AEW TNT Championship: Predicting All 8 Men In The Tournament

WINNER

1. Sammy Guevara

In short, if this is all to culminate in a PPV match, then Sammy Guevara vs Cody Rhodes is about as close to a money-match as you're really able to have at this level of the card. Thrown too many big names into it (your Omegas, your Pacs, your Archers) and the strap seems too far elevated above the rest of the roster. You need someone who's within touching distance of the top, but crucially not there yet.

AEW has been missing something since Chris Jericho lost the World Championship. A certain arrogance, a certain swagger, a certain something that vanishes when your top heel continues to refer to himself as Le Champion with no shiny trinket to laud over the rest of the roster. He can't win the TNT Championship, but his young protege can.

On his own terms, having him go over Cody Rhodes is a smart rematch from the very first night of AEW Dynamite, and levels their personal rivalry up at 1-1. Sammy's the sort of unmissable television personality who could do wonders with a prop like this, and seeing the inventive ways he'd think to put himself over with the network would be appointment-to-view TV.