Tag: the young bucks

The following is an opinion-based preview and reflects that of the author and not the website.

AEW Revolution is AEW’s first real statement of the year, a new calendar with new intentions. This one feels different. Not louder, not more stacked necessarily, but more consequential. Almost every match on Sunday’s card carries the weight of a real-time decision. This isn’t just about who wins, but about who these people will be going forward.

Konosuke Takeshita getting what’s his or being deferred again. Marina Shafir walking through the door or watching it close. Kevin Knight being on the precipice of something bigger than the team he’s in. Hangman Page facing permanent exile from the one thing that defines him. Sunday’s Revolution 2026 isn’t just a show. Rather, it’s a card full of people standing at a fork in the road, whether they asked to be there or not.

These are the questions that get answered this Sunday in Los Angeles. Let’s run through the action.

AEW Revolution preview

Toni Storm vs. Marina Shafir with everyone banned from ringside

There is a specific and under-appreciated generosity in what Toni Storm is doing right now. For years, she was the division’s anchor and a main event metronome. Now, without gold attached, she’s doing something arguably more valuable: she’s making others matter. That’s a skill set not everyone has and fewer are willing to deploy it.

Storm is doing both because that is what the great ones always do. The Timeless character should not have worked at all, but Storm turned both it and herself into one of the most valuable commodities in all of pro wrestling at the ripe age of 30. 

Marina Shafir has been many things in AEW. Background. Muscle. Faction decoration. Occasionally terrifying in small doses. But this is different. This is the door opening to something substantially more. Her credibility has slowly accumulated in the margins of larger stories and has led us to this moment.

There is no more patient waiting, no more promising glimpses. The lights are on and Storm, of all people, is the one at home. What Shafir does with this opportunity will define her ceiling in AEW. Either she leaves LA as someone the audience believes in, or she doesn’t. Sometimes it’s that simple. Sometimes, it’s that unforgiving. No pressure!

Prediction: Marina gets the big one

Darby Allin, Orange Cassidy & Roderick Strong vs. The Dogs (David Finlay, Clark Connors & Gabe Kidd)

David Finlay has something, something real, something that separates him from his partners in ways that will eventually become impossible to ignore. The Dogs are loud and committed, and while Connors has his moments, this is clearly Finlay’s faction in the same way the Death Riders are (were??) always Jon Moxley’s.

The others exist in service of their leader, whether they know it or not. Gabe Kidd remains, to me, a performer whose reputation slightly exceeds his output, though I am watching him closely. The tag match on Wednesday delivered in a big way with a killer closing stretch that was a perfect preview of what kind of match this should be. 

Roderick Strong’s addition is a welcome one. The man is a perpetual motion machine of offense. He fits comfortably into the chaos this match is building toward. Expect more of what we saw on Wednesday, only just a bit louder. This is a fun match on a heavy card and exactly what’s needed.

Prediction: Darby, Cassidy & Strong

Brody King vs. Swerve Strickland

No titles. No trophies. Just violence.

Swerve is never better than when he has an edge. There’s real menace and an earned anger in everything he does. He’s never needed a reason to make someone bleed, but he feels slighted and pettiness is a powerful motivator.

Brody King has come into his own. A hulking, physical performer who has rounded out his edges to become an across-the-board superstar. The man was quietly turning into one of the most compelling physical presences in the company long before anyone thought to build a match around it. Now they have, and the result is a collision that doesn’t need a single title belt attached to justify its existence.

Leave these two alone in the ring, and they will figure it out.

Prediction: Swerve

Andrade El Idolo (with Don Callis) vs. Bandido

Good lord, the juice in this match.

Andrade has never, ever been better — not in NXT, not in WWE, not in his first run in AEW, not anywhere. There is a clarity and a sharpness to him right now that suggests one of two things: this is either a man who finally knows exactly who he is and what he’s capable of, or yet another tantalizing Andrade tease where he dials it in for a stretch before logging out completely.

We know these runs are fleeting and fragile, but right now, in this moment? He is a Tropicana factory worth of juice, and everyone in that arena and everyone at home is going to feel it.

