A rising tide lifts all boats, in order that they inform me. The tide on the ladies’s aspect of AEW, for just about its whole three-plus-year existence, appeared fairly stagnant, with the occasional spike that promised extra however hardly ever delivered a change in altitude. Whereas not wanting to place an excessive amount of on her shoulders (although they may actually carry absolutely anything) Jamie Hayter’s rise to girls’s champion has apparently remodeled the route and make-up of your complete division.

The renewed optimism — which, to be clear, has not but been accompanied by precise outcomes — is what seems to be the primary, all-encompassing story for the ladies that doesn’t should do with the title. For therefore lengthy, the largest tales and feuds within the girls’s division have been simply title matches that have been often thrown collectively every week or two earlier than the pay-per-view or Dynamite they have been on. That also led to some nice matches, and the making of some wrestlers, however they hardly ever went from week to week over months for everybody to see what would occur subsequent.

That seems to be altering. A break up inside the division, with Saraya and Toni Storm turning heel and making a fissure between wrestlers who had developed in AEW and those that got here from elsewhere (i.e. WWE) units up a plethora of matchups and ultimately a climax on the first Girls’s Blood & Guts match someplace within the spring or summer season (it’s clearly the place we’re going). It’s even caught one within the center. Ruby Soho, who’s at the moment positioning herself on the AEW authentic aspect however might be poised to activate everybody straight away. Whereas the AEW aspect already has the corporate’s largest girls stars in Hayter and Britt Baker, together with Willow Nightingale and Hikaru Shida, even a Ruby flip nonetheless solely has three together with Toni and Saraya. Gee, who may the fourth ultimately be? (I hope I hope I hope I hope…)

We’ve already seen the brilliance that Hayter has produced with Storm, and Storm and Shida have achieved the identical. Throw Ruby in both method and Willow and there are simply so many matches that Tony Khan can play with to maintain this going. It’s the type of set-up that will get followers doing all of the permutations and fantasy-booking of their heads, which is strictly what AEW ought to need. It’ll preserve throwing up new matches and alliances and feuds. It mainly feeds on itself, one thing the ladies haven’t actually had. Past Bryan Danielson chasing down MJF, it’s one of the best story AEW has going general.

Numerous credit score has to go to Hayter, and for just a few causes. One, she had an natural rise to the highest of the cardboard, which all the time locks extra followers in and extra passionately. She bought there just because she was so good within the ring and placing on such nice matches that the corporate had no selection however to maintain pushing her additional and additional up. Two, she’s raised not simply the standard of the matches within the division, however the notion of what the standard is. Followers have simply grow to be accustomed to seeing higher high quality, erasing one of many (false) causes that Khan needed to not run that many ladies’s encounters on TV. Followers now got here to look ahead and demand extra. Third, she confirmed that AEW didn’t want a reputation that followers knew earlier than they began getting TV time to get followers to connect themselves.

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This is the underlying story, that AEW has done a pretty great job under the surface of improving the in-ring work of a host of wrestlers through Dark and Dark: Elevation. For instance, we’ve seen a few Jade Cargill-Red Velvet matches in the past, but last night’s was a level or two above the rest. Skye Blue was able to pull off shit like this just some weeks in the past after lower than two years in AEW. They’re hardly alone. Hayter might have had an enormous hand in elevating the ceiling of what girls’s matches are on AEW, however the ground has come proper together with it.

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That doesn’t imply every thing is rosy. Regardless that there have been three girls’s segments on final night time’s Dynamite, there was nonetheless just one match and it was nonetheless within the 9:30 EST time slot, which has been the customary slot for the division for AEW’s whole existence, mainly. They’ve hardly ever led off a present (a slot that AEW mainly treats on the identical stage as the principle occasion) and solely barely extra usually have primary evented a Dynamite. Hopefully, when the AEW v. Outsider angle actually kicks into excessive gear this modifications. It has to.

Let’s be trustworthy, there’s nonetheless the massive fish swimming on the market, and that’s Mercedes Moné. No matter her character is now, it’s actually nonetheless “Boss-adjacent” and it’s exhausting to fathom how a job of coming in to show these AEW youngsters a lesson about what an actual wrestler appears to be like like doesn’t hit her proper between the eyes. Even when it’s just for a handful of matches, even when it’s just for a yr or two, it’s the ultimate juice for the division. Sasha Banks by no means bought to be in a Struggle Video games/Blood & Guts match, and one has to imagine that Mercedes is dreaming of all of the issues she may do in a single. The sudden rise in high quality of in-ring work additionally feels prefer it rises to the extent of Mercedes, and there are a number of matches together with her that followers would die to see. However as of now, it’s solely a dream.

And as unusual because it sounds, the ladies’s division doesn’t want Mercedes. Very similar to Hayter’s rise on her personal, this faction-forming feud has momentum merely due to the way in which followers have connected to it. And very similar to Khan did with Hayter, all he has to do is get out of its method to let it blossom.