Latest / Elite Heat / The Build To Double Or Nothing: MJF's Hair, Darby Impresses Again, & The Women Need A Direction

Transcript

The Build To Double Or Nothing: MJF's Hair, Darby Impresses Again, & The Women Need A Direction · Elite Heat

• Welcome into a solo episode of Elite Heat where we're talking both dynamite and collision. There is no Doug today. And for those of you that watch this on YouTube, yes, I am holding my microphone because my mic stand broke and I haven't fixed it yet. So we're off to a really good start. Speaking of being off to good start, I'm going to jump into this by nitpicking HBO Max. Look, I get it. Get it that this was technically two different shows, but making me switch to a different feed when dynamite ended. quote unquote ended to go to collision. That's dumb. That should all been one feed. And I'm tired of nitpicking HBO Max on this. Get better, do better. I also don't fully understand why this was a dynamite collision combo and not just a three hour dynamite, but whatever, who cares? So as we get into this, remember hit subscribe if you haven't already on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you're listening to this, if you're watching this online, if you're watching, you know, clips and things. Give us a follow at Elite Heat Pod on all the social medias. And okay, here we go. So we opened with Tony Schiavone and Sting doing a tribute to Ted Turner, which I wondered if they were gonna do something. I figured they probably would because in a lot of ways AEW I think is kind of the spiritual sequel, I guess, to WCW. Sting is still great. I don't care what anybody says that dude could still fire up any crowd. I think he could still go. I know he just doesn't want to, but I thought it was a really nice tribute to Ted Turner, who we found out passed away earlier today. I thought they did a good job getting that put together pretty quickly considering they didn't have a lot of time once they found out the news. From there, we opened the show properly. And we start with Mox versus Juice Robinson in a continental title eliminator match. The positive here is I like that they're using Juice Robinson in a spot that feels like it matters. Overall, I thought the match was fine. I would even say it was pretty good. It felt a little off to me at some points, particularly early in the match. It felt like maybe their timing was a little bit off. Not sure what happened there. I wish they'd put Juice over just so they had something to do with him, especially since he would not factor in later when we would see the Bang Bang gang again. So I'm a little bummed by the finish, but overall pretty good match. thought Juice looked pretty good in it. Mox did mox things. Nothing really to complain about, I guess, other than I would have liked to see Juice go over, but that's probably, admittedly, probably being nitpicky. Nah, I don't think it is because do something with him. Then we went from Mox and Juice to the Death Riders Osprey backstage training. I almost said montage, but that's not really right. Lifting pack with your neck as Will Osprey was doing there is definitely something. It's quite a thing there. But I wrote down here, maybe this is how they're gonna stop working the, his neck is a mess angle. And it was definitely interesting. still don't know where we're going with this, especially as we would get to some things later in the show. But this is one of several angles that I'm going to say, I don't know where we're going, but I'm very interested to see how it's going to play out. And really isn't that what it's all about? Telling a story that makes me go, okay, I am curious. I am interested to see where you go. And that definitely... happened with this backstage and really everything that's going on with the Death Riders and Osprey, I'm very, very intrigued. From there, we went to the quote unquote double Jeopardy match between Dax and Orange Cassidy. And I don't know why, other than they like the name, why they're calling this a double Jeopardy match because I don't think they know what that means. I don't think they fully understand what the term double Jeopardy means, but okay, whatever. I also did not understand why there were so many people here. Like I know that there's a 10 man match at the end of the show. And I know that there's the obvious FTR versus, uh, cope and Christian. Hey, I said it right. Look at me go versus the obvious cope and Christian, uh, angle there. But I thought it was a little bit weird that the dogs and RPG vice are getting involved in this. It's just, it's a lot of people. It was a little bit confusing to me, especially because commentary kept saying, well, they've basically turned it into an impromptu lumberjack match and then they didn't do lumberjack things, not really. It was just a lot of people confused me a little bit, felt maybe a little overbooked. I do think that Orange Cassidy winning is the right move here because I think it's, to me, it's more interesting for some combination of the conglomeration. which A, I did not mean to rhyme that, but I'm not mad at it. And B, at this point really consists of three people, at least until Mark Briscoe was back. But I do think it's an interesting story of having two of those guys challenge FTR or whoever comes out of Double or Nothing with the tag titles at some point. I think that's a bit more interesting of a move than FTR and Champa fighting for the trio's titles. So I think that's probably the right move. The Donnybrook, you like that? Donnybrook, bring it back. Anyway, the Donnybrook afterward was fine, but like I said, this all just felt a little bit overbooked to me. It also feels a little indicative to me of here's a bunch of guys that we don't really, we're kind of doing stuff, but we're also kind of not. Like they feel a little bit directionless to me outside of FTR and Coop and Christian. So I'm not trying to tell you this is a bad match. I'm not telling you that if you haven't watched it yet that you should skip it. That's not the case at all. It just, I don't know. It's a lot of people around a ring kind of not doing anything and it just felt a little weird to me. But from there we went to a nice video package for