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Last Wednesday night was jam-packed with three hours of AEW programming, starting with our traditional two hours of DYNAMITE, then immediately followed by RAMPAGE as it aired on a special night! During those three hours, the AEW faithful witnessed Adam Copeland earn back the TNT Championship by going through a hellacious “I Quit” match with Christian Cage, and saw Kazuchika Okada defeat Eddie Kingston to claim the AEW Continental Championship! In addition, Skye Blue and TBS Champion Julia Hart beat Kris Statlander and Willow Nightingale in a Street Fight,  Orange Cassidy & Trent Beretta won their Wild Card bout in the Tag Title Tournament, and FTW Champion HOOK defeated Chris Jericho!

This Wednesday night on DYNAMITE, live from Quebec City, QC and the Centre Videotron, we will witness a rematch seven years in the making, one that many thought would never come to pass, when Katsuyori Shibata takes on Will Ospreay! Plus, Konosuke Takeshita will go head-to-head with Swerve Strickland, and the Quarter-Finals of the AEW World Tag Title Tournament begin when The Young Bucks meet Private Party!

Then join All Elite Wrestling in London, ON for Saturday’s COLLISION, live from the Budweiser Gardens,  for The Infantry versus FTR in the Quarter-Finals of the AEW World Tag Team Title Tournament, and so much more!

SEVEN YEARS IN THE WAITING…

“The Aerial Assassin” Will Ospreay vs. Katsuyori Shibata

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Eleven matches; that is how many times Katsuyori Shibata and Will Ospreay stepped into the ring between January 5th and February 11th of 2017. Seven of those times it was Shibata who came out on top, but only one of those victories came in the form of a singles match, the very last one at NJPW’s THE NEW BEGINNING IN OSAKA 2017 event. The other ten matches were all fought in trios and multi-man bouts, all save that RevPro British Heavyweight Championship fight on February 11th won by Shibata, but unfortunately a rematch never came to pass as Shibata’s career came to an end just two months later after an IWGP Heavyweight Title fight with Kazuchika Okada at SAKURA GENESIS 2017. 

Then the unimaginable happened; four years and six months later, during the G1 CLIMAX 2021 tour, Shibata shocked the world when he stepped into the ring with Zack Sabre Jr. for a five minute Grappling Rules contest! Two and a half months later, at WRESTLE KINGDOM 16, Shibata would get back into the ring with Ren Narita for a full-blow professional wrestling match, then ten months later, on the 11/4/22 edition of RAMPAGE, Shibata would make his in-ring debut for AEW in an International Championship loss to Orange Cassidy. Given the time between those two matches, it was reasonable to question whether or not Shibata was returning to full-time competition or if those were just a couple matches to test his own limits. The answer came on March 31, 2023 when, at ROH’s SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2023 event, Shibata won the ROH Pure Championship from Wheeler Yuta, and spent the next eight months tearing it up on both AEW and ROH events, as well as traveling to RevPro for their 11TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW. 

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After losing the Pure Championship back to Yuta last November, Shibata returned to Japan, but made a monumental return to AEW action on the March 16th COLLISION when he battled Bryan Danielson in a certified Dream Match. Here were two men that both thought their in-ring careers finished at some point in the years prior, two men who defied the odds and the expectations of medical professionals, two men who were now fighting better than they had at any previous point in their careers, and they were going to war for the AEW faithful. Danielson ultimately won the fight, and there was another man watching on who took what happened as a test he needed to take upon himself.

That man was Will Ospreay, and with his own bout against Bryan Danielson set for AEW DYNASTY on April 21st, he felt the need to test himself against Katsuyori Shibata, to see if he could succeed in 2024 where he did not in 2017, and thus made a challenge to “The Wrestler” for the fight going down this Wednesday night! Can Ospreay follow in Danielson’s footsteps and score a victory over Katsuyori Shibata in Quebec City? Or will Shibata repeat history in this monumental rematch seven years in the making?

ONE-ON-ONE…

“The Alpha” Konosuke Takeshita vs. Swerve Strickland

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Thus far in 2024, Konosuke Takeshita holds a record of 5-1 in singles matches, and 10-2 over the last twelve months in that field. That’s a run that includes victories over Chris Jericho, Darby Allin, Kenny Omega, Kyle Fletcher, as well as Rocky Romero this past Wednesday night, and has shown the world that “The Alpha” is one of the most fearsome competitors in All Elite Wrestling today. 

Over the course of his last eleven one-on-one match-ups Swerve Strickland lost exactly one time, his Continental Classic Gold League fight with Jon Moxley on 12/13/23, and was taken to a 30-Minute time limit draw by Hangman Page on 2/7/24. It’s been an incredible run for Strickland as well, and even if you factor in his two Three Way losses in the Gold League Finals and at REVOLUTION 2024, it doesn’t change that run because wasn’t the man who took the fall in either of those matches. There are few men who’ve been on a hotter streak that Swerve Strickland, and that run has put Samoa Joe’s AEW World Championship in Swerve’s crosshairs.

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For the very first time these two men, each at the top of their game, will lock horns this Wednesday night on DYNAMITE, and there is certainly the possibility that the future of the AEW World Championship hinges on the result of this match! Both Takeshita and Swerve have reasonable claims to being the next challenger for Samoa Joe, based on their respective records and, in the case of Swerve, the fact he wasn’t defeated in the Three Way at REVOLUTION ’24. 

As announced Tuesday night by AEW GM Tony Khan, this match will determine the next challenger for Samoa Joe’s AEW World Championship! With that added factor, there is no doubt Samoa Joe will have his eyes on this contest as his next contender is determined!

AEW WORLD TAG TITLE TOURNAMENT QUARTER-FINAL MATCH…

The Young Bucks (Matthew & Nicholas Jackson) vs. Private Party (Isiah Kassidy & Marq Quen

On October 9, 2019, in the very first match of the original AEW World Tag Team Title Tournament, Private Party shocked the world when they defeated The Young Bucks to advance out of the Quarter-Finals. Though Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen would fall to The Lucha Brothers in the Semi-Finals, the impact was made, and the world had been forced to stand up and recognize Private Party.

A year later The Young Bucks would even up the score, pinning Isiah Kassidy to win a Four Way #1 Contenders match on 10/21/20, and would follow that up with a traditional tag team victory over Private Party on November 4th a few weeks later. Since that bout over three years ago, the two teams only met in one Trios match, though Isiah has a little more experience fighting the brothers Jackson with other partners during Marq Quen’s injury recovery, but not one other tag team match between Private Party and The Young Bucks since 2020.

That all changes this Wednesday night on DYNAMITE when, in the Quarter-Finals of the AEW World Tag Title Tournament, The Young Bucks and Private Party meet again! Since Marq Quen’s return to action in 2024, Private Party is 2-2 in tag team action, though one of those losses came in a Three Way tag with Top Flight and Bryan Keith/Komander where neither Quen nor Kassidy were the ones pinned to lose the match.  As for The EVPs, in 2024 they are 3-1 in tag team action, but to be honest about their record, two of those victories came over local competitors who frankly had no chance at actually beating the former 2-Time AEW World Tag Champions. 

The Young Bucks have a mission of becoming the first 3-Time AEW Tag Champions while Private Party have one to capture those belts for the very first time, and only one team can get closer to their objective. Will it be The Young Bucks or Private Party who advances to the Semi-Finals? And will it be The Undisputed Kingdom or the Orange Cassidy/Trent Beretta tandem who meets them there?

AEW WORLD TAG TITLE TOURNAMENT QUARTER-FINAL MATCH…

The Undisputed Kingdom (ROH World Tag Team Champions Matt Taven & Mike Bennett) vs.

Orange Cassidy & Trent Beretta

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The AEW World Tag Title Tournament kicks off in full-force this Wednesday night with the aforementioned Young Bucks/Private Party match, and this Quarter-Final match pitting ROH World Tag Team Champions Matt Taven and Mike Bennett against Orange Cassidy and Trent Beretta!

Though OC and Trent have never faced this Undisputed Kingdom tandem in a tag match, Cassidy’s fight with Roderick Strong have made them all quite familiar with one another, in fact the former 2-Time International Champion beat both Taven and Bennett in singles matches on the road to REVOLUTION 2024. But on that same road, as part of their mission to remove Cassidy’s support system, The Undisputed Kingdom put a hurting on Trent Beretta, so that makes this tag team encounter as much a method of revenge as it is an opportunity to move forward in the tournament to face the winner of the Private Party/Young Bucks bout!

TBS CHAMPIONSHIP #1 CONTENDER MATCH…

Kris Statlander vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Skye Blue vs. Anna Jay

***Mercedes Moné on commentary***

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The TBS Championship is a prize greatly coveted by the women of All Elite Wrestling, and this Wednesday night four competitors will clash to see who moves on to DYNASTY 2024 to face Julia Hart! All four of these women have plenty of story with Julia Hart, especially Statlander, Nightingale, and Skye Blue given their months of battle since FULL GEAR 2023, but Anna Jay has her own reasons for wanting another fight with Julia Hart.

Hart has been the bane of Anna Jay’s AEW existence, in three bouts it has been Julia who’s won each one, including a TBS Championship fight at BATTLE OF THE BELTS IX back in January. Statlander is the woman that Julia Hart took the TBS Championship from, though technically she did not defeat Kris to win in, but Statlander has yet to be granted a rematch. Coincidentally, Julia earned that title fight at FULL GEAR 2023 by defeating Willow Nightingale in an Eliminator Bout, and of course there’s the relationship between Hart and Skye Blue that’s blossomed since Hart misted Skye many months ago. At first they were at odds, but over time the two women became thick as thieves, and have come to operate as quite the fearsome tag team, actually beating Stat and Willow in a Street Fight last Wednesday night on RAMPAGE!

This is quite the intriguing Four Way, and it will be interesting to see how TBS Champion Julia Hart responds to the outcome of the fight, especially if it is Skye Blue who earns herself the DYNASTY 2024 title match!

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Join us Wednesday night for DYNAMITE, hailing from the Centre Videotron in Quebec City, QC, and featuring the first Quarter-Final match in the AEW World Tag Title Tournament between The Young Bucks and Private Party, Takeshita versus Swerve, and a rematch years in the making between Katsuyori Shibata and Will Ospreay!!!

The meets us this Saturday in London, ON at the Budweiser Gardens for the return of COLLISION featuring former 2-Time AEW World Tag Champions FTR taking on The Infantry in a Quarter-Final match-up of the AEW World Tag Team Championship Tournament!

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We are finally here, the moment we have all been anticipating/dreading since October 18th when “The Icon” Sting announced to the world that he would bring his historic Hall of Fame career to an end at REVOLUTION 2024. That night he said to the world “The only thing sure about Sting is my retirement, REVOLUTION 2024, is for sure.”, and it felt like a seismic shift in the foundation of professional wrestling. 

We’d learn shortly thereafter that the site for this historic night would be the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC, a site very familiar to “The Icon”, a place where he fought “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair to a 45 minute draw over the World’s Championship, where he and Lex Luger won the 1988 Jim Crockett Memorial Cup, and where he stepped inside a Steel Cage with Mick Foley. The Greensboro Coliseum is where Sting found The Great Muta to a time limit draw, where he went to a Double DQ with Abdullah The Butcher, and where he was trapped inside that enclosed Steel Cage in 1991. After Sunday night, the Greensboro Coliseum will also be known as the location where Sting fought his final professional wrestling match, and where All Elite Wrestling’s first pay-per-view of 2024 took place!

While this Sunday night will obviously be historic as the night professional wrestling bids farewell to Sting’s in-ring career, it could also go down in history as one of the most unforgettable nights in AEW history! With so many championship matches on tap, the debut of Will Ospreay as an official member of the AEW locker room, the All-Star Scramble, and so much more, REVOLUTION 2024 goes live on PPV beginning at 8pm ET/7pm CT, with the ZERO HOUR kicking off at 6:30p ET on the official AEW YouTube channel!

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP TORNADO TAG MATCH…

Darby Allin & “The Icon” Sting(c) vs. The Young Bucks (Matthew and Nicholas Jackson)

13,978 days; 38 years, 3 months, and 7 days; that is how long it has been since the first night “The Icon” Sting stepped inside a professional wrestling ring for a match. In that time he has been an inspiration to fans around the world, one of the most beloved figures the industry has seen, a true Hall of Fame talent, a master of reinvention, and a worthy of that “Icon” tag. It was not all that long ago that, due to injury, it was thought Sting’s days inside the ring were over, but since coming to All Elite Wrestling he has proven that to be so far from the truth. 

It began at WINTER IS COMING 2020 on December 2nd, when Sting arrived at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville, to the delight of the limited fans inside the arena. It was a cold night in Jacksonville but the electricity for Sting’s arrival, the excitement from the fans made it red hot, and at REVOLUTION 2021, when he teamed with Darby Allin for his first match in nearly six years, “The Icon” showed he was as good as ever. That Street Fight saw the Sting/Darby tandem score victory over Brian Cage and Ricky Starks, and thus began a streak of twenty-eight victories, fifteen of them in tag matches with Darby, that has included Street Fights, No DQ situations, a trip to Pro Wrestling NOAH, and even a Coffin Match at Wembley Stadium for ALL IN: LONDON! 

In the midst of all that, on October 18th, Sting told the world that at REVOLUTION 2024 he would close the book on his legendary in-ring career after thirty-eight years, he said that was the one thing about Sting that was for certain, but between October and this Sunday, there was still a lot to accomplish. Darby and Sting made an ally out of Adam Copeland, joining him in the fight against The Patriarchy, and even signed on with Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara to fight then-AEW World Tag Champions Big Bill & Ricky Starks and The Don Callis Family. Still, there was one goal, one thing that Sting hadn’t accomplished during his AEW tenure, one thing Darby Allin was adamant about making happen before the final curtain: an AEW championship.

That ultimately came to fruition on February 7th when Sting and Darby claimed the AEW World Tag Team Championship from Starks and Big Bill in a Tornado Tag. It should have been a moment of triumph, of celebration, but instead two petulant adults ruined the moment for Sting and Darby, as well as for the fans wanting to celebrate this monumental occasion. While the extent of what The Young Bucks did to Darby, Sting, and his sons was quite shocking, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they spoiled the celebration. 

After all these are two men who, after losing their tag team title opportunity at FULL GEAR 2023 to Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho, had Brandon Cutler put out the message to “respect their privacy” as they took time away from wrestling, had Brandon Cutler tweet out that they were done with BEING THE ELITE, and on January 10th when Matthew and Nicholas finally came back to work to respond to the question of who Sting would face in his final match, also had Cutler put out that backstage morale increased tremendously due to their return.

