R-EVOLUTION V - 3/3/2024

[The Natural]

Wish AEW would cut down on PPVs. We've got a new one in Dynasty. I'd stick to Revolution, Double or Nothing, Forbidden Door, All In, All Out and Full Gear. I'd lose World's End, don't need a reminder of that show as World's Out 2023 imo is the worst AEW PPV ever. Well that or All Out 2020.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

1 minute ago, Octopus said:

“Samoa Joe is THICC” - JR

Thicker than a bowl of oatmeal?

[Teflon Turtle]

4 minutes ago, Casey said:

I understand the Bucks and Pentagon are pretty well hated around these parts, but the cage match at All Out 2021 remains the best Young Bucks match for my money.

This one sprang to mind for me, too. 

This won't win me many friends here, but the Bucks have a pretty decent big match resume, if you ask me. The above-mentioned cage match against the Lucha Bros, vs. Golden Lovers in NJPW, Bucks vs. Omega/Hangman (this one might be my personal favorite in terms of straight match quality). 

But, I think it's safe to say the match tonight was probably their highest-profile match in terms of emotional stakes and overall historical relevance. 

Ospreay/Takeshita was a crazy athletic spectacle. Though, it felt like someone told them "Okay guys! Go on out there and have a thirty-minute NJPW-style epic spectacle match! But you have fifteen minutes or so."

[Just Dave]

I thought that show ruled ass. I’ll have more to say tomorrow. That show ruled. Ass.

[WholeFnMachine]

1 minute ago, The Natural said:

I liked Ospreay/Takeshita more than I expected considering Ospreay's overrated. Think I'm in the minority thinking that about Bruv.

Sorry my lovely friend but I wore my white with gold English Rose KNGP1N shirt today for the #1 BRUV tonight. 
Absolute banger of a PPV, faves of the night were as follows:

1 King of Bruvs vs Cinnabon Madness

2 AmDrag vs King of Bums

3 STING & Painted Young Boi vs EVPS

4 Spiraling Into Madness Cowboy vs the One True Samoan vs Breaking & Entering and threatening a small child yet somehow cheered as a baby face

5 BCC Warriors vs FTJobbingAgain

[The Natural]

3 minutes ago, WholeFnMachine said:

Sorry my lovely friend but I wore my white with gold English Rose KNGP1N shirt today for the #1 BRUV tonight. 
Absolute banger of a PPV, faves of the night were as follows:

1 King of Bruvs vs Cinnabon Madness

2 AmDrag vs King of Bums

3 STING & Painted Young Boi vs EVPS

4 Spiraling Into Madness Cowboy vs the One True Samoan vs Breaking & Entering and threatening a small child yet somehow cheered as a baby face

5 BCC Warriors vs FTJobbingAgain

Still love you, mate.

[tbarrie]

23 minutes ago, EVA said:

Much to speak of tonight, but first we must acknowledge that a not-insignificant number of people in the audience in Greensboro apparently thought Will Ospreay is Australian and/or Ospreay and Kyle Fletcher are the same person (hopefully the post-match clarified the latter).

The latter seems like an odd mistake to make. Doesn't Ospreay have a personality of sorts?

[The Natural]

https://twitter.com/AEW/status/1764512682424569943

Insane bump by Darby Allin who was badly cut up by the glass.

Edited March 4 by The Natural

[Kevin Wilson]

9 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I'm really looking forward to this show, a lot of potential top to bottom and every match could be (to use common rating terms) a ***+ match (depending on the scramble and Toni/Deonna). As a lifelong Stinger, obviously that match is the biggest to me but both Danielson/Kingston and Takeshita/Ospreay could steal the show. And I'm expecting a pretty vocal crowd. Should be a hell of a show.

I did indeed think it was a hell of a show. Ospreay/Takeshita, Kingston/Danielson, and the main were all amazing memorable matches. The only 'dud' I thought was Toni/Deonna, and it was the only match the crowd was kinda quiet for (a polite quiet, but quiet nonetheless). They just had little chemistry. But everything else ranged from "good" to "amazing", I'm not great at ranking shows as I rarely re-watch them but I can't remember any past AEW PPV that entertained me like this one. Hopefully not a peak, but instead the start of a great run for AEW.

I'm on team "The Young Bucks Are Annoying Sometimes But Put On Great Matches" so I wasn't surprised they delivered, they were there for one reason and understood the assignment very well.

[John E. Dynamite]

7 minutes ago, Teflon Turtle said:

Ospreay/Takeshita was a crazy athletic spectacle. Though, it felt like someone told them "Okay guys! Go on out there and have a thirty-minute NJPW-style epic spectacle match! But you have fifteen minutes or so."

They should have that conversation in NJPW. 

[The Natural]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAGkPtYtapY

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb3ey6a5SBQ&pp=ygULZGFyYnkgYWxsaW4%3D

Sting's speech.

Edited March 4 by The Natural

[The Natural]

Smiled hearing Seek and Destroy for Sting as a big Metallica fan and for a friend of mine.

