All Elite Wrestling comes our way from The James L. Knight Center in Miami. Last week, Dynamite opened with exciting 8-man tag team action between the Super Elite and Jurassic Express & friends. Despite Jungle Express’s best efforts, The Super Elite triumphed like the cheating cheaters they are. CM Punk gave his shoes to a child, Arn Anderson committed arson on Cody Rhodes’s suits, and Bobby Fish lost his Dynamite debut to the reigning TNT champion, Sammy Guevara. Dan Lambert and Chris Jericho continued to swear at each other, Tony and Aubrey debuted the new women’s TBS championship, and QT Marshall is still a thing, apparently. The Dark Order seemed to be mending their divides, Dante Martin called out Malakai Black, and Black accepted. Hikaru Shida failed to get her fifty wins courtesy of The Woman of 1000 holds, and finally, everyone’s favorite cowboy, Hangman Adam Page, returned to win the casino battle royal, earning him a future world title shot!
This Week’s Headliner:
In this week’s edition of dream matches, Bryan Danielson is wrestling newly signed Bobby Fish. The best part of this match is it’s not really about proving their worth to the Dynamite audience - basically, everyone knows that these two are top talent - but it is more about two great wrestlers getting the chance to let loose on each other in a way they were not able to at a different company. Sometimes it’s just nice to watch wrestlers loving wrestling!
The Title Scene:
The threats to the World Champion are coming in hot from all sides. The AEW World Championship Eliminator Tournament bracket will be announced tonight, and we’ll be hearing from Hangman Adam Page for the first time since his win last week. Kenny Omega is going to be a blustering mess full of excuses and complaints.
The Lucha Bros are undefeated AAA tag champs in 2021. To rectify what he perceives as a grievous error, Andrade is bringing two mystery wrestlers to battle The Tag Team Champions for AAA gold. Now that the Lucha Bros are AEW champs, it might make more sense for them to drop the AAA titles and focus on AEW. Though, if Kenny is any kind of example, more belts isn’t necessarily a problem. Plus, it’s really good for racking the frequent flyer miles.
The World Women’s Champion isn’t scheduled for a match tonight, but considering that the women’s division landscape is changing - both with new competitors AND a new title belt - I bet the champ has some things to get off her chest.
The TNT Champion, Sammy Guevara has been a busy champ. He’s defended his title against a world-class wrestler, Bobby Fish, and he’s been helping out his Inner Circle bros in their battle against American Top Team. Considering the finish of last night’s Rampage, it looks like he’ll be busy helping out his comrades for a little while. Or at least until Ethan Page demands a title shot!
Other things to keep an eye on:
-Jon Moxley battles it out with Wheeler Yuta. Look, this match basically means nothing, but both these wrestlers are fun and great, and this match will be fun and great.
-This one is basically a fairytale. Malakai Black is the big bad monster and Dante Martin an up-and-coming prince who needs to slay the beast to prove his worth. This feels more like the beginning of a feud than a one-off match, but we’ll see!
-Penelope Ford takes on Keira Hogan tonight. Keira has a lot of indie cred but hasn’t had the best of luck in AEW. Unfortunately for her, I think tonight her bad luck continues courtesy of a big right punch from Penelope Ford.
Tune into AEW on TNT at 8pm ET to see how all this plays out.