AEW Full Gear 2020

AEW Full Gear 2020
Jacksonville, FL
Daily’s Place
November 7

Last Saturday AEW presented their fourth and final pay-per-view of the year, and it was fucking FANTASTIC! The quality of their PPV events so far has been absolutely excellent, with great builds, tremendous match quality, and an exciting atmosphere. Just like All Out in September, I ordered this live on PPV and settled in with my beers and burritos for an action-packed Saturday night of wrestling.

AEW truly brings back that feeling of anticipation for me, especially the day of, for a pay per view. The build for this show was a little rocky, but once they got things on track, the excitement was bubbling over by the day of. Over a year into their televised existence, I could care less about comparisons to the WWE. I pointed this out in my All Out review, and these feelings growing stronger all the time. I’m just fucking happy to have a wrestling company that I enjoy this much. I’ll take the good and the bad and set my expectations accordingly. I’m past the point of caring about what company does this better or that better. AEW is what I’m emotionally invested in and I’m enjoying it for exactly what it is. I have been following this company for two years, and I sure the hell hope it’s here to stay for the long term, because damn, I’m fucking enjoying the hell out of their product.

Some of my criticisms about the All Out PPV back in September were about the look and the feel of the show. AEW did a great job of taking care of this for Full Gear, creating a unique entrance setup with props, special lighting, different entrance tunnels, and had a larger contingent of fans spaced out around the building. For a pandemic era show, it was extremely well produced, and by far the best looking of the three pandemic PPVs so far.

Buy In) NWA World Women’s Championship: Serena Deeb (c) defeated Allysin Kay by submission 10:25

I was so into this PPV that I was even excited for the Buy In pre-show! AEW’s women’s division continues to be a mess and is the worst booked aspect of the company. The best women in the division have either been in Japan since March or dealing with injuries. One of the smartest decisions AEW made lately was to team up with Billy Corgan and the (apparently not dead) NWA and start sharing some of their talent. I’m all for co-promotion if it improves the matches and gives us fans something to look forward to. This was a really solid NWA women’s title match and a really sweet bonus for the pre-show. There’s a lot of potential in the AEW ladies division, but just so many rookies. A seasoned veteran like Serena Deeb is a huge boost. Deeb and Kay worked a really solid mat based match, focused around a lot of cool submission moves and holds. I so appreciate a technically sound match, and these ladies really brought it. Having the NWA title as a prize certainly upped the stakes. Deeb picked up the win with her impressive looking serenity lock submission hold. Big surprise after the match as Thunder Rosa appeared and came out to challenge Deeb. This was huge, as rumors have been circulating that Rosa would be signing with NXT. Can’t wait to see more from these ladies!

I should point out how excellent all the video and highlight packages were for this show. Full credit to AEW’s production team for their creative work with these!

Jim Ross, Excalibur, and Tony Schiavone were handling commentary for the show as per usual. They were joined by Winnipeg’s own Don Callis, current EVP of Impact Wrestling, for the opening contest to provide more insight on Kenny Omega.

1) AEW World Championship #1 Contender Eliminator Tournament Final: Kenny Omega defeated “Hangman” Adam Page 16:25

Someone on the internet compared AEW’s storytelling to that of a Stephen King novel, and there’s no question that this company is mastering the art of the slow burn. Some of these storylines have ever so slowly been unfolding since last year (also likely due to the pandemic), such as this amazing rivalry. Omega and Page have been on fire in 2020, and the slow dissolution of their phenomenal tag team run is one of the storyline highlights of the year. This has had so many compelling twists and turns. They have been teasing a full Kenny Omega heel turn for 2 months, but are just not going all the way with it. This match is the result of a really obvious tournament to determine the future number one contender for the AEW championship. Expectations and intrigue were sky high for this battle, and Omega and Page went at it at full throttle. This was brutal and hard hitting, beginning with vicious chops and followed up by high impact action and offense. These guys were delivering a 30 minute match in half the time, destroying each other with a showcase array of their best offense. Omega is just fucking amazing and would be an unreal heel. And Page has so much natural babyface fire. It’s amazing how much he’s grown into a star in the past year and has so much more fire in his matches now. I absolutely loved this opener, and like everyone else, totally wanted this to keep going. The ending was surprisingly abrupt, with Omega using the one-winged angel to cleanly put Page away. But that was the point, to no doubt leave fans wanting more. And now, one year later, we circle back to the premiere feud that helped kickstart the company – Omega and Jon Moxley. I can’t fucking wait!

