Cassidy, Ospreay team up on Dynamite on TSN2
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Orange Cassidy and Will Ospreay team up to take on Trent Beretta and Roderick Strong. Plus, AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland meets Nick Wayne and Bryan Danielson faces off with Satnam Singh. You can catch AEW Dynamite LIVE at 8pm et/5pm pt on TSN2, streaming on the TSN App and on TSN.ca.
"Freshly Squeezed" Orange Cassidy and Will Ospreay vs. Trent Beretta and AEW International Champion Roderick Strong (w/ Matt Taven, Mike Bennett and Wardlow) - Before a pair of heated singles matches at this weekend's Double or Nothing pay-per-view, Orange Cassidy and Will Ospreay team up to take on their respective PPV opponents on Wednesday night in the form of Trent Beretta and the AEW International Champion Roderick Strong. Cassidy will take on former ally Beretta for a second time in under a month since the dissolution of Best Friends when Beretta turned on Cassidy and later shattered Chuck Taylor's ankle so severely that the future of his wrestling career is in doubt. On the May 8 edition of Dynamite in Edmonton, Cassidy got the better of Beretta when used an exposed turnbuckle to schoolboy him. But Beretta got the last laugh with a post-match attack that saw him hit Cassidy with a spike piledriver on the steel steps. It was only with the intervention of Don Callis, who was sitting in on commentary, that the beating stopped. Callis's intentions in all of this remain unclear with the Don Callis Family head having scouted both men in recent weeks. As for Ospreay, he will challenge Strong on Sunday night in his first title match in AEW. Ospreay earned the title match by winning a Casino Gauntlet Match on the Apr. 24 Dynamite when he defeated Dante Martin, Jay Lethal, "Switchblade" Jay White, Komander, Penta El Zero Miedo, Lance Archer and Komander. On last week's Dynamite, Ospreay and Strong had a heated verbal confrontation in which "The Aerial Assassin" revealed that Strong has been trying to kneecap over the course of his career, badmouthing him to peers in a variety of promotions including Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla. Ospreay plans to use Sunday's title match to beat some respect into Strong. Before that goes down, though, there is the matter of Wednesday's tag-team match. Who wins and loses won't matter as much as who can send the strongest message headed into the weekend. Both teams would love nothing more than to show up the other and make sure that their opponents know they're out for blood on Sunday night. Which of these four men will pick up a victory?
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AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland vs. "The Prodigy" Nick Wayne (w/ "The Patriarch" Christian Cage, Killswitch and Mother Wayne) - Swerve Strickland isn't trying to hide from his past. He will be the first to admit that he's done some heinous things in order to get ahead. But he also recognizes that becoming AEW World Champion gave him the opportunity to change his ways. Still, sometimes old debts still need to be repaid. On last week's Dynamite, after Strickland had defeated "The Machine" Brian Cage in a hard-fought AEW World Title Eliminator Match, Christian Cage, Swerve's opponent in the AEW World Championship match at Double or Nothing, appeared on the ramp and headed down to ringside. With Strickland distracted, he was laid out from behind by Nick Wayne and Killswitch. To add insult to injury, Wayne took a framed photo of Strickland and his family and broke it over the world champion's head. It was payback for last summer when Strickland entered Wayne's family home and laid a beating on him that culminated with a broken family photo over his head. That beating was something that Wayne clearly had not forgotten about and he'd been waiting for nearly a year to exact his revenge. On Wednesday night, the two men will face off in singles action. The two men are hardly strangers to one another. It was Strickland who Wayne beat in April 2023 to capture the DEFY World Championship in Seattle. The two also had a singles match weeks later in AEW with Swerve picking up the win this time. In three career matches against one another, Wayne holds a 2-1 edge. Though further revenge will be on Wayne's mind on Wednesday night, it's impossible to look at this match outside the context of Sunday's world championship bout. Wayne undoubtedly has marching orders from Cage to soften Swerve up ahead of that match. That is paramount to revenge as far as Cage is concerned and the former TNT Champion will undoubtedly be on hand to help Wayne along in that venture. Will Swerve once again enter Wayne's World or can the champion let his challenger know he's ready for Sunday night?
