AEW TV - 5/27 - 6/2/2026 - I'm Head of the Class, I'm PACular

[Dolfan in NYC]

 Three important rules for breaking up: Don't put off breaking up when you know you want to. Prolonging the situation only makes it worse. Tell him honestly, simply, kindly, but firmly...

The gas ran out of the tank.  6 weeks on overdrive and the engine blew up.  We have a NEW All Elite Wrestling Men's World Champion~

The "Basic Super Tombstone Piledriver" did it.   And actually, calling it the BSTP is probably not the worst idea...

 Don't make a big production... Don't make up an elaborate story... This will help you avoid a big tear-jerking scene. If you wanna date other people say so! Be prepared for the boy to feel hurt and rejected...

But after the match... oh Kevin Knight... what have you done?

....why Kevin, why? ....did you wait so long to do this. 

 Even if you've gone together for only a short time and haven't been too serious. There's still a feeling of rejection when someone says she prefers the company of others to your exclusive company. But if you're honest and direct and avoid making a flowery emotional speech when you break the news... The boy will respect you for your frankness; and honestly, he'll appreciate the kind of straight forward manner in which you told him your decision.  Unless he's a real jerk or a cry baby, you will remain friends!

THIS WEEK!!!  We begin our march to Forbidden Door '26!  

Kevin explains the perils of popularity.  

(Cannot get this song out of my head.  I'm actually astonished it hasn't been used for a match promo vid.)

Enjoy the week!

[J.T.]

 

Edited May 27 by J.T.

[JLSigman]

Didn't Jericho and Ricochet already have a match when everyone was banned from ringside? Or am I remembering something else?

Also, Renee is going to talk to Kyle (and Don Callis) about how he betrayed his one true love Takeshita. 

[Technico Support]

I thought that was a stripper reference and not a "rioting in Philadelphia" reference.

 

[J.T.]

Having seen parts of Shida's gravure video online, I also thought it was a stripper reference.

I will go into the parking lot and hang my head in shame.

[Curt McGirt]

I thought it was reference to some other poles, having no other reference I could think of

Somebody needs to wash my brain out with a powerful industrial solvent

[Pete]

5 hours ago, J.T. said:

 

I had no idea "Shida" was Japanese for "Fredo."

[Zimbra]

Mark Davis vs Jack Perry is also happening tonight.

3 announced matches, none of which sound great, for a 3 hour show is making me nervous.

[Casey]

I'd bet on the new TikTok preshow thing having match announcements/setups for matches that'll happen tonight on it.

EDIT: Yeah, sure enough, TK is gonna be on the preshow with "news about tonight's Dynamite". This will probably take the place of him going live on Twitter to announce stuff like he usually does.

Edited May 27 by Casey

[Technico Support]

Well it’s the post-PPV Dynamite — they need to see who’s healthy enough to work.  

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

I enjoyed that lights out match, but two things bothered me. Why did Stat refuse to use the light tubes? It just made her look stupid. And what was the point of Harley Cameron coming out right at the end when Statlander had all but won anyway?

That Perry/Davis match was absolute fire, and on par with anything at the pay-per-view. Is that Perry's best ever singles match? Mark Davis is so great.

 

[Curt McGirt]

Not a whole lot nice to say about tonight. There was something irritating in every match. Speedball looked like a giant bottle of dijon mustard walking out there in his karate formal attire. PAC looked like somebody stuck an air compressor up his ass to make his upper torso look like that. Ace Austin did a squat with Andrade on his back and then just put him down, as if it was an offensive move. We did get your Basic Super Piledriver from Mark Davis, the Rascalz took their beating well (the one getting kicked right in the chest by Will was a great spot), RUSH is getting a title match, Chicken is getting a title match (imagine the pop if he won it. Don't bother imagining that he really will, but it's a nice thing to fantasize about), Kris got her back opened up by light tubes. But when we're getting Claudio and Brody pretending they're Kobashi and Sasaki I think it's easy to sum this one up as having the post-PPV blues like always. 

Edited May 28 by Curt McGirt

[Casey]

People are (rightfully) upset about the lack of women’s wrestling on a three hour show - even if Shida/Stat did main event - but here’s my counter argument: TayJay are terrible.

[J.T.]

So wow. Curse of the after show strikes again. Lots and lots of uneven booking and WTF was Speedball wearing to the ring? Did this man just step out of the shower to cut a promo? And BOO~! on Kevin Knight. Insulting local sports teams is the cheapest of cheap heat. Do better, man!