Roosh, which I'm very on board with if you've listened to the last couple of weeks of this show, you know, I'm a Roush fan. I want them to do stuff with him. I want them to push him. Hopefully, hopefully that's where we're going is that he's gonna do something. He's gonna be involved somehow. From there, Renee talked to Jericho and I did like, I thought it was an interesting or a unique kind of, what's the word I'm looking for here? I know, I thought it was unique that he started out backstage and then walked to the ring and they had him in a good spot where it wasn't a long walk to the ring. I thought that was kind of cool, kind of unique. Jericho looking to the camera to point out that Ricochet got it wrong and said North Carolina when they were in fact in South Carolina was very funny. Jericho really threw this whole thing I thought was very good. Ricochet's part was not great and This is a guy who has been real up and down on his promos of late. There were, I don't know, might've been a month ago now, but at least a couple of weeks ago, we were on here saying, man, that might've been his best promo. Maybe he's figuring it out. Maybe he's turning the corner tonight. I didn't think he was great. I just didn't. You know, I really like Stoke being with FTR, but it might not be a bad idea to switch him over to the demand. I think they need a mouthpiece that isn't ricocheting. Sorry, Ricochet, but it's how I feel. The story here I think is gonna be who is going to team with Jericho. If you didn't see it, they made the stadium stampede match for double or nothing. So it'll be the demand versus Jericho. And now historically, if I recall correctly, it's five on five, right? So Jericho would need to find four other people. He got two of them. The Hurt Syndicate came out to help him out. which I figured it was gonna be those two guys. Maybe MVP will get involved, which would be three. So he'll need a fourth guy, or I guess it'd be a fifth man at that point. Now I understand the storyline is gonna be who's gonna work with Jericho, especially because he's made a lot of enemies in AEW. But the last time I checked, there are three people in the demand. And if it's a five on five match, they're gonna need two more and nobody likes the demand. Nobody, they have no friends. So I think that should be a storyline here too. I just don't know if it's going to be. That said, it is a little bit interesting to me who's gonna be the fourth and fifth man or potentially the fifth man if MVP does not decide to wrestle in the match. It's gonna be an interesting couple of weeks to see how they put that together, I think, because you got a lot of different options and I'm curious to see who they go with. I think, you know, You could bring in Sammy Guevara, who I know has been on Ring of Honor, but obviously has a lot of history with Jericho. There's a guy that I'm about to get to that I think you could use. So you've got some options here. Like I said, to me, the more intriguing part is almost who are the two that are going to work with the demand since again, nobody likes them. So we'll see how they put this thing together over the next couple of weeks, but it, again, it is a bit intriguing. And I like a good stadium stampede match. I still think the first one was the best one, but I like a good stadium stampede. They're fun. Okay. So then we got a backstage of Renee with Mina Shirakawa and Harley Cameron. That was kind of fun. It was pretty good. You know, basically the point here was, Harley hasn't been herself since they lost the, since she and Willow lost the tag team championships, which I have a couple of different thoughts here. Number one is that's great. It would have been cool for you to be showing us that all along. This was, I felt like it was the first time I heard of it. Maybe it's been on collision more than I'm aware of, but you've done nothing to really bring the wider audience into that story. And for a lot of us, that was the first time we heard that tonight was that, Harley hasn't been herself. She's been despondent or whatever, ever since they lost. It also brings up the point of why are she and Willow, I know Willow's doing basically an open challenge for the TBS championship, but why are she and Willow not trying to get back in the tag title picture, especially when there's really nobody in it. Not really. I mean, I think we know who the next challengers are going to be, and that would be somewhat solidified tonight, which I also have questions about. We'll talk more about that when we get there, but. I just feel like you're the first ever champions. You lost to divine dominion and he just went, okay, well, okay. Harley's going to be sad and Willow's just going to pretend it didn't happen. doesn't, it doesn't make the most sense in the world psychologically, right? But anyway, the promo itself was not bad. It wasn't bad. And we kind of got Harley snapping out of it. So, okay, fine. After that, Okada took on Brian Keith. Now, Brian Keith is the guy that when he came out, went, now that could be interesting. You could put him in stadium stampede, right? Obviously he and Jericho have a history as part of the learning tree with Big Bill. Big Bill is another guy that could be a potential teammate. I know that it sort of ended bad, but also sort of didn't. But with both Brian Keith and Big Bill, you haven't really been doing anything with them. Why not put them here, especially because of what they did with Brian Keith tonight. Being in a match against Kazuchika Okada, that's a big spot. It's Okada, you know? So they did that with him. And not only did they put him in a match with Okada, he looked good. Like they did a nice job of making Brian Keith look good here tonight. He's slimmed down. I think he looks great. The new haircut is interesting with the rat tail, but it actually kind of works for him. And there were... Believe it or not, a couple of times that I thought he might win this match against Okada of all people, right? mean, especially when you would factor in what would happen after this match ended. The fact that there were a couple of times where I kind of bit on Brian Keith might win this thing that tells you that they put him in a