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Elite Heat is the All Elite Wrestling podcast for fans who want more than just a recap.
Every week, Tim and Dug — two AEW fans who've been All Elite since day one — react to AEW Dynamite and Collision, break down the latest storylines, analyze the characters driving the product, and give you their unfiltered take on everything happening in All Elite Wrestling.
From weekly show reactions to PPV breakdowns, roster moves to long-term booking analysis, Elite Heat covers the full spectrum of AEW. No fluff, no filler...just two passionate pro wrestling fans who care deeply about the product and aren't afraid to say exactly what they think.
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Are we sure that Ospreay’s gonna win at All In? Are we sure this isn’t building to Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley for the World Championship?
All righty, here we go with a solo episode of Elite Heat tonight because Doug had some things going on. So it’s just me to talk about the Redemption go-home show, which was live from Nashville tonight. So let us get into this and talk about this show and what, if anything, it really did to help set up Redemption.
So let’s begin, as we always do, with the Heat Check, where I’m going to tell you what I liked, what I thought was mid, and what I didn’t like. And the good news is there was really nothing tonight that I thought was bad. Nothing made my “did not like” list, and I think it’s a pretty short mid list as well.
So here’s what I liked tonight. I thought right out of the gate, we got three really good segments in a row with the Ospreay and Omega promo, followed by Darby versus Kevin Knight for the TNT Title, and then ProtOkada versus Brodido, which I thought was pretty darn entertaining.
The segment with the women who will be fighting for the AEW Women’s World Championship this Sunday, I thought, was pretty good. It started off a little rough, but I thought it got good at the end. We’ll talk more about that. “Switchblade” Jay White and Clark Connors were good. Sisters of Sin and Divine Dominion actually kind of surprised me. That was better than I thought it was gonna be. I thought Bang Bang Gang did a nice job on their promo. And then, of course, the trios match that was the main event was good because, honestly, how could it be bad? I mean, Ospreay, Omega, and Moxley were all in it. How could it honestly be bad?
All right, so that really only leaves two things for the mid list for me, which were the, not surprisingly, Painmaker video. Whatever. It was fine. I didn’t dislike it, but whatever, whatever. And the Cope and Cage backstage promo, which, when we get to that, I’ll explain more why I thought that was kind of only okay.
So let’s run it down and explain why I put the things where I put them tonight. And like I said, we start with three in a row that were pretty good.
I liked the Ospreay and Omega promo because Moxley only basically made a cameo in it, but I thought he was the best part of the promo with all his kind of Zen stuff. And again, what they’re doing here is, little by little, building that tension, right? There’s tension between Will and Kenny. Some of that would come into play later on in the evening with the main event. So, good stuff there.
Then it went to Darby versus Kevin Knight for the TNT Title, which I initially had written down, “I’m surprised they didn’t do this on the pay-per-view,” and then remembered, yeah, Kevin Knight’s challenging Kenny Omega at the pay-per-view. Right. That would be why they’re not doing that.
This was my match of the night. They did some stuff. Darby’s clothesline over the barrier was crazy. They did some stuff out there tonight. I was actually a little bit surprised that they went this hard, given that the pay-per-view is Sunday and, you know, pretty high injury risk in this match. But hopefully they came out of it okay. It certainly looked like they did. So that was a little bit surprising to me, how hard they went, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when Darby’s involved. This was really good. Match of the night. Really good stuff.
Then you would get some post-match angle here as Kyle Fletcher made his entrance. Okada came in right behind him. Fletcher, I thought, did a great job as the arrogant heel in this promo, going, “You think you don’t need us? Well, I don’t need anybody either. So everybody’s banned from ringside tonight and at the pay-per-view.”
Will that cost him on Sunday? I don’t know. We’ll find out. But Kyle Fletcher did a really, really nice job in this promo.
It also makes me think that the Don Callis Family breakup is coming. We’re inching closer and closer to it, and I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see what Don does when they split them up. Who does he go with? What ends up happening with Don Callis when this splits up?
Also, since Doug is not here to say it, I feel like I need to point it out: Okada blew the pin breakup at one point. It should have been a three. He put Aubrey in a tough spot because he didn’t get there fast enough. But other than that, this was a good match. It creates more tension within the family post-match, as there’s some nonsense there.
But the main thing to take away from the post-match stuff is that, as my friend Mike pointed out, Andrade dresses like a cartoon detective, which is very accurate, and now that’s all I can see. But it was good stuff. Everything that happened here was good.
Then we got the Painmaker video that I mentioned earlier. It was fine. It was fine. Like, I get it. You’re trying to show what the Painmaker version of Jericho is. Whatever. It was fine. It was a My Chemical Romance video, but whatever. It was fine.
Then Mick Foley came out, and AEW—I’ll tell you what I wrote down—AEW remembered that Willow and Thekla are wrestling this Sunday for the World Championship. I was like, “Cool. Yay. Good job remembering that.”
And then I realized, wait, they have extra belts. Triangle of Madness has belts. And then went, “They won some STARDOM titles, apparently. All right. Well, I guess that’s why we hadn’t heard a lot from Thekla lately, because she was in Japan.”
