For the fourth year in a row, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) presents WrestleDream in honour of the life and legacy of Antonio Inoki. Eight main show contests and four matches on the pre-show have set this show up as one unmissable night of wrestling action, live from the Audition Financial Arena in Orlando, Florida, including the first ever ‘Clockwork Carnage’ match where Will Ospreay will defend the AEW World Championship against seven of the toughest opponents in the company: Kazuchika Okada, Konosuke Takeshita, Samoa Joe, Darby Allin, Adam Copeland, Ricochet and “Speedball” Mike Bailey. Meanwhile, the AEW Tag Team Championships are on the line as The Young Bucks, Matt and Nick Jackson, defend against the team of Kevin Knight and Kyle Fletcher, while Jon Moxley puts his AEW Continental Championship on th elike against the big, bad Australian, Mark Davis. Mercedes Mone will also defend her AEW Women’s Championship against Thekla, following Thekla’s victory at All Out, and the team of Swerve Strickland and The New Level (Austin Creed & Kofi) defend their AEW Trios titles against the former champions, Hangman Page and Brodido (Brody King & Bandidio). Not to be forgotten, Andrade El Idolo defends the AEW National Championship against Tommaso Ciampa, and Persephone faces all three of Dani Luna, Hyan and Queen Aminata with the TBS Championship on the line. Finally, Chris Jericho and Nick Wayne face off one more time, this time live on PPV!
Kicking off all the action on the pre-show ‘Tailgate Brawl’, the Motor City Machine Guns have their debut match for All Elite Wrestling as they fight the former Tag Team Champions FTR in the first match of a Best of Five series, and we see a huge 10-man tag between members of the Death Riders, The Dogs, The Conglomeration and the Bang Bang Gang. Three of the Don Callis Familiy’s best will be in action when Wardlow, Jake Doyle and Josh Alexander step into the ring, and in the opening contest, Divine Dominion will face the Sisters of Sin in tag team action. It’s a huge night of wrestling, as AEW presents WrestleDream!
+ Jon Moxley (c) vs. Mark Davis (AEW Continental Championship): I am a longtime fan of Davis, so while it has been great to see Kyle Fletcher given the chance ot shine off the unfortunate Davis injury some years back, seeing Davis getting these big moments now is a really great thing. I’ve long loved Aussie Open for the obvious reasons of countryman pride, as well as the fact they are both just great. Mox, meanwhile, is far from a favourite of mine, but after the month he has had with Pac’s death and the behind-the-scenes stories of how he kept the locker room together, it’s really hard not to barrack for the guy. This was a hard hitting match with a really great story behind it, and I loved it
+ Swerve Strickland & The New Level (Austin Creed & Kofi) (c) vs. Hangman Adam Page & Brodido (Bandido & Brody King) (Two-out-of-Three Falls for the AEW Trios Championships): overall this was quite good, but it suffered from the show already having had three tag matches, a trios match and a 10-man tag match, because it felt like we had seen almost everything before. Bandido and Brody were the standouts, and I still think New Level versus Brodidi is significantly better than handicapping Swerve and Hangman into this trios division — in a discusson with a friend recently we determined that Hangman/Brody/Bandido are a team which are worse than the sum of their parts; all of them could be doing big singles things and Brodido as a tag have a lot of mileage left (especially with the arrival of MCMG and The New Level) but they are all four handicapped by being stuck in this trios division. This was a good match, but gosh I hope they can all move on and that even the winners can get out of this division soon
+ Andrade El Idolo vs. Tommaso Ciampa (AEW National Championship): despite AEW using the pre-match graphic for the International Championship, which currently belongs to Kazuchika Okada, this was a pretty good match albeit full of far too much bullshit. There was one much talked about moment which I heard about before watching, and while the crowd went bonkers for it I can’t help but think it really did not service to the people involved. As a separate sort of pet peeve of mine, why was Ciampa even in this match when he lost clean to Okada at All Out? This is another aspect of AEW which bothers me, because I have to image someone as talented as Ciampa or Andrade are going to keep receiving titles matches, quote-unquote, ‘for no reason’. This is a soft recommendation, as it feels like the biggest moment was the meme everyone has already seen
+ Persephone (c) vs. Dani Luna vs. Hyan vs. Queen Aminata (TBS Championship): the crowd was very quite for this one following the Tag Titles before it, but I think this was a very good match. All four women came to work, and they did really well. Queen Aminata was laying it in really solidly, and Luna has some intense power behind her moves. I am least on board with Hyan, but at least she’s not Maya World. Persephone, meanwhile, continues to impress with every outing, and I am rapidly becoming a big fan. This was very good
+ The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) (c) vs. Kevin Knight & Kyle Fletcher (AEW World Tag Team Championships): I enjoyed this a lot, and against all odds, a Young Bucks tag team match was perhaps my favourite match of the show. Fletcher and Knight are both so insanely talented and it was they who took this from being another frustrating ‘samey’ tag match to something special. If I had to nitpick I’d say there was one too many big kickouts when the crowd seemed ready for it to be the finish, but otherwise all I can say is that this was excellent