position or are positioning him in a way where maybe they're going to do something with him. And I think stadium stampede makes a lot of sense to get him on the double or nothing card. So. Right now he's my pick to be one of Jericho's teammates, but obviously we'll see how that plays itself out. But overall good for him. I thought Brian Keith looked real good in this. This is a good match. And like I said, hopefully they build on this with Brian. So then Okada would talk after the match. He'd do a post-match promo. And this is where Okada called his shot for the world championship. Now, if you've been following us the last couple of weeks, know, that we've been talking about this a lot, that basically the way it works in AEW right now is you're gonna walk out, you're gonna pick up a microphone and hold it just like I'm holding this one. Well, not just like I'm holding this one, but in a pretty similar way. And you're gonna say, I want my world championship match and they're gonna give it to you and they're probably going to give it to you next week. And I wrote down here, I assume this is going to happen on this, you know, a week from tonight, this coming Wednesday. So Okada comes out, he calls it shot, his shot. And I'll say this, I don't hate this because it is about time they put Okada in the world championship picture. My friend Mike actually texted me, I think it was over the weekend or earlier this week, basically saying, did AEW play it too slow with Okada? by not getting him in the world championship picture immediately. Did they kind of accidentally fumble this? Did they waste him a little bit? And I was like, yeah, maybe. I mean, they've basically made him a, when you think about Okada over the course of his time in AEW, he's had a championship for basically the whole time. He's had at a couple points, he's had more than one, or at least at one point he had more than one, but he's held a championship basically the entire time. that he's been in AEW. And then when, when he does defend it, they'll say like, he's four and in championship matches. And then you do the math and you go, that means he's defended it four times in the course of like 18 months. Right. So I don't know that they did the best job of building him for an American audience that may not have known him beyond like, I've heard the name and I know he's a big deal. They kind of made him a side character. They kind of. The funny thing, I like the character, I like him being funny, but they didn't necessarily present him immediately as like, this dude is one of the best in the world, other than commentary bringing it up every time he wrestles. So all that is to say, you might have wanted to get him in the world championship picture earlier than this. However, this is a guy who can still go. I have no problem with any of the matches he's done in AEW. We haven't seen the five star, six star, seven star, whatever matches that he did, you know, with Omega in the Tokyo Dome. I don't know that we're going to get that from him. my friend Mike made the comp of, Shinsuke Nakamura in WWE, a guy who's still got some stuff left in the tank. He can still go, but it's not what he once was. Right. That's probably where we're at with Okada in AEW. I think he can still go. I think he can still give you good quality matches. He can still give you entertaining storylines. I don't know that we're going to get the five star bangers out of him. That said, I could be wrong. Who knows? He and Darby might put on an epic match of the year contender a week from tonight. We'll find out. But I'm glad they put him in the world championship picture. This is one I wouldn't mind some build on, but I understand that really what we're building towards is Darby and MJF at double or nothing. So they're putting him, they're putting Okada in here to help. with the Darby as a fighting champion thing. I think there's something brewing here with the Don Callis family that we'll get to a little bit later that may play a part in all of it. I don't know. I'm not mad he's in the championship picture. I just would like him to be in a legit program for the world title. That's all. But overall, I'm not mad at it. Then there was an Andrade video package. Fine, whatever. If you're new here, they showed you he's good. Cool. And the ladies love him. Then we got a Kevin Knight and Speedball promo to which I wrote, meh, was, it was, it was fine. These two aren't the best talkers. They're not the worst, but they're not the best. I felt like this was the first time I had seen Speedball in quite a while, which is going to come up again later. But you know, it was basically just a hype that Kevin Knight was taking on Darby for the world title later on that, that evening. It did that. It reminded you of that, so it's fine, I guess. Quick pause. Okay. So then we got another backstage with the ops with Joe doing all the talking, which is fine. Joe's a good talker. Joe probably should be the one doing all the talking. No hook there. Apparently off shooting a movie is what Joe told us, which is kind of fascinating to me. I'd like to know more about that. But really the point of this was they were once again recruiting Osprey, but this time at the end made a little bit of a threat of basically, I think it was you've got one week. to give us your answer. And if you don't shake my hand, then I'm going to punch you in the face, basically. This again, not unlike Osprey with the Death Riders is something that I don't fully understand this angle. I really truly do not fully understand where we're going with this. But again, I'm intrigued. I'm interested. I'm kind of curious about this sort of bidding war, if you will, over Will Osprey. I mean, he's just the prettiest girl in school right now and everybody wants to be with him. I get it. think Joe hit a lot of, I think he hit a lot of good talking points tonight of Osprey probably is the next world champion. I'm not entirely convinced of that as we'll get to, but I think he's certainly going to be world champion. It's probably going to happen at all. And I've been saying that for a while, right? We'll see if I'm right, but I just don't know where we're going with this. I assume it's going to