Last night All Elite Wrestling held their second annual Revolution Pay Per View. It was a mostly positive event with lots of exciting action that unfortunately may be best remembered for a spectacularly unspectacular ending to the main event exploding barbed wire death match.
For many fans, the thing they were looking forward most to was the debut of a ‘Hall of Fame worthy’ talent who would debut as teased by Paul White on Dynamite last week. We speculated over who the talent may be in an article over the weekend, and the big surprise turned out to be Christian Cage just a few weeks after he made an equally shocking return to the WWE as a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble.
There’s a few things to unpack with this debut, but first of all let’s address whether it was as exciting as we’d hoped? Truthfully it probably wasn’t. People had hoped for CM Punk, who unlike Christian wasn’t a question of if he’d wrestle in WWE or AEW, as Punk currently doesn’t wrestle for anyone at all. And it wasn’t as big as if it had been Brock Lesnar, John Cena or The Rock. They all are much bigger stars then Christian is.
It’s also a slight disappointment to see Christian split up from Edge after their very brief reunion in the Royal Rumble as surely with both men making comebacks from career ending injuries they both could have an extended run by working tag matches as a duo.
Christian also gave us a sense of déjà vu in more than one way, as his leaving the WWE for AEW brings back memories of when he left the WWE to join TNA many years ago. Adding to this was the fact that he came out to his old TNA theme music and once again has adopted the ring name Christian Cage which he used in TNA/Impact Wrestling.
His debut at Revolution was fun to see, but I would have handled it differently. By announcing that there would be a HOF worthy debut at the show it certainly grabbed some headlines and hype going into the event, but with everyone speculating it would be the aforementioned Punk or Brock etc, Christian did feel a slight let down. This is unfair on Christian as he is genuinely one of the most overlooked and underrated wrestlers who was never given his fair dues in the WWE.
If I had been booking AEW I would have sacrificed the pre-hype and inevitable disappointment in exchange for a shock and completely surprise and unannounced debut with a run in and attack. Either coming into play with the Young Bucks vs Jericho and MJF match or the Matt Hardy match. Something that would have called back to Jericho or Hardy who he has worked with in the past as if he has some unfinished business, or to tease that he has joined the inner circle and that he’s going straight into a feud with the Young Bucks.
Whoever you paired him with, a run in and attack would have had the limited fans who are allowed to be in the arena to go ballistic and would leave everyone with questions that need to be answered on the next edition of Dynamite. As it was I already feel that I know most of the answers. Christian made a return at the Royal Rumble and couldn’t agree on money with Vince…because Vince doesn’t see enough value in him.
If Christian had made a shock entry to AEW it would have seemed that he had jumped ship from the WWE instead of being undervalued by the WWE. AEW now also has to start the build of a program with Christian against someone on Dynamite and I expect what will happen will be that Christian will come out to explain why he is there and will be quickly interrupted by a mid level talent.
Whatever happens it’s still great to see Christian Cage in AEW, and with the cross over potential to make appearances back in Impact. Fingers crossed they’ll use him in some great feuds and he’ll be able to show why he shouldn’t be undervalued. The ball is now in Tony Khans court.
Who would you like to see Christian Cage wrestle in AEW? As always put your thoughts into the comments, and check out all the wrestling content we have here on xstreamed.tv
