And here’s my commentary for the last AEW PPV of 2024, AEW World’s End! Happy New Year everybody, as I’ve said I’ve fallen behind a bit on my AEW watching but I’m catching up here. Here’s my reactions to the Voices of Wrestling Flagship podcast’s Instant Reaction Live to the show. This has a lot of talk about stakes, which is one of the Big Ideas that I’ve been working with when writing about wrestling.
Joe talks about the Rams, his four TVs, which sports are best to watch on second screen
Usual way to settle in to one of these. Probably right that football and baseball are much easier to watch on the second screen than basketball or hockey.
Joe talks about World’s End putting C2 on the map, C2 final as good as a G1 final
I think the qualifier Joe used is important: if the C2 continues on. No way to tell if it will or not at this point, AFAIK there hasn’t been an announcement about next year yet (behind on the latest Dynamite).
Rich talks about World’s End as a microcosm of AEW 2024: highest highs (Ospreay/Fletcher, Ospreay/Okada, etc.), lowest lows (four-way, MJF/Cole, etc.); not being able to “restore the feeling”, pushing the wrong people
This is possibly best encapsulated in Mariah May holding Women’s World title over Mercedes Moné holding the TBS title, which they talked about. I think the thing to really rest your hopes on if you’re a fan of AEW is that they still see a connection between great matches and over performers. We all extol the idea of the workhorse secondary champion but that works best, in my opinion, when the top of the card is hot. In the case of the TBS title and, arguably, the Continental title following C2 Year 2, the workhorse secondary champ is actually the hotter act.
Joe talks about not liking the four-way, bog-standard, not invested; Mox had no chance of losing, not liking World title involving Edge & Christian
Agreed pretty much entirely.
Rich talks about structure of four-way matches sucking, not all Pavlov attempts working
Like I just said, I agree that four-way matches aren’t a great format, and I think Rich breaks down the issues with them well. I’ve mostly focused on stakes, but I think it’s important to talk about how these formats impact action. As far as the stakes go, the thing about having singles matches is that it allows you to say that for the moment, wrestler A is better than wrestler B. In a multi-person match, you can no longer make that clear conclusion. When you come out of a four-way match, you are much less likely to have learned anything than if it was a singles match.
Joe talks about pay-per-view crowds vs TV crowds; Copeland being over in the buildings but not moving business
“Pops the crowd but doesn’t move business” is a phenomenon that’s been noted plenty in wrestling history but I’ve never fully gotten why it happens. I don’t even really have a conjecture, especially in the case of a guy like Copeland who, as Joe mentions, is not just popular but is a fair worker. Certainly, worse workers than Copeland have confirmed business wins under their belt. It’s possible that AEW is far enough behind WWE that Copeland can make a difference, or that Copeland is being better used in AEW and therefore will make a difference. I think Joe & Rich mentioned that he hadn’t shown much in his time so far but I may have imagined that.
Rich and Joe talk about Orange Cassidy being done as a top guy, missing the window on Cassidy
This is probably true. I think Cassidy is a good example of how sometimes getting eaten up does you no favors. That sounds obvious, I know, but I contrast it with Tony Khan’s other booking rhythm of jobbing people out for weeks on TV before pushing them. That is also criticized a lot but I can see the sense in it and I think that Khan has shown that it isn’t that much of a barrier, though I think there does have to be a degree of protection and showing-out which people like Fletcher and Garcia were always able to display. After you’ve started to push somebody, though, I don’t think you can start just beating a guy silly without hurting him. Maybe Cassidy isn’t done for good but he may need to be rebuilt.
Rich talks about Hangman Page feeling like just a guy, people not sure about what is going on with him as far as heel/face, Hangman not fine
Joe talks about Page being a cartoon, Page appearing unmotivated
It’s a shame but I get being unmotivated, if that is the case. Especially in a situation like AEW’s where specific story beats are very important to how wrestlers relate to one another on screen, it’s really important for each wrestler in the show to be clear about what they are doing and why, to whatever level they are comfortable with. If Page is actually conflicted about what’s happening, it would be hard to stay motivated and it would also induce you to just do the broadest thing that could be expected in the hopes that it would at least partially land. But that’s a consequence of the Death Riders story not being as fleshed out or as far-reaching as it could be.