lead to some sort of war between the death writers and the ops, but I don't know. I don't know. But again, I find myself going, okay, but you have my attention. let's see where this is going. And I don't see how that can be anything but good. So I don't know where we're going with this everybody wants to date Osprey thing, but I'm not mad at it. So then we got the match between Harley and Mina and Chris Stattlander and Hikaru Shida. Pretty good. I thought this was a pretty good match. The thing that kind of bummed me out about it. is watching this match, I was like, man, Harley really has gotten a lot better. And Tony Schiavone even talked about it on commentary and I agree with him. So why does that bum me out? Because as I'm watching this, the whole time I'm thinking it really feels to me like there's no direction for these four. And that sucks because we have talked a lot lately about how we kind of feel the women's division is a mess right now. That Thekla is hitting her stride with the promos, but Who's she gonna fight? She doesn't have a contender lined up. Now, we'd get some clarity on that tonight, but there wasn't, and I think still isn't an obvious contender for Thekla's World Championship. Nobody is going after the Women's Tag Team Championships. We don't have a program going for the TBS Championship. And it just feels to me like you've got a bunch of very talented women that... don't have a clear direction and don't have a lot to do. Now, I do think that all of this is building towards Statlander and Sheeta are going to challenge Divine Dominion for the tag titles, probably a double or nothing. That might end up on zero hour, I'm not gonna lie to you, but we'll probably see that match. I'll be very curious to see if they switch the belts or not because they have not done really anything with Divine Dominion, which I would be kind of sad. if they switch it after really not doing anything with those two. But they might, unless they decide to do the breakup angle and it moves into a StatLander and Sheet-O program, which could be interesting. I don't fully under, I still don't fully understand the Sheet-O character here. I don't understand how it fits with Chris StatLander, who is now sort of a tweener, not a face, not a heel, although trending towards heel, I guess. I don't. I don't know. I just feel bad for Chris Statlander because this is a couple of months now that we've been going. I don't know what she's supposed to be. I don't understand it. I'm not sure how much of that is her fault. I'm not sure much if any of it is her fault to be honest with him. But again, outside of the, you know, I think this is leading to a tag team title shot between divine dominion and Chris Statlander and she'd, I don't know. You know, it's like they're trying to build momentum with Mina, but I don't know where it's going because they're not having her do anything of consequence. They didn't mention the Toni Storm stuff at all tonight. I don't know. I don't know. It just feels like there's nothing cooking here for at least half of the four people in this match, if not all four of them. And I'd like to see, I'd like to see that change. I'd like to see some direction for all the women because they're very talented. And I'd like to see us get back to that for a while. The women's division was one of the best parts of not the best part of AEW. And we've really gotten away from that. Same thing with the tag team division. We've really gotten away from that and I'd like to see them get that fixed. I know you only have so much time. You only have so many hours of TV in the week, but I'd like to see them get some direction going for, for all those folks in the tag teams and the women's divisions. Okay. Moving on to the Swerve promo that came next. Now, this is an interesting promo to me. And again, is in the vein of, I have no idea where they're going with this. I have no idea what the point of any of this is other than to make a match between Bandito and Swerve at, I assume at Double or Nothing. But tonight, Swerve's promo was all about he wants all the power, okay? get that and that fits after challenging Kenny Omega for the VP title. So if he wants all the power, why are you going after Bandito? Nothing against Bandito. I like Bandito. I think he's very talented dude. But I don't know how fighting him gets you power unless you think taking the ROH title off of him does. And maybe that's where we're going with this. I don't know. It just didn't, it didn't make a ton of sense. And I don't mind a vague promo every now and then. And I don't mind. I don't mind it in this vein where it's pretty obvious to me that they're laying groundwork for something, right? Like we're going to peel away at the layers of this onion and it's going to make more sense over time. That's fine. I'm all for that. You don't need to give me everything in one night. We talk about it a lot on this show. If you've got X amount of weeks between now and the pay-per-view, use them. So I don't mind that. It's just on the surface, it's a little bit confusing, right? But I'm down for a Swerve and Bandito match. And if this leads to them wrestling prior to Double or Nothing, which I, this is, this is how I'm going to fantasy book this. This is how I think this is going to play out. I think that probably next Wednesday, Swerve and Bandito will get into it somehow. They'll make the match possibly for collision could be the following dynamite. I think that Swerve will go over, he'll probably cheat to win or he'll do some dastardly things after the bell. Brody King is gonna come out, they'll do that again. And this all could be leading to Swerve and Omega at double or nothing. Because again, if the whole point is I want power, maybe he goes after Kenny's EVP title again. Do I love that? Yes and no. I love it from the matchmaking standpoint because I think Swerve and Bandito will be very good. Swerve and Brody we know are good. Swerve and Kenny we know are good together. I like that. I don't love it from a story perspective, but we'll see what happens. it's another one of those where, again, I don't know where we're going with it, but you've got my attention. I think they are doing a good job of