AEW Full Gear 2020

[Johnny Sorrow]

I love that Eddie wore Misawa gear, fought like Kawada, and his favorite wrestler is Kobashi.

[joeg]

Tag title match was very, very good. It lived up to the years and years of hype behind it. Everything else ranged from watchable to good. The buy in was good and aimed at talking people on the fence into buying the show rather than getting a bunch of random guys a pay day. Thats what I like about AEW, they don't seem to repeat their misteps. They make a lot of misteps but not the same one twice. The opener was good, and I'm digging the long term booking of Omega eventually beating Mox a year a half after their first match, and having Hangman chase him that whole time. Orange Cassidy and Silver was not bad, good for what it was it was. Darby and Cody was fun, I liked the surprise finish and the little angle afterwards to set up TV matches going forward for the next couple of months. Weakest match on the show was the women's title match, and while it wasn't good it was at least watchable and nobody got seriously hurt which is a win for a Nyla Rose match. Like I said earlier, the tag match was really, really good and the finish left the door open for more from these two teams down the road. The Hardy skit/match was a perfect break from wrestling after the emotional roller coaster of the tag title match. MJF vs Jericho was solid. I think this was the best MJF match I've seen and I really like the finish. The main event was brutal. Honestly for me it may have been a little too much as the match just seemed to unravel a little bit as soon as the barbed wire bat and thumbtacks came out, but then they managed to tie it all together in the finish.  All in all a good show that likely set up several more good shows to follow.

[Dav'oh]

Have to respectfully disagree on the Kingston-Misawa tribute. You've got this psychotic arse-kicker from da streetz, yo, and he puts on his shiniest board-shorts and kickpads? (And he ended up throwing zero kicks unless I missed something). Matching, colour-co-ordinated freshly-laundered singlet, for a weapons and blood brawl? Nice paunch, Eddie. Add in that I don't think Kingston, whilst a good talker and serviceable wrestler, isn't fit to wipe Misawa's butt-cleavage, and that Misawa didn't work this "style" of "wrestling", and it's just jarring. Almost like he was taking the piss...

With that out of the way, good PPV. I thought the Hardy/Sammy hour was self-indulgent tosh that seemed to go forever but apart from that a good showing from all involved. Darby in particular will benefit if/when live crowds return, they'll go nuts for him.

[El-P]

I marked out as soon as Don Callis was in sight. Omega vs Page was just awesome, with the right finish, just. Best opener of the year easily and probably best opener in AEW PPV history yet Both looked incredible.

Silver vs Orange was pretty damn good and a good way to showcase Silver.

Nyla vs Shida was good although went too long after the spot where Shida picked up Nyla. And Vickie is useless as a manager, I was hoping Nyla would kill her postmatch and that would be the end.

Darby vs Cody Rhodes (sounds off almost) was terrific and exactly what it should have been, loved pretty much everything about it, including the cool post-match attack. Taz is soooo good in his manager role, it's so cool to hear Taz cut promos like it's 1997 again.

Then, holy shit, Young Bucks vs FTR was all kind of awesome in every way. What's crazy is that this year it's not the definitive MOTY yet (not sure it was as great as the Page/Omega match, but maybe it was), but it was just a masterpiece. It's insane they they lived up to the hype these two teams meeting up garnered. Classic finish, perfect match.

And then there was no way anyone could follow that one, I mean really, you're fucked seven ways to Sunday trying to follow this, which is why the Deletion insanity was perfect in this spot. The ending stuff in the garage got kinda grim I thought, but one hell of a spectacle with some crazy cameos. Fucking Gangrel... The "mud show" line killed me.

In some ways, I thought Jericho vs MJF was kinda underwhelming. And Jericho looked better than MJF I thought, who did look, well, kinda "soft". Not near his matches against Jungle Boy or Moxley. Fun finish though, but to me the match was kinda there.

Moxley vs Eddie (between the Misawa colored outfit, which was indeed kind of an odd choice for this kind of match but still, and the Tracy Smothers tribute T-shirt... damn that guy adds so much great touches) was excellent for what it was. Hard to ask more than what they delivered, and they could not follow Omega/Page nor FTR/YB if they tried to wrestle, so that was like the best Abyss match ever or something. 

