AEW Dynamite results and highlights (Jan. 15): Jon Moxley retains, Toni Storm earns title shot vs. Mariah May

AEW kicked off a two-night tentpole event called "Maximum Carnage" on Wednesday night with "Dynamite" taking place at the Brady Music Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The card was stacked, featuring Kenny Omega's first AEW match since coming back to the world of professional wrestling, Cincinnati-native Jon Moxley's latest title defense and the first-ever Women's Casino Gauntlet match to determine AEW Women's Champion Mariah May's next opponent.

Here's what went down.

🎰 Jackpot! 🎰

On a night where Omega wrestled his return match in AEW and Jon Moxley defended the AEW World Championship in his hometown, the women of All Elite Wrestling stole the show and earned our ...

👑 Uncrowned Gem of the Night 👑

The Women's Casino Gauntlet match was brilliantly booked and executed, advancing key storylines, protecting the biggest stars and debuting a new one as well. Kris Statlander, Jamie Hayter, Megan Bayne, Willow Nightingale, Julia Hart, Toni Storm and Harley Cameron all deserve their flowers for Wednesday's showing.

Statlander continues to look utterly impressive in defeat — this was her third high-profile loss in as many months — and got her moment to rekindle her on-screen friendship with the ever-enthusiastic Nightingale. I'm not sure we see her in either title picture any time soon, but she'll eventually get back there.

Bayne was the big surprise entrant in the match, with the commentary team of Taz, Excalibur and Tony Schiavone explaining her history on AEW Dark and Stardom. Mariah May joined the trio in the booth for the match, since the winner will face her at Grand Slam Australia. May remains a rising star in everything that she does, including when she's not in the ring, as she illustrated as part of the announce team.

Hart and Hayter continued their budding rivalry and the former sprayed black mist into Cameron's eyes, protecting her in the process and clearing the way for Storm — the "rookie" — to win the match and book a date with May next month.

While Storm was the somewhat obvious right choice to win here, Wednesday's match showed the star power that AEW's women's division has. There were zero duds among the entrants (even Bayne won the crowd over quickly after a somewhat lackluster reception) and the action was clean, fast-paced and entertaining. You couldn't ask for more and the fans voiced their appreciation by chanting "Women's Wrestling" during the match.

Bite Fight

Jon Moxley on-screen and off-screen is demanding the best out of everyone in AEW, and on Wednesday night, Powerhouse Hobbs delivered in a star-making performance.

Coming into the main event of "Maximum Carnage," there was little doubt that Moxley was going to walk away victorious, but as the match wore on, more and more doubt started to creep in. Hobbs proved to be an incredible foil and the duo showed off very strong in-ring chemistry, likely due to their contrasting, but equally violent styles.

Things turned a bit gruesome when Hobbs bit Moxley's ear — ripping out his earring in the process — but otherwise this was a very good main event TV match. Hobbs got plenty of moments to shine and show off his strength and athleticism, and as the match reached its peak, the crowd started to really get behind him and believe that he could dethrone the hometown hero.

Naturally, Moxley's Death Riders got involved, with Wheeler Yuta hitting Hobbs with a Busaiko Knee and Marina Shafir hitting him in the head with the briefcase that allegedly holds the AEW World Championship. Moxley eventually won with a bulldog choke as Hobbs passed out. The finish protects him somewhat in an increasingly more crowded main-event scene.

After the match, the Death Riders continued to punish Hobbs and targeted his right knee. Rated FTR came out to chase off the Death Riders, but only after the damage had already been done.

🧹 Welcome back, Kenny 🧹

As mentioned earlier, Omega opened the show with his first AEW match in more than a year, facing off against Brian Cage. Was it Omega's best work? No, there was some expected ring rust, but he did show glimpses of the "Best Bout Machine" we all know and love — particularly with a stunning avalanche powerbomb on Cage in the latter stages of the match.

