Chris Jericho held the 17th edition of his “Saturday Night Special” YouTube livestream tonight and made an announcement regarding AEW‘s upcoming women’s tag team tournament. Jericho announced that former WWE NXT performer Taynara Conti is working in the tournament alongside Anna Jay. Further, he announced their first match has already been taped. That match is against the team of Nyla Rose and Ariane Andrew, who also formerly worked for WWE and was featured in the Total Divas television series on the E! Network.
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“The women’s tag team tournament, I think you guys are really going to like it, we’re giving a lot of different people a chance,” Jericho said. “I was really surprised, there was a match Nyla Rose and Ariane Andrew against Taynara Conti and Anna Jay.”
He went on to give the match some high praise as well.
“Taynara, I’m not sure how many matches she just had, I know she was with NXT, and Ariane, we haven’t seen her in a few years now, Anna Jay’s super green, even Nyla’s fairly green, so I didn’t know what to expect,” explained Jericho. “I watched this match, and all four girls just kicked ass! It was really good, it was way better than I expected. I’m not saying that in a mean way either, they really impressed me, all of them!”
The eight team tournament will begin airing on the AEW YouTube channel this Monday, August 3rd. The tournament has been dubbed “The Deadly Draw” by AEW. The following rules have been announced for the tournament:
- Tournament is a random draw
- All competitors must draw a color
- Match colors will become a team
- Selections are final and cannot be appealed
We know six of the competitors out of the 16 that will be in the tournament now with tonight’s reveal by Jericho. They include: Conti, Andrew, Rose, Jay, Brandi Rhodes, and Allie. Monday’s show on YouTube may just be a tournament reveal with all of the pairings and the bracket released, or the company may begin airing matches or announce an air date schedule. That remains to be seen. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer has said on his Wrestling Observer Radio program that the entire tournament will be aired solely on YouTube with weekly releases on Mondays.
H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
