Review – AEW: Double or Nothing

This is my second foray into the world of AEW PPVs following last month’s Dynasty, and the fifth anniversary of what was their first ever show.  Five years in some things have changed and some have not.  The company is no longer the hot new thing on the street and is now going through a rough period while seemingly everyone else in the industry is doing better than have in a while.  Can this show be the start of a rebound?  Let’s see.

AEW International Title Match: Roderick Strong (c) vs Will Ospreay

Roddy was accompanied once again by Matt Taven and Mike Bennett.  This was a good choice to open the show, but it opened with a spot that belongs in the Doing Too Much Hall of Fame.  While the referee was distracted, Taven and Bennett hit a doomsday device on Ospreay outside the ring and Ospreay took a really nasty looking bump out on the floor. Having your best delivering signee of the year almost getting a serious injury on a match for a midcard title, when you clearly have much bigger things ahead in mind, is a choice for real. In between that foolishness and some unnecessary gaga at the end, Ospreay and Strong had the very quality of match you’d expect them to. I’d call this somewhere between good and very good, with all the interference dragging it down. There’s a time and place, and a right way, to do interference and this was not it.

Next up we get an Adam Cole promo which leads to the return of MJF!! MJF is badly needed back on AEW TV now more than ever, so it’s a good thing for the company that he’s back and is signed for the next few years at least. This ran a bit long but so does pretty much everything in AEW so it is what it is.

Six Man Tag Team Championship Match: The Bang Bang Gang (c) vs The Death Triangle

This was fine, and mainly served as a way to bring back Juice Robinson, who interfered to help his guys retain the titles. They could have done this on TV.

AEW Women’s World Championship: Toni Storm (c) vs Serena Deeb

The build to this match was a bit weird. Deeb had been off TV for some time with no explanation, then out of nowhere challenged Storm who accepted. Deeb has no history of being a title contender or any previous beefs with Storm, they just felt like they needed to get Toni on the card so Serena was the lucky recipient. They tried to add something to it with some promo segments and fights between the two but the end result was the crowd siding with Storm even though she’s the heel. And while that was going on Storm and her sidekick/protege Mariah May had a match with Deeb, and got into it with Saraya and her sidekick Harley Cameron which lead to a tag team match between Storm/May and Saraya/Cameron which had more buzz than anything that happened between Storm and Deeb. Yeah, that’s a lot.

As of the match itself, another good one. The biggest thing here was when Deeb had Storm trapped in a half Boston Crab and May was preparing to throw in the towel while Storm’s butler Luther tried to stop her. This is important because Storm threw in the towel during May’s match with Deeb a few weeks ago, so now we have a bone of contention between the two. That is once Storm finds out it was May and not Luther (who she blamed here) doing the deed. That drama was only a small portion of what was a very good match here. Sometimes even if there isn’t a lot of buzz to a match, the match can justify itself once it happens and I think that’s the case here.

Orange Cassidy vs Trent Baretta

These two just had a no DQ match on free television, so why are we running it back here in a regular ass match? Baretta gave Cassidy a piledriver on the ring apron, and that did it for me because Cassidy was back on his feet a few minutes later. And this is two weeks after Baretta did the same thing on the ring steps on Dynamite, which Cassidy got up from to win the match. Baretta would get Cassidy in a triangle choke, which Cassidy would roll through and hook his legs for the pin. Look, this was a good match and they showed the kind of energy you should for a blood feud kind of match. But that one move was ludicrous to do, especially after doing it worse two weeks ago. Sorry guys, I can’t get with taking piledrivers on ring aprons and stairs then being back up a few minutes later. And I fail to see the point in doing this match at all given that they already did one with the same winner on free television.

FTW Championship Match: Chris Jericho (c) vs Hook vs Shibata

Shibata is here to take the pin and we all know it. We got a bunch of weapons spots, and instead of the bag of thumbtacks there is a bag of dice (clever given the location but also likely just as painful), and then a triple stick fight face off where Shibata and Hook wail away on Jericho. Then in a ridiculously bad spot Shibata and Hook put Jericho across a table and spend what felt like 10 minutes on the turnbuckle setting up a death valley driver onto Jericho through the table (well, actually on the table which didn’t break). A few more minutes of this foolishness and then Big Bill comes out to help Jericho only to eat a suplex through a table on the outside….yikes. Hook and Shibata get submission holds on Jericho and then a third man comes out in a mask and nails Shibata with a trash can. Jericho knocks Hook out of the ring and covers Shibata for the pin. The man in the mask is Bryan Keith, which….ok, good for him. Seriously Keith is somebody who might actually benefit from the association with Jericho so that’s cool. This was better than the Hook/Jericho match at Dynasty for sure.

Eliminator Match: Jon Moxley vs Takeshita

This was a good, stiff, hard hitting match. Moxley spent the match selling his injured arm and did a good job IMO. Takeshita is really good, but is an unfortunate victim of booking who could stand to be liberated from the company. The finish was downright idiotic, as Takeshita started throwing chairs into the ring and then slid one in only to get curb stomped on it while the referee removed the other ones that he threw into the ring a few seconds earlier. The whole concept of the Eliminator Match is just dumb to me – you take somebody who would be a good challenger in a title match, but instead of doing that you put them in a non title match with the champ that they lose anyway. All that stupid stuff aside this was a good match, I just don’t see the point in doing this unless it leads to something for Takeshita later. And even then that could have been a big TV angle instead of taking up time on a PPV.

