AEW Star Fired! | WrestleTalk News

Because of all your wonderful generosity, raising £20,000 for the mental health charity CALM over WrestleMania weekend, I now have no eyebrows. Real nice of you, that. Now I can’t display emotion properly. Like right now. I’m really, really happy. 

But I’ve got a way round this. I’m not going to look like an idiot reading serious wrestling news. Ha, ha ha. Who’s the idiot now? Having to talk about someone losing their job. 

Ivelisse debuted for AEW at the first All Out pay-per-view in 2019, and would start wrestling on Dynamite in July the following year. She teamed with Diamante and even won the promotion’s Women’s Tag Team Cup Tournament – which never really led to anything. 

But last September she appeared to be building to a program with then NWA Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa. They had a very stiff looking championship match, where Ivelisse suddenly appeared to stop selling for Rosa’s offence – causing them to reportedly start shoot fighting in the ring.

Ivelisse continued to wrestle for AEW, mostly tagging with Diamante on Dark, last appearing on the 18th February episode. But she hasn’t been seen since, while Diamante has started to wrestle as a singles. And now we’ve found out why – that’s actually really satisfying to do, I get why he does it now – going by Ivelisse’s own now-deleted tweet. She’s been released by AEW.

“History repeats itself unfortunately. I speak up about mistreatment and get let go. Thats life.”

Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select is reporting that a couple of weeks ago, he reached out to Ivelisse, who confirmed she was still with the company. However, “talent had informed us prior to that they didn’t expect Ivelisse to return to AEW as she had well-known disagreements with agents backstage”, adding “As far back as March 20, Fightful was told by talent that Ivelisse likely would not remain with the company.”

Ivelisse herself sent a statement to Fightful Select, which alleges:

“I spoke up about mistreatment from a Coach, even to other women too, there were witnesses and I was the one suspended and left in limbo and just now let go, and nothing has been done at all the entire time about (Thunder Rosa) slandering my name the entire time in AEW and doing everything to sabotage my position there, I kept quiet, (Thunder Rosa) also has a history of getting involved with officials in order to get ahead which there was a lawsuit and everything in (Lucha Underground).”

She then continued to post about Rosa on Twitter:

“Nope, it was her being unprofessional, she had done the same thing in LU as well, and was unprofessional hurting my tag partner s jaw the next match and slandering my name the entire time at aew.”

Fightful Select also confirmed that “Ivelisse was said to have been in “limbo” for quite a while, but the official release came [yesterday].”

It’s very rare for AEW to release wrestlers, especially during the pandemic – with the only other names from the Dynamite era being Jimmy Havoc, Bea Priestly and Sadie Gibs. 

What do you make of the situation? Let me know in the comments because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NO HAIR.

Now I need to change my eyebrow expression to happy for this next story…

While AEW was last night, NXT took place on Tuesday in its new weekly slot, and the ratings for that episode are now in. And, unsurprisingly, they’re really good. It’s almost like the two shows should never have ran unopposed for a year and a half.

NXT drew an average of 805,000 viewers, which is great, but it’s the massive increase in the 18-49 demographic, almost doubling what they usually get. This is NXT’s best rating since Halloween Havoc last year. Remember, you can watch our new NXT podcast review on the WrestleTalk Podcast channel.

AEW Dynamite Review

I wasn’t that into last week’s show closing angle of the Young Bucks turning heel. I feel like we’d had this story beat already, with the Bucks yet again appearing conflicted over their pretty toxic friendship with Kenny Omega. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but for once, I didn’t want complex, psychologically torn characters. I just wanted some bad guys.

But, as always, trust in AEW: as they immediately got me back on board right at the start of the episode. The Bucks cut a super heel promo about bringing back the olllld Young Bucks, and then had an excellent pay-per-view calibre 20 minute match against Death Triangle where they did all the heel bits, complete with the Invisible Handjob Don Callis as their manager.

I love the Bucks as babyfaces, but they’ve been that for so long I’ve forgotten how their true prime state is heels. They were otherworldly here with facials, mannerisms, tactics. They worked the camera as much as the crowd. All while somehow making the most incredible, athletic, babyface offence obnoxiously heelish.

And their opponents were no slouches either, with PAC and Fenix frequently forgetting that gravity is a thing, and providing an excellent Black Arrow near fall. But Nick low blowed PAC and then tore of Fenix’s mask to get the win. The Bucks won. They’re dickheads. This is the best thing to happen to the AEW tag division since the FTR match at Full Gear.

