AEW Friday Night Preview for October 8th, 2022

AEW is in Washington D.C. for three huge events, and the first of those came at you hard and fast on Wednesday night! DYNAMITE's finale saw ROH World Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara defeat Bryan Danielson and Daniel Garcia in large part to a well-placed shot from the ROH World Title belt to Garcia's skull. On top of that, it was National Scissoring Day and while DC fans of The Acclaimed turned were all in on the experience, Swerve Strickland certainly was not and challenged Billy Gunn to a match, but in the end, it was “Smart” Mark Sterling who suffered for it all!

Willow Nightingale scored a huge victory for her team when she pinned Penelope Ford, Adam Page topped Rush before ultimately ending up in a face-to-face with AEW World Champion Jon Moxley, and MJF showed he's more than just talk in a superb bout with Wheeler Yuta.

On the heels of that jam-paced DYNAMITE, this Friday night All Elite Wrestling is giving fans a double dose of action! First, at 10pm ET/9pm CT, RAMPAGE presents another packed hour of action on TNT, as well as at AEWPlus.com for our international audiences, featuring Death Triangle's first AEW World Trios Title defense against Dark Order, The Blackpool Combat Club will be in action against Rush and Private Party, the women of TayJ.A.S. will be in tag team action against Skye Blue and Madison Rayne, and the Varsity Blonds return to action against Tony Nese and Josh Woods! But that's not all coming on Friday night...

Immediately following RAMPAGE, AEW presents BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV, featuring THREE championships matches in one hour of action! The TBS Championship will be on the line when Willow Nightingale tries to capitalize on the momentum from her DYNAMITE victory to finally topple Jade Cargill and her 38-match win streak. Prince Nana's Embassy will be in the house when The Gates of Agony come for FTR's ROH World Tag Team Championship, and PAC will make his second championship defense of the night when Trent Beretta comes for the All-Atlantic Championship! This second hour of AEW action comes your way immediately following RAMPAGE, 11pm ET/10pm CT, and fans can prepare for all the action by visiting the official AEW YouTube channel for Dynamite highlights, Dark: Elevation, AEW Dark, Road To, and this week's Control Center with Tony Schiavone!

RAMPAGE

AEW WORLD TRIOS CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH...

Death Triangle (PAC, Penta El Zero Miedo, & Rey Fenix)(c) vs. The Dark Order (Alex Reynolds, John Silver, & Ten)

On the road to ALL OUT 2022 and the AEW World Trios Tournament Finals, one man was robbed of his opportunity to fight for championship success, forced to sit on the sidelines thanks to injury, while another stepped up in his place to try and become the first-ever AEW World Trios Champions. That man was The Dark Order's Ten and it was an injury sustained during The Dark Order's Trios Tournament victory at RAMPAGE on August 26th that necessitated he watch as Alex, John, and Hangman Page became the unit fighting for the titles.

Unfortunately they were not successful in their bid to be the first, but now opportunity has arisen once again for Ten, as on the anniversary of Mr. Brodie Lee's final match, he, Alex Reynolds, and John Silver will get the opportunity their trio was denied as Friday night on RAMPAGE, it will be The Dark Order versus Death Triangle with the AEW World Trios Championships on the line!

This particular Dark Order trio has won their last three matches together, they're 11-1 overall in the division, and are only second to the Gunn Club in terms of both trios matches and trios victories. They are one of the most formidable units in All Elite Wrestling, but they are running head-up with PAC, Penta, and Fenix, whose only desire is to dominate in Trios action at the expense of every foe standing in their way. They defeated The Best Friends to claim the vacant Trios Championship the 9/7 edition of DYNAMITE, and are not about to let them slip away in their very first defense, not even to one of AEW's most successful trios units. In addition to that, “The Bastard” certainly does not want to lose his ability to lay claim to being the only double-champ in AEW's history, although given he's defending both his titles on Friday night, that could still happen during BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV.

But for The Dark Order, this is a fight with multiple motivations: it's a chance to make-up for the opportunity Ten was robbed of weeks ago, it's an opportunity to pay tribute to the memory of the man who brought them all together and helped each Dark Order member find themselves, and a night to finally achieve the potential The Dark Order has shown over the last three years. They have all the tools to dominate the Trios division, will Friday night in Washington D.C. be the night it all begins again? Or will The Death Triangle once again doom anyone who steps into their ring?

TAG TEAM CHALLENGE...

