The Match Everyone is Ignoring

AEW Dynasty is exactly five days away. The discourse online is already a toxic wasteland of takes regarding the main events. People are arguing about star ratings before the bell even rings in Kansas City.

But scroll down the card. Past the shiny objects. Past the title matches.

Right there in the middle of the graphic, you have FTR taking on Billy Gunn and Dustin Rhodes. If you are using that match as your bathroom break, you are making a massive mistake. You are missing what is fundamentally guaranteed to be the hidden gem of the entire pay-per-view.

Let's talk about the veterans first. Dustin Rhodes is pushing 60. Billy Gunn is actually past 60. In any normal athletic endeavor, these two should be running a podcast network or selling autographs at a convention center in Ohio.

Instead, they are lacing up boots on a premium live event. The absurd part? They can still go. Dustin still throws the best powerslam in the business.

It is a completely fluid motion that guys half his age cannot replicate. Billy Gunn is still moving around the ring with a physical presence that defies basic biology.

Are they going to wrestle a 30-minute iron man match? Absolutely not. If they try that, someone is going to need a paramedic. But they don't have to. Because they are in there with Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler.

The Masters of the Craft

FTR are exactly the right opponents for this setup. Dax and Cash exist to pay homage to the territory days. They probably have framed pictures of the Midnight Express in their living rooms.

Think back to FTR's trilogy with the Briscoes. Those matches were violent masterpieces. Or their old NXT run against DIY.

Dax and Cash have a proven track record of adapting their style to whoever is standing across the ring. When they wrestle the Young Bucks, it's a counter-wrestling sprint. When they wrestle a team like Billy and Dustin, it becomes a grimy, methodical breakdown of body parts.

They are chameleons who insist on wearing 1980s wrestling boots.

When you put FTR in the ring with two guys who actually lived through the eras they idolize, Dax and Cash turn it up to another level. They will bump like absolute maniacs to make Dustin and Billy look like killers.

Cash is going to take a bump over the top rope off a right hand from Dustin that will look like he got hit by a Mack truck. Dax is going to sell the Fameasser like he just took a shotgun blast to the chest.

It is going to be a masterclass in making less mean more.

The Inexcusable Build

Now, let's be entirely honest here. The build for this match has been absolute garbage. Tony Khan has essentially treated this like a dark match that accidentally ended up on the main card.

There is no real blood feud here. No deeply personal stakes. The segment they had last Wednesday on Dynamite was horribly rushed.

It felt like they were given exactly four minutes to set up a pay-per-view match, and everybody rushed their lines. Dustin stumbled over a promo, Billy just yelled, and FTR looked mildly annoyed to be standing there.

It is lazy booking. It relies entirely on the crowd recognizing the names rather than giving them a reason to actually care about the fight.

The AEW tag division is a mess right now. The Lucha Bros are stuck in booking purgatory. FTR has basically been treading water for six months, waiting for a meaningful program.

Throwing them into a match with two sexagenarians right before a pay-per-view is a band-aid on a bullet wound. It exposes the fact that the booking committee has no long-term plan for the best traditional tag team on the planet.

The fact that this match will likely be great proves exactly how good the talent in the ring is, rather than the people writing the show.

Flawless Psychology

But once the bell rings, the bad build stops mattering. This match is going to be built on basic, flawless professional wrestling psychology.

FTR will cut the ring in half. They will work over a limb. Probably Dustin's knee.

The crowd in Kansas City is going to get lulled into the rhythm of the match. Dax will do that classic heel spot where he distracts the referee while Cash chokes Dustin on the bottom rope.

It is basic, but it works because they do it with absolute conviction. Then you get the hot tag to Billy.

The pop for a 60-year-old man hitting a tilt-a-whirl powerslam is going to blow the roof off the building. There will be a sequence near the end that will genuinely make people think the veterans are going to pull off the upset.

A Shattered Dreams setup countered into a spike piledriver. A Fameasser out of nowhere for a painfully close two-count.

The Palate Cleanser

Look at the rest of modern wrestling. We are drowning in matches that look like choreographed gymnastics routines. Guys are kicking out of avalanche Canadian Destroyers on free television.

This match is the antidote to that nonsense. It will be a palate cleanser.

A reminder that you do not need to risk a broken neck on the ring apron to get a reaction. A solid punch to the jaw, timed perfectly, can draw a bigger gasp from the crowd than a triple backflip to the floor.

Dustin and Billy understand timing better than ninety percent of the AEW roster. They know exactly when to breathe. FTR knows exactly how to pace a match around those breaths.

We really need to appreciate what we are watching with Dustin and Billy while they are still doing it. Dustin debuted in 1988. He was wrestling in WCW before some of the guys on the Dynasty card were even born.

Let's be real about Dustin Rhodes for a second. The man spent over a decade wrestling in a full-body latex suit, taking some of the most ridiculous bumps of the late nineties.

He should be physically completely broken. The fact that he reinvented himself in AEW, starting with that bloody war against his brother Cody back at Double or Nothing 2019, is one of the greatest late-career runs in wrestling history.

He doesn't just do nostalgia pops. He actually wrestles.

The Inevitable Finish

Billy Gunn was an afterthought in the Attitude Era tag scene, yet somehow he is the one who survived and thrived in the modern era.

His run with The Acclaimed gave him a completely new lease on life, and now he is just coasting on pure charisma and a freakishly preserved physique.

Putting them in there with FTR is a respect nod. It is a chance for Dax and Cash to work with guys they clearly revere, and it is a chance for Dustin and Billy to have a fundamentally sound, high-profile match without having to carry the entire physical load.

FTR has to win this. There is zero logical reason for them to take a loss here. They need momentum heading into the summer, and beating two legends clean in the middle of the ring provides exactly that.

The finish will likely be the Shatter Machine on Dustin after Billy gets dumped to the outside. But the result isn't the point.

The point is the 15 minutes leading up to the bell. It is going to be a clinic in old-school tag team wrestling.

When Dynasty goes off the air on Sunday night, people will be arguing about the main event. They will be debating whether the right guy won the world title.

But when the dust settles on Monday morning, the smart fans are going to be talking about the tag match. They will be clipping sequences of FTR bumping around the ring and posting them on Twitter.

Do not sleep on this match. Grab your beer before the entrances, sit down, and watch four professionals put on a clinic.