With his win against Ricochet at Revolution, Swerve Strickland secured the number one contender spot against Jon Moxley at Dynasty on April 6 in Philadelphia.
At least, he’s supposed to be the number one contender. Despite winning the match, he has to watch as Cope gets another shot at Jon Moxley, this time in a street fight in Omaha at Dynamite this week. I guess being number one contender doesn’t mean you get the next shot but a shot at some point. AEW has done this for years. Even in their first year you had Cody having the shot at Chris Jericho for Full Gear but in between Darby Allin won a shot for Dynamite against Jericho.
This focus on Cope’s match unfortunately cuts into the amount of time Swerve Strickland has to build up his match with Jon Moxley, though the company is still trying. Almost like this Cope match wasn’t originally planned and now they are having to work around it.
(I have no clue what actually happened to schedule it, probably just they saw ticket sales for Omaha and hoped that would fire up sales, but I imagine someone reminded Cope he hasn’t really lost to anyone in a singles match except Christian Cage when he’s claimed he’s here to give back and Cope defiantly said he’d probably lose to Mox if they book a rematch and Tony Khan fell for it and gave it to him. Again, I’m making stuff up in my head. Don’t take me serious.)
Rough Start
Swerve would come out on Collision to cut a promo on why he would be winning the championship, and the promo certainly wasn’t one of Swerve’s best. He also had to pretend he might be facing Cope for the title a few times which really did nothing to build that match or build Swerve’s. Eventually, Jon Moxley would pop out dressed like Denis Leary in The Ref and bonk Swerve’s leg with a tire iron and then cut a promo on Cope.
You can hear my enthusiasm for this. I would rather make up Cope politicking for a rematch scenarios than recap this segment. That wasn’t how I felt watching Revolution when Jon Moxley beat Cope only to be confronted by Prince Nana and jumped on high by Swerve Strickland. It felt like at that moment that the crowd was absolutely choosing their next heir. A man who they chose last year and helped propel to the AEW Men’s World Championship at Dynasty in 2024.
Swerve Strickland has the charisma to be the most enigmatic and interesting man on the roster. He has the ability in ring to stand toe to toe with absolutely anyone on the roster. He represents AEW better than anyone who isn’t an AEW original. Honestly? He represents himself better than most originals.
We all know the mountain climb. We all know that the plan is for Darby Allin. It’s likely a plan that’s to come to fruition at Y’All In Texas when Darby Allin returns from climbing a real mountain to climb the AEW mountain and finally defeat Jon Moxley and free the AEW Men’s World Championship from his clutches.
The question we should be asking right now is, should they pivot to Swerve Strickland?
Mox To Swerve To?
Let’s first talk about what that would mean for Darby Allin. I love Darby, and I think that if he had returned for Revolution to defeat Jon Moxley this story would have ended perfectly. Instead they went with Cope, and the Cope match was a complete disappointment to main event Revolution. It made perfect sense for Darby to go from Revolution 2024 winning the AEW World Tag Team Championship with Sting who retired that night to winning the AEW Men’s World Championship in the main event of Revolution 2025.
Instead we wait, wait for him to climb Mt. Everest and return to get his big moment, and unfortunately, the time to do it might have passed. AEW absolutely needs a new vibe in the main event and the suffocating heat of Jon Moxley caused the product to be near unwatchable in January, needing a rebound by completely cutting Death Riders legs out. That’s why Mox doesn’t have his faction anymore and talked about Cope turning him into something he hates.
I think you can still have Darby Allin return to AEW to defeat Jon Moxley at Y’All In Texas without the title being on the line. It won’t mean the same, and Moxley will probably not be happy about it, but that’s the story you told and that’s the story we reacted to. It didn’t make it to the finish line because you didn’t get it over enough. It’s a failure at the hands of Jon Moxley, Tony Khan, and anyone involved who thought week after week of gang beatings and making Orange Cassidy gargle windex was a worthy way to build top heels in 2024/2025.
Darby can beat Mox and move into becoming the number one contender, shooting for All Out or WrestleDream to get his title shot.
In that time? You could have Swerve Strickland as champion again. But it can’t end with Darby versus Swerve. Even if that would be a great match, the alignments and heat wouldn’t work. Swerve becoming champion needs to become a remedy for the Moxley reign, but you’d have to have someone planned to beat Swerve and that man ends up the one who Darby Allin defeats to become World Champion.
The perfect man for that job is likely Maxwell Jacob Friedman. After losing to Hangman Adam Page, the two will likely continue their feud, and the end of that feud could have MJF winning. You move MJF to Swerve and have him win the championship, either at Y’All In Texas or Forbidden Door, only for him to now have crosshairs on his forehead and Darby Allin wanting that match.
Darby and MJF we already know have incredible chemistry. Full Gear 2021 when they opened it with a singles match? That’s one of my favourite Darby and favourite MJF matches. Quite possibly the greatest opener in AEW PPV history. They had a skirmish in the Double or Nothing 2023 four way but it’s just not the same. Darby defeating Maxwell Jacob Friedman for the AEW Men’s World Championship would mean just as much as beating Jon Moxley for it.
Dynasty Redux
I think this could work, but now we have to battle with the question of whether or not Swerve Strickland should beat Jon Moxley at Dynasty. I’ll tell you that at Revolution it really felt like they could have done that match on Wednesday and it would have been fine for Swerve to go over. After this delay with Cope getting another shot and the best thing Jon Moxley could think of in incapacitating Swerve Strickland is to Jeff Gillooly him (I know Shane Stant did the attack but come on his name is GILLOOLY) we now have to wait for the result of the Cope versus Mox street fight before we get back to building up Moxley versus Strickland.
That gives us maybe the Omaha Collision, St. Paul Dynamite, Milwaukee Collision, Peoria Dynamite, and Peoria Collision. I’m not saying you can’t plan a great Dynasty main event in three Collison’s and two Dynamite’s but it certainly makes everything a bit compact to get the best results. You want people absolutely frothing at the mouth, fists clenched, demanding, screaming for this match. You want them begging for Swerve to win the championship.
Swerve selling his knee and having to cut lukewarm promos about he can’t have become the most dangerous man without Rated R and how he’s just a guy in his way isn’t going to create that.
I don’t know what they do to make Swerve Strickland feel like the most dangerous man from now to Dynasty, but if they want a pivot? They need Swerve Strickland to feel undeniable. This Death Riders angle was supposed to be about an AEW Original finally climbing to the top to take down the dragon of Jon Moxley. If you’re going to pivot from that? It’s because the man across the ring from him is so good we’re fine with the story being rewritten. We’re fine with the plot deviating.
Right now we only want it because the story has been told poorly. We want a twist for the sake of a twist. Or in 90s wrestling terms, we’re actually asking for a Vince Russo swerve. We don’t want that kind of swerve. We want the Swerve of 2024 that forced his way into being the best choice for AEW Men’s World Champion.
If Swerve can win this? We need a white hot program. If Moxley is going to retain? Keep up the tire iron bonking and having Cope still involved. I’m sure the crowd will once again be more invested and react louder in the pre-show matches than the main event like they did at Revolution. Keep giving us programs we don’t care about and we will respond in kind.
Or you can remember what AEW is supposed to be and give us a main event we want to pay to see.
