AEW Dynamite Match Review: 16 February 2024
Broken hearts and broken faces for Valentine’s Day
WARNING: THIS WEEK’S REVIEW IS PRETTY GORY, SO LEAVE NOW OR PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. PARENTAL GUIDANCE IS RECOMMENDED FOR THE YOUNGINS.
Normally Valentine’s Day is a day for love and happiness - but it seems the wrestlers in this week’s match didn’t get that memo. Sure, there were boxes of chocolates and bouquets of flowers, but they certainly weren’t used to make anyone feel loved. Instead, they were used to inflict a bunch of pain onto anyone who came into contact with them.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
This week’s Dynamite took place at the H-E-B Center in Cedar Park, Texas. It would have been great to be in the crowd for the Texas Death Match main event especially, because of how much of it spilled over into the audience area. I wouldn’t have hated to have the wrestlers fighting it out right next to my seat.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
The only way to win the Texas Death Match is by knockout or submission, and it is as savage as the title suggests. The two booked wrestlers, reigning International Champion Orange ‘Freshly Squeezed’ Cassidy and Ring of Honor tag-team champion Matt Taven, really didn’t pull any punches with each other at all. They also didn’t hold back on using weapons this week, which was great, because I’ve been missing that from a lot of matches in AEW recently.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
Cassidy was kindly gifted a box of chocolates by his friend Chuckie T., which was actually filled with thumbtacks to pour onto the mat and cause as much damage as possible to Taven. At first it backfired for Cassidy when Taven pushed him into them, but then Taven dived into them accidentally and then Cassidy DDT’d Taven right onto them again. I can’t imagine how much that would have hurt Taven, especially going into his hands like that.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
There was no shortage of furniture used either, from the tables through to what seemed like an endless supply of chairs pulled from under the ring. Cassidy in particular got slammed into the tables a few times. At one point, Taven got up onto the stage, and, as the crowd were booing him, launched himself onto Cassidy who was on the table below. Brutal, considering the stage is a lot higher than we might think from what we see on the broadcast.
When Trent Beretta, Mike Bennett, and Roderick Strong made surprise appearances at different points in the match, it was clear that they were in the firing line too. But it didn’t scare them off. A seemingly sweet Valentine’s gift turned dark when Beretta first appeared, as he went from carrying a box of flowers to revealing a steel pipe hidden amongst them. He was ready to inflict some damage. This was after Cassidy had introduced a steel chain from under the ring, too, so things definitely escalated at this point.
Being a ‘survival of the fittest’ kind of match meant that the wrestlers were pretty relentless in going after each other, and were covered in more and more blood for every minute that went on. Check out the gashes in Cassidy’s head in particular - I wonder how many stitches he must have needed to close that gash up again. You can also see blood all over their clothes and the canvas too, so the damage of the thumbtacks was pretty intense.
In the end it was Cassidy that came out on top, which was impressive, because he had spent a lot of the match copping hits from Taven especially. Romance was definitely not in the air as everyone else had been knocked out. I’m sure they’ll be more cautious of boxes of chocolates, flowers, or furniture in future.
To be honest, it was good to see such an exciting match from AEW this week. I’ve been missing that edginess that made the company so great to begin with, and I hope they have more like this coming up for future events.
Image courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
I give this match 3.5 out of 5 stars:
