Nyla Rose vs Max The Impaler

But first…

AEW Dark Elevation opens up with a video segment of Nyla Rose for Pride Month. She talks about the importance of representation and what it means to her to be a black indigenous trans woman on a national platform living her dream. Nyla stresses that while times aren’t changing as quickly as we’d like, they are changing. Nice.

I was glad this match started first because I was really looking forward to my first look at Max The Impaler in an AEW ring. Max has quite the look that even Nyla puts over at one point. Justin Roberts announces Max The Impaler as “Max the Impala-r”. I feel like they could’ve fixed that in post but oh well.

The match begins with neither competitor being able to inflict their physical will on the other. Nyla then resorts to her skill game using dodges and drop toeholds to get the advantage. Max turns the tide with some big body blocks but when trying to Irish Whip Nyla, once again the power game is a wash. Max finally does get the whip attempt which Nyla, again going to her technical wrestling skill, turns into a neck breaker. Nyla then picks up Max hoping she’s done enough damage to pull off the Beast Bomb but Max blocks and turns it into a Back Drop which is then followed up by a Spear. Max attempts another Spear on Nyla in the corner which she dodges and then hooks a leg to help bring Max up to the middle turnbuckle and then quickly maneuvers underneath to turn it into a Beast Bomb for the win.

Actually a good little match story told in under 2-minutes. Max The Impaler’s power game is indirectly put over as equal to Nyla’s but Nyla has the superior technical game, which is a nice wrinkle. For Max’s part, while they didn’t try anything very technical or complex, everything Max did looked strong. Again, Max has a great look like something directly out of Mad Max. I hope we see her back in an AEW ring soon!