On October 2nd 2019, the very first episode of AEW Dynamite was broadcast on TNT. The main event of that night featured a six man tag match between the Elite, Santana & Ortiz and then-World Champion Chris Jericho.
The match begins very reminiscent of traditional Elite matches of the ye fabled olden times, condensed into a few minutes of entertainment. It has all the right spots: Matt and Nick firing up a hesitant at first crowd from the apron, spreading out three fingers and eliciting the time honored chants of “the Elite, the, the Elite”, while Kenny employs smooch-embellished chops and well-known combinations such as the leg slide and basement dropkick, or the Kotaro Crusher and Frankensteiner, to the by then, eager cheers of the crowd, all while commentary remarks what a return to form this was for Kenny and the Elite.
The real turning point, as far as volume is concerned, would of course be the double Superkicks to save a suddenly ensnared Kenny from the perils of Jericho’s finishing hold [1.], followed by another signature from the Bucks’ repertoire: the dropkick and suicide dive combination that sees Nick flying over Matt’s legs as he holds down the top rope. The crowd is the choir, and the Elite are the masterful conductors they have always been, commanding the tides and turns of attention with pinpoint accuracy. In hindsight, it’s so obvious how this was meant to lure everyone into a false sense of security, how it was meant to merely simulate, but not emulate, that feeling of triumph; but in the moment, with your vision clouded by nostalgia, you couldn’t help but fall for it.
As his opponents are spilled outside, Kenny prepares for another well-known move, whose theatrics the crowd cheers with a wave of jubilation and appropriate rhythmic claps:The Rise of the Terminator. However, crucially, before he can actually rise and execute the dive, he is beset by a seething, twitching Jon Moxleyāwho took the time Kenny spent kneeling to slither into the ring and prepare his assault, all of it set to the flaring anticipation of the audience and the realization dawning ever so deliciously on Kenny’s face.
Moxley had previously laid waste to both Jericho and a knocked-out, beaten Kenny at AEW’s inaugural Double or Nothing event, half a year before the first Dynamite. Back then, Moxley had gleefully driven Omega (who was already bleeding profusely due to a broken nose suffered from his match with Jericho) into a stack of stage props after a brief waltz through the crowd, and as it turned out, their second encounter wouldn’t end much differently.
Like at Double or Nothing, their fight takes them out of the ring as fast as their bodies allow them to, and then into the roaring, welcoming arms of the crowd. And as much as Kenny is no stranger to street fights and inappropriate use of scenery, this is Moxley’s home turf first and foremost, his playground, the one battleground he, given the opportunity, will always choose above all others. With the foreshadowing previously mentioned, it shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that this all ends in his favor, but as we are about to see in just a bit, there is, perhaps, one moment that was meant to fool us all, meant to lure us in and make us believe that Kenny had this one made, after all. The tease comes early, when Kenny briefly tries to keep Mox at bay with a trash can, but if the audience did not pick up on that as quickly as it’s over, they will, loudly and excitedly, when the combatants happen upon an abandoned cleaning apparatus between the bleachers.
It’s pornographic, really, if one looks at how meticulous and obvious it’s laid out. It’s pornographic in that it has one purpose, and one purpose only (much like the convenient and inexplicable materialization of a bed out of thin air for the couple in need), and it follows this purpose to completion with laser-guided focus. As soon as the crowd cheers loudly when Kenny picks up the mop and ends his attack on Mox with a literal cleaning of the floor (mimicking the comedic antics that had once been a staple of his, and a solid reason why fans worldwide had come to adore him so much), that purpose becomes crystal clear. It’s like Matt so assertively proclaimed before the beginning of the match, echoed by Excalibur during the mop spot: the Cleaner’s back, just as we all remember him.
Except, of course, that he’s not back, not at all, and his desire to convince the crowd (and, most importantly, himself) that he is, would ultimately become the very foundation of his inevitable downfall.
If you look at it pragmatically, there really was no way this all could ever have ended well, given a continuation of the trajectory that Kenny, and to an extent the whole of the Elite, was intent on staying on. The past is the past, it cannot be replicated, no matter how hard we try (and try, oh, try Kenny will in the months to come after this maiden episode of Dynamite), and to chase the banners and premonitions of some glory days gone by, seems to go against everything the Elite had set out to do with the founding of AEW in the first place: to start anew, to change the game, to inject a jolt of electricity into the inanimate body of North American mainstream wrestling that had, from their perspective, just laid there forgotten for too long.
