AEW Dynamite (August 22nd, 2020): No More Papers

So, I'll keep this short because there's only a couple pieces of business worth mentioning; this was another fine episode of Dynamite that did a fine job of hyping up the PPV taking place in a couple weeks. And they made the most of the temporary timeslot running opposite whatever Takeover event was taking place by giving us a special show, even if the matches weren't up there.

- Fuck The Revival is now joined by Tully Blanchard... but what about the ten guy? He beats the "Dead Ass" guys and then a backstage thing takes place where they propose a gauntlet match between the various tag teams to determine who challenges for the tag titles at the PPV.

- So the Jon Moxley/MJF feud continues with another quality Mox promo followed by MJF, his neck brace, and entourage challenging Mox to sign a petition to ban the dangerous and deadly Paradigm Shift (a double-arm DDT) from their All Out match or else he'll SUE! Yeah, just one problem with that theory. What's to stop Mox from dishing out a DEATH RIDER, which is also a double-arm DDT? Why not just say DDTs are banned and he can hit you with a piledriver, instead? Which is even worse than the DDT... all snark aside, this is more good quality promo work from both guys and it gives me a World title match to look forward to rather than "meh, cool, derpy funny mask thing."

- They had the finals of the Women's Deadly Draw thing take place. I didn't watch the Youtube show, but if this match was indicative of the rest of the tourney, then I'm glad I didn't miss much. But hey, Hikaru Shida vs. Thunder Rosa should be a fun match at the PPV, so that's something.

- The Elite beat the Dark Order and Kenny goes made after a while, but who gives a shit about that? The main event saw The Exalted One Mr. Brodie Lee DESTROY Cody in a total squash to win the TNT Championship. Good job, AEW; you did a short match... after the other short match with Darby, but I digress. Cody is taken out on a stretcher, but the Dark Order geeks beat him up, they drag out Dustin and that other guy who were already beat up, and even Anna Jay gets in on the action by choking out Brandi. If you wanted a better way to put the Dark Order over as a true potential threat, then you'll have to find it somewhere else because this did the job perfectly. Brodie looked like a monster, the Dark Order didn't look like total boobs (this will last until the next BTE, I'm sure), and the bit where Brodie is sprinkling the broken pieces of the old TNT belt over Cody's near-corpse was a nice touch.

So, yes, thoroughly entertained... and yes, regarding the bit where AEW is going to start having actual fans again in limited capacity... setting aside all the safety concerns, I'll reserve judgment until I've seen the show take place. AEW usually does a good job with these limited capacity showings and I think they'll be fine, but let's wait and see with this one.