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"The American Dragon" Bryan Danielson vs. Satnam Singh (w/ Jay Lethal, "The Last Outlaw" Jeff Jarrett, Sonjay Dutt and Karen Jarrett) - Ahead of Sunday night's Anarchy in the Arena Match at Double or Nothing, The Elite (Nicholas Jackson, Matthew Jackson, "The Rainmaker" Kazuchika Okada and "The Scapegoat" Jack Perry) have made it no secret that there's a bounty on the head of Bryan Danielson. They will gladly pay for somebody to injure Danielson before he teams with Darby Allin and FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler) at the pay-per-view. Allin is actually an injury replacement for Eddie Kingston, who was already taken out by the Young Bucks and Perry at New Japan Pro-Wrestling's Resurgence show on May 11. Stepping up to the plate to claim the money from the AEW executive vice-presidents is none other than Satnam Singh. The hulking Punjabi giant will be making his Dynamite singles debut in the match and the largest man in AEW will present the kind of challenge that Danielson has seldom faced over the course of his storied career. Danielson has taken on the likes of Paul Wight, Great Khali and Big Bill in the past, but Singh is 7-foot-4 and will be the largest man with whom he's ever shared a ring. How he will handle a man that size remains to be seen because relying on submission holds will be hard to do when you can't manage to ground your opponent. Perhaps Danielson's best best is to attempt to tire his much larger opposition, but does he really want to extend his time in the ring on Wednesday night with Sunday's grudge match quickly approaching on the horizon. There is also the matter of Singh's crew of flunkies and The Elite themselves making their presence known at ringside. The last thing Danielson needs is more to contend with when he will already have his hands full with the monstrous Singh. Can Danielson somehow pull off an upset or will Singh prove that size matters most?
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AEW Women's World Champion "Timeless" Toni Storm and "The Glamour" Mariah May (w/ Luther) vs. Saraya and Harley Cameron - Credit is due to Harley Cameron. In back-to-back weeks, the Aussie took on the far more experienced duo of Mariah May and AEW Women's World Champion Toni Storm and held her own before ultimately falling prey first to a Mayday and then to Storm Zero. This Wednesday night, Cameron will once again step into the ring with May and Storm, but this time it won't be singles action. On Dynamite, Cameron will team with former AEW Women's World Champion Saraya. The match will mark the first time that Saraya and Cameron have teamed together, so whether or not there will be any in-ring chemistry remains to be seen. While the bond between Storm and May is a closer one, the match comes only days before Storm is set to defend her world title at Double or Nothing against "The Professor" Serena Deeb. It can be argued, then, that Cameron and Saraya are catching Storm at the right time when the champion will undoubtedly have one eye on Sunday night. That might be just the opening they need to get the better of Storm and May. Should either of the two women manage to defeat Storm, a title match down the road could be in the offing. And there is, of course, the history between Storm and Saraya to consider here. The duo were two-thirds of the Outcasts faction in AEW until Storm went, uh, in a different direction to become the "Timeless" version you see today. Can May and Storm beat Cameron again or will Cameron and Saraya earn a key win?
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FTW Championship No. 1 contendership match: Hook vs. "The Wrestler" Katsuyori Shibata vs. "The Bounty Hunter" Bryan Keith - "The Learning Tree" Chris Jericho needs an opponent for his FTW Championship at Double or Nothing and he will found out who it is on Wednesday night when former champion Hook takes on Katsuyori Shibata and Bryan Keith in the final of the FTW Contenders Series on Dynamite. Each of the three men won a match to advance to Wednesday's three-way. Hook choked out Johnny TV with Redrum on Collision, while Shibata beat Rocky Romero and Keith got the better of the Iron Savages' Boulder, also on Collision. The match means the most to Hook, who is a two-time FTW Champion, with the title having been made famous by his father, "The Human Suplex Machine" Taz. On top of that, Hook wants revenge on Jericho for the manner in which he took his championship, resorting to a low blow and shots from a baseball bat. Shibata would also love another crack at Jericho after having previously been defeated by the eight-time world champion for the title on the May 1 edition of Dynamite thanks to the intervention of Big Bill. For Keith, the match represents the opportunity to earn just his second shot at a championship in AEW, having previously come up short against Orange Cassidy for the AEW International Championship this past December. The fact that the match is a three-way will obviously inform each man's strategy and one of the three is going to come out of Wednesday night a loser without even being pinned or submitted. Which of these three men has what it takes to earn himself a shot at Jericho?
