AEW Dark Elevation is even bigger before Blood & Guts!

Before the violence and pain this Wednesday, former AEW World Champion Jon Moxley brings unscripted violence to Dark: Elevation!

OFFICIAL RESULTS

• Miro VS Will Allday; Miro wins.
• Abadon VS Ryo Mizunami; Abadon wins.
• Jon Moxley VS Andrew Palace; Moxley wins.
• Preston Vance w/ The Dark Order VS D3; Vance wins.
• Orange Cassidy w/ Kris Statlander VS VSK; Cassidy wins.
• FTR w/ Tully Blanchard VS The Hughes Brothers; FTR wins.
• Madi Wrenkowski VS Nyla Rose w/ Vickie Guerrero; Nyla wins.
• Nick Comoroto w/ The Factory VS Baron Black; Comoroto wins.
• Red Velvet VS Reka Tehaka; Velvet wins.
• Private Party w/ Matt Hardy VS Ganon Jones & Duke Davis; Private Party wins.
• Thunder Rosa VS Willow Nightingale; Rosa wins.
• QT Marshall w/ The Factory VS Dillon McQueen; QT wins.
• The Gunn Club VS Chaos Project; Gunn Club wins.
• Matt Hardy & The Blade w/ the Hardy Family Office VS Alan Angels & Colt Cabana w/ The Dark Order; Hardy & Blade win.

MY THOUGHTS

This Elevation starts off pretty strong with a squash-competitive-squash sandwich. Miro toys with Allday but still destroys him; Abadon and Mizunami have a solid match, and there’s always good character work from both of them so them together is a great mix of the serious and the comical; and then Moxley of course gets a win off Palace. Miro and Mox were obviously going to win but it means big things for Abadon to win over Aneki. Abadon goes to 12-2, she might be in the top spot after Shida VS Britt happens. Shida already faced Abadon once, but who knows if Shida retains against Britt. Britt and Rebel having to deal with the Living Dead Girl might make for some great material, honestly.

We got another string of obvious results, but we’ve been seeing more and more of D3, Madi Wrenkowski and Baron Black and more from them so AEW is really helping these young wrestlers sharpening their ring skills. Though at the same time, those three were the ones taking brutal shots from the more monstrous stars, as Vance is bouncing back from losing the TNT title match, Nyla is staying strong in the background of the women’s title scene, and Comoroto is building his way up the midcard, perhaps to be The Factory’s guy for the TNT title. Good to see we finally got to see FTR VS Team TNT when it was advertised for last week and never aired, it was a decent match, but naturally FTR wins because we’re heading for BLOOD & GUTS!

We also got some new names added to AEW’s growing reserves, with Tehaka, Nightingale and McQueen each getting good showings against Velvet, Rosa and QT. Well, maybe less McQueen, he got brutalized. QT has a good new theme, though. Private Party has a good match with legitimate towers in Jones & Davis. The Hardy Family Office having two tag teams seems like a disservice to both teams, but I do hope that Private Party gets back to being tag title contenders. They’ll always have that shocking win over the Young Bucks in the original tag team tournament, but they’ve dropped off ever since. Matt Hardy as their manager was supposed to get them back to there, so maybe after Double or Nothing, we start seeing that again.

The final two matches tonight got a good split, though, at sharing half of the final 20 minutes or so. The Gunn sons and Chaos Project was a fun match just on character work because of all the charisma the Gunns have, and just how eccentric Luther and Serpentico both are. The Gunns winning makes sense given the building story with The Factory, they need to stay strong. HFO VS Dark Order was a great main event, the Dark Order is a lot of fun in a lot of different ways, and they could get away with main eventing every episode of Elevation and Dark classic. “Putting the Dark in Dark Order” or something like that. Dark Order is such a big group, they can take losses and not look weak, though I like that this adds to Angels’ own story as last place of Dark Order and how he’s dealing with that.

My Score: 8.1/10