The neon lights couldn't hide the booking blunders
Stardom rolled into the Horseshoe Las Vegas yesterday for the second annual American Dream show. It was part of the inaugural Slam Palm Fest, but the execution felt more like a frantic rehearsal than a marquee event. When you plant your flag in Vegas, the expectation for a high-octane production is standard.
Instead, the card felt disjointed. Stardom has built a reputation on high-speed, technical precision, but this show struggled to leave the loading dock. Watching the broadcast on TrillerTV, the transition between the joshi style and the American independent influence felt jarring rather than experimental.
The Babes of Wrath angle needs a rewrite
The main event featured the Babes of Wrath, the AEW powerhouse group, but the six-woman tag match was a struggle to follow. It was booked as a splashy collaborative effort, yet the ring psychology vanished by the five-minute mark. You cannot toss high-level talents into a main event without a clear narrative thread.
This is the same promotion that just saw Stardom American Dream results hit the wire, yet the social chatter is surprisingly quiet. Silence in the industry is often louder than boos. If you are going to draw from the AEW roster, you have to do more than just book the talent; you have to justify the crossover.
The pacing was the real killer here. We had long stretches of standing around while teams tagged in and out, ignoring the natural flow of a main-event showcase. It lacked the intensity that made their Japanese shows must-watch television last year. Wrestling is about momentum, and this show kept slamming on the brakes at every turn.
The Slam Palm Fest experiment is a head-scratcher
Attaching this event to the broader Slam Palm Fest likely looked good on a spreadsheet. In practice, the Horseshoe Las Vegas venue felt oddly muted for a show with this much pedigree. Maybe the crowd was burned out by the festival atmosphere, or maybe the card depth simply wasn't there.
We have WrestleMania 41 looming just one day away on April 19, 2026. The timing was always going to make the industry press difficult, but Stardom did themselves no favors by offering such a pedestrian product. If you want to grab the spotlight in the biggest wrestling week of the year, you need more than just names on a poster.
The finish of the main event didn't ignite the arena, resulting in a hollow ending that left the capacity crowd confused. A main event should send the fans home buzzed, not frantically checking their phones. The promotion needs to reassess its strategy for the US market before they start losing the hardcore fanbase they spent years cultivating.
I have seen better work put together at regional armory shows. Stardom has the best talent in the world, yet the booking decisions yesterday felt like they were actively working against the wrestlers' strengths. The final tally of the night: 4 out of 10 for effort, but 1 out of 10 for coherent storytelling.
Maybe they will find their footing at the next crossover event, but yesterday was a stumble. Stardom is better than this. They need to stop looking at the US market as a side quest and start treating it like a serious booking objective. As it stands, this was a forgettable footnote in a busy week of wrestling.
