AEW celebrates 200th Dynamite episode on TSN2
It's a loaded card for the 200th episode of Dynamite with Jon Moxley taking on Penta El Zero Miedo and Trent Beretta in an anything goes three-way match. Plus, Toni Storm defends the AEW Women's World Championship against Hikaru Shida and the team of Chris Jericho and Konosuke Takeshita meets Daniel Garcia and Sammy Guevara. You can catch AEW Dynamite LIVE at 8pm et/5pm pt on TSN2, streaming on the TSN App and on TSN.ca.
Anything goes match: Jon Moxley (w/ ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli) vs. Trent Beretta (w/ "The Kentucky Gentleman" Chuck Taylor) vs. Penta El Zero Miedo (w/ Rey Fenix) - Simply put, Wednesday night's match is going to be violent. The anything goes match is the culmination of weeks of discord involving all parties. On the July 19 edition of Dynamite, the Blackpool Combat Club team of Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler YUTA, Konosuke Takeshita and PAC lost to the Golden Elite (Kenny Omega, "Hangman" Adam Page, Kota Ibushi, Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson) when Moxley verbally gave up in order to spare YUTA from a brutal beating. This happened after both PAC and Takeshita walked out on the team. Then at ROH's Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view, Castagnoli successfully defended his ROH World Championship against PAC. Afterwards, the Lucha Bros. (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fenix) jumped the BCC in order to defend their Death Triangle stablemate. Best Friends (Trent Beretta and Chuck Taylor) and Orange Cassidy came down to even the score, but an Orange Punch meant for Penta connected with Castagnoli. An infuriated Moxley laid out Cassidy with the Death Rider following his successful defence of the AEW International Championship against AR Fox on last week's Dynamite. Then in the main event of the show, the Lucha Bros. defeated Best Friends and the BCC in a three-way tag match when Penta pinned Beretta after a Fear Factor. With bad blood still boiling hot, Wednesday night's match will assuredly get ugly at points with none of the three men involved afraid to dole out - or incur - punishment. Whatever happens on Dynamite won't end the war, but all three men will be looking to get one over on their adversaries. Who will survive this brutal encounter?
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AEW Women's World Championship match: Toni Storm (c) (w/ Saraya and Ruby Soho) vs. Hikaru Shida - AEW's longest reigning women's champion has the chance to get the belt back around her waist when Hikaru Shida steps into the ring against Toni Storm. In her second reign as champion, Storm will be making her sixth defence of her title since defeating Jamie Hayter for it at Double or Nothing at the end of May. Storm is coming off of a win over Taya Valkyrie at Battle of the Belts VII on July 15 in Calgary. Shida defeated "The Native Beast" Nyla Rose for the AEW Women's World Championship at Double or Nothing 2020 and went on to hold it for 372 days before dropping it to Dr. Britt Baker, DMD, at Double or Nothing 2021.Since losing the title, Shida has gone on to wrestle for it on three occasions and has been unsuccessful in each attempt to regain it. One of those defeats actually came against Storm during her first reign as champion when Storm Zero put Shida away on the Oct. 18, 2022 Dynamite. That match has been the only singles bout between the two to date. Shida heads into the match on a roll as the winner of her last four singles matches in AEW including a hard-fought victory on last Friday's Dynamite against Rose. But as formidable an opponent as Storm is, Shida won't have the luxury of keeping her focus solely on the champion when her stablemates Saraya and Ruby Soho will be lurking on the outside. The Outcasts have never been afraid to get involved in a match and Wednesday night won't be any different. Can Storm make it six straight wins or will Shida once again claim the AEW Women's World Championship?