The version of The Young Bucks that has taken up television time in 2024 can be summed up in three words: abuse of power. For the first time since AEW’s inception, the brothers Jackson are actively taking advantage of their power as EVPs in the company hierarchy, not only to threaten people with fines (as they did with Tony Schiavone) or to disrupt others moments (as they did with Eddie Kingston this past Wednesday), but also to put themselves into this position to challenge for the AEW World Tag Team Championship! The return of the rankings system was intended to provide deserving challengers with their opportunities, to have a system where individuals/teams earn their way to title shots with victories over other deserving challengers, but The Young Bucks arbitrarily decided how it would work for them. They came back, defeated a team of local hopefuls on the 2/9 RAMPAGE, cheated to beat Top Flight on the 2/14 DYNAMITE, and then declared themselves the #1 Contender’s to the tag titles. They didn’t earn that top spot through actual work, they didn’t win an Eliminator Match to get a title opportunity, nor are they answering any kind of Open Challenge to face Darby Allin and Sting; they are simply using the tools they were given as EVPs for selfish ends rather than to the boon of AEW.

The Young Bucks, as they have chosen to operate thus far in 2024, couldn’t be farther from who they were in 2019, and could not be any farther from the men they are facing on Sunday night. Since the day he set foot in AEW, Sting has been here for All Elite Wrestling, for the men and women in the locker rooms, and has been an example of how to enjoy a nearly 40 year career in this industry in a way that actually benefits all those around you. That isn’t just here in AEW though, the people who were around him long before AEW have testified to that being the way Sting has always conducted himself in the wrestling sphere, and it is also what Sting has told the world he sees in Darby Allin. Darby cares about AEW deeply, not just his own place in it, but in the entirety of All Elite Wrestling, wanting to see it grow and thrive, and thus he is utterly disappointed in the men The Young Bucks have chosen to be in 2024. They are not here for AEW, they are not here to benefit anyone else but themselves, and they obviously don’t care who they hurt in the process, and that is why this Sunday night at REVOLUTION 2024, Darby Allin and Sting have bad intentions for Matthew and Nicholas Jackson.

It’s about AEW, it’s about the Borden family, it’s about the bond Sting and Darby have built over the last several years, and for Darby especially, it’s about making sure “The Icon” gets the send-off from professional wrestling that he has earned. After thirty-eight years and a lifetime of sacrifice, of a career filled with the highest highs and lowest lows, of championships, and of blood, sweat, and tears, Sting bids professional wrestling farewell, but not before trying to teach one last lesson to The Young Bucks about humility, and the cost of their hubris.

AEW WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Samoa Joe(c) vs. “Hangman” Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland

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Two years ago, at REVOLUTION 2022 in Orlando, Swerve Strickland signed his name on the dotted line to became All Elite while Adam Page retained the AEW World Championship over Adam Cole. One year ago, at REVOLUTION 2023, as Adam Page beat Jon Moxley in Texas Death and Samoa Joe lost the TNT Title to Wardlow, Swerve sat in the back of San Francisco’s Chase Center stewing that he wasn’t involved with anything that night.

Now REVOLUTION is upon us again, this time hailing from the historic Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC, and Swerve Strickland is exactly where he has always wanted to be, in the AEW World Championship picture. Swerve has always felt, always known, he has the tools to be the man standing atop AEW as champion, but this is his first opportunity to become the champion, and he means to make the most of it. Over the course of his AEW career, specifically since the moment he chose to turn his back on Keith Lee, Swerve has shown a willingness to do anything, to go to any lengths, in order to accomplish his goals, and that is where Hangman Page enters into the picture.

This thing between Hangman and Swerve started innocuously enough on the September 6th DYNAMITE when Strickland interrupted Tony Schiavone’s conversation with the former AEW World Champion, but it quickly went south as Swerve ran down Hangman. Strickland swore it wasn’t personal, that it was simply a matter of wanting the spot Adam occupied, and it was that night Strickland said “if I would’ve gotten the opportunities that you’ve gotten, I’d be the first black AEW World Champion by now”. Maybe it wasn’t personal to start, but it rapidly became so as Swerve pushed every possible button he could to get under Hangman’s skin, the situation ultimately ending with Mogul Embassy member Brian Cage dropping Hangman with a Drill Claw.

Their first singles match at WRESTLEDREAM 2023 went Swerve’s way, but not without the assist of Prince Nana, while their second match at FULL GEAR 2023 produced one of the most violent, bloody, sadistic scenarios we’ve ever seen play out in All Elite Wrestling, and that too was won by the boss of The Mogul Embassy. Along the way Hangman made sure Strickland didn’t cheat his way to a TNT Championship opportunity, along the way Swerve thought it was a good idea to break into Hangman’s home, along the way everything that started as being about professional wrestling and a “spot” got very, very personal. Hangman swore he’d never let Swerve become AEW World Champion, and when the two men collided on the February 7th DYNAMITE to see who would go to REVOLUTION 2024 to fight for the title and it ended with a time limit draw, Hangman thought he’d accomplished his goal of blocking Swerve’s path to the title.

Unfortunately for Hangman, AEW GM Tony Khan had other thoughts, and it was announced just moments after the draw that both Hangman and Swerve would go on to March 3rd in Greensboro as the challengers for the AEW World Championship held by Samoa Joe. Yes, that was another thing that happened along the way; the most dominant World Champion in ROH’s 22 year history, the most dominant ROH World TV Champion in that title’s 14 year lineage, had now become the king of All Elite Wrestling after smashing through MJF at WORLDS END 2023.

Ask anyone who’s ever stood across the ring from Samoa Joe, or even stood in the ring as he made his entrance for that matter; the AEW World Champion is one of the scariest individuals to share space with inside the squared circle. There is an intensity that permeates the room when Joe walks into it, a feeling that you’re sharing space with one of the baddest men on the planet, a man willing to destroy you if you come for what’s his, and an individual to be feared. Samoa Joe’s arrival to ROH at GLORY BY HONOR 2002 changed the game for professional wrestling, his historic reign as ROH World Champion elevated ROH to that next level, and his fight with Kenta Kobashi in October 2005 elevated the entire sport. A man of Joe’s size wasn’t supposed to move like that, wasn’t supposed to be able to string together the furious combinations of offense that he did, but his presence on increasingly larger stages showed the wrestling world different, making his arrival to AEW two years ago one of the most exciting debuts in the company’s history. 

After all, there are few competitors in professional wrestling more legitimate than Samoa Joe, few men who force all those around them to be better, and that is what both Swerve Strickland and Hangman Page are going to have to be on Sunday night: better. They each need to find the best version of themselves to have a hope of dethroning Samoa Joe as the AEW World Champion, they both need to find a way to focus on that goal rather than on their hatred for each other, otherwise their mutually assured destruction will leave Samoa Joe reigning atop AEW. 

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

“Timeless” Toni Storm(c) vs. “The Virtuosa” Deonna Purrazzo

Deonna Purrazzo first showed her face in AEW as the ROH Women’s World Champion, but at that time she was obligated elsewhere in her professional wrestling career, and with Mercedes Martinez defeating her to claim the championship, it seemed the only time the AEW faithful would get to see “The Virtuosa”. 

Then January 3rd happened, and in the aftermath of Mariah May’s in-ring debut for AEW, “The Virtuosa” arrived on the scene in Newark, upstaging Mariah’s debut, and telling her to take a message back to AEW Women’s World Champion Toni Storm. Mariah took umbrage with the idea that she’s Storm’s messenger, slapped AEW’s new signee across the face, but immediately received a slap of her own from Purrazzo, followed by a kick to the jaw that sent Mariah reeling.

With just those few minutes, Deonna Purrazzo let the world know why she was here in All Elite Wrestling, but it would take a few more weeks before the AEW faithful learned about the history between Deonna and Toni Storm before there was a “Virtuosa” or a “Timeless”. It turned out that the two women were friends, former roommates, who even got identical tattoos to commemorate their bond. Their friendship ran deeper than two women who’d worked in Stardom together, or had been opponents in other companies, they were true friends in their pre-AEW days, but that didn’t stop “Timeless” Toni Storm from feigning ignorance to who Deonna Purrazzo identity.

Eventually Storm let the facade drop, and both women spoke to their history, Deonna looking for some glimmer of the woman she knew before “Timeless” took over while the AEW Women’s World Champion considered her past dead. It’s almost as if, between losing the AEW Women’s World Championship twice in less than a year and having her relationship with The Outcasts disintegrate, Storm just broke, deciding that she’d always been “Timeless”, and anything before her AEW premiere as “Timeless” happened to someone else.

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So Deonna did what she had to do in order to get what she wanted, she got to work inside the squared circle and earned her way to a championship fight. Starting with Red Velvet on January 13th, Purrazzo has racked up five singles victories over Red, Anna Jay, Taya Valkyrie, Madison Rayne, and Kiera Hogan, and did not hesitate to throw blows with her former friend last night on COLLISION. It seems Deonna Purrazzo has had to accept that the Toni Storm she knew is gone forever, so all that’s left to do is take away the championship she holds so dear, and see if perhaps that shock to the system jolts Toni Storm back to who she was before “Timeless” took over the reins.  

TNT CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

“The Patriarch” Christian Cage vs. Daniel Garcia

Daniel Garcia was at a point in his young career that many individuals could relate to regardless of their occupation; he was questioning himself, questioning his worth, and questioning if he should continue chasing his professional wrestling dreams. The frustration of one loss after another in the Continental Classic didn’t help his feelings, but when he finally got that victory over Brody King in their last match of the tournament, even if it didn’t matter by that point in terms of the standings, it mattered to Garcia and his dreams. It was a reminder of just how good he is bell-to-bell, it was a wake-up call to the rest of AEW that Garcia needs to be viewed as a threat to everyone standing across the ring from him, and a statement to the fans that the energy they’d invested in Garcia was one worth making.

It wasn’t a victory that led Garcia directly into a ripping streak where he’s stacked up W’s over everyone in front of him, but it bolstered his confidence, it led to his team scoring victory at WORLDS END 2023 when Garcia pinned Lethal, and to Garcia stepping up to aid FTR against The House of Black, notably being the deciding factor in their victory over The House in the Escape The Cage match several weeks ago.

A week later, Garcia followed that up by scoring the decision over Nick Wayne to get his trio with FTR  a win over The Patriarchy, and that moment is what brought him to this place on Sunday night’s REVOLUTION 2024 pay-per-view. That victory gave Garcia the confidence to call out Christian Cage for a TNT Championship match, it boosted Garcia when he accepted Adam Copeland’s challenge for a #1 Contender match on DYNAMITE. Sadly, though unsurprisingly, Christian Cage and The Patriarchy ruined that match, getting it thrown out as a No Contest when they interfered while Copeland had Garcia in a Crossface submission. Merely interfering wasn’t enough though, Cage and company tried to deliver a Con-Chair-To to Garcia, one Copeland stopped from happening, only to end up a victim of the devastating chair attack himself thanks to Mother Wayne hitting him in the groin.

So with Copeland on the shelf from that assault, Daniel Garcia was the man left standing, and he absolutely was not going to back down from this fight no matter what. He wants that TNT Championship, he wants revenge for what Cage did to him, Copeland, and Daddy Magic, and he will fight the entire Patriarchy by himself in order to get it! Unfortunately that just may be the scenario in Greensboro on Sunday night, Garcia versus Cage, Killswitch, and The Wayne’s, but if that’s what it takes to finally wear an AEW championship around his waist, than that is what Garcia will do.

There is one question though, if Garcia is successful in his TNT Championship bid at REVOLUTION 2024, how will Copeland handle that upon his return? It’s been his mission to be the one to take that title from Christian Cage, the entire point of the Cope Open was for Adam to play Cage’s game and earn his way back to contention with actual victories, so if Garcia is the one to swoop in and end The Patriarch’s reign as TNT Champion, how will Copeland respond?

CONTINENTAL CROWN CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Eddie Kingston(c) vs. “The American Dragon” Bryan Danielson

Nearly 500 years ago the Pakistani Beggar King Hussein Nishah wrote, “Treat people the way you want to be treated. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Respect is earned, not given”, and those words, especially the final five, have permeated through history to this very day. Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone character in The Godfather spoke those words after a fashion, Ring of Honor even named one of its pay-per-view events RESPECT IS EARNED, it’s a mantra that many people live by, and one that Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston has taken to heart both in his wrestling career as well as in life.

He is the first man to admit that he wasn’t the most respectful of individuals as a young kid first getting into professional wrestling. He was an uncouth kid off the streets coming into a world where handshakes are an expectation, respect for those who came before you is demanded regardless of their behavior towards you, and “paying your dues” can be an arbitrary term for treating the younger generations horribly. It could be a world where respect was expected rather than earned, and that system did nothing to bolster those who struggled to find their place in it. Some were rigid in their expectations of adherence to pro wrestling’s precepts, and when an individual like Kingston, especially in his nascent years lacing up the boots, comes into that world it can bristle those who have lofty expectations. 

That is the relationship of Bryan Danielson and Eddie Kingston, one where the former gives the latter no learning curve and simply demands he be better. There’s no leeway given to the notion that Eddie, as he has owned, is his own worst enemy, that he’s guilty of walking away rather than fighting the preconceived notions of men like Bryan and Claudio Castagnoli. There are times when Eddie hasn’t pushed himself to be his best, that he’s allowed himself to be less than, but for some it just takes longer to find that self-belief, to create that self-confidence, that lends itself towards being the best version of yourself. 

Bryan and Claudio may entered into professional wrestling utterly confident about their abilities, completely sure of their choices, but that wasn’t Eddie. He was the man who took time to figure out his place in the world of wrestling, to learn who he is as a man away from the ring, and figure out why he kept handicapping his own career. It took time, it took making a lot of mistakes and creating a slew of enemies, it took losing friends and relationships, but eventually Kingston looked inward rather than outward, and began to make the changes. The reality is that this is an ongoing process for Kingston, one that will likely last his entire life, but at least it’s a process he pursues and won’t let himself give up on ever again.

Unfortunately that’s not enough for Bryan Danielson; Eddie’s desire to change, the work put in towards becoming a better version of himself, of living up to his fullest potential, none of that matters to “The American Dragon” because all he sees is who Kingston was, not who he is. He doesn’t see the hard work Kingston puts in every night, the gym hours, the diet, the mental healthcare, the pure passion Eddie has for professional wrestling; all he sees is who Eddie was fifteen, twenty years ago, a version of Kingston that Danielson has forever trapped in amber. For Bryan there is no such thing as growth, no such thing as change, no such thing as redemption; you are who you are and you’ll always be that.