Madison Rayne & Skye Blue vs. Anna Jay A.S. & Tay Melo

Chris Jericho's mission of pitting “sports entertainers” versus professional wrestlers has made it's way to the women's division as Anna Jay A.S. And Tay Melo have taken up issue with Madison Rayne and Skye Blue simply for existing in the same world as them. The team of Anna and Tay, would would now be TayJayA.S., have proven quite a successful duo in the past with their 9-1 record in AEW, and eight consecutive victories at that, but it has been nine months since their last outing as a duo.

On the other side of the ring though, Madison Rayne and Skye Blue are teaming up for the very first time, so they may not have that continuity like Anna and Melo, but what they do have is a hunger to shut the mouths of the braggadocious ladies representing The Jericho Appreciation Society. Can the nascent duo overcome their tag team experience disadvantage, perhaps using the wrestling experience Madison has over all of them combined, and score a victory for the pro wrestlers of the world?

TAG TEAM BOUT...

Varsity Blonds (Brian Pillman Jr & Griff Garrison) vs. Josh Woods & Tony Nese

It's been a few weeks since we last saw the Varsity Blonds in action, defeating Dean Alexander and Rosario Grillo on the 8/30 edition of DARK, but they are back in the house this Friday night on RAMPAGE with eyes on returning to the tag team championship hunt!

But in order to begin that journey anew, Pillman and Griff have a tremendous task ahead of them, defeating the duo of Tony Nese and Josh Woods, two men who can only be described as wrestling machines. Hard-hitting strikers, top shelf grapplers, and one annoying mouthpiece leading them to the ring, Nese and Woods have demonstrated their tag team skills against many an opponent, but keep hitting that wall when faced with foes like Wardlow, Samoa Joe, and Swerve in Our Glory. They too need a string of solid victories to get into championship contention and take a stab at The Acclaimed's titles.

Will it be the returning Blonds or the grappling duo of Nese & Woods who pick up the victory this Friday night in D.C.?

TRIOS BATTLE...

Claudio Castagnoli, Jon Moxley, & Wheeler Yuta vs. Isaiah Kassidy, Marq Quen, & Rush

It has clearly been a rough road for Private Party since they chose the A in AHFO over the H, and as evidenced by the video above, it's brought Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen to the point where they're almost held hostage by their contractual obligations. Jose the Assistant and Rush made it quite clear how willing they were to pursue legal means if Kassidy and Quen didn't abide by their demands, so they made an appearance after Rush's loss to Hangman Page, albeit one cut-off at the pass by AEW World Champion Jon Moxley's arrival on the scene. So Private Party did as ordered, it's not their fault they were prevented from committing some kind of assault on Hangman, but it's doubtful Rush and Jose The Assistant will see it that way. Yet, in spite of these tensions, the trio has to find a way to co-exist as they enter into a fight with the most-battle hungry unit in all of AEW, The Blackpool Combat Club!

Former ROH World Champion Claudio Castagnoli, former ROH Pure Champion Wheeler Yuta, and the 3-Time AEW World Champion Jon Moxley will unite as a trio for the very first time this Friday on RAMPAGE, and you know they are all ready for a fight! They are on the same page, they have similar perspectives on handling their business, and none of them are being held hostage by the contractual obligations to one another. This is a collective of men who all love the sport of pro wrestling, who each approach it from a different method, but who all respect one another for what they bring to the table. The BCC and The AFO could not be further apart from one another; will the cracks in the foundation finally cause the house Andrade built to crumble? Or can Private Party and Rush somehow co-exist to achieve victory? However this goes, that trio is in store for a Friday Night Fight when they face down The BCC!

BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV

AEW ALL-ATLANTIC CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH...

PAC(c) vs. Trent Beretta

It's been almost three years since their first and only singles match, but this Friday night during BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV, “The Bastard” PAC and Trent Beretta will collide once again, this time with the All-Atlantic Championship on the line!

See their first match was just that, a wrestling match, albeit one that ended rather brutally as PAC applied his signature submission to Trent after crushing him with The Black Arrow, but it was not a bout born of bad blood, not like this one.

Now this fight may be about the All-Atlantic Champions, but it is also about the history of The Best Friends and Death Triangle, it is about how “The Bastard” lived up to his name when he battled Orange Cassidy at DYNAMITE: GRAND SLAM 2022, and the depths to which he stooped to maintain a stranglehold on said championship.

This Friday night is about friends and family, and Trent stepping up to the plate to take one of the two championships PAC cherishes away from him. Those two championships beg the question of what shape “The Bastard” will be in heading into this with with Beretta after defending the AEW World Trios Championships against The Dark Order during the RAMPAGE half of Friday night's AEW broadcast? This fact may prove crucial to Trent Beretta overcoming the kind of vicious assault usually perpetrated by “The Bastard”...