making it just intriguing enough. to keep me hooked on it. We'll see what happens next week. We'll see if they get more of a build. I'm sure they'll get more of a build going. but I don't know what it's going to look like. So after that, then Renee was with Bro Dito. I probably should have folded this all together. Basically Bandito just said, I'm not hard to find. And Brody basically said, you hurt my friends and that's a whole other thing. So that's what makes me think Swerve is gonna quote unquote hurt Bandito. Then it'll be him and Brody. That could lead to him and Kenny Omega. Cause we still haven't seen Omega. since dynasty after the weird crying in the locker room promo with him and Will Ospreay. And at some point I feel like we should see him, right? Like Kenny Omega, we should probably see him. Just a thought. Then it was, I guess the dynamite main event time of Darby Allen versus Kevin Knight. Really good match. I was very surprised because I thought for a good portion of this match, they wrestled a different style than I expected with both of these guys. My thought is flyers, right? They're going to be a lot of top rope stuff with these guys, a lot of spilling out to the floor. And there was, don't get me wrong, but especially right at the start of the match, it was a lot of holds, a lot of mat based wrestling. I really liked it. I thought that these guys showed you a different side of themselves that we don't normally see in the ring. I thought Kevin Knight was working a little heelish. That was kind of interesting. They're working a knee injury angle that started of course last week in the match with MJF. So, you know, they're probably going to keep that going with Kevin Knight. good match. Good match. Really was good. Again, Darby is making me a believer. He really is. know, I didn't think, personally, I didn't really think that Kevin Knight was going to win. And because of that, I didn't really bite on any of the false finishes. But we talked about it last week, this angle of Darby is going to have to basically fight his way from, you know, he's the ultimate underdog. right? And he's going to have to fight his way up this mountain. Cause no matter who he's in the ring with, they're going to be bigger. And you know, we know how he works. He's going to get rag dolled, although he's doing less of that since winning, which I like, but you know, there's going to be, he's going to have to come from behind essentially at some point. the matches have been a lot more even since he won the title. I think that's smart. think that's how it should be. But I also liked the angle of, mean, look, this guy could lose to anybody, right? Like we believe he can beat anybody, but he can also lose to anybody. And that adds drama to the world championship picture that hasn't been there for a long time. Because really when you go back a couple of months where they started the, I'm calling my shot, know, person X calls their shot and gets their title match the next week, there were a bunch of those matches where I went, well, the challenger is not winning. know, Hangman wasn't going to lose to Speedball Mike Bailey, which I don't think even happened. But you see my point. You know, there are a bunch of those with MJF that I was like, MJF is not losing to this person. You know, I love Brody King, but I was like, MJF is not losing to Brody King. He just wasn't. With some of these with Darby, going, well, maybe. And with Okada lined up. I mean, I could see him losing to Okada. I don't think he's gonna, but you can see it. Right? Cause it's Okada and he's got the pedigree and all that stuff. I also think it's a really smart way to keep building Darby as world champion. And again, you're making me a believer when I didn't think I was going to be. So kudos to AEW on that. Truly. They're doing a really good job here. And they're making Kevin Knight look really good too, which is, there's nothing wrong with that. Right? You always need more stars. So then MJF comes out post-match. And I really thought because the whole point here, the whole build to this has been max. cannot have your rematch until you put something on the line. And I have been thinking this whole time. my God, they're going to do it again. The I'll never challenge for the world championship again, or at least it would be a, as long as Darby has it, max can't challenge if he loses. Right. Which is I'm so over it. I hated it with hang man. We've talked about it on here that I don't like the stipulation of if FTR beats Copen Christian, that Copen Christian won't team together anymore. Like sometimes fighting for the title is enough. You don't have to keep adding the stipulations, right? So I really thought that's where we were headed here again. I did think for a minute, I thought they were gonna go for the diamond ring. Cause I knew Max was going to put that on the line and I thought maybe Darby's going to go for it. Again, I love how no matter what MJF says, Darby just calmly goes, no, especially since Darby is supposed to be the unhinged guy, right? I love it. I really love what they're doing with him. It's really good. Really good. I'm happy to be wrong about this, about his world title run. I'm glad they didn't do the, can't challenge again thing. I don't think the ring would have been quite enough, right? So I'm glad they didn't go with that. I think it is a brilliant angle to do hair versus title. Brilliant way to fold in. Everybody's been talking about Max's new hair, right? I loved what Darby said of You flew 15 hours to Turkey to have it sewn into your head. It's the only thing you really care about. So put your hair on the line. Love it. Love it. And it now makes me legitimately question who's going to win. Cause we know Max is going to ultimately agree to it. And now he's going to be desperate, right? Now he's the animal in the corner who's even more desperate and foaming at the mouth than he would have been just to get the title back, which we know matters. a ton to max, It does genuinely though make me wonder because are they gonna shave MJF's head? I could see it. I'd be kind of pissed if I were him that you just spent that money on the new hair and now they're gonna take a razor