By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Full Gear Hits
“Brodido” Brody King and Bandido vs. “FTR” Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler for the AEW Tag Team Titles: The best match of the night. FTR winning seems logical given the abundance of strong babyface challenger teams they have to work with. AEW has gone so overboard with near falls during some of their pay-per-view events that I found myself numb to them long before the main event. The pre-show and the first two main card matches were light on near falls, so they stood out as fresh and believable throughout this match. In fact, AEW didn’t go too crazy with wrestlers kicking out of finishing moves during most of the matches on this show. Whether by design or not, it was a rare AEW pay-per-view where it felt like things were saved and still mattered by the time we got to the final matches.
Kyle Fletcher vs. Mark Briscoe in a No DQ, no count-out match for the TNT Championship: The decision to hold back-to-back bloody brawls was baffling. While AEW showed more discipline than usual with near falls, I was completely numb to blood by the time we got to the main event, even though Samoa Joe hit a gusher. Anyway, this was the second best match of the night. I was intrigued by the storyline possibilities of Briscoe being forced to join the Callis Family, but it was still nice to see him win an AEW singles title. I assume there will be a seventh match between these two since they are tied with three wins each in matches against one another. I’m hopeful that Fletcher will become a regular in the main event mix. As such, coming up short in the deciding match with Briscoe wouldn’t be a bad thing, as I’d rather see Fletcher in the world title picture than holding one of the many men’s secondary singles titles.
Kyle O’Reilly vs. Jon Moxley in a No Holds Barred match: I could take or leave the gore fest, but it was good to see them double down on O’Reilly beating Moxley. O’Reilly would have lost whatever momentum he gained from winning the previous match had Moxley gotten his win back. And they are clearly telling a story with all of Moxley’s losses, presumably setting up the end of his run as the leader of the Death Riders. It’s fair to question whether O’Reilly is the right guy to be elevated, but Moxley deserves credit for doing his best to make that happen.
Kenny Omega, Jack Perry, and Luchasaurus vs. Josh Alexander, Matt Jackson, and Nick Jackson in a trios match for $1 million: A tad underwhelming due to the high bar set by Omega and the Bucks, but it was still a good enough trios match to warrant a soft Hit. The prize money is too ridiculous to take seriously, so here’s hoping that the Bucks turning babyface will put an end to AEW matches having financial stakes. The post-match reunion of Omega and the Bucks was fine.
Kris Statlander vs. Mercedes Mone for the AEW Women’s Championship: This was the match that seemed to pay the price for the pay-per-view running so long. Statlander hasn’t connected with the audience in a major way, but I suspect this crowd would have been louder had this match not occurred in the semi-main event slot of a long show. It was a quality match with a clean finish. I’m still not sold on Statlander as the champion. Only time will tell if she can win over the masses. If not, it won’t be from a lack of effort on the company’s part, as it doesn’t get any bigger in the AEW women’s division than getting clean wins over Toni Storm and Mercedes Mone in back-to-back pay-per-view matches.
Casino Gauntlet match to become the first AEW National Champion: More of an in the middle than a Hit or a Miss. Adding a sixth active men’s singles championship is absurd. It was disappointing to have Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin be the first two entrants, only to have them do a pair of lockups before Ricochet came out as the third entrant. The work in the match was good enough to keep it from being a Miss, but the outcome felt telegraphed. Tony Khan makes it no secret that he caters to the Sickos. As such, he should also know that Ricochet became the favorite to win this match in the eyes of many fans when they saw him take a quick and decisive loss to Lashley on the go-home show. Khan should use the fans’ awareness of booking tropes to his advantage by teasing that he’s going to follow a repetitive booking trend, only to surprise them by going in a different direction.
AEW Full Gear Misses
Hangman Page vs. Samoa Joe in a steel cage match for the AEW World Championship: This Miss is for the decision to take the title off Page more than an issue with match quality. AEW did a great job of building up Page heading into the All In event, which was capped off with his second world championship win. Taking the title away just a few months later is baffling and potentially damaging to Page. It was also disappointing to see all of the outside interference in a cage match. AEW had done a better job than most companies of sticking to the “no one gets in, no one gets out” approach to standard cage matches (not Blood & Guts), but Tony Khan followed in the footsteps of most modern bookers by overbooking the match with a ref bump, a wrestler breaking the cage door lock, and having a bunch of outside interference. Hook turning on Page was fine, and he feels like a better fit in the heel Opps faction than Katsuyori Shibata does. As for the post-match angle, the Page and Swerve Strickland characters were able to coexist before Swerve took time away for surgery, so the attempt to play up the possibility that Swerve was there to attack Page didn’t work. Even so, it was good to see Swerve back, and hopefully, the return of MJF isn’t far behind.
Pac vs. Darby Allin: My guard was up for the baseball bat playing into the finish the moment I saw Darby carry it to the ring. The match was okay, but the cheap distraction finish felt out of place on an AEW pay-per-view. This was another marathon show from AEW, and it would have been better had they saved this match and the one listed below it for television.
Toni Storm and Mina Shirakawa vs. Marina Shafir and Megan Bayne vs. Harley Cameron and Willow Nightingale vs. Julia Hart and Skye Blue in a four-way tag: The stipulation that the winning team gets to choose the stipulation of their semifinal match in the tournament to crown the first AEW Women’s Tag Team Champions did nothing for me. Why does there need to be a stipulation for a tournament match? The majority of the pre-show was worthless. AEW would have been better off holding the semifinal tournament matches on the pre-show. I’m not a fan of repeating the strategy of having the pre-show main event spill over into the actual pay-per-view, but I suspect that Storm and Shirakaway vs. Shafir and Bayne carrying over to the main card would have led to more impulse buys than a match for another company’s trios titles. Furthermore, it would have sped up this needlessly drawn-out tournament.
(Jason Powell, founder and editor of ProWrestling.net, has covered pro wrestling full-time dating back to 1997. He hosts a weekly podcast, Pro Wrestling Boom, and also appears regularly on the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. Reach him via email at dotnetjason@gmail.com and on social media via @prowrestlingnet.bsky.social or x.com/prowrestlingnet. For his full bio and information on this website, click here.)
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