By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW WrestleDream Hits
Bryan Danielson vs. Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship: A terrific main event with Danielson doing the honors to wrap up his career as a full-time pro wrestler. Moxley going over was the right call given the story they are telling with him and his crew. And for as great as Danielson is, he looks like a guy who has pushed it physically more than he should have. The post match angle wasn’t for me with AEW doubling down on the suffocation angle from the previous pay-per-view. It felt very odd that only a couple babyfaces ran out initially and then there were still some big name babyfaces missing when the final wave of wrestlers hit the ring. Some of that can be cleaned up on Dynamite, but there’s still the issue of transferring the issues that Moxley’s crew has with Danielson to other babyfaces. Danielson has storyline reasons to go after Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli, and Pac once he presumably returns somewhere down the road, but they need to make things personal between Moxley’s crew and the babyfaces they will be working with. Colin McGuire nailed it in his piece earlier today. AEW needs to stick the landing when it comes to the explanation for what is happening with Moxley’s crew. This company desperately needs a spark. They’ve set the table for something interesting with Moxley teasing a greater purpose behind what he is dong, and they have to deliver a satisfying payoff or run the risk of turning away even more viewers.
Will Ospreay vs. Ricochet vs. Konosuke Takeshita for the AEW International Championship: The match exceeded my lofty expectations. As much as Don Callis’s screwdriver is a groaner, the end result of Takeshita finally being elevated by winning a championship and Kyle Fletcher turning on Ospreay left things in a good place. The Callis Family became a joke because they lost frequently and the fans wanted to cheer the wrestlers involved in the faction. Fan reaction may still be an issue with Takeshita because he’s so damn good in the ring, but the way the match played out was an attempt to put heat on the entire family. As good as Ricochet was in the match, he still hasn’t clicked as character any more than he did during his WWE run.
Mariah May vs. Willow Nightingale the AEW Women’s Championship: One of the best women’s matches held on AEW pay-per-view. May is still struggling to pin down her identity since splitting off from Toni Storm, but she is very good in the ring and it helped that she worked with the most beloved wrestlers in AEW. Willow’s popularity is being tested with high profile losses to Kris Statlander and now May. It feels like she is still in a good place with the fans coming out of this match, but the company would be wise to have her bounce back with quickly to avoid the threat of fans losing hope.
Swerve Strickland, Prince Nana, MVP, and Shelton Benjamin segment: This was an enjoyable segment that also provided a nice break from the big spot matches. Swerve was really good on the mic and did a nice job of trying to create a little mystery before he ultimately announced that he is staying with Nana because he considers him family. MVP also held up his end of the segment nicely, and having him point at his watch just before he headed backstage was a nice hint that there’s more to come.
Darby Allin vs. Brody King: An enjoyable brawl that didn’t overstay its welcome. There was no mystery regarding the outcome in a clean finish scenaro, so as well as these two work together, there was not point in dragging out the match. I wish that mentality would carry over to a lot of AEW television matches, but I digress. Over the last week, Darby told us that King is a family man and then King shook hands with Allin after the match. It would be odd for King to just go back to House of Black spooky mode as if none of this happened, so hopefully there’s an actual plan to do something fresh with him.
Hangman Page vs. Jay White: White picking up a clean win in the opening match got the main card off to a good start. Similar to Willow, Page can absorb this loss, but the creative forces would be wise to have him bounce back quickly and save his future jobs for key moments. Was this a one and done or will Page attempt to avenge the loss?
Mark Briscoe vs. Chris Jericho for the ROH Championship: On a night filled with so many big spots and near falls (why is the Poison Rana just a throwaway move?), this match provided a good change of pace. They told a simple and effective story of having Briscoe show off his mean streak and get a measure of revenge for Jericho bringing up his late brother Jay. Jericho deserves credit for simply losing clean and decisively when the situation called for it. I hope we see a little more of this Briscoe and a little less of the wild man promos he cuts with The Conglomeration.
Hologram vs. The Beast Mortos in a best of three falls match: An in the middle rather than a Hit or a Miss. For all the talk of Hologram being a rising star, his entrance received a mild response at best. And the idea of having a wrestler intended to cater to children in a company that’s doing suffocation angles is no better than WWE catering to kids during the Attitude Era. The actual match was solid. I get that best of three falls matches are common in Mexico, but they would have been better off going with a tight one fall match as opposed to having these guys work for nearly seventeen minutes.
AEW WrestleDream Misses
Jack Perry vs. Katsuyori Shibata for the TNT Title: The match was fine until the bad finish that made Shibata look foolish for having his shoulders counted down while he was applying a sleeper hold. Fortunately, the post match angle involving Daniel Garcia, MJF, and Adam Cole helped wash away most of the bad taste left by the unsatisfying finish.