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"The Alpha" Konosuke Takeshita (w/ Don Callis) vs. Matt Sydal - Konosuke Takeshita is on the path towards gold. The five-time KO-D Openweight Champion in DDT is set for an IWGP World Heavyweight Title Eliminator Match at Double or Nothing against the champion Jon Moxley. Beat Mox on Sunday and he earns himself a title shot. He could become just the third person to hold the top prizes in both DDT and New Japan Pro-Wrestling, following in the footsteps of Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi. Before he can do that, though, he has one final tune-up match on Wednesday night against Matt Sydal. It will be an emotional Dynamite for Sydal. On last week's show, he and close friend "The Fallen Angel" Christopher Daniels fell in a World Tag Team Title Eliminator match to AEW World Tag Team Champions the Young Bucks (Nicholas Jackson and Matthew Jackson) before the Jacksons, in their roles as AEW executive vice-presidents, fired Daniels as both a wrestler and as head of talent relations. Perhaps getting right back on the horse will be exactly what Sydal needs, but the challenge of Takeshita is an immense one. While the match will mark the first singles meeting between the two, Takeshita and Sydal have shared a ring three previous times with the former holding a 2-1 edge in tag-team and multi-person matches. Takeshita heads into the match coming off of a win over the legendary Minoru Suzuki at a DDT show this past weekend in Osaka. Can Takeshita continue to build up some momentum ahead of his date with Mox or will Sydal bounce back from a rough week?
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Kyle O'Reilly vs. Malakai Black (w/ "Big, Bad" Brody King and Buddy Matthews) - For the first time in AEW, Kyle O'Reilly goes one on one with Malakai Black with the TNT Championship looming large in the background. At Double or Nothing on Sunday night, Black will challenge the TNT Champion "The Rated-R Superstar" Adam Copeland for the title in a barbed wire steel cage match. The bout comes as Black and the rest of the House of Black have attempted to push Copeland to his breaking point over the past couple of months. Copeland has already defeated Buddy Matthews and Brody King in title matches, but the threat of Black is an interesting one. There are few other competitors in all of pro wrestling capable of playing the kind of inscrutable mind games that are Black's trademark. O'Reilly has been Copeland's ally in this fight against the House of Black, but perhaps his motivations haven't exactly been completely altruistic. He leveraged his assistance into a title shot against Copeland on the May 11 edition of Collision in which Copeland retained his title. Still, O'Reilly attempted to help even the odds last week when the House of Black jumped Copeland and ate The End from Black for his troubles. But it's safe to say that if O'Reilly manages to pick up a victory over Black on Wednesday night, he would be setting himself up for another shot at the title should Black be victorious on Sunday. O'Reilly and Black have had only one singles match in the past with Black picking up the victory back in the summer of 2017. In eight total matches between the two men, Black holds a 5-3 edge. Will Black head into Sunday's cage match on a roll or will O'Reilly force himself back into the title picture?
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PLUS:
- IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Jon Moxley will be in the building
- Fresh off of a backstage beating of "The Bastard" PAC last week, we will hear from AEW Unified Trios Champions Bullet Club Gold ("Switchblade" Jay White, Austin Gunn and Colten Gunn)
- We will take a closer look at Sunday night's TBS Championship match between champion Willow Nightingale and the challenger, "The CEO" Mercedes Mone
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