And seeing the Super Elite all together, properly heeling it up in a car park promo later on made you even more excited for the biggest douchebags in wrestling. 

Which is the perfect antithesis to their former Elite buddy. The guy who thought he was the problem. Hangman Page dodged Marvez’s question backstage about the Elite being evil now.

Jade Cargill had a perfect match against Red Velvet, putting over Velvet’s babyface fire at the start, but quickly destroying her with strength. Cargill oozes charisma, and her booking emphasises big moves at a fast pace, hiding any potential inexperience. She’s female Goldberg. Girlberg.

On the men’s side of new exciting talent, The Governor Anthony Ogogo punched Cole Carter in the gut, leading to a referee stoppage in ten seconds – another fantastic piece of booking to build up a relatively green wrestler who used to be a boxer. Hide the inexperience by emphasising the strengths. It’s booking 101, but it’s so refreshing to see after watching another company that looks at a wrestler’s strengths and then goes, yeah, but let’s undermine all that in a 15 minute match against Elias on Raw.

Britt Baker is still working her way up the rankings. Miro cut a promo on how he hasn’t seen Kip Sabian since their Arcade Anarchy match, building a feud there.

And then we got another pay-per-view level match to start the second hour: Chris Jericho vs Dax Harwood with Mike Tyson as the special guest enforcer.

This was the perfect first match to blow off some of the Inner Circle vs Pinnacle steam, while still keeping so much for later. And while Tyson didn’t really do much, he undoubtedly elevated the significance of the bout, calling it right down the middle to further establish Jericho’s face turn.

The rest of the respective factions started warring at ringside, letting Tyson knock out Cash Wheeler and Jericho hit a Judas Elbow – it’s Judas Effective – to win. 

The right result, and both guys looked brilliant.

Thunder Rosa video package saying she wants both NWA and AEW women’s titles, which led into Kris Statlander getting a solid squash match victory over Amber Nova. Rosa, Statlander, Shida, Conti, Cargill, Velvet, Baker – AEW have finally built themselves an actual women’s division.

But then came my low key favourite thing on the show: Taz calling Christian Cage a s***bag. Although it was at that point when I realised Darby Allin vs Matt Hardy in a Falls Count Anywhere match was main eventing the show, and I started to fear for everyone’s lives.

Christian Cage got an in-ring interview with Tony Schivaone, which obviously involved the compulsory interruption from Team Taz. Christian said he’s not going to join them, while getting in a wonderful shot at Taz’s height – leading to Taz to say if he was standing on his wallet he’s be 3 foot taller, and that he never liked Christian’s friend, and that Christian shouldn’t be wearing orange and black. This was just the best possible version of angry ranty Taz.

Hobbs beat down Christian, setting up a match between them next week – where we’ll also get Shida vs Conti, Trent vs Penta and Starks vs Page. I doubt we’ll get another TNT title defence though. Because Darby and Hardy got out of hand fast. 

I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, Darby Allin. You killed the announcer’s table. You might want to lay low for a while.

Chairs, parkour on steel steps, the Butcher chucking a bin at Allin, and then all the faction warfare, with the Dark Order backing up Sting against the Hardy Family Office. This was chaos in a fun, coherent way. Even when Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page suddenly tried to beat up Sting, but Lance Archer made the save, kind of, so Sting could play baseball bat catch with his son Allin.

And underneath all this was a fun hardcore match, with Hardy actually making me belive he’d win a midcard title in 2021 with a leg drop off a ladder through a table.

But Allin topped that to retain, hitting a Coffin Drop off the trussing – apparently 20 feet in the air going by JR measures, coincidentally the same measures I use to size up my penis. Allin crashed Hardy through the announcer’s table – the first time the Dynamite desk has ever been used in a table spot!

What did you think of AEW Dynamite? Let me know in the comments below, and vote in our poll on a pole match on the community tab, where 72% decided to mourn the AEW announce table, May 2019 to April 2021.

This was a fantastic episode, with three incredible matches spaced evenly throughout the show, and a lot of work building up younger talent like Hobbs, Ogogo and Cargill. This week’s Dynamite is four out of five.

What are your thoughts on the above story? Let us know in the comments on Twitter or Facebook.

• Ivelisse
• AEW: Dynamite
• Thunder Rosa
• AEW

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