Posted in: AEW, Sports, TV | Tagged: aew, double or nothing, recaps, wrestling

AEW Double or Nothing: Now That's How You End a Pandemic

Last night at AEW Double or Nothing, the one ingredient that's been missing from pro wrestling returned in full force: the full-capacity, packed wrestling crowd. And even if AEW Double or Nothing was the worst PPV in wrestling history, it would still have brought incredible catharsis to fans after a year-and-a-half of COVID. Even better: AEW Double or Nothing was not the worst PPV in wrestling history.

Instead, Double or Nothing felt like a return to form, of sorts, for AEW. After botching the ending of their two most recent big shows, by exposing the crash pads from Chris Jericho's fall at the end of Blood and Guts and by promising an exploding ring at the end of AEW Revolution and delivering a few dud fireworks and an insufficient amount of smoke, AEW symbolically went back to basics for the ending of Double or Nothing, as the spectacle of the main event, Stadium Stampede two, concluded with Sammy Guevara beating Shawn Spears in the middle of the ring. The show went off the air with the Inner Circle posing in the ring while the crowd sang along to Judas in my Mind by Fozzy. It was as if they hadn't skipped a beat.

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, professional wrestling companies continued to entertain fans as best they could. Impact Wrestling held empty building shows in Nashville, holding out on even adding fake crowd noise until very recently. WWE started with empty shows in the performance center and later built the Thunderdome, a monument to excess with a thousand LED screens displaying WWE fans (or their visages, now fully owned by WWE in perpetuity), as if they were right there in the building, and sweetening the whole thing with fake cheers, boos, and chants. AEW, very early on, went a different route, originally filling their early pandemic shows in Georgia with enhancement talent, and taking that concept to Daily's Place in Jacksonville, where the building slowly began to fill with fans, at first socially distanced. Of the three, AEW's "crowd" felt like the closest substitute for the real thing, except for one problem: there is no substitute for the real thing.

Leading up to the main event, Double or Nothing was filled with mostly good wrestling and mostly crowd-pleasing finishes. During the Buy-In pre-show, Serena Deeb retained the AEW Championship against inaugural AEW Women's Champion Riho in a match that threatened to steal the show for the whole night. Hangman Page and Brian Cage opened the official show, tearing down the house and ending with Cage rejecting the help of his Team Taz teammates only to fall to a Buckshot Lariat. In a clash of styles, The Young Bucks defeated Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston to retain the AEW Tag Team Championships, requiring multiple BTE triggers in a row to keep Moxley down. Jungle Boy finally got that big win everyone has been waiting for in the Casino Battle Royale, upstaging the surprise appearance of Leo Rush in the wildcard slot. Rush's signing would not be the only surprise of the night.

In perhaps the only match of the night where the definitively wrong person won (just ask Twitter), Cody Rhodes defeated Anthony Ogogo in one of those "try to make him look good in defeat" matches. Cody and his character have become polarizing in recent months and he could probably do with a heel turn, though that seems unlikely in the near future, especially with a baby — and a reality show — on the way. Miro defeated Lance Archer to keep the TNT Championship at Double or Nothing, though we never got any resolution on the status of Jake's snake, which Miro tossed halfway across the building. Then again, Jake never did open his burlap sack, so for all we know, the bag probably contained Jake's dirty underwear.

Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D. fulfilled her own prophecy and became the face of the AEW Women's division in a very good match with Hikaru Shida that turned nastier and nastier as the night went on, Shida getting increasingly more desperate to put Baker away while Baker's victory became increasingly inevitable. Sting returned to the ring for the first time in six years to team with Darby Allin against Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page, who excelled in their roles as bastard heels. Though Allin did the bulk of the work for his team, Sting looked like he hadn't lost a step, pulling off a diving crossbody from the stage onto Page and Sky and hitting all his signature moves after getting the hot tag from a battered Allin. Sting pinned Sky with the Scorpion Death Drop.

And finally, in the first of two co-main events, Kenny Omega retained his AEW Championship against Pac and Orange Cassidy in a finish so delightfully infuriating, my 11-year-old son cried for ten minutes and my 13-year-old daughter informed me she would see me in a few days because she walking to Florida to seek revenge. If you ever needed any evidence that Cassidy is a babyface fans get behind, there you have it. Before the second main event, Tony Schiavone announced that Mark Henry had signed with AEW and will be a coach and commentator for the new AEW show, Rampage, launching in August. And then it was time for the Stadium Stampede, and, well, we already told you how that one ended.

All in all, AEW Double or Nothing was exactly the show it needed to be, and if it sets the stage for what the future of wrestling will look like as big crowds return full time this Summer, then wrestling fans have a lot more to be excited about for the future. You can read a full recap of the events here. Highlights of the night for me personally included the AEW Championship match, the Stadium Stampede, and Baker vs. Shida. The only lowlight was that I would have preferred Cody lose to Anthony Ogogo, but I don't have the same problem with him many on social media do. Now, all we have to do is get through the month of June before fans return to both AEW and WWE in July.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!