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Trios match: The Elite ("The Cleaner" Kenny Omega, Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson) (w/ "Hangman" Adam Page) vs. "The Last Outlaw" Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal and Satnam Singh (w/ Sonjay Dutt and Karen Jarrett) - Two weeks after their brutal encounter in the Blood & Guts match, three members of The Elite return to action when Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks (Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson) take on Jeff Jarrett, Jay Lethal and Satnam Singh in trios action. This will only be the third time that Jarrett, Lethal and the monstrous Singh have wrestled as a trio, but their different styles and abilities will undoubtedly be enough to trouble Omega and the Jacksons. It's highly unlikely that any of the three men have dealt with somebody with the size and strength of Singh and it will take a large amount of creativity to come up with a game plan for the giant nicknamed "The One in One Billion." There is, of course, still concern over what kind of shape that Omega and the Bucks will be in after the kind of hellacious trauma they put themselves through during Blood & Guts. Any kind of victory in that sort of match is bound to be pyrrhic and Jarrett, Lethal and Singh would be wise to exploit it. But with their war with the Blackpool Combat Club behind them, could The Elite use Wednesday night's match as a springboard to return to AEW World Trios Championship contention with the belts still residing around the waists of the team that defeated them for them in the House of Black (Malakai Black, "Big, Bad" Brody King and Buddy Matthews)? More importantly, do they have the physical wherewithal to deal with the challenge of Jarrett, Lethal and Singh?
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"The Ocho" Chris Jericho and Konosuke Takeshita (w/ Don Callis) vs. "The Spanish God" Sammy Guevara and "Red Death" Daniel Garcia - After weeks of courting by his old friend Don Callis in hopes of getting him to join his new family to rid AEW of The Elite, Chris Jericho is ready for a trial run as he teams up with Konosuke Takeshita in tag-team action. What makes the match so intriguing, though, is their opponents on Wednesday night - (former?) Jericho Appreciation Society members Sammy Guevara and Daniel Garcia. Guevara, Garcia and the rest of the JAS have made it clear in recent weeks that they don't support whatever kind of relationship it is between Jericho and Callis and feel abandoned by their leader. For his part, Jericho has told his (former?) charges that he can't be there for them forever and need to strike out on their own. Guevara and Garcia have done that over the past month as the duo advanced to the finals of the Blind Eliminator Tag Team Tournament where they ultimately fell to AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Adam Cole. While there were some bumps along the way, Guevara and Garcia proved they could function as an effective team and will undoubtedly prove to be a tough matchup for Jericho and Takeshita. The stakes on Wednesday night will be high with Callis out to demonstrate that Takeshita and Jericho can be unstoppable together, while Garcia and Guevara would love nothing more than to hand them a loss. Which team will get their hands raised in what will surely be an intriguing encounter?
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ROH World Tag Team Championship match: Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher and Mark Davis) (c) vs. AAA Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo and Komander (w/ Alex Abrahantes) - Kyle Fletcher and Mark Davis made their return to tag-team action in a big way at Death Before Dishonor when they claimed the ROH World Tag Team Championships in a four-way match that also included former champions Lucha Bros. (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fenix), Best Friends (Trent Beretta and Chuck Taylor) and The Kingdom (Matt Taven and Mike Bennett). The match was the duo's first in over two months with Davis sidelined after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his knee. The injury forced Aussie Open to vacate both the IWGP World Tag Team Championships and the NJPW Strong Tag Team Championships, but now they have gold back and are in no hurry to lose these belts. Of course, El Hijo del Vikingo and Komander will have different ideas. Two of lucha libre's premier high-flyers, the Mexican duo will give Fletcher and Davis everything they've got and will offer a taxing challenge to the new champions. The major edge that Aussie Open will have over their challengers is in the chemistry department. While Vikingo and Komander have faced off as opponents and shared the ring on the same side in trios and multi-man matches, they never wrestled as a tag team before. It will be imperative for the United Empire members to take advantage of Komander and Vikingo's unfamiliarity with one another. Will Aussie Open hang onto their titles or can Vikingo and Komander claim gold in their first match together?
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PLUS:
- After running down the name and legacy of Extreme Championship Wrestling on last week's Dynamite, FTW Champion Jack Perry goes face to face with ECW icon Jerry Lynn
- We hear from AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman after he and Adam Cole were unsuccessful in their attempt at taking the AEW World Tag Team Championships from FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler) on this past Saturday night's Collision