Happy New Year everyone! I’m Jordan Huie of the Overtimer and I couldn’t think of a better way to kick off 2020 than with another edition of the Wednesday Night Wrestling Wars! It’s a really appropriate to celebrate the new years when you think about it. After all, when 2019 began, we didn’t have a live two hours of NXT on USA to look forward to, and AEW Dynamite was something only alluded to via trademarks. 2019 was a rough one for many in many areas, but the wrestling industry as a whole became much healthier for it, and one can only hope that momentum soars even higher in 2020!
AEW Dynamite Preview (1/1/2020) Taz To Make Appearance | All Elite Wrestling
For the All Elite Wrestling side of things, this is a particularly special day. It’s the one-year anniversary of All Elite Wrestling’s initial announcement on the Being The Elite New Year’s special. And it’s returning to Jacksonville, the event where they held the inaugural Double or Nothing Rally days later. AEW President & CEO Tony Khan is of course co-owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars alongside his father, and the town is among the many home bases AEW wishes to establish. Thus, the show is being called AEW Homecoming!
There’s plenty to talk about, but let’s start small…
Wrestling legend Taz to be making a guest appearance.
Taz is of course famed for his work in ECW and WWE, first as a Human Suplex Machine and later on the broadcast booth. After several years working SmackDown and WWE’s revival of ECW, Taz left the company and shortly after resurfaced with TNA where he became their lead color guy for yet more years. It’s safe to say he’s therefore among the most experienced color commentators in the business today.
Tony Schiavone is said to be missing tonight’s show, so it seems likely that Taz will end up filling in for him. He has called matches for AEW on two prior occasions, working an episode of AEW Dark before later appearing on the Buy-In for AEW Full Gear. Whilst guest spots on Dark and the Buy-In are nothing new, for someone like Taz it’s hard not to see it as something of a tryout. And in my humble opinion he was very impressive on these shows. He’s a guy who was kind of hit or miss for many of his early years but seemed to come in very sharp for these appearances, it’s pretty apparent he’d like to get work again. So it’s nice to see this is being rewarded with further opportunities, assuming he is indeed getting that primetime shot once more tonight.