So no matter what Eddie Kingston does, Bryan Danielson will never genuinely respect him, not as a wrestler or a man, it will never be earned no matter how many times “The Mad King” can best him. There’s a reason why the simple act of a shaking Eddie’s hand has to be forced upon Bryan, and it says a lot more about who Danielson is as a person than anything about Eddie Kingston. Perhaps the world can now see that no matter how good “The American Dragon” may be inside the ring, and make no mistake he is quite possibly the best to ever do it, outside of the ring he is a bully who relishes in the misery of others, and Bryan’s actions show he is the one who has not earned one ounce of respect. 

AEW INTERNATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

“Freshly Squeezed” Orange Cassidy(c) vs. Roderick Strong

Adam Cole made it abundantly clear on the DYNAMITE followings WORLDS END 2023, when The Undisputed Kingdom officially introduced themselves to the world as a unit, that Roderick Strong was on a mission to claim the AEW International Championship. There was no secret plan now that Cole, Strong, Matt Taven, Mike Bennett, and Wardlow had stepped out from behind their masks, every card was laid out on the table, and Roddy did not hesitate to step to Orange Cassidy’s face on the January 17th DYNAMITE after he and Trent Beretta defeated Penta and Komander. To be clear though, while Roderick had no problem getting into OC’s face to declare his championship aspirations, he had no intention of fighting Cassidy that night even though the defending champion was more than willing to go.

Instead Roderick Strong made it known he would wait until REVOLUTION 2024 to take up this title fight, giving Cassidy plenty of time to prepare for the match, but also plenty of time to possibly lose the championship as well. After all, just because Roderick was willing to wait over a month for his title opportunity didn’t mean Cassidy wasn’t going to be the defending champion he’s always been. In fact, not only has “Freshly Squeezed” defended the belt since the confrontation with Strong, he’s done so three times, including traveling to RevPro in London to put it on the line in a Seven Way bout! 

But it looks like Roderick actually had a rationale behind his decision to postpone the opportunity, an actual plan to put into motion leading up to REVOLUTION 2024, and that plan meant removing a majority of Cassidy’s allies off the playing field. Trent Beretta, Chuck Taylor, and Rocky Romero have all been put on the shelf by The Undisputed Kingdom, FTW Champion HOOK has been otherwise engaged in issues with Brian Cage and a fixation on Samoa Joe, and Danhausen, well who knows where his head is at. Suffice to say with Trent, Chuck, and Rocky off the table, the AEW International Champion is rather alone while Roderick Strong is always flanked by Taven and Bennett. 

If Cassidy had lost the championship between January 17th and March 3rd, it’s safe to say Roderick would’ve just moved his focus to whoever beat Orange, because for him this isn’t personal, it’s just about taking the International Championship. For Cassidy however, trying to take the title he’s poured his blood, his body, and his soul into for 471 out of the last 508 days is very personal, and taking down his best friends out of some misguided delusion that it will make him easier pickings is also very personal.

So while Roderick is fighting for the International Championship, Cassidy is fighting for that title as well as for those who suffered at The Undisputed Kingdom’s hands simply for the “crime” of being in Orange’s friendship circle. Taven and Bennett have already brought one championship to the UK fold, will Roderick be able to bring another on Sunday night? Or will Cassidy be able to continue chasing the records he set with his first International Championship reign?

THE FAMILY THAT FIGHTS TOGETHER…

Will Ospreay vs. “The Alpha” Konosuke Takeshita

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yOaijQExO6k?si=Y5jcO3un9QZlvCNU&start=285

In the twisted mind of Don Callis, pitting two of his own “family” members against one another seems to be a way for Callis to hype his own unit as the greatest group of professional wrestlers in All Elite Wrestling. It is a way for Callis to say he won regardless of if it’s Takeshita or Will Ospreay who comes out with the actual victory in the match, and it’s clear to see that Callis believes, no matter the outcome, his “family” bond will remain as strong as ever.

But will that be the case? Is The Don Callis Family on the same level as, say, The Blackpool Combat Club? Meaning can Callis’ crew fight one another with no problem, do they look at it as iron sharpening iron the way The BCC does, or is Don Callis setting himself up for disasterous consequences? 

However the aftermath of this battle plays out, there is no doubt it has the potential to be one of the greatest bouts AEW has seen its existence. Konosuke Takeshita is a true hoss in that ring, he’s powerful and fast, a hard-hitting beast who has grown to relish the pain he dishes out to his opponents. Will Ospreay, well there’s a reason many people, fans and wrestling pundits alike, consider him the greatest wrestler competing today. He can soar, he can strike, he can get on the mat and grapple, he can take punishment as well as dish it out, and the fact that this will mark his first official match as part of the AEW locker room only provides further incentive to make it a memorable evening. 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dYA59k3M37A?si=TH7__yLkW0tUnJGb&start=449

So while Don Callis may say that no matter what happens, his family wins, the reality is that no matter happens it is the fans who will win with this match!

TAG TEAM GRUDGE MATCH…

The Blackpool Combat Club (Claudio Castagnoli & Jon Moxley) vs.

FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3WPmdwHpxKE?si=d2F4xSzoY4IZDj9I&start=221

On the 2/21 edition of DYNAMITE, fans witnessed glorious combat as FTR and The BCC, represented by Claudio Castagnoli and Jon Moxley, battled to a 20-minute draw. Though a phenomenal pro wrestling contest, it was understandably unsatisfying for either team, and they nearly came to blows in the backstage area shortly thereafter. Both teams wanted more, with the challenge laid out by FTR for a rematch, and that challenge was gladly accepted by Mox and Claudio, but not without their fair share of words denigrate Cash and Dax as clutching to the past of professional wrestling rather than creating the future.

The former 2-Time AEW World Tag Champions took umbrage with that statement, and their perspective came out after scoring a hard-earned victory over Shane Taylor Promotions last week on COLLISION, but things weren’t done yet that night. Bryan Danielson beat Jun Akiyama in a superb main event, but things went pear-shaped after “The American Dragon” kicked him right in the groin, bringing Eddie Kingston into the ring from the commentary position to pound Bryan’s skull in. Of course this brought Claudio Castagnoli into the fray, which in turn got FTR involved, sending the two BCC members scurrying away for higher ground. As COLLISION went off the air, it was announced that FTR and the Continental Crown Champion would team up to fight Mox, Bryan, and Claudio in a Trios match on DYNAMITE, a bout that got as intense as one would expect, and ended with Danielson putting Kingston down! 

So that brings us to this Sunday night on pay-per-view where FTR meet Moxley and Castagnoli in a tag team grudge match that feels as much about marking territory as it is about tag team wrestling. It’s about staking claim as not only the baddest dudes in AEW, but also taking ownership of All Elite Wrestling as the top dogs in the territory.

ALL-STAR 8-MAN SCRAMBLE MATCH…

FTW Champion HOOK vs. Brian Cage vs. Dante Martin vs. Chris Jericho vs. “The Murderhawk Monster” Lance Archer vs. Magnus vs. Powerhouse Hobbs vs. Wardlow

***WINNER EARNS AN AEW WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH***

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ltpMUc0QDnQ?si=V3he_FFxDrY8fK8D&start=221

Thanks to injuries, Meat Madness had to be put on the back burner, but in its stead, this Sunday night will see AEW’s first Scramble match! We’ve got four of the biggest, toughest men in All Elite Wrestling in Lance Archer, Powerhouse Hobbs, Wardlow, and Brian Cage, a guest from CMLL in Magnus, FTW Champion HOOK, the high-flying Dante Margin, and the original AEW Champion Chris Jericho all competing for a future shot at the AEW World Championship! There’s a whole lot of history mixed up in this match, like Hobbs being the one who ended Wardlow’s second TNT Championship reign on the 3/8/23 DYNAMITE and Wardlow reclaiming it from Hobbs forty-two days later on the April 19, 2023 edition of AEW’s flagship. 

Then there’s the issues between the FTW Champion and “The Machine” Brian Cage that have been the main focus of Cage for the last several weeks, not to mention their history with Team Taz. Also, it wasn’t all that long ago that Powerhouse Hobbs decimated Chris Jericho, putting him on the shelf for several weeks, and it was just last night on COLLISION that Jericho got laid out again by the former TNT Champion!

There is a litany of intriguing situations wrapped up in this All-Star Scramble Match going down in Greensboro this Sunday night, but only one man can earn their shot at either Samoa Joe, Hangman Page, or Swerve Strickland! 

ZERO HOUR

TAG TEAM GRUDGE MATCH…

TBS Champion Julia Hart & Skye Blue vs. 

Kris Statlander & Willow Nightingale (w/ Stokely Hathway)

After losing to Skye Blue on Wednesday as a result of Julia Hart cracking her in the skull with the TBS Championship belt, Kris Statlander and Willow Nightingale will have a chance to even the score this Sunday night during the ZERO HOUR! Stokely Hathaway’s insistence that Stat use a chain as a weapon may have provided a slight distraction to Stat, but it was Hart’s involvement that made the former TBS Champion vulnerable for Sky to hit a Code Blue for the pinfall victory. That gave Skye a 2-1 advantage over Statlander in their singles matches, but Willow beat Skye two weeks ago in their singles match, while Julia Hart holds victories over all three women, including her own partner. It was Willow that Julia beat to earn her TBS Championship match, it was Skye who Julia pinned to become the TBS Champion, and though she hasn’t beaten her directly, it was Statlander who Julia took the TBS Championship from at FULL GEAR 2023.

Ever since Hart and Skye have banded together, they’ve set their sights on taking down Willow Nightingale and Kris Statlander, and between the events of Wednesday night, and this first-ever tag team meeting, they’ve certainly got their opportunity to rid themselves of Nightingale and Statlander. The presence of Stokely Hathaway may not help matters either, he hasn’t exactly been the best individual to have at ringside given his insistence on interference doesn’t quite jive with the entire oeuvre of the two women he’s allied with, but perhaps Willow and Kris believe they can bring out the best in a man who has only ever shown the wrestling world his worst. What they need from Stokely in this fight is to be on the same page, and not create another distraction that leads to defeat. Hart and Skye are obviously of one mind right now, perhaps an effect of that black mist Skye was exposed to months back, and that’s where Willow, Statlander, and Stokely need to get if they want to win this bout on ZERO HOUR!

12-MAN TAG!!!

The Bang Bang Scissor Gang (AEW World Trios Champions The Acclaimed & Daddy Ass and ROH World Six-Man Champions BULLET CLUB GOLD)

vs.

Private Party (Isiah Kassidy & Marq Quen), Jay Lethal, Jeff Jarrett, & Willie Mack

https://www.youtube.com/embed/rlfCMoj4YDM?si=_mL_LsbxB_Lgu2VR&start=449

The final match in the legendary career of “The Icon” Sting takes places this Sunday night at REVOLUTION 2024 live on pay-per-view from the historic Greensboro Coliseum! In one of six championship matches taking place on March 3rd, Sting and Darby Allin will defend their AEW World Tag Team Championship in a Tornado Tag against former 2-Time champions, The EVPs of AEW, Matthew and Nicholas Jackson, otherwise known as The Young Bucks! Plus, AEW World Champion Samoa Joe defends against both Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland, Orange Cassidy defends his International Title against The Undisputed Kingdom’s Roderick Strong, and “Timeless” Toni Storm puts her AEW Women’s World Championship on the line against former best friend Deonna Purrazzo!

But that’s not all; we’ve also got an 8-Man Scramble for an AEW World Title shot, a TNT Championship clash between Christian Cage and Daniel Garcia, FTR and BCC going at it in a tag team rematch, Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston battling Bryan Danielson, and two members of The Don Callis Family colliding when Will Ospreay meets Konosuke Takeshita!! It all begins with the ZERO HOUR, going live at 6:30p ET on the official AEW YouTube channel, and then REVOLUTION 2024 coming at you starting at 8pm ET/7pm CT! Do not miss out on one of the most historic nights in the history of our great sport as we bear witness to Sting’s final professional wrestling match!

To witness the fallout of REVOLUTION 2024, join us Wednesday night at the Gas South Arena

in Duluth, GA to see what shape All Elite Wrestling takes in the aftermath of this pay-per-view extravaganza!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YZSUs7T0g94?si=C93x6HmpzkNHTJxk&start=320

After an exciting RAMPAGE on Friday night, AEW is right back in the action with an all-new COLLISION, coming to you from the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis! Last night we saw an amazing clash between Jeff Hardy and Darby Allin, the continuing…something…with Kris Statlander and Stokely Hathaway, Anthony Henry give Penta El Zero Miedo a tremendous fight, and Chris Jericho get back to business in a bout with Matt Sydal! 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/E1Rl4SOBpH4?si=H0gppR37vmTf8rox&start=320

The night begins with COLLISION at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TNT, featuring a huge Grudge Tag match pitting Eddie Kingston and Ortiz against The BCC of Claudio Castagnoli and Bryan Danielson, Adam Copeland laying out another Open Challenge, Buddy Matthews and Daniel Garcia going head-to-head, and Jon Moxley back in the house after a wild trip through New Japan Pro Wrestling! Fans can get prepared for the action-packed evening by visiting the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW’s other social media platforms, for highlights from this week’s DYNAMITE and RAMPAGE, as well as the latest CONTROL CENTER, and so much more!

TAG TEAM GRUDGE MATCH…

Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston & Ortiz

vs.

Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson & Claudio Castagnoli)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/r9kyXdFTxy4?si=3-YHDqE7Q4ieJ_Gl&start=320

As if there wasn’t enough fuel to the fires that burn between Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston and The Blackpool Combat Club, last week during RAMPAGE: HOMECOMING 2024 Eddie beat ROH Pure Champion Wheeler Yuta in a Continental Crown defense, leaving the young man battered and bruised.

So this Saturday night, with Bryan Danielson back on the scene after his New Japan excursion for WRESTLE KINGDOM 18 and NEW YEAR DASH!! 2024, and Claudio coming off a victory over Bryan Kieth Thursday night during ROH ON HONOR CLUB, The Blackpool Combat Club will reunite for tag team action against Kingston and his partner, friend-turned foe-and back again, Ortiz! When last we saw Ortiz and Eddie Kingston engage with one another, the former came to ringside at FULL GEAR 2023 to help the latter in his ROH World Championship match with Jay Lethal. That was on the heels of Sonjay Dutt trying to recruit Ortiz to their little unit, and given that Jeff Jarrett’s guitar ended up around Dutt’s head, that was a clear indication of where Ortiz stood. The question of whether or not that choice had anything to do with Kingston, or was just a response to Dutt, was answered fairly quickly when Ortiz and Eddie stood side-by-side in the ring; it was as if the Stadium Stampede at ALL IN: LONDON got the bad blood out of their system, and now they could move forward as friends.

