Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk News, I’m Luke Owen and this is my review of AEW
WrestleDream… in about as long as this video takes.
Probably about 10 or so minutes.
Because there is a lot to unpack!
Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland had an AEW match of the year contender!
Bryan Danielson and Zack Sabre Jr had an overall match of the year contender!
And Edge debuted for All Elite Wrestling.
At least, I think it’s Edge.
Hard to see who that is through all the smoke.
It’s like Rob Van Dam was producing this segment.
The pre-show hilariously and, perhaps unnecessarily, had 4 matches and 18 wrestlers on it.
The team of Satoshi Kojima, Keith Lee, Athena and Billie Starkz beat Shane Taylor Promotions,
Mercedez Martinez and Diamante - Athea’s act is too good to be restricted to just Ring
of Honor - Claudio Castignoli beat Josh Barnett in the best match of the Zero Hour, Luchasaurus
beat Nick Wayne, and The Acclaimed retained their Trios titles over TMDK, with Max Caster
making a reference to Shane Haste being Slapjack in Retribution.
That’s Slapjack, who was made famous by his incredible main event rivalry with Tucker
on the Monday Night War over on partsFUNknown.
The show kicked off proper with MJF defending the Ring of Honor tag team championships in
a 2-on-1 match against The Righteous.
The crowd never really bought into Vincent and Dutch winning the belts, but were fantastically
into all of Max’s gimmicks.
He promised the crowd that he would bodyslam Dutch and show Vincent’s dreadlocks up Dutch’s
bum, and he achieved both of those things - finally hitting the Heatseaker for the win.
Max put his feet on the ropes for that all important leverage in a fun opener.
This was missing the Adam Cole dynamic, but the crowd were a rather suitable replacement
tag partner.
Eddie Kingston retained the ROH and Strong Openweight Championships over Katsuyori Shibata
in a great little 11 minute match, which felt like a thank you dream match for Eddie from
Tony Khan after resigning for another 4 years.
Crowd were again hot for this one, and particularly enjoyed the fighting spirit strong style aspect.
Julia Hart is perhaps the most improved wrestler of all of 2023 - certainly in AEW - and that
was on display in a superb TBS Championship match against Kris Statlander.
It even got a THIS IS AWESOME chant from the Seattle crowd, who popped big when Hart teased
and hit the Moonsault - which really shows you a) how much of a ‘hardcore crowd’
this was, and b) the power of Twitter has to get people and moves over, as Hart’s
moonsault was a big talking point over the weekend.
Statlander powered out of The End of Hartache to hit a Tombstone and Sunday Night Fever
for the win.
A fantastic match.
In our first ‘that probably could have been on Dynamite or Collision’ match of the night,
The Young Bucks beat Lucha Bros, The Gunns and Orange Cassidy & Hook to earn the number
one contendership to the AEW tag titles.
This was a pretty surprising win, considering that Hook and Cassidy were going in with a
lot of momentum for a FrankenTeam, and we just did the third in the trilogy of matches
between the Bucks and FTR at All In.
However, there was also that angle at All Out where the Bucks refused to shake the hands
of FTR, which did foreshadow this win.
I think that says a lot about AEW’s lack of follow up with some of their stories on
TV.
But speaking of stories playing out well on TV…
…Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland tore the house down in their highly anticipated
clash, which really put a huge amount of momentum behind Swerve.
The Seattle crowd were so hot for Swerve - even chanting DEFY at him, the name of the local
promotion he wrestled for - that they booed forever babyface Page.
And because these two men are exceptionally smart, Page worked heel in the match but was
never a heel, and Swerve worked as the babyface without ever turning face.
The two went to war with each other, but the match kicked into a fifth gear when Swerve
‘broke’ the arm of Page - giving him the Swerve Stomp on the apron while he was being
checked on by the doctor and hitting a 450 to the now injured arm.
It meant that Page’s biggest arsenal - the Buckshot - was more or less neautrilised.
He finally hit the move, but couldn’t captalise, and Prince Nana put Swerve’s foot on the
ropes for a great nearfall.
Page went for it again while the ref was distracted ejecting Nana, but Swerve cracked Hanger with
the jewelled headband for another amazing nearfall.
But two Housecalls and a JML Driver put Page away.
An incredible match, and one that should be the first step on a long road for ‘big push’
Swerve.
I can see him being the Winter is Coming challenger to MJF.
Ricky Starks beat Wheeler Yuta in the other ‘probably could have been on Dynamite, that’
match, which was used as a backdrop to set up Starks vs. Moxley for when Jon is back
and healthy.
Moxley was on commentary, and remained there for what was easily the match of the night,
and will likely get lots of nominations for Match of the Year.
Speaking of End of Year awards, here’s a fun fact for you: in the Wrestling Observer,
the Best Technical Wrestler award is called the Bryan Danielson award.
It’s called that because Danielson first won it in 2005, and went unbeaten until 2013.
And the man who beat him for it?
Zack Sabre Jr.
He first won it in 2014, then won it again in 2015.
And again in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The man who finally dethroned his incredible seven-year run?
Bryan Danielson.
So, as you can imagine, Dave Meltzer rather enjoyed this match.
And he’s not alone, because - and apologises to the editor for a bit of extra editing work
here to censor my potty mouth - but I f***ing loved this match.
