AEW Full Gear 2022

[Infinity Land]

I didn't catch this on the pre-show.

Ricky and MJF have the potential to bring the best out of each other on the road to Winter Is Coming.

[The King Of Swing]

Reminds me. 

Eddie Kingston should cut a pre show hype promo every PPV.

[Keith Houchen]

The Elite are clearly massive fans of Supernatural and are probably Destiel and Wincester shippers. 

[Supremo]

Shocked people are saying Regal’s turn didn’t make sense. Did you see Moxley’s trousers? Awful. Worse than Undertaker’s Survivor Series kecks. Left Regal no choice.

[The King Of Swing]

Hopefully Mox is getting that well earned break.

[simonworden]

I didn't mind the main event and was genuinely glad they filtered out all the firm bollocks and didn't go with a potential pinnacle reunion at this point. I feel like they've actually course corrected a bit to Regal from what was originally planned there.

Regal turn makes sense to me. He's been on the face side for years having to toe the line but then he meets MJF. Someone do dastardly with so much promise it's like a young version of Regal in and outside the ring. Of course he was going to join up. He shouldn't be spending his final years with nutjob Mox, a vegan married to a Bella or two pillars of generic. He should living the good life with Max, daytime's in the country club and nightime in the strip variety. Mox and Bryan probably don't even offer him a good cup of tea when he pops round and Yuta would get his mum to make it....not good enough for Britain's best wrestling villan in his golden years!

Edited November 20, 2022 by simonworden

[Kamaras-Tash]

Skipped through the womens matches but thought it was a pretty good show overall. I never usually spot fans but those 3 on hard cam ( 2 in glitter jackets and the gimp wearing shdes indoord with red jacket ) I don't want to wish harm on them but I hope they had a terrible night after it ended 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Kamaras-Tash

[theringmaster]

The Regal turn made total sense to me; He just see's MJF as the better horse to bet on, it's classic wrestling heel manager tactic.

Cage match was fantastic and my favorite match of the night, JungleBoy looks ready to break out.

Storm v Hayter was really engaging I thought, I genuinely felt Toni was keeping with all the false finishes.

Great having the Elite back, AEW have really missed them.

 

[Infinity Land]

12 hours ago, gaz2050 said:

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but apart from it being a class song, lyrically, it seems very apt such as "there'll be peace when you are done" and "don't you cry no more"

 

Just doesn't seem coincidental.. 

People have done a deep dive on this and it turns out its a song they've wanted to come out to for years. As seen in a BTE episode back in April 2021.

 

[Arch Stanton]

It's 2022 and the match I enjoyed the most on an AEW PPV was the one with Sting and Jeff Jarrett in it. Absolutely legendary workers.

I loved the Elite vs Death Triangle match too, but a best of seven series is a dreadful idea. Total overkill.

On the whole I thought it was a strong show, but felt it lacked any of the special moments we've come to expect from AEW's big shows. Not a fan of how that Regal turn played out in the finish of the main event, it felt like lazy booking to me. Hopefully it's the end of the awful BCC group though.

[JimmyAnderson]

I was expecting Regal to align with MJF so it made sense to me. And especially when MJF threw the ring away, it showed Regal that MJF was willing to win fairly, which is what he's criticised him for in the past. 

Also expecting Ethan Page to win on Wednesday to set up his title match with MJF and bring the whole nonsense with The Firm to some sort of closure. Regal planting one on Stokely will be nice to see. 

Another thing I took from Full Gear was a possible Hobbs/Wardlow tag team. The little nods of respect to each other after Joe won just made me think that maybe they're gonna look out for each other. I know they've just separated Wardlow from a similar thing with Joe but they never felt like a tag team going for anything other than Lethal/Dutt/Singh. Once that was done, Joe turned on Wardlow. Hobbs/Wardlow could be a longer-term thing and AEW don't have many big burly tag teams either so a Hobbs/Wardlow team could be fun. And with the Bucks & Lucha Bros tied up with one another for the foreseeable, it'll give the Acclaimed another option to do battle with. Possibly even a match up with FTR to play on the Pinnacle history between themselves and Wardlow. 

[Chris B]

Really fun show - for all the criticism of the booking recently, everything match had storylines going into it (which hasn't always been the case) and stuff happened that mattered.

Zero Hour was fun too. I enjoyed Darkhausen, and it feels like a necessary wrinkle to the character - lovable goof who will fuck you up if you go too far, and come at you with teeth and spikes. Not having seen Akiyama before, they got across how much it meant, and Kingston's promo was a great way to finish the lead-in.

It was one of those shows where every match could have been a Dynamite main event, which I liked a lot. Hugely fun cage match, which was clearly one both guys have thought about for a long time.

The Elite return was great, and I could easily go with this series (especially since it's already one in). Although, there are quite a few involved who are injury-prone, so it's a courageous decision... but yeah, cracking return match, hitting all the highlights. And the pantomime with the hammer at the end was perfect. Pac rubbing the hammer between his hands like a goblin was fantastic, along with his gleeful 'Look at your work!' to Rey.

The Jade Cargill/Nyla match was fun - I like both of them a lot, and it's nice to see Nyla being used (and being generally hilarious). Jade continues to look like a megastar.