Bandido, meanwhile, remains one of the purest pro wrestling treasures on the planet. His ROH World title is well-earned even if its visibility is…limited. Everything he does is must-see. Everything he does makes the person across the ring look like a million dollars. What happens when the person across the ring already looks that good? There is potential for something really, really special here.

This is lining up to be the match people talk about on the way home. Plan your bathroom breaks accordingly.

Prediction: Bandido

AEW Trios Champions Don Callis Family (Kazuchika Okada, Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis) defend against Místico & JetSpeed (Kevin Knight and Mike Bailey)

We are in a moment for the fortitude and otherworldly determination of Mark Davis, a talented, rear-end-endowed man who has battled through more unfortunate injury luck than any one performer should be asked to absorb. It would have been so easy to give up and fade into generic Don Callis Family flotsam.

Instead, he worked his tail off and made the most of his situation. This is no charity act. Davis deserves to stand side-by-side with Okada and Fletcher as a champion. A rugged and beyond-solid worker, he is the kind of performer professional wrestling desperately needs to revitalize a sagging middle-class.

JetSpeed didn’t recruit a consolation prize when they brought in Místico. They recruited a living legend, this site’s Wrestler of the Year, a man so beloved in lucha libre that entire arenas exist in a state of permanent devotion to him. If anything, Knight and Bailey are the junior partners in this arrangement.

JetSpeed has worked better as a team than I ever imagined. I am frequently wrong. I am wrong about something every single day I am alive. Rarely have I been more wrong about something than I was about Bailey in AEW. I thought the act had a short shelf life at best and was an active drag on the product at worst. Nope! Not even close! The dude is not just a television worker, but a television highlight week after week. 

The more interesting thread running through this match is Kevin Knight himself. Watch him. He demands it. He got the big match against MJF, he got the prime promo time, something big is coming. He’s already outgrown the trios title, but has he outgrown his tag partner as well? This is a burgeoning superstar with an uncapped ceiling. I can’t wait to see him try to reach it.

Prediction: Okada, Fletcher and Davis

AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) (with Stokely) defend against The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson)

A few variations on one big question I can’t get out of my head: What can they do to make this special? What can they do to make this meaningfully different than every other time these four men have shared a ring?

It’s an honest question and it deserves an honest answer which is probably not much, at least structurally. The bones of an FTR/Bucks match are well-documented at this point. We know the beats, we know the escalation, we know the breathless finishing stretch. The question is whether, on this particular night in this particular building in this particular ring, they find that thing that separates a great match from a transcendent one.

These are two teams well aware of their legacy and their places in wrestling history. Any implication to the contrary is shortsighted and naive. Both FTR and The Young Bucks are consumed with greatness, and, with their finish lines closer than anyone would like to admit, tearing down the house very much matters to them. How they do it is where the intrigue comes. 

If they go 25 minutes and leave everything they have on the floor, this match can still be the thing everyone remembers. These four are too good at their jobs for it not to be.

Prediction: The Young Bucks win the titles

AEW Continental Champion Jon Moxley defends against Konosuke Takeshita with no time limit

Here is the honest Moxley situation as it stands: tweener Jon Moxley is incongruous. The Death Riders are firmly heels while their leader is no longer, at least not consistently. The audience has started cheering him again because the audience never really stopped loving him, which is either a testament to his permanent likability or a creative miscalculation, depending on how charitable you’re feeling.

The full turn feels all but cemented, but that creates a different problem entirely: can the Death Riders function without their True Ace as the fulcrum? Everyone in that group would need to take a significant step up for the faction to work independently of him, and that’s the big blinking question mark at the end of this sentence.

The no time limit stipulation exists because a second draw would be a bit of unconscionable, creative malpractice. One of them must walk out of LA as Continental Champion. The narrative weight of Takeshita finally claiming more gold and Moxley’s potential full face turn needs a clean loss to make it land with proper weight.

This is Takeshita’s moment and has been for a long time. Beating The Ace and bringing another title to the Don Callis Family does wonders for him. He should win, and win clean…and then the Death Riders should bust out the plastic bag one more time. 

