St. Patrick's Day Slam is a special episode of the weekly television series, AEW Dynamite, produced by All Elite Wrestling. It was held on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at Daily's Palace in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Highlights from this show include the first on-air interview with Christian Cage after signing with AEW, Jade Cargill's singles debut, the fallout from MJF's new faction laying waste to the Inner Circle  to close out last week's show, and the first ever AEW women's main event between Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. against Thunder Rosa in an unsanctioned lights out match. 



Match Results: 



Cody Rhodes (w/ Arn Anderson) def. Penta El Zero Miedo


It goes back and forth a bit until Pentagon starts targeting Cody's ailing shoulder. He motions for his signature "arm breaking" spot from Lucha Underground, but Cody manages to get out of position and steals the win from right from underneath Penta's nose since he was milking it for so long. Pentagon immediately assaults him post-match until the Nightmare Family (namely Arn, Dustin, and the Gunn Club) come running out for the save. Pentagon SLOWLY walks away without the babyfaces giving chase and even passes by QT Marshall on the ramp, causing the rest of the Nightmare Family members to demand what took him so long. It seems like they are continuin this issue of desention between QT and the rest of the Nightmare Family members as he even turned his back on his former students in the group on last week's broadcast. Are they seriously thinking that QT could be a breakout heel at this point against the rest of the Nightmare Family? Sounds like a complete waste of time to me.

Then again, this is the same company that gave the Bucks' childhood friend a winning streak on Dark and job working for AEW Games with Kenny Omega...







Jade Cargill wins a quick squash vs. Dani Jordan


The best part of this were the tweets back and forth from them on Twitter all morning leading up to this match, only for Dani to tweet later that evening, asking "Did I win?" following her abrupt loss.



This is exactly what it needed to be, short, sweet and to the point with Jade going over. I have to say that Jade's kicks look odd as hell. Maybe she needs to work on that a bit more. Otherwise, I'm fine with how she's coming along.





New Faction Promo


This was exactly what it needed to be following this new faction, what Tully Blanchard dubs, "The Pinnacle" during his promo. Tully did this masterfully well to lay out the groundwork for this promo and handed it off to MJF, who knocked it out of the park with a homerun. He explains that he was biding his time working underneath Jericho until he had the perfect opportunity and knocked down the entire Inner Circle like bowling pins. The Pinnacle declares themselves as the most powerful faction in AEW. 

No arguments from me when the not-so-Bullet Club or BTE (Being The Elite) guys are in disarray, the Nightmare Family is a bigger clusterfuck of talent than Master P and his No Limit Soldiers in WCW, and the Dark Order is still pretty much direction-less following the untimely demise of Brodie Lee. No disrespect to Brodie Lee, but were the Dark Order EVER a powerful stable outside of that hot minute when Brodie Lee killed Cody, Brandi, and majority of the Nightmare Family to win the TNT Championship? Oh yeah... let's not forget Hardy Inc., who's another clusterfuck of talent that we'll get into with the next match. 

I'm really anxious to see where this stable ends up in the next year or two. Hopefully not down the same route of bad comedy and show toons that the Inner Circle devolved into. A lot of people seem to be leaning towards the idea that AEW could be leading this feud between the Pinnacle and the Inner Circle into that Blood & Guts (AEW's version of War Games) match that never happened between the BTE guys and Inner Circle last year amongst COVID-19 concerns and safety protocols. I wouldn't be opposed to that, but the Pinnacle shouldn't be losing that match either. 








Hardy Inc. def. Jurassic Express and Bear Country


I said it while livetweeting during the show last night and I'll repeat myself here too. Hardy Inc. should be called "Team Clusterfuck" from the random assortment of talent that AEW clearly has no idea what to do with on a regular basis that they have lumped up together within Hardy's "acquisitions" of talent to hoard around and do his bidding. Bear Country comes across to me as a similar team in the vein of War Machine (Hanson and Rowe) from Ring of Honor before they went to WWE and became the War Raiders/Viking Raiders.

I didn't get why they were letting Marko Stunt get so much offense in. At least everyone bumped like crazy for Luchasaurus, who is admittedly getting rather stale now that the honeymoon period is over for this company. He does those kicks to his moonsault in every match now to the point where it's not even special anymore. 

Matt Hardy stole the win for his team after a bit of showboating, but it's like whatever at this point. Sure, Hardy Inc. needs wins for those losers that he has aligned with him, but is really a win when no one really cares about anyone in this match?






Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley def. Good Brothers


I think Moxley works better in a tag team than he does as singles talent if you ask me. This way he can do his signature spots while the heels feed for him off the hot tag(s). Kingston played the part of the babyface fighting from underneath masterfully here. By the end of the match and during the post-match attack though, he ate far too much abuse from the heels without getting anything in. They hit him with what, 2-3 Magic Killers, before this was all said and done?

I couldn't care any less about the Young Bucks and the rest of the former Bullet Club members having a rift down the middle of their not-so-happy relationship. Why should this matter when the Bucks act like douchebag heels 24/7 regardless if they are heels or babyfaces anyway?





