Tonight All Elite Wrestling comes our way from Jacksonville, Florida. Last week, MJF & Chris Jericho earned an opportunity to face The Young Bucks for the AEW Tag Team Championships, Jade Cargill was revealed to be Superman, Team Sting and Team Taz yelled at each other for a while, Britt Baker cheated to beat Thunder Rosa theoretically ending their month’s long feud, Hangman Page humored Matt Hardy, despite Miro’s best efforts Orange Cassidy ruined Penelope & Kip Sabian’s wedding, Shaq punched some plastic, Lance Archer defeated Eddie Kingston with help from some lumberjacks, FTR kidnapped Marco Stunt, and Kenta GTS’d Jon Moxley.
This Week’s Headliner:
Tonight The AEW World Champion Kenny Omega will team up with New Japan’s KENTA against Jon Moxley & Lance Archer. This is the first significant partnership between NJPW and AEW. All four of these men have storied histories with the Japanese company (so do many, many members of the AEW and Impact roster), so it’s awesome to see the two companies working in tandem.
The big story here is that KENTA is currently Jon Moxley’s main challenger for the IWGP US Heavyweight championship, so him showing up on Moxley’s home turf sends a big message.
The other notable thing about this matchup is that it solidifies Lance Archer as team babyface. He’s been tweening for a while now, but between his multiple run in’s to prevent post-match beatdowns, his destruction of Eddie Kingston, and now this partnership with Moxley, it’s safe to say The Murderhawk is only murdering for the good guys.
Expect this match to go long - they want to show off KENTA to their American audience - and be full of shenanigans - you don’t really expect The Good Brothers to sit by and watch, do you?
The Title Scene:
MJF & Chris Jericho earned the right to challenge The AEW Tag Team Champions last week in a Tag Team Battle Royal. Tonight they gloat while they face off with The Acclaimed. Expect an easy win but an uneasy celebration within the Inner Circle. Tensions are high, and a break-up feels imminent.
The AEW Women’s Championship Eliminator Tournament starts tonight when Thunder Rosa takes on Leyla Hirsch in round one. The outcome of this one seems pretty obvious - hello Thunder Rosa - but I’m just thrilled that this match is happening on the main show and not buried on YouTube.
Of course, if you want to see the Japanese women compete, you’ll have to mosey on over to YouTube. Which suuuuuuuuucks, but hey, one step forward and two steps back. It’s just the AEW women’s division way.
TNT Champion and body horror enthusiast Darby Allin defends his title against Bad Boy and Trash Panda Joey Janela. Darby is 1,000 winning this as he and his papa have a big violent date with Team Taz, but it should be good, brutal fun.
Other Things to Keep an Eye On:
-Hangman Page just wants to be LEFT ALONE. Respect his boundaries, please.
-PAC wrestles Ryan Nemeth in an “ab supremacy” match.
-The Nightmare Family is in action after adding several children to their brood. Still not really sure what is going on this with this faction, but maybe we’ll get some answers tonight. Or maybe Shaq will show up and punch some more plastic. Who knows? Wrestling is a wild time.
Tune into AEW on TNT at 8 p.m. EST to see how this all plays out!