10 Completely RANDOM Cameos In AEW
Welcome to the team - Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine is All Elite?!
Tony Khan is fickle.
He is a wrestling fan first, wrestling booker second, and to illustrate this, you need only cast your minds back to October 2023, when Khan rashly booked Mistico for a Rampage transmission. He did so with the same hasty impulsivity as any aspiring wrestling promoter would do when filling out a virtual TEW card with whatever free agents happened to be in the area.
Sylvain Grenier's in town? Yes. Will he pop a positive rating? No. Should he be booked anyway on the notion that he was once in WWE? Absolutely.
Mistico will be better known to the casual fanbase as the original Sin Cara of WWE infamy. Laughably flopping when he failed to enter the ring of his own volition, the Sin Cara gimmick was dead on arrival - but he was a hit in Mexico's CMLL, which is what Tony Khan remembers him for and, supposedly, what Tony Khan believed everyone remembered him for.
So he was booked on Rampage.
Against Rocky Romero.
2,100 additional tickets were sold following the announcement of Mistico's involvement in AEW, rendering Tony Khan's seemingly spontaneous decision effective, albeit random - but this same effectiveness doesn't always apply to AEW's one-night wonders...
10. Rico Constantino
The AEW pay-per-view pre-show means nothing.
It doesn't increase pay-per-view buys. Nobody is spending the frankly ludicrous amount of their hard-earned dosh on AEW All In because Kip Sabian and Anthony Ogogo have been sent out for a cheap hometown pop.
Instead, the typically gargantuan 90-minute pre-shows are used to highlight the main card's matches, airing some well-produced VTs to explain the who, the what, and the why - only for these video packages to also air before the match begins anyway.
The complete lack of purpose that accompanies these Zero Hour specials was exemplified ahead of WrestleDream 2024. Maximum Male Models were booked to clash with The Acclaimed in a match booked specifically for the chronically online amongst AEW's fanbase. Max Caster and Anthony Bowens had Billy Gunn in their corner, so to even the odds, who did Mace and Mansoor enlist?
Rico Constantino.
The same Rico from WWE's Ruthless Aggression Era who served as Billy and Chuck's personal stylist and, later, 3-Minute Warning's mouthpiece.
The story at least made sense with Gunn across the ring post from him, but Christ, this appearance was the equivalent of pulling teeth.