Hopefully that is the case because Eddie and Ortiz will have to be on the same page when facing The BCC if they want any hope of leaving St. Louis with a victory. Claudio and Bryan are 2-1 as a duo with their last fighting being the bout with Orange Cassidy and Okada in October while Ortiz and Eddie are 9-2, but it’s been over a year since their last time teaming up. Will the bonds forged by The BCC in their time together prove stronger than the ones between Kingston and Ortiz that were so tested in the last year?

ONE-ON-ONE…

The House of Black’s Buddy Matthews vs. Daniel Garcia

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_kQ63q_taBY?si=Hbbev1ftZqPx7Vm2&start=320

Last Saturday night, in one of the many super trios matches AEW has produced, FTR and Daniel Garcia fell to The House of Black, the end coming after Buddy Matthews smashed Dax Harwood’s face into the canvas for the pinfall. It was an intense, chaotic, hateful battle, but the result doesn’t appear to have settled anything between these six men, or should that be seven given how The House pulled Matt Menard into the fray in the aftermath of their victory.

Garcia and FTR may have ran The House off before they could inflict too much damage, but all that means is the fight will continue in one form or another as long as all these men are still able to throw hands. The next form this explosive issue will take goes down this Saturday night on COLLISION when Buddy Matthews and Daniel Garcia meet in singles competition for the first time! Garcia has come so far in his career since debuting in AEW, and seems to have the number of House member Brody King, but will that success parlay over to Buddy as well? Or will Garcia be the next man whose face Matthews stomps into the mat?

ASK AND SOMETIMES YOU RECEIVE…

Jon Moxley vs. Shane Taylor

Though Jon Moxley has not been seen in All Elite Wrestling since WORLDS END, that doesn’t mean he’s been inactive, sitting on the sidelines, watching the world pass him by. As a matter of fact, it has been quite the opposite as the former 3-Time AEW World Champion returned to New Japan for WRESTLE KINGDOM 18 where he vied for the NJPW Global Heavyweight Title against Will Ospreay and David Finlay. Finlay would be the one who ultimately walked away with the newly created crown, pinning Ospreay to claim the title, and sending Mox to NEW YEAR DASH!! 2024 empty handed. Unfortunately loss would follow Mox to his eight-man tag on that event as well, with TMDK’s Shane Haste pinning Moxley’s partner Tomohiro Ishii to get the victory.

Thankfully Moxley rebounded in his No Disqualification bout at NJPW’s BATTLE IN ALLEY 2024, scoring a victory over Shingo Takagi after twenty-six minutes of hard-hitting, violent action, and subsequently let new IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Tetsuyo Naito know that he had eyes on that prize, issuing a challenge for WINDY CITY RIOT 2024 on April 12th.  

But before Moxley gets to that potential championship challenge, he’s coming back home to All Elite Wrestling this Saturday night! And initially we wondered if he was coming for a fight, or was he simply making the trip to St. Louis to let the world know where he’s focusing his energy in the new year; but thanks to one social media follower in particular sharing an older video of Shane Taylor’s, we know now just what’s in store:

Just goes to show that sometimes when you ask for something, you get it, and boy are we all going to get it this Saturday when Shane Taylor throws down with Jon Moxley! These are two of the hardest-hitting, rough and tumble individuals in all of AEW, and Shane Taylor has proven in his fights with Samoa Joe and Keith Lee that he gives as good as he gets in a fight. Aside from the fight with Joe last year, this is Shane T’s biggest match since joining on with AEW, and he aims to leave an impression on the AEW fans, as well as on Jon Moxley’s face! There’s nothing more Mox loves than a fight, and he is now guaranteed to get one on COLLISION!

THE OPEN CHALLENGE CONTINUES…

Adam Copeland vs. ???

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ALtgXeFurtw?si=YMuQ4uuERzKd2xge

Last week it was Shane Taylor Promotions’ Lee Moriarty who answered the call of the Adam Copeland Open Challenge, giving the Hall of Famer a fight he did not anticipate, but one he certainly appreciated, with Moriarty showing the world he’s got the potential down the line to stand with the greats in this business. But that time wasn’t last week, Copeland’s drive to earn himself another stab at Christian Cage is too strong, and it is going to take a very special individual to disrupt this man’s track to the TNT Championship.

Well with “The Rated R Superstar” set to appear on COLLISION for another Open Challenge, someone else will have that opportunity to play spoiler to Copeland’s quest, and given how the competition has escalated with each outing, it’s going to be very interesting to see just who answers the call this week in St. Louis!

LA MERA MERA IS BACK!

It’s been awhile since her last singles match, an August 6, 2022 championship fight with Jamie Hayter during BATTLE OF THE BELTS III to be exact, but this Saturday night Thunder Rosa is back in action! We got a taste of “La Mera Mera” on the December 23rd COLLISION and on DYNAMITE: HOMECOMING 2024, but those were in multi-person bouts, a singles match is a whole different story that could put the former AEW Women’s World Champion to the test! Who will step up to the fight with Thunder Rosa this Saturday in St. Louis?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/XD3xT-2tTRs?si=CEOrvNH5FTA5wpVX&start=320

COLLISION comes to St. Louis this Saturday night, with the action starting at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TNT, and showcasing a massive Grudge Tag Team fight pitting Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston and Ortiz against Blackpool Combat Club members Claudio Castagnoli and Bryan Danielson! Plus, Adam Copeland plans to lay out another Open Challenge while, after their tremendous trios bout last week, Buddy Matthews and Daniel Garcia will meet one-on-one! We haven’t seen Jon Moxley since WORLDS END as he’s been putting in work with NJPW, but he will be back home this Saturday night! Before showtime, be sure to visit the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW’s other social media platforms, for highlights from this week’s DYNAMITE and RAMPAGE, as well as the latest CONTROL CENTER, and so much more!

The Kitchen review by Big Gold Belt MediaHost – Terrell @AroundTheGeek-Synopsis:In a dystopian London, the gap between rich and poor has been stretched to its limits. All forms of social housing have been eradicated and only…

https://www.youtube.com/embed/v9x8utAq7iU

Coming out of ,,WORLDS END and kicking off 2024, All Elite Wrestling began a new chapter with Samoa Joe taking the helm as AEW World Champion and the revelation that Adam Cole had been The Devil in MJF’s life the whole time. Those two elements changed the landscape of AEW moving into the new year, and then there was the arrival of Deonna Purrazzo on the heels of Mariah May’s in-ring debut, but at least some things remain the same, like Orange Cassidy still AEW International Champion after his fight with Dante Martin Wednesday night, and Wheeler Yuta still ROH Pure Champion after Friday’s fight with Komander.

The new era for AEW continues this Saturday with 2024’s first COLLISION, but it comes with a mix of something old and something new! The rivalry between The House of Black and FTR has been simmering for months, and will explode in tag team warfare this Saturday night while Eddie Kingston defends his Continental Crown for the very first time against Trent Beretta! It comes with AEW’s return to the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, NC this Saturday night for COLLISION, live on TNT, begin at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TNT! Get prepared for the night’s festivities by visiting the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW’s other social media platforms, for highlights from this week’s DYNAMITE and RAMPAGE, as well as moments from WORLDS END 2023, plus the latest CONTROL CENTER, and so much more!

TAG TEAM GRUDGE MATCH…

FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) vs. The House of Black (Buddy Matthews & Malakai Black)

On the October 7th edition of COLLISION, Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood were decimated by Big Bill and Ricky Starks resulting in the loss of the AEW World Tag Team Championship. It was a heartbreaking, physical dissection of the defending champs, one that left FTR still feeling the bruises on October 21st when they returned to in-ring competition. Just a minute into that tag team match the lights in the arena went out, and when they returned Malakai Black stood opposite Cash and Dax. Before either could react, the lights were doused once again, and this time when they flared back to life, it wasn’t just Malakai standing there, he’d been joined by Buddy Matthews and Brody King, leading to a 3-on-2 assault on FTR.

It seemed a similar scenario would play out a week later when, after Starks defeated Dax in singles competition, the lights went out once more and The House of Black, who’d been watching the bout from a distance, appeared inside the ring. It was only the arrival of LFI that balanced the scales, leading  to the most unlikely of temporary alliances between FTR and LFI, but one that was destined to be short-lived as FULL GEAR 2023 put FTR, LFI of RUSH and Dralistico, as well as Brody King and Malakai Black, in a Ladder Match against Big Bill and Ricky Starks with the AEW World Tag Titles hanging in the balance.

Starks and Bill would retain, the end coming when Starks smashed one of the hanging belts into the skull of Cash Wheeler, but that did nothing to quell the fires burning between FTR and The House. Malakai and company were on the spot to make verbal allusions after FTR beat The Righteous, and when FTR came to fight The House after they defeated Matt Sydal and Christopher Daniels, Cash and Dax were instead subjected to, first, an offer to join The House, and then a brutal assault they left both unconscious in the ring.

Then it got personal; three weeks ago, the December 16th edition of COLLISION, Buddy Matthews and Malakai Black put Dax’s wife and child into the conversation, burning a picture of the three of them, and telling FTR that The House was their family now. The challenge for this tag team fight was finally made when Cash and Dax came to the aid of Daniel Garcia and Matt Menard following Garcia’s victory over Brody King. 

So it all comes down to this Saturday night as former 2-Time AEW World Tag Champions FTR meet The House of Black as honored by Malakai Black and Buddy Matthews; the tension, the animosity, the vitriol between these two units has reached a fever pitch, and it will explode live on COLLISION come Saturday night! With as personal as their issue has gotten, the AEW official tasked with maintaining order is going to have their hands full… 

AEW CONTINENTAL CROWN CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Eddie Kingston(c) vs. Trent Beretta

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MjBqv_m4wKQ

This is a match full of firsts; not only is it the first defense of the Continental Crown since its creation at WORLDS END last Saturday night, it is also the first time Eddie Kingston and Trent Beretta will step into the ring for a fight! They stood on the same side of the ring at ALL IN: LONDON in Stadium Stampede, and both were part of the ALL OUT 2020 Casino Battle Royale, but this will be the first time they’ve ever been foes in a traditional match.

But this isn’t just a match is it? This is Eddie Kingston fighting for his life’s work, something he already put at risk when he laid the ROH World Championship and NJPW STRONG Openweight Title on the line to create, along with the AEW Continental Title, this Continental Crown. Every fight Kingston had during the Continental Classic Tournament put his status as a double champion at risk, but “The Mad King” persevered through adversity and loss to win the Blue League, capping it off with a victory over Jon Moxley in the Finals at WORLDS END.

There is no way Kingston will let this crown slip off his head easily, Trent Beretta is going to have to utterly incapacitate Eddie in order to win this match, but there’s just something about Beretta as of late that makes it seem like he’d be willing to go to such lengths. Fans have seen the man get down and dirty in Parking Lot Brawls before, so they know Trent Beretta is capable of the violence it may take to put Eddie Kingston down.

The thing with Eddie though is that he knew the second he beat Jon Moxley, he’d become a target for any individual striving for championship success. It’s not a matter of shattering a dream, Kingston isn’t a dreamer, he’s a fighter and one who knows that as long as he laces up the boots, the fight will never end. Every day someone will be gunning for him, after all he’s a man hoarding three different championships from three different companies, making him a target for people from every single one. Trent Beretta just happens to be the first, and even if Kingston makes it past him, there will be another and another and another waiting to take their shot at the Continental Crown upon The Mad King’s head!

STING’S FINAL CHARLOTTE APPEARANCE!

Darby Allin & Sting vs. The Workhorsemen (Anthony Henry & JD Drake)

Ahead of their fight with The Don Callis Family on ,,DYNAMITE: HOMECOMING 2024 in Jacksonville, Darby Allin and “The Icon” Sting will be in tag team action this Saturday night! It’s a huge opportunity for The Workhorsemen of Anthony Henry and JD Drake, facing Darby and Sting, given the amount of respect and admiration the pair have for “The Icon”, but it’s also so much more than that. See this night at Bojangles Coliseum will be Sting’s last fight in Charlotte, a wrestling city synonymous with his career, where he’s fought Eddie Gilbert, battled inside War Games, as well as fought the likes of Sid Vicious, Cactus Jack, and yes, Ric Flair, for championship gold!

In fact, the last match Sting had in Charlotte took place at the Bojangles almost five years ago to the day, and featured him defending a World Championship! So now he returns to Charlotte, with both Darby Allin and Ric Flair at this side, to bid farewell to the fans of the Queen City, and give The Workhorsemen the kind of wrestling lesson that can only be given by someone with his experience! Join AEW this Saturday night in Charlotte as we continue on the Road to ,,REVOLUTION 2024 and Sting’s final professional wrestling match.

ADAM COPELAND RESPONDS…

At WORLDS END 2023 Adam Copeland managed to experience ultimate triumph and catastrophic tragedy within minutes of one another. In a vicious No DQ Match with Christian Cage, Copeland defeated “The Patriarch” to become the new TNT Champion but taking advantage of the situation, Killswitch brutally assaulted Copeland in hopes of using the TNT Championship match contract he’d earned during ZERO HOUR. Unfortunately for the former Luchasaurus, he was convinced by Christian to hand over the contract, and the ex-champion took back the TNT Championship he’d lost only moments earlier.

Well the world heard what Christian Cage had to say about the situation this past Wednesday on DYNAMITE, basically denying he ever lost the title and this is one continuous run, so this Saturday night we will hear from the other half of that equation! Adam Copeland has to have a lot on his mind about this situation, and we will get a piece of it on COLLISION!

All Elite Wrestling is back in Charlotte, NC at the ,,Bojangles Coliseum this Saturday night with the first COLLISION of 2024! In one of the most anticipated tag matches in recent memory, FTR will finally fight The House of Black as honored by Buddy Matthews and Malakai Black, and Eddie Kingston will defend his Continental Crown for the very first time against Trent Beretta after that Best Friend won DYNAMITE’s Four Way bout! Those two stellar contests, and more, are set to come your way when COLLISION kicks off at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TNT. All you need to do is get prepared by dropping in on the official AEW YouTube channel to watch highlights from this week’s editions of DYNAMITE and RAMPAGE, as well as events from WORLDS END 2023, and the latest CONTROL CENTER!

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WORLDS END proved to be exactly that for Maxwell Jacob Friedman as, in front of his hometown audience, he saw the AEW World Championship slip away to Samoa Joe and witnessed his best friend Adam Cole reveal himself as The Devil. Flanked by The Kingdom of Matt Taven and Mike Bennett, Roderick Strong, and Wardlow, Cole watched as his associates demolished the dethroned champion. Why Cole and these men have traveled this path remains to be learned, though it’s been clear for months Wardlow’s wanted Max’s head, and perhaps we will find out more soon.