TBS Championship Match

Jade Cargill(c) vs. Willow Nightingale

On Wednesday night's DYNAMITE, Willow Nightingale scored a huge victory when she pinned Penelope Ford to give her Trios unit the win. It marked the a huge moment for Nightingale's AEW journey as she scored her first televised victory after picking up wins on DARK and DARK:ELEVATION during the last year. Willow's excitement was infectious, as evident in her interview above with Tony Schiavone, and that exuberance led her to issue a challenge to TBS Champion Jade Cargill for this fight at BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV.

Now Cargill, still undefeated at 38-0, beat Willow in a previous TBS Championship match on the June 17th edition of RAMPAGE, in tag team action at DYNAMITE on July 20th, and even in trios competition back on April 29th's RAMPAGE. But while this fact makes Cargill supremely confident that she'll just rinse and repeat on Friday night, it does not deter Nightingale from taking another crack at claiming the TBS Championship for herself. As Willow said to Jade, no one can win forever and what if it is Willow who's the one to put the first one in Cargill's loss column? That's a career defining moment, a headline making moment, and well worth the risk of ending up as Jade's 13th successful championship defense.

Nightingale is not afraid to take the risk, and the look on Jade's face at the end of that interview showed that the defending champion was not expecting Willow to step to her like that. Did it shake the champ enough to finally make her slip up on Friday night? With 275 days as champion under her belt already, will Jade see another or will Willow be the one to launch a new era for the TBS Championship?

ROH World Tag Team Championship Match

FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood)(c) vs. The Gates of Agony (Kaun & Toa Liona)

Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood have reigned as ROH World Tag Team Champions since April 1st when they beat Jay & Mark Briscoe at ROH's SUPERCARD OF HONOR 2022 event in one of the best tag team matches in recent memory. Since that day six months ago, FTR has continued to elevate tag team wrestling with each of their four successful championship defenses. Just five days after capturing the belts, they defeated The Young Bucks in a bout where both the AAA and ROH Tag Team Championships were on the line, and then they'd go on to beat both United Empire and Roppongi Vice in a match with both the ROH and IWGP Tag Team Championships on the line.

As if those bouts weren't enough to make their case as the best tag team going today, Cash and Dax would again beat The Briscoes in a 2 Of 3 Falls rematch at ROH's DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR 2022 event that went nearly forty-five minutes. Time after time, Cash and Dax have stepped up to the plate whenever their number is called, and each time they've brought the best out in their foes. Now come Friday night, during BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV, a new team will have a chance to test the mettle of FTR.

Enter The Gates of Agony, Kaun and Toa Liona, representing The Embassy and led to the fight by Prince Nana. The Gates are two monstrous men, frightening powerhouses, who united with Brian Cage to decimate Alex Zayne, Blake Christian, & Tony Deppen at DBD '22: ZERO HOUR, and represent a whole new kind of threat to the ROH championship reign of FTR. The fact they are under the guidance of Prince Nana only adds to the trouble Kaun and Toa represent to Dax and Cash as the Ghanaian prince has represented some truly elite athletes in his day. Starting his career as a wrestler, Nana is quite familiar with the ins-and-outs of the squared circle, and when he decided to apply that knowledge to running The Embassy, he helped shape the careers of many competitors throughout ROH's history.

Now he aims to do the same for his newest Embassy acquisitions, and lead The Gates of Agony to the promised land of the ROH World Tag Team Championships! Can Kaun and Toa Liona find the key to doing what The Young Bucks, The Briscoes, Roppongi Vice, and United Empire could not do before them? Will Prince Nana offer that extra edge, or extracurricular assistance, that the other teams did not? Tune into to BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV to see if new champions will be crowned!

Two events, seven matches, and four championship bouts; that's what is in store for the AEW faithful this Friday night when both RAMPAGE and BATTLE OF THE BELTS IV are live on TNT beginning at 10:00pm ET/9:00pm CT on TNT, as well as at AEWPlus.com for our international audiences! It's a totally loaded Friday night for AEW fans, featuring PAC making AEW history by defending two championships in one night, Jade Cargill looking to extend her unbeaten streak, FTR defending their ROH World Tag Championships, The Blackpool Combat Club in Trios action, and more!

Be prepared for the action with a trip to the official AEW YouTube channel with Dynamite highlights, Dark: Elevation, AEW Dark, Road To, and this week's Control Center with Tony Schiavone