Joe talks about C2 final being a classic match, Okada being able to “flip the switch” and having passion, night being a huge positive for Ospreay, everything being a home run, accomplished getting the win back for Ospreay
If you’ve read a bunch of my wrestling blogs, you’ll probably get the idea that I’m not totally into the current wrestling style in AEW, and that’s true. So I can’t necessarily agree that Ospreay/Okada in the C2 final was a classic match. I gave it four stars but that’s mainly a rating on what I saw in the performance, not a rating of my enjoyment of the match. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the match, but four star enjoyment, I’m not sure about that. Since I had the opportunity, though, I did feel like making it clear how I stood about that.
The main thing I wanted to talk about here was “getting the win back”. Like I said in an earlier point, I have been talking a lot about stakes, and here I just wanted to point out that this is a measure where it’s clear to see that almost everybody cares about the stakes in wrestling. Booking a series of matches so you go 1-1 and then get a rubber match is all about creating the stakes in the third match of who will be the better wrestler between the two. When you do that, the third match is likely to be more interesting to people than even a first-time match would be (excluding “dream matches”). Even if the first two matches go to one person, that still creates a set of stakes that are to be contested in the third match. When you’re running a whole promotion, part of what you’re doing is managing all these different sets of stakes, and helping organize them into something that makes sense to your audience so that they can then get properly excited when new matches are presented to them. I just recently posted a bias on attention which has some things to say about being primed to pay attention to a stimulus.
Joe talks about Continental Championship being cemented as the #2 title, being right on the heels of the AEW World Championship, able to help All In Texas sell tickets
Rich talks about Okada vs. Omega as a “traveling match” (i.e. worthy of traveling to see)
Obviously I’m going to use this time to once again shill my article for Voices of Wrestling, Is the Continental Championship Really Necessary? I’d still say that, even after World’s End, my answer remains “maybe”, and if a title was to be gotten rid of, I would still choose to get rid of the Continental belt. Now, this isn’t to say that they should get rid of it; I also earlier wrote a blog “arguing” that AEW should actually have more titles. It is interesting, though, that Joe and Rich agreed that the Continental title feels like it’s nearing the World title’s importance, because that was one answer I gave to solving the “dilemma” of having a bunch of midcard men’s titles. If this is the case, and they are really going to try and treat the Continental Championship as a 1B to the World Championship’s 1A, it’ll all be in the follow-up.
I do agree that Okada/Omega is a great way to help establish this title at that level. If that’s their match, I would hope that we don’t need to have a lot of holdover title challengers, if any; this type of thing always strains credulity, we know that the midpoint challengers aren’t winning.
Joe talks about someone saying Ospreay was shown to be “definitively a tier below Ospreay and Omega”, disagreeing with that; praise for Ospreay’s promo
I don’t want to weigh in on whether or not the insinuation about Ospreay’s ranking is correct. Rather, I want to point out that this is another piece of evidence that rankings are important for people, even informal rankings. People are always measuring wrestlers against one another. That’s good. Like Joe says, people arguing about stuff like this is great. It shows investment. And that means that, on balance, when people aren’t having these types of arguments, they are less invested.
As for the Ospreay promo, look, in my review of World’s End I said that Ospreay’s blood stuff was goofy, and I stand by that. Again, check out that piece on attention, because probably part of what was going on for me was that I got that Ospreay was wounded and all this stuff like the un-cleaned blood and the bandages was just shoving it in my face. Maybe Ospreay felt he had to do that so that as many people as possible would get it, along with any aesthetic gains he felt he made. It’s just not my style, at the end of the day. The promo was fine but a bit cheesy for me.
Rich talks about Ospreay getting better reactions than Swerve, not liking Swerve being a prop guy
Joe disagrees, talks about the upcoming programs of Okada/Omega, Ospreay/Fletcher, and Swerve/Ricochet
I don’t really remember why I wrote about these two parts together but I also don’t have enough to say here to break them up. I think these three are pretty good programs, though Swerve/Ricochet has a long way to go heat-wise since Ricochet has gotten nothing on Swerve. I agree with Joe that Swerve probably gets better reactions than Ospreay but I agree with Rich that I don’t like Swerve the prop guy gimmick. That said, and I’m not an ROH historian, but just knowing how things often go, I feel like there was a moment similar to Nana’s wagon for Jimmy Rave as well. We tend to remember things as being more organic than they were. This isn’t to shit on Rave at all, either, RIP. These are the tactics commonly used. Even if you use them, though, you have to be able to perform well enough to convince people to play along. That’s how you know Rave was quality. Ricochet’s job is to convince people to now bring their own toilet paper.