In addition, the bums around the world rejoiced as Eddie Kingston defeated Jon Moxley in the finals of the Continental Classic to not only retain his ROH World & NJPW STRONG Openweight Titles, but to also become the first Continental Champion, and the holder of the Continental Crown! It was one of the most emotional moments in AEW’s history, and likely the biggest in the career of Eddie Kingston. WORLDS END was also a night that saw the wildest TNT Championship situation imaginable, including the shortest title reign in history, and Killswitch make a surprising decision in the heat of the moment. Toni Storm retained her AEW Women’s World Championship, as did Julia Hart with the TBS Title, and so much more went down on AEW’s final PPV presentation of 2023!

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With a new year upon us, and a new AEW World Champion at the helm, All Elite Wrestling embarks down a new path but starting on familiar territory. The Prudential Center in Newark, NJ will host the first DYNAMITE of 2024 and with it comes an AEW International Championship Match where Orange Cassidy will defend against Top Flight’s Dante Martin! In addition, after two months of anticipation, Mariah May will finally make her in-ring debut this Wednesday night on DYNAMITE! 

The first AEW event of 2024 begins at 8pm ET/7pm CT live on TBS, as well as at AEWPlus.com for international fans, so be sure to drop in on the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW’s various social media platforms, for highlights from WORLDS END, as well last week’s episodes of DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, and COLLISION, the newest CONTROL CENTER, and more!

THE CHAMP IS HERE!

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At WORLDS END this past Saturday, the longest reigning ROH World Champion and ROH World Television Champion of all-time added another accolade to his resume: AEW World Champion. Samoa Joe, after eighteen minutes of a tremendous fight, choked Maxwell Jacob Friedman unconscious to end the longest and most successful AEW World Championship reign experienced since Chris Jericho first won the crown at ALL OUT 2019. 

While the way the remainder of the evening played out for MJF will haunt him for some time, knowing that he is no longer the champion will likely linger the longest, especially as he watches DYNAMITE this Wednesday night, healing up from the various injuries sustained over his championship run, and sees Samoa Joe walk to the ring with the AEW World Championship over his shoulder. The added knowledge that the Triple B is in a dumpster somewhere on Long Island may just make it even more painful…

But that’s MJF’s burden to handle; the question at hand is where does Samoa Joe go from here? He made it abundantly clear in the Media Scrum that anyone can try to step to the champ, that he’d fight Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland and anyone else who wants a piece of the action. So who will be brave enough to be the first? We already witnessed Hangman and Joe have a confrontation in recent weeks, will it be him? Will it be Swerve who said his road to the title started December 31st? We will find out soon enough if anyone is willing to put it all on the line for a shot at greatness…

THE DEVIL REVEALED…

Why Adam? Why? That’s the question on everyone’s mind after seeing Adam Cole sitting in that chair Saturday night, surrounded by Matt Taven, Mike Bennett, Wardlow, and Roderick Strong, with The Devil’s Mask tossed on the broken body of former AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman. After spending months tolerating Max’s behavior, helping him grow into a legitimately better version of himself, and seemingly driving a wedge into his relationship with Roderick Strong, why did Adam Cole put in all that effort to drive a knife between the shoulder blades of MJF? Has this been the plan since the Blind Eliminator Tournament over the summer? Since after ALL IN: LONDON? Or maybe after Cole got hurt at GRAND SLAM 2023 trying to help MJF in his first match with Samoa Joe? 

It’s all speculation at the moment, but tonight on DYNAMITE, we expect to get some answers from Adam Cole about why he donned The Devil mask and betrayed Maxwell Jacob Friedman!

AEW INTERNATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Orange Cassidy(c) vs. Top Flight’s Dante Martin

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The last time Dante Martin challenged for a singles championship was on the June 3, 2022 edition of RAMPAGE when he challenged Scorpio Sky for the TNT Championship. Obviously that was not his night to claim a singles title, but it was one of many nights that proved with getting experience under his belt, Dante was destined for success with his brother, as well as on his own. Unfortunately a freak injury at SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2023 derailed Dante’s career for months on end, but in truth he’s fortunate the injury didn’t flat out end his wrestling journey.

But since returning from that injury with a November 29th Trios victory on DYNAMITE, Dante has looked superb both in AEW and ROH action. He’s racked up victories in five of the six matches he’s been involved in, the only loss coming to Daddy Ass and The Acclaimed in an AEW World Trios Championship bout, and seemingly hasn’t missed a step. Dante’s confidence is high, something that can often be lacking when returning from injury, and that helped boost his trio to a victory last Friday night on RAMPAGE over Roppongi Vice and AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy.

It may not have been a pinfall on Orange Cassidy, but it was still Dante scoring the pinfall win over his OC’s team, and as such the fighting International Champion is willing to give this half of Top Flight an opportunity to end the run! Can Dante begin the new year by marking the first title change of 2024? Or will “Freshly Squeezed” ground the man’s dream and move forward into the year with the title still in his backpack? 

THE DEBUT…

Mariah May vs. Queen Aminata

November 8th; that is the day All Elite Wrestling officially announced the signing of Mariah May. May, a standout from the Japanese promotion Stardom reigned as a Goddesses of Stardom Champion alongside Mina Shirakawa during her tenure with the company, with her primary motivation for touring there being to follow in the footsteps of Toni Storm. See “The Timeless One” called Stardom home from 2016 until 2019, and even reigned as the World of Stardom Champion for 258 days, so being thus inspired by the path of Toni Storm, it was an experience Mariah May had to take.

After wrapping up in Stardom on September 30th, May showed up in AEW with aspirations of meeting Toni Storm, becoming friends with Toni Storm, and just being in the proximity of the current AEW Women’s World Champion. Mariah’s even asked Toni to be at ringside for this debut match, but it seemed like “Timeless” couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge the request being made by a woman whose name she couldn’t be bothered to remember.

Still, even if Toni Storm can’t remember her name, it’s clear from the reaction of the AEW faithful in the arenas, as well as those online, that they know who Mariah May is and have been patiently waiting for her in-ring debut. Well that day is finally upon us, so it’s all on Mariah to make it a memorable one and leave an impression on the AEW Women’s World Champion, otherwise it will be Queen Aminata who makes her mark by spoiling the AEW premiere of “The Glamour”!

ONE-ON-ONE…

Swerve Strickland vs. Daniel Garcia

The last several months in the careers of these two men could not be more different; since WRESTLEDREAM, Swerve Strickland has been on an absolute tear in All Elite Wrestling, winning nine of his last twelve bouts, including that unforgettable Texas Death Match with Hangman Page at FULL GEAR 2023, and had the best pinfall ratio in the Continental Classic. After scoring three straight victories in the Gold League, Swerve experienced his first pinfall loss at the hands of Jon Moxley. Still, with a victory in his final points match-up, Strickland managed to work his way into a Three Way League Final with Mox and Jay White, only to see Moxley pin White to advance to the overall Finals. But with Moxley losing to Eddie Kingston in the tournament finals, that means Swerve was the only man in the entire Continental Classic to only be pinned one time, and he capped off his year with a win over Dustin Rhodes in lieu of Keith Lee being unable to compete.

As for Daniel Garcia, he’s experienced just three victories in his last twelve matches with two of those coming over the course of the last week. It’s been a rough road for the man as of late, a frustrating one that’s often put him at odds with friend Matt Menard, but when he pinned Brody King in their final Blue League match, it felt like perhaps it had all been worth it. That feeling was further amplified at WORLDS END where, as part of the All-Star Eight-Man Tag, Garcia actually scored the winning pinfall for his team, a unit consisting of Blackpool Combat Club members Bryan Danielson and Claudio Castagnoli, as well as Mark Briscoe. 

It was a triumphant way to end the year for both men, but DYNAMITE marks the beginning of a new one for All Elite Wrestling, and that means nose right back to the grindstone. Swerve stated in the WORLDS END Media Scrum that his mission of becoming World Champion began the day after the pay-per-view, and that means a fight with Daniel Garcia on his plate for Wednesday night! For both men this is the kind of fight that can shape the rest of the year, and neither wants to let 2024 start on a bad foot. This will be two men fighting with every thing they’ve got in their body and soul; may the best one win…

CHRISTIAN CAGE’S 2024 STATE OF THE UNION…

What on Earth just happened? That had to be the thought spiraling through the mind of Adam Copeland after seeing the TNT Championship ripped away just minutes after he pinned Christian Cage to claim it for himself. From the moment Paul Turner’s hand counted three to end Cage’s first TNT Championship run to the second it hit three to begin his second, just three minutes and thirty-two seconds had passed, officially making Copeland the shortest reigning champion in AEW history. It should have been a moment of triumph for Adam, putting to rest the toxic relationship with Christian Cage, but ever the opportunist, “The Patriarch” managed to take Killswitch’s moment and make it his own. Whatever Cage whispered to the former Luchasaurus was enough to make the monster surrender the TNT Championship match he’d earned earlier in the night into Christian’s hands after Killswitch had done all the dirty work to incapacitate Copeland.

So now Christian Cage walks into DYNAMITE as a 2-Time TNT Champion, and it looks like we will all have to suffer through him delivering a State of the Union-style address to the AEW faithful. It will undoubtedly be filled with heaping of self-praise, with little credit given to Killswitch for doing the actual work, and likely little acknowledgment of the fact Adam Copeland beat him in the middle of the ring at WORLDS END. The question Christian Cage should be asking himself as he prepares to deliver this speech is whether or not Adam Copeland will be watching, listening, waiting, for his opportunity to deliver much-deserved retribution?

A new era is upon us with 2023, the era of AEW World Champion Samoa Joe, and it begins when All Elite Wrestling returns to the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ for the first DYNAMITE of 2024! On tap is an AEW International Championship Match pitting Orange Cassidy against challenger Dante Martin, as well as the greatly anticipated in-ring debut of Mariah May, and so much more! 

It all begins again at 8pm ET/7pm CT live on TBS, as well as at AEWPlus.com for international fans, so be sure to drop in on the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW’s various social media platforms, for highlights from WORLDS END, as well last week’s episodes of DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, and COLLISION, the newest CONTROL CENTER, and more!

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First recorded in 1944 by The Mills Brothers in 1944, the song bearing the title of this retrospective has been covered by Connie Francis, Fats Domino, Ringo Starr, Michael Buble, and even Ryan Gosling in the heartbreaking film “Blue Valentine”. The lyrics include lines such as “You always break the kindest heart with a hasty word you can’t recall, so if I broke your heart last night, it’s because I love you most of all.”

It’s a song very easily projected onto a romantic relationship, but that’s just one type of love, and if nothing else, since the two men first became entangled in All Elite Wrestling, it’s been pretty clear that there is a lot of love between Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley. Love built on shared experiences, on treading common grounds, on time spent together both inside the ring and out, knowing each other’s families, not to mention spilling blood along similar roads en route to the promised land of AEW. 

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Moxley got here first, making his impact on as grand a scale as possible in the closing moments of DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2019, taking out both Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega, and beginning the path that led him to his first AEW World Championship at REVOLUTION 2020, just weeks before the wrestling landscape as we knew it, as well as the world at large, became a different place under pandemic restrictions.

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That’s the world in which Eddie Kingston was birthed into AEW, a world where fans were only able to watch from the safety of their own homes, a world where the hard-traveled Kingston was forced to sell his wrestling boots in order to make rent. So with nothing left to lose, and then-TNT Champion Cody Rhodes holding an Open Challenge for his title, Kingston took his shot and called out Cody during one of the few independent wrestling shows running at the time. This led to Eddie walking out on the stage on the July 22, 2020 DYNAMITE, no pomp or circumstance, and fighting Cody in a No DQ match for that championship. Eddie failed to become the champion, but he made such an impact on the AEW landscape that nine days later, Kingston got his “…IS ALL ELITE” graphic.

While Moxley went about building the AEW World Championship up with one of the most impressive streak of defenses amassed to date, Kingston drew men like Butcher, Blade, and The Lucha Brothers to his side, and when the opportunity opened up to take his shot again, Kingston didn’t hesitate to take aim at a man who had been his friend for years…

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That fight did not go the way of “The Mad King”, but the aftermath of it set the table for the violent affair that would result at FULL GEAR 2020, a match that would turn out to by Moxley’s final successful title defense before losing to Kenny Omega at DYNAMITE: WINTER IS COMING 2020. Suffice it to say, the “I Quit” bout was twenty minutes of two men hurting the one they love, and came to an end with Kingston failing to claim the crown he’d risked destroying his friendship over…

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Shockingly, despite how that fight came to its conclusion, when Moxley fought Kenny Omega in an Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match at REVOLUTION 2021, it was Eddie Kingston who came to the aid of Jon Moxley. That moment of sacrifice, Kingston’s choice to put his own safety at risk to protect his brother, that was a defining example of the core relationship between Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley. They were brothers, two men who cared about and supported one another, whose passion for pro wrestling bonded them, and whose capacity for violence mirrored one another’s. This reunion led Eddie and Mox into tag team competition, and a march towards The Young Bucks and the AEW World Tag Team Championship…

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Though that DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2021 championship bout did not go in favor of Kingston and Moxley, it solidified their bond before the AEW faithful, and created a duo that continued on throughout the remainder of 2021, including a wild Lights Out fight with Minoru Suzuki and Lance Archer at RAMPAGE: GRAND SLAM 2021. Then the FULL GEAR 2022 Eliminator Tournament began, and though the layout of the brackets meant Moxley and Kingston could collide in the finals, Mox having to pull out of the field ended that possibility, and Eddie losing to Danielson in the Semi-Finals nixed his hopes of challenging for the title. 

Moxley would return to the fold in January 2022, refreshed and ready for the fight, a return that would lead him into battle with Bryan Danielson at REVOLUTION 2022, and then into the formation of The Blackpool Combat Club alongside “The American Dragon” and William Regal. At the same time, Kingston was in the midst of battle with Chris Jericho, a battle he actually won at REVOLUTION 2022, but would only be the precursor to much greater wars as Jericho abandoned The Inner Circle in the aftermath and formed The Jericho Appreciation Society. The paths of Kingston, Santana, Ortiz, and The Blackpool Combat Club would converge at DOUBLE OR NOTHING 2022 when they and The J.A.S. went to battle under Anarchy In The Arena rules. Perhaps it should have been clear before the unit even stepped into Las Vegas that the inherent strife between Kingston’s side and Mox’s side would make success unlikely…

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Still, the attempt was made, Kingston tried to work with Bryan Danielson as best he could, but in one of the most horrifying visuals in AEW history, it ended up with Eddie dumping gasoline on Bryan, as well as his foes, in a failed attempt to actually light them all on fire! Perhaps it was fate that Danielson got injured during the course of Anarchy in the Arena and was unable to compete in the Blood & Guts cage match that followed, but much to the chagrin of Eddie Kingston, his friend Jon Moxley would ally himself with yet another of Kingston’s hated foes, perhaps the most hated of them all, Claudio Castagnoli.