So I’ll just walk back that whole part about, “Hey, look, they remembered.”
Anyway, I thought this segment got off to a little bit of a rough start with Willow and Thekla exchanging the same insult of, “You’re fake. You’re not who you claim to be.” And I thought, let’s not do that, because now we’re getting a little close to the Jericho-Ciampa stuff, and that’s just—just—we’re fighting for the belt.
But I’ll say this: They picked it up. They got a lot better by the time they got into it and had the little bit of a brawl there. I thought it ended up being a very good segment.
And the most important part of this segment, I think, is that I came out of it going, “I don’t know who’s gonna win.” Because up to tonight, I had been thinking it’s certainly going to be Thekla and Mercedes Moné at All In for the Women’s World Championship. That, to me, just felt like the obvious match.
But now I’m looking at it going, well, I think they’ve positioned Willow better here. They’ve made her look stronger here. Not that she ever didn’t before, but I think tonight helped. And I’m wondering if they are going to switch the belt on Sunday because Willow versus Mercedes—I was gonna say stylistically; I’m not sure that’s the right word—but it makes a little bit more sense because at least you’ve got face versus heel in that.
Not that I think it really matters, particularly in this day and age. I think just give me a good match. But I’m wondering if they’re gonna switch the title on Sunday, which, up until tonight, I had not really entertained that possibility. Nothing against Willow. I just hadn’t.
So I’m very curious to see where we’re going with this whole story, but certainly where we’re going with it on Sunday.
After that, “Switchblade” Jay White took on Clark Connors, which was very good. Connors continues to impress me. I really think that someday, if they want to, they could make him a big singles star. He’s really good. Jay looked good after that long, long time out of the ring. Good match. Really good match. It would come back around here in a couple segments.
But after them, we got Cope and Cage backstage starting to do a promo, and then PAC and Claudio jumped them. Now, I know that they made the match on Collision. I, not surprisingly, have not watched Collision to see what the justification is.
But for me personally, this is one of those things I’m gonna nitpick, I guess. I don’t like it when a champion makes a challenge out of nowhere. I understand that when you’re telling a story and you’re creating a situation where the challenger has pushed the champion to the point where the champion is like, “That’s it. You and me. Let’s do this,” right? I get that, and I don’t have a problem with that.
But I do have a bit of a problem in this situation when you’ve got a championship team like Adam Copeland and Christian Cage, who are legendary performers who have held a bunch of titles and understand the best way to stay a champion is to not have to defend it. So why are you challenging Claudio and PAC out of nowhere?
And maybe they explained that on Collision, and they didn’t do a good job of explaining it tonight, in my mind anyway. I don’t know, but I don’t love that. The match is going to be fine, I’m sure. I have no doubt about that.
It does also, though, make me scratch my head because I get it that you’re probably saving Young Bucks and Cope and Cage for All In, but you could have had, as we’ve talked about on the show a lot, any combination of the Don Callis Family get in there with Cope and Cage. You could have run it back with The Dogs, even though we’ve kind of moved them on to Bang Bang Gang. Hell, you could have done a triple threat with Bang Bang Gang, The Dogs, and Cope and Cage, and that would have been really interesting, I think.
But whatever. We’re gonna get Cope and Cage and Claudio and PAC on Sunday. And again, I don’t think it’s gonna be bad. I just think it’s a match that got smacked together on a video game. You know, like, “This’ll be fun. Let’s put these two teams together.”
So it was fine. The segment was fine, but this whole thing is just, I don’t know, not doing it for me. Again, I think the match is gonna be fine. There’s just not a lot of story here.
Then Sisters of Sin took on Divine Dominion in a No DQ AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship match. And I’m not sure I fully understand the No DQ stipulation, other than it just kind of fits these teams. But it was a good match.
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this one because I feel like the four of them haven’t done a lot together, but I thought this was pretty good. I thought it was a good back-and-forth between the teams. I think they made Julia Hart and Skye Blue look pretty good in the loss.
I think that, even though Doug would probably say that Megan Bayne was not dominant enough in this and that Divine Dominion probably should be more dominant than they were tonight, I thought they looked pretty good. This was a good match. This was a pretty entertaining match. I really have no problem with it whatsoever. Rare, right?
Then the Bang Bang Gang promo. Like I said, that would come back around. This was a pretty good promo to set up the match on Sunday, but I guess it’s gonna be Jay White and Juice Robinson versus The Dogs, meaning Finlay and Clark Connors—David Finlay and Clark Connors.
I’m not quite sure how the chains come into it. Is this a dog collar match? Or, I don’t know. They’re gonna be chained together, I guess, which will be interesting and probably fairly brutal. But I’m in for this match. I like both these teams. I’m very happy when Jay White is on my TV.
Yeah, I’m in. Let’s see what happens, and let’s see what happens afterward. Where they go after Sunday will be very interesting to me because do they position it as the winner is gonna go to All In in line for the Tag Team Championships, or is that gonna be the Young Bucks? I still think it’s gonna be the Young Bucks, but I’ll be curious to see what they do a week from tonight with this.
