Matt Hardy Debut Puts Exclamation Point on Surreal AEW Dynamite

The show opened the only way it could, with the one man capable of making sense of this strange time in professional wrestling in the ring by his lonesome. Impeccable in his camel-colored Hugo Boss jacket, Cody Rhodes stood straight and tall and set the tone for the equally impeccable show to follow.

"Recent events have really put into perspective how small we all are," Cody said, looking straight at the camera because, well, there was literally no one in the audience. "It has also clarified for me how big and how important the service we provide is."

If Cody brought order to chaos to start the show, it ended in the kind of madcap anarchy only Matt Hardy can provide. Interrupting a Chris Jericho monologue, Hardy revealed himself, not as the Exalted One as many expected, but as the newest member of The Elite and the fifth man on their Blood & Guts team taking on Jericho's Inner Circle.

It was the perfect way to end a very surreal night of professional wrestling.

The coronavirus, of course, is bigger than wrestling, bigger than sports. Lives are at stake.

But, of all professional sports, wrestling is among those that have been hit the hardest.

WrestleMania, our Super Bowl, has been downgraded from "The Granddaddy of Them All" to a glorified WWE Network special. Raw, once the proud flag-bearer of the sport, is now being broadcast from the WWE Performance Center, a lifeless and dull pantomime of a show.

On the independent scene, where wrestlers work without guarantees, the potential of months passing without an opportunity to earn their keep has created a minor panic.

Wrestling needed a win-and AEW delivered.

From the opening match between Best Friends and The Lucha Bros to the reveal of Brodie Lee as The Dark Order's Exalted One, to the tremendous six-man tag between The Elite and Inner Circle, the show was firing on all cylinders. It would have been easy to phone it in, to use the crowd's absence as an excuse for delivering a second-rate show.

But AEW was built by performers with their thumb on the pulse of the wrestling audience. It's a community particularly hard hit by recent events, one shaken by the possibility of months without the thing we love most. There are lots of casual sports fans-but wrestling fans tend to be all in.

Wrestling invades your life in a way very few things can. If you like wrestling, chances are you really like wrestling. It's less a hobby than a lifestyle. Its potential absence has been painful-on Wednesday night, AEW Dynamite provided a salve.

Following WWE's lead and the guidance of local authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, AEW performed in an empty arena, the passionate crowd that has become one of its trademarks missing from the jump. The same has been true of the last several WWE shows, and the audience's absence left the show feeling off-kilter and a little sad.

AEW, perhaps learning from its rival's example, made a subtle adjustment to the empty-arena concept, having heels come sit on one side of the ring and babyfaces on the other. Their energy and enthusiasm helped fuel the performers in the ring and brought what might have felt like an emotionless display of acrobatics to life.

These weren't choreographed and carefully executed routines performed in a vacuum. They were fights, red-blooded performers giving their all to win. It's a subtle difference but a big one. And it made this AEW event a truly memorable night.

The empty-arena concept isn't new. Jerry "The King" Lawler and Terry Funk innovated the concept in 1981, and WWE brought it back for Mankind's epic win over The Rock on a memorable Super Bowl Sunday in 1999.

But this was different-AEW didn't reinvent this concept as it's done so many other wrestling classics to pop a rating or generate buzz. The decision was forced on the company by events beyond anyone's control.

What AEW did was make the most of it. For two hours, fans and performers alike could forget about the challenges we all face just leaving our homes and living our lives in the age of COVID-19. It took a surreal night in wrestling to give us what we needed most-a rare feeling of normalcy.