[2024-01-17-AEW-Dynamite] Samoa Joe vs Hook

[ShittyLittleBoots]

Samoa Joe defends the AEW World Championship

Fuck yes what a match. Joe looks like an absolute beast throughout, just destroying Hook in exploding fashion, and Hook looks like a badass taking that punishment & having superb moments of his own on the offense with his comebacks. 9 minutes of pure kickass action. ****

[KawadaSmile]

Yes. Simple, straight to the point, everybody played their part perfectly and it was just so damn good. Joe is obviously great, and while I'm not the biggest Hook fan there is, he looked great with his selling. 

This deviated so much from the usual AEW World Title matches, you have to love it. 

[The Man in Blak]

I'll be the wet blanket and say that this didn't quite land for me. As much as I like Hook, the story of the match is Joe giving him way, way too much here as an underdog challenger.

If you squint, you can see this match as a PG callback to the famous (if somewhat overrated) match that Joe had with Necro Butcher, with both encounters hinging on two big moments at the midway point that throw the whole contest into jeopardy. For Hook, it's an absolutely gnarly uranage into the announcer's desk and then a considerably less gnarly power bomb on to the ring apron, which nonetheless got milked into a countout tease from referee Bryce Remsburg (hilariously, the same ref in Joe/Butcher).

The Butcher match succeeded by using those two big moments as immediate and, more importantly, lasting game changers; Necro Butcher mounted his own comebacks for Joe to cutoff, but there was a desperation and a raggedness to Butcher's offense that still managed to put over the idea that he had been hit by a truck. And then by a second truck. (Yes, bleeding profusely did help to build the illusion there.)

Meanwhile, in the Hook match, Joe nonchalantly follows up the counter tease with a powerslam (another Butcher match callback?) for two, a Death Valley Driver for two and then takes Hook into a Muscle Buster...where Hook immediately kicks out at one and turns into Hulk Hogan.

With Joe/Butcher, Joe responded to Butcher's final comeback by escalating, furiously fighting back with his own slaps, knees and then one final kick to the head to finally put the zombie down. It's an exclamation mark that puts both guys over: you leave that match thinking that nobody could have delivered that beating like Joe and nobody could have taken that beating like Butcher and still fought as long and as hard as he did. 

When we come back to AEW in 2024, we settle for shortcuts instead. We have Samoa Joe, legendary bully who's wrestled for over two decades, acting stunned after a one count kickout and cowering like he's seen a ghost. Rather than escalating, he frantically feeds Hook's superman comeback for a while until he abruptly counters out of Redrum out of nowhere into a Kokina Clutch that finishes the match with no drama whatsoever. And then, just to drive home the fact that Hook's last comeback didn't mean anything, he gets his heat back by beating up Hook after the match. Plot twist, plot twist, then an abrupt -- and flat -- end to the book.

Sure, you can charitably frame this as 2024 Samoa Joe being a little older and a little more nonchalant with underdog challengers than 2005 Samoa Joe and let that contrast tell the tale of the match. But where do both guys go from here? Joe's a newly minted champ that seems to have barely escaped the first upstart challenger that he faced, less than a month into his title reign? Hook almost had the champ beat and then I guess he didn't?

The match, as a whole, felt fresh because it was the first no-bullshit AEW World Title match in months and they played it straight, but tell me if this feels like a four-star asskicking if you watch it six months from now.

 

[Tenese Sarwieh]

A thrilling David/Goliath encounter unfolded with incredible moments, showcasing Joe's beastly performance, and delivering impressive comebacks and hope spots for Hook.