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 NothingThe state of the AEW women's divisionWhy Ruby Soho, Toni Storm, Kris Statlander, and Jamie Hayter were better options to win the tournamentAdam 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, ...
