This isn't so much a review, just some pretty simple thoughts I had while sitting through this show. I didn't see the pre-show, but the 4 hour main card was enough for me, and I don't imagine there's anything worth elaborating on there. Mike thought Brody King & Malakai Black vs. Gabe Kidd & Roderick Strong vs. Kyle O'Reilly & Tomohiro Ishii vs. Isiah Kassidy & Marq Quen was a pretty good rushed match and Penta El Zero Miedo & Rey Fenix & Mistico vs. Hiromu Takahashi & Titan & Yota Tsuji had some excellent stuff from Fenix vs. Titan, and would have been good with any reasonable junior teaming with Takahashi & Titan, but was ruined by a totally miscast Tsuji, who just stood around with his silly grin as usual, and eventually did the lightest looking offense in the match despite being the only heavyweight.

Hechicero vs. MJF 9:51. This was just a waste of Hechicero, who had a high quality TV match with Bryan Danielson earlier in the year, and a match that shouldn't have been booked in the first place. MJF delivered what was expected – a goofy, overacted, oversold, bad match that he didn't take seriously. The way he treated Hechicero in the (non) buildup, he should've squashed him in 2 minutes. Instead, MJF hammed it up way too much for almost 10, burying Hechicero by treating the whole thing like a joke. As usual, whatever effort put forth by MJF was not to have a good match or help the opponent get over, just to get himself over doing stupid things. *

Hiroshi Tanahashi & The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens & Max Caster) vs. The Elite (Kazuchika Okada, Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson) 13:01. The crowd were into Okada and Tanahashi, and couldn't have cared less about anyone else in the match. The Bucks could have made it a watchable underneath match, but they just dogged it. While it started out looking like your average, forgettable match, it got worse and worse as it went along, and wound up being kind of a train wreck. Tanahashi looks like his knees are gonna go stop supporting him at any moment. 1/2*

Owen Hart Foundation 2024 Men's Tournament Quarter Final Match: Bryan Danielson vs. Shingo Takagi 20:19. Technically good, but it was only a story match when it suited them. Not really what I wanted it to be, and it didn't really tell the story they were trying for. It was slow paced with a lot of dead time. Danielson loves to oversell the neck, but he oversold to the point where it was hard to buy his miracle comeback. I actually think he should have ended it with a flash submission when he caught Shingo in that first armbar after Shingo destroyed him, but they had to do the typical finishing sequence that the people expected, even in a match where the random armbar didn't come off like a finisher. I probably wouldn't have laid the match out the way they did. Ideally you'd want to do the fast paced match, and get to some spot where Shingo wrecks the neck, and then you can do his heat segment, but I wouldn't have tacked on a finishing run after that. With what they were doing, Danielson's desperation counter to steal a win seemed the most logical thing. Some good stuff in there, but Danielson sold to the point it should have been thrown out. Shingo was getting some good heat out of it too, but Danielson had to win, so they tacked on a finishing sequence that didn't really work. ***

AEW Women's World Title Match: Toni Storm (w/Luther & Mariah May) (c) vs. Mina Shirakawa (w/Mariah May) 11:42. Not as embarrassing as I was expecting, but it was still bad. Mina dominated the whole match, and then Toni came back and won with a Storm Zero out of nowhere. Mina's offense is weak and lousy, and she spends forever posing. The less said about Storm in the Timeless days the better. Post-match was even worse, they did their horrible, campy Stardom angle making the match for ‘custody of Mariah', and then had all three of them do a sister kiss. *

Orange Cassidy vs. Zack Sabre Jr. 16:22. As with MJF vs. Hechicero, this match was booked for no one because people who appreciate the serious technical grappling of the outsiders don't want to see the silly clowning of the AEW guys, and vice versa. Zack, being the consummate professional, still tried to put on an interesting technical wrestling clinic with this goof, but everything Orange does just looks like shit. Orange wasn't horrible here, but he couldn't keep up, and his stupid gimmick always has to be injected into any match he has to it's detriment. At least the right person went over. I hope there isn’t a rematch. **1/4

Hook, Katsuyori Shibata & Samoa Joe vs. The Learning Tree (Big Bill & Chris Jericho) & Jeff Cobb 14:02. I don't know why this was even on the PPV. It was a match that happened. The Cobb vs. Joe stuff was okay. Jericho continues to be an embarrassment who needs to just retire. *1/2

AEW TNT Title Decision Ladder Match: Mark Briscoe vs. El Phantasmo vs. Konosuke Takeshita vs. Lio Rush vs. Jack Perry vs. Dante Martin 16:56. Typical forgettable car crash match that caused at least one injury to Rush, had a stupid titty twister spot, and instead of putting the TNT belt on someone good, the most useless guy in the match who has go away heat predictably won. They could have just done Takeshita vs. Briscoe, and it would have been infinitely better, and the belt would have gone to someone who might make it a belt worth fighting over. The fans really wanted to see Takeshita win the title, even though he's one of Callis' heels, and has been totally misused of late. Perry… just like everything else with the Elite, it's not working, but Tony won't give up on it. **

AEW TBS Title / NJPW STRONG Women's Title Match: Mercedes Mone (AEW c) vs. Stephanie Vaquer (NJPW c) 16:51. Mercedes tries, but it's not there. She was doing her usual WWE match, except it's not 2015 anymore, and she doesn't really seem to know how to structure a match. She couldn't do the lucha sequences properly, so they were just a mess, and she spends forever posing and playing to the crowd. Vaquer was so much and so obviously better. She doesn't offer much beyond impressive offense, but she got enough of that in that between her own performance and how bad Mone was, the crowd turned on Mone. People are blaming the crowd chanting about Boston sucking, but they decided Mone sucked, and got on Boston too. It wouldn’t have happened if she delivered a decent performance. Their match last year was decent (**1/2ish) – Mone had the same problems in that one, stalling and doing trope spots, but it had a better layout, so it was less of a mess.*3/4

IWGP World Heavyweight Title Match: Jon Moxley (c) vs. Tetsuya Naito 17:04. This was just pathetic. Moxley pretty much phoned it in, but he wasn't the problem here. Naito looked like he should just retire. The Naito I remember was lazy and took forever to get going, but he could execute, and you'd usually get a few impressive spots out of him if you managed to hang on long enough. He was really slow and sad to watch, unable to execute anything to a passable level. Moxley did nothing to help him. Naito was so bad in this that I was jokingly almost wondering if that Red Shoes screwjob was actually planned. 1/4*

AEW World Title Match: Swerve Strickland (w/Prince Nana) (c) vs. Will Ospreay 27:06. The match that bailed the show out. It was mainly just a spot match, but that's what you get from Will, and that's what the people want. Took a while to get going, but it got better as it went along. There were plenty of impressive spots. It wasn't much other than the spots, but both went above and beyond what they normally do to make it stand out as a big main event. It all came crashing down when Don Callis came out and the melodrama kicked in. Acting isn't Will's strong suit, and he gave his typical horrible performance in that segment. It wasn't the screwjob I was expecting, and Swerve did at least somewhat do it by himself, so maybe we can call that a win, but it still wasn't a good finish. At least Swerve won somewhat cleanly. I'm not sure it did enough to ‘make' him feel like a proper champion after how poorly he's been booked week in and week out on TV, but it did get some of the stink of the Christian Cage feud off him. ***1/2

Best Matches of 2024 YouTube Playlist