Blinding four-way match, and the aggro between Jericho and Guevara explains his being added to it. The bits between Danielson and Claudio were just massive-grin-while-watching stuff. And I love that, for all the intensity, the big moment is always as silly as the big swing. Silliness is great.

Saraya/Britt - they got away with it, just, in terms of not making Saraya hateable. Because her promos and instincts leading up to it were terrible, to the point where the promo video was entirely about damage control. I suspect Saraya will be eating muffins and causing problems at press conferences within six months.

Nice to see Jamie Hayter get her moment, and feels like this could really go somewhere.

Holy shit, I love Swerve Strickland. Everything about this match worked, but he's phenomenal.

Main event - probably the weakest on the card, and an outcome I was a bit 'meh' about. But someone made the point that the BCC could easily become a hindrance rather than a help - it's been great, but which of them needs it other than Wheeler Yuta? Better to implode like this and have everyone go their separate, violent ways.

Although, arguably, Regal's betrayal could have been an act of love, finally giving Mox his holiday.

[Infinity Land]

Mystery solved.

 

[Supremo]

It was a great show. Everything delivered and I was happy with all of the results. If it wasn’t clear already that there’s a mandate to refocus on all the homegrown talent, the results on this show left no doubt whatsoever. It was like a love letter to the Pandemic Era. An apology to everyone for the last twelve months of focussing on CM Punk and the NXT rejects.

Eddie Kingston remains the best. I’d never even heard of Akiyama before, yet felt myself tearing up watching how much it meant to him. What a hype job at the end, too! Hilarious. There’s nobody in this business who makes me care like Eddie Kingston does. Pull the trigger!

Jungle Jack looked like a superstar. Bonus points for showing up at the press conference still covered in blood, eating pancakes, but not losing his fucking mind. Those Hell in a Cell 1997 spots when they broke out of the cage were a nice touch as well. Nice to be reminded that the wrestlers themselves are geeks for this stuff, too.

Loved the Trios match. Will happily gobble up six more. Phenomenal entrance from The Elite. They looked the absolute business in silhouette with Kansas banging. If it did end up being a choice between these lads and CM Punk then Tony definitely made the right decision. Those loud, “fuck CM Punk,” chants were something else though, weren’t they? What a fall from grace. As always though, I couldn’t help myself but imagine the heat if they somehow patch it up and Punk one day jumps the guard rail to attack Omega. Money.

As much as I hated the ANIMOSITY leading into it, Pac acting like a proud dad because Fenix smashed someone with a hammer was really funny.

ROH Four Way massively overdelivered. Great fun. I’m assuming the end goal remains Jericho vs. Garcia but fuck me if this isn’t the slowest of slow burns. Glacial pace.

Saraya and Britt was probably the only low point on the whole show. Just really sad to watch. The work itself wasn’t even bad, but what did they expect the crowd to do after such an awful, confusing build up? Who were they supposed to cheer for?! It was a game of who do you hate the least. It got the exact reaction it deserved. Tragic silence. I feel sorry for Saraya. She’s been a real victim of the unscripted promo. You assume it’s not a problem she’s had to deal with before, having every last word scripted for her. Every pause in her dialog denoted by, “*****” in the script. All she’s had to do is deliver her lines and hit her marks. She’s never had to look in the mirror and ask, “am I a bit of a knobhead? Do I sound super arrogant? Are my instincts horrendous? Will what I choose to say make me seem like an unlikeable prick? Should I have maybe watched the product a bit before slagging everything off like a dick?”

You could sense they’d realised what a disaster this had became by the time the go-home show started, portraying Britt as the pseudo babyface, but it was too little too late. The bigger question now is where do you go from here? Do you just skip the comeback story and turn Saraya heel? It seems the only answer. Keeping her a babyface isn’t going to work when her awful real-life personality shines through so strongly. I’d forgotten about the shit tattoos on her hands, too! Dreadful!

TNT hoss match was great fun. I’d watch a best of seven of this! Hopefully Joe unifies the titles and we can be done with all the ROH stuff by Christmas.

Sting was Sting. Brilliant. Can’t wait to play as him in the video game.

Buzzing with the Hayter win. Worried about where it goes though. Hopefully we don’t see Britt doing the Triple H thumbs down on Wednesday.

Enjoyed the Tag Title match. Anthony Bowens is one of the greatest sellers in the business today. Happy to see the Keith Lee thing have a definitive conclusion, too. Looking forward to Lee vs. Swerve going forward. I’ve got so much time for Swerve. He’s been a revelation these last few months. Can’t keep my eyes off him. Future main eventer. I can’t believe this is the same lad who used to slum it with Hit Row.

Good main event. Happy with the Regal turn. It was the type of seismic moment MJF winning needed, Regal and MJF as a team has all the potential in the world, and I cannot wait to see Regal as a top heel. Will this be his first big heel run since that time he was getting nuclear heat on Raw, only for it to be cut short after he failed a drug test? More of that sounds fucking amazing!

But yeah. After what’s felt like years of just watching pro-wrestling because I always have, and finding so little enjoyment from it, I never want to take for granted how great it is these days. Especially when you get those amazing, iconic visuals that remind you how awesome pro-wrestling can be.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Supremo

[Guest]

Re Saraya, If they did a repeat of this angle that ICW did after Lionheart returned from his broken neck, it’d make her a massive heel.