It's Official: AEW Is Actually BACK
It was easy to hold a certain suspicion. The not remotely great Worlds End event was less than a month old. As his promotion had cooled, Khan was trying to force it.
The imminent signing of Kazuchika Okada didn’t inspire much in the way of optimism. This was incredible - Okada is an all-time great who at 36 has just entered what are considered the wrestler’s prime years - but no less true. Okada, beyond a very funny run as the ornery vet who beat the sh*t out of NOAH’s Kaito Kiyomiya for daring to make his name at the expense of the Rainmaker, had spent the last however many years working yet more incredibly long matches within a slow-build formula that, while still great, had peaked. Really great matches were not a problem from which AEW suffered throughout its annus horribilis. AEW struggled to build true anticipation for key matches that were all but certain to be superb on the night of the PPV. Okada, overexposed, threatened to be excellent in a familiar, uninspiring way.
Okada, Khan, and the Young Bucks have positively embarrassed those projections.
Ahead of Revolution, the Bucks took on a heel authority gimmick. Wearing garish white suits weeks ahead of a tremendous angle, they bloodied Darby Allin and beat up Sting and his sons. The visual of the blood-soaked suits was awesome, in and of itself, but all the better because they hadn’t just worn white gear to a grudge match. They’d thought deeper than that. That’s what the Bucks do at their best. Matthew and Nicholas Jackson were instrumental in the pure magic that was Sting’s last match at Revolution.
AEW Sting was perfect, and it was a feature and not a bug that his matches weren’t particularly dramatic. Your superhero always won; that guarantee was the magic, the impossible evocation of the inner child. The Bucks - by using glass, finisher overkill and distributing head trauma to creaking legends who had no business in the ring - added a real sense of distress to the party match. Sting cut the promo of his life, descended from the rafters one last time, and taught those pr*cks a lesson in Greensboro. AEW told an absolutely fantastic, traditional babyface versus heel story as rich in detail as it was in emotion.
That was the stuff.
During their entrance, the Bucks wore gowns as their EVP business cards rained down from the rafters. The Bucks in Greensboro concealed in plain sight their direction on the March 6 Dynamite. As they settled into the onscreen EVP role, they threatened Top Flight, Tony Schiavone and production staff with fines. They also threatened to penalise Eddie Kingston on the Revolution go-home Dynamite. After doing a priceless impersonation of a frightened Tony Khan doing a stilted announcement, the Bucks went to the ring, announcing that for disciplinary reasons and missing dates, respectively, Hangman Page and Kenny Omega had been fired from the Elite. Eddie Kingston, who is exactly the sort of character who’d hold onto his fury and let it fester, stormed the ring. Again, in character, he paid the threatened fine in advance before letting the Bucks have it. Enter, as teased at Revolution, Kazuchika Okada.
CONT'D...