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Did AEW miss an opportunity with Britt Baker winning the women's Owen Hart Cup?

You can listen above or via your favorite podcast app or read the show notes below. The main highlights are also available via the transcript below.

Show Notes

• Renee Paquette's reaction to Britt Baker winning the women's Owen Hart Cup at Double or Nothing
• The state of the AEW women's division
• Why Ruby Soho, Toni Storm, Kris Statlander, and Jamie Hayter were better options to win the tournament
• Adam Cole's injury status

For more AEW discussion, you can follow me on Twitter @wrestleblake.

Transcript

We're back here with thoughts on a couple of AEW topics, and we start off with a notable topic that I know was a bit more notable coming out of Double or Nothing and the Owen Hart Cup.

Did AEW get the winners, right?

A lot of people had thoughts on Adam Cole winning the men's side and Britt Baker winning the women's side of the Owen Hart Cup. In this episode, we're gonna focus specifically on the latter part of that with Britt Baker because Renee Paquette, who on latest episode of The Sessions, said something that I think a lot of people agree with.

Here's what she had to say: "I think when Tony Storm didn't go over Britt on their way to the tournament, and then to have Ruby also lose, it would have been nice to have one of those women in that spot. Like I'm saying, Britt is fucking great. There's no denying that. I think she's fantastic. I think she's head and shoulders at the top of that division. But to spread some of that love around as they're bulking up that division. These women are stars. Tony storm is a star, Ruby Soho is a star. She's amazing. Kris Statlander is on her way up as well."

So that was Renee's quote. I think if you asked a lot of different people, and you saw this on social media, that quote is not unlike what I think became the popular opinion for people coming out of the Owen Hart Cup. Could you use it to sort of catapult someone into that upper echelon of the AEW women's division?

You could have certainly made the same argument on the men's side. I didn't have as big of a problem with Adam Cole winning the men's side. Baker winning the women's side, I think it was a little bit of a different situation.

The thing with AEW's women's division is this. It's been a hot topic since the company started. It didn't get off to the best of starts in terms of just the overall depth of the roster, and now, you are starting to add some depth. When you actually pull up the roster page now for the AEW women's division, you see a lot of potential. It's not just that small group anymore that you had for a while there where it seemed like they were filtering in the same people in and out.

Due to the WWE releases, you've had a lot of new people come into the company. Most recently, that's Athena. There have been others as well. Of course, Jade Cargill has come onto the scene and been a superstar for AEW thus far. You've had new additions elsewhere, whether it's someone like Jamie Hayter, or Mercedes Martinez comes in. You've got Paige VanZant kind of getting started there. We talked about Ruby Soho, Toni Storm - they're in that group. So you have a lot of different options.

That's why I think, doing it the way they did it, having Britt Baker win the tournament - there's no doubt Britt Baker is the top star in the AEW women's division. That could lead into a whole different conversation about how they're treating Baker versus their world champion Thunder Rosa.

But for the Owen Hart Cup, it is something where I think when you saw the visual after it was all over with, clearly, Tony Khan decided that he wanted to go the route of having Britt Baker and Adam Cole standing there with Martha Hart to sort of celebrate this big occasion. It was the first-ever tournament. But beyond that, beyond the visual, I think that there were a lot of other directions you could have gone to sell fans on someone else getting that spot and making this that launching point for them in the AEW women's division.

Now, that's not me taking anything away from Britt Baker.

Again, to me, she has clearly been the number one star in their division over the past however long now. She's been the biggest star in the division. She still is to this point. But I think that's where you have that opportunity, whether it is Toni Storm, as Renee Paquette said, getting the win over Baker in that semifinal match. Maybe that's the direction they should have gone. And then that could have set up a lot of different possibilities.

Maybe you throw someone like Jamie Hayter in there and do something with that where she gets that push forward because, I think I've said this from the start - Jamie Hayter clearly has all the potential to be a top star in the AEW women's division. Putting her with Britt Baker has certainly helped in terms of giving her that exposure. So maybe you do something there.

Maybe you just go the route of having Ruby Soho beat Baker in the finals. Or again, you could also talk about Kris Statlander, who got a huge ovation in that semifinal match against Ruby Soho. There are a lot of different directions you could have gone in to maybe give fans the sense that you were really pushing someone forward.

The issue perhaps is that immediately coming out and Double or Nothing, of course, they had the tag team match where Soho actually gets the pin on Baker, as though that's supposed to sort of make up for it. I don't think that works in this scenario. That's not of the same level - pinning someone on Dynamite - as this Owen Hart Cup that had been pushed for months and months and months. It's just a much different sell to fans.

So I don't really think it does a whole lot just for Ruby Soho to get a pin on Britt Baker in that manner because it didn't come in that one-on-one match with everything on the line with a shot at being the inaugural Owen Hart Cup winner.

It is something where to me it feels like a missed opportunity, where you could have gone a different direction and really established someone else in that division, even though there are a lot of women that are established now as really good competitors.

Athena coming in, she's going to be established. So are Hayter and Statlander. Nyla Rose has kind of been established and she has been there since the start. There are other options as well. Riho and Serena Deeb are in that group.

I could have gone probably with four different people aside from Britt Baker in this tournament. I could have made the case for Jamie Hayter to possibly win and then have a semifinal match there between Hayter and Baker. You can kind of go all the way with that if you think the timing is right, but clearly AEW did not think the timing was right to do that.

Or, again, you have Toni Storm beat Baker, take Storm to the finals, and maybe she wins the whole thing. The same for Ruby. I think those three plus Kris Statlander, who I think if I'm looking at it in the way they're setting it up right now, could be the person that will challenge Jade Cargill next.

Statlander is probably the person to take the TBS title off of Cargill. I don't see anyone else that I would probably put in that position right now. Statlander, with this new sort of character, this new edge, I think she's the one to put in that spot to do that.

That's where you could have her win the Owen Hart Cup to make her even more of a threat going into a potential match against Jade Cargill........