On AEW Dynamite, it felt like the company finally took a step in the right direction on the AEW Men’s World Championship situation for World’s End.
Following Full Gear, it looked like Orange Cassidy would be forgotten so Hangman Adam Page, Jay White, and Christian Cage could move up into the picture against Jon Moxley. None of these men really had a quarrel with Moxley, the closest being Cage trying to cash his dumb briefcase for an automatic AEW Men’s World Championship shot.
Hangman had lost two major pay per view matches against Jay White so making he should not be trying to make any argument to fight for the title, while Jay is the one who beat him. You’d need to do something to really establish them for the match. Instead, the next Dynamite they spent most of the time having Death Riders beat up White and Page while Cage was nowhere to be found. Real good way to make me believe these guys can win the top prize in the game.
Collision had Adam Page beating Wheeler Yuta and the Death Riders decided not to stop him. Jay White came out to also beat up Wheeler Yuta. Death Riders still just watched. I understand they are building up the idea they don’t want to get more people going against them. They are trying to diffuse Page and White. If everyone in AEW is united in going after them? There won’t be a Death Riders and there won’t be a Jon Moxley as king of these lands.
A Step In the Right Direction
On Dynamite, Jay White now had his shot at a Death Rider in PAC. The match was really good, as an aside. After Switchblade’s victory, it looked like just another Death Riders beat down. Jay got destroyed once again, humiliated by every Death Rider. How does this make me want to see Jay White face Jon Moxley? But then Adam Page came out.
Page is interesting. Hangman Adam Page is an AEW Original. Hangman Adam Page is a former AEW Men’s World Champion. He was once the most hated man in the company until Jon Moxley decided to return. For all of his talk of being unworthy of redemption? I don’t think the AEW fans feel that way. They see an Original stepping up to Moxley. They want to see it. And for all Page did to Swerve Strickland? They will still cheer Adam Page on to do it right to Jon.
Moxley has been reluctant to fire up Page but then Moxley got strangled by a masked member of production. They unmasked to reveal it was Orange Cassidy, finally getting revenge for Full Gear. It was at this point that the numbers game was no longer in the favour of the Death Riders. OC, Jay White, and Hangman Adam Page got their moment of glory in one upping the Death Riders finally. It was the one break in Death Rider’s crusade. They lost this fight.
It was finally starting to feel like we had a direction. Christian Cage might not be the fourth man in a four way at World’s End. It would instead be Orange Cassidy. Instead of a heel in Page (that the fans want to cheer), a babyface in Jay White (who the fans don’t believe in yet), and a heel in Christian Cage against Moxley? You got two AEW Originals and Jay White going after Moxley.
Why run a four way match?
The whole psychology behind multi man matches involving a heel World Champion is to make people think there’s no way the heel can survive this. You want to stack the deck against them. The heel always finds advantages and now they got multiple babyfaces who can beat them. They don’t even have to be pinned to lose the title when it isn’t elimination. The focus becomes all on how the heel can possibly survive this situation. You want to make the fans believe they are getting a title change, and it’s going on someone they like. And then the heel wins.
In the build up to this, you don’t want weeks upon weeks, waves upon waves, of heel heat. It isn’t like a singles match. In a singles match, you usually want the heel having the upper hand going in so the fans are invested in the babyface to reverse fortune and win. But in a four way? You want the heel to look like they lost the numbers game. They bit off more than they can chew. They are going to be outnumbered, outdueled, out drawn. The only advantage they have? Intelligence. Divide and conquer.
We still have a few weeks to build up to this, but AEW has a more difficult task in the fact that getting rid of the Rankings meant nobody is really earning a shot through multiple victories. It’s usually a tournament, a Casino Gauntlet, that’s what is getting title shots these days. Or in Orange Cassidy’s case? He basically just asked for it.
Orange Cassidy can make his argument just because he’s the former number one contender. He’s going for his rematch. Jay White and Adam Page need to make their case. Every week should be about making them look like absolute threats to the championship. I know AEW knows this, which is why both men have beaten a member of the Death Riders. They can’t face Claudio Castagnoli because he’s in the Continental Classic. But you need more.
Dynamite was that “more” since it was the fans seeing with their own eyes Adam Page hitting Jon Moxley with the Buckshot Lariat. It plants an idea in their head. “Page could do this at World’s End and become the AEW Men’s World Champion.”
