Who Should Join The Blackpool Combat Club?

In this edition of The Wrestling Estate roundtable, we name our top choices to join the Blackpool Combat Club.

Chad Gelfand

Lee Moriarty

Moriarty was one of the original names along with Wheeler Yuta that Bryan Danielson mentioned when he floated the idea of forming the Blackpool Combat Club with Moxley. Moriarty has a lot of talent and wrestles a highly technical style, so adding him sounds like it would be the perfect fit.

Anthony Ogogo

Ogogo hasn’t been seen on AEW TV much since his disastrous feud with Cody Rhodes, but joining the Blackpool Combat Club would be just the type of refresh Ogogo could use. The legitimate Olympic boxing background would help Ogogo fit in and give the group a striker to go along with all of the elite grapplers.

Cesaro

The former Cesaro has a history with William Regal, Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley, so a reunion with all three just makes sense. Moxley, Regal, Danielson and Cesaro teaching a younger generation how to be killers in the ring would make for excellent television.

John Corrigan

Scorpio Sky

Although Dan Lambert is a highlight of AEW Dynamite, he hasn’t necessarily helped Scorpio Sky advance his career. Now that he’s lost the TNT Championship, perhaps it’s time for Lambert and Ethan Page to ditch Sky, who gets saved by the Blackpool Combat Club. Regal and Lambert in dueling promos would be hilarious.

Serena Deeb

“The Professor” is a natural for Regal’s crew and it can finally get her away from Hikaru Shida.

Tony Nese

This guy needs something. He has all the tools in the ring except a personality. I’m not sure Regal, Danielson and Moxley can bring that out of him, but at least he can be camouflaged by theirs.

Jack Goodwillie

Anthony Ogogogogogogogogogo

Before I get on with my list, a couple things I want to get out of the way that I haven’t really talked about with The Wrestling Estate or are newer wrestling concepts. First, I’m not sure if the Blackpool Combat Club NEEDS any new members. As I look up and down the AEW roster, three out of every four wrestlers or something like that are associated with factions. That’s WAY too many and the turnover of factions breaking up and forming isn’t really enough to justify it. That said, WWE has too few, at least as far as one it’s invested in.

I’m also against the idea of joint-gender factions on wrestling shows because what we see so often is a woman being a member of a faction dominated by males and essentially breaking off with their own program anyway, totally independent from what their male counterparts are doing. We saw this with Nikki Cross and Sanity, and to a lesser extent Mia Yim and Mercedes Martinez in Retribution.

Leyla Hirsch seems like a good fit for the stable on paper, but unless she’s going to be heavily featured in angles and to a lesser extent promos, I don’t see a need to mix genders in factions UNLESS you’re running an intergender promotion which isn’t really my cup of tea, either.

Now then…Anthony Ogogo. The Factory has sort of taken a backseat to some of Q.T.’s antics in 2022, and I’d like to see that change because the underlings are a talented bunch. You could probably make a case for Regal attempting to steal Solo, Ogogo AND Comoroto away from Q.T., only for Q.T. to retaliate by bringing up three new members of the school to fight them.

But if I were to pick just one, Ogogo would be the guy. All three have reasonably high ceilings, but being English himself, Ogogo might stand to benefit the most from working with Regal. We know he can fight, and that makes him an instant fit. It’s everything else that he can stand to improve in, and if he can, he could have his very own Wheeler Yuta moment in the not-too-distant future.

Brian Pillman Jr.

Pillman and his tag team partner Griff Garrison have begun to distance themselves from Julia Hart in recent weeks following their experience with the House of Black, but I don’t think they’re long for tagging together either. In fact, it’s entirely possible that they peaked when they took the Young Bucks to the limit on Dynamite, and that was almost a year ago now.

When the time comes to split them, even though the Blackpool Combat Club are more of a tweener faction, I can see Pillman being the one to turn solely because of the upside he still brings to the table. Every stable can use a second-generation talent and the contrast between the no-nonsense demeanor of the stable and Pillman being this affable, happy-go-lucky babyface would make for good television and be the perfect vehicle for him to break off into a singles role one day.

Santana & Ortiz

Miro can make a lot of sense, and ultimately Cesaro, most likely coming in as Claudio Castagnoli, is going to end up in the group. However, Miro has shown he can stand on his own just fine and the question was who on the AEW roster would make sense for the Blackpool Combat Club. With all of that said, the group could be just the thing for Santana & Ortiz to revitalize themselves away from the hokiness of 2022 Chris Jericho.

At their core, the duo are proud fighters who embrace their Puerto Rican heritage, and that seems to be the mold Blackpool Combat Club is looking for. The departure from the Inner Circle is the key. Some might say they can do without being part of a stable for a while, but if Moxley and Danielson are going to operate as a two-headed dragon (pardon the pun) in singles action, then the stable can probably use a tag team to hitch its wagon to. If Santana & Ortiz are on their way out in AEW, obviously this is moot.