Joe talks about the definitive finishes in Okada’s matches rather than having a lot of kick outs
Yeah, it’s good. AEW may build into a kick-out era but it’s better, in my opinion, if that’s one of those things that works in cycles.
Joe talks about wanting what this C2 gave him over last year’s, compared to Kingston’s emotional pull
Agreed.
Joe talks about Briscoe being phenomenal
I really liked what I saw out of Mark Briscoe in the C2.
Rich talks about having to rip up his year’s top 10 match list because of the C2, this is what the C2 should be about
Agreed.
Joe talks about his wife being repulsed by the Muta scale blood in Ospreay/Fletcher
Yeah, it was a little much for me as well. I’m not against blood but I’m not a freak for it, either. Also, as I mentioned in my review, part of it was that it seemed like a pretty routine bump and yet Ospreay was gushing, it just didn’t fit together to me.
Rich talks about using multiple finishes, Ospreay using the Styles Clash to win his first match and then using the Styles Clash as a tease in his second; matches you “can’t do this for” such as hip toss and powerslam
Powerslam is a weird call here, lots of people have finished with powerslams, maybe Rich meant bodyslam. Regardless, I agree. In fact, I think that there should be certain moves which are always treated as finish-worthy no matter who uses them. Powerbomb, piledriver, cross arm breaker, and the ankle lock seem like obvious choices. To some extent, they are used this way already, but I think it would be good if more people just used these moves to finish their matches and really establish across the board that if someone hits a powerbomb or a move that seems as strong as a powerbomb, you should anticipate a possible finish. At the same time, I’m thinking about to my reading about attention and wondering what is gained by having limited finishers. That’s a topic I should explore at some point.
Joe talks about Ospreay and Ricochet’s heel work having gotten over
Agreed. I said earlier that Swerve/Ricochet has work to do in getting heat but when I say that, I’m talking about the issue between Swerve and Ricochet. There’s something for Ricochet to settle at this point but I don’t care that much; I’ll start to care about the feud when Swerve has something to settle, and Ricochet hasn’t given him that yet. At the same time, I think the crowd is booing Ricochet appropriately.
Joe and Rich talk about Joe clipping the mic with his Ricochet noises, doesn’t clip this time
He does clip the mic at least once.
Joe talks about people being too hard on Ricochet
Possibly true.
Rich talks about Swerve being cringe in his segment, the toilet paper thing not being organic
Agreed, I already talked about this though.
Joe talks about Madison Rayne, Toni Storm, QT Marshall…
Not sure what I wanted to say here but I made a note of it. He definitely talked about these people.
Joe talks about talent not always having great ideas, Tony Khan not telling people no; Khan doing things that pop him personally; Khan sees long term stories through no matter what
I think it definitely is true that Khan defers to the talent a lot of the time, which is good except when it’s bad. Joe’s probably right that the Toni Storm stuff is going to continue because both Storm and Khan enjoy it, which, uh… sucks? It sucks. I’m not really sure if there’s a solution to be had here, from an external or an internal perspective. That is to say that, yeah from my point of view sitting out here, it would be nice if they just changed course but I don’t have any way to affeect that. On the other hand, even if you’re within AEW, what do you do? If you’ve built this culture, especially among your top guys and girls, that it’s very worker-driven as far as creative goes, you’re taking a risk if you think about clamping down on that in any way, and a big risk if you want to do something that a lot of people don’t do. I’ve mentioned that it’s crazy that MJF has never been in the Continental Classic. How much of it is that MJF doesn’t want to be in the Continental Classic? How much do you piss MJF off if you change the whole direction to one where he has to be in it, or has to abandon the theater kid stuff he wants to do? Does Toni Storm stay home if you don’t let her pretend to be reverse Scott Bakula?
Joe talks about Private Party not being worthy of their spots
Probably true what Joe implies about the Bucks really liking Private Party. I think a big part of what’s wrong about Private Party is what I talked about in my review where I talked about Darby Allin: Private Party just don’t have a gimmick meant for being top guys (no pun intended). They also haven’t shown any interest in or ability to turn their characters on to a point where they could be taken seriously. They’re not the type of wrestlers who would be considered “the best tag team in the world” and this is not an indictment of their ability, it is an indictment of their gimmick. Of course, if they were superstar workers, their gimmick would not hinder them so much. Even in that case, though, they would benefit from a gimmick update to something more befitting of a marquee tag team.
