As excited as I am to see Andrade and MJF square off in the casino gauntlet match at All In, the build to that is yet another build I don’t think AEW is doing right ahead of the big event. Tonight’s segment was entirely missable, and really rather odd, and if MJF is to be believed, he won’t be present at next week’s show, either. This is something that probably could have been cut from the show, as, and I’ll forever complain about it, the main event didn’t begin until after 10 p.m., which is getting beyond ridiculous.
At one point of the show, the broadcast went to Jonathon Cruz standing in the middle of the ring. I thought to myself, before remembering Cruz is loosely affiliated with MJF, that this was going to be one of those skippable things on the show, and something that was going to help extend it well past its advertised end time, or even its old usual overrun time period of just 10 minutes or so over.
Cruz briefly addressed Andrade in Spanish on behalf of MJF before switching right back to English, running him down, saying the usual things you’d expect: that MJF is more handsome than Andrade, the AEW National Champion isn’t a “Real Latino Man,” etc. That brought out Andrade, and then, suddenly, the segment was actually a match. It was the strangest thing, and Andrade squashed Cruz off the DM for the win.
Then, MJF popped up on the tron, in a video from a hot tub in Long Island, obviously filmed on an iPhone and sent in. I don’t think I would have minded this as much if he had actually come out in person to confront Andrade, who he’s now calling “Andrew,” as we had already seen one pre-recorded confrontation tonight and another interview segment. The pair just straight up brawling after Andrade downed Cruz would have been fine, but MJF didn’t travel to Baltimore.
MJF said that the next time Andrade is going to see him will be at Wembley Stadium, and I sure hope that’s not the case, and he’s going to show up next week to get the upper hand in a surprise attack. In the video, he also had his “Triple B” with him, and if he’s going to continue this “real world champion” thing that I’ve already said that I hate, you’d think he’d want to be as annoying about it as possible and parade around “Dynamite” with the gold. For a long episode tonight, this was missable and did nothing to help the build for their face-off in the casino gauntlet.
Written by Daisy Ruth
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