There was a key moment where it seemed Jack Perry felt the ghost of CM Punk was lifted – AEW’s Rising and Fading Stars of the Week

Welcome everyone!

While WrestleDream may not have been AEW’s biggest, or best, show it did prove that when you put down $50-60 for an AEW PPV, those wrestlers are going to go all out, pun intended, for you. That Jurassic Express vs. Young Bucks match and the Sting return were worth the money alone to me.

AEW Dynamite is almost here, so let’s look back and see who had a good week and who had a bad week.

Rising Star of the Week

Jack Perry

• AEW Original
• AEW Pillar
• Former AEW Tag, FTW, and TNT Champion

This is as surprising to me as it is to you. “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry really has come a long way from the first time I ever saw him and Luchasaurus together. I remember seeing them together in the months before AEW launched and thought their gimmick was fun. Then after AEW launched the team really got over huge with the crowd in those early days, including winning the AEW Tag Team Titles.

Then came Christian Cage stealing Jungle Boy’s dinosaur. Perry did have an AEW World Title match after that; remember the Four Pillars title match between Perry, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara, and the champion MJF? After that, Perry won from and lost the FTW Title back to Hook. This is where the Perry and C.M. Punk issue started – all because Perry quoted a Justin Timberlake song (maybe Punk is a Backstreet Boys fan?).

Anyways, we know how the next two years went. Perry was suspended and then brought back as “The Scapegoat.” Perry and the Bucks attacked Tony Khan. They showed the weird footage of the altercation between Perry and Punk on Dynamite. He won and lost the TNT Title during his Scapegoat time. Then Perry just kind of went away for over a year.

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

If we go back to Forbidden Door when the reanimation video for Luchasaurus, a/k/a Killswitch, played and we saw that someone was bringing him back to life. They didn’t show his face, but we all knew, right? We all knew it was going to be Perry who brought him back.

Then All Out happened and Perry showed up to attack the Young Bucks for abandoning him, flashing that boyish smile underneath his beard. This is when we got to see who was reanimating Luchasaurus. It was, of course, Jack Perry. This is also where I think anyone who thought the AEW audience was still blaming Perry for Punk leaving ended. The reaction to him attacking and then smiling at the Bucks right before Luchasaurus came out showed no one cared anymore. Jack Perry might not be Jungle Boy anymore, but he is definitely still just as over.

Let’s get to WrestleDream and talk about one tiny part of the Jurassic Express vs. Young Bucks match. The part I’m talking about isn’t even a specific move. No, there was a part in the match that Perry hit back-to-back moves on the Bucks and ended up sitting in the middle of the ring smiling at the roaring crowd. It was like you could see the past two years just rolling off Perry’s back and him feeling fully embraced by the AEW fanbase.

It also reminded me that Perry is only 28 and still has so much of his career left in front of him. Much like his fellow pillar Darby Allin, I don’t see Perry ever being a WWE guy and I think the AEW audience fully gets that. I also think it could be why they have been hesitant to embrace a different pillar, MJF, fully since his return, but that’s a subject for a different day.

Going forward, I think the Jurassic Express is another over team in a now revamped and stacked tag team division. There are plenty of teams for them to feud with going forward and I’m here for it.

Then, if they want to revisit Perry as a singles guy, I think that is something that can work in the future. Perry being undersized and his offense make him a very good babyface. Then the way he can garner sympathy makes him a borderline top-of-the-card guy in AEW. Darby and Perry really have benefited – maybe the most – since AEW came into existence. They have main-evented Dynamites and PPVs during their time and I’m pretty positive neither would have gotten that anywhere else.

Speaking of Darby….

1st Runner Up: Darby Allin

• AEW Original
• AEW Pillar
• Former AEW Tag and TNT Champion

After years of trying, Darby Allin has finally beaten Jon Moxley. Let’s look back at a quick match history.

Their first match happened as AEW was just starting, but the match happened at NorthEast Wrestling and Mox won. Then Darby’s first singles match in AEW against Mox was a few months later on the Nov. 20, 2019 Dynamite. After that, Mox successful defended the AEW World Title against Darby on Dynamite on July 29, 2020.

Their next singles battle came after Mox just started his Death Riders run. At the 2024 Grand Slam event, Mox defeated Darby again in a no. 1 contendership match for the AEW World Title, which was held by Bryan Danielson and we all know what happened after that match. Follow that up with last month’s coffin match and that left Darby with 0 wins and 5 losses (4 in AEW proper) in the last six years.

That brings us to this past Saturday night where Darby finally slayed Jon Moxley. The match was wild and crazy, which was expected. Then it had a spot in the match that didn’t need to happen – yes, the drowning spot, but everything else around it was damn near perfect.

Mox trying to get Darby to quit. Not wanting to go as far as he did, but in Mox’s mind he had to because Darby wouldn’t quit. Throughout the match, you could really see how conflicted Mox was, helping the overall story of the match. Mox telling the ref to end the match, repeatedly, because Mox is the only one who cares about Darby will make Mox’s face turn not come out of nowhere.

Then the ending with Sting coming out to fend off the Death Riders was beautiful. As the lights went out, I yelled “FINALLY!” at my TV, not because I wanted the match to be over, but because I knew who was about to appear. Then having Mox quit to the Scorpion Death Lock also felt fitting. Yes, the ending felt abrupt but we found out later that they were legit out of time on the broadcast.

So from here I’m not sure what happens with Darby, but him getting back into a feud with one of the current champions seems fitting. Okada, I’m looking at you. Then again, can you imagine what Kyle Fletcher and Darby could do together? Or if “Hangman” Adam Page wants to give Darby a shot because he took out Mox; I would love to see that too. Plus, Darby has a win over Hangman from last July.

Regardless of what’s next, I’m always intrigued when Darby comes on my television. So I am sure when I see him this week, I will be hanging on every word.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…

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Fading Star of the Week

I just kept it positive this week. Not because I wouldn’t have something to rant over, such as what happened to The Demand at WrestleDream.

Or I could talk about the drowning spot except it feels like most people think that spot “wasn’t that bad” compared to what has happened recently.

I won’t do any of that because WrestleDream was, again, a PPV that didn’t seem great or event that good on paper, but AEW delivered. Of all the bad AEW can do, PPVs are something they have really learned how to deliver. If you need proof, and even if you didn’t like the Mox vs. Darby match, just put the match on and listen to the crowd. They had them sitting in almost stunned state and then Sting arrived and that crowd was quickly whipped into a frenzy.