AEW Booms/Duds: Jericho calls out “Iron” Mike Tyson

After a thoroughly enjoyable Double or Nothing, how did AEW continue the momentum with last night’s Dynamite? Let’s review the “booms” and “duds” for May 27.

That “Stadium Stampede” was something else, huh?

Sure, it wasn’t for everybody and certain segments within the match tested the patience of some viewers, but it was different and fun. AEW made good use of the stadium available to them, and I’m pretty sure everyone popped when Jaxson de Ville was hit with Chris Jericho’s Judas Effect.

After the events of that match and the rest of Double or Nothing, which saw The Elite defeat Inner Circle; Cody win the TNT Championship; Jon Moxley retaining his World Championship; Hikaru Shida becoming the new Women’s Champion; and the thunderous debut of “The Machine” Brian Cage as the mystery ninth participant and winner in the Casino Ladder Match, how were new stories and feuds set last night?

Cage winning and Moxley retaining has them set for a match at Fyter Fest “sometime this summer” as Jim Ross stated, much more time than the original announcement of last night. How did AEW begin the build to their eventual match?

There was also a battle royal last night to determine Cody’s first challenger for his freshly won TNT Championship. AEW has been insistent that this title is not a mid-card title and should be respected on the level of the World Championship; was this reinforced by the events of last night?

Shida is the new Women’s Champion and had her first match (non-title) as champion. We know former Women’s Champion Nyla Rose won’t just sit around quietly, and competitors like Kirs Statlander, Penelope Ford, and Big Swole seem primed for big runs. Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. also appeared live last night (with her assistant “Reba”) to update fans on her unfortunate knee injury.

Lastly, after their disappointing but highly entertaining defeat to The Elite, Inner Circle held a pep rally to gather the troops after what has been a rather rough couple of months. What did this pep rally entail, and what does this mean for Inner Circle?

As a reminder of my criteria, I’m not going to run through each match/segment. Rather, I will identify a couple of segments that either worked (“boom”) or didn’t for whatever reason (“dud”).

My criteria includes quality of match/segment and how it starts and/or builds stories. After all, we watch partly to be caught up in the stories. If a great work-rate match happens with no context or bearing on the stories, it’s going to be a miss.

Also, just because something is a hit/miss doesn’t mean it was an overwhelming choice. The selection could be 51 percent hit, 75 percent miss, and so on.

There are other subtleties to my criteria, but those are pretty much the parameters.