+ Mercedes Mone vs. Thekla (AEW Women’s World Championship): Thekla’s entrance is always maximum hype, but she came in on a chariot here and I was immediately all in. This was a perfectly acceptable TV match, with a very excited and appreciative crowd, but I struggled to get invested. These two are both ‘bad guys’, but the crowd loved them both, so neither really had the chance to be the proper good or bad guy against each other, and I think the match itself was worse for it. A few times I caught some sly looks and maybe I am just being suckered in, but I got the feeling something was off between these two. Still, a good match with a hot crowd is hard to say no to
+ The Dogs (David Finlay & Clark Connors) & Death Riders (Claudio Castagnoli, Gabe Kidd, Daniel Garcia & Wheeler Yuta) vs. The Conglomeration (Orange Cassidy, Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly) & BANG BANG GANG (Jay White, Austin Gunn & Colton Gunn): this was the first match I actually cared for, and it had good action and a great crowd response. I love the BANG BANG GANG so dang much, and I can’t wait for them to be better featured, though I note that entire crew has had a poor run with injuries. It’s hard to say specific moments which made this good, but David Finlay and the Gunns, as well as the always great guys like Gabe Kidd and Jay White, all looked great
– Will Ospreay (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada vs. Darby Allin vs. “Speedball” Mike Bailey vs. Samoa Joe vs. Konosuka Takeshita vs. Ricochet vs. Adam Copeland (Clockwork Carnage for the AEW World Championship): straight up, I did not have much faith in this concept and I think I was proven right when the match ended and the crowd seemed more confused than anything. You have eight of the best guys in the world, and without implying anything about the winner or final scores, the match was made so that everyone would be beaten at least once and to me that is the opposite of what you want to do when you have a talent pool so strong. This was hyped as a cross between a gauntlet and an iron man, and I can’t help but think that this could and should have been either a gauntlet, or an explicit 8-person elimination match. If you’re wondering why I have not said how good or bad the actual wrestling was, it’s because these are eight of the best in the world, of course it was good, but this match was not about good wrestling, it was about debuting a goofy gimmick match, and I did not enjoy it
– Nick Wayne vs. Jericho: this was totally acceptable overall, but it feels a bit overkill to do another match so soon after their previous. That said, I really hated the finish to this match, and until then I might have recommended it. After the way this ended (not the winner, but the method) I just can’t in good conscious tell you to waste your time with this
– FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) vs. Motor City Machine Guns (Chris Sabin & Alex Shelley) (Best of Five Match #1): this match started really well, but I simply lost interest. These four, and the referee, were calling their spots so loudly and only just barely making the saves/kickouts/”lucky ropebreaks” that I was completely taken out of the match over and over. I am a long time MCMG fan, and neutral-leaning-negative on FTR, and I really did not like the finish to this match, either, and that was about all I needed to decide this was not for me. The fact this was match one of a Best of Five does not bode well for my sanity for the future
– The Don Callis Family (Wardlow, Josh Alexander & Jake Doyle) are in action: I won’t be cute; this was a three-minute destruction. Great to see Wardlow being taken seriously — I say, slightly sarcastically for his position here, but at least he looked like a monster
– Divine Dominion (Lena Kross & Megan Bayne) vs. Sisters of Sin (Skye Blue & Julia Hart): I was absolutely dreading yet another ‘Sisters of Sin lose on the pre-show’ affair, to the point I have previously had to imagine they were being punished for something. I really like Lena Kross and I hope for big things in her future; frankly, she would shine in the WWE, but AEW is the best place for her to be right now. It’s always hard to recommend a throwaway pre-show tag team match, even if this was perfectly fine
> all throughout the show, matches kept doing the same sequences and moments from matches before them. I don’t mean a few shared moves, but I mean one match featured a ‘near miss rope break’, and then the very next match featured the exact same moment with the same awkward camera angle; moments involving the steel steps were in multiple matches, and the same specific tag team offence was used multiple times throughout the show. AEW has often had issues with ‘sameness’, but it was especially noticeable tonight
> similarly, AEW has always had the issue of the microphones picking up the wrestlers and referees, but it was particularly loud on this show. The referees were so audible throughout; it was fascinating, but frustrating at the same time as you could clearly hear them say what was coming next, and when to turn toward the camera, et cetera
Should you watch this event: After just how excellent All Out was, this show was the worse example of how everything AEW is far too ‘samey’ for me. It has taken me almost a week to review as I have had to watch this show in four sessions; it is just exhausting when every match feels like the same moments in the same configurations, time after time. Seek out Mox/Davis and the Bucks/Fletcher and Knight tag match if you’re a fan of them specifically, but frankly the rest was skippable. This was an ‘okay’ B-level PPV built around a specific match, but I don’t know if anything was must see.
