At the risk of sounding like a broken record like I’m sure so many of us do when it comes to talking about the women’s division in AEW, Tony Khan just really isn’t good at booking the ladies. While there was a tag team match pitting AEW Women’s World Champion Toni Storm and Mariah May against Saraya and Harley Cameron, which got a decent amount of time on the show, I’m surprised and disheartened that what I would consider the bigger women’s championship match had no presence outside of a video package on the go-home “Dynamite” to the pay-per-view. Of course, by that, I mean TBS Champion Willow Nightingale taking on Mercedes Mone, who will be making her long awaited in-ring debut at Double or Nothing.

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I think AEW’s first mistake was bringing Mone on to television well before she was seemingly cleared, but that aside, I think they showed their hand too soon when it came to their rivalry going in to the match on Sunday. Their contract signing segment was last week, which culminated in the line I was waiting for from Nightingale, telling Mone, “I walked out of NJPW a champion, and you didn’t walk out at all.” The line? Straight fire. What Nightingale did next was even better, putting Mone through a table after eating a slap from “The CEO.” That entire segment was great, and I’m not even a big fan of contract signings, but this week? Nothing outside of a video package. While I did like that AEW used footage from Nightingale and Mone’s NJPW STRONG Women’s Championship match, the entire thing felt weak compared to everything else on the show. Everyone has been waiting over a year for Mone to wrestle in AEW, and you’re going to relegate her to “Rampage” before her very first match? Mone didn’t even make a backstage appearance or even have a video segment of her own, cutting a promo on the champion. From what we’ve seen of the former “Boss” turned “CEO,” that really seems unlike her character, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.

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I don’t know if Khan thought that maybe there were too many big angles on the show, from the “blood” being dropped from the ceiling on Malakai Black, to the return of Prince Nana and the parking lot brawl between AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland and Christian Cage, or heck, even Darby Allin coming out of the back with a freaking flame thrower, but I think a more simple, yet effective angle of Nightingale putting Mone through the table this week would have fit right in with the chaos.

Yes, Storm is having a championship match for the “main” women’s belt on Double or Nothing, but Mone is the highlight of the women’s division, along with her history with Nightingale. I think many fans are looking forward to, or even just expecting, the former Sasha Banks to win her first shot at gold in WWE’s biggest competitor, so it really does feel like the bigger women’s match on the card. To me, it’s such a shame that the contract signing between these two women was pushed back to last week, rather than being held on a much bigger show Wednesday night.

Written by Daisy Ruth