After a mixed but mostly good show in front of a very hot crowd for AEW Dark Elevation, can AEW Dark continue the trend or will this be the first show of the new year that completely misses its mark?
The Good from AEW Dark
The first match of the night involving Juice Robinson was a good opening match. The crowd was into it and that is something that at times, the Dark tapings from Orlando miss.
I think that Juice might have given a debuting wrestler a little too much but it wasn’t enough to put this segment into the bad section.
The Jake Hager squash match was solid and I actually like Hager’s thing that he is doing with his goofy hat. I think that I am one of the only people that think that Hager was pretty good in the ring before he got to AEW.
Big Bill and Lee Moriarty work well with each other. I like that it seems like they have all basis covered with their team. You have the big guy that is the powerhouse in the group and you have the smaller guy that is the speed and energy of the group.
Juice Robinson had a promo backstage and at first, I wasn’t all the way on board with it but when the Dark Order, who I really don’t like, joined in, the segment got much better and a lot of seeds for future matches or storylines were planted.
Ethan Page with a live microphone while a match is going on is gold. He is so annoying and obnoxious and I absolutely love it.
I really liked the main event of Athena versus Marina Shafir. This match didn’t have any business being as good as it was. Maybe it was Athena carrying Shafir to a good match, but I don’t think so.
It looked like Shafir carried her own part of the match and this is a big change from the typical squash matches that she usually has. I think that Marina Shafir’s offense is, like Athena’s, some of the best and most realistic offense in the women’s division.
I think that this might be the start of something more and I can see AEW running this match back at some point.
