We talked about it earlier this week that Junior dos Santos was weighing his combat sports options but in the meantime, he was set to make his professional wrestling debut as a part of the Dan Lambert angle the All Elite Wrestling promotion is using.
Dan Lambert has been poking and prodding wrestling legend, Chris Jericho with well-dispersed trash talk and last night it came to a head as he had one of his own in dos Santos go into the ring and defend American Top Team’s honor.
As expected, they didn’t ask him to do a whole lot when he got in the ring, and putting him in initially with someone like Jericho makes sense as he is a seasoned enough veteran to carry and protect Cigano.
Junior dos Santos’ first moments as a pro wrestler pic.twitter.com/KIhpYZOsCi
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) October 16, 2021
Junior Dos Santos would get some help from other American Top Team members such as Paige Van Zant and Jorge Masvidal, both making sense to get involved given their strong following and with Masvidal coming off a huge fight announcement this week.
.@IAmJericho gets in the face of Jorge Masvidal (@GamebredFighter) and @OfficialEGO takes advantage – Tune in NOW for #AEWRampage LIVE on @tntdrama pic.twitter.com/8MmLKjyWW9
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) October 16, 2021
Getting back to dos Santos though, he would be able to stay away from much of the heavy action due to the “chaos” of the six-man tag matchup and Lambert utilizing the American Top Team fighters as distractions, as seen above. Where things got interesting though was when the current Bellator heavyweight, and Chris Jericho stablemate, Jake Hager had a fun interaction with Junior dos Santos.
dos Santos was going back and forth with Hager and had him on his shoulders to put through a table but as you can see below, things changed rather quickly.
.@RealJakeHager sends @junior_cigano through a table! This main event is WILD – Tune in NOW for #AEWRampage LIVE on @tntdrama pic.twitter.com/uhVANBNON3
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) October 16, 2021
Now of course leave it to Marc Raimondi for putting an MMA spin on things but a matchup between these two would be absolutely brutal to watch. Hager still has so much developing to do, if he can, and dos Santos is on to bigger and better things.
Bottom line though, dos Santos was very green but we’ve have seen way worse debuts from athletes in other sports.
Yes, I am looking at you, Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone.
Regardless of what happens next for dos Santos, MMA Sucka and all of the MMA world will be following closely as everyone has come to love Cigano as he has grown up in his career.
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