Roderick Strong to face Swerve Strickland for the AEW Championship on June 5th Dynamite

Image Courtesy: AEW

The AEW World Championship will be on the line on the June 5th edition of Dynamite.

Champion Swerve Strickland will defend against Roderick Strong.

During Saturday’s broadcast of AEW Collision, a backstage segment aired featuring Strong and Tony Khan.

After winning the opening match of the show against NJPW’s Lio Rush, Strong confronted Khan and demanded the match. He said:

I was supposed to be the last man in the Forbidden Door Gauntlet. I was supposed to be going to Forbidden Door as the number one contender. Come on, Tony, you gotta understand, you’re someone just like me. You overcame your neck issues, you’re neck strong just like me.

Listen, Ospreay got lucky at Double or Nothing. I should be the number one contender. So I want Swerve on Wednesday. Give me Swerve and I will go to Forbidden Door and I will beat Ospreay as the AEW World Champion.

Khan responded that it was “a great idea” and made the match, with the winner to face Ospreay at Forbidden Door.

Kate From MTL and Bruce Lord will be going live with a full review of tonight’s show on Collision Course for POST Wrestling Café patrons at 10.05 pm ET.

About Neal Flanagan 1134 Articles
Based in Northern Ireland, Neal Flanagan is a former newspaper journalist and copy editor. In addition to reporting for POST Wrestling, he co-hosts The Wellness Policy podcast with Wai Ting and Jordan Goodman.

COMMENTS

  1. Didn’t this goof lose to Osprey and now he’s getting a title shot to tease a rematch where he lost clean?

  2. Screw the rankings or winning a gauntlet match, just go in and talk to Tony Khan. Ospreay should have just done that.

  3. Im interested in hearing @MarkP defend this one.

    Why is Roderick Strong getting a world title shot? Shouldnt all the other guys who were also supposed to be in this match, also recieve shots too?

    I love AEW, but man sometimes the booking is baffling. It could be so simple.

  4. Avatar for MarkP MarkP says:

    My first response?

    Tony’s trolling people.

    Every week, no matter who Swerve works, people have something to complain about. Or any of the non-title matches.

    Look, I don’t know what the ranking status is. They same back for a week or two and were dropped.

    Swerve seem to want to wrestle different opponents every week.

    The same people complaining it being a title match, would say the same thing if it were an Eliminator match.

    I can’t defend it. But it will be a very good TV match.

  5. As always, the nonsensical booking is retconned into Tony Khan playing 3d chess, the match will be a banger, we all should just enjoy it and not ask any questions about logic or continuity.

  6. Avatar for MarkP MarkP says:

    Huh?

    I literally said I can’t defend it.

    I said my initial response was he is trolling. That doesn’t mean he is, or I think he is really.

    He wanted to book the match, or Swerve wanted to work Roddy - and they did.

  7. Avatar for kliq kliq says:

    I don’t hate the match, I’m sure it will be great. I just wish it was a non title match as Strong getting a title match is Vince style booking.

  8. The match is fine. I hate the rankings are gone again.

    It does feel like this gives credence to lack of organization. The rankings were a good way to keep organized and plan things out in advance.

    That’s one reason I like Eliminator matches in general. You get to see the champion wrestle, but if he loses against someone who isn’t a top contender, they get a shot, despite not being ranked. I also liked how top 5 contenders could get title shots to keep things relatively easy, so you can still be a bit looser with your booking.

    Here’s the top 5. You pick 5 guys who are going to focus on and you plan your stories accordingly. The only thing I don’t think the rankings work for is the trios division, as there are fewer teams.

    HOWEVER, despite all that, it’s not like Roddy’s record is Rocky Romero level. He lost the International Title, but he has a good record regardless. He lost one match, despite numerous title matches and wins before he was champion. If rankings were weekly and consistent, put him in the top 5 and boom, good to go. The last singles match he lost before Ospreay was against Hangman Page in December.

  9. What I like about it is how Roddy revealed himself as one of the guys in line for the gauntlet match just as a sort of world building detail. People should come out as annoyed that the match ended before they could have a say in it.

    I also thought that the title announcement was believable in the sense that Tony seems like someone you can shout into getting a title shot like that. The match itself doesn’t really move me though. Talented as Strong is, the Undisputed Kingdom just have negative value to me right now.

  10. Maybe in story he doesn’t like Strong that much and hopes that Swerve will beat him up even more if it is a title match.

  11. Random undeserving guy gets a title shot because he interrupts a promo or just kind of requests it. This is nothing that hasn’t happened in every major wrestling promotion, 100 times over.

    But what we’re seeing is the backlash of AEW positioning itself as “better than that” with the rankings and the stated focus (by TK himself) on wins and losses… as well as the tribalists in their fanbase acting like AEW is perfect. People get sick of hearing it and get excited to point out when they miss the mark.

    All of which is also nothing that hasn’t happened in every major wrestling promotion, 100 times over.

  12. I have to agree with you. It’s just a TV match that we know Roddy is not gonna win. Maybe it gets the undisputed elite some heat if they beat down swerve or something and maybe it helps set up future bigger match. Not every match needs a big long build up

    One of the greatest TV wrestling titled defence of all time was Brett Hart versus the 123 kid. It’s not like that had some long story line and it’s not like he was a major contender we ever thought would win the title.

    I agree that the rankings make this stuff odd, but it’s not anything that every other promotion doesn’t also do

  13. Avatar for kliq kliq says:

    The hypocrisy………Khan has framed AEW as a promotion that doesn’t do things like this, he even goes on Twitter/X and takes shots at WWE when they do (ie. Jinder). So now that he is doing the same thing, AEW fans who have defended him are likely annoyed, and WWE fans are using this as a “gotcha”
    moment.

    In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal. But this is what you get when when you take shots at WWE for something that you end up doing yourself.

  14. @RocketKing is right that this is something that has been done a hundred times over, but it’s just annoying to me because all it takes is a slight pivot to make sense of this match.

    Roderick has no championship momentum, he has no rightful stake to a title shot, so just have him in the ring saying what he shouted at Tony on a live mic, put Swerve on the screen, or in a pre-tape later, say “if you wanna lose so bad then let’s do it at Dynamite.” At least then it’s the Champ’s call and can effectively bypass the rankings. He declared himself a fighting champ and basically set the table that it’s that easy to get a shot.

    Instead, Roderick dressed down his boss and his new assistant on the spot, on live TV for a shot he doesn’t deserve, and not only do they just stand there and take it, the boss then goes “that sounds so cool!”

    I have no problem with the match (well, aside from my absolute disinterest in the Roddy and co.), it’s just a fine detail problem. As said, it basically refutes Tony’s arguments over the Jinder Mahal title match, and it made Tony Khan/Christopher Daniels look weak as babyface matchmakers when it didn’t have to. On it’s own it’s no big deal, it’s a whatever match, but these little things add up I think.

  15. @kliq I also think that’s because Jindef had literally not been on TV and he sucks. Roddy was just in a pay-per-view match, won a match that day and doesn’t suck. It’s slightly different.

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