Tonight (March 25) All Elite Wrestling comes our way live from a closed set. Last week Cody welcomed viewers with an impassioned speech, Orange Cassidy killed it on commentary, Brodie Lee was revealed to be The Exalted One and Matt Hardy maniacally laughed from the rafters.
Advertised for tonight:
- Chris Jericho & Broken Matt Hardy come face-to-face
- Kenny Omega versus Sammy Guevara for the AAA title
- Cody versus Jimmy Havoc
Here are five questions about AEW tonight:
1) How will Le Champion handle The Broken One?
Honestly, I don’t even know what to write here other than OMG I AM SO HYPE FOR THIS.
Chris Jericho as Le Champion has been, frankly, untouchable in AEW. Sure, he lost the championship, but like he says he doesn’t need a belt to wear that title! And he’s right. That man has not only helped to solidify AEW as real competition for WWE, but has put over a plethora of new talent and has gotten entire crowds to sing his weird dad rock band’s song all the while calling them a bunch of mouth breathing idiots.
Legend.
Matt Hardy on the other hand has kept his truly innovative and DELIGHTFUL broken gimmick alive even while under the thumb of Vince. Through his own ingenuity (and his wife’s) he was able to walk out of WWE and directly into a feud in AEW.
Legend.
These two have had amazing careers, but seeing them face off in what I can only assume is their “final forms” is beyond exciting! I have no idea what they are going to do or say to each other, but I hope it involved teeth gnashing, neck scarves and Jake Hager fighting Vanguard 1. If anyone can keep the hype for Blood & Guts going for who knows how long, it’s these two.
2) What’s going on with Jon Moxley?
Jon Moxley is the champion, but Jon Moxley is also on the “do not enter list” as he is not medically cleared. On one hand that makes perfect sense story line wise. Moxley isn’t really a part of Blood & Guts (despite his threat to the Inner Circle) so putting him on the shelf for a little bit while they focused on B&G made sense.
But now that that epic encounter has be postponed what are they going to do with Moxley? They can’t really justify keeping their champion off TV until they can reschedule the cage match and the longer they wait to bring him back the more obvious it will be.
3) What is The Exalted One’s next big move?
The Exalted One has finally been revealed! Brodie Lee (once the long suffering Luke Harper) is the leader of The Dark Order and he’s ready for his cult to takeover...but how?
The Dark Order just recently started to pick up steam once AEW focused on The Exalted One’s identity, but now that the spider’s out of the cage (I’m SORRY!) can they keep that momentum up? Will Brodie Lee act more as a manager directing his followers or will he put his body on the line and lead by example?Will we even see The Dark Order in the ring during this crisis or will we be treated to Dark Order cult videos?
Either way, AEW needs to capitalize on the Dark Order hype while they have it. Hopefully Brodie Lee can lead his followers to victory (or at least an interesting feud).
4) What of shenanigans can we expect from Jimmy Havoc?
If you can’t have a Blood & Guts match have the next best thing. A match with Jimmy f*cking Havoc.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Havoc on TV and his unique brand of violence will be a nice change of pace. Cody will win obviously, but since B&G is tabled at the moment this is the perfect time for the face of the company to showcase their roster. I’d love to see Cody in matches with people like Sonny Kiss and Nakazawa. Give the roster some love!
This doesn’t mean that story lines need to be thrown away, either. Currently Cody is involved in at least four story lines (Inner Circle vs The Elite, MJF evergreen feud, The Elite break-up, and looming Lance Archer) and these matches could be used to exacerbate them.
Like tonight, Jimmy and Cody could (should) get violent (give Jimmy SPOONS) with MJF and Lance Archer in the audience egging him on. Ultimately, Jimmy loses because of a distraction from MJF (new feud there already supported on twitter) and Lance Archer blindsides Cody while he’s celebrating. Also there is blood.
Or something...there are options!
5) Women’s division. What’s going on there?
Heavy Sigh
Why? Why must it always be one step forward six steps back with the AEW women’s division? I get that everything is up in the air right now and that plans change by the minute, but you’re telling me that creative - you know the team that has to try new things and be open to innovative ideas right now - can’t come up with a single interesting thing for the women’s division to do?
Where are our Nyla Rose pre-taped segments where she looks like the bad ass champion she is? Where are the backstage promos where Big Swole is tearing the place apart to look for Britt Baker? Where is the video of Kris Statlander talking to the stars? Where is... ANYTHING? There wasn’t even a women’s match on AEW Dark this week!
*internal screaming*
Last week we were treated to a really good four way match that set Hikaru Shida up as Nyla Rose’s number one contender based solely on rankings. Looks like we got ourselves another women’s title feud with no story and no build folks! At least the match was good? I’m really grasping at straws here.
Don’t get me wrong, Shida versus Rose sounds like a fantastic match. I just wish there was something a little more to it than “the rankings told us to do it.”
Tune into AEW on TNT at 8 ET tonight to see if we get any answers to these questions!