AEW - All Elite Wrestling (*Spoilers for Latest Show*)

I tip my hat to Mikey Rukus, AEW's music guy.

From inside the arena in Chicago.

Andrade already whinging?

Wouldn't surprise me. From all the debuts recently he is by far the least interesting.

I liked how Bryan went for Justin's tie in that video.

Wonder if Marko was told to stay away as he just hung around outside the whole time

Meant to say, seeing Punk these days is like seeing Cena when he let his hair grow.

I heard the Buy In was great fun, I must watch it but isn’t great to see Butcher back! He was gone for what 7 months?

im a bit of a fan of his and just a nice guy

Yep

Tis been a tough time but as you said can we let people enjoy what they like and not be judging them

I'd sort of be expecting Cody to come out after Black takes Dustin's head off on Wednesday. Cody vs Black then again at the Arthur Ashe show.

He is a future hall of fame for WWE and deservedly so

Thinking about it, I'm still buzzing from All Out. So I figure let's do a match by match review!

Miro/Kingston- Easily Miro's best in ring performance in AEW. He was everything you'd want him to be here, he's got such a great look, a fantastic presence and the added benefit of having that legitimacy to back it all up, the only thing that's been missing since his split from Kip has been the in ring, but here it was excellent. And Kingston too deserves a tonne of credit, he can be a bit hit or miss in ring, his bell to bell doesn't always land but here in a stiff hoss fight it worked and the story being built around the neck of Miro was a cool aspect, like a real combat sport thing where you can hype a fight around the weakness of an otherwise unbeatable fighter. ***3/4

Mox/Kojima- I've seen some bad takes on this one, probably the most bizarre of all being not knowing who Minoru Suzuki is which is mindblowing to me but OK. Real nice work in this, snug, solid professional wrestling. Mox post WWE has gotten so much better in working these straight singles matches, no gimmicks, just a tight pro wrestling match against a legend. Maybe the match suffered slightly from the crowd not entirely knowing the big Kojima spots but still came across well. The pop for Suzuki and Kaze Ni Nare was goosebump worthy and man I'm so hyped for that match on Wednesday because their work in New Japan together has been stellar. ***1/2

Britt/Statlander- Good match. The struggle here was always going to be that Britt is such an overwhelmingly big star that in comparison Statlander may not be received as well in comparison or, as in most Britt matches, that the crowd will end of making her the face in the match. But they overcame that for the most part and, by the end, the crowd really did want that Statlander win. Outside of the Thunder Rosa Lights Out match, Britt's best in ring performance for sure. I thought Statlander was very good here too, and a couple of spots that looked like they were flirting with disaster, she managed to save purely on the basis that she is a genuinely incredible athlete. Popped for the Orange Cassidy fired up spot at ringside too. ***1/4

Young Bucks/Lucha Bros- My favourite part of when I write stuff about AEW is declaring, yet again, that the Young Bucks defy expectations and prove once again that they are, without question, the greatest tag team in the history of pro wrestling. Here, the fusion of old school cage match psychology melded with the big time highspots of modern pro wrestling, no other tag team in pro wrestling puts the two together like the Young Bucks. You can take out the big cage dive by Fenix, you could take out the top rope destroyers and Nick Jackson's slick flying and you'd still have at it's core a bloody, brutal cage match that would not have been at all out of place headlining an NWA card from the 80's. That there are people who tell you "oh but the Young Bucks are just spotmonkeys" are people parroting opinions that have not been true to life in over a decade. In this AEW run alone, they've played the role of veteran team working with younger teams, they've played the valiant babyface role, they've had the big highspot matches that made them famous in the first place, they've worked the big epic main event style matches and here they worked as a brutal heel team trying to kill the Lucha Bros. Throw the flowers their way now, you're watching the best team to ever do it. The crowd was electric here, the work perfect. Perfect pro wrestling and a match that could win MOTY. *****

Casino Battle Royal- Fun. Easy watch. Didn't overstay it's welcome. Eliminations moved on nice and quick. Highlighted some feuds. And the Ruby/Thunder Rosa final stretch of the match felt hot. Literally could not complain about this. ***

Jericho/MJF- Excellent. The best Jericho in ring performance in ages (the bar is low on that). But this was the MJF show. I said it ages ago on here, it was obvious then, it should be a no brainer now because this was the coming out party for MJF, he's really good in ring. His psychology is water tight, his offense is focused, it's not the kick/punch/stomp stuff that he was accused of early in his career, he's developed it now to the point where his control segments are entertaining and important to the overall structure of the match but most impressive, apart from his character work which of course is what makes him stand out, was his selling. The back sell was so great from the powerbomb onto the apron spot onwards, and it played into the finish perfectly. ***3/4

CM Punk/Darby- Loved it. I really did. A proper wrestling match wrestled at a good pace, you learned so much more of where Punk is at right now in this than you would've done had they done a gimmick match or had they relied on Darby taking some crazy bumps. The match layout was perfect and made complete sense, Punk the veteran having to slow down the younger, quicker Darby. Darby wrestled this really well too, he still worked it as the underdog (which makes sense given the size differential in pretty much all Darby matches) but was very comfortable in control and very comfortable working a big singles match style. Punk looked nice and sharp, particularly in the middle and closing portions of the match, he's a genius at match layout and this landed. ****

Paul Wight/QT- Short, inoffensive buffer segment. I don't know how you rate that.

