AEW RISING AND FADING STARS OF THE WEEK: Of course, Tommaso Ciampa is the rising star with great new entrance and strong debut match, but what is his ultimate role in AEW?

Welcome everyone!

It was, apparently, championship week on AEW television. Between Dynamite and Collision we were treated to six title matches. All but one ended with the champions retaining, more on the title change later.

The most disappointing match was Thekla losing to Kris Statlander because you all know I feel the Statlander title reign has been a bust.

Let’s get to my list!

RISING STAR OF THE WEEK

Tommaso Ciampa

Wow, I was legitimately surprised by Ciampa’s debut. Then he debuted with a, dare I say, great entrance song. After that Ciampa had the encore of his debut being a TNT title win.

You can’t do this type of push with everyone that comes in but I think it can and will work for Ciampa. Why? Because he is a guy that would have been a “Day 1” guy in AEW had Ciampa not worked for WWE. He just feels more like an AEW guy and maybe it’s because, and it pains me to say this, NXT Black and Gold is as a really good blueprint for how AEW should be.

Regardless it does not matter because Ciampa was in NXT/WWE for the first 6 years of AEW. The question now is what is Ciampa’s ceiling in AEW.

Personally right where he is happens to be perfect. Ciampa, like Mark Briscoe, can be the ultimate gate keeper to the main event scene. Any young heels on the rise would have gone through Briscoe these last few years and now it can be Ciampa.

In a crazy stat I believe Ciampa makes 16 new AEW signings since the calendar turned to 2026 and oh how sweet 16 was for all of the fans. Here’s to Ciampa continuing to grow this Psycho Killer persona.

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FADING STAR OF THE WEEK

THEKLA

So where does she go from here? Thekla has just 1 singles match win on Dynamite since her debut last year. All of her singles wins have been on Collision. And honestly, that’s just been 3threewins over the last year. Beating Willow Nightengale, Mina Shirakawa, and Tay Melo, in that order so each win had less meaning. Not the way to build up your women’s division.

So her losing makes sense knowing the background of her wins. That said, Kris Statlandar is not doing a good job as champion. It feels like she has regressed as a character, somehow, so I was just ready for a change.

I just don’t know what AEW can do with Thekla now that won’t feel like a step backwards. She has a singles win over Willlow, so she could try to use that to get a shot at the TBS Title, but that’s an obvious step down. She and one of her “sisters” could go after the tag titles but the group just lost a tag title match.

Honestly, this just shows a lack of the true depth in the AEW Women’s Singles Division since the tag titles were introduced. The tag division has depleted the singles division.

That said, with the women they have, it can be rebuilt kind of quickly. Meghan Bayne is the one, for me, that should be built up again and win the AEW World title from Statlander. As I’ve said before the Statlander experiment has not worked and I feel it’s time to move on. A heel Bayne swatting off baby face challengers sounds better than what’s going on with Stat.