Stiva

Tony Khan has said the whole show is going to be formatted differently to normal so I’m intrigued to see what that means, especially since they’re dealing with just an hour.

AKA CM Punk’s “surprise” debut. Moxley takes on Daniel Garcia, Jurassic Express have Private Party in that thrown together tag tournament and Cargill will flex her way through Kiera Hogan. Hopefully, we hear Eddie Kingston’s response to Miro too but this is really a one angle show so let’s hope they stick the landing.

I think it’s pretty incredible that they’ve had the restraint. I suppose it helps that all the shows are pretty much sold out anyway but has anyone ever built to a debut in such a fashion? Fun show, all in all but I’m definitely ready for the Bucks to lose their belts now and I’m leaning toward Jurassic Express being the ones to do it since the cage seems designed to book a title change. Wight/QT seems a thrown together match for his return but I’d bet money on Shaq showing up to run it at Full Gear. Miro/Kingston promo battles should be all that program needs to heat it up. Finally, I’m loving the focus on Daniel Garcia and 2.0 recently; just a fantastic way to debut them, feature them and make them TV acts within a month. Great stuff and the fantasy Booker in me is wondering if they’re positioning Garcia for a showcase match with one Bryan Danielson in the future.

Yeah, I like how AEW doesn’t beat you over the head with things and trusts your memory but even then, expecting me to remember Jamie Hayter after 2 years is a bit much. Fun show though; If Rampage is going to be three matches of a similar ilk every week, it’ll be a really fun watch. Would be perfect for the trios titles too.

I suppose the reason she’s still straddling the heel line is because there’s a raft of babyface challengers but no real heels other than Nyla or Cargill. You’d need to open the door to Impact to get Baker some heels to beat.

I do wonder if they’re heading towards Omega/Christian/Jungle Boy in a triple threat at All Out because it feels bizarre to run your PPV main event 2 weeks beforehand for a different title. Then again, another part of me still thinks this is all smoke and mirrors and Hangman will still get the shot, his wife’s due date be damned. The real worry is that they still don’t know what to do with Miro or who to position with him. Jungle Boy feels like the obvious challenger but he’s involved with the Elite at the moment. You also have to think that the Big Show angle is leading to Shaq coming back in, possibly for something at All Out. Would pop for a training montage of Shaq throwing Solow all around the gym. Now that I think, Ogogo has been missing a while and Big Show had that knockout punch finish, maybe it’s leading to that.

In its current incarnation at a trim 40 minutes, Dark: Elevation is finally the perfect AEW tribute to WCW C-Shows. They even have their own programs like the Janela and Kiss break-up. Good stuff

I also wonder where they were going with the Colt Cabana/Brodie story before The Dark Order became the fun loving guys they are now. Seems crazy to think how they changed after Brodie died.

MJF sits and reads Fozzy album reviews to him for 15 minutes.

Hyped for 2.0 debuting. Great personalities and nobody was watching 205 Live but they were good hands on there. Despite having something like 20 teams, it still feels like they could do with another team on top of them though so get that Forbidden Door open. Or give us that Dustin/Sonny Kiss team they teased for like a week. What are we guessing for Jericho’s fourth Labour? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nick Patrick showed up.

Every time you’d get a random Steiners/Faces of Fear match on a 1996/97 Nitro, it was always a joy. Probably not up there with the Heavenly Bodies match but just four big bastards throwing each other around

Is there a definitive list of who was booking WWE ECW over its years? Was it Dusty who took over from Heyman and how long did he last? As a self-contained (more or less) show that did such a good job of building to TV main events and utilising everyone very well for the last two and a half years of it’s run, it has a lot of parallels with Dusty booked NXT so I was wondering how long he was booking it for.

To be honest, I assumed the plan was to find a way to get to Page/Omega for All Out and put Punk in as the ref. He’d be the attraction but at the end of the night, Page would still be champ. But the Darby Allin promo suggests otherwise.

I really do hope Wyatt is ok but with all these persistent rumours of his mental health and the fact they cut him, Nick Khan really doesn’t care about being the bad guy, it’s fair to say. As for the AEW ad pressuring, I think that’s finally an admission that someone, somewhere, in WWE is a little bit worried with Punk and Bryan coming in

I think they could probably dial it back for a bit considering you had a Texas Death Match and then this back to back. It certainly worked as a one-off spectacle though. Saying that, I can't imagine Cody not wanting to bleed next week considering he'll probably be in white tights.

I’m amazed they went full Gage on national TV and even more amazed that a lot of the gruesome shit really got over. Not too keen on Page being beat since nobody else on the roster gets that reaction and the story is there but I guess the Danielson match is happening since it seems like Punk is going with Darby. Unless they’ve beat Page to go with Omega/Christian which, I cannot imagine even if they were hinting it

Shame about Marc Quen’s performance against Jungle Boy. I hope he’s carrying an injury because otherwise, that was about as sluggish and slow as you can be in a national promotion. Everything looked like he was running through treacle

They got over a million for this Dynamite and beat Raw in 18-49. What are we saying? Moxley? Darby? Fans being back? Sakazaki?!

Great show that flew by. All I can think about is how it must have absolutely sucked to be Ethan Page in that coffin, waiting for Darby to come crashing down on top of you with barely any idea of when it would be happening

Jungle Boy is the real deal, for sure. Could have done without the run ins for the Hardy/Christian feud but I liked seeing everyone intersect again. Was pretty much a one-match show but it was still a breezy watch. I agree that nothing in this Pinnacle feud is sinking in though. At least show SOME recaps to get over what these two factions are doing to each other.

I assumed the first Rampage show would be main evented by Britt beating Thunder Rosa

You never want to see anyone lose their jobs but I’d love a Breezango indie run.

France have been booked so strongly recently, someone going over on them could make them a star

I do wonder where MJF goes after he beats Jericho in the blow off. Both single champs are heels (unless they pull the trigger on Jungle Boy which, I’m not against) and a feud with Sammy is a situation where neither should really be losing.

Jericho loves doing his feuds in 3s. I assume the Pinnacle win the third match but where do you go from War Games and Stadium Stampede? Also, how hard would it have been to debut Andrade after Omega beats Jungle Boy next week? The crowd would do wild and you immediately sow the seeds for the Omega/Andrade match. And it’s way more exciting than him just walking out