Powell’s AEW Double Or Nothing Hit List: Anarchy in the Arena, Swerve Strickland vs. Christian Cage for the AEW World Championship, Willow Nightingale vs. Mercedes Mone for the TBS Title

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

AEW Double Or Nothing Hits

MJF returns: MJF is back and he apparently spent every second of his time away in the sun. The Triple H cosplay was odd. Putting that aside, this was the return promo that MJF needed to deliver. Perhaps it should have been saved for Dynamite so more fans could have watched him swear off the version of MJF we saw late last year, but he can always reiterate those aspects of the promo on Wednesday. MJF took out Adam Cole with ease and hopefully that means he’ll dive into something big as opposed to wasting his time with the ice cold Undisputed Kingdom members. MJF is the just boost that this company needs and it will be very interesting to see how his return affects the ratings.

Willow Nightingale vs. Mercedes Mone for the TBS Championship: A good match with the expected outcome of Mone winning the title in her first AEW match. I could have done without Willow getting a visual pinfall. There would have been no shame in her character taking a clean loss after a highly competitive match. Rather, they used that spot to set up the post match turn of Stokely Hathaway and Kris Statlander, which really should have been saved for Dynamite. In this case, it’s not about having more people see the turn, it’s about about the way the turn immediately shifted the focus away from Mone’s moment.

“The Elite” Matthew Jackson, Nicholas Jackson, Kazuchika Okada, and Jack Perry vs. “Team AEW” Bryan Danielson, Darby Allin, Dax Harwood, and Cash Wheeler in an Anarchy in the Arena match: If you don’t care about logic and are just looking for big spots and stunts then this was the match for you. They literally set Jack Perry on fire and then he ended up winning the match for his team. Think about that for a moment. They took the time to explain why Perry was wet before his legs were set on fire, but then he returned unscathed and actually won the match using a knee strike. While this is definitely not my preferred style, it delivered in terms of being the over the top spectacle that fans have come to expect from Anarchy in the Arena matches.

Roderick Strong vs. Will Ospreay for the AEW International Championship: A very good match with the expected outcome. It was hard to feel anything when Ospreay won the least meaningful of AEW’s four singles championships. Here’s hoping that the plan is for Ospreay to merge his title with one of the other singles titles.

Swerve Strickland vs. Christian Cage for the AEW World Championship: A quality first pay-per-view title defense for Swerve. The predictable outcome of a first pay-per-view title defense by a new champion is pretty much unavoidable, which made Christian a logical first challenger. The match went a little longer than it needed to, but it was good for what it was and I’m curious to see what’s next for Swerve.

Adam Copeland vs. Malakai Black in a barbed wire steel cage match for the TNT Championship: More good than bad. Let’s get the negative out of the way. The tease of Brody King and Buddy Matthews joining Copeland was ridiculous. The heels had a three-on-one advantage, so why would they bother acting like they were going to join Copeland only to then attack him? This was essentially a singles match version of TNA’s Lethal Lockdown. It was well worked and the crowd enjoyed the Gangrel appearance. Unfortunately, Copeland announced that he suffered a broken tibia during the match, so we’ll find out what this means for the TNT Title soon.

Toni Storm vs. Serena Deeb for the AEW Women’s Championship: Does anyone know which wrestler they actually wanted the fans to root for? They went back and forth during the build and then it came off like they just let the live crowd choose as opposed to having Deeb play the heel role. Even so, they produced a good match.

AEW Double Or Nothing Misses

IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Jon Moxley vs. Konosuke Takeshita in an eliminator match: I enjoyed the work of both wrestlers, but Moxley playing Superman by winning the match with one arm was too much. The waste of the extremely talented Takeshita is borderline criminal at this point. Why do I suspect that Takeshita would be getting a mega push had his time in AEW had been preceded by a successful run in WWE or NJPW?

Chris Jericho vs. Hook vs. Katsuyori Shibata in a Triple Threat for the FTW Title: A garbage match with some frightening spots, including Jericho being dropped on his head while taking a double suplex. What was the point of Bryan Keith hiding his identity when he interfered only to unmask moments later? It’s easy to ignore the logic gap of this scenario when the mystery person who unmasks is a legitimate surprise, but it’s an eye roller when the mystery person is a regular who loses the vast majority of his televised matches. No matter how much people have tried in two different companies, no one has ever made me care about FTW Title matches.

Orange Cassidy vs. Trent Beretta: A well worked match with the odd choice of Cassidy going over yet again. Beretta needs wins to establish himself as a singles wrestler, but he’s now lost back-to-back singles matches with Cassidy. I assume this somehow leads to Beretta joining the Don Callis Family where he will fit right in with the other members who lose all of their meaningful matches (no, Will Ospreay’s weird affiliation with the family does not count).

“Bullet Club Gold” Jay White, Austin Gunn, and Colten Gunn vs. “Death Triangle” Pac, Rey Fenix, and Penta El Zero Miedo for the Unified Trios Titles: The trios titles are worthless regardless of how many belts the champions carry around. Was anyone even surprised when over pushed Billy Gunn scored the pin for his team?

Tony Khan says he’s considering adding AEW Mixed Tag Team Titles: Yes, Tony Khan actually said this during the post show media session. The last thing this company needs is more titles. Too many title belts, too many hours of television, too many wrestlers under contract, and needlessly long pay-per-view events. The overindulgent owner needs to be more disciplined.