One match that went under the radar at AEW Full Gear was Tay Conti vs Britt Baker. Tay Conti was vying to be the new AEW Women’s Champion, and attempting to end Britt Baker’s reign as champion.
Dr Britt Baker, DMD, has been champion since May, when she won the championship from former champion Hikaru Shida. She was the most popular woman in AEW, and fans were getting excited to see her finally win the big one.
However, her reign has not been the best so far. It has not been awful, but not all the matches have been hits. The addition of Jamie Hayter Baker’s posse also has meant more interference and screwy finishes. With the women’s division starting to gain steam, more clean finishes are needed to establish her as a great champion.
Ideally, it would’ve been a clean finish in favour of the Brazilian star Tay Conti. Conti is a star, and should be the women’s champion. Some could argue that now is not the time, but no one can say that she doesn’t have what it takes to be the champion one day in the near future.
Tay Conti as AEW Champion
AEW boss Tony Khan has been high on Tay Conti even before she signed for the promotion. He spoke on the AEW Unrestricted Podcast about how shocked he was when he heard about Conti’s release from WWE.
Tay Conti is another great example of somebody who had been fired by WWE, and I thought was one of the top prospects in wrestling. I was really surprised.
Tony Khan on Tay Conti, AEW Unrestricted
Khan brought Tay Conti into AEW after her release from WWE in 2019. After just a few months, her improvement in ring was shocking.
Nobody has improved faster in the ring than Tay Conti. In NXT, she seemed lost and sloppy in the ring, with a generic style that was not distinct from anybody lese.
In AEW, she has developed her own style based on her background in judo. Dubbed “Shikira meets Shibata” by some fans, based on her Latin American heritage and fondness for the hard hitting style of Japanese wrestler Katsuyori Shibata.
She has grown leaps and bounds in the ring. And that was obvious when it came to her bout with Dr Britt Baker at AEW Full Gear.
Tay Conti vs Britt Baker
Tay Conti put in the performance of a lifetime when she took on Britt Baker at AEW in a bid to become the new AEW Women’s Champion. She dominated the Champion, expanding her move set with a number of brutal looking moves.
She hit Baker with a series of painful looking knees and kicks. She used her Judo background to perform a number of arm drags and such moves to take the champion down.
She added a Gotch-style piledriver to her repoetoir, getting a near fall in the middle of the ring. She even performed a moonsault from the top rope to the outside, taking out Baker and her lackeys, Rebel and Jamie Hayter.
Shockingly, after physically dominating the champion, and with her fierce new look with braided hair and Brazilian-coloured face paint, Conti lost the match to a shock roll up from Britt Baker.
“Even When I Lose, I Win”
It was an injustice, in my opinion. She hit Baker with a varied arsenal and looked like she could have gone another 10 minutes on top of the 15 minutes she had already wrestled. But Baker left the arena with the title, and Conti will slip down the rankings.
It’s obvious that Baker will not lose the championship until she has her rematch with Thunder Rosa. Their Lights Out match last year was one of the best AEW matches of all time, and the rematch for the championship will surely be just as good.
Thunder Rosa is even likely to beat Baker for the championship. She is a former NWA Woman’s Champion, and one of the best wrestlers in AEW, male or female. She has huge potential to be a main event talent in AEW, and can help take the women’s division even further.
But after that? That Championship is Tay Conti’s. The Brilliant Brazilian will be a future AEW Women’s champion, I have no doubt in my mind. Tay Conti as AEW Women’s Champion is the future of AEW, and she will only improve in the ring as the years go by.
Conti had an upbeat reaction to losing at Full Gear. She reflected on her loss, and vowed that it was not the end of her pursuit. She will rise to the top one day, and I think that one day will be soon.
Even when I lose, I win. I had to fail so many times to be where I’m today, yesterday I didn’t fail, I learned. I’ll keep going as I always do, that’s what brought me here and I’m not stopping. To the top I go
Tay Conti, on her loss to Britt Baker at AEW Dynamite