to it. But it's interesting. Right now I'm still leaning towards MJF takes it back from Darby a double or nothing. But the stipulation has me at least questioning that. And that's really what a stipulation I think should do. So again, credit where it's due, I think they're doing a really nice job now with with the MJF and Darby angle. think they're doing a good job. So then Okada came out, which I probably should have seen coming. And it does make sense. And I told you they'd do it quick, didn't I? So Okada and Darby on Wednesday, like I kind of noted before, Okada is the first challenger that I genuinely think could win this thing. I don't think he's gonna, but I could see it, right? And I think that's good. Sindin... I think sending people like that at Darby is a good idea. It helps again, build that credibility for him. So then we got a backstage with Renee talking to Doc Sampson and Will Ospreay about Ospreay's health again. And that was my initial reaction was, good, we're doing this again. Cause as you know, if you listen, Doug and I are both over the, his neck is basically a sack of marbles at this point, right? Doc Sampson saying, The training he's doing is improving his condition. It's actually getting stronger. I like it. Mentioned it earlier, right? That that's an interesting way to get past the, his neck is a bag of marbles thing. And again, doing basically neck curls with pack laying on your neck, I would imagine would strengthen it. Yeah. So it's an interesting angle. It feeds into, the stuff I'm doing with the Death Riders is working, which then would feed into why would I go work with the ops when the Death Riders are actually helping me? Again, I'm not certain where we're going with any of this other than this is their ticket out of talking about his neck all the time. But I am intrigued as hell by all of it. I really, really am. This Osprey story is probably the thing I am most into right now. And it's the thing that I have the least idea of where we're going with it. I genuinely have no idea. I assume he's gonna be on the double or nothing card somehow, but against who? I mean, it's probably gonna be one of the ops, right? Cause he's probably gonna reject them, but I don't, I don't know. I don't know. It's real interesting. Really, really interesting. So they're doing a nice job. Overall, I would say with this build to double or nothing. So then we got, so now we're into the collision portion of the night and we get AR Fox versus Speedball Mike Bailey, which look. A R Fox is very talented, but A R Fox is also a guy who is. I mean, at some point he might get like a trios championship run, but this is not a guy that they're treating as a legit. Dude, you know what I mean? He comes out, he puts on a good match and then he loses more often than not. And so for speedball Mike Bailey to have gone from somebody who felt very important. to now being in a match like this, which is a good match. It's a good match. It's worth watching. It just didn't feel important. You know, I'm watching it going, I don't know where we're going with it. Okay, so Speedball gets the win. So you can say, okay, he's been on a, you know, hot streak or whatever, but I don't even know if he has been. I don't even know because they're really not doing anything with him lately. So it's a bummer to see that they built. that momentum for him and that they've kind of lost it. And all of it has gone to Kevin Knight. And I don't know, maybe it's going to be, you know, they're going to keep sending dudes like AR Fox at speed ball to help him get the winds racked up to give him a, a legitimate challenge, I guess for probably Kevin Knight's TNT title. Cause I think that might be where we're going with it. I don't know. I don't know. It just was interesting to see him go from a guy that really felt important, like really felt like he had the rocket strapped to him to now he's doing this. And I'm just not sure what it did for anybody tonight. So then there was a Willow promo that I was pretty good. Again, it's just her basically pointing out that she's a badass. And if you want the TBS title, you better be prepared to throw some hands. It's pretty much what it was. It was fine. Then we get a pack promo. I guess I should have seen it coming, but I sure didn't that pack is shooting his shot at the world title. And at least he's got a winning record as he pointed out over Darby to base his challenge on. I like that there's some, I don't know, legitimacy to the challenge other than somebody just picking up a mic and calling their shot. I thought it was a pretty good promo. you know, pack is usually good promo. So no reason to expect otherwise here. I thought it was pretty good. And I'm like, yeah, all right, let's do it. Fine. You know, again, Darby's a fighting champion. I'm on board with it. So then we would get Jamie Hader and Sky Blue. And again, this fits into the, I'm not sure what we're doing with the women mold. Now, I thought it was a pretty good match. The first thing I wrote down though, and the thing that I wrote the most about in my notes is that During this match, announced Darby versus Pack for this coming Saturday, their fairway to hell thing that Tony Khan has been enamored with for a while. If you don't know the story, he had said he wants to do like a charity golf tournament in the day called fairway to heaven and then pair it with a wrestling show called fairway to hell at night. And he got the fairway to hell part. He just doesn't have the tournament part, but I'm sure he will. I'm sure he will. So they announced that match is going to happen this Saturday. So for those of you scoring at home, you had Darby versus Kevin Knight tonight, Darby pack Saturday, and then Darby Okada on this coming Wednesday. So again, when they say fighting champion with him, they mean it. And I don't hate it. I think it makes a lot of sense for Darby to approach it that way. I think that fits his character. And I'm sure it's going to be a really, really good match. I'm sure it is. Pac ain't winning. That much we know. Pac is not winning. And that is, if I'm gonna criticize at all, Darby just being this fighting champion that's taking on all comers, that's the problem with