The history between Kingston and Claudio has been well-documented since “The Swiss Superman” came into AEW, suffice it to say that it took everything Kingston had in him to fight alongside Castagnoli rather than rip his head off and chuck him off the top of the cage. The fact that Castagnoli, in Eddie’s eyes, stole the victory for their team from him did not help matters, and it sent Kingston back on his own path, completely separate from Moxley, as Jon and The BCC pursued theirs.

But those paths would once again intertwine, as friendships often too, only this time the circle had come back around to their AEW beginning, and Kingston was standing alongside Moxley’s enemies in The Elite, men he himself could not stand and did not respect, but his hate for Claudio burned far hotter. Strange bedfellows indeed…

This animosity put Eddie opposite his brother-by-choice at FORBIDDEN DOOR 2023 and during the course of that match, in unarguably the most emotional portion of the fight, the two actually came to blows. The scene would repeat two months later at ALL IN: LONDON, albeit with a twist, as Kingston allied himself with The Best Friends, Orange Cassidy, and Penta El Zero Miedo to fight Moxley, Yuta, Claudio, Ortiz, and Santana in Stadium Stampede! Eddie’s team actually won the fight, though he and Moxley would throwdown with one another yet again, and it certainly left a question as to the status of their relationship moving forward. 

For Eddie moving forward meant finishing his issues with Claudio Castagnoli once and for all, and that meant facing him at DYNAMITE: GRAND SLAM 2023 with both Kingston’s NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship and Claudio’s ROH World Championship on the line. In front of his hometown, his family, and his loved ones, Kingston put the final nail in the coffin of his rivalry with Claudio Castagnoli, and became the holder of both the NJPW STRONG title and the ROH one!

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For Moxley moving forward meant capturing a championship of his own, one he’d never held before, the AEW International Championship held by Orange Cassidy. That came to be at ALL OUT 2023, though the triumph turned to tragedy quite quickly when Rey Fenix dethroned him just 17 days later, and putting Moxley on the injured list for the next few weeks. Moxley’s return to AEW competition meant failure in regaining the AEW International Championship, once again held by OC who’d beaten Fenix himself in Jon’s absence, but then finding a new focus as the Continental Classic was announced.  Another man who found focus in the tournament was Moxley’s brother Eddie, only he chose to up the ante on the entire game, putting both of his championship belts in the mix, to create an American Triple Crown Championship…

Thus on November 22nd, with the field split into two groups dubbed the Gold League and the Blue League, twelve men began their trek towards WORLDS END, the Continental Championship, and now both the ROH World Championship and NJPW STRONG Openweight Title. For Moxley the road began with Mark Briscoe, and was followed in successive weeks with fights against Jay Lethal, RUSH,  and Swerve Strickland. Four consecutive victories meant 12 points for the 3-time former AEW World Champion, and berth in the finals of the Gold League, all that remained was his final match with Jay White to either solidify his spot atop the Gold, or to turn the League Final into a more complex situation with a “Switchblade” victory. But that’s exactly what Jay White did, he squeezed out a victory to tie up Moxley at 12 points, then Swerve did the same against RUSH in their fifth bout, thus leaving the Gold League with a three way tie to determine the victor. As we witnessed this past Wednesday night on DYNAMITE, Moxley would get his back on Jay White, and earn his spot in the Continental Classic finals this Sunday night!

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With Kingston slotted into the Blue League, there was a possibility that he and Jon Moxley could end up in the finals together, but the road to get there would be long and arduous for “The Mad King”. Though his two championship titles were not at stake in each of his five matches, each loss brought him closer to losing hold of them without technically being beaten for them in a title bout, but that was the risk Kingston took when he threw them into the pot for the Continental Classic. Unfortunately for Eddie, he started the tournament off on bad footing by dropping matches to Brody King and Bryan Danielson in his first two bouts, the latter especially stinging given the dismissive rhetoric Danielson has long used towards Eddie.

Those losses also put Kingston in a position where each match became a must-win situation if he hoped to have a shot at keeping the two titles in his camp, and gaining the Triple Crown he’d created with his choices. The third match of Kingston’s journey put him opposite Claudio Castagnoli, a man he’d only ever beaten once in their careers, and somehow Eddie found a way to make it two straight wins over this Blackpool Combat Club member. It was as if somewhere along the way, possibly the night he first held the ROH World Championship overhead in front of his mother and father, Eddie learned how to best handle his demons. He knew they were creeping up behind him, just waiting for him to slip up and stumble into their waiting arms, but instead of slipping, Eddie Kingston kept moving forward “humble in victory, humble in defeat”, and that made the difference as he rattled off a second victory in the tournament over Daniel Garcia, and secured himself a spot in the Blue League finals with a win over Andrade El Idolo.

That set Kingston versus Danielson as the match, and put Eddie in a situation where he had to do something he’d never done before: beat Bryan Danielson. Without a twenty-minute time limit hanging over their heads, the two warriors brutalized each other for nearly twenty-five, absorbing blow-after-blow, suplex-after-suplex, and surviving multiple submission attempts, before it came down to Kingston dropping Bryan with the same Kawada-style Folding Powerbomb that defeated Claudio at GRAND SLAM 2023 some months earlier.

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With their respective wins in the Gold and Blue Leagues, for the first time since FULL GEAR 2020’s “I Quit” match, Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley will go one-on-one at WORLDS END in the Continental Classic Finals with the winner walking away as a Triple Crown Champion, simultaneously holding the ROH World Championship, the NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship, and the Continental Championship! It also means, if Eddie doesn’t want to see his last day as champion of the first two titles, he has to do something else he’s never done before: beat Jon Moxley. 

This Saturday night on pay-per-view, as part of AEW’s WORLDS END presentation, Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley will do to each other what they’ve done for years now, hurt the one they love, and in the end they will either embrace one another as brothers, happy for the success of the other, or they will see the rift in their friendship gutted even deeper. For as important as the championship aspect of this fight is, for as historic a contest as it is, this is undoubtedly the most personal fight of either man’s career…

Barney Fishwick & Josh Dylan Interview by Big Gold Belt MediaBarney Fishwick (“Lord James Seadown”) + Josh Dylan (“Lord Richard Marable”)-Synopsis:Girls with money, men with power. New money, old secrets. A group of fun-loving young American…

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What a week it has been in All Elite Wrestling! Starting with FULL GEAR 2023 this past Saturday, and continuing into DYNAMITE on Wednesday night, the landscape of AEW continues to be the most exciting in all of professional wrestling! We know that Samoa Joe and MJF are scheduled to collide at WORLDS END, providing MJF doesn’t end up in a situation where the belt is at risk, but in addition the culmination of the Continental Classic will go down that night in Long Island as well!

This week in Chicago, as part of AEW’s Thanksgiving Eve tradition, fans witnessed Jon Moxley, Swerve Strickland, and Jay White each score three points in the Gold League, leaving Mark Briscoe, Jay Lethal, and Rush with zero points to their names, with the first bouts in the Blue League going down in Pittsburgh this Saturday night!

This Saturday night, with three hours of action between RAMPAGE and COLLISION, the Petersen Center on the campus of Pitt will be rocking! The first bouts in the Blue League of the Continental Classic are set to go down with ROH World/NJPW STRONG Openweight Champion Eddie Kingston fighting Brodie King and Claudio Castagnoli taking on Daniel Garcia during COLLISOIN. But before that, on a special Satu night edition of RAMPGE, the ROH Pure Championship will be at stake with a SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2023 rematch between 2-Time champ Wheeler Yuta and the man who dethroned him, Katsuyori Shibata into the mix, and it all begins at 8pm ET/7pm CT live on TBS, as well as at AEWPlus.com for international fans. Be sure to visit the official AEW YouTube channel, as well as AEW’s assorted social media platforms, to get caught up on the action with highlights from FULL GEAR 2023, as well as recent episodes of DYNAMITE, RAMPAGE, COLLISION, and this week’s CONTROL CENTER!

RAMAPAGE

ROH PURE CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Katsuyori Shibata(c) vs. Blackpool Combat Club’s Wheeler Yuta

Perhaps it’s his experience as a member of the Blackpool Combat Club that has beaten any fear from the former 2-Time ROH Pure Champion, perhaps it is cockiness due to that affiliation, but whatever the reason, it is clear that Wheeler Yuta fears little. Why else would he, all by himself, step the AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy, FTW Champion HOOK, and ROH Pure Champion Katsuyori Shibata ahead of their Trios match on DYNAMITE and talk trash on all three of them? There is plenty of history between Yuta and all three of these individuals; Orange served as a mentor to Yuta for much of his career before The BCC came calling while HOOK’s association with OC led to Yuta holding a pinfall victory over the FTW Champion on the November 15th DYNAMITE, and finally, it was Katsuyori Shibata who ended Yuta’s second reign as ROH Pure Champion earlier this year at SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2023, a loss that Yuta has certainly not forgotten.

It seems the sting of that memory, and standing just feet away from Shibata hold the title belt, encouraged Yuta to dip his toes back into the Pure Division this past Thursday during ROH ON HONOR CLUB (www.watchroh.com), and score a victory over Shane Taylor Promotions member Lee Moriarty.

Earlier in the night, in a tremendous Pure Championship bout, Shibata retained the title over Trent Beretta, a man quite familiar to Yuta albeit the one member of the Best Friends unit who didn’t care for Wheeler’s presence, and as a result of these respective victories, this Saturday night on RAMPAGE, Wheeler Yuta will get the rematch he’s been waiting for since March 31st! With almost 240 days under his belt as champion, Shibata heads into this ninth title defense as strong as he’s ever been, and as imposing a presence as ever, and the history between these two men does not tilt in Yuta’s favor.

In addition to their SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2023 fight, there was that ALL OUT 2023 tag team bout that may have been won by The Blackpool Combat Club, but Shibata’s offensive barrage actually put Yuta on concussion protocol for several weeks. So while this is primarily about the Pure Championship, and Yuta’s desire to be the only 3-time Pure Champion (he’s already the only two-timer), there’s also a whole lot of other reasons for Yuta to want this fight on Saturday evening!

The Blackpool Combat Club is woefully lacking any championships at this moment, but with Moxley’s victory in his first Continental Classic match serving as a moral booster to the unit, and Castagnoli’s fight with Garcia following shortly after Yuta’s, this could be a week that shines in the history of The BCC. The question may then be whether Yuta or Shibata will bring the violence needed to emerge from this fight as reigning Pure Champion!

ONE-ON-ONE…

Kris Statlander vs. Diamante

Coming off losing the TBS Championship to Julia Hart at FULL GEAR 2023, Kris Statlander is back in action against one of her long-time rivals, a woman she’s got history with dating back to 2018, but who she’s surprisingly never gone one-on-one with in a televised bout! Diamante and Stat had a pair of singles matches on DARK, in addition to two trios bouts, and they even clashed in a tag on COLLISION back in September, but this Saturday night will be their first televised singles match ever!

Statlander certainly holds upper hand in their rivalry, having been on the winning side for four of their five AEW bouts, but will she be there for it after watching the TBS Championship slip out of her grasp last week in Los Angeles? This may be the prime moment for Diamante to strike and score a huge victory over her rival!

COLLISION

CONTINENTAL CLASSIC TOURNAMENT…

BLUE LEAGUE

Blackpool Combat Club’s Claudio Castagnoli vs. Daniel Garcia

They were trapped inside the Blood & Guts Cage together 17 months ago, and they fought in tags and trios over the ensuing months once Chris Jericho defeated Claudio Castagnoli to become ROH World Champion, but this Saturday night in Pittsburgh will be the first time that Claudio and Daniel Garcia fight in singles competition, and what stakes there are at hand!

This bout marks each man’s first in the Blue League of the Continental Classic, and Garcia is undoubtedly the underdog, not just in this match, but in the big picture of the entire twelve-man tournament! Though he is a former ROH Pure Champion, and the current PWG Champion, Garcia is absolutely the dark horse of the Blue League. After all this is a bracket consisting of the men involved in this match as well as Bryan Danielson, Andrade El Idolo, Eddie Kingston, and Brody King. That being said, regardless of how they came to be, Garcia’s record book shows victories over Brody and Bryan, though they are balanced by losses to Andrade and Kingston.

So the question is whether or not Garcia can find an amalgamation of his pro wrestler side and his sports entertainer side, because if he can find a balance of the two, he could evolve into the most dangerous wrestler in the whole of All Elite Wrestling. There is not doubt he is one of the most gifted wrestlers in the game today, he is also one of the most entertaining, but he’s yet to find a balance of the two that leads to consistent success.

With so much at stake in each Continental Classic match it becomes imperative that Daniel Garcia find his identity, and decide who he wants to be. Nothing dictates he has to be one or the other, but he has to figure out a balance between his best attributes if he hopes to defeat the complete package that is Claudio Castagnoli. One would be hard-pressed to find a professional wrestler more adept at every style in the game than Castagnoli, or one more powerful than the former ROH World Champion. Though there are several more matches to be fought before WORLDS END comes, that first victory is imperative to setting the town for the Continental Classic; will it be Claudio’s victory in the record books or will it belong to Daniel Garcia

ROH World/NJPW STRONG Openweight Champion Eddie Kingston vs. The House of Black’s Brody King

The enhanced stakes of this tournament, the situation where the winner will walk out not only as AEW Continental Champion, but also as ROH World Champion and NJPW STRONG Champion, are a direct result of the fighting spirit that burns in the soul of Eddie Kingston. Call him “The Mad King”, call him “The Last of a Dying Breed”, whatever you call him, you have to call Eddie Kingston a fighter with a respect for professional wrestling above and beyond the call of duty. There is no reason for Eddie to put both his hard-earned championship titles at stake save for his belief that a champion should be defending their title any time they are in a prize fight.

That leads to this situation where Eddie has laid both his championship titles on the line for the ultimate winner of this Round Robin-Style Tournament, thereby creating a modern American Triple Crown Championship, and adhering the Continental Classic winner to three separate promotions. But that’s what comes at WORLDS END for the winner of the entire field, this Saturday night during COLLISOIN, Eddie Kingston will first have to deal with a man he first met in La Boom back in 2018, and first fought in Wilmington, CA one month later: The House of Black’s Brody King!

These two men had issues in All Elite Wrestling earlier this year, problems that created the fissure in the relationship between Ortiz and Kingston that ultimately put those two on opposite sides of the Stadium Stampede at ALL IN: LONDON, but seem quelled based on recent Ring of Honor activity, but the Kingston/HoB issues never put Eddie in the ring with Brody here in AEW.