Barbed Wire Steel Cage Match: Adam Copeland vs Malakai Black

This is for Copeland’s TNT Title, and is the blowoff match for the feud between Copeland and the House of Black. It had not only barbed wire around the cage but weapons on the inside including a table, chairs, and a barbed wire bat. Ten minutes in both guys are bleeding like stuck pigs. I really liked this match. Even though there was the usual over the top kind of stuff that you get with these matches they kept it within the rails of two guys trying kill each other over beef. Copeland took two bumps he has no business doing at his age, a powerbomb through a table and a ridiculous elbow drop from the top of the cage through a table. Late in the match Malakai’s mates Buddy Matthews and Brody King came down to help him but were foiled by Edge, I mean Adam’s former mate Gangrel from the Brood! Edge got the win here in a really fun match.

TBS Championship Match: Willow Nightengale (c) vs Mercedes Mone

Willow was accompanied by her friend Kris Statlander and manager Stokely Hathaway. Dueling chants to start things off and Mercedes starts out working like a heel, bailing out and stalling before getting to the action. Willow takes over after a minute or two and starts using her power to take control. Mercedes traps Willow in the corner and goes after her ankle then spends the next few minutes working it over. Willow eventually comes back and gets a pounce and a spinebuster, then a fisherman’s suplex. There was a lot of great back and forth here, too much to get to without writing 50 paragraphs. Late in the match Statlander and Stokely get into an argument with the ref, who misses Willow having Mercedes pinned for three. A few minutes later after another corner exchange Mone hits her finisher for the win. As of May 27, this is the best women’s match I’ve watched all year.

And then we get the aftermath, where Statlander and Stokely turned on Willow and laid her out. There’s a lot to unpack here. Is Mercedes officially a heel now, or was she just working that way to go along with how the crowds at Dynamite have been reacting to her? Also, what’s the explanation behind Willow’s friends turning on her? Stokley berating Willow after the loss fits how he normally acts but Statlander joining in the betrayal, even though it was telegraphed for weeks, needs to make some sense.

As for Willow, I hope this isn’t the end for her as a title contender. She’s done an admirable job getting herself over during the last nine months and is a natural babyface that’s hard to come by nowadays. It would really suck if she was forgotten after what was a placeholder title reign. If Tony doesn’t see it with her there’s another company based in Stamford that she could do well in.

And for Mone the first question I have is whether or not this is going to be a repeat of Jade Cargill’s run as TBS champion, where she ruled over a separate universe while barely interacting with anyone who wasn’t sent there by Tony Khan.  The second is when will she eventually move on to the Women’s World Title because I imagine Tony did not bring her in to be the forever TBS champion. 

AEW World Title Match: Swerve Strickland (c) vs Christian Cage

This was a good match here that was stuck in between an over the top spectacle in the Anarchy in the Arena and the much ballyhooed in ring debut of Mercedes Mone, but it delivered. Christian had his entire group out there and they all got involved at different points while Prince Nana did the same for Swerve. It went a few minutes too long after everyone got tossed, and they could have gotten in everything they needed in 15 to 20, but all in all a good match here and a good defense for Swerve.

Anarchy in the Arena: Team AEW vs Team Elite

I originally was going to skip this match; I am not a fan of the Young Bucks and everything I’ve heard about the previous versions of this match have sounded terrible. But I stuck this one out. They did indeed fight all over the arena, into the parking lot and everywhere. A running bit has been playing entrance music in the opening minutes before somebody calls to cut it out, and they did that again here. Darby Allin is a psychopath for even doing this match after getting hit by a bus. A guy got dunked in an iced water tub like he was in an illegal interrogation, there was an attempted vehicular homicide, a flamethrower got used, and a ton of other crazy stuff. These kind of matches, either you’re in or your out. I normally have my limits when it comes to this kind of stuff but in this case I’ll allow it because as ludicrous as everything was in the match they kept the pin attempts and two counts to a minimum. At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite for all the times I’ve trashed these kinds of matches….I liked it.

Matches: B+, Finishes: A, Swerves/Surprises: A, Storylines: A, Pacing: F

FINAL GRADE: B+

None of the matches were bad and a couple of them were great. My few complaints are that the pacing was awful and there were some matches that were completely unnecessary to have on this PPV or at all. Because it’s the fifth anniversary of the show it seemed like they wanted to get everyone who was available and had some importance in the company, when they could have just run a tighter 7 or 8 match show and gotten an A from me instead of the B I’m giving them here.

As for the future, well……

Their three big signings of 2024 are all wearing gold now – Ospreay, Mone, and Okada.  MJF returned at this shoe and is signed for the future.  The once maligned women’s division is looking a lot better not just with Mone but Storm, May, Willow, Thunder Rosa and Deonna Purazzo and others. Swerve continues to prove to be a good signing and Legends like Copeland and Christian have proven to still be able to do it well.  So the talent is definitely there.

The main issues are booking and creative, and can those things be done better.  There are too many people who lose all the time and continue to be put on TV in matches just so they can lose some more, too many prospects who continue to be among the losers and can’t get anywhere, and too many matches that happen for no other reason than having a good match.  Those are just my personal pet peeves here.  But there is light at the end of the tunnel if they want to pursue it.  Depending on how the rest of the year unfolds this could be the start of it, but if not it was a good show on it’s own nonetheless.