it is because we know that the story really is him and MJF. And as long as that is the story, we know Darby's not gonna win. but sit back, enjoy the match. That's really what this is gonna be about. And it's gonna be a good match. It is. So back to Jamie Hader and Sky Blue. See, I told you I wrote down the most about the Darby stuff, right? I like the Avalanche Hader raid coming off the top rope. I thought that was very cool. Pretty good match between her and Sky Blue. I'm gonna be very blunt here though and say, don't, I'm over... this weird thing of the brawling birds and the triangle of madness because there's not really story behind it other than Thekla attacked Jamie Hader when she first showed up on AEW. Yeah, she did. And it took like a year for you guys to come back to that or however long Thekla has been in AEW. Other than that, there's not a lot of story here. It's not doing anything for Triangle of Madness. It's not doing anything for the Brawling Birds who are supposed to be this badass tag team that rarely tag together. So what was the point of building them up as this badass tag team when they rarely are a team? And at the end of this, Thekla and Julia Hart would be shown in the crowd. They didn't say anything. I get it that this is leading to Jamie Hader and Thekla at Double or Nothing. That's fine. I have no problem with that. I like Thekla. I like Jamie Hader, but we've done it before. And I don't know that we should be going back to this for Double or Nothing, which is one of their big four pay-per-views. Then again, what else are they gonna do? Because like I said before, they have no clear challenger lined up for the Women's World Championship. They don't have a clear challenger lined up for any of the Women's Championships. In fact, the only one where there's a genuinely clear challenger lined up is the Men's World Title, which I get is gonna be kind of like your A storyline, but I don't know. Okay, fine, so make the match, I guess. They'll probably put a stipulation on it because again, we've done this before and that's fine. But. I don't know, is it doing a lot for you? Is it, is it doing a lot to bring you into the women's world championship story? Cause it's not doing a lot for me. so after that Don Callis promo where the seeds of Andrade and Takeshita leaving the family are really sown in this one, I believe. he hypes up Mark Davis who will be challenging. Jack Perry for the national championship on fairway to hell on Saturday. He hypes up Okada to Kesha to interrupts basically saying, you should be focusing on keeping your international title. Cause I'm going to take it from you. you know, on Drate is basically, I don't, I don't understand the, do know, how do know him just saying that over and over again line? I don't really get that. but he said that like three times to Don and then they both walked off. And it seems pretty obvious to me that Andrade and Takeshita are going to split off from the family, whether that's by choice or the family turning on them. I'm not really sure. Don started to lean into it. Like Don seemed like he's getting pretty annoyed, especially with Takeshita. So that's coming and I have no problem with it. I like it. know, Don Callis was involved. So of course the promo was good. then we got Roush, who I mentioned earlier, they did a nice little hype. video for him. He took on a jobber. It was a proper squash. Great. The crowd clearly is behind Roush, clearly. So again, I'm hopeful that this means we're going somewhere with him, that he's racking these wins up, because Shivani made a big point to talk about the hot streak that Roush has been on. Hopefully it's going somewhere. Hopefully means we're going to do something. because they should. He's really good. I think he's very entertaining. What are they going to do with him? Hell if I know. He'll probably call his world championship shot next week. And then who knows what they'll do from there. But, you know, I'd like to see them get him into more of a featured position in the company than what he's been doing. So then we got a Jack Perry video. If you haven't seen these, they're pretty good. It's him and Luchasaurus. on the bus, the Jurassic Express bus. They're weird in the best way. It's Jack just talking trash and Luchasaurus driving a bus, is bizarrely entertaining. I mean, I like these videos. It was fun. I thought I did a good job of setting up the match with him and Mark Davis. It was good. All right, so then. The main, main event. don't, I don't know. This would be the collision main event. This is going to be the last match of the three hour show. It's the 10 man tag between Wheeler, Yuta, Claudio, Castagnoli, Danny Garcia, Clark Connors, and David Finley versus the Young Bucks and the Bang Bang gang minus Juice Robinson. So Ace Austin and the guns. They went to commercial break after the, I guess, heel team made their entrance. So the death riders are just doing pushups. while the dogs were making their way in. And then we go to commercial and I'm like, well, I mean, okay, I guess get your pump on. I don't know. they'll definitely pass the presidential fitness tests. So congratulations on that. I mox on commentary was really good. You know, they did the thing where everybody comes together in the center of the ring and one side suplex is the other mox called it the human centipede suplex. Love it. Let's make that a thing. I'm on board. ACE Austin would ultimately get the win here, which surprised me in a good way. I like Ace Austin. liked him picking up the win. think that's good. I think it's good that the bang bang gang, was, you know, victorious here. Again, I'd like to see you do something with them. Ultimately with the match, whether or not you like it is going to depend entirely on how you feel about spot fest. You know, if you're like cornet, you're probably not going to love this match very much. in fact, you're probably going to hate it. Um, it is a spot fest. is a match where it looks, there are multiple times where you see the choreography of it, right? Um, that doesn't bother me all that much. I know other people, it does bug them cause they want it to still look and feel real, which I get. I don't have a problem