by AEW once again showed the wrestling world EXACTLY how to do an empty arena show last night. One can only hope the WWE took notice, but somehow, I think we all know better than that.
They put wrestlers in the crowd to create noise and had a multi man announce team to keep the quiet spots to a minimum, if at all. The camera angle was shot from the perfect placement of the hard camera, not showing any empty seats and the perfect areas were darkened out.
With the ambiance of it all being done right, let’s look at the actual action of the show as well and break it down. A show missing MJF, Wardlow, Hangman Page and the women’s champion, still did pretty darn well! They mixed in excellent video packages of Jon Moxley, The Young Bucks, Jake Roberts and Chris Jericho as they went.
The show kicked off with the announcement of the TNT tournament starting next week. This is a novel concept in which 8 men will compete for what is, a TV championship much the same WCW had back in the day. I like the concept and the bracket sets up very nicely with some intriguing matchups.
The bracket will consist of Colt Cabana taking on Lance Archer. The smart money is on Archer for this one as they are building him to be a monster and Cabana hasn’t even had his first match with the company yet.
Also, on that side of the bracket will be Dustin Rhodes vs Kip Sabian. I would look for Rhodes to pull off the upset in that one. Point being that they want to set up Archer to run through the Rhodes family as part of Jake Roberts sick plan.
As Cody mentioned last night, the left side of the bracket is rather loaded. I have my money on Rhodes to run through Shawn Spears like a hot knife through butter.
The bottom of the bracket with Darby Allin and Sammy Guevara is a rematch of the five-star classic they had at Februarys PPV Full Gear. That one can go either way but after the Allin and Rhodes clash to end the show last night, I can see them headed for a match.
