The next to last AEW PPV of the Year, came on November 23rd. The vibes going into this one weren’t as positive and they were in previous years, or even earlier this year. Along with some objectively bad decision making in lots of areas AEW is going through a bad momentum phase right now where even their best stuff isn’t turning things around. All that being said they have delivered on their PPVs this year; did that continue here? Let’s find out.
Private Party (c) vs The Acclaimed vs The Kings of the Black Throne vs The Outrunners
Private Party finally broke the five year jinx and won the tag team titles, this was their first defense. I didn’t expect them to lose because it was so soon after the big win but hey, you never know. The big running subplot was the Acclaimed (Max Caster and Anthony Bowens) not being on the same page, and constantly getting in each other’s way, missing cues, and then resulting in Caster getting pinned. Fun opener with the customary double team spots and four way pandemonium. This was a good way to open the show with faced paced action and a good win for the champs. If Caster and Bowens are breaking up, it’s time. They were pretty awful at first, then they stuck with the gimmick and got over and became huge stars there, but then regressed to being a one note act again. Private Party, if they can continue to build momentum, can finally separate themselves from jokes mistaking them for the Street Profits; let’s hope they do that because they’re a real talented team.
MJF vs Roderick Strong
Was it good? Yes. Very good, in fact. But they could have done this on Dynamite. 13 minutes felt like almost 20 to me; largely because there was zero doubt MJF was winning here. The finish was kind of abrupt, too. MJF had worked Roddy’s arm but snagging it out of a pin attempt and getting a quick submission was a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing. They should have just memory holed the MJF/Adam Cole feud once both guys were back; it wasn’t any good to start with and isn’t better with the roles reversed.
TBS Title Match: Mercedes Mone (c) vs Kris Statlander
One of three Match of the Night contenders. Mercedes time in AEW has been a disaster when it comes to do anything other than wrestle and even that has been a mixed bag – before tonight she had two of the best women’s matches of the year with Willow and Stephanie Vaquer but also two very lackluster ones with Britt Baker and Hikaru Shida. This would be the AEW tiebreaker; Statlander has been very good for a while so if she crapped the bed here it would have to be a reflection on her and not any other circumstances. Well, sorry to any detractors but she scored a home run here. This match was great and both ladies brought their A games.
As with Mercedes better matches there were a lot of move counters that you don’t see every week; she is a wrestling move student and always tries to bring something unique each time out. Sometimes it works, like tonight, and sometimes it doesn’t. Statlander is her best type of opponent, somebody big and strong who can act as a pivot point for her to try all of her stuff with – see Bayley, Charlotte Flair and Willow Nightengale – and they blended together great. They even roped me in to where I believed they just might do the title change tonight. With the win, now the question lies as to who’s next for her and what will happen with her ongoing abuse of her bodyguard Kamille. Tonight was a great night regardless of how the rest of her time there has looked.
And to that end, it’s time for a lot of you to take off your WWE colored glasses about her. Yes the promo segments and backstage segments and anything outside of her matches have been terrible. But she still can bring it when the bell rings and she’s been an overall net positive for the women’s division there in that they get more time after her arrival than they did before. At this point if you’re going to keep saying she have never left or needs to go back to WWE then I’m gonna assume either you didn’t watch any of her matches in AEW, you’re one of those people who think everyone should want to play in the WWE sandbox, or both. Given the way the WWE women’s division has been booked lately I don’t think it’s crazy to say we wouldn’t be getting her best work if she was still there now so I’ll gladly skip everything else, or watch with the sound off, as long as we keep getting stuff like this from her in the ring.
Hangman Page vs Jay White
I have never been remotely interested in either of these guys. I get that they both learned how to do wrestling moves really well and are both really good at executing them but neither of them has given me anything beyond that to even generate a minor bit of interest, save Hangman burning down Swerve Strickland’s house before All Out this year. They did what they do, and it was well done. I just didn’t care. With both guys a big selling point is a bunch of stuff they did in New Japan, and their respective relationships to the Elite and the Bullet Club; if you don’t know or care about that (I’m a little of both) then you can get completely lost as to why either of them is a big deal today. But if you do care or you just want to watch a well done wrestling match then by all means this will work for you.
White winning again after beating him WrestleDream is a head scratcher. Given that most of us only know this feud from what we’ve seen on AEW television I think you would have Page get the win to tie it up in America instead of White winning again and the commentators having to explain to us that now he is 5-0 against Page and thus has his number. Now we wait for Hangman to finally get a win somewhere down the road when most of us only saw the last two matches and don’t give a damn about any of the lore involved with this. We’ll see how that goes, I guess.
Will Ospreay vs Kyle Fletcher
This was reminiscent of the Bret vs Owen Hart in that the petulant little brother went over the deep end after being told he was the little brother one time too many, and joined the dark side. It also had the same winner. The goal here was clearly to show what Fletcher was capable of by putting him in a big showcase against a big star, and that worked. I got to watch Fletcher in person at Supercard of Honor this year and my first thought was indeed that was Ospreay Jr. I’ve even referred to him that way in some conversations I’ve had so if I’m doing it then he’s probably heard it enough times to be at least a little irritated in real life and not just kayfabe.
The match was expertly set up to showcase Fletcher; he hits lots of big stuff and Will mainly got in the occasional counter to slow him down for a few seconds. Yes they did a bit much – it is Will Ospreay and Kyle Fletcher, all – but in a unique development it actually led somewhere. After the piledriver on the rings steps, Will was dead man walking and could only muster some low energy strikes and barely getting his shoulder up on pin attempts. And then when he had nothing left, Fletcher hit his big turnbuckle head drop move (I don’t know what you call it, bear with me folks! I know he uses it to win a lot) and pinned him 1-2-3. So the first part of ‘Make Kyle Fletcher a thing’ was nailed perfectly, now it all comes down to the follow up.