Omega/Christian- They worked as hard as two guys can work. The crowd just did not buy in though. The problems here were several fold. Christian not being the popular choice for the title shot originally (I think everyone expected this to be Hangman Page) got the programme off on the wrong foot, the crowd being burned out post Punk (which was obviously the real selling point for this ppv) and everybody knowing that Christian was never going to win this match. So, that's the negatives and they did harm the match, because I really think if you got rid of those, if the crowd did believe in Christian, if the crowd had been as hot for this as everything pre Punk, this could've been anything from a ****1/2-****3/4 match because the work was absolutely stellar. Stiff as hell, everything executed beautifully (save one Omega rail spot in which his recovery was a million times more difficult than the original move) and a layout that, with a crowd not burned out, would've had such great peaks. A match that I think on repeat will get far more appreciation than the first time viewing. ****1/4

And then the show closer. Cole joining the Elite makes total sense, and man I do hope we get some Bucks/Cole trios matches because they will tear the house down in front of an AEW audience. And what can you say about Bryan Danielson? He looks great, he was clearly having a great time the entire night, what a coup for AEW. And how exciting were those post show comments? No more "Yes Man" this is American Dragon Bryan Danielson and he want to kick your head in. I cannot wait. As much of a homerun show as any I've seen. You can feel the excitement around this company off the back of this show and the recent signings. I loved this, it's one of the best pro wrestling shows I've seen, it's a shoe in for show of the year. And finally, after 20+ years of being told pro wrestling is bad, of being force fed sports entertainment nonsense, Tony Khan has brought back professional wrestling and guess what? It's really good!

I'm hoping for Danielson - Cole (and you can do tag/trio matches here with the combination of Danielson, Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus and Christian vs The Elite as the build to a Danielson - Cole singles match). You can tease multiple things here for longer term, Danielson vs Omega, Jungle Boy/Luchasaurus beating the Young Bucks in a tag match, and Cole vs Omega for control of The Elite. At some point, you need to bring Page in here for the Omega - Page match and what will hopefully be Page taking the title off of Omega (I'm still hoping Full Gear for this but Page probably needs to return at Arthur Ashe for this) and could potentially have a Page/Bryan vs Omega/Cole match at some point.

For Punk, I think him joining with Sting and Darby to go against 2.0 and Garcia, and at Full Gear do a Garcia vs Punk match. Punk says he's here to help the young guys and Garcia is someone with star potential imo and like Darby, can get put over in a loss to Punk. Punk has another few matches under his belt at that point, and whilst I think the title picture doesn't need him, could go there at that point, or do more with Darby and Sting and you've got potential feuds with MJF/Pinnacle, or Tazz's crew with Hobbs and Starks. I doubt they want to call out but with Lambert around and Punk's failed MMA career, you've an easy move into a feud there vs Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page.

Tony Khan tried to get the rights to The Final Countdown however it would have cost to much license.

The remix of  the Last of the Valkyrie is called Born for Greatness.

I always thought it's more when it comes to TV, it gets awkward. It's probably unauthorized anyway but no one cares but they care when it's being used on TV in front of a few hundred thousand viewers.

I think his new theme is excellent though. He's associated more with this now anyway and the remix having the indie chant in it is great.

Can someone tell me what is it that they're chanting in Bryan's new entrance theme? I didn't see much if any of his indie stuff so I can't figure it out!

I think Matt is doing well for himself with now they got past the Broken Matt thing. The HFO is working well for him. Especially taking 50 or 60% of Private Party's salary.😀

I'm sure Jeff wouldn't mind the move unless he's happy to have gone from the first guy to beat Karrion Kross in WWE to a 24/7 title chaser (as seen on Raw last night) in the space of a few weeks.

As for Bryan's chant, don't know how TNT will feel about people chanting it

I think is fine that the majority of wrestling fans haven't a clue who these Japanese guys Mox is fighting are.

What it is doing is actually doing is great for me as it is opening Japanese wrestling to those fans who might just google them and see there is more to wrestling than North America.

How many fans didn't know who the Lucha Bros were two/three years ago then went on YouTube and were blown away by them and became new fans.

The Forbidden Door just isn't opening a door to cross promotions working together it's is opening the eyes of fans to Lucha, Strong Style, Garbage, Catch wrestling.