AEW RISING AND FADING STARS: Where would the AEW Women’s Division be without Thekla? Jericho, Ciampa, and Bang Bang Bang sereaming WWE circa 2015

Welcome everyone!

Wow! That was a rough week of television for AEW. In my opinion, they could not get out of Ohio fast enough. Hopefully this week shows we’ll have a better crowd.

So, let’s look back and see who I felt had a good week and who had a bad week.

RISING STAR OF THE WEEK

THEKLA

Where would the AEW Women’s Division be without Thekla? Since Toni Storm left, and because of the creation of the AEW Women’s Tag Team Titles, the division has lost so much star power. Thekla has been one of the few bright spots during this time. Thekla has just been consistent and believable as a loud mouth, badass champion.

Thekla also has me interested in a PPV that I am typically meh at best on, Forbidden Door. I like that she has a story like this to do with Stardom. All it does is make Thekla feel like a bigger star.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…

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FADING STAR OF THE WEEK

JERICHO AND TOMMASO CIAMPA

I think part of the reason Dynamote felt flat was the crowd, but the start of the show was not helped by that opening segment with Chris Jericho and Tommaso Ciampa. None of that worked for me. It all screamed WWE circa 2015. Even when Jericho “snapped” and told Ciampa that the sport is important to him, not one person cared. It felt like that was supposed to get the crowd to “oooooo” or pop and, again, it just fell flat.

One issue with all of this is that Ciampa has been all over the place since he got to AEW. He gives promos that sound like a babyface, but he’s obviously playing a heel. There was a point over two weeks where it seemed like Ciampa turned heel back to face back to heel again.

Couple that with the fact that Jericho has not gotten over since coming back and this feud does not work.

Runner Up – The Bang Bang Gang

Yes, again. Why? Go watch their Collision promo. It was not clever. It was not funny. It was also very WWE circa 2015.