AEW presented night two of New Year’s Smash on tonight’s (Jan. 13) episode of Dynamite.

The main event was a TNT championship match with defending champion Darby Allin in the underdog role against the unrecognized FTW champion Brian Cage. This one has arguably been building since May 2020, when Cage debuted at Double or Nothing and immediately joined up with Taz, who was sick of being rejected by Darby.

More recently, Sting has made his presence known on a weekly basis to thwart Taz and his thugs at every turn with a menacing stare and pointing his baseball bat in their direction. This just had to be the night where The Icon would finally get physically involved, right?

The championship fight started out in brutal fashion, with the much smaller Allin being tossed through a table by Cage and busted open as part of the sudden destruction.

The match became a one-sided annihilation from there; Cage manhandled Allin at will, with nasty bump after nasty bump. But Allin kept kicking out of Cage’s pin attempts. The TNT champ finally got back in the match by using his teeth and a crazy Coffin Drop.

Ricky Starks tried to interfere on behalf of Cage, and that’s when Sting showed up to introduce Starks to his baseball bat:

Allin was able to pin Cage shortly after Sting took out Starks, and is still the TNT champion.

What did you think about AEW’s main event for New Year’s Smash?

Get complete Dynamite results and coverage here.