Official Revolution (2021) Thread

I must admit I've been taken hook line and sinker with AEW from day 1 but this PPV fell just short of the mark for me,
Ethan page missed so many spots, I've never been a fan of his but I tried to keep an open mind. Hopefully when there's not as much going in the ring I'll come around on him.

Christian being the surprise, neh, I get the disappointment, especially when all we've seen is speculation about Punk, Lesnar and Batista those are top tier guys. As other people have said it would have been better to have no "scoop" angle and just have Christian show up, people's fantasy booking was better than the storyline. Still he's a great get and if edge still has that desire to tag again with Christian I'm sure the door is open with AEW when he feels like leaving the E

I enjoyed the barbed wire match shame about the explosion was weak at the end Moxley played it well afterthe PPV saying Kenny can't make explosions for crapor something they should have aired that make it look like less of a botch.

All in all 7/10

Name calling. Yes. Solid retort to me calling you out and proving you to be a liar. 

I can see why some people was a little disappointed in Christian but I’m not one of them I really enjoyed him wherever he’s been and I don’t see that changing now.

I thought the Sting&Darby/Team Taz match was great. It was awesome seeing Sting back in action no matter the type of match,I’m just glad he made it out as good of shape as he went in.

Omega/Mox was great until the ending,it’s a shame a great night of action is gonna get over looked by a lot of people because of that ending.

I thought it was a really good show and well worth the price tag for me.

I appreciate that mileage may vary for others, but this was one of the better PPV's of the last few years for me. The show opened with 4 absolute bangers and closed with two more. My only complaint is the botched pyro to close the show, which could have absolutely made Eddie and instead will be a meme and the time given to Hardy/Hangman. Even then, wrestling is all about suspension of belief and we do it thousands of times each show. I'm willing to accept that Eddie saves Mox's life by protecting him from those firecrackers and smoke bombs and see what story they're going to tell.

The Christian signing is absolutely a win. Building a company is about a lot more than just the matches in the ring, and Christian absolutely brings significant value that they will monetize outside of his wrestling. It's not like there's a long list of former world champs just floating around able to be signed. Anybody getting spun up over Punk, Brock, Cena, etc wasn't living in reality to begin with. Of available talent, this was the biggest get out there to be had.

I thought the show flowed fairly well, but landed somewhere in the middle quality-wise when it comes to AEW PPVs. I realized when watching that I generally wasn't all that invested in a lot of the stories driving the matches for this show. Some aspects had good payoffs like Matt Hardy/Hangman Page, Christian's debut, and Young Bucks/Jericho & MJF. I thought the ladder match was entertaining enough - I'm not too familiar with Ethan Page but I'm interested to see what he does in AEW. Scorpio Sky winning the TNT title shot will make for a great match with Darby.

Match of the night for me was surprisingly the cinematic street fight between Sting & Darby/Team Taz. I thought the commentary complimented the match's cinematic style and kept it from being too over the top since it was being treated as a legitimate match. My only complaint is that I think it would have been more effective for Darby to pick up the win with an assist from Sting rather than Sting straight up getting the win on Starks. Even so, it was nice seeing Sting compete again even in a controlled environment.

I was having a hard time being invested in the Shida/Mizunami match. I appreciate that they tried putting a spotlight on their eclectic women's division with the eliminator tournament but I'll admit I only watched the matches that took place on Dynamite, so this week's episode was the first time I saw Mizunami since Double or Nothing 2019. Granted the vignette gave a glimpse at the history between these women, but it feels like AEW's women's division is in such a directionless state filled with a mixed bag of characters that they don't know what to do with. Why haven't they pulled the trigger on Britt Baker vs. Shida over the title? It feels like such an obvious program to run with that actually has a solid story behind it. The match itself was okay but there was a serious overkill of false finishes that got pretty ridiculous at the end and didn't do any favours for Shida.

The main event with Omega and Moxley lived up to the hype in terms of violence throughout the match itself, but yeah...that "explosion" was baffling. It did such a disservice to the match that came before it much like the handcuff botch at the end of the Reigns/Owens match from the Rumble this year. Surely the team behind putting this match together knew how this would look on TV, right? It would have been way more effective for the PPV to just end on a brutal beatdown of Moxley from Omega and the Good Brothers. Looks like Mox acknowledged the disappointment of the explosion after the show went off the air, so maybe there will be some kind of a make up angle on this week's Dynamite to write Moxley off for a few months.

I hope for Double or Nothing AEW can get back on track with more meaningful storylines. There's a ton they have to work with, and for me there have been more hits than misses in the promotion so I'm confident there will be intrigue leading up to the next PPV.