Other than Claudio vs. Brody killing it and RUSH getting a title shot, this was a pretty meh show and I didn't even bother to tune in to Collision to watch Jack and Mark Davis wrestle for the 100000th time in less than a month. The regret was only felt this morning as I watched the Davis / Perry recap on YouTube while eating breakfast and saw that the match was pretty awesome. Normally I hate repetition but Perry and Davis seem to have that chemistry that will evolve into a really good longstanding feud. You need feuds like this to shore up the midcard.

The finish of Jericho / Ricochet was hilarious with Ricochet doing the old Kevin Sullivan booty scoot to get himself into the correct position before Jericho's lionsault resulted in Ricochet getting knees to the face instead of the usual bump.

I would like to see Lio Rush get a win as The Blackheart, but this may be a Danhausen deal where the gimmick far surpasses the workrate.  If he's going to be the AEW version of Gollum, at least put him in an angle where he steals MJF's cheat to win KO ring and starts talking to it.

Shida and Kris did their best to close things out but it felt a bit off. The apple in the mouth spot (THE IMPLICATION~! HOW DISRESPECTFUL~!) and Shida running over Kris's hand with a bicycle were creative but street fights should be straightforward, right? I know we frown a bit on Britt Baker but her match with Thunder Rosa is what I think of when we talk about matches like this. Blood, chair shots, thumbtacks, punches to the face. That sort of thing. Maybe I've watched too much Megumi Kudo over the years? At least there was light tube violence in the Kris / Shida match.

I'm guessing that Shida reads the board and was angered by my comments because she wore the least stripperific outfit to the lights out brawl compared to Kris's gear and Harley Cameron's run-in jean shorts. Damn.

I tend to expect one off shows after a really good PPV because there is always a bit of fumbling for new angles and you sometimes have to throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. Plenty of time for after action meetings in Creative to adjust things and re-right the ship.

Edited May 28 by J.T.

[Technico Support]

As soon as Speedball got near ringside, a mic picked up a fan screaming YOUR JACKET SUCKS

Doyle is back!  I hope they team him with Cage and keep Davis as a single, because Davis is fucking awesome.  Unless they’re getting the belts, he’s wasted as a member of Male Bayne and Kross.

When Rush entered the ring, Lio Rush was yelling “WE’RE TWINS!”  He’s great.

Edited May 28 by Technico Support

[JLSigman]

Typical post PPV slightly off show, really shouldn't have been 3 hours. Some of these dudes have spent more time in the air than on the ground since last week.

Jericho is fucking awful. Please, Ciampa, put him out of our misery.

Orange Cassidy's face as he's trying to not touch Lio Rush was great.

I kinda thought we'd end up with Mark Briscoe vs RUSH, with MJF not wanting to be within 20 feet of RUSH, so this segment felt weird to me and ended with Briscoe looking like a chump in the ring. 

Brody vs Claudio was the big meat slappin we all love. Brody vs Swerve has a lot of back history to it, should be an amazing match.

As others have said, Jungle Jack Perry vs Mark Davis was way better than expected, all things considered. 

I gave up just as Ospreay/Death Riders vs Rascalz was starting, so I'll finish up the show in a little while.

[Sex Machine Gun]

I enjoyed the show but it's a bad sign when the two things I'm noticing most people talking about are:

#1: Lack of women's action/presence in a three hour show, as well as putting off the announcement about the TBS Championship to Saturday. The entire first round of the men's side of the Owen tournament is also already done while the women have had one quarterfinal match. We didn't even get Thekla, their champ!

#2: Speedball's outfit. If those are his street clothes he dresses like people in the original Star Trek movies when they weren't in Starfleet uniforms. But he's successful and can kill me in fifteen different ways, while being happily married. Can't really throw stones. 

Anyway, if those are the main things people are talking about it might not have been the best episode of rasslin' TV.

[Curt McGirt]

15 minutes ago, Sex Machine Gun said:

#1: Lack of women's action/presence in a three hour show, as well as putting off the announcement about the TBS Championship to Saturday. The entire first round of the men's side of the Owen tournament is also already done while the women have had one quarterfinal match. We didn't even get Thekla, their champ!

Ooof. Yeah, that's bad. On the positive side we did get Alley showing up again which bodes well for a possible ROH spot. I would hope, anyway. 

