Double or Nothing 2022 - Post Show Thread

[StuntmanCrowley]

Can’t wait for more pandering CM Punk promos now.  Kind of disappointed he won the belt.  This was probably the weakest AEW PPV I’ve watched thus far.  Loved the 10 man brawl, house of black v death triangle but that main even result made me feel I wasted a few hours of my life.

[eikerir]

 

[GojiColin]

I feel like while Jade didn't show much new in her match, what she did felt a lot more confident. Ana still has some hesitation in her stuff but I think she'll keep growing.  Glad to see Athena here and here's hoping darkside Stat gets some more to do.

Everything else was E for entertaining, I just wish I liked Punk more.

[The Natural]

Bring on my first choice for Bryan Danielson, vs. Kazuchika Okada at AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door. Second preference is Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr while third is Bryan Danielson vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi.

[The Natural]

Online at the same time as a dear friend, @WholeFnMachine. Love, Paul xxx.

Edited May 30, 2022 by The Natural

[Brandon Bones]

I could feel the anger reaction towards the show growing the longer it went.  To each their own.  But if I’m going back to the 50 bucks for a show format?  I want my moneys worth.  I got it.  I ain’t mad at you if it’s not for you.  But in this economy I gotta keep my money counted.  AEW puts out because I’m convinced they legitimately care more about their show than some companies do.  So I’m open to looking the other way on features that may not hit 100%.
 

I’ve been critical of Cargills quality of matches historically.  But I’m not blind to the fact she is still really inexperienced.  As is Anna Jay for that matter.  So I’m impressed that they were coached up enough to pull that entire segment off as well as they did.  It started off kind of rough.  But they eventually got there.  Kudos.

LOVED Wild Thing playing on repeat as not just an homage, but a heel spot for Jericho (who was excellent tonight) to cut it off.  That brawl was absolute chaos and for me was the highlight of the show.  I kinda expected to hear more about the production having a difficult time keeping up with how spaced out the action was.  I thought it enhanced the authenticity.  Cool.  Menard’s blade job was fucking great.  Those two Canadian goof balls got a strong WWF in 87 vibe to them that really appeals to me.  Bryan’s fury was incredible.  Especially, when he almost got caught up in Eddies feral aimless arrow act.  Even Hager didn’t suck.  Good finish too.

I was glad to see Thunder Bae have a really good match with Serena after a string of below par results recently.  Hopefully, she is back on track.  
 

Punk is probably the best choice as champion going forward with the changing business landscape.  Very good match hampered a bit by being on so late.  But I think Hangman’s reign was solid with some excellent to very good matches.  Curious to see what happens to him next.

Yeah, Darby/KOR didn’t need to be on the show.  But I’m glad it was.  Great match too.  
 

Tag title match was entertaining and exceeded my expectations.  Swerve is a guy I don’t know much about.  But I’m starting to look forward to when he appears.  All 6 of those guys should get a bonus.  
 

Speaking of exceeding expectations.  The Hardys/Bucks match.  I guess when the two older guys can’t really keep the kind of pace the younger guys do… just beat the shit out of them.  Worked for me.  The full impact Swantons week after week always pop me.  
 

I did eat a shovel load of shit in my assurances that no heels were winning the Owen.  Alrighty then.  Rancid was great.  
 

I’m not going to miss that 50 bucks.  But my weed man will.

 

 

 

 

[For Great Justice]

Stokely with Jade is what we all called for, and we got it.

Sterling will be fine. In kayfabe, every heel in the company should be lining up at his door - he took a rookie to a championship. Pair him with Deeb.

This show was just too damn long man. Give me the nice and tight 2.5 hour In Your House format Backlash had a couple of weeks ago over this one.

Anarchy was the best match of the month and maybe year.

[(BP)]

Edit: Fell victim to the two open threads again. Moving to post show

Edited May 30, 2022 by (BP)

[(BP)]

This was a real wings of wax show. Everyone lost their goddam mind and tried stuff they shouldn’t be doing or can’t do anymore. Some of the botches were just embarrassing, but I spent entire matches waiting for someone to become a vegetable or die. It’s weird for most of the roster to have an off night, but maybe Vegas Baby? The vibes were fucked. 

 

[The Natural]

8 hours ago, The Natural said:

Moving ceremony.

I got teary eyes through this. It's great that the Owen Hart Foundation and AEW has come together to honour Owen Hart. A big part of that is through the treatment of the late great Mr. Brodie Lee. It's also a reason why CM Punk and Bryan Danielson signed with AEW. We love and miss you Owen. Woo!

[The Natural]

@John from Cincinnati.

Edited May 30, 2022 by The Natural

[The Natural]

On 4/28/2022 at 3:20 PM, The Natural said:

Shame it's a Sunday and not a Saturday.

My prediction for Adam Hangman Page vs. CM Punk is Punk wins the AEW World Championship and goes into AEW X NJPW Forbidden Door as the AEW World Champion. 

