The War Report - March 03, 2021: SHAQUILLE O’NEAL
NXT vs. AEW: Dynamite - which was the better show this week?
Storyline Development
The fallout of Adam Cole being a nasty little man continued, with Roddy acting as the crux of the story this week. While Strong’s promo wasn’t very… strong, his match with Bálor was unsurprisingly really good, and it was announced for next week’s NXT that Cole will face Finn for the title. If Kyle O'Reilly doesn’t show up I’ll eat Cameron Grimes’ hat.
Toni Storm vs. Io Shirai will also take place next week, in what is shaping up to be a super stacked edition of NXT. No Xia Li this week, but Kayden Carter kept things ticking over with an update on Kacy, and some fire in her quest for vengeance. Good luck pal.
The Swerve vs. Ruff feud continues, and I’m really liking where it is going. If it doesn’t eventually end up being a feud over the North American title, then I’l eat… someone else’s hat I suppose. Speaking of which, no Kushida yet again.
Santos Escobar turned up to batter a few people and snarl down the mic, and The Way vs. Dexter Lumis shows no signs of slowing down. Very intrigued to see where it leads.
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Where to start with AEW eh? As this was a go-home show there was a ton of story development.
We have the second-to-last competitor confirmed for the Face of the Revolution ladder match, and with Ryo Mizunami defeating Nyla Rose we have our number one contender for Hikaru Shida’s title. The two competitors even had a good natured scrap because why not.
Sting and Darby vs. Team Taz rumbles on, and while I am looking forward to the match, this whole angle has had far too much TV time.
Matt Hardy’s vow to hurt the Dark Order stayed intact as he and Jack Evans cost 10 a spot in the ladder match, while Hardy's post-match beatdown of Adam Page after the main even was pretty good too. Oh and then seemingly the entire tag division ran out for a huge punch-up.
The most welcome bit of storyline development concerned FTR & Tully. With the returning Shawn Spears definitely part of the fold - never mind JJ Dillon being out there - could we finally be seeing AEW’s much rumoured Four Horsemen? Arn Anderson flashing the four fingers to JJ was intriguing too. I hope they do something with Spears though, I’d like to see him sniffing around the TNT Title.
Winner: AEW. This week was stacked, and there was a ton of stuff I didn’t even manage to talk about, like Scorpio Sky saying The West Texas Rednecks were right. Revolution is shaping up to be a hell of a show, but the fallout edition of Dynamite faces stiff competition from next week’s loaded NXT.
