Official AEW Dark Discussion Thread

that botch by Jack Evans was next level, how did it not get edited? lol

Tonights Dark: Elevation:

Fenix/Sexy Chuckie T is worth a watch, continues the Death Triangle/Best Friends feud as expected.

Bunch of squashes after, almost nothing of note or particularly driving story wise for a few matches. Relevant thing is Anthony Bowens is healthy and back in action.

Rising Star feature on Leyla was cool. I really like these spotlights. Say what you want about her, her entrance music really fits her well. Something I think at times AEW has struggled with. This one hits it out of the park. Personally I really like Leyla, so this spotlight was fun.

I really like Diamante, Ryo, and Leyla, so I loved the tag between Ryo/Leyla and Diamante/Amber. Obviously this would have been Ivelisse/Diamante a month ago lol. I continue to beat the "Hey, Diamante is really improving" bandwagon. She's likely never going to be a Britt Baker or Shida level star, but she's got a good character, and her in ring abilities are continuing to improve. Solid mid-card player imo. Got to see more of Amber Nova this week, and she was solid. I'm a sucker for an Orange costume though. The women always get judged with a more critical eye, so I tend to recap their matches more in an effort to spotlight their positives, but I thought this was a solid match overall. We'll be getting Diamante/Leyla on Dark next Tuesday.

Sky and Page cut a half comedy promo arguing about their name. It's no secret I'm very high on both these guys. I was the happiest lad on earth when Sky/Kaz became the first tag team champions.

Tesha Price/Statlander was next. Tesha is still running this weird psycho gimmick that isn't working. She's pretty solid in the ring for only 3 years though, so I'm happy to keep seeing her. Just gotta figure out who she is as a character. Not unlike Kilynn King, who is really strong in the ring, but really struggling to find her identity yet. She's getting close though being around Swole and Velvet so much, who both carry themselves with a lot of condfidence.

Statlander booped Remsburg. It's been a while . Fast match. Statlander looks healthy though. She's moving with confidence and looks comfortable, so it seems the recovery went really well. She fits in so nice with that motley crue of friendship.

Scorp & Page/5 & Reynolds was next. 3rd kind of "main roster" match of the night. (I count Diamante at this point, and I think that's justifiable). I really enjoyed this match. Sky & Page work well together, and Reynolds is getting some good chances to step out of Johnny Hungee's shadow. I've really enjoyed Paul Wight on commentary so far, but he really stuck out to me in this match. In a positive way.

Swole/Velvet vs Nyla/Madi up now. I am such a huge fan of Madi Wrenkowski. She just gets it. Not unlike Red Velvet. Swole has short hair now. It looks badass. Character wise that might be a small change that makes a huge difference. Not a long match, but a very fun watch. Swole looked really good tonight. She had been kind of regressing for a while, but I'm thinking that was mostly due to the Chron's, because now that she's doing better in that department, she looks a lot more like early AEW Swole/indies Swole. Madi was awesome in this match. She does such good character work, and I think we learned a lot more about the Madi Wrenkowski character in this match. If nothing else, this match is worth watching for the absolutely hilarious moment where Madi tags into the match. I'm not gonna spoil it, but I laughed a lot.

Matt Sydal vs. Joey Janela was next. Pretty good match, Joey showed off a fair amount of his technical side. That said, I'm not particularly attached to Sydal or Janela so I wasn't as in to this one. Solid match for sure, and they worked really well together.

Man, I'm loving this Peter Avalon stable. JD Drake is so awesome.

Man, I know some people haven't been feeling Jake lately, but I freaking love the story he and Lance are putting together. I'm super biased though, because the Murderhawk was one of my number one wants for AEW, and I absolutely love the story he's been telling, even if a lot of it hasn't been on dynamite lately. In general I'm not a fan of the 'big' wrestlers. I.e. Kane, Taker, Andre the Giant, etc, etc. I've never liked watching those types of guys. Lance is one of the very few that broke that mold, and the one that broke that mold for me in a way that made me totally reevaluate how I thought of all those guys. 

Edit:

I'm watching this late at night.

Holy crap, the Caster rap.  That one was something special. 

Royce Isaacs got an entrance tonight for his match with Ren Narita. Ren got an entrance too. Would not be surprised to see Ren be the first official AEW excursion for a young lion. To be honest young lions from the LA Dojo doing their excursions in AEW makes so much damn sense.

I expect the entrance for Royce means he's signed to some sort of tier 0 deal. He was fantastic on NWA power, the man is a strong wrestler.

JD Drake has an official song & big screen thing now. He's had entrances before but this is the first time he's had the "blue collar badass" thing on display on the big screen.  He was announced as being accompanied by "the wingmen" so I guess that might be the name of the pretty picture stable now? 

Regardless, great match between him and Rocky. Really cool, but this is the first episode of AEW Dark or Dark Elevation to be main evented by two people not on the official roster page. Granted, I think it's safe to say JD Drake is signed to some form of contract, same with Bononi and Nemeth, but still!  

I think this week was a better glimpse of what future dark and dark elevations are going to be like. Fewer but longer matches and more promos etc

Aaron Solow using the pedigree is stupid as hell. Although atleast he didn't just use another wrestler on the rosters set up move as a finish or vice versa as is the case sometimes with the promotion.

The official end of the current dark and dark elevation. Very curious to see what changes on the road. What a great ride.

Super cool that Wheeler got the win over Nemeth. Wheeler was the only person I guessed correctly in the masked wrestler thing iwtv did.

Dark elevation was great last night. The 8 man tag that features varsity blondes and acclaimed is a must watch for the post match shenanigans. Bowens was absolutely ruthless and it's hilarious. Now over sensitive Twitter marks losing their minds because they worked themselves. If nothing else just find that clip.

King/Yuka was good too. Could tell kilynn hasn't wrestled many Japanese wrestlers but beyond that it was solid.

Jungle boy/Lee Johnson was of course awesome.