Did The House Of Black corrupt the souls of The Elite on last night's AEW Dynamite?
It certainly appeared that way. In a mirroring of Bray Wyatt's White Rabbit teases from late last year, Malakai Black's group appeared to infiltrate a backstage segment between the Trios Champions and Top Flight and AR Fox ahead of a rematch between the two sides on this week's Rampage "Slam Dunk".
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Despite not overtly building a story over the last few weeks, the groups had been tacitly positioned against one another after The House Of Black decimated Brandon Cutler on the December 3rd Rampage taping. They'd since been derailed by a programme with Eddie Kingston and Ortiz, but the cut-in during Omega and The Bucks' spiel here strongly implied that they're back to targeting the Champions. Cutler is always cast as the one filming the skits, meaning that the House Of Black's magic powers penetrated his camera, rather than AEW's.
The Elite have held the gold since 11th January after defeating Death Triangle in a Best-Of-Seven series. They've since defended the gold against The Firm and the aforementioned Top Flight/Fox combo, and may well issue the challenge to Black, Brody King and Buddy Matthews when they watch Cutler's footage back.
Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation for 10 years. Alongside the production of daily written, audio and video content covering WWE and AEW, he also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years.
As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot on the UK's wrestling podcast charts with over 10,000 episodes and 70,000,000 total downloads. He also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House!, Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast, and has guested on long-running Sunderland AFC podcast Wise Men Say.
With WhatCulture, he has provided in-person coverage of some of the biggest pay-per-views and Premium Live Events in wrestling history, including WrestleMania, Survivor Series, All In & Double Or Nothing in destinations such as New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. He has also been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana, 411Mania and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling.
Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in music and culture magazines The Crack, Pilot as well as Sunderland AFC's premiere fanzine A Love Supreme. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it every other Saturday at the Stadium Of Light, and at Cribs gigs nationwide.