Joe talks about Tony Khan not liking big wrestlers
This isn’t something I had personally noticed. Is it possible that what Joe is talking about as far as disliking heavyweights is really Khan just not pushing heavier wrestlers over lighter ones? I mean, Japan is well known for the barrier (which is breaking down but still exists) between heavyweight and light/junior heavyweight, and there has traditionally been an emphasis on that difference in the US as well, so that there’s a stereotype of large, less-skilled wrestlers getting better careers than they otherwise would on their size alone. One place where I see less of that is the indies, and I think that’s largely a consequence of indies wanting to be able to push smaller guys. Bigger wrestlers therefore end up bumping more for smaller guys than we might be used to seeing. I’m making this suggestion not because I think Joe isn’t noticing things like this but because this isn’t a pattern I’ve really noticed. Samoa Joe has been pretty strongly pushed and I’ve felt like Keith Lee got a pretty good look before getting injured. Hobbs and Wardlow have been well-treated, even if there are questions about Wardlow in the ring from some areas. Maybe I would just need to hear Joe talk more about the cases in which he feels big wrestlers have not gotten their due in AEW.
Rich talks the street fight, talks about Rosa’s back being shot, both Rosa and May being good at plunder, but didn’t like the match
Joe dislikes Mariah May, disagrees that she’s good at plunder, talks about her being tailor made for WWE, most over-pushed
I wasn’t aware of how bad Rosa’s back was but that makes sense that she’s both not been around that much and is working a lot of plunder. I’m not as down on May as both Rich and Joe are but I agree that she may be the most over-pushed, certainly in AEW.
Rich talks about TBS title feeling like the top title, especially with Mercedes; Mercedes improving her stock through matches
Agreed.
Rich talks about MJF/Cole, hated the match, no one cares, not caring about the minor blood
Joe talks about the match losing him when they started yelling at each other, Joe talks about the established psychology being that if the ref doesn’t see something then they can’t call it
While I did not like this match, I disagree that it violated standard wrestling psychology; I think the standard psychology is that if there’s an issue, whoever speaks first gets to determine things, and heels make sure they speak first. I thought it made sense in wrestling-logic for Bryce to act as he did. Also, what about the clap tag? Refs call stuff they don’t see all the time.
Joe talks about MJF/Cole still going on because there’s no space at the top of the card
I’ve said it before but I agree with this assessment and also that it’s a shame that we can’t get away from this shitass feud.
Joe talks about Hobbs/Takeshita, nobody bought that Hobbs was going to win with a title-for-title match later, Hobbs does a great job selling
Agreed.
Joe talks about Moné/Statlander, the boot-tying spot, Moné has been on a roll
Rich talks about Moné’s best matches being sloppy and dangerous
My problem with Moné’s sloppiness is that it’s not just about landings and lifts, it’s also about technical execution. That thing that she was trying with Statlander at the end of the match looked just horrific and uncoordinated; that is, Moné looked personally uncoordinated, not just that the two of them were not coordinating. It didn’t kill the match but it hurt it some for me.
Rich talks about the story of the Death Riders, Copeland being the guy who defends the heart and soul of AEW, “Dean Ambrose vs. Edge”, vagueness
Joe thinks Mox has showed too much ass, disagreeing with Rich
I originally made these tweets about the Death Riders on Bluesky (@nearzone.bsky.social) and they remain relevant here, so I’ll just post them:
I think the problem with the Death Riders storyline is that it’s toothless. It feels clear to me that what Mox & friends want to say is “fuck that sports entertainment crap” (lol fatal four-way) but they can’t because AEW is just doing that most of the time.
What they should make clear is what Moxley wants to do, and I think his actions have been clear enough. It’s something like “I want AEW to be a place where only tough people feel confident coming, aka we should exile all the soft sports entertainers, and I’m going to do that through violence”.
But in my view they haven’t done that because putting a point on Moxley’s goals would imply certain things. Like, if his goal is to get rid of sports entertainment, #1 in his sights would be MJF. In fact, regardless of Mox’s specific goal, it feels like his #1 target should be MJF based on actions
Since they don’t intend to do that, they can’t put anything out there that would make the Death Riders look dumb for not really pursuing their goals.
As far as whether or not Moxley has showed too much ass, I agree with Joe that he has showed too much but I also think there was nowhere else for the story to go. Moxley has no other good targets who he can beat that he isn’t already fighting. Because of that, for the story to keep going, Moxley has to give up some ground, especially if he wants to take ground again later. Because he’s not going to start attacking MJF or Swerve, at least that appears to be the belief of Joe & Rich as well as myself. If that’s the case, then the existing face enemies have to get enough wins that they’re worth beating again.