You want to spend these next weeks making it seem like there’s no way Jon Moxley can win this, while at the same time planting seeds for Jay White and Adam Page to once again turn on each other, and something to cost Orange Cassidy the victory. Instead we got… FTR?
One Step Forward…
On Collision, Jon Moxley finally did what he should have done at the Thanksgiving Dynamite. He had his champion’s banquet. He cut a promo to the fans after defending the AEW Men’s World Championship.
This promo was good in that it established a few things that AEW wants to keep up with this. First? Moxley talked of, “the one foretold in the prophecy.” Moxley is making it clear that this isn’t the final chapter of his championship reign. We know who the final chapter is. It’s Darby Allin.
Moxley also talked about Page as being self destructive and insecure. “He’ll play himself out of the game before he even sniffs another championship” is likely hinting that it will be Adam Page that inevitably ends up costing the three men at one of them pinning Jon Moxley at World’s End. For all of his focus on Swerve and Jay White, Hangman Page’s original reason for his self destructive path is the dark cloud of the AEW Men’s World Championship no longer being around his waist since 2022, and how much he blames himself for it.
Another part of that one step forward is when Orange Cassidy came out and said he could live without being AEW Men’s World Champion. He knows he isn’t the one of the prophecy. But he is going to do whatever it takes to get the title off Moxley. He’s going to be what Hangman Adam Page was to Swerve Strickland. Page’s interference in the match at All In played a part in Swerve losing to Bryan Danielson. Orange Cassidy plans to play a similar role. He doesn’t need to be the one. Moxley just can’t be it either.
It’s at this point things go backwards. We get a beatdown beginning with a weak briefcase shot and a boring beat down. Orange Cassidy had no big plan here. He literally came out knowing he’d get beaten up and he does. You could try to twist it that he’s being a martyr for AEW, but we’ve seen beatdowns already. We saw how to stop it on Dynamite. Why go back to the well?
It leads to the Death Riders backstage trying to force Orange Cassidy to drink windex, essentially to kill him. They do it only a mere few feet away from FTR cutting a promo, which leads to FTR getting involved. Why? Why is FTR getting involved? How does this serve the AEW Men’s World Championship storyline?
…Two Steps Back.
It doesn’t. It’s meant to serve the overarching angle of the Death Riders taking over AEW and ensuring they don’t get too many involved to lose their numbers game. Accidentally getting FTR involved wasn’t in their plans. It’s why when FTR stood up to them? They let go of Orange Cassidy and left the building.
These moments are good for building up to the final moment of the Death Riders downfall, and I’m sure they might build to something where FTR finds a partner to take on the Death Riders for the Trios Championship once Claudio Castagnoli is done the Continental Classic. But we didn’t need it right now.
All this angle serves is to make Orange Cassidy look like a dumb babyface putting himself in harms way for no good reason, and it makes you talk about FTR versus Death Riders instead of the upcoming Men’s World Championship match.
Now we got Winter is Coming coming up, and All Elite Wrestling really needs to get to the point where they announce the four way match for World’s End so they can officially build to it. We need to know Christian Cage isn’t in it. We need to know that Page, White, and OC are. We need to have a clear direction.
In Kansas City, when Orange Cassidy and Jay White face Jon Moxley and PAC in a tag match? We probably need to see Jon Moxley get pinned. Not PAC. We already saw PAC get pinned. We need to see Jon Moxley lose. We need to see it’s possible to beat the man at the top of the mountain. I would have preferred Hangman Adam Page do it since he needs the win the most, but he isn’t in the match.
We need to start feeling like all of this is going to fall apart for Jon Moxley and the Death Riders. He challenged too many people. He made too many enemies. They can’t run from every fight now. And AEW just locked him a way where he can lose the championship without even getting pinned.
We don’t need custodian Jon carrying windex and plastic bags right now. We need a vulnerable beast bleeding from the forehead realizing even the best laid plans are falling apart. We need AEW to take a page out of a different WBD property in The Penguin and see the ways Oswald would watch all of his plans fail and be staring at the barrel of a loaded gun only to find a way out. We need World’s End to feel like that.
Now that FTR is introduced in this they can’t really get out of it. It’ll feel like a loose thread. Maybe they can hold off to next Collision, but on the Dynamite Winter is Coming? It needs to be about the AEW Men’s World Championship. It needs to be about Jon Moxley starting to feel the walls closing in. And it needs to be about him preventing the Death Rider’s World to End.
That’s the only step forward.