Prediction: Takeshita wins the title

AEW Women’s Tag Team Champions Babes of Wrath (Willow Nightingale & Harley Cameron) defend against Megan Bayne & Lena Kross

Megan Bayne is a top-of-the-card superstar in the making, and pairing her with another woman of size in Lena Kross is exactly the right move — two physically imposing, credible presences who should not ever resort to chicanery to win their matches. Bayne has been ready for titles for a while now and this feels like the first step in a full ascent toward every piece of individual gold. 

Willow Nightingale is better than these titles. She is better than this program. She may well be better than everyone in this match. This is less hyperbole and more a statement of fact that AEW has been politely ignoring. Willow is a singles star being asked to be patient inside a tag team. Case in point is her singles title defense being on the pre-show and this on the main. 

Harley Cameron is not for me. I’ll own that fully and without reservation. Some people find her endearing and charming which is almost certainly true, and I understand that I am likely the problem here. But as a professional wrestling act, she is an anchor on someone with greatness in her future.

The Babes of Wrath have been fun enough. Fun has a ceiling. Nightingale does not and the longer she remains ancillary attached to other people’s stories — Cameron’s rise, Kris Statlander’s everything — the further she drifts from the moment she’s owed.

Let Bayne and Kross have the titles. Free Willow.

Prediction: Bayne & Kross win the titles

AEW Women’s World Champion Thekla defends against Kris Statlander in a two of three falls match

Rarely is someone so comfortable in their character so quickly on national television. Thekla is by no means a rookie, but it still took a terrifyingly short time to become this fully formed, singular performer. No one is really doing it like her. She moves, acts and talks like an 80s action movie villain who is also, entirely and completely, herself. I could listen to her run down her opponents all day. Her delivery of ‘you wear sunglasses now!’ is something I’m still thinking about.

There is a specificity to her contempt that most heels can’t locate without using their opponents’ first names or winking at the camera. Her delivery is spiteful and it always feels like she’s airing a grievance. That’s the mark of someone who has done the work. AEW’s women’s division is flush with talent. Thekla came in like a thunderbolt, forcing everyone else to step up.

This is the rubber match with a fitting stipulation. Two out of three falls neutralizes the chaos that defined their strap match. It forces a longer story, rewarding craft over improvisation, and leans into both women’s ability to go a longer distance. Statlander is proof of concept as the wrestler who waited, grinded, and finally got there. Thekla is the proof of concept for what happens when AEW lets someone be who they are, even when they’re so different from everyone else.

Prediction: Thekla retains

AEW World Champion MJF defends against Hangman Adam Page in a Texas Death Match where if Page loses, he can never challenge for the title again

Think about what that actually means, not as a pro wrestling contrivance, but as a story. Hangman spent two years crumbling, crawling back from the edge, reclaiming his moral compass, and eventually pulling the World title back out into the light. Now he walks into a Texas Death Match where losing doesn’t just cost him a championship match. It costs him everything, permanently, forever.

There’s a world where that’s interesting. This is not that world. It’s a booking inconvenience masquerading as drama, and it diminishes something that didn’t need help. The jubilation of Hangman freeing the title from that briefcase last summer is something only he could evoke. Few performers can tell that story. Fewer still can deliver that finale with the proper weight. Adding a “never again” clause is a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

MJF, for all of his exhausting excesses, has been genuinely great lately. He’s cut the corny name-calling and started delivering his promos with actual meaning. The cowardly, overcompensating heel is still there, but his worst inclinations are being curbed, and the result is a real pro wrestling antagonist.

A Texas Death Match is the complete antithesis of what he is as a wrestler. There is no worse stipulation, no worse opponent. He didn’t burn down a man’s house. He didn’t stick syringes into anyone. MJF is desperate and has done gross things to stay at the top, but Hangman, with everything to lose, is a different beast entirely.

Hangman should win. Any result that doesn’t end with him leaving LA with the belt is misguided. His reign after All In wasn’t the best, but the solution is not to exile him from the title picture forever — it’s to do better this time. MJF losing in his first PPV defense should send him spiraling, and that’s a story worth telling. Give us that story.

Prediction: Hangman wins the title