Brandon Cutler vs. Jimmy Havoc
Havoc has been gradually built as a heel in recent weeks. He went wild with cheating on AEW Dark a few weeks prior, to the point of alienating his own partner Joey Janela with his dirty tactics. He followed that up with an appearance in the Dynamite Dozen battle royal, where after he was eliminated, he made for quite the sore loser, coming back in and assaulting everyone within arm’s reach with his signature staple gun. He received a storyline fine for his actions after the fact.
Havoc has already got the makings of a solid threat to rising midcard babyfaces, but still needs some establishing before matches with him can be that big of a deal. So naturally, he should be defeating Cutler without that much difficulty here. This might be a good chance to see a little more of his technical side beforehand though.
Shawn Spears vs. Sonny Kiss
Sonny’s still only gotten so many chances to do much in AEW thus far, having less matches than most. But this is a pretty good opportunity for him to show everyone what he can do. I also appreciate continuing the theme of the ultra-serious, oldschool Spears being put against AEW’s most goofy, colorful babyfaces. He had a good contrast going with Michael Nakazawa and we should see more of that here.
Spears is a lot higher on the pecking order than Sonny as things stand, no doubt about that. And usually that’d make for a really easy prediction. But I do feel like there’s an impetus there to push Sonny and up to this point it hasn’t exactly happened, save for that time he teamed up with Dustin Rhodes. And considering Spears directly cost Janela that battle royal earlier, I think some eye-for-an-eye might be in order. Could be off-base, but with a little help from the Bad Boy, Sonny Kiss might get an upset.
Jurassic Express (Jungleboy & Marko Stunt) vs. Proud-N-Powerful (Santana & Ortiz)
This, I believe, is the first episode of AEW Dark to feature any members of the Inner Circle. So that’s fairly interesting. As for the match itself, there’s a fairly wide disparity in terms of positioning between these two teams. Of course the Jurassic Express remain one of AEW’s most popular tandems in spite of it’s utter lack of success – atleast for everyone not named Luchasaurus. So pitting them against Santana & Ortiz, probably the highest ranking heel tag team going, is interesting to say the least.
This should be some real good stuff. But it’s effectively a foregone conclusion to me. Jurassic Express as a team has still yet to notch even a single victory, which is something done very deliberately. We’re building to the day where they get that first win and it should be a really big deal. Whilst this would be a massive upset, it’s also a match on AEW Dark that hasn’t been particularly built. Granted seeds have been planted to have Jurassic Express challenge the Inner Circle in some capacity with Luchasaurus confronting Jake Hager… but this ain’t the night. P-N-P with the W, swiftly bouncing back from being upset by Private Party last week.