That all changes this Saturday night on COLLISION when, as part of the Blue League, Eddie and Brody lock horns in singles competition for the first time in AEW, and for the first time time since an AAW title fight in December 2018. These are two men who were inspired to this trade because of their love for Puroesu, because of their love for the concept of Fighting Spirit, and though they’ve traveled very different paths to get to this point, now are engaged in a tournament that owes a great deal of inspiration to those that elevated the men Brody and Eddie love into inspirational figures.

This is going to be a hard-hitting affair, one in which bombs will be thrown from the outset, and neither man will emerge in perfect health. No matter who wins, both Brody and Eddie will know they’ve been through a battle to score their first 3 points, and they will feel the repercussions of the bout throughout the rest of the Continental Classic.

THE CHAMPIONS SPEAK…

After assaulting Chris Jericho following the FULL GEAR 2023 Media Scrum, reigning AEW World Tag Champions Ricky Starks and Big Bill will be on-hand this Saturday during COLLISION for an interview with Tony Schiavone.

With that Ladder Match victory under their belt, the duo were already riding high, but putting the boots to Jericho the way they did, and doing more damage to the arm already injured by The Young Bucks has left them even higher on the hog than they were. There’s no doubt Starks and Big Bill will have a lot of gloating to do on Saturday, but eventually they will have to answer for their attack, and given that The Golden Jets are owed a championship match, the champions’ actions may cost them the titles!

“THE RATED R SUPERSTAR” AND THE PATRIARCHY…

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This past Wednesday night on DYNAMITE, fans watched in horror as Christian Cage prepared to deliver a One-Man Conchairto to Shayna Wayne. If it wasn’t for the timely intervention of Adam Copeland, one can imagine the kind of damage that would’ve been done to Nick Wayne’s seemingly-estranged mother. Unfortunately for Nick, it was young Mr. Wayne who ended up with his head sandwiched between chairs and felt the cold sting of the steel across his skull, but also unfortunate was the fact this happened right in front of Shayna.

Whether or not “The Rated R Superstar” even realized there was a distraught mother crumbled in the corner crying for a stay of execution is something only Adam can answer, and perhaps that’s what he will address this Saturday night on COLLISION!

TAG TEAM BOUT…

FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) vs. The Righteous (Dutch & Vincent)

FTR were within moments of claiming the AEW World Tag Team Titles at FULL GEAR 2023 but Ricky Starks played spoiler to their moment of redemption, and instead pulled down the titles to keep them around the waists of himself and Big Bill. Frustrating as that may be, it’s not the first time Cash and Dax have been on the losing end of a fight and it certainly won’t be the last, and that loss is not going to stop them from getting right back into the hunt for a third reign as champions!

The road that hopefully ends in another title opportunity begins tonight on COLLISION when FTR faces The Righteous for the very first time! Dutch and Vincent recently took up with Jake Roberts, a match certainly made in the most devilish of fires, pooling a wealth of knowledge with a bent towards wickedness that could certainly lead The Righteous towards championship success.

Will Dutch and Vincent be able to blaze that trail at the expense of FTR, or will Dax and Cash rebound from their PPV heartbreak and set their sights right back on the AEW World Tag Titles?

SINGLES BOUT…

“Limitless” Keith Lee vs. Shane Taylor Promotions’ Lee Moriarty

The issues between Shane Taylor and Keith Lee date back over a decade to the earliest days of the wrestling careers, into their time in Ring of Honor as The Pretty Boy Killers, even spilled over into the New Era of Honor with their fight at FINAL BATTLE 2022 last December, and into AEW with their Mixed Tag Team bout during the ZERO HOUR for WRESTLEDREAM 2023. Now, with Shane Taylor having recruited Lee Moriarty into his fold, it looks like Pittsburgh’s own is taking up the fight on his mentor’s behalf!

It was just a little over two years ago that Moriarty wrestled his first match for AEW, losing to Dante Martin on the August 17, 2021 edition of DARK, and his drive to become one of the best in the game led him to championship bouts with Orange Cassidy, HOOK, Wardlow, and Katsuyori Shibata, to mention a few, and caught the attention of Shane Taylor.

Stepping up this Saturday to fight Shane’s former tag partner, will Lee Moriarty come to regret his choice of partnering with STP, or will that association be the thing that bolsters the master of #TaigaStyle to the level he has been striving for since coming into AEW?

TAG TEAM BOUT…

The House of Black (Buddy Matthews & Malakai Black) vs. Gravity & Komander

FULL GEAR 2023 was not an ideal night for the men of The House of Black, though Julia Hart did bring the TBS Championship into their fold, all three of the men honoring The House were unsuccessful in their respective fights. Buddy Matthews fell to Claudio Castagnoli during the ZERO HOUR, while The Kings of the Black Throne came up short in the AEW World Tag Team Championship Ladder Match.

Thankfully for all three of them, today is a new day for a fresh fight, and while Brody King is embroiled in the Continental Classic Tournament and his opening fight with Eddie Kingston, Malakai Black and Buddy Matthews will team for the first time to take on the high-flying duo of Gravity and Komander! The Luchador duo have been sporadically tagging up for several years, though this will be there first time working as a team in All Elite Wrestling, and what a challenge they face in this House pairing!

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All Elite Wrestling returns to pay-per-view this Saturday night, November 18th, for FULL GEAR 2023 live from the fabulous KIA Forum in Los Angeles, CA! AEW’s return to the West Coast has already been an exciting endeavor, and now it comes to a head with multiple championship bouts, epic grudge matches, strained friendships, and the top shelf professional wrestling the world has come to expect from the athletes of All Elite Wrestling! Click here for all the details on how the AEW faithful around the world can watch our November tradition, then sit back, strap in, and get ready for a rocket ship of a ride in Cali!

AEW WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

MJF(c) vs. “Switchblade” Jay White

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On November 1st, just four days after beating Kenny Omega on COLLISION, Maxwell Jacob Friedman became the longest reigning AEW World Champion in AEW’s history, surpassing the 346-day marker set by “The Cleaner” between WINTER IS COMING 2020 when he beat Jon Moxley and FULL GEAR 2021 when he lost to Hangman Page. One week later, on the November 8th DYNAMITE in Portland, MJF defeated Daniel Garcia in a World Championship defense, thereby tying the mark of 9 successful defenses set by Moxley during his reign from REVOLUTION 2020 where be bested Chris Jericho to the aforementioned WINTER IS COMING 2020 loss.

These are two huge milestones in the history of All Elite Wrestling, as well as in the professional career of Maxwell Jacob Friedman, not to neglect his fifth consecutive victory where the Dynamite Diamond Ring is concerned, but unfortunately MJF has had to celebrate both this championship milestones without his precious Triple B, the AEW World Championship title. For weeks now “Switchblade” Jay White has been parading around with the physical title belt and using his possession of it to proclaim himself the real AEW World Champion. While White is certainly championship material, his status as a former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion is testament to that, he is not the AEW World Champion regardless of his physically holding the title belt.

While he’s not champion, what “King Switch” has been is a thorn in MJF’s side that he’s been unable to remove, a foe Max has been unable to get a leg up on, and man surrounded by three other men willing to get their hands dirty in order to lend “Switchblade” an assist when it is need. Jay White is also one of just two people who’ve pinned MJF’s shoulders to the mat since he returned to the fold at ALL OUT 2022, the other being Dax Harwood the night Better Than You BayBay challenged FTR for the AEW World Tag Team Championship. To say Jay White has the psychological edge heading into this fight would be an understatement, and though initially it seemed the Devil-masked individual, and their gang of black clad thugs, that have encircled this bout was MJF’s balance to everything White had done, it became clear after White’s victory over Mark Briscoe that they (a) The Devil was not MJF and (b) they were not on the side of the World Champion either. Even though their initial arrival on the scene was at the expense of Jay White, this time around they left The Acclaimed and Daddy Ass laying, even chucking Anthony Bowens through a window.

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So after everything that has gone done between MJF, his allies, Jay White, and BULLET CLUB GOLD, the two men will finally go one-on-one for the AEW World Championship! It’s MJF’s chance to become the most successful champion in AEW history by breaking Mox’s record, it’s Jay White’s opportunity to ascend to the throne in All Elite Wrestling just as he did in New Japan, and it plays out this Saturday night live on pay-per-view from the legendary KIA Forum!

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Hikaru Shida(c) vs. Toni Storm

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Though it’s been a little more than ten years since the very first time Toni Storm and Hikaru Shida stepped into the ring with one another, that fight from the REINA promotion is their lone fight away from All Elite Wrestling and a tag team one won by Storm and her partner.

It would be nine years before Storm and Shida saw each other inside the squared circle again, only now they were working as partners on DARK: ELEVATION #74, teaming with Willow Nightingale as their third to top Emi Sakura, Marina Shafir, and former AEW Women’s World Champion Nyla Rose. The two women would actually team up several more times in 2022, actually proving quite successful both as a team and a trio, but the AEW Women’s World Championship would enter the picture.

At ALL OUT 2022, with the title having been vacated as a result of Thunder Rosa’s injury, Toni Storm bested Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D, Jamie Hayter, and Shida to win her first title, acquired by pinning Hayter, and since she was not the woman pinned, lining up Shida for a title fight of her own. That first singles bout between the women would go down on TITLE TUESDAY 2022, and end with Toni Storm still the reigning champion.

The two women would go their separate ways, reconnecting in May 2023, but unlike Shida who had stayed true to the side of angels, Toni Storm had aligned herself with Ruby Soho and Saraya to form The Outcasts. The alliance-turned-rivalry would blossom into a Women’s World Championship match at the 200th episode of DYNAMITE and that fight would end with “The Shining Samurai” becoming a 2-Time World Champion. Sadly it was a short-lived title reign as Saraya would bring it to an end just 25 days later at ALL IN: LONDON, though not by pinning Shida, but rather by putting down Toni Storm to claim the victory. That pinfall on Toni would prove a breaking point for Storm’s role in The Outcasts as she began to spiral out into the woman we see now, and the Women’s World Champion defeating Toni at GRAND SLAM 2023 completely broke the camel’s back.

The Women’s World Championship would end up back in Shida’s possession after TITLE TUESDAY 2023, making her the first 3-Time champ in the division, but as for Toni Storm, a week prior to Shida’s win at DYNAMITE: 2023 ANNIVERSARY, we all witnessed Toni spiral out on RJ City before making her “Timeless” declaration.

Now lost in this “Timeless” Hollywood starlet delusion, Toni has declared this year’s FULL GEAR event as her “Hollywood Homecoming” and “Quest for the Gold”, heaping a great deal of the blame for her woes on Shida’s lap despite it being The Outcasts, Toni’s former friends, who caused much of that misfortune. As for Shida, while Toni has been experiencing this break from reality, she has posted three successful title defenses against Ruby Soho, Willow Nightingale, and that unforgettable Fright Night Fight with Abadon on COLLISION. Meanwhile Storm has not been inside the ring since an October 7th victory over Kiera Hogan, which means she may be well-rested and healed up from any nagging issues, but heading into FULL GEAR 2023 is she ready for a fight, especially the type of fight Hikaru Shida will undoubtedly bring?

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The defending Women’s World Champion does not want this third reign to end as abruptly as the second, and thus she will throw every bit of her arsenal at “Timeless” Toni Storm to insure this go-round isn’t a repeat of the second. While she may hold the spot as longest-reigning Women’s World Champion of all-time at 372 days, so too does Shida hold the position for shortest with that 25 days reign, and if Toni beats her on Saturday night, she’ll also have the second shortest time with the title as well. That’s not the history Shida intends to make…

AEW INTERNATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Orange Cassidy(c) vs. Jon Moxley

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After 326 days and 31 championship defenses, Orange Cassidy had the AEW International Championship ripped from his waist by former 3-Time AEW World Champion Jon Moxley at ALL OUT 2023. It was a violent bout, one in which Cassidy was brutalized like never before in his career, but it was a beating that earned him the respect of Mox, not an easy thing to acquire by any means.

Unfortunately for Moxley, his time as International Champion did not come close to touching the records set by Cassidy during his reign because on his fourth defense of the title, just 17 days in, Rey Fenix dropped Moxley hard, and wrested the championship from The BCC member’s grasp. It was a shock to be certain, a win many considered an upset despite Fenix’s championship pedigree, and one that actually put Mox on the injury list for several weeks as far as AEW was concerned, though that didn’t stop the man from fighting for OTT in England and Ireland, for NJPW in Osaka, and at NJPW STRONG’s event at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, the home of FINAL BATTLE 2023.

Meanwhile, during the month that Moxley was kept on the sidelines before his OTT trip, Orange Cassidy had the opportunity to challenge Fenix for the International Championship, a one-on-one rematch of their 11/2/22 Three Way title fight early in Orange’s reign, and just like that fight, it ended with “Freshly Squeezed” getting his hand raised in victory. So not only was OC the longest-reigning International Champion in that title’s short life, not only is he the most successful champion in all of AEW history with those 31 defenses, but now he is also the only 2-Time Champion in the history of the International Title.

Seeming somewhat lost after losing the title to Mox, Cassidy seems rejuvenated by his reclamation of the championship, as if it helped salve the lingering injuries he’d sustained over those 326 days, and reinvigorated him for this second run atop the division. He’s already bested John Silver and Mox’s BCC brother Claudio Castagnoli in championship defenses, but this Saturday night at The KIA Forum, he’s got to get back into the fight with the man who battered him not that long ago.

It’s obvious that Cassidy wants this fight, why else would he have shoulder-bumped Mox after the show of respect Moxley gave him after their fight, provoking the man, almost rubbing it into his face that OC had taken the belt back from the man who beat Moxley. The situation began to blow up this past Wednesday on DYNAMITE as The BCC of Moxley and Yuta met Cassidy and HOOK in a tag team battle, and not only did The BCC defeat championship pair when Yuta pinned HOOK, but Moxley ate a straight shot from an Orange Punch and did not even go down to a knee! It very clearly shook OC to see his primary weapon have no effect on the man he’s got to fight on Saturday night; will we see the same reaction if Cassidy scores with an Orange Punch in the championship match, or can it actually put the 3-Time AEW World Champion and former International Champion down?

Moxley says FULL GEAR 2023 will be a course correction, a moment where he shows the world that Cassidy is actually who Jon Moxley says he is, and he puts the 2-Time International Champion back in his place. Will this be the case when the final bell rings, or will Cassidy do what he has done repeatedly since coming to All Elite Wrestling and show Jon Moxley he is as real as The BCC?

TEXAS DEATH…

“Hangman” Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland

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Swerve Strickland came into this entire ordeal with former AEW World Champion Hangman Page with the intent of proving he was worthy of a top spot in the AEW pantheon. A former AEW World Tag Champion, just like Hangman, Swerve has relentlessly pursued that top tier status ever since violently parting ways with Keith Lee and nothing has deterred those aspirations, not even being locked in a coffin by Darby Allin and Sting.

