All Elite Wrestling Discussion Thread

Fyter Fest Night 1 7/1/20

Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) vs. MJF and Wardlow
Well Chris Jericho is very hyper on Canada Day. I haven't been watching the product that much lately but I know Luchasaurus and Wardlow has been feuding.



Hikaru Shida (c) vs. Penelope Ford - AEW Women's World Championship
Well the referee sent Kip packing early but he took Shida kendo stick! The fiend!



Cody (c) vs. Jake Hager - AEW TNT Championship
I've gotten accustomed to not expect too much from a Jake Hager match. He is mostly a submission wrestler these days but he lacks the work rate at his size in comparison to Zack Saber Jr.


Private Party (Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen) (with Matt Hardy) vs. The Inner Circle (Santana and Ortiz)

I was watching this with my brother and he hasn't seen much of Private Party so that was a benefit to this match but it was mainly a standard affair with Isiah Kassidy being the standout performer in this match. Card building wise it was a good cool down for the main event.


Kenny Omega and Adam Page (c) vs. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent) - AEW World Tag Team Championship

Being that the winner of this match will now have to defend the championships again next week messed with how I thought this match was going to go


Match of the Night: Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) vs. MJF and Wardlow
Show Score: 70 out of 100

For me nothing really stood out tonight. I wasn't expecting an matches to blow me away but I definitely felt this was the better card for Fyter Fest and with Jon Moxley having to pullout of next week to do the July 15th show instead. Well now I don't know if I'm that interested in watching it. But the first match got my energy up and the flow of the match is very important to me when I'm watching. That is what edged that match out to me as the best match of the night.

Fyter Fest Night 2 7/8/20

Kenny Omega and Adam Page (c) vs. Private Party (Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen)

I was a little surprised to see them start with the tag title match, since it is a weaker card compared to last week.

Lance Archer (with Jake Roberts) vs. Joey Janela

I haven't really seen the Archer I was seeing in the 2019 G1 Climax yet in AEW. Which is probably a style thing.

FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) and The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) vs. The Butcher and The Blade and Lucha Brothers (Pentagón Jr. and Rey Fénix)

There is 8 wrestlers in the ring. This is fast paced match. When you switch camera angles every two seconds under these conditions. Its just too much. I can't follow the flow of the match. It feels jagged this way.

Nyla Rose vs. TBA

The TBA was two of the jobbers they put on AEW Dark. DUD.

Colt Cabana and The Dark Order (Brodie Lee and Stu Grayson) vs. SoCal Uncensored (Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian, and Scorpio Sky)

Well this was the best paced match but personally I can't get into Dark Order. I feel that ship sailed awhile ago. BTE doesn't help because it makes them even more silly.

Chris Jericho vs. Orange Cassidy
Was this the best match of the night? Of course. Jericho knows how to lead a match. Jericho knows how to pace a match. But it was nowhere near enough to save this show.

Match of the Night: Chris Jericho vs. Orange Cassidy
Show Score: 56 out of 100

I came into this show with low expectations and I still feel disappointed. Leave the 4v4 matches for New Japan AEW. In my opinion they shouldn't of had two nights of Fyter Fest. This would work as a lower-end Dynamite but not a special show. MJF started the first night of Fyter Fest talking about them being in a ratings war. I know we lost the Heavyweight Title match but even with that...a lot of the other matches fell flat tonight. I would of changed the channel to NXT if I was a neutral.

Fight for the Fallen 2020 7/15/20

Cody (c) vs Sonny Kiss

So this was an opportunity to see exactly how much Sonny Kiss can actually do against someone who can carry wrestlers to good matches. For me I just don't think Sonny Kiss has enough of an arsenal to really be that entertaining in big matches. Sonny really needs to work on adding more moves.

FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) vs Lucha Brothers (Pentagón Jr. and Rey Fénix)

The quality of these teams is on the level of a PPV match. So I had decent expectations. The match did start a bit shaky. There seemed to be a good botch by the Lucha Brothers where they either forgot what move they were going to do or Fenix couldn't get the right gripe. I was worried that the chemistry between these teams wouldn't be there.

Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus, and Marko Stunt) vs The Elite (Kenny Omega, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson)

Then we had 5 more good wrestlers and Marko Stunt. There was a part in the match where Marko was doing his stupid dance and one of the Young Bucks just kicked him straight in the face and it got the biggest pop out of me for the night. Matches like this really wish they'd do more with Luchasaurus. I get that his gimmick is he is a big dino who wants to protect his little ones. But there is a lot of talent here that I feel is being under utilized.

The Nightmare Sisters (Allie and Brandi Rhodes) vs Kenzie Paige and MJ Jenkins

Squash match, at least it wasn't TBA like last week. I guess it was a lame way to get the woman on the card but it is probably for best since if they had a show without female talent there would be huge outrage.

Jon Moxley (c) vs Brian Cage

Then finally we have the most hyped up match for these three weeks and should be with the heavyweight championship match. I haven't watched much Impact. So I haven't seen Brain Cage that often since Lucha Underground and he looked better than ever in this match. If this was a PPV main event I would at least be satisfied though I feel they would of gone crazier on PPV and most likely will in the future.

Match of the Night: Jon Moxley vs Brian Cage
Show Score: 79 out of 100

So there was 3 matches tonight that were really satisfying and it does make it harder to pick my favorite match but I will go with the main event. There was parts on the tag matches where the flow was disruptive and when you have three matches so close in quality that can be the difference. We also had a few angles on the show So when you add in the angles my show score is quite high. This was a really good episode and the type of episode you need to turn the ratings war around.

Full Gear 2020 11/7/20

"Hangman" Adam Page vs. Kenny Omega

This match made me so happy because it made me feel like I was watching New Japan Kenny Omega again. The beginning of the match we had a more Dynamite pace but as the match went on it changed more and more into the New Japan match pacing. More and more into the New Japan style of false finishes. There is our Best Bout Machine and I hope he is here to stay now.

Orange Cassidy vs. John Silver

I'm surprised how much I actually enjoyed this match. How decent John Silver was this match. Granted he is a PWG guy. Before AEW PWG was the proving grounds in the indies and he was Tag Champs with Alex Reynolds.

Cody (c) vs. Darby Allin - AEW TNT Championship

This is the match where my mood started to sour a bit. Throughout the whole match Cody just wasn't taking things seriously. It started really nice with the ring psychology that we've come accustomed to with Cody matches. The issue came with Darby Allin. They just made him look so weak in this match. He barely gets any offense in. When he does its nothing too convincing. The announcers were talking about him wanting to be the face of TNT.

Hikaru Shida (c) vs. Nyla Rose - AEW Women's World Championship

Its been around a year since we've had the Nyla Rose vs Riho matches that for me was absolute dumpster fire. It was a terrible match-up to start the Woman's Division and its been struggling since. Personally I really liked Shida vs Thunder Rosa but Grappl didn't see to. But other than that, its been poor. So this was a big moment for Nyla Rose to show improvement and sadly I didn't see it.

FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) (c) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) - AEW World Tag Team Championship

So the injured Matt Jackson storyline continues but instead of it being his back now it is his knee. I am all for telling a story in the ring but I guess this would be an example of them overdoing it. For about 15 minutes the match continued to have to be stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, because Matt had to continue to sell his knee that he couldn't kick with it without falling over. I feel that is better to do for the last 5 minutes, not basically the entire match. The quality of these four is immense so it still ends up being a good match but not a show stealer.

Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara

This is what it is. Its a cinematic match. There can be fun moments but they are never going to get good ratings from me. Its the same thing with Yano matches in New Japan. These are comedy matches. Even blood capsules were used.

