Overall Evaluation and Achieved Goals
Areas of Excellence Within Performance
I loved the gigantic balls AEW displayed by taking a leap of faith on The Dark Order by having Brodie squash All Elite’s young king for the title right before All Out. Afterwards the entire group (sans Cabana) laid out Cody’s family and rectified an issue with AEW’s top heels, making the former Luke Harper into an actual threat in less than 10 minutes of TV time at the expense of nobody.
Dark Order without Brodie laying out all of AEW’s EVP’s felt like a forced attempt at something special; Dark Order with Brodie laying out just Cody and family felt like they simply took advantage of the world they’ve built up.
The Eddie Kingston promo to setup a Lucha Bros/The Butcher & The Blade stable was 10/10 too – it reads a little like a parody of AEW’s stable obsession but Kingston is enough of a beast on the mic that he already has it making sense.
The Chris Jericho/Orange Cassidy feels like its’ about to end way past its’ welcome with a Cage Match RAW, but they were able to add a little heat to it with a nasty old school Inner Circle beatdown on Orange.
“I don’t need face paint to be somebody, I AM somebody!” – great line delivery by Ricky Starks.
NWA Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa challenged Hikaru Shida – let’s GOOOO!
AEW bringing in Northeast independent guy Mark Sterling to do a promo slot as MJF‘s lawyer was great. He nailed the promo and is already selling t-shirts and working the gimmick on Twitter – AEW is basically a stimulus check for the wrestling business.
Suggested Areas of Improvement
Don’t bring back limited capacity crowds until you’re actually ready and not in Florida. Please.
My Favorite Things
2. Kenny Omega’s Powerbomb One-Winged Angel Setup
1. Cash Wheeler’s Spinebuster
Official Star Rating
4 out of 5 Stars
