The opening bell blues

AEW Dynasty kicked off with a Zero Hour scrap between Alex Windsor and Marina Shafir that served as a lightning rod for everything currently wrong and right with the mid-card booking. While the recent BodySlam.net report confirmed the result, the real story happened in the threads where fans are currently tearing each other apart over the pacing of this feud. It felt less like a wrestling match and more like a rushed segment to get bodies on the screen before the main card fireworks.

The Death Riders are theoretically a major deal, but Shafir’s involvement is making people scratch their heads. You have a faction that should be running through the roster like a lawnmower, yet we are seeing them get dragged into these personal, low-stakes grudge matches that feel disconnected from the larger Will Ospreay narrative. It is the classic issue of having far too many moving parts and not enough time to let a story breathe before the bell rings.

The basement vs the marks

The online discourse is predictable if you have spent more than ten minutes on wrestling forums lately. One camp is praising Windsor for her ring presence, claiming she carried the technical side of the match with some crisp striking sequences. They love the grit, the stiff shots, and the way the match didn't rely on twenty straight minutes of near-falls. It is refreshing to see a match that feels like a fight.

Then you have the contrarians who think the ending was as flat as a week-old soda. These people are correctly pointing out that the feud lacks the heat it needs to justify a spot on a major pay-per-view pre-show. If you are going to put people in a ring with a personal history, you need to deliver a climax that doesn't leave the audience checking their watches to see if it is time for the main card yet. Wrestling is about the build, and this one felt like it was built out of construction paper.

Why the skepticism is actually healthy

Let's be clear: questioning booking decisions isn't being a hater, it’s wanting the product to be better. When you look at the landscape for WrestleMania 41 next weekend, you can see how much higher the stakes are in terms of production value and narrative coherence. Dynasty has its moments, but the Zero Hour match between Shafir and Windsor felt like it belonged in a different, smaller universe.

My take? The match was technically competent but booking-wise, it was a total disaster. Putting a feud that supposedly has 'personal heat' on the pre-show is the neon sign that management doesn't actually care. You don't put a grudge match in the graveyard slot if you want the talent to move the needle. You are just asking for the fans to tune out before the real fun starts in 7 days.

The bottom line is that AEW is trying to do too many things at once. We are getting high-level wrestling from Ospreay and others, but then we get these fillers that feel like we are just killing time to reach the three-hour mark. I want to see Shafir succeed, but she needs a direction that doesn't involve trading spots in a vacuum while the crowd waits for the real main event participants to walk out.

This isn't about talent, it's about the lack of connective tissue. When the matches feel like islands cut off from the main storyline, the audience checks out. Expect the discourse to stay toxic until someone actually puts a title on the line or creates a reason for us to actually tune in before the bell rings.