10 Terrible Debuts AEW Quickly Fixed
3. Dark: Elevation
With matches fizzling rather than fizzing, Kenny Omega working a WWE-adjacent angle for the night and Tony Khan making an absolute t*t of himself in his first ever appearance as an on-screen character for the company, Episode One of Dark: Elevation was not a banner night for All Elite Wrestling.
The show wasn't without a couple of in-ring highlights, and new commentator Paul Wight earned praise for his maiden effort in the booth, but those headlines were damaging.
Yet, just a fortnight later, Elevation had established itself as much more than superfluous YouTube content from an organisation already producing more of that than most people can keep up with any given week. Without house shows, AEW needed more ways for their younger talent to get reps and Elevation joined its namesake as another canny way to pad the stats and pay more wrestlers to take a few more bumps before a post-pandemic normal could be realised.
It's not always the highlight of the wrestling week, but it's not since spat out anything as wretched as Khan's bizarre "nine days!" speech.