AEW is toddling into its terrible twos across a tightrope of TNT.
They didn’t have any matches involving zombies and I didn’t realise that was a bar I need major American promotions to clear.
Seriously though, AEW is flourishing right now, going unopposed on Wednesday nights, hitting the million viewer mark on more than one occasion and their last two pay-per-views pulling in the promotions highest buy-rates to date. This is great.
Having another major player in town is good news for everyone, wrestling fans, wrestlers and especially the people that WWE are releasing with what now appears to be grim regularity.
It’s not been a perfect year, and AEW still has stuff to learn about medical standards during live broadcasts, and how to build exploding rings, but even though, holy moly this was a tough list to put together, they’ve got some really good wrestlers over there you guys.
Honourable Mention: The ‘Great Match, Shame About The Finish’ Twins
Just wanted to make a quick shout out to the Barbed Wire Exploding Death Match and the Blood and Guts match, which both seem destined to be consigned to the popular opinion dustbin based purely on shoddily executed finishes, ie. laughable s**t boom booms and a poorly shot fall.
This is a shame as both matches were very good, very different from what you normally see in mainstream American wrestling and featuring character peak performances from Eddie Kingston and MJF respectively.
But “the only thing they remember is the finish”. Not my words, the words of my friend and lover Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
10. Brian Cage & Ricky Starks vs Sting & Darby Allin – Revolution
A sizzling take now: aside from the firefly funhouse, this might be my favourite cinematic match of the entire pandemic.
I know, and it didn’t even have Otis rubbing himself with ham or ninjas or anything. It’s just cool.
Darby Allin’s cool. Sting is still cool somehow, catching a bat thrown from across a warehouse and going Oldboy on Taz’s nephews.
Darby Allin spidermanning off a brick wall, before plunging to his death, Powerhouse Hobbs turning up in a Curryman disguise for no reason, Sting and Darby arriving in a way that looks like David Lynch directing Back to the Future, I just really liked all of it, sorry.
Some fans might see cinematic matches as wrestling with cheat codes, but hell Sting’s still out here taking powerbombs at 60.
You could argue that Sting and Darby’s match at Double Or Nothing was a better watch with the benefit of a joyous crowd and silly sting doing silly things, but the street fight pipped it for me.
9. FTR & The Young Bucks vs. Lucha Bros, The Blade & The Butcher – Fyter Fest
So many things. Not even half the division as well, god tag team wrestling’s the best.
With the FTR/Bucks storyline yet to go off the rails, AEW told a pretty great story here of everyone and their mom wanting to see FTR face the Bucks, but playing with that expectation by having them fight alongside each other, and not just that, but really effectively too (until the end of course) with plenty of great double team spots feature an FTR teaming with a Jackson.
The superkick fake out to the DDT is just a chef’s kiss of a spot. Add to that the Lucha Bros, Rey Fenix being everywhere all of the time, Penta slapping the marrow from everyone’s bones, as well as the Butcher and the Blade being there to soak up just a whole bunch of cirque de soleil whirling dervish bulls**t.
And then there’s the stupidest, coolest and stupidest Danadian Destroyer of all time. Just a lot. It’s a lot, but sometimes more is more.
8. Fenix vs Kenny Omega – New Year’s Smash
Do you think Rey Fenix is going to be AEW champion one day?
Like, he’s one the most consistently awesome, consistently inventive wrestlers in the world, but doesn’t it just feel like he’s never going to be AEW champion, which is a shame because bloody hell this AEW championship match is Good Stuff, capital G capital STUFF.
Omega’s first defence since winning it with industry shifting shenanigans, the winner was never in doubt, but they sure did have some fun out there.
Some bits of this match are so fast-paced, so fluid, but also grounded with a vicious stiffness (phrasing) with kicks, knees and slaps and snapdragons on the outside, oh no your neck, horrific German suplexes, oh god no your poor neck!
Also that knee into a kip up into a superkick was fun, huh?
So yeah it’s a bunch of moves, but all the moves are very good, and after the match the Good Brothers make their AEW debut, fun for all the family. As long as your family regularly features on Being the Elite.
7. The Young Bucks vs Death Triangle – Dynamite
Oh hello again Rey Fenix, you get everywhere.
There is so much violent dancing in this match.
It’s a spotfest Sunday with whipped spots, crushed spots, spot sauce and a cherry on spot, but when it’s all so beautifully timed and crisp like this you can’t help but just sit there with your mouth hanging open.
This list isn’t just going to be a list of Elite family spotfests, promise, but if flippy s**t is your bag, doesn’t really get much better than this.
Could have done without all the cuts to tag teams watching in the stands to be honest, although the crowd chanting those are fake at the Bucks’ Dior Jordans was hilarious.
There’s a bit of everything that you expect from the names involved, dickhead posturing from the Bucks, Rey Fenix doing ludicrous things like just swanton-ing over the top rope to the outside, walking tightropes, hitting thrust kicks mid-tightrope, another crazy dumb Canadian destroyer, PAC being a vicious weirdly strong Geordie beastie, the diabolical mask-based finish, it’s all here, tag team wrestling is the f**king best.
6. Kenny Omega vs Orange Cassidy vs PAC – Double or Nothing
Double or Nothing was a hell of a show.
We’ve already talked about the Sting match, but also the Stadium Stampede was fun, Hangman Page was over like rover and Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston vs The Young Bucks was dangerously close to making this list. There is no-one cutting promos like Mox and Eddie right now.
