AEW Dynamite - a fifth anniversary love letter

It's a show capable of delivering moments of pure magic even if you think you know all the tricks.

October 2, 2019 - do you remember where you were when the first episode of AEW Dynamite aired? I know where I was.

Maybe it's my dirty secret but, when Dynamite hit the airwaves for the first time I was in Orlando, Florida, at Full Sail University to be exact, watching WWE NXT’s two-hour debut on the USA Network.  

I was with a group of media members who had been invited to witness as NXT entered a new era.

While the show was good, one of my lasting memories of the night happened when the assembled media all got on a bus together back to our hotel.

I remember someone gleefully announcing that Jack Swagger, now Jake Hager, had debuted for AEW. There were a lot of sniggers from my fellow passengers but I couldn't wait to see Dynamite for myself, because now I knew anything could happen.

That was a funny week in October 2019. Days later I was in Los Angeles for SmackDown's debut on Fox, where Brock Lesnar beat Kofi Kingston in record time.  

The night before, I remember sitting in a hotel bar and seeing Eric Bischoff looking kind of sad (he'd be let go from WWE days later) and Renee Paquette, then Renee Young, looking up at a TV screen as an advert for Dynamite featuring her husband Jon Moxley played.  

There was something in the air. WWE felt like it was desperately trying to plant its feet on the ground, reminding everyone of its past, while hinting at a future that could never really be possible with Vince McMahon at the helm.

For SmackDown's Fox debut legends like Hulk Hogan and Mick Foley were wheeled out on the blue carpet. The Rock even opened the show. WWE was saying, ‘Look at our history, look at everything we've done, we ARE wrestling.’  

Meanwhile, AEW was the new kid in town saying, 'Wrestling doesn't have to mean WWE, there's another way.'

AEW was able to do something that hadn't been done in 18 years, really challenge WWE with a weekly flagship TV show and it was no coincidence that this show would be on TNT.  

When I finally got to watch the first episode of Dynamite I was immediately hooked and locked into watching every week. 

While the first few months were good, things really took a turn for the better when we got to 2020.

When the pandemic hit and the world (outside of pro wrestling) shut down, AEW could have become a casualty of the worst possible circumstances.

A show that had just found its feet was now left without live crowds and confined to Daily's Place in Jacksonville.

But it was during the worst of times that Dynamite was at its best.  

The Daily's Place era gave me back a feeling that I'd been chasing for nearly two decades.  

I first started watching wrestling every week with WCW Nitro. This was late 1996 to early 1998 NWO-era WCW.  

With the wide-eyed innocence of a child and with my rose-tinted nostalgia glasses on, I could, for a long time, say that I had never experienced a better run of TV than Nitro had in those two years.  

Every Friday night (because yes, that's when it aired in the UK) I was locked in, on my sofa ready for Nitro and I couldn't get enough. In a world before the internet, when Nitro ended I was sad, I wanted more, and I couldn't wait until next week.  

I had never experienced a better run of TV than Nitro had in those two years… until the Daily's Place era of Dynamite. 

Alone because of the pandemic, I sat every Wednesday night watching some of the best wrestling television I have ever seen. 

I felt the joy and excitement of childhood again and now, in a world connected by the internet, I could talk about it. I could talk to my friends, I could tweet about it, I could turn on my laptop and make a video about it for YouTube. I could connect with people through wrestling in a way that had never been available to me as a kid.

The stories that AEW told and the moments they created in that period are ones I'll never forget.

Whether it was Sting debuting, MJF turning on the Inner Circle, Hangman and Omega, or Cody jumping off the cage, they are burned in my memory forever. ` 

The pandemic ending and AEW being able to move out of Daily's Place wasn't the end of Dynamite's hot streak. The company now had CM Punk, Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole.  

We will all give a different answer as to when the inevitable end of Dynamite's incredible run of TV came.

Five years in, it is still a great show. It's a show capable of delivering moments of pure magic even if you think you know all the tricks.  

It’s no exaggeration to say that AEW Dynamite changed my life and my career, if you don't believe that then, lucky you, you've not invested too much of your time and yourself into professional wrestling.  

To get in on the ground floor of a wrestling promotion, one who really could challenge WWE, was something I'd never dared to dream of. To be able to say you’ve watched all of a promotion, you know every story, seen every big match, that's incredible, that's worth hanging on to.

Whatever the next five years bring for AEW, Dynamite will always hold a special place in my heart.  

During the pandemic and for months afterwards, AEW was producing the best weekly wrestling television I have ever seen. It was a golden era, once in a lifetime, it was ELITE.

That's why I still will never miss an episode of Dynamite on TV, that's why I will go see AEW live, why I will talk about AEW,

write about AEW, and praise and criticise AEW.

AEW set out to change the world and, for me, it did. So cheers to five years of AEW Dynamite, the ups, the downs, and everything in between that makes it still the best wrestling show I have ever seen.