{"id":113278,"date":"2022-05-03T15:13:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T19:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=113278"},"modified":"2022-05-03T15:13:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T19:13:41","slug":"aew-dark-leon-ruffin-debuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2022\/05\/03\/aew-dark-leon-ruffin-debuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: AEW Dark (5\/3\/22) &#8211; Leon Ruffin Makes AEW Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight&#8217;s episode of <strong><em>AEW Dark<\/em><\/strong> is stacked with nine total matches announced. <strong>Toni Storm<\/strong> looks to remain undefeated in AEW as she faces <strong>Diamante<\/strong>, who has not lost a singles match since July of 2021. <strong>Dante Martin<\/strong> faces a familiar foe in <strong>Invictus Khash<\/strong>, but this time, they collide in singles action. Our focus on tonight&#8217;s <em>AEW Dark<\/em> will be on <strong>Tony Nese<\/strong>, fresh off spoiling the debut of <strong>Cheeseburger<\/strong>, looking to do the same against the debuting <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/11\/11\/andnew-leon-ruff-nxt-north-american-championship\/\" target=\"_self\">former NXT North American Champion<\/a> <strong>Leon Ruffin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Full AEW Dark Card (5\/3\/22)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Jacey Love vs. Julia Hart<\/li>\n<li>Angelico vs. Yuya Uemura<\/li>\n<li>Dante Martin vs. Invictus Khash<\/li>\n<li>Lord Crewe vs. Shawn Spears<\/li>\n<li>The Wingmen&#8217;s Ryan Nemeth vs. Dark Order&#8217;s John Silver<\/li>\n<li>Powerhouse Hobbs and Ricky Starks vs. Terry Yaki and Jay Lucas<\/li>\n<li>Varsity Blonds vs. The Workhorsemen<\/li>\n<li>Tony Nese vs. Leon Ruffin<\/li>\n<li>Toni Storm vs. Diamante<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Shining light in a dark place. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AEWDark?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#AEWDark<\/a>  this is the start! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QZ58wH4oq6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/QZ58wH4oq6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; LEONRUFFIN (@LEONRUFF_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LEONRUFF_\/status\/1521243820817592322?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 2, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Leon Ruffin Makes AEW Debut<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Leon Ruffin looks to make a big impression in his AEW debut on <em>Dark<\/em>. Unfortunately, for him, he will be facing Tony Nese, who has been riding a wave of momentum since joining up with <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/08\/22\/smart-mark-sterling-aew-mjfs-lawyer\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>Mark Sterling<\/strong><\/a>. Nese is coming off a great showing against the debuting Cheeseburger on <em>Dark: Elevation<\/em>. Not to mention, as I&#8217;ve stated before, Nese has been quietly dominant in his AEW career, with only two losses on his record.<\/p>\n<p>However, if Ruffin has shown anything in his career, it&#8217;s to never count him out of a fight. He shocked the world when he defeated <strong>Johnny Gargano<\/strong> for the NXT North American Championship; he could easily pull out the upset over Nese. This is one of the tougher match-ups to call, but I give Nese the edge. It will be a great match no matter the outcome, and this will not be the last time we see Leon Ruffin in an AEW ring.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world. As well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.\u00a0 You can catch AEW Dynamite Wednesday nights at 8 PM ET on TBS and AEW Dark: Elevation (Monday nights) and AEW: Dark (Tuesday nights) at 7 PM ET on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCFN4JkGP_bVhAdBsoV9xftA\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a>. AEW Rampage airs on TNT at 10 PM EST every Friday night.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tonight&#8217;s episode of AEW Dark is stacked with nine total matches announced. Toni Storm looks to remain undefeated in AEW as she faces Diamante, who has not lost a singles match since July of 2021. Dante Martin faces a familiar foe in Invictus Khash, but this time, they collide in singles action. Our focus on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3049,"featured_media":113286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4677,6,2192],"tags":[5729,6983,5355,1369,8080,4669,598,425,7817,6568],"class_list":["post-113278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aew","category-north-america","category-wrestling","tag-aew-dark","tag-dante-martin","tag-dark-order","tag-diamante","tag-leon-ruffin","tag-shawn-spears","tag-toni-storm","tag-tony-nese","tag-varsity-blonds","tag-workhorsemen"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3049"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}