But match of the night belonged to the AEW title, which was Omega’s first defence in front of a capacity crowd and it made all the difference in the world.
It’s one of the best triple threats in recent memory, everyone’s over and everyone’s working their arse off, especially and ironically Orange Cassidy who’s out here hitting double Hurricanranas and more superman punches than a litter of Roman Reigns.
It also features one of my favourite spots of the year with Omega just yeeting Pac into the corner.
Lots of amazing spots, most of which made the most of the triple threat stipulation, there’s genuinely too many fun moments to list them all, just go watch it.
5. Santana & Ortiz vs Best Friends – Dynamite
Parking Lot brawls used to be an excuse to take a whole bunch of shortcuts in a match.
A few spots here or there, but then the rest of the match is some sweaty dudes, grunting and walking each other around, like they’re escorting a drunk friend home, pausing to bash each other’s heads into stuff in an endless cycle of tedium, unrelated shot of Edge and Orton from Mania 36.
Not so this match, which is not only an UNBELIEVABLE amount of fun, but it has possibly the funniest closing moment in wrestling tv history.
That middle finger, man. Gold star Trent’s Mom.
It was just a day at the office where everything went right, all the spots worked, the sledgehammer lodging perfectly in the glass, the windscreen buckling perfectly under Trent after the dual powerbomb, Orange Cassidy emerging from the boot like slacker Gandalf riding in from the east at dawn.
Creatively violent, violently creative, no shortcuts taken.
4. Cody Rhodes vs Mr Brodie Lee – Dynamite
While one of AEW’s biggest assets is the variety of matches they produce, you could levy the criticism at them that their matches do have a bit of a samey structure.
WWE’s mode du jour of keeping everyone looking strong is very short matches with distraction/non-finishes, while AEW pulls all the way in the opposite direction, stuffing matches with arguably too many things to make their stars look good.
Thank Heavens then that they still have the nous to, every once in a while, book a match like this, an exhibition squash featuring the biggest star in the company having his dick ripped off by a brand new monster.
An unapologetic love letter to Antonio Inoki getting trampled by Vader in New Japan, the late, great Mr Brodie Lee demolishes Cody in one of the biggest wrestling shockers of the decade, single-handedly revitalising the TNT title, Brodie and the Dark Order all in one discus lariat.
A joyous, vicious rug-pull.
3. Britt Baker vs Thunder Rosa – St Patrick’s Day Slam
Earning the most improved sticker in Year 2 is the AEW’s Women’s division.
It’s still not quite to the standard of NXT, it’s still lacking in a few areas of its presentation, but the company has made some big strides.
Britt Baker becoming champ, the women’s eliminator having some really fun matches like Riho vs Serena Deeb, and Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero was a fun pairing, but the single biggest improvement was bringing Thunder Rosa on board from the NWA.
Thunder Rosa is f**king brilliant, and she ended up having one of the best overall rivalries in AEW’s history with Baker, the division’s strongest character, culminating in a Lights Out match at St Patrick’s Day Slam.
Oh it’s good, bringing a level of bloody brutality that you so rarely if ever see in western women’s wrestling, with Britt Baker making her boyfriend’s deathmatches look like Sunday at the community centre.
There’s biting of wounds. JEEZ. Death valley drivers onto ladders, and a crimson masked Baker taking a powerbomb onto thumbtacks. It’s star-cementing stuff and giant bloody footprint in the right direction for women’s wrestling in AEW.
2. The Young Bucks vs FTR – Full Gear
A comprehensive history of tag team wrestling, squeezed into 30 glorious minutes.
It’s not quite as good as the Revolution tag, but hell it’s close, and that’s saying something.
After what was, let’s be honest, a build that was WWE levels of way more convoluted than a dream match needed to be, this blow-off was everything we always hoped it would be, combining the best traits of both teams, the jaw-dropping spot-intricacy of the Bucks vs the psychological focus of FTR.
Not only did both teams do their thing, but they even forced a change in their opponents, the relentless limbwork to Matt Jackson’s ankle forced the bucks to slow down and wrestle a more emotionally and narratively grounded match than they usually do, and Cash Wheeler ended up courting ruin by going for a flip rather than a fist.
It felt like a match that could only be possible with these two specific teams and that is the highest compliment I can think of for the work each pair has done to build their signature style. AEW continues to reign supreme as the kings of tag wrestling, and speaking of…
1. John Silver, Alex Reynolds & Adam Page vs The Inner Circle – Brodie Lee’s Celebration of Life
Oof, I mean… yeah.
The strongest possible argument you can make for wrestling being a brief escape from life’s cruelty, how wrestling can create a symbol of that cruelty which can, if only for one night, be defeated with strength and courage, and help from dear friends.
MJF going off on negative one, only for him to make the difference in the finish, the papers, the run-in from Erick Redbeard Rowan, John Silver’s best day emerging from his worst, it’s all so beautifully, profoundly silly.
Modern wrestling is inextricably linked from the production process. Hell, one of the reasons it’s so compulsive is watching real-life decision-making and drama seep onto the camera.
As an isolated match, this is a good to very good tv wrestling match, as a piece of real-life it’s genuinely deeply moving and helpful. See you down the road.
What are your thoughts on the above story? Let us know in the comments on Twitter or Facebook.
Comments.
Loading comments…