Yeah, great show with two or even three legit great matches and good booking all over.

[RingoPlaysDrums]

Really enjoyed the show. Good pacing, lots of variety, a couple of excellent matches and no outright bathroom breaks. I only really found my interest waning in the Elite Deletion match which dragged on too long but even that had a few fun moments. I was fairly excited for AEW from the start and I wanted it to succeed but I had quite a few issues with the product towards the beginning. Many of those have been rectified now and that makes me all the more optimistic for the future. Much of the "long term booking" that had been speculated has played out just as I'd hoped so I'm probably more likely to trust certain booking decisions at this point.

Shout out to heel manager Taz who I think is great in this role. Together with Cage and Starks I'm enjoying Team FTW. Just a trio of complete dicks and the post-match beatdown on Darby was great. Particularly liked big Willie Hobbs coming to the rescue with a chair. Felt a bit like an old WCW angle to me.

[Stiva]

Pretty much everything delivered and in some cases, over delivered. The tag match was too long by about 5 minutes, I’d say but the teams matched up so well that I’m definitely down for a rematch. The main was fantastic; Kingston really is special and seeing him have that moment in a major PPV main event was brilliant and they brought it with the violence. I wonder if they’re going to stretch out Omega/Moxley until Revolution, they get some placeholder feuds in the mean time. 
 

Some stray thoughts:

Bin Serpentico and give me the Luther/Gangrel team we all need.

Feels like Team Taz needs a third member for the eventual Cage/Starks/??? Vs Darby/Cody/Hobbs match. Darby getting the big win was probably overdue but Arn was so great at ringside; absolutely criminal that he wasn’t on WWE TV for all those years.

Callis showing up for commentary gives me hope that we can get the Impact women on this show, not to mention Callis leading The North into the tag division.

Bunkhouse match with Butcher and Blade and NN is going to be so great. Those four guys will pull it out of the bag, I have no doubt.

[NintendoLogic]

I watched Cody/Darby and Bucks/FTR and liked them both, the former much more so. I'm in agreement with Phil Schneider that the latter had some great moments but was too bloated to be a truly great match. Cash Wheeler turning into an insane bump machine is an interesting development, though. The main event is something that I will never watch. I don't care for I Quit matches as a rule, and crap like rubbing alcohol and barbed wire causes me to instantly nope out. Like intergender wrestling, deathmatch torture porn has no place in a major league promotion.

[MoS]

1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said:

The main event is something that I will never watch. I don't care for I Quit matches as a rule, and crap like rubbing alcohol and barbed wire causes me to instantly nope out. Like intergender wrestling, deathmatch torture porn has no place in a major league promotion.

It was not deathmatch torture porn though. In fact if you can get over the visual of thumbtacks and barbed wire, from reading your general match reviews, I think you would really like the match. The few barbed wire spots were milked and built to for all their worth, and most of the match was them hitting each other really hard, and putting each other in painful-looking submissions. 

[MoS]

4 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

 I don't care for I Quit matches as a rule

Also I thought of this right now.

If I am not mistaken, one of your reasons for hating the I Quit matches is because they primarily have really disrupted action due to constant mic work by the people interrupting the flow to ask wrestlers if they quit. This was nothing like that; there was no mic. So it was more like a submission match than an I Quit match.

[Alucard]

On 11/7/2020 at 7:05 PM, Johnny Sorrow said:

I'm all for using real music, but Poison? Yuck. Hey, Sweeney!

No, Cinderella, actually! My favorite part of all the build to the PPV, hoping for more ECW style music use like that.

[El-P]

On 11/8/2020 at 5:54 AM, King of Debt said:

Eddie Kingston is going to be the AEW World Champion. It will not be today. But it will happen. And that's beautiful.

Considering the (incredible, as usual) emotional promo he did on BTE this week, yeah, this guy is gonna end up a huge babyface and win the title one day, I don't see why they wouldn't do it. And the day it happens, it will be one of those special moments of "truth" that sometimes happen in pro-wrestling.