-A strong opening match this week between FTR and Blackpool Combat Club. I liked the time limit draw and it wasn’t a total cop out way to get to a second match between both teams on PPV. The issue I continue to have with this is the lack of clear definition for either team. The crowd isn’t invested in the outcome here.
-Ok, Renee Paquette shouldn’t be playing into the gimmicks of the talent she interviews backstage. She needs to react to them, but playing a part in the Orange Cassidy schtick this week hurts her credibility as a reporter backstage and will hurt her ability to drive home serious storylines when she needs to.
Jake who?
-Since when is Jake Hager on team Orange Cassidy? Hager was a bizarre choice to make the save for Cassidy as he got beat up by Undisputed Kingdom this week. I’d bet most of the audience forgot Hager was still on the AEW roster. Yeah, this was weird.
-If Ruby Soho and Angelo Parker going on a date finally wraps up the love story between the two, I’m all for it. Soho and Parker have absolutely zero chemistry together, which makes the story very hard to believe and invest in.
-Thumbs way up on the Christina Cage segment with Daniel Garcia. Cage was brilliant as a heel and laid such a good foundation for Garcia to work with as the babyface. Cage was ruthless, gross, and a total jerk. Garcia was there and delivered as the polar opposite of that. Garcia has had his ups and downs in AEW. There are times where he leans into the wrong thing — like dancing — instead of his true personality, charisma, and wrestling talent. The audience has a connection with him and going up against the dastardly Cage will emphasize that fact in strong ways. This has been one of the best feuds leading up to Revolution and has the possibility of stealing the show on the PPV next week.
Help us Revolution, you’re our only hope
-As I said last week, the Toni Storm vs. Deonna Purrazzo program needs the PPV to get here ASAP. Overall, it’s been a strong program between the two women, but this week was ineffective and unnecessary for the story. Toni Storm squashing an opponent was fine, but the Deonna Purrazzo vs. Madison Rayne match was a total disaster that almost ended with Rayne suffering a serious injury. Purrazzo has been really good since debuting with AEW, but this was messy and hurt Purrazzo’s aura as a dominant wrestler. Next week, a video package is enough to push this feud across the finish line. Anything else risks damaging the strong story they’ve told to this point.
-Man, the Sting and Darby Allin recorded promo was fantastic. Just a wonderful piece of business that did a great job building up their match against The Young Bucks at Revolution. Both Sting and Darby were serious, they were focused, and they kept the attention on the story at hand instead of the meta nonsense that creeped into things last week. Maybe Sting’s best promo ever. Really well done.
Ummm, you ok Wardlow?
-What the hell was Wardlow thinking? Instead of that promo he may as well have wore a sign around his neck that read “my career has gone poorly.” Wardlow was passionate, but his material was disconnected and pivoted back and forth between storyline and meta. He also didn’t reference his big bad Undisputed Kingdom faction once. Ouch. Not good, but it’s looking like Wardlow will be a Samoa Joe opponent sooner than later.
-Tony Khan, we’re still not done with the Bang Bang Scissor Gang yet? Really?
-A good main event this week. The action was exciting, but the stories that played out within the match were strong too. The triple threat title match between Samoa Joe, Hangman Page, and Swerve Strickland was furthered, along with Hook vs. Brian Cage getting some added juice to it too. Not a main event we’ll remember in five years, but certainly good enough.