AEW delivered on it promises, but there’s still work to do on the rest.

Wednesday’s debut episode of “AEW Dynamite” on TNT from Capital One Arena showcased the superb in-ring action its known for, it opened and closed hot and even gave viewers a surprise or two. It’s the things that were not wrestling that will need to be improved on, such as the in-arena promos and when commercial breaks come. Filling the time around the great matches will be AEW’s biggest challenge to keep people from flipping to WWE’s NXT.

Here are five takeaways from a very good first night for AEW on TNT:

Beating up the Elite

Jake Hager, formerly Jack Swagger in WWE, in now in AEW and couldn’t have been positioned better. Hager was the final person on screen in a wild end to “AEW Dynamite” that saw The Elite group — Matt and Nick Jackson, Cody and Kenny Omega — decimated by the end of the six-man tag main event.

The run-ins after Chris Jericho hit the Judas Effect on Matt Jackson for the win included Cody, Sammy Guevara, Dustin Rhodes and finally Hager — who is 2-0 in his MMA career in Bellator. Hager, who had been rumored to appear, got to come in and run through AEW’s biggest stars and rub elbows with Jericho all in the same segment. He put Dustin Rhodes through a table, which could lead to his first feud.

All of this happened after Jon Moxley, formerly Dean Ambrose in the WWE, made his return. Moxley is must-see TV right now because you have no idea when he’ll show up and what he’ll do when he does. He returned from a staph infection and snuck up behind Omega — his opponent next week. The two fought their way to one of the bars in the arena and he put Omega through a glass table.

Open and Shut Up

In some coherent storytelling, the end of the show played off how it started. Guevara and Cody set the stage for what was a good night in-ring for AEW. Guevara really acquitted himself well and came off like the cocky upstart — even pulling Brandi Rhodes in front of Cody’s suicide dive. Cody eventually won with a roll-up after Guevara missed a shooting-star press.

Then things went from great to awkward. Jericho, whom Cody will face for the AEW world championship at the “Full Gear” pay-per-view on Nov. 9, attacked him as he was shaking hands with Guevara. It was a great moment, set up the title match and got Jericho on TV even before his match. Then commercials rolled on a split screen and spoiled it.

You could see Jericho beating up Cody all over the arena, but you couldn’t hear what was going on for three to four commercials (through one of them was fittingly for Bubbly seltzer as Jericho wore his “A little bit of the Bubbly” T-shirt.) Still, the commercials took away from what was one of the biggest moments of the night, especially with NXT running commercial free for the first 30 minutes and with limited commercials throughout. AEW did release the footage with sound as a “Social Exclusive” on their social media.

Big winners, big losers

Riho did it, and maybe wrestling in your hometown, like in WWE, isn’t a good idea in AEW either. The sprightly Japanese star defeated Nyla Rose, the Washington, D.C. native, to become the company’s first women’s champion. It was an action-packed, fast-paced match that played well into the smaller Riho versus the big and powerful Rose. Having Britt Baker, who was nearly in the match, miserable on commentary during it was a nice touch for a future story.

Hangman Page has gone from within an inch of being AEW world champion to consecutive losses and a continuing feud with PAC. PAC, who had some blood along his eye, did need a low blow out of the view of Earl Hebner to set up a sweet Black Arrow in the Brutalzyer submission for the win. This feud feels far from over and Page is now desperate for a win.

MJF had a strong night. He cut a good promo on the audience walking to the ring and beat Brandon Cutler — who got little pop from the crowd — with the underhanded move of pulling the ref in front of him to gain an advantage.

Different strokes

AEW vowed to look and feel different than WWE and tried to deliver on that both in large and small ways. It just didn’t always work.

It had Justin Roberts do an interview with Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes of “Jay and Silent Bob” fame from their ringside seats. Angelico and Jack Evans came out to confront them, and Private Party brought the movies stars drinks. It made good on the promise to have things happen in the arena and got tag teams camera time. The segment just was a little flat.

SoCal Uncensored’s spot was very odd. After a taped promo to get over their “This is the worst town I’ve even been in” schtick, they appeared live on stage with Tony Schiavone to promote the tag-team tournament starting next week. Though the Lucha Brothers came out to confront them for an eventual pull-apart, it was a lot of talking after the celebrity segment. That’s when people change channels.

Sounding off

The announce team for “Dynamite” was Jim Ross, Schiavone and Excalibur, and it really was the best trio the company has offered so far. The three told you the backstories, analyzed the action and had natural chemistry. It was weird, however, hearing Ross tell the viewers that a picture-in-picture commercial was coming and to not change the channel, but understandable with NXT rolling out title matches and the return of Finn Balor over on USA.

The live crowd looked and sounded awesome the whole night. The sight of 14,000-plus is something NXT can’t deliver right now.