Before the thread locks. Yay me!

[Coletti]

Well that was a LOT, mostly pretty great too, but I've never before been like, "well that match fucking rocked but I totally didn't need to see it tonight."

Is there any reason that these shows can't start even one hour earlier, if not two? The length wouldn't be so bad if you weren't up until the AM...

[The Natural]

Just now, christopher.annino said:

Well that was a LOT, mostly pretty great too, but I've never before been like, "well that match fucking rocked but I totally didn't need to see it tonight."

Is there any reason that these shows can't start even one hour earlier, if not two? The length wouldn't be so bad if you weren't up until the AM...

Yep. 01:00am till 5:40am UK time. Four fucking hours and 40 fucking minutes. Tired as fuck.

[Octopus]

5 hours ago, Jiji said:

Incredible save job from Anarchy match on. Was ready to swear off buying AEW PPVs after taking a break before the women's title match to finish off work. Don't remember a crowd chilling and then coming back sustained like that before. Bless that brawl. MOTY so far. Tag match was great, Starks stole the show and Hobbs was not far behind. They need to get those belts fucking yesterday. Main was p great but Punk being too optimistic like he does kinda hurt it but I really enjoyed the intensity and two proud men story. KOR and Darby put on a great match but nobody was watching apparently. Jade match was probably the best of the women's matches but still not great. Big improvement from both. Stokely. Yes. Roosh. Fuck yes. Where is Claudio? Cup matches stunk. MJF match was fun and exactly what it should've been. Please don't let this be the end tho. 

As fellow member of JiPus, I agree with most of this. The event was so long but more importantly it FELT long. Nothing really grabbed me. Deeb and Rosa was cool but I was so beat up I didn’t jump too hard into it. I could have started the event in the lastish hour. The Anarchy Derp woke me up. I’m excited for Kingston v Danielson II. Who will Mox hug? Always a fan of mustard. Tag was sweet and agree Team Taz should have won but the match was good so it’s cool. Loooooved the main. It was sloppy at times but that made it good. Both sold their legs well. Ending made me giddy with the belt Gaga. 

[The Natural]

The Greatest of All Time. Man, I love me my Bryan Danielson. If I could ever meet him, oh my! Anarchy in Arena was by far the MOTN and a MOTYC. Might be the MOTY.

Edited May 30, 2022 by The Natural

[Matt D]

Good morning.

I tuned out of the net after the Athena/Stoke debuts last night, haven't not actually seen anything but some fancam of that.

This morning, unspoiled, I watched the main and then went back to the women's world title match and watched through the tag titles. After that, I went back to see the finish of the Six-person tag and Martha's speech. I'll pick up the Darby match sometime in the next couple of days. Hell of a PPV when viewed that way.

I kind of loved the main event. Page annoyed me in the way he usually does but at least his strikes are pretty good. The match was all about the two of them being super pissy, trying each other's moves, overstretching, not capitalizing when they should have because of the weird underlying emotions, paying for their mistakes, making more mistakes, and then Page not willing to go all the way with it and losing. Those Punk botches, if they were even botches, played into the real life person and the emotions in the match, and absolutely just made things better. I loved they story they were telling and how they executed it. This all stemmed from Punk getting into Page's head last week. Great match. Better outcome. I don't at all want to see Punk as a heel. Yes, he'd get a little more control over the ability to call a match but so much of what's making his matches stand out and unique right now are only achievable with him as a babyface. So much of it has to do with his selling and his comebacks and cutoffs and some of the tweener moments when the crowd starts to turn. It was amazing to me in this match that the crowd seemed to turn on either guy that was taking a liberty or acting less than noble in the moment that they were doing it. What amazing crowd control and great performances by both guys. Full credit to Page for the things he does well. I just don't want to see him do the things I don't think he does well. I'll rewatch this for a SC write up on Weds.

Tag Title match was smartly put together with some big spots and big moments and well-orchestrated tags. You always were focused on who the legal man was. I thought they might do something where Christian kept saving them but Jack got distracted by it and there would be bad feelings that would boil over, but nope. Hope Starks is okay after that nasty land on his head.

I have to write about the Anarchy match on Wednesday and I don't know that I can find the worlds to analyze it. It was great. And yes, the finish was right because Eddie went too far and Danielson stopped him and then Danielson is the one who paid for it and Eddie is going to blame him anyway which will lead to some absolutely amazing Danielson vs Kingston match. Let's move Jericho on to something else.

Women's title match was interesting. I wish they had played it up on commentary but the sense I got from watching it was that Deeb, the character, choked. She's the expert and worked the first half with a lot of precision but then seemed to be stumbling left and right after the first Tequila Sunrise didn't work, not sure what hold to put on, not putting the holds on correctly. It would kind of fit her character to choke in the big moment and blow her opportunity.

Martha's speech was a little overwritten but she saved it with the hat bit at the end, and with how excited she was for both the Owen chant and the Thank You Martha chant.

