10 Wrestlers Who Could Be The Jokers In The AEW Owen Hart Tournament
7. Candice LeRae
If it seems too early for Candice to make her AEW debut, having given birth not too long ago, what a patronising thing that is as a counterargument; your writer is a bespectacled nerd with a BMI that's probably suboptimal, he's too lazy/chickensh*t to check, women are warriors, and Candice LeRae once took a thumbtack-spiked sneaker to the forehead.
The act of recovering from childbirth is nobody else's business, as is the mother's decision over when to return to work - but if Candice wants to return, AEW should welcome her with an open embrace.
Woefully miscast in NXT, Candice is North America's lost great babyface. A tremendous worker with a magic ability to evoke sympathy and mouth-agape astonishment at the crest of her comebacks, she was presented as the gothic surrogate parent of Austin Theory towards the end of her run. This is as genuinely unhinged and moronic as booking Omos in a 60-minute Iron Man match.
She is free to work tomorrow - her contract expired, she wasn't released - and her spell in NXT isn't the only blemish on her legacy, nor is it the only blemish she has exactly zero to do with. Candice deserves a run that isn't A) monumentally mishandled or B) bittersweet in retrospect.
AEW's women's division sadly isn't the place in which to accomplish that, necessarily, but Candice is so good that she might hold the key to convincing Tony Khan that it needn't be an afterthought.
Probability: 50%