TNT Title Match: Jack Perry (c) vs Daniel Garcia
I didn’t care much about this one either outside of whether or not we’d finally be free of one of the worst gimmick runs I’ve ever seen with Perry’s Scapegoat. The Scapegoat is one of the dumbest ideas ever, a play on CM Punk’s post All In 2023 firing and the backstage altercation between he and Perry that lead to it. Taking something that directly hurt your business by causing you to fire your biggest star, and that you exacerbated by showing the video months later and only bolstered Punk’s side of the story, and turning it into a gimmick is next level stupid. As is making it worse by trying to execute it with one of the most sauce-less people in your company. Garcia was looking like a future star playing off of MJF, and even scored himself a nice new contract and a rumored bid from WWE to switch sides. Playing off of Perry on the other hand undermined a whole lot of that real fast. Match was fine but why on Earth did they get 18 minutes on a Saturday night, on a card where five other matches went 19 minutes or longer? Thank God it’s over, now we can see just what Garcia actually has to work with.
AEW International Title: Konosuke Takeshita (c) vs Ricochet
This match was a bit of a letdown for me. They started out pretty slow, which I wasn’t expecting these two. It picked up later but never really got to that gear I was looking for them to hit. Both these guys are real good, and if they run this back I bet they will get closer to what we were thinking they would do. It wasn’t bad by any means but I wouldn’t call it great either. Felt more like a TV main event than a PPV title match. One thing I absolutely hated was Don Callis’ pathetic attempts at getting involved in the match. Walking over the ring halfheartedly and not even so much as putting his man’s foot on the rope or distracting Ricochet? Come on now. And please don’t tell me that Takeshita needed a clean win. He’s a heel champion with a manager in a PPV match against an opponent who was a big signing. If he’s winning it should be in a way to get heat.
Bobby Lashley vs Swerve Strickland
Good debut for Bobby; he controlled most of the match but Swerve fought back valiantly where he could. MVP and Shelton Benjamin interfered in spots but not to a degree where it made Bobby look weak. Contrast that with Don Callis’ half assed work in the previous match and get back to me. While Swerve isn’t a small man himself, it is still a marvel to see Bobby and Shelton dwarf so many people around them in their new surroundings. Shelton has been putting a wrestling clinic since he debuted, or I should say a working clinic. The Hurt Syndicate is a plus if for no other reason than they are providing a different style of ring work than is customary in AEW, which should only make anyone who’s willing to learn better. Really dug this match all around.
AEW World Title: Jon Moxley (c) vs Orange Cassidy
I said previously on the Mindless Wrestling Podcast that I was looking forward to the aftermath far more than the match itself, and boy was I wrong. This match far exceeded my expectations on every level and the aftermath ended up being the clusterf-. I have come to expect mostly dreck from Moxley, and that’s about where he’s landed all year for me. Orange jumping Mox at the start was exactly how a blood feud match should open up; fewer things are more irritating than two people who hate each other and are out for violence having a proper wrestling match. Thankfully they did not do that here. This is the best Mox has looked in a match that I’ve watched of his in a long time. This was a good, brutal fight and the all the shots got in looked brutal as hell. When Orange got busted open it resonated (see how that can work when you save it?) and punctuated the brutality of the situation. Orange fought back like hell and held his own against Moxley’s assault, and I was hooked.
The finish was exactly as it should have been. Mox’s goons – PAC and Claudio – came to ringside but were stopped by Kyle O’Reilly and Tomohoro Ishii of the Conglomeration. That left Marina Shafir to take advantage of the situation but she was stopped from interfering by Willow NIghtengale. But Wheeler Yuta was unaccounted for and he came in the ring to level Cassidy with a running knee a la Bryan Danielson, leading to Mox winning with the Death Rider. Yuta deserves all the props in the world for getting in the ring, hitting his spot, and getting out as fast as he did. That was one of the cleanest run ins I’ve ever seen. Great match, great finish. But then came the chicanery……
Hangman Page comes out to the ring and lays out Moxley. Then here comes Christian to cash in the Money in the, err……use his contract for a title match! But then Jay White comes out and breaks that up! Then Moxley and his gang bail out and head out of the arena but the car they were running towards gets smashed by an oncoming car, so they steal another one and drive off. The driver of the vehicular assault vehicle gets out, and it’s Darby Allin! That was an Attitude Era ending if there ever was one. Way too much going on for my tastes here. But that doesn’t take away from what was a great match.
FINAL GRADE: B+
Matches: A, Finishes: B, Swerves/Surprises: C, Storylines: B, Pacing: B
Good show. None of the matches were bad IMO, even the ones I wasn’t particularly interested in, and three of them were great (Mone/Statlander, Ospreay/Fletcher, Mox/Orange). I didn’t care for the Ricochet/Takeshita finish, but it is what it is. Takeshita and Kyle Fletcher got much needed the wins they for on their respective shows, and the crowds responded accordingly. As for the pacing I’d rather the show not run four hours but they kept things moving and didn’t bog us down with a bunch of talking or loads of ads. This may very well be their best top to bottom show this year in that the lowest points were still a matter of me not being into it from jump more than them actually sucking. If you’re curious and want to check out a replay, I think you should.
Stroke of Genius 