Sting and Darby Allin Interview


I can't speak for anyone else but I'm flat out sick and tired of these Tony Schiavone interviews with Sting that get interrupted week to week. It's been the same goddamn thing for roughly THREE months in a row now. You can't tell me that this is the only material that they could cook up for this guy to do on a week to week basis. 

As for the "interview" if you can even call it that, I still don't know what the fuck that they are doing with Lance Archer. One week, he's a babyface and then on another, he's a heel. I'm sick of caring at this point, yet people complained about The Big Show turning so much. Well, Archer is on his way to follow in Big Show's footsteps in that regard. 

The most headscratching thing about this interview was Brian Cage addressing Sting and talking about how much he respects him after their match at Revolution two weeks ago. It comes across as Cage is going babyface so much to the point that even Taz utters "What the hell are you doing!?" while the rest of Team Taz looks on confused. Cage merely walks off and that's the end of this. 

Should they really be trying to split this group up NOW? I really don't get how this company thinks in terms of their storylines and angles sometimes. They spent the better part of a year fucking up Brian Cage in terms of storylines and feuds, only for a random light bulb to go off with the idea of turning him babyface? You can't tell me that this guy isn't reconsidering that decision to leave IMPACT last year at this point from how much AEW has mishandled him. 




Singles Match
Rey Fenix (w/ PAC) def. Angelico (w/ Jack Evans)


This was one of the rare occasions where you didn't miss anything of note if you decided to fast-forward through a Rey Fenix match. I don't get why this match was so far into this card and served as essentially a nothing match to serve as filler before the main event.





Unsanctioned Lights Out Match
Thunder Rosa def. Britt Baker (w/ Rebel)


Simply put, this match was for AEW's women's division that the No Mas Match in Lucha Underground between Mariposa (Cheerleader Melissa) and Sexy Star (despite what you may think of her currently after the fact...) was for that division at the time. It is going to put more eyeballs onto AEW's women's division that it desperately needs while at the same time, elevating both Thunder Rosa and Britt Baker. The only other noteworthy Britt Baker match in AEW prior to this was her match where Hikaru Shida broke her nose roughly a year ago. Ironic that she was left with a crimson mask by the time that was all said and done too. Britt Baker seems to thrive in these matches where almost any other female performer would throw in the towel. My only concern here is that this doesn't give AEW or any other promotion for that matter, the excuse that the only way women's matches are going to draw high ratings is to toss the women into a bloodbath. This is false. A strong, compelling narrative that fans can invest into will do the exact same thing. You don't have to have these women shorten their careers by making this into a trend. 

As for this match itself, there were some great spots in here, but my biggest knock against this match was it would have meant a lot more if these women would take a moment and sell the punishment being inflicted upon all of them. Britt Baker was lucky to have an excellent worker like Thunder Rosa to lead her throughout a match like this, but there were multiple points during this match where I could do nothing but shake my head at the women completely no selling the punishment that they were putting their bodies through here. I don't blame the women for this, but it kills a lot of these hardcore matches for me when guys and gals completely no sell the superplex spot onto a stack of chairs. Like c'mon... It wouldn't have killed Britt Baker to sell the ladder being kicked into her face for a few more moments when she had blood pouring down her face for an added effect. They completely no sold the spot onto the thumbtacks just to rush through the spot off the ring apron for the finish too. (Laughs) Why can't some of these people sell like death like how Reba (or Rebel) sold that table bump towards the end?

All that being said, I applaud the ladies for how hard they worked here. By the time it was all said and done, both of these women came across as battle-tested warriors, no matter what you may think of them. In that regard, it was a job well done for keeping many fans invested in the high stakes of a match like this from bell to bell. 




Closing Thoughts: 


The praise for this show's main event seems to be unamious in terms of the positive reception of the ladies in that spot. They went above and beyond to deliver in that regard, but I can't help thinking that so many people were blown away by that match when the bar for the AEW Women's Division has been so low to begin with until excellent workers like Thunder Rosa, Leyla Hirsh, and Serena Deeb came along. Outside of those names, AEW's women's division is full of women who have good, consistent workers who don't embarrass themselves to others who are obviously not ready to be performing week-to-week on live television. To be fair, WWE is no stranger to putting their women out there to sink or swim either. If Thunder Rosa wasn't a star tonight then her star shown even brighter after this match. Britt Baker definitely deserved her share of that too, especially with the fact that Rosa has to return back to NWA this weekend for their PPV and their following TV tapings for new episodes of NWA Powerrr finally returning. Britt proved that she was more than a chicken shit heel here and showed that she could take her share of abuse while dishing it back out too. 

I don't necessarily agree with a lot of other critiques of this show, saying that this main event was the only thing worth watching tonight. Jade Cargill continues to impress with her singles match debut and I thought the formal induction to The Pinnacle with Tully and MJF cutting promos to put the new faction over was well worth the time. Everything else was your run of the mill episode of what we've come to expect on Dynamite on most weeks. I honestly still don't get why they went out of their way to bill this as a "special" episode of Dynamite just for St. Patrick's Day when there was only one marquee match.
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