“The Young Bucks” Matthew Jackson and Nicholas Jackson vs. “Private Party” Marq Quen and Isiah Kassidy for the AEW Tag Team Titles: Matthew Jackson told fans that Private Party did nothing after they beat him and his brother five years ago and will always be a mid-card act. Oddly, he seemed to prove them right when he and Nicholas went over. Don’t get me wrong, this beat the hell out of another dreadful Bucks’ finish that requires referee Rick Knox to look like an oblivious moron, but it oddly came off like fans were supposed to see Private Party in a new light because they worked a competitive match with the Bucks. Here’s the problem. 95 percent of the matches in AEW are laid out to be highly and often overly competitive, so it just didn’t stand out when they tried to make it seem like Private Party hanging with the Bucks was something special. It also didn’t help Quen and Kassidy to look like scrubs later in the night when Jon Moxley put them in a double headlock with ease during the post main event brawl.
Zero Hour Pre-Show: It continues to feel like these needlessly long 90-minute, four-match pre-shows exist so the company can cram more wrestlers onto the pay-per-view cards as opposed to actually serving the fans. The pre-shows continue to adversely affect the main card, as there’s always a point in the show when the crowds start to fade (see the AEW Tag Team Title match on this card). It’s past time that Tony Khan show some restraint by scaling back on the pre-shows for the good of the actual pay-per-view. If the Gunther vs. Sami Zayn match for the World Heavyweight Championship was held on last week’s Raw rather than on the Bad Blood premium live event, then surely someone in AEW work up the courage to tell the Dark Order and Premiere Athletes that their match didn’t make the pay-per-view night card.
Comments
Show was wayyyy too long. Cut the preshow matches and no talking segments on a PPV please
Question
This is a legit question. Not passive aggressive sarcasm. At this stage what is the demographic AEW is targeting?. Their ratings are in the tank. Their YouTube views are 1/2 what they used to be. They can’t draw much more than 7k in Daniel Bryan’s back yard. The cool factor seems gone and they seem to have lost the key demo
Who is AEW intended audience? At this point it feels like hardcore (ie long term) wrestling fans who just don’t enjoy WWEs product.
Do other readers have any thoughts? I’d love to hear from AEW diehards. Who are you?
I am not an AEW diehard, but I do watch and I really want the promotion to succeed as it benefits wrestling as a whole. The worst thing to happen to AEW since its inception was Vince having to step down – the dreck WWE was serving up made AEW look so much better in comparison, now the tables have turned. I do think the “every match is a banger” philosophy, as Jason said with needlessly competitive matches with a foregone conclusion, is a big part of the problem. Too many moves, matches and wrestlers have been run into the ground and the audience are jaded. I still don’t enjoy their shows any less than WWE shows as a whole to be honest, but I can see why people have switched off. Catering more than WWE to the hardcore fans is ok as a way of setting yourself up as an alternative, but their needs to be light and shade. HHH understands this. Vince didn’t, and neither does TK.
THERE needs to be light and shade, not their. Damn you, lack of an edit function.
They need a booker. An actual wrestling booker. AEW’s main event for the PPV was between two guys who have lost almost all their appeal with mainstream audiences since leaving WWE for AEW.
They need to try and be a modern day Mid South/Florida/Texas territory where things are more grounded than WWE’s flashier style instead of trying to appease Meltzer’s made up workrate/Japan style. That allows for a grittier style without relying on garbage matches all the time.
They need to trim the ever loving shit out of that roster and either make ROH their developmental brand or get rid of it altogether. While cutting the roster, they need to think broader appeal so guys like Cassidy, Yuta, and Garcia can’t be the ones pushed to the top. They also can’t keep having ratings death like the Young Bucks, Jericho, and Mone on TV no matter how much they’re being paid.
A cursery look at their roster shows, at most, 43 (of approx. 130) men’s wrestlers I would keep and honestly 8-10 of them were a stretch. 14 women (of approx. 40) made the cut.
A moratorium on weapons, pre/post match attacks, interview attacks, backstage/parking lot attacks, gimmick matches, table spots, etc. Go at least a year without anything like that until a feud gets hot enough to earn it. Punk vs Drew worked for WWE because it’s been a very long time since anything like that was on one of their shows, the characters had earned it, and because it was the only match on the card like that.
They need to drop one of the men’s titles and make the TNT belt like an old school TV title which is defended on TV regularly with an enforced time limit.
Then go with the approach of picking something like 6-8 people to feature in the main event picture, 6-8 more for the secondary belt, and 4 teams for the tag belts.
Finally, they need adult sized wrestlers to be the focus. Way too much of their roster is comically short, painfully thin, or both.
Short version:
Real Booker
Modernize Good Territory Wrestling
Roster Purge
Cut Out The Constant Nonsense
Build Aroudn Broad Appeal Wrestlers With Size
Seems like pigs will fly when that happens!