[Technico Support]

Two nitpicks, because I'm a pedantic prick:

Ospreay: My neck is fine, luv!  Just gonna go ice me biceps!  (Proceeds to sit down and ice his neck)

Cope: We're done with FTR!  Time to look to the future, not the past!  (Proceeds to psyche up for a gimmick from almost three whole decades ago)

 

I really enjoyed Christian noting that flash photography barely exists anymore.  I enjoy Christian's gimmick, but the combined comedy routine of Christian being  a curmudgeon while Copeland is all "OH YOU!" is getting old. very quickly.

It also funny how nobody ever uses that lime green camera cable.  It purely exists for Rush to beat people with it.  OSHA should look into that.

Edited May 28 by Technico Support

[NikoBaltimore]

I get what you all are saying but I found some things worthwhile from it all:

Orange's reactions to Lio had me wish their first time meeting was a singles match.  While the energy diverted from this to usual four-man stuff Orange played off of Lio's stuff wonderfully.  Enjoyed the match and liked that it came down to Lio and Rush.  The more I see Blackheart Lio the more I'm starting to oddly like it so I'm down for seeing him get more chances to shine.

Seeing flash photography again kind of gave me some nostalgic vibes.  I like that the idea got turned on its head when people had something completely different to take pictures of (The Dogs) and not what was intended.

The DR/Rascals tag was neat due to seeing how throughout it Ospreay and Pac start to have a begrudging respect for each other.  It's neat seeing Will but more into what they're doing each week and while this will lead to a turn of some type the end result is going to be very interesting.

But not gonna lie I fell asleep after the Fletcher segment and had to rewatch the last hour this morning.  Not the best post-PPV show but it's cool.

Edited May 28 by NikoBaltimore

[Zimbra]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

It also funny how nobody ever uses that lime green camera cable.  It purely exists for Rush to beat people with it.  OSHA should look into that.

We noticed last night that they even cut the plugs off the end.  It really is just the chokin' cable.

[SovietShooter]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

It also funny how nobody ever uses that lime green camera cable.  It purely exists for Rush to beat people with it.  OSHA should look into that.

I noticed that awhile back (because I have the same lime green extension cable, lol).  I think they gave him that one to use for the gimmick spot because he originally was using the actual ringside camera cables, and someone probably almost dropped a $500K camera.  It being lime green is a "use this one" secret code, lol

[J.T.]

57 minutes ago, SovietShooter said:

I noticed that awhile back (because I have the same lime green extension cable, lol).  I think they gave him that one to use for the gimmick spot because he originally was using the actual ringside camera cables, and someone probably almost dropped a $500K camera.  It being lime green is a "use this one" secret code, lol

What the Shooter said. Pro Wrestling is theater so they use a lot of stage techniques like set blocking and color coding of props. The reason actors know exactly where to stand in a every performance of a play is because they can see the X's in masking tape on the stage floor and you can't.

The green cable is connected to absolutely nothing and is there to be used as a weapon. The black cables are connected to hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that is very expensive to replace. If someone ever ends up getting bashed in the head with a camera, that camera wasn't working anyway.

Edited May 28 by J.T.

[Casey]

3 hours ago, Sex Machine Gun said:

#1: Lack of women's action/presence in a three hour show, as well as putting off the announcement about the TBS Championship to Saturday. The entire first round of the men's side of the Owen tournament is also already done while the women have had one quarterfinal match. We didn't even get Thekla, their champ!

To be fair, the women’s bracket does have three people whose main priorities aren’t AEW (but then again, Hazuki and Persephone are both going to be on Collision, and neither are wrestling their Owen matches, so…). Also, Persephone and Sareee are currently injured.

I don’t see the problem with the TBS title being addressed on Collision. Everyone wants everything to happen on Dynamite and it’s kind of maddening.

Devil’s advocate: what if Thekla requested a little break? Maybe she’s hurt or something. Usually if someone important isn’t showing up, there’s a reason that we discover later.

Also: RAW had one women’s match, but these very vocal women’s wrestling supporters aren’t complaining about that. Shida/Stat alone lasted longer than RAW’s one match. This is how it always shakes out when the week is over with. Usually, AEW gives more in-ring time to the women and WWE will have more female individual segments. 

[Pete]

33 minutes ago, Casey said:

Devil’s advocate: what if Thekla requested a little break? Maybe she’s hurt or something. Usually if someone important isn’t showing up, there’s a reason that we discover later.

She and Toni are on the same cycle?