There was a big irregularity during the main event of Wednesday’s “AEW Dynamite” which saw a title change that crowned Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland) as the new AEW World Tag Team Champions.
Wednesday’s main event was a three-way match, with now-former champions The Young Bucks defending against Swerve In Our Glory and the team of Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs. The rules of the match were that only two men could legally be in the match at any given time.
An examination of the closing moments of the match reveals that Strickland did not pin the legal man to get the win. For the purpose of this analysis, we will be referring to the times in the video of the match posted to AEW’s YouTube channel which you can also find at the bottom of this article.
At around the 4:15 mark, Swerve Strickland tags into the match off of Ricky Starks, and Matt Jackson tags into the match off of Nick Jackson.
Referee Rick Knox acknowledges that Strickland and Matt Jackson are the legal men in the match by counting two pin attempts on Strickland by Jackson (at around the 6:30 mark and the 7:00 mark) and one pin attempt on Jackson by Strickland (at around the 7:30 mark).
At around the 8:15 mark is where the confusion begins. Powerhouse Hobbs tags Ricky Starks into the match. This, despite the fact that Hobbs is clearly not one of the legal men in the match at this point. That was the last “tag” in the match, as Strickland would later pin Starks to win the AEW World Tag Team Championship and cap an emotional victory.
Whether this discrepancy was an oversight or done by design to set up a future rematch is unclear at this point. None of the participants in the match have mentioned it on social media.