While the Bucks valiantly hold down the fort in a now handicapped match against Santana, Ortiz and Jericho, Kenny and Moxley continue to brawl, until they find themselves within the cul-de-sac of the VIP area that exists, just like the trash can and the mop, for a single purpose only. It’s here that the exclamation point to Mox’ arrival in AEW is finally written, as well as to his feuding with Kenny, which will not, in fact, be another one-year challenge he can brute-force his way past by running his head into it over and over again. Mox runs Kenny through a glass coffee table with a DDT, and as his legs sprawl out over the shards and splinters, Mox exhilarated and panting next to him, him and the audience both slowly start to realize what exactly this whole charade was set up for.
Though the Young Bucks try their best, busting out beloved northern lights locomotion, rising knee strikes, spears and even teasing an Indytaker (that the veteran Jericho swiftly scouts and counters into a Codebreaker), they are morally outmatched and are forced to succumb to a dry three-count.
But wait, wasn’t this supposed to be a traditional Elite match? In a traditional Elite match, the Elite always wins, they always emerge victorious, and they always look damn good doing it, so what’s the meaning of all this? The question lingers and festers as the Bucks are attacked by Jericho and a forming Inner Circle, and even a run-in by Cody cannot save them from the unfair kicks and punches.
Not only were they assaulted and hurled out of the ring by the menacing force of nature that is Mox, but they were beaten clean in the ring as well, and then further humiliated by a rival faction on the very first TV episode of the venture that they themselves set in motion in the first place. Bookending the segment between Kenny’s claim of ājust getting startedā, and this silent but telling beatdown drives the point home with even more brutal finality than the DDT through the glass table; the point being that this is not at all the Elite of old, this is not at all the Kenny of old, that this is all wrong and twisted.
Both the gear donned by the Elite and the entrance exemplify this further. Instead of either Kenny’s or the Bucks’ new themes playing, they enter accompanied by the BTE theme, preceded by a special one-use-only VTR that was also shown on the BTE episode after this Dynamite. Said special VTR closely resembles the Marvel Studios splash that has become such a pop culture touch point for moviegoers, complete with orchestral music and bits and pieces of old episodes flying by like comic book pages. It seems playful, appropriate, to have three of the founding fathers of AEW be heralded for their first TV taping by the tongue-in-cheek references that their vlogs are often personified by, but if you followed the actual episodes leading up to this event, you’d quickly feel taken aback, shocked even, by what was happening on screen. In the face of the actual human drama that had unfolded in those episodes, the cheerful VTR and nostalgic BTE music seemed like poorly applied masking tape. “Nothing to see here,” it always screamed to me, “The Elite is totally fine“.
The street fight following Mox and Kenny’s confrontation visually represents in physical distance the emotional distance that had wormed its way into the trio. Even though it appears at first that this is something outside of Kenny’s control, like a violent storm sweeping the metaphorical roof off the Elite’s abode, the months to follow would show that the actual distance wasn’t something Mox or anyone else created. It was merely the lure, and Kenny bit into it and refused to let go until it was too late.
In the same vein as the entrance, the gear only appears fitting and appropriate on a surface level (all three of them matching in black and green, and the Bucks wearing DIY cropped tops), but the frayed tears and jagged edges of the Bucks [2.] set against the strangely sponsored feel of Kenny’s Razer tights and black-winged jacket are the real giveaway, and an effervescent expression of what was already bubbling underneath for years. [3.]
Kenny would later mutter “I’m coming apart at the seams” in a conversation with Matt, but that statement goes for everyone in the Elite, symbolized by this gear as a taste of the contortions that awaited us in the future. Similarly, a month after this Dynamite episode, Nick would exasperatedly exclaim “This is supposed to be fun”, albeit in a different context, but the seeds for that sentiment were sown long before this match, long before Dynamite, long before AEW. The Elite carried those seeds with them, just as their gear carried those connotations with it into the match.
