she is the one standing inside the ring in London as challenger to whoever may be holding the AEW Women's World Title come ALL IN: LONDON 2024!
WOMEN'S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CONTRACT SIGNING...
This situation is complicated to say the least; it would be rather entangled if it was simply about the relationships Mariah May has with both AEW Women's World Champion Toni Storm and her FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024 challenger Mina Shirakawa, but the additional factor of the title makes it so much more of a tangled web. Mariah has a much longer association with Shirakawa dating back to their time together in Stardom with Club Venus, but Toni Storm has been an inspiration to Mariah since long before they ever met, a fact she made quite clear from the first moment Mariah appeared on AEW programming.
And now she's stuck in the middle trying to play peacemaker...
That is the role Mariah May has said she will take on tonight when “The Timless One” and Shirakawa stand in the middle of the ring together to sign their names on the dotted line and make June 30th official! This is already quite the dramatic situation just being a title fight, but the question of will Mariah May will lean if push comes to shove makes all the more intriguing; will we see which way she sways tonight when her two closest companions are in the same place at the same time once again?
ALSO ON TAP:
-AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland & AEW International Champion Will Ospreay Face-To-Face!!
-And more!!
With just eleven days to go until FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024, All Elite Wrestling comes to Fairfax, VA and the EagleBank Arena for tonight's edition of DYNAMITE!! Kicking off with an uninterrupted fight between MJF and RUSH, we've got a stacked night of action including the first Men's Owen Hart Foundation match between PAC and Claudio Castagnoli, the first Women's Owen Hart Foundation match between Kris Statlander and Nyla Rose, AEW Women's World Champion Toni Storm and FORBIDDEN DOOR 2024 challenger Mina Shirakawa putting pen-to-paper, a huge eight-man tag, The Young Bucks fighting The Acclaimed in an Eliminator Match, and kicking it all off without commercial interuptions: MJF versus RUSH!
It all begins at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TBS, so visit the official AEW YouTube channel before the show begins to watch highlights from last week's DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, and COLLISION, as well as a great deal more. Then join AEW in Allentown, PA this Thursday night to see COLLISION before anyone else catches it Saturday on TNT! After last week, Private Party versus “The Learning Tree” Chris Jericho and “The Redwood” Big Bill has already been signed with plenty more to come!