with that. Um, but it's a spot fest. Ultimately the match is fine. It's pretty entertaining. I just again, for the third or fourth time tonight, have to ask, what is the point? What are we doing with these 10 guys? There's no obvious direction for Bang Bang Gang. The Young Bucks aren't doing anything. And I don't know why they aren't constantly every week on TV going, hey, whoever wins between FTR and Cope and Christian, we're next. We're coming for the title. We're coming for the tag team titles after that. Whoever wins, we're next. Like, I don't know why they aren't doing that every single week. They should be. So the bucks have no direction. The dogs have no direction, even though, man, they look good. Bang, bang gang has no direction here. The rest of the death writers that aren't mocks don't, don't really have a direction other than, we're involved kind of in whatever it is with Osprey and you know, okay, pack's going to fight for the world title. then go back to not having a direction. again, you got 10 people here, you got the women's division, you've got basically every tag team that isn't FTR or Copen Christian. None of them have a direction here. None of them are involved really in anything that feels like it matters. And I don't get that, because that's some big names for this company. that you're kind of leaving on the sideline headed into doubler or nothing. I just, don't get it. And maybe this is going somewhere and I just can't see it yet, but I would like to see them figure out a direction for these 10 guys, for the women, for the rascals, for who else have we talked about? mean, You know, the national championship doesn't get featured all that much on TV. I'd like to see that more. I mean, you you, see where I'm going with this. Like you've got a group of storylines that are very good. They're very, very good that I don't know where they're going, but I'm like, great, let's go on the ride. And then you've got everybody else where I don't know what you're doing. I don't know where you're going. And I just feel bad for you because Hey, you're getting on TV, which is great. But I have no idea where you're going or what you're doing. And, and the creative there. feels like it's lacking. And I hope that they get it sorted out sooner rather than later. Because again, this is a lot of people that are very talented. And I hope that you are, I hope there's a long-term plan here to build to each of them doing something. You I think that the dogs and the bucks should get involved in the tag team scene. You know. I'd like to see legit challengers for the trios championships. You know, those are out there and nobody cares. So I don't know. We'll see where this goes. because, that's really all we can say about these shows right now. They're laying groundwork. Not all of it is clear in a good way, right? Not all of it's clear, but I'm, I'm intrigued. for other people, I don't know how much groundwork they're laying and I'd like them to do more of that, but Ultimately, I would say this is a pretty good show. Actually, I'd say it's a very good show. It's pretty entertaining. Three hours of wrestling. Um, match of the night is a little bit tough. There wasn't anybody that really jumped out where I was like, Oh my damn while watching it. So I think I think I'm going to go ahead and give it to, you know what? I'm going to give it to Dax and Orange Cassidy. They were, they were actually very good. I got a little hung up on all the people around the ring. The match itself is actually very, very good. they did some cool stuff in it, so I'm going to give it to Dax and Orange Cassidy. overall pretty good show. I'd give it a, give it a solid B plus, maybe an A minus depending on if some of this stuff starts to pay off. you know, like starting next week. But, yeah, overall it's a good show. I think they're doing a pretty good job building to double or nothing with your, again, your main storylines with Osprey, with Darby and MJF. well, those, those are really your main ones. you know, they, they've built the FTR and Copan Christian thing. You could almost argue a little bit too fast because I don't know how you're going to stretch this, but to now and double or nothing without it being like, yeah, okay, I got it. You know, yeah, they did some more build with Okada and Takeshita, which is good. So like I said, your main, your kind of main storylines that have been there, they're doing a nice job building those to double or nothing. It's everybody else that I want to see start to get that same build. of what are they going to do? What's Chris Stattlander and Sheeta going to do with Double or Nothing? What are Divine Dominion going to do? Like I said, we're probably headed for Thekla and Jamie Hayter. Fine. But we probably need to ratchet up the heat on that build as well. But anyway, as things go on the road to Double or Nothing, I think this is a pretty good one. Swerve is another one that I think they're doing a nice job with. So overall, overall, good show. I think they're they're doing a pretty good job. Yeah, I think they're doing a pretty good job with the build to double or nothing, which is really, really all I ask. It's really all I ask is give me a nice build to a big pay-per-view because for the last couple of pay-per-views we've thought, could have done a better job building to it. they listened, they took the notes to heart. And on that note, Doug will be back next week, as far as I know. so again, hit like, hit subscribe, share the show with your wrestling friends, jump in the comments, tell us what you're thinking about the build to double or nothing. I'm genuinely curious to see how you feel about it, how you feel about Darby as champ and how they're handling that. Talk about anything else you want to talk about with AEW. I got the time. Let's talk about it. So find us on elite heat pod or at elite heat pod, should say on pretty much every social media platform. We're on YouTube. We're on every podcast platform that I'm aware of anyway. So give us a follow, give us a like, give us a subscribe, give us a five star rating, help grow the show. You can be able to say you are on the ground floor of Elite Heat and we will talk to you next week.