Pre-Show: El Desperado, Paragon (Roderick Strong, Kyle O’Reilly), Yuya Uemura def CRU (Action Andretti, Lio Rush), Josh Alexander, Hechicero[w/Rocky Romero, Lance Archer, Don Callis] — (12:15, Deadbolt Suplex Hold)
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During the entrances, Despe got the biggest pop of the face team. But Yuya got to come out last and everyone walked to the ring to his music.
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Yuya starts with Alexander. Very quiet “Yuya” chant which fades out after like 10 seconds.
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Very short sequence, then tags out to Despe and Hechicero. They got a longer sequence, then Lio tags in; with the seeds of dissension starting between CRU and Don Callis Family.
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After a long CRU vs Paragon heat segment, Kyle makes the hot tag to Yuya and Lio tags to Alexander. Decent pop for the Yuya tag and his offense. But then Hechicero comes in illegally and briefly becomes the crowd fav.
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Everyone else gets taken out, Yuya is left with Lio. Pin got a decent pop.
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Post match, Kyle comes in to celebrate and declares Yuya is “dope as hell.”
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DCF attack, Ishii comes out for the save. Archer stays in the ring, brief exchange then Ishii hits the VDB. Kyle wants to celebrate with his fellow Conglomerator, but Roddy pulls him out. Yuya, Despe, and Ishii are left to briefly celebrate.
I just remembered that I guess technically the Kevin Knight match (JetSpeed & Michael Oku vs Ricochet & GoA) is relevant. It was fine, faces lost.
Pre-Show– AEW Trios titles: The Opps (Samoa Joe, Katsuyori Shibata, Powerhouse Hobbs) def Bullet Club War Dogs (Drilla Moloney, Clark Connors, Robbie X[w/Gedo]) — (10:00, Musclebuster)
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Potentially very interesting that Gedo is here ringside for a non-Finlay Dogs match.
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The Opps briefly get in the Dogs’ faces during their entrance. Joe is very over.
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Shibata and Clark get a quick start with just over 10 minutes on the PPV countdown clock.
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The AEW announcers pointed out the same outside barricades spot Shibata’s done in like every single AEW match he’s ever had as “violence” that’s become part of his arsenal since he joined The Opps. This is factually incorrect.
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We get about four seconds of Shibata and Drilla before Joe tags in. Maybe a minute of that then Robbie X tags in. Shibata back in, hits the dropkick and choke, goes for the PK but gets tripped by Clark and taken to the outside. Hobbs takes out Clark.
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Long heat segment on Shibata with all the Dogs getting some; but Clark naturally having the most time.
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Hot tag to Hobbs. 4 minutes on the clock. Dogs get some 3-on-1 stuff in to make a comeback. But once it’s back to one-on-one Hobbs makes a comeback and tags out to Joe.
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Gedo interferes so War Dogs can get more team offense in. Everyone gets in the ring, scramble ends with Opps on top and Joe pinning X with a minute to go. Very brief Opps celebration as the pre-show goes off the air.
AEW TNT title: Kyle Fletcher[c][w/Lance Archer, Don Callis] def Hiromu Takahashi — (15:27, sheer drop Brainbuster)
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This was the second match on the main card.
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Walker joined the announce desk for this match, as did Callis.
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Hiromu got a decent pop.
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This started kind of slow but got way better once Hiromu made his comeback. Crowd followed that same flow; and funnily chanted “AE-dub” at one point.
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Post match, Callis and Archer come in to celebrate with Fletcher.
IWGP WHC: Zack Sabre Jr.[c] def Nigel McGuinness[w/Daniel Garcia] — (17:05, roll up)
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This was the 4th match on the main card. Walker was back on the desk; Bryan Danielson has also been there the whole main card but it wasn’t really relevant until now.
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They ran a match preview video, then a nice little video of Nigel playing chess with Johnny Saint and talking about strategies for the match.
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Garcia has a towel around his neck, which I am suspicious of.
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They seemingly learned from the lack of pop for ZSJ’s Collision appearance and played the OG Young Punks instead of the crap techno mix.
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During his entrance Zack gets right in Nigel’s face with the title.
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During an uppercut exchange, Zack gets his nose bloodied hardway.
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There were a couple points where submissions were in and Garcia tried to manipulate the bottom rope to help Nigel; he gets admonished by the ref both times. After the second time Zack went out to stare Danny down.
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Great match, as you’d expect. Thankfully Garcia didn’t factor into the finish.
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Post match, Zack celebrates and then shakes hands with Nigel. This time they’re playing the techno Punks mix.
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Zack leaves. Tony Schiavone comes out. Garcia pushes Tony aside and hugs Nigel; this was definitely an intentional heel turn tease.
G1 Winner TAKESHITA made a very brief appearance after the Unified title match to help welcome the Don Callis Family’s newest member, Wardlow.
Lights Out Steel Cage: Darby Allin, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kenny Omega, Kota Ibushi, Will Ospreay def The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson), Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Gabe Kidd[w/Marina Shafir, Wheeler Yuta] — (28:59, High Fly Flow)
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This was the final match of the broadcast. Danielson left commentary, with the reasoning being his personal issues with Death Riders/Mox. Jim Ross joined the desk for the second time tonight.
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The cage is similar to the Dogpound cage: surrounds the ringside area and is slightly shorter than a usual cage, though it’s still at least a foot taller than the ringposts (which is one of my gripes with the Dogpound cage).
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Tana was second to enter, and got a pretty big pop (the feed I was watching started cutting out, so I missed the end of his entrance while I was swapping to a new one).
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They played an incredibly touching video for Ospreay that was narrated by his Missus. Will was still teary-eyed making his entrance. Ospreay is supposedly dealing with a neck injury that he will take time off to get surgery for after this match. He climbs the cage to enter and then hugs everyone.
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Gabe entered with Death Riders. He has a brace on his right knee.
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This was the hardcore spotfest you’d expect. Tana did just a handful of spots; including a failed “face overcoming the odds” rally spot, putting Mox’s face in a barbed wire table, taking a Neutralizer and BTE Trigger for a nearfall, and teasing climbing the cage for a High Fly Flow– which Ospreay and Ibushi talked him out of. (Ospreay then did the big off-the-cage dive.)
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Gabe did slightly more; giving Ospreay the piledriver to take him out for a stretch of the match and working lots of bits with Kenny including an extended sequence towards the end which ended in a dual V-trigger/hidden blade nearfall. He also got the big spot of going off the cage and through a mountain of stacked tables with Darby.
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At one point Yuta went off the cage through the Japanese announce table and pretty much landed in Despe’s lap. This was very telegraphed and I don’t know why Despe just stood there seemingly trying to protect the table?
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Tana’s final spot was a High Fly Flow to finish the match.
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All the faces except Darby celebrate; they then get Darby up and carry him away. At the end Will tried to bring Tana back in the ring for one final bow but the refs literally told Tana no.
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This was because after Ospreay’s bow, the Death Riders (minus Gabe, who disappeared after the table spot) attacked him. They locked the rest of the faces out of the cage and brutalized Will; The Opps ran out to try and help but I guess none of them know how to climb a cage because they just stood there like goofs until the cage started getting raised; at which point Death Riders scurried off. The show ended with the faces, refs, and Doctors tending to Ospreay.
Post-show media scrum is happening imminently, I’ll drop anything relevant from that here as well.
by EffingKENTA