Winners, News And Notes On July 6, 2022

AEW Dynamite featured Jon Moxley vs. Brody King for the AEW Interim World Championship and Wardlow challenging Scorpio Sky for his first AEW championship in the form of the TNT Championship.

AEW opened with Wardlow’s big moment as Wardlow beat Scorpio Sky, with one foot on his chest, to become the new TNT champion.

Last week’s broadcast of AEW Dynamite drew 1.023 million viewers for Blood and Guts. With no sports competition from the NBA or the NHL, this number was AEW’s first show over one million viewers since March.

AEW Dynamite 7/6/2022 Match Card

• Wardlow vs. Scorpio Sky | TNT Championship
• Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee vs. The Butcher and The Blade
• Eddie Kingston Interview
• Christian Cage Interview
• Dark Order, Negative 1 Interview
• Penta Oscuro vs. RUSH
• The Acclaimed and The Gunn Club vs. Ruffin’ It and Fuego del Sol
• Thunder Rosa and Toni Storm vs. Marina Shafir and Nyla Rose

• June 29, 2022 | 1.023 million
• June 22, 2022 | 878,000
• June 15, 2022 | 761,000
• June 8, 2022 | 939,000
• June 1, 2022 | 969,000

• AEW Dynamite Venue: Blue Cross Arena (Rochester, N.Y.)
• AEW Tickets Distributed: 5,002
• AEW Tickets Available: 2,001

Tony Khan Comes for Yours Truly on Twitter (Pro Wrestling Bits)

AEW Dynamite Blood and Guts Results | June 29, 2022

Wardlow def. Scorpio Sky

The lingering possibility of an MJF return is the only way I see Wardlow losing this match. And even if he did, it would be yet another instance of MJF taking Wardlow’s heat away, which would just seem cruel.

Both of Scorpio Sky’s TNT Championship runs were empty and devoid of very many matches. But at least he carried himself as a champion and made the belt gold.

Wardlow was hugely over in front of this Rochester crowd, and this Street Fight win was reminiscent of Goldberg’s first championship victory over Raven in WCW under similar circumstances.

Wardlow winning TNT Championship undid a lot of wrongs done to him over the past couple months.

Christian Cage Mocks Jeff Hardy’s Addiction

The Hardy Boyz theme music played and was met with a “Jeff Hardy” pop. Turns out, the song was for Matt Hardy, which is cool, too.

Christian (and AEW) continues to top himself with deep heel remarks, and this week was another doozy. Christian went in on Jeff Hardy’s addiction issues, telling Matt “you’re making your brother sound like the sober one.” It only got worse from there as Christian’s new gimmick is “bottom-of-the-barrel Twitter troll.” Polarizing remarks aside, Christian is knocking every promo out of the park.

Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee def. Butcher and Blade

AEW continued to talk up Swerve and Keith Lee’s potential split, and I see it coming this month.

Strickland, Lee, Ricky Starks and Will Hobbs were actually in a very good talking segment. Then the Young Bucks came in, and one would assume that would make it better, but the segment was ultimately drowned out by “FTR” chants. The Young Bucks even had to improvise to address them. Despite this angle promoting a Triple Threat match, all these fans want in this division is FTR to be AEW world tag team champions.

JAS Destroys Ruby Soho

Between the Jericho Appreciation Society and Eddie Kingston, there sure have been a lot of death threats made throughout this feud.

AEW continues to use Ruby Soho in a top storyline in place of her wrestling in the women’s division, which will help rehabilitate this character. This week, Tay Conti slammed her arm with a car door.

Dark Order, Negative 1 Interview

Dark Order did a great job teasing that they were going to break up, only to swerve the audience and announce they were staying together. This is a tactic that WWE does to death—and it’s always predictable when a swerve is coming—but this segment was written perfectly to disguise it.

Negative 1—who helped The Dark Order get the better of QT Marshall—already has more than enough charisma to be a pro wrestler. He’s got some promise as the heir to the Dark Order throne.

RUSH def. Penta Oscuro

Jim Ross joined the broadcast team for the 6 pm PST hour as AEW continues to tinker with Ross calling Dynamite on a part-time basis. For those wondering, Ross was not wearing a vest or a jacket.

This was RUSH’s in-ring debut on Dynamite. A match against Penta Oscura means a possible showdown against Rey Fenix, which would be unbelievable no matter how much time they’re given.

AEW is obsessed with removing masks. Of all of Penta’s losses, I’ll bet at least half of them have come when somebody removes his mask.

The Gunn Club Turn on The Acclaimed

Fit Finlay was once fired for booking an angle where The Miz interrupted the National Anthem at a WWE house show. Whoever came up with this angle to have Austin Gunn interrupt a Max Caster freestyle should suffer the same fate.

The Gunn Club—and Billy Gunn—turned on The Acclaimed and one of the most entertaining stables in AEW history is no more. As a collective, their entrance was far too long for them to be persist long-term, but it was fun while it lasted.

Thunder Storm def. Marina Shafir and Nyla Rose

Thunder Storm (which is a great name) feels like a vehicle to turn Toni Storm heel. I can’t imagine AEW ultimately adding women’s Tag Team Championships given the litany of titles they already have.

Judging by the commentary and booking of Thunder Rosa, it feels like AEW does not have concrete plans as to what to do with her next.

Jon Moxley def. Brody King

The AEW broadcast team continued to insist that they would stay with this match no matter how long it took. I lost count of the amount of times they said this, Taz’s sole purpose on commentary seemed to be to get that over, so I was assuming this show had to have an overrun.

AEW cleverly booked Brody King to use the same suspension sleeper hold on Moxley that he eliminated Darby Allin with. King was a longshot to win this match, however, so fans didn’t believe Moxley was in danger for a second.

Moxley won this match with a submission, and King passed out presumably to protect the monster from tapping out. AEW Dynamite ended up going about two minutes over the hour and rushing off the air as the overrun was more of AEW going over time. When American Dad started, the intro was sped up to make up for lost time.