The Rush I know is 2014 Rush. I have no idea what 2022 Rush is like but I'd love to see 2014 Rush vs about 4/5th of the roster. I thought that was how they were going to debut Claudio for a minute but it ended up sort of a best of both worlds as I was happily surprised by Rush and I would have liked something more from Claudio.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Matt D

[The Natural]

Very NSFW.

[eikerir]

And poor Chuckie T hasn’t even said the S-word on TV yet

[Belgian_Waffle]

7 hours ago, EVA said:

My buddy and I thought Jeff Hardy looked wasted even before the Whisper. Say what you will about the Bucks, or Matt Hardy at this point in his career, but those guys are fucking pros and held the match together until it could find itself in the end, when it very easily could’ve gone off the rails early and not recovered.

My partner who only started watching wrestling a year ago also immediately started asking me if Jeff was wasted or not (this is without any knowledge of his past issues). As a recovery person myself I don't like speculating but if he wasn't loaded he was still in extremely rough shape and was a step behind all three other guys for various spots. And yet I'm glad he's there and thought this was MOTN until the street fight? And I got teary when he got the pin? 

And it's very heartening to see I'm not the only one who never wants to see KOR going over Darby. What is that even setting up, KOR vs Punk?? Fish is the best guy of ReDragon/Cole yet he's also the one they job all the time. O'Reilly is a great wrestler but his goofy facial expressions and bizarre chimp-like body mannerisms absolutely take me out of his matches (sometimes even before he hits the ring). 

I love AEW and yet I can't stop complaining. I'm thrilled we got three women's matches for a change. Can't wait to hear Big "I Don't Hate Women I Swear" Dave bitch on WON about how they all should have been cut from the show so that Page and Cole could have more TV time. 

Is Adam Cole's man takeaway from his dark mentor Shawn Michaels that if you do as much shit as possible in every match and never make your opponent look good you can trick people into thinking you're actually good rather than incompetent? Because he took the night off tonight in terms of what he usually does and still made Joe look like nothing. 

[HarryArchieGus]

6 hours ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

The finish to the ten man tag was off.

Again, took the heat off Kingston/Jericho for no real reason, Danielson lost on PPV for no real point (unless Danielson vs Hager is really up your alley), yes the heel team needs to win if its going to lead to Blood & Guts, but it's not the most productive way to get there because the heats all now on Kingston/Danielson rather than the faces needing revenge against the heels who stole a victory. Also, the JAS are by nature, a lame parody act. They didn't need to win this (again unless you really care about 2.0 and Hager more than I do).  It'd be like the BWO going over Sandman, Dreamer and the Eliminators in 97 ECW. 

To each their own, I loved that finish with Hager and Jericho applying strong looking submissions from both ends. I'm sure I do care more about 2.0 (L-U-V them), but the Murderer Eddie and Danielson late match dust up was one of the best moments on the PPV and nicely sets up those two pairing off, which is nothing to complain about. That's what directly led to the loss and made perfect sense. Also, Eddie aleady scored a win on Jericho, and they can easily come back to it. Keeping the actual faction stronger than the thrown together team makes clear sense. As for the BWO, yeah they could easily have scored a victory over those hardly unbeatable names. 

6 hours ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Rosa/Deeb was far better than I anticipated. It was really good and deserved better than the death spot it had with such a dead crowd. Given Sammy is now unable to challenge for the title, do they put Tay over Rosa on Thursday night?

This 'death spot' theory gets thrown around a lot. Wouldn't a death spot indicate following a really hot match and before the next hot match? They followed the fine but unnecessary-for-ppv-thrown-together KOR-Darby match. Lack of fan participation feels more squarely on the poorly received build. Specifically the Deeb line 'you'll be the shortest reigning champion' which made Rosa winning clearly obvious. I haven't actually seen that whole match, but I heard it was good. Tho, I saw some (on brand) sloppy moves from Rosa which didn't sell going back to it. 

[(BP)]

The media scrum is the skeleton key to understanding everything else. AEW was Tony finding a remunerative way to get people to put a mic in his face so he could scream about wrestling. 

[eikerir]

Speaking on the HBK-Cole connection, his eyes seem to be going a different way than his mentor which I now can’t unsee
 

Edited May 30, 2022 by eikerir

[EVA]

I tell you what: If Kyle keeps putting on matches as good as he’s had against Fenix, Joe, and Darby over the past two weeks, I will gladly accept them and not once question where the booking is going!

[DEAN]

23 minutes ago, Matt D said:

The Rush I know is 2014 Rush. I have no idea what 2022 Rush is like but I'd love to see 2014 Rush vs about 4/5th of the roster. I thought that was how they were going to debut Claudio for a minute but it ended up sort of a best of both worlds as I was happily surprised by Rush and I would have liked something more from Claudio.

RUsh was great as ROH champion, wrestling in front of nobody or hardly anybody.  I hope this means Dragon Lee follows and they feud with Death Triangle and House of Black.