The real advancement of the story came after Omega picked up the win over Cage, as the Don Callis Family — Lance Archer, Kyle Fletcher and Konosuke Takeshita — took out Omega and Will Ospreay, who made a brief save.

Everything worked well enough here, and if I had the pencil I'd build this toward a Stadium Stampede or Anarchy in the Arena-type match at Grand Slam Australia between Callis' crew and the team I am inevitably going to dub the Five-Star Avengers (Omega, Ospreay and two others).

😣 Ricochet in reverse 😣

This ain't it.

Ricochet's character and his feud with Swerve Strickland was building so well with the sneak attack two weeks ago and the music swerve in the Men's Casino Gauntlet match last week.

Then he got tossed around like a rag doll by Powerhouse Hobbs and Lance Archer in the match itself and had one of the weakest segments of the show Wednesday.

The music thing worked incredibly last week — it's a fine line to walk, but I would have loved to see him do it again to get a little more heat. Instead, we got Ricochet meandering around the ring soaking in jeers while commentary suggested he was confused as to why he was being booed.

He stabbed a man with scissors. In. The. Head. It's pretty clear if you ask me.

Thankfully, Strickland's music hit and Prince Nana hit Ricochet with a chair. Strickland then emerged and chased Ricochet into the cold, dark Cincinnati night.

Strickland is one of the best on AEW's — or any — roster and is a former world champion. Ricochet is a major recent signing who you want to build into a star. These two meeting on "Dynamite" in three weeks doesn't do either justice. This should happen at Grand Slam Australia or Revolution.

M-Double J-F

I could have just copy and pasted Drake Riggs' comment from last week's "Dynamite" recap about Jeff Jarrett's segment with MJF going too long, because the same is true this week.

Look, there's something here. MJF hit some high notes with his comments about Jarrett being a grim reaper of sorts for wrestling promotions, Jarrett's alcoholism and Jarrett needing his daddy to make him a top guy. He even referenced the late Owen Hart, Jarrett's real-life best friend.

Unfortunately, we got a lot of other blabbering about families, wives and girlfriends that just completely whiffed. The same can be said about Jarrett's whole babyface schtick. Ditch the cheap pop about wanting one last run and having a fire awoken during the Owen Hart Tournament last year — you told us this several times on AEW programming already.

Jarrett showed glimpses of what we need to see from him on the microphone in this feud and he certainly has the ability to go promo-for-promo with MJF, so I am going to have some faith in these two to build this into something worth all of our time.

👍 EXPLOSIVE 👍

1. Samoa Joe made his return, saving Hook from a beatdown at the hands of Christian Cage and the Patriarchy. Joe's a former AEW World Champion and a fan favorite. Things are always better when he's around.

2. Hurt Business (with MVP!) defeated Private Party and Mark Briscoe. Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley are going to win the tag team titles sooner rather than later. Also, Benjamin might have the best release German suplex in all of wrestling.

3. I LOVED the setup for "Dynamite." Moxley alluded to the unique layout of the Brady Music Center in our discussion this past week so I was interested to see what it would look like Wednesday. In addition to the elevated ramp leading directly to the ring (not new, still awesome), can I petition Tony Khan to have the announce table facing the hard cam all of the time?

4. Omega, a noted gamer, has been using new entrance music since his return earlier this month and it's awesome. The song is created by Final Fantasy composer Masayoshi Soken and really feels like a video-game boss fight. Just when you thought wrestling couldn't get any more nerdy, am I right?

👎 DUDSVILLE 👎

1. I didn't love the "recap" of last week's Men's Casino Gauntlet match, which essentially served as a way for AEW to set up Kyle O'Reilly versus TNT Champion Daniel Garcia and Roderick Strong versus Jay White. Interview segments would have worked much better here, in my opinion.

👑 The in-ring action would have easily earned a monster score, but the promos really hurt things this week. All in all, 6.5/10 crowns. 👑