Cody Rhodes, Young Bucks and Omega have proven they are great and talented performers and even visionaries. But they lack in basic story telling and booking. AEW needs to get a Booker to help Tony Khan, someone who knows wrestling.

they've built their own stars in under a year (Darby, Jungle Boy, MJF)

they now have Wednesday's to themselves where they can attract another 100k+ people

Dynamite is locked in it's position with TNT, and the PPVs are proving to be profitable

people can have all the critiques they want, and every company makes mistakes, but at the end of the day AEW is killing it and attracting attention from fans who swore they wouldn't give it a second glance

In retrospect, I think they should have used cgi for the explosion. They’re working with a half house live, anyway. Make it look good on tv. Even if it looked like sparklers to the live audience, the PPV crowd doesn’t know any better because the match used practical gimmicks along the way. They could have just doubled down on the amount smoke to make the aftermath fit. Hindsight is 20/20. I still ing loved the match itself.

Sting literally said he came to AEW to do cinematic matches because he loved the Taker/AJ match. Last night was great and it’s extending his career. I absolutely love Sting, and this is what I want out of him now. To see him look good and protected because he’s a living legend. Nobody should want to see Sting put in the position WWE put Taker and Goldberg. And to be frank, I think it’s this Sting or no Sting at all.

I'm not surprised to see people $#!tting on the ppv, but I thought it was awesome. I was immersed until the end. As for the botch, I'm pleased to learn that it was. in fact a botch. God what a terrible ending to an awesome show. The worst part is that I feel like this was supposed to write Mox off of TV so that he could be a father for awhile. Botch aside, Eddie Kingston coming out to protect him was intriguing.

As for the rest of the show, great. I don't think that anyone honestly expected Punk or Brock. As mentioned in other threads I thought it would be Angle or Christian. Definitely overhyped, but people acting like it's the end of AEW because of a weak reveal and some botched pyro are way off-base. Here are my takeaways:

We knew Jericho was being ousted from the Inner Circle, but I'd be curious to see if it happens right away or if they tease it for a few weeks. What I really hope is that this turns into a coming out party for Santana and Ortiz as the bonified tag team of the Inner Circle. They've been overshadowed thus far. I'm also curious to see if Hager stays or leaves with Jericho. I do think that Sammy and Jericho will get back together. Having Hager with them would make the power struggle more even, and Wardlow would work as the Inner Circle powerhouse if Hager leaves.

I actually really enjoyed the Battle Royal. The right team won, and Jungle Boy was further cemented as a top star. I'm also all in on Death Triangle.

This might be the beginning of a coming out party for Miro. It's been pretty rough with him so far, but I saw some shades of greatness that really didn't appear until last night.

The women's match was better than I expected. I'm really not into the WWE style of women's wrestling, but I could get into the Japanese style. I hope that there's some reason for Nyla Jax, Maki Itoh, and Britt Baker to be aligned other than as a one-off six person tag. I've heard lots about Maki, I'm looking forward to seeing her in action.

The ladder match was pretty good, but not one of the best I've seen. I don't know who Ethan Page is, but maybe he'll look better in a singles capacity. I saw Arn in the far right corner lingering for what seemed like an eternity basically watching for the cue, making it blatantly obvious that Cody was returning. They'll need to work on those types of things. Max Caster surprised me, but Scorpio fell pretty short of my expectations. Still happy for him. I'm glad nobody was hurt too badly.

Hangman is a big star. I was afraid that not being able to drink from people's cups would derail him, but he's doing just fine. Say what you will about Matt Hardy, but he always comes up with something new for himself, and it always at least sort of works.

I remember thinking when Christian was revealed that I fully believe that he spoke to WWE officials, and they gave him their blessing. They know he CAN wrestle, but they clearly have nothing for him. Like I said in the previous threads, he's definitely a tier below Edge in the star department. This way both guys can be on the top of a company after returning from career ending injuries. I just hope that they don't give him the belt, it belongs with younger guys now.

The street fight was great for my money. Darby took some brutal looking offense, Cage looked like a monster, Starks is always a highlight of anything that he's involved with, and Sting is vindicated after a horrible WWE run that absolutely tarnished his legacy. That was possibly the best match of the night. Good for Sting!

The main event was basically a barbed wire match. There was no need for the explosions. Without them it would've been a brutal barbed wire match, but probably fallen short of the brutality of their last death match. The rope explosions were kind of cool actually, but there's no coming back from the fancy sparklers of doom. It certainly wasn't the first ppv to end on a sour note, and it won't be the last.

Final thought - I agree with the post above that says that they do their storytelling in the ring. That's why guys and gals who don't speak great English can get over whereas in WWE the writers don't know what to do with them. They turned Asuka from a badass into an annoying, shrieking caricature. Ryo Mizunami was telling a more realistic story during the match with her mannerisms and reactions than she would have by trying to do an English promo or a Japanese promo in subtitles. Everyone understands frustration, pain, and disappointment. Fenix and Jungle Boy facing off at the end of the Battle Royal was another example of two young bulls going at it, mutual respect, trying to get a title shot. Promos would've only hindered that story. AEW certainly isn't perfect, but they've done nothing but improve. They are a breath of fresh air for people who are sick to death of the overproduced WWE formula. I'll even say that having an alternative with elements of WWE, Japan, Indies, and rookie leagues all rolled into one makes me appreciate WWE's presentation more, as there is now a mainstream pallet cleanser between WWE shows that have all basically felt the same for the past 5 years.