8 Wrestlers Who Could Be The Mystery AEW Casino Ladder Match Entrant
Could it be? Oh, my!
AEW has a...mixed history with debuting talent.
The company is very trusting of its audience, and it's beyond refreshing to have one's intelligence respected. In contrast, if a writer was brave enough to point out that WWE probably shouldn't have jobbed King Corbin to Elias ahead of his match with Drew McIntyre on RAW, Vince McMahon would have told them to f*ck off, because we're not going to remember, are we? We are smark goldfish to this man.
Still, the alternative isn't automatically better, which is why AEW had to refine its process. Excalibur was rightly pelted for reading the debuting talent's Wiki in a state of faux-shock, even if that first bit is virtually every WWE promo. With the introductions of Jeff Cobb and Lance Archer, AEW relied less on the crowd pop and more on the craft of anticipation and presentation. The ominous warning shots fired to the babyfaces backed up by sensational video packages were better than "That's the Blade, JR! You'd know this if you could take your eyes off the damn Bunny!"
At last year's Double Or Nothing, the Dark Order debuted to zero reaction, where Jon Moxley, greedily sucking in the air of freedom, changed the business in a super brawl with Kenny Omega.
As for this year's...?
8. Brian Cage
Pros:
Brian Cage recently revealed on an Instagram story that he is cleared for action following a bicep tear, and before he succumbed to it, he'd all but signed with AEW. The dots connect themselves: he came up with the core of AEW in the southern California scene, he's gone from Impact Wrestling, he was a big part of the All In battle royal and was all but set to be a part of its Double Or Nothing sequel, and the well-sourced SoCal Uncensored broke the news which - and this is more of a smoking gun than Billy, Bart and Dexter Lumis in the "NXT is dead" case file - his wife denied. Cage is AEW bound, and it's a good get. A balloon-muscled freak athlete, he is capable of popping both AEW's base and the toxic AeW iS jUSt vANiLLa mIDgEts crowd, though they'd likely find another reason to pretend it's bad. "LOL an Impact reject?" they might say, as they cheer on AJ Styles who also left after he'd outgrown them.
Cons:
There aren't many. The injury might have concerned Tony Khan, with his long-term vision, but he's also very adept at thinking on his feet. The man wrote the Georgia Dynamite tapings in an hour, conducting as if modifying the D.E.N.N.I.S. system.
Probability: 85%