It was put over perfectly from the outset by Mox: Zack Sabre Jr plans out combinations
and executes them.
He’ll start at your ankle, then work his way to the wrist, exactly as he planned.
Bryan Danielson, on the other hand, is more reactive.
He has things plotted out, but he can change and pivot when he needs to if that isn’t
working out.
But sometimes that can backfire.
For example, Danielson isn’t using his right arm at the moment because that’s the arm
he hurt in the Okada match.
So he was giving Zack some uppercuts with his left arm, which were less effective.
And Zack baited him into using his right arm because of fighting spirit, and Danielson
reacted in doing so, which Zack took advantage of.
He then targeted that arm for the majority of the match, which was a brilliant technical
display.
This Seattle crowd gave this the reaction it deserved - huge pops for the big nearfalls,
and polite applause for the technical wrestling on display.
It was such a good technical display that at one point, Nigel McGuinness and Jon Moxley
got out of their seats to see a submission a bit closer.
Finally, Danielson hit two Knee+s for the win.
McGuinness pointed out that Danielson had to use a strike to put Zack down, so ZSJ is
still the best technical wrestler on the planet.
This won’t be for everyone, I get that.
If anything, the people who will enjoy this match the most are me, Oli Davis, Dave Meltzer
and Kate Elizabeth from Fightful.
But, for me, this was magic, and I hope we get to see more of it.
The same cannot be said for the trios match of Chris Jericho & The Golden Lovers taking
on The Don Callis family.
The action was good and frantic, but it wasn’t as good as the sum of its parts.
It’s a match that featured Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, Konosuke Takeshita
and Will Ospreay (Sammy Guevera was also there).
Omega and Ospreay have shown time and time again why they are the best wrestlers on the
planet, Jericho can still bust out main event level quality, and Takeshita is just incredible.
While Ibushi has lost somewhat of a step in his AEW run, he still has an aura around him,
and while his character just never clicks, Sammy is an exceptionally crisp talent.
So why was this only a 3 and half star match?
I don’t know, but it was a bit messy in parts.
And the focus was all around Jericho and Sammy when all of the build has been focused around
Callis and Kenny for the past 6 months.
Callis hit Jerichi with the bat, and Sammy pinned him.
Meh.
FTR retained the AEW Tag Team Championships against Aussie Open in what should have felt
like a dream rematch, but Fletcher and Davis haven’t been given enough momentum on TV
to make the crowd think they were walking away with the titles.
The hype for this worked if you saw the Royal Quest match last year, but if you didn’t
then this was the same level of anticipation of MJF and the Righteous.
The match was very, very good - but not a patch on last year.
The crowd gave it a half-hearted This Is Awesome, and FTR won with a Super Shatter Machine.
Which brings us to the main event of Christian Cage defending the TNT Championship against
local boy Darby Allin - who also got DEFY chants - in a 2-out-3 falls match.
Allin got the first fall by hooking Cage’s turtle neck over his face - making him look
like Cornholio in search of TP for his bunghole - and the second fall was built around Nick
Wayne’s mum at ringside.
She threw a drink in the face of an advancing Cage, which led to a series of great nearfall
moments with the Coffin Drop.
But in the end, Cage slammed Darby into the step bit of the steel steps from the ring
apron to get a countout win.
One word: OUCH.
The final fall saw Christian take apart the ring to expose the boards, and did a Frog
Splash onto Darby while he was on the stretcher.
Allin then took a brutal Unprettier on the boards for an amazing nearfall, and the two
exchanged Sting-based moves until Cage took out the ref with a Spear.
Nick Wayne came down to stop Christian using the TNT Championship - but then turned heel
and cracked his mentor Darby Allin with it in a shocking moment.
Cage covered, and retained his title.
It was an awesome match with an incredible finish, but there’s still 10 minutes of
this show left, so we’re not done there.
Sting came out for the save, but with Luchasarus also making his presence known, the numbers
were too much.
Cage set up for the ConCHAIRto, but the lights went out, and Edge - now Adam Copeland - made
his debut for AEW.
Remember when Cody Rhodes returned to WWE at Mania last year and it was so weird seeing
AEW Cody - and it was AEW Cody with the same entrance music, same pyro, same gear, same
everything as he had in AEW - so, remember how weird it was seeing AEW Cody in WWE.
Well, this was WWE Edge in AEW.
Same music, same entrance, same pyro, same everything.
A proper CTRL+C, CTRL+V job.
He’s even the Rated R Superstar because WWE didn’t renew that copyrighted term after
it expired in 2020.
He came out to a monster pop, teased joining The Christian Coalition, but cracked them
with chairs and took out Luchasaurus and Nick with Spears.
He shook hands with Sting and Darby, and has his eyes set on Christian’s TNT Championship.
An all-timer moment for the company.
It was so awesome, I nearly didn’t spot this Support WrestleTalk sign in the crowd.
Shoutout to that person!
Look, this show ruled.
Even the two ‘skippable’ matches, there was a huge amount to enjoy about them.
Every match either delivered or over-delivered.
And it had two match of the year contenders, and an awesome debut.
AEW WrestleDream is 5 out of 5.
But there’s more PPV action coming this weekend with WWE’s Fastlane, and Pete Quinnell
counted down some fantasy pitches for what could happen.
Go and check that out while I rewatch Edge’s AEW debut with British Wrestling Legend, Kendo
Nagasaki.