AEW World Women's Championship Eliminator Tournament: Show 1 Review - February 15, 2021

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Yuka Sakazaki def. Mei Suruga in an AEW World Women's Championship Eliminator Tournament First-Round Match

I'm not familiar with Suruga at all, but I remember Sakazaki from the appearances she made on Dynamite in 2019 and 2020. This set the tone for the rest of the first round matches in the Japan side of the bracket well as it was an entertaining outing with good showings from both ladies. I didn't have a strong preference to see either woman win, but Sakazaki made more sense just because she's already been somewhat established with the AEW audience.

Emi Sakura def. Veny in an AEW World Women's Championship Eliminator Tournament First-Round Match

Of everyone on this show, AEW fans are probably most familiar with Sakura as she made a ton of appearances early on for the promotion, most notably at Full Gear 2019 when she challenge Riho for the AEW World Women's Championship. The Freddie Mercury-inspired gimmick was channel-changing material for me, so I'm glad she ditched that here. This ended up being even better than the opener and was very well-paced. Again, Sakura is the bigger name of the two, so her advancing was the right call. She'll face Sakazaki in the next round.

Ryo Mizunami def. Maki Itoh in an AEW World Women's Championship Eliminator Tournament First-Round Match

Itoh had a lot of people talking coming into the tournament because of her social media activity and because of her response to what Jim Cornette had to say about her. The stuff she was tweeting about didn't exactly get me excited to see her in action, but she is as talented as everyone has been saying she is. Mizunami was good, too, but Itoh really impressed me as she stood out more than anyone else on the show in my opinion. I was honestly shocked she lost, but hopefully AEW took notice and she'll be used again by them at some point.

Aja Kong def. Rin Kadokura in an AEW World Women's Championship Eliminator Tournament First-Round Match

Kong is obviously a legend and you had to know she was going to be making it to at least the second round. She completely dominated Kadokura in the first few minutes, so I thought this would be a one-sided squash. Then, Kadokura scored some offense before eating defeat. In other words, it was well-structured and was a solid way to close out the first round for the Japan side of the bracket. Kong will now face Mizunami in the next round and I assume she'll be winning that, too.

Overall Show

There wasn't anyone in the crowd and there was no added crowd noise, but it didn't matter because the wrestling still delivered for the most part. Excalibur also did a great job on commentary of telling viewers about each competitor. I just wish AEW had put together a few video packages to offer additional information about everyone so viewers were a bit more familiar with them going in. Otherwise, the Japan side of the bracket is off to a solid start. It was also announced that the winner of the tournament will face AEW World Women's Champion Hikaru Shida at the Revolution pay-per-view on March 7.