Actually stayed up for the show last night but found myself lagging at points and definitely fell asleep once since it was like 4am in UK, so I rewatched the stuff I missed and stuff I thought didn't work for me just to see if I really didn't like it or if it was watching live and half asleep that was the problem.
THE BUY IN
LEYLA VS. STATLANDER - Had a couple of scary moments but I really enjoyed this one and thought it was the best womens match of the night. Leyla popping Kris into the air and catching her into an Olympic slam was cool AF.
HOOK VS. QT - A first real match for HOOK who was definitely OOOOOVER. QT played the wiley heel veteran perfectly, cutting HOOK off whenever he was gaining too much momentum but HOOK outsmarts and taps QT in the end. Exactly what it should've been.
HOUSE OF BLACK VS. DEATH TRIANGLE & REDBEARD - First off, awesome new entrance for the HOB. Secondly Redbeard I never really cared for in the E, I was really impressed with him here. Aside from a great shoulder charge showdown between Redbeard and Brody, this was just a fast paced non-stop 6 man. Perfect match to lead into the PPV.
MAIN CARD
JERICHO VS. KINGSTON - Never in my life expected Jericho to kick off a PPV but as soon as Eddie suplexed Jericho on his head in the opening seconds, man I knew was it the right choice. One of Jericho's best AEW matches and same for Eddie, who rightfully finally won the Big One.
TAG TITLE 3 WAY - First match I had to rewatch as I was flagging towards the end, much like the Buy In 6 man, it was just TNA. Don't know why Bobby Fish had a mic on but otherwise this was just a blast.
JADE VS. TAY - My second favourite womens match of the night. What an entrance for Jade. I would've liked to have seen more offence from Jade, I get making her look strong by absorbing tons of punishment but it felt like Tay was put away after like three moves. Also nice to see Jade showing more personality in the ring.
FACE OF THE REVOLUTION LADDER MATCH - I enjoyed it but coming only a few weeks after one of the best ladder matches I've ever seen from Cody & Sammy, this had an uphill battle from the off with me even if that was unfair with them going for different things. This was probably my disappointment of the night. I kept waiting for Keith Lee, Wardlow and Hobbs to do some awesome big man stuff with the ladders and they never really did anything. Orange got a few cool spots and Ricky diving through the ladder to spear Christian was awesome. At least Wardlow winning will make for interesting TV in the next few weeks.
PUNK VS. MJF - First of all I didn't like Punk's "new" entrance, I know it was a callback but I've just never been into that style of music, cool for those who remembered it I guess. The match itself was fantastic, I just loved how patient they were and how deliberate the pacing of the match was. If I have a minor gripe with it then it was with the ending and the exact way Wardlow turned on MJF. I would rather have seen MJF's shocked reaction in the moment to realising Wardlow screwed him over.
BRITT VS. ROSA - I still liked this but it was too long and there were too many outside interference spots. I get that that was the point but at the same time where is Mercedes to counter act the DMD crony BS. Oh she's conveniently missing. It's just one of those things that make it's obvious they give less thought to the women. Britt desperately has to lose the title for me now.
MOX VS. DANIELSON - Good loooooord. Just two guys beating the piss out of each other. That's it. I was kinda down on this program going into this match because of how the faction story has been handled. Oh they're having a match before they join up but what has to happen in the match for them to join up? Does one guy losing call the whole thing off? So who do I root for here? The match itself was fun as all hell and maybe the best thing on the entire show, we knew this would rule but what was most important to me and I'm sure many others was how do we get to the faction/team up and will the match help us get to it or will it kill off the idea. Mox squeaks out a win, Danielson can't handle it and attacks Mox and it seems the dream is dead but fortunately Sir William Regal appears to slap some sense into the pair and the dream is alive again. BTW I had no idea how big Regal was, he looked huge next to Mox.
AHFO VS. SAMMY, DARBY & STING
A fun, more stunt based 6 man, not a lot to say about it tbh.
HANGMAN VS. COLE
This was the other match I was half asleep for last night, I was seriously lagging and just couldn't get into it last night. Second time around I enjoyed it more however…..I found the last 10 minutes extremely repetitive, there were way too many super kick and no selling super kick spots. I know they don't talk about this stuff in the back but there were like five piledriver spots in this match and that was after there had already been 3-4 throughout the rest of the night. I was beyond over superkicks and piledrivers. I expected more creativity from these two. Enjoyable for the most part but yeah it just devolved into the NXT style main event I grew tired of years ago. I hope that's it for Adam Cole in the world title picture for a now.
SW3RVE - I almost forgot him, great to see him coming into AEW, haven't seen that much of him since his Killshot days so it's like having a totally new guy coming in for me.
Very good show.