And then it was main event time. Trios match between Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley, and Will Ospreay, taking on Brian Cage, Jake Doyle, and Hechicero, who we haven’t seen for a while. And, you know, if you listen to the show, Doug and I really like him. And he was very entertaining. Didn’t do—I felt like he didn’t do a ton tonight, but that’s okay. I thought he was very entertaining because he always is.
This was a really good match. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say really. No, I’m gonna say really good. It was a really good match. I really enjoyed it.
And there were a couple production mistakes. They got a bad camera angle that showed Mox missing a boot by a mile. But other than that, like I said, it’s not terribly surprising that this was a good match, given that Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley, and Will Ospreay were in it.
I think the best thing it did, though, is it really did some nice storytelling. At one point, you had Kenny very much on the same page with them because he was doing the Death Riders thing that they do where, you know, there’s an opponent in the corner and one guy runs in and hits him, then the next guy and the next guy, and they just keep doing that over and over. And Kenny being like, “Ooh, I want to do this,” was very interesting.
There was some tension at one point in the match over who Ospreay was going to tag in when he desperately needed to make the tag. And then, of course, I think anybody who watches wrestling knew what was coming: Kenny inadvertently hits Mox with the V-Trigger. That sets up some beef between them.
I thought it was interesting to have the Bucks come in and make the save—or maybe not make the save—but come in and try to break it up a little bit. I liked it. I just didn’t necessarily expect them to come out. I don’t know who I thought was gonna, but I liked it.
And so they came out and tried to break things up post-match. It’s getting heated between Mox and Kenny, and then, you know, it just broke down from there. Ospreay clocked Kenny.
The only thing I thought was interesting is Jake Doyle comes in at one point, and I think, psychologically or in kayfabe, I’m not sure that makes the most sense. Because if I’m in the Don Callis Family, like, all right, just let these guys beat each other up. Why am I getting involved? Other than, I guess, if you’re Jake Doyle, you just like to punch people.
But he got in, and then I don’t know if I just missed it or if it was a camera cut or what it was, but then he’s just gone. And I don’t know. I assume that somebody hit him to knock him out of the ring, but I didn’t see it. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Just something I caught. I’m not sure it matters in the least, but whatever. It registered with me.
But overall, I think that this is a very interesting angle. It continues to ratchet up the tension between specifically Ospreay and Omega, who now full-on got into it tonight. It also creates more tension between Omega and Mox, which, if you go back to last week, adds some fuel to the fire that Doug kind of started:
Are we sure that Ospreay’s gonna win at All In? Are we sure this isn’t building to Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley for the World Championship?
And I don’t know. I still am gonna stick with Ospreay’s gonna win at All In. It still just feels that way to me. I also think that this could just build to a feud between Mox and Omega that doesn’t have to have a title on the line. That’s what those guys did at first when Jon first came in: These guys are gonna fight because they don’t like each other. That’s okay.
So I don’t necessarily have a prediction, per se, on where this is going. I still think Ospreay wins at All In. I think it’ll just be a question of how much Mox gets involved in that, how much the Death Riders get involved in that, and how much the Young Bucks get involved in that.
It’ll be very interesting to me to see how that particular tension, specifically between The Elite and the Death Riders, plays itself out. And does that in any way bring Hangman back into The Elite? Because obviously The Elite would be outnumbered by the Death Riders.
I don’t know, but it sets up a lot of very interesting storytelling possibilities here. I’m not entirely certain where we’re going, and to me, in my book, that means they’re doing a really good job with this story.
I’m very interested in it. I’m very intrigued by it. And I have no idea where we’re going. That’s a good job, everybody involved in this story. Good job, guys. Well done, everybody.
So, with that, because Doug isn’t here for he and I to banter back and forth, it’s a pretty quick one tonight. But we’ll, of course, be back to talk about Redemption on Sunday. First time for Redemption. We’ll see how that goes in Montreal.
I don’t expect a lot of major changes. I think maybe the biggest change we see is possibly Willow winning the Women’s World Championship. But I’ve been wrong before, particularly when it comes to AEW, and specifically when it comes to me saying, “I mean, Hangman’s gonna get involved here, right?”
So why don’t I just say it? Hey, he’s gonna get involved on Sunday, right? He’s probably not, but let’s find out together, and then we’ll talk about it right back here.
So if you have not hit the like and subscribe buttons on YouTube or whatever podcast platform you listen on, please do. It very much helps us out. Also, it helps me get a new ring light.
If you’ve been watching this on YouTube or you see the clips online, yeah, my ring light quit working a couple weeks ago, and I haven’t gotten a new one. But I think I’m just gonna go ahead and pull the trigger tonight after we finish this up. So hopefully I’ll have better lighting come Sunday. Although, I don’t know that that’s better.
I mean, I’m not exactly, you know, Brad Pitt or George Clooney or somebody over here. I don’t even know who the heartthrobs are anymore. Does anybody even say “heartthrob” anymore?
All right, clearly I need to go take some Metamucil and go to bed. So we’ll see you back here Sunday to—well, I guess we’ll put it out on Monday—to talk about Redemption.
Until then, like, share, subscribe, follow us on social media, and remember to hydrate. It’s very important.