[The Idiot King]

5/5 PPV. AEW rules the world, etc. The worst match was probably the scramble, and the women's match had a tough spot with a totally OK performance. Ospreay/Soup was amazing (as someone who has been slowly warming to Will over the last year or two), the tag match and Eddie/Brian were all-timers and what a beautiful, dumb, silly, genuine send-off for Sting. I don't understand how you could hate this promotion. 

Swerve/Ospreay at Wembley! Takeshita should be belted up! The crowd is finally booing Hangman! I am now 100% okay with Darby dying on live television because it seems like what he wants, and I should respect that! Daniel Garcia SHINED!  

[Curt McGirt]

This was a blast!

Spoiler

- Pretty much ignored the open. We talked about Jay White getting randomly dropped entirely out of the title picture for apparently no reason at some point. He has really gotten a raw deal so far, having to prop up the deflating balloon that is the Acclaimed and Billy fucking Gunn. Didn't pay much attention to the women's tag and I'm not sure why? It's not like there was a reason. The pounce on Skye was pretty gnarly.

- We'll have great reviews on Segunda of the next two matches so I'll just say a few things. Christian is great, and Daniel losing to piss everybody off worked perfectly well. I learned what the King of the Mountain spot is! Danny needs to have a submission match to win the belt finally. Danielson vs. Kingston was another masterpiece of storytelling and selling, with Dragon pulling his ZSJ offense out of the bag of tricks. King gets to hang onto the belts, all is right with the world. You can stop watching now if you want but there's more show and it's almost as good... but first!

- This! Which sucks! It is posited that we would have just had the Meat Madness match but Jericho whined to the boss that he isn't on the show so we got four extra guys to practice their camera avoidance hiding on the ground while the other four guys fight in the ring. Wardlow, like White, is another guy who unexpectedly tanked but for different reasons. He wins tonight though. Whoop-tee-doo. At one point ALL EIGHT GUYS ARE IN THE RING AND THEY JUST STOP. ENTIRELY. They stare at each other like deers in headlights and then randomly start doing something. I can only imagine them trying to work the match out in the back, Jericho trying to steer the conversation, everyone basically playing a game of "Who's On First?" while Magnus stands there mute thinking "these stupid pendejos think I speak English don't they". Dante also almost dies a couple of times, so there's that.

- The sleeper match of the night is Orange vs. Roddy. Orange's ribs are taped up to a "DDP In 1997" level and Roddy just goes insane using ten different kinds of backbreakers and all kinds of other ways to injure them more. Then he actually gets the pin! Cassidy has finally lost the title. A dishevelled Kyle O'Reilly (?!?!) shows up looking crazy to only smile and hug Roddy, reject an Undisputed shirt and walk off looking like he's gonna cry. His hair isn't ultra ginger red (except for his beard) so you know something's deeply wrong with this man. 

- FTR and BCC have -- get this -- the same match they've been having for weeks now. A little better rounded, but basically the same fucking thing. In that whole time, they didn't amp things up, heighten the pressure, build up to give this stakes at all. We get blood from Dax (and it is pretty nasty early on), but there is no heat to go along with it. They just go out and wrestle, the crowd waxes and wanes along with it, and it's over. Highly disappointing. (Ex also makes light of Moxley being drunk all the time back in the day, which he's probably getting an earful about from Renee in the back. Oh yeah and BCC wear Road Warrior shoulder pads, for no reason.)

- The other sleeper match is this one. Mariah cosplays as Nise Toni Storm (or Nise Bella Twin, minus the football player makeup stripes) and Toni wears an actual weight belt! She doesn't get all Yappapi on Deonna with it though; instead they have a fairly technical match. Not a lot of love from the crowd but it's fine work. Luther busts out the Pointed Finger of Impotent Rage and takes a bump, which seems to be a first for him in this character. Toni kicks Deonna in the hoo-hoo and both the chat and the commentary team discuss. Taz is gonna get a nice segment on the next Botchamania, but... I digress haha. End is abrupt but Deonna does get the visual tap. This is the first time I can recall Aubrey reffing with her hair down, btw. 

- God, what can you even say about Ospreay vs. Takeshita? It's the cutest boy in the fed versus the ugliest bastard to walk in the door. They both wrestle like CAWs in Fire Pro. It is so stiff and so fucking ridiculous that you can't believe it, it shouldn't be believed in fact, but there it is having people rave and drool all over it, including yourself. Meltzer is officially SPENT. So is everyone else. Now, time to get that kidney checked out...

- The main event is a Grade A, Capital-S Spectacle of the first order and some fuckin' awesome professional wrestling. We Love Sting! (Meanwhile, Richard Lewis just passed away and apparently his spirit has taken up residence in the body of Scotty Riggs. We love you too.)

 

[The Natural]

Knew Sting would go all out in his last match ever but I didn't expect him doing a glass pane bump.