Chris Jericho vs. MJF

I really don't have much thoughts on this match to be honest. We all knew what the outcome would be but every time I Jericho he has put another pound on. His work rate has diminished. This was the poorest match of the night in terms of in-ring quality and entertainment. Makes me really sad to say that about a Jericho match.

Jon Moxley (c) vs. Eddie Kingston - AEW World Championship

So I'd say to this point I had 4 thumbs up and 3 thumbs down. So a lot was writing on this match and it started like their Dynamite match with more of a strong style build and then we went outside and then we turned hardcore match that I thought we were going to get. Though to be honest, I was expecting more violence. There wasn't anything hear really out of the ordinary.

Match of the Night: "Hangman" Adam Page vs. Kenny Omega
Show Score: 72 out of 100

I don't regret buying this PPV. I did get my fair share of enjoyment from it but it does not live up to Full Gear 2019. I do feel the card had the ability though but the match structure and booking held the PPV back. Mainly with Cody vs Darby and FTR vs Young Bucks. Matt Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara and Chris Jericho vs. MJF did bring down the quality of the card. But that was to be expected. My average rating was 3.21 for the show.
If you take out those 2 matches it would be 3.46.

AEW: Revolution 3/7/21


AEW World Tag Team Championship
The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) (c) vs The Inner Circle (Chris Jericho and MJF)

Well The Young Bucks do what they do best and that is be in the opening match to set the tone for the night. Eventually they need to pull the trigger on MJF. Have him win a title, build him up as an actual top heel of the company. Its been 18 months or so since AEW has started and a couple of rings isn't really enough.

AEW Women's World Championship
Hikaru Shida (c) vs Ryo Mizunami

The video package to this match was very nicely put together. This match has 10 years of history to it and it was a good way to inform the fans going into the match. I watched All-Star Dream Cinderella in the afternoon and I would have to say this would fit nicely on that card.

Best Friends (Orange Cassidy and Chuck Taylor) vs Miro and Kip Sabian

This match was absolute garbage, didn't need to be on the PPV. Something that should of just stayed on Dynamite. Miro is the biggest disappointment in AEW right now and this match does not match the value of 50 dollars for this event.

Adam Page vs Matt Hardy

Speaking of money though we had the contract stipulation match with imaginary money up for grabs. It was okay for what it is was but once again not worth the 50 dollar asking price for the PPV.

Face of the Revolution Ladder Match

I'll be honest, I got distracted in this match because of what was going on with Cody. Was he actually hurt? Was he just selling? The bump he took didn't seem so bad and I don't see why it would dislocate his shoulder. He was also continued to be seen in tunnel to subtly stay in the minds of the audience.

Team Taz (Brian Cage and Ricky Starks) vs Darby Allin and Sting

So how do you get around Sting's age? Cinematic Match. Always hard to score these. It was a fun experience but I just can't consider this a match. Moving on.

AEW World Championship
Kenny Omega(c) vs Jon Moxley

Then we finally get to the main event the Exploding Barbwire Deathmatch. Honestly I knew this was going to be that bloody. Running into Barbwire with clothes on isn't going to do as much damage as thumbtacks and broken glass. If they really wanted to up the violence light tubes would be the proper direction but I know after the match in 2019 Tony Khan said he won't have another match like that.


Match of the Night: Hikaru Shida (c) vs Ryo Mizunami
Show Score: 66 out of 100

So this was no where near as good as last year's show and it never was going to be with this card. I still had a good time but it didn't feel special and when you only have 4 big shows a year. All of them need to feel special. I did enjoy the Tag Team Rumble match as well but that isn't going to make the event feel special either. Nothing stole the show. There was a lack of memorable moments. My favorite match of the night didn't have anything memorable either but it was a solid Joshi match with how the pinfalls were transitioned from one another in the flow of the match. I don't regret watching it. I don't really regret paying the money either but this is when I get to watch AEW without commercials but they need to do better than this.