The decline of Kenny’s mental health and his competitive standing within the company prior to and during this episode was just child’s play compared to what was about to come, a lukewarm appetizer for the real nosedive in the rollercoaster. In a way, the moment with the mop thus stands out as one of the most important beats in the story at largeāboth of the individual known as Kenny Omega and the Elite as a whole. It’s a point of no return, a final etching in the stone to prepare those who had not realized it yet for what was about to happen the following year and a half. “Remember those days?” it seems to say, with that taunting, gleeful smile, as it takes the mop, Kenny and the whole nostalgic attachment to the glorious past, and dangles it over the same trash can loyal fans had become so obsessed with. Then, it turns to the camera and widens its sickening smile. “You’re about to watch it all crash and burn”.
Perhaps the metaphors of rollercoasters and collapsing ruins aren’t fully apt. It would, after all, be no singular event, no one catalyst, that would propel this story towards the destruction it was seemingly always headed for. This is the Elite, and as much as they don’t do subtle, they also don’t do contrived, either. We aren’t strapped in for a sudden, uncontrolled demise after which we will move on to the next monster of the week. No, we are strapped in for the long run, an at times agonizingly slow train of hurt and suffering that will have you sit through the entire, sometimes joyful, sometimes baleful journey of it, or not at all. And it all starts here, with the corpses of the Elite, lying sprawled over shattered glass or over each other in the ring, helpless to do anything but despair.
With a story so much focused on juggling past expectations and desires to set sail in new, untested waters, so much focused on memory and nostalgia and the struggle to maintain a vision of the self that simultaneously outgrows and depends on both, one might make the mistake to think that an extensive knowledge of those past events and threads referenced here is required to even begin to enjoy the matches and story at. I think it’s quite obvious that that’s not the case. A large portion of AEW’s audience is not, in fact, as intimately acquainted with said story beats as us fanatics. Nonetheless, they are as enraptured by it as those who have followed the Elite all the way to here, and in my opinion that’s one of the clear strengths of AEW storytelling (the other, to me, being a focus on long-term investment and payoff).
It must be no easy feat to structure matches or plan out scenes in such a way that they neither alienate newcomers or casuals, nor neglect the attentive fans who love to analyze and feed aggressively on all the pieces of information they are given [4.] I think many people most strongly associate this dual skill with the Revolution 2020 match, which received praise for its captivating story and character moments, even from those who had no idea which famous tag team Kenny Omega was previously a part of that also faced the Young Bucks in a fateful encounter once upon a time , or what a Golden Trigger is, or why kicking out of one at a one count is so significant. But the first episode of Dynamite has those same properties for me, walking a tightrope walk between needing to establish a whole new (hopefully soon loyal) audience and rewarding those who had stuck with the Elite prior to TNT, prior to AEW perhaps. Mox was as much a key in this as were the other players (Dustin, Jericho, to name a few), even if back then we may not have seen it immediately. And though they brought their followings and established fame with them from other promotions, the company, in the words of Jarvis, was born yesterday.
A lot has changed since that yesterday. The deck has been shuffled many times, new players have sat down at the table (such as Adam Cole, whose thunderous arrival recently Completed the Elite), and the cards has been dealt anew. This week, AEW celebrates its second anniversary of Dynamite, and the Eliteānow in a different yet very familiar configurationāare once again asking for a dance, but if the previous night is any indication, things might go less than ideal. If you stuck with them through those two years (or one, or whenever you came aboard), you know they love their tragedy as much as they love their shimmering moments of happiness. Whichever happens, though, I have no doubt it was worth the wait. Thanks for reading.
[1.] As the most experienced player in this match, Jericho’s scouting and countering of moves is emphasized multiple times, a fact I can’t help but feel was part of the structure devised by the Elite for this whole segment.
[2.]There’s three versions of this gear: a poison-green and black one, a blood-red and black one that makes a telling comeback for a reformed Elite in 2021, and a more colorful version featuring the same yellow-blue-pink tones that would later be incorporated into the gear they wore, appropriately, for the star-studded Revolution 2020 match against Kenny and Hangman.
[3.]Trust me, the one-winged jacket is a topic for a whole other discussion. Thereās a lot going on here.
[4.]Why am I suddenly looking into a mirror as I say this?