[Curt McGirt]

Aaaaaaaand I forgot to even write about the 3-Way. It was pretty damn good for a 3-Way. I posited that

Spoiler

the only way Joe was gonna win was if Hangman played spoiler and cost Swerve the title in some way

and I was RIGHT! CALLED IT~! Joe is still a force of nature what, like, 20 years after his prime? Insane. He can tell a story just by angrily huffing when he gets in the ring, or approaching someone a certain way, or how he breaks up a pin. Swerve and Hangman have all the bombs in the world (and I think the only actual move Page used the entire time was the Buckshot) but Joe has what you need in a wrestling match, all of it. 

[Octopus]

Watching the Scrum. TK seems more reserved than usual. No wig and sunglasses.

Tony said the tag titles will be vacated and there will be a tournament. More info later on.

[The Idiot King]

15 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

This was a blast!

  Hide contents

- The sleeper match of the night is Orange vs. Roddy. Orange's ribs are taped up to a "DDP In 1997" level and Roddy just goes insane using ten different kinds of backbreakers and all kinds of other ways to injure them more. Then he actually gets the pin! Cassidy has finally lost the title. A dishevelled Kyle O'Reilly (?!?!) shows up looking crazy to only smile and hug Roddy, reject an Undisputed shirt and walk off looking like he's gonna cry. His hair isn't ultra ginger red (except for his beard) so you know something's deeply wrong with this man. 

 

 

Almost forgot, but yeah, Orange-Roddy was great and the Roddy/Wardlow wins made a ton of sense and maybe -- MAYBE -- could save the dumb Devil shit. Orange has not had a bad match in the last year and a half? Two years? Amazing work. The most I have ever cared about anything related to the Undisputed Era. Skeptical about Kyle O'Reilly stuff and was definitely handled in a very AEW way of "Oh, okay? Sure. Huh." 

[Craig H]

AEW rules the fucking world. PRO. WRESTLING. MOTHERFUCKERS.

I didn’t think, as a wrestling match, anything would top Danielson vs Eddie. And then Ospreay and Take Soup fucking milled themselves.

I was crying as the main event finished. Sting is completely one of a kind. I can’t think of anyone else who had this long of a career that no one has anything bad to say about and he still gave his all every time he went out at this point in his life and he got to end his career on his own terms. He didn’t need to come back in TNA or WWE or AEW because he was broke, he came back because the fans loved him and he had unfinished business. He didn’t let anything from 97 to the end of WCW eat him alive. He didn’t trash people in shoot interviews (I think). He’s a rare breed for his generation that generally put his family first. His body wasn’t a fucking train wreck. His brain wasn’t mush from headshots or drugs. And he got to end things like he wanted. This is someone who I almost instantly became a huge fan of in the late 80s and was the reason I watched WCW even when WWF was the cooler product with Hogan and Warrior and Macho. It was always weird to be asked when I was 9 or 10 who my favorite wrestler was, Hogan or Warrior or Macho or whatever and respond with Sting. And yeah, it sucks he never got the Undertaker match, but he got a run in AEW that showed the perfect way to book a legend and was probably the best ever booking for a legend. Sting was always my guy as a kid and teenager and adult. I think the only thing that compares to the sadness and numbness I feel now is when Jordan retired. The second time. I’m going to miss him. Again, truly one of a kind and a model person in this business.

[Curt McGirt]

Having to actually ask if O'Reilly had been in AEW before was pretty weird. I remembered Bobby Fish but not him, FFS. 

You just reminded me that Wardlow is also part of the Undisputed Era stuff, albeit loosely. The Kingdom boys are surely going after the tag belts. Will Page want to hang onto the International title a la Chris-tee-ann? Wardlow is clearly gonna just be a snack for Joe. Poor guy, I just don't know how you recharge his batteries, they are trying but the jump ain't working well. 

[Curt McGirt]

Just now, Craig H said:

He didn’t need to come back in TNA or WWE or AEW because he was broke

We've totally forgot that our little insider term for him was Real Estate Steve, until he came back and showed us that he was STING.

[Craig H]

BTW, harder than anything else tonight was seeing KOR. Holy shit. He looked…bad. He’s not a ginger, his hair is all long and scraggly, he has bags under his eyes that would make CM Punk say “damn dude,” and he had the insulin pump on his arm which I don’t ever recall him sporting in public before.

If you told me he’s retiring and that’s why he was teary eyed then I’d believe you. I’m legit worried about his personal health and hope his diabetes isn’t so bad that he has to call it quits.

[Cobra Commander]

i'm sure the plan will be announced whenever but would it be fair to guess that the idea for the AEW Tag Team titles involves a tournament to figure out who wrestles Darby/new partner, or who wrestles each other for the titles?

[Craig H]

Just now, Cobra Commander said:

i'm sure the plan will be announced whenever but would it be fair to guess that the idea for the AEW Tag Team titles involves a tournament to figure out who wrestles Darby/new partner, or who wrestles each other for the titles?

TK announced during the scrum that the titles are being vacated and there’s going to be a tournament.

[Craig H]

But TK should serve everyone and have the tournament be for who will be Darby’s new partner. That is such a wrestlecrap idea that I honestly don’t think has ever been done.