So when Page and Swerve went into battle at WRESTLEDREAM, Strickland viewed it as his opportunity to snatch the spot while Hangman saw it as his moment to get back on track with his own career after spending a great deal of 2023 wrapped up in Elite business with Blackpool Combat Club and then, surprisingly, winning the ROH World Six-Man Titles from Swerve’s allies in The Mogul Embassy. But instead of Swerve proving his merits on his own, he resorted to an assist from Prince Nana and his crown to defeat Hangman, and shortly thereafter, when the opportunity arose to fight Bryan Danielson for a shot at TNT Championship, Swerve tried the same tactic. Thankfully Hangman was on the spot to stop that crime from being committed, but that only served to escalate the issues, and next thing Hangman knew, Swerve and Prince Nana were breaking into Page’s house.

That disturbing scenario is best left untouched, suffice to say that Swerve committed the heinous sin of dragging family into this issue that started as a professional jockeying for position, making it as personal as any issues experienced in All Elite Wrestling. We heard Hangman speak his mind about this, tearing Swerve down to the core with every bit of personal drama Strickland has experienced, and capping it all off by assaulting Nana since the two Texas Death combatants were forbidden from any physical content on DYNAMITE.

But that rule doesn’t extend beyond the borders of AEW…

At Pro Wrestling Revolver’s UNREAL event, as Swerve and Nana stood in the ring talking about the FULL GEAR 2023 fight, Hangman attacked out of nowhere, and promised that he would beat Swerve’s ass this Saturday night. Swerve chose to make this personal, messing with a man’s family, so much so that it led others like Penta El Zero Miedo to fight the him, but once Hangman chose to oblige Swerve and join him in the muck and mire, it was bound to get ugly. Fans have seen the former AEW World Champion in Texas Death before, he’s undefeated in that stipulation here in AEW, and that’s because he’s willing to get uglier and dirtier than anyone else when the fight comes.

Swerve led this into ugliness by his actions outside the ring, will he be able to get that ugly when the bell rings on Saturday night?

TRIOS MATCH…

Adam Copeland, Darby Allin, & Sting vs. TNT Champion Christian Cage, Luchasaurus, & Nick Wayne

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It was a huge moment at WRESTLEDREAM when “The Rated R Superstar” Adam Copeland arrived on the scene in All Elite Wrestling and stood side-by-side with Sting and Darby Allin in opposition to TNT Champion Christian Cage, Luchasaurus, and sadly also Nick Wayne. In the weeks since then, we have heard Sting announce to the world that he would bring his legendary career to its end at REVOLUTION 2024, we heard Copeland repeatedly say he would not fight his best friend, we saw Ric Flair come into the equation to ride this home stretch out with “The Icon”, and we’ve watched Christian Cage continue to be a horrible human being.

But after hearing Cage after being attacked by Cage’s “sons”, after hearing Christian threaten to break his neck, Adam Copeland has agreed to ride into battle alongside Sting and Darby Allin this Saturday night at FULL GEAR 2023! We witnessed these three men get their first reps in as a trio against The Righteous and Lance Archer, and though they looked very solid in action, they are still new to the idea of working with one another. In truth, it’s not all that different from the situation with Christian’s Patriarchy, much like Darby and Sting, Christian and Luchasaurus have spent a great deal of time together and formed their own dynamic, and much like Adam Copeland, Nick Wayne is a new ingredient to that formula. Unlike the Darby/Sting/Copeland trio though, The Patriarchy all fall under the direction of Christian Cage, they do not think for themselves, they follow the direction of their erstwhile father figure, and only his direction.

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Their opponents are individuals, allies, friends; it’s not a case of Darby falling into a subordinate role just because of Sting and Copeland’s seniority or being led by their direction. This will be a trio operating on the same page but making use of their varied levels of experience, pooling their assorted resources and knowledge, and applying each other’s best attributes to the fights. There is obviously a concern about the history between Christian Cage and Adam Copeland, how all that friendship, those roads traveled together, those championships held as a team, the time spent with each other’s families, how will all that play into this Trios fight at FULL GEAR 2023? All of it has to be nagging at the back of Copeland’s skull, but will it effect his ability to fight? We will all see this Saturday night…

TAG TEAM BATTLE…

The Golden Jets (Chris Jericho & Kenny Omega) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson)

***TAG TEAM TITLE OPPORTUNITY VS. TAG TEAM BREAK-UP***

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It was at WRESTLEDREAM that The Young Bucks earned a future shot at the AEW World Tag Team Titles at a moment of their choosing; they did so by defeating The Lucha Brothers, The Gunns, as well as the team of HOOK and Orange Cassidy. Since that PPV event, we’ve seen Nick Jackson lose to AEW International Champion Nick Jackson, The Young Bucks & Hangman Page lose the ROH World Six-Man Championship back to The Mogul Embassy after just one successful defense, and watched The Young Bucks completely lose their cool after that championship defeat.

Over the last few months we’ve also seen Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho form one of the most unlikely pairings in AEW’s history, brought together by their mutual issues with Don Callis and his Family, putting aside their own sordid history in order to fight against Callis’ relentless onslaught. Clearly this is not a situation that sits well with the brothers Jackson; call it jealousy over the relationship with Jericho or call it caution given that the history between Jericho and The Elite created Stadium Stampede, either way it is driving a rift between Omega and The Young Bucks.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/nC_dQ89iNi0?si=AnpJRE7S0EgkGe8u&start=381

Now we now from history that The Young Bucks do not deal well with their friends having other friends, we witnessed it many moons ago with Adam Cole and reDRagon, but when it’s a man such as Jericho with whom there was so much bad blood from the first year of AEW, it’s got to be infinitely worse. That is why this match is going down, after all when there’s an issue between professional wrestlers the best place to settle it is inside the squared circle, and why not amp up the stakes when both teams have something to lose?

And what are those stakes? If The Young Bucks win, then the existence of The Golden Jets comes to an end. There will be no more team of Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho, no more fighting the good fight together against a common foe, they will just be quits as soon as that bell rings. But if The Golden Jets win, then Matt and Nick will have to say goodbye to the World Tag Team Championship match they earned at WRESTLEDREAM! That opportunity will belong to The Golden Jets, no Young Bucks championship match on the horizon, just Jericho and Omega maintaining their dynamic to challenge whoever wins Saturday night’s Ladder Match. And what of the relationship between Omega and The Young Bucks? Well it has survived a great deal, and it has endured, but they haven’t been at this point before where so much hostility has put them at odds.

Previously that was Hangman with Omega trying to keep the peace as best he could for as long as he could; only now there is no cooler head trying to prevail, just four men looking to fight, and we shall see if the friendship between The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega can survive the ordeal.

TBS CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Kris Statlander(c) vs. Julia Hart vs. Skye Blue

Kris Statlander is a breakneck pace as the TBS Champion; in the span of 174 days, Stat has successfully defended the title on 16 occasions against fourteen different women. For perspective, by that point in her historic TBS Championship reign, the longest title reign in AEW history across all divisions, Jade Cargill had only defended the title eight times while Orange Cassidy, the most successful champion across all divisions in AEW, was also heading towards his 17th defense against Dralistico.

This Saturday at FULL GEAR 2023, Statlander heads into her 17th defense against two foes she’s already beaten in one-on-one contests, but who she now must contend with in a Three Way situation. To make matters more intriguing, there is an entire other dynamic between Julia Hart and Skye Blue that has little to do with Statlander. Ever since Hart misted Skye, the latter has taken a turn towards the dark, so much so that there was absolutely a concern she’d walk through the doors of The House of Black and be lost to her friends forever. Though Skye would repeatedly rebuke the handshake of help of the TBS Champion, when the moment came between choosing between Willow Nightingale and Julia Hart, Skye turned and sprayed her own blue mist into the face of The House of Black’s Hart.

So with each woman’s position set, the light of Statlander, the dark of Julia, and the chaotic middle of Blue, they will now collide on Saturday night with the TBS Championship on the line! This will mark the first defense for Stat that’s involved multiple challengers, will that be the ticket to ending this potentially historic reign? Or will the strife between Julia Hart and Skye Blue be the key to the champion retaining her championship?

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP LADDER MATCH…

Big Bill & Ricky Starks(c) vs. FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) vs. LFI (Dralistico & Rush) vs. The House of Black (Brody King & Malakai Black)

A Ladder Match, only one other time in the history of AEW have the World Tag Team Titles been at stake in a Ladder match, and that was the night The Young Bucks beat Jurassic Express to start their defenseless 28-day second reign, as well as the night Christian Cage first stabbed Jack Perry in the back.

But four teams fighting to climb the rungs to championship status? That is a whole new ballgame, and one likely to end up in plenty of pain, suffering, and punishment! Just yesterday the AEW faithful witnessed the chaos that erupted between these eight men, especially Dax and Rush as they battled to a No Contest, now put that into a situation with no rules, the freedom to use weapons, and with a title at stake. This will be an intensely physical situation, and even though Ricky Starks is the one who laid the stipulation on the table, not necessarily the best one for the champions to retain their titles. They may not have to worry about a pinfall or submission happening to someone else to lose their status, but Big Bill and Ricky Starks constantly have to be concerned about stopping someone else climbing the ladder. There are six bodies besides theirs all with the same goal, but only one has to ascend to the top of the ladder and pull down the belts.

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Can the defending champions survive six other opponents, as well as the Ladder itself, or will they be hoisted on their own petard?

FULL GEAR: ZERO HOUR

ROH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

Eddie Kingston(c) vs. Jay Lethal

ROH WORLD TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH…

MJF(c) & Samoa Joe vs The Gunns (Austin & Colten)

ONE-ON-ONE…

Blackpool Combat Club’s Claudio Castagnoli vs. House of Black’s Buddy Matthews

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mIUYRmccbWw?si=9neyQvr0H6nC-USo&start=326

All Elite Wrestling is back on pay-per-view this Saturday night with FULL GEAR 2023 coming to you live from the KIA Forum in Los Angeles! This PPV experience is loaded with multiple championship bouts, including a Four Way Ladder Match for the AEW World Tag Titles, as well as huge grudge matches, and all the elite class professional wrestling fans expect from an All Elite Wrestling pay-per-view! All the details on how to watch FULL GEAR 2023 can be found here, so if you can’t be there in-person, you have to join us through your preferred method for the greatest PPV experience professional wrestling has to offer! And don’t forget to join us for the FULL GEAR: ZERO HOUR prior to the start of the PPV where the ROH World Title and the ROH World Tag Team Titles will be defended!

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For the first time, All Elite Wrestling is coming to Oakland, CA and bringing a live edition of RAMPAGE with it! With a week to go until FULL GEAR 2023, The Oakland Arena will be rocking with all the athletes of AEW jockeying for superiority before that pay-per-view extravaganza, including a huge tag match pitting former 2-Time AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR against AAA Mega Champion El Hijo Del Vikingo and AAA World Cruiserweight/World Tag Champion Komander! Plus those in attendance on Friday night will get to see COLLISION one day early, featuring another big tag team bout with La Faccion Ingobernable’s RUSH and Dralistico, as well as Edge, Sting, and Darby Allin putting in Trios work against The Righteous and Lance Archer!

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Live action begins at at 10pm ET/9pm CT live on TNT, and at AEWPlus.com for international fans, but if you’ll be in attendance in Oakland, the party begins at 6:30pm PT! Before the night begins, make sure to visit the official AEW YouTube channel to watch highlights from this week’s DYNAMITE, previous episodes of RAMPAGE and COLLISION, as well as this week’s CONTROL CENTER, and much more!

TAG TEAM BATTLE…

FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) vs. AAA Mega Champion El Hijo Del Vikingo & AAA World Cruiserweight/World Tag Champion Komander

https://www.youtube.com/embed/B2wW8f7geX0?si=zdc2-7-ENAaerO0a&start=288

It was just over a month ago that FTR were enjoying their second reign as AEW World Tag Team Champions, a goal finally accomplished after fighting since FULL GEAR 2020 to reclaim the titles they lost to The Young Bucks. Over the span of 185 days, Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood had toppled The Gunns, BULLET CLUB GOLD in an epic 2/3 Falls Match, Jarrett and Lethal, Better Than You BayBay, Big Bill and Brian Cage, The Young Bucks at ALL IN: LONDON, Aussie Open at WRESTLEDREAM, all en route to matching the record of nine successful title defenses held by both The Young Bucks in their first reign, as well as by Kenny Omega/Hangman Page during theirs.

The along came Big Bill and Ricky Starks, in just their second match as a team, to smash their way through FTR and end that run in just under five minutes. It was a beating unlike any Cash and Dax had taken since coming to AEW in 2020, one that kept them out of action for a few weeks as they recovered, only to be waylaid in their return to competition by The House of Black. FTR would however be back in the ring last week as part of a wild eight-man tag pitting Cash, Dax, Preston Vance and Rush against The Gates of Agony and the AEW World Tag Champions. Despite the rather uneasy alliance of FTR and LFI, that foursome did manage to secure the victory, only for LFI to bail and for FTR to get attacked by The House once more. The surprising arrival of Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta brought that to an abrupt end though, creating another rather unusual alliance between FTR and the BCC in the face of that common enemy.

But this week FTR will be right back in the mix as they take on two of Lucha Libre’s finest athletes, both champions in their own right with the AAA promotion, the team of Komander and El Hijo Del Vikingo! Now as a result of their rivalry with The Lucha Brothers, Dax and Cash have had some experience fighting competitors versed in the Lucha style, but as superb as Penta and Fenix are, they’re approach is quite different than Vikingo and Komander, and FTR is going to be in for a wild ride this Friday night!

Can Dax and Cash overcome? Will they need eyes in the back of their heads where The House of Black is concerned? Or will we see the two AAA champions reign supreme over the former 2-Time AEW Tag Champs?

JERICHO TALKS DRAGON GAIDEN…

Ahead of the LIKE A DRAGON GAIDEN STREET FIGHT going down on Wednesday night’s DYNAMITE, we will hear from Chris Jericho on RAMPAGE on Friday night! What will “The Ocho” have to say before he goes to war with The Don Callis Family? Tune into TNT to find out!

RAMPAGE begins at at 10pm ET/9pm CT live on TNT, and at AEWPlus.com for international fans, but if you plan to be at the Oakland Arena for the action, the night gets underway at 6:30pm PT! Prior to the fights, drop into the official AEW YouTube channel to catch highlights from Wednesday’s DYNAMITE, as well as previous episodes of RAMPAGE and COLLISION, this week’s CONTROL CENTER, and much more!