10 Ups & 0 Downs From AEW Dynamite: Fight For The Fallen (27 July)

2. The Tragedy Of Team Taz

Curse you, Powerhouse Hobbs.

In a move foreshadowed by the duo's near disagreement on last week's Road To video, Hobbs turned on Ricky Starks during an impassioned post-match promo, clobbering his tag team partner from behind and drilling him with a powerslam. Given how earnest Starks has been lately (and how close these two came to becoming Tag Team Champions), it was a heartbreaker.

Taz was aghast on commentary, though HOOK was conspicuous by his absence. That's a detail to pay attention to going forward. Nonetheless, Starks is now a fully-minted babyface opposite Hobbs, who can return to full heel territory, having never quite embraced the same good guy fire as Starks in their run towards the tag belts.

Ricky spoke of being no stranger to defeat pre-turn. On the FTW Title, he claimed to have taken what people took as a noose and turned it into a tie, grabbing leather and metal and making it gold. Even in defeat, he never gave less than 100%. There's no more being patient or waiting in line: his time is right now.

Those were the words of a babyface not coming out of his shell, but breaking free from it entirely. In this quarter-hour, AEW established Ricky as a face star finally on the cusp of a mega-push, heated HOOK back up, got heel Hobbs over more than ever before, and created an interesting new dynamic within Team Taz.

Incredible television.