2) Orange Cassidy defeated John Silver 9:40

Full props to AEW for giving their mid-card time to shine on pay per view. John Silver has been a breakout star of the Dark Order over the past couple months. Silver has been mostly a jobber for the past year, but has been showing a lot more character and hilarity, with his wacky antics and facial expressions. Cassidy has 100% cooled off since his feud with Jericho ended in September, but that’s fine – I like him much more as a mid-card attraction. This match was hilariously bonkers with Silver constantly posing and jawing with Cassidy. In the best spot of the match, he rips off Cassidy’s pockets, like some kind of inhumane monster! Silver is comically small, but ridiculously powerful. I love the diversity in the AEW roster! This was a highly entertaining mid-card match, and Cassidy picks up a much needed victory.

3) AEW TNT Championship: Darby Allin defeated Cody Rhodes (c) (with Arn Anderson) 17:00

Lots of interesting stuff going into this match. After being destroyed by Brodie Lee and the Dark Order, Cody took a few weeks off before returning with new evil looking dark hair. Him and Lee had an absolute, tear-down-the-house all-timer of a dog collar match on Dynamite that saw Cody regain the TNT championship. Every week Cody’s promos have been subtly more heelish, leading so many fans to believe the big turn was imminent. Coming into Full Gear, it seemed like it might be the night for this expected turn, but it was not to be. Darby has been red hot all year, but has been coming up short in big matches. This was basically their last chance to elevate him to another level or shunt him to the mid-card for the conceivable future. Definitely a lot to think about heading into this big match. Once again, Rhodes and Darby delivered. All of their matches have been excellent, and this was no exception. Rhodes subtly played the heel during this match, seemingly taking it easy on Darby and ignoring the advice of his coach Arn Anderson on the outside. Cody has packed on a lot of extra muscle over the past couple months and was using the strength advantage to dismantle Darby. The resolve of Allin would prevail, as he took everything Cody had and kept kicking out and battling back. Cody was too cocksure in the early going and by the time he was busting out his big moves, it was too late. Darby found a way to counter Cody into a pin attempt and win the TNT title.

After the match, Cody cleanly presented the ever-mysterious Allin with the title and did not turn heel as everyone expected. As Cody and Darby had their moment, Team Taz interrupted as they promised on Dynamite, and Brian Cage and Ricky Starks came down to beat the shit out of Cody and Darby. This was a real solid beating. They eventually dragged Darby over to the piece of shit car he drove to the arena and beat him down on it. They were about to attempt to break his arm, when Will Hobbs and Cody made the save.

4) AEW Women’s World Championship: Hikaru Shida (c) defeated Nyla Rose (with Vickie Guerrero) 14:10

Ehh… I was really disappointed when this match was announced. Despite dominating the women’s division for most of the past year, Nyla has barely been on TV since summer and hasn’t had any major wins. Her and Shida already had a great PPV match at Double or Nothing back in May and Rose went on to do nothing. For some reason they brought in Vickie Guerrero as her manager, which has gone nowhere. Shida’s championship reign has pretty much been a dud thus far, even though she’s a great worker. This match was alright, nothing terrible, but nothing hugely outstanding. I dunno, they could have at least done a four way match or something more interesting. This seemed to have no thought behind it, but was good enough for what it was. Shida thankfully picked up the win. Who the hell knows where they go from here with this division.

5) AEW World Tag Team Championship: The Young Bucks defeated FTR (c) 28:35

The build up to this match was extremely weird and confusing, with the Bucks seemingly turning heel or into wannabe Stone Colds. I think they were trying to come across as badasses by superkicking announcers and ring crew, but the whole thing fell completely flat. It did lead to the Bucks announcing that if they didn’t win the titles here at Full Gear, they would never challenge for them again. Despite the weird fucking build, this has been a dream match years in the making. These are arguably the two best pure tag teams, with the most dedication to the art of tag team wrestling. That was more than enough of a selling point without all the weak “badassery” by the Bucks. Once the bell rang, all that nonsense was forgotten about, as this amazing match started to click into gear. The initial focus of the feud was on the non-sense “no flips, just fists” approach of FTR and the high flying, double teaming gymnastics of the Bucks. But Matt Jackson was working with a bad ankle, forcing the Bucks to use a more conservative approach to wrestling, and the match was even more exciting because of this development. High flying was conserved and more spectacular, and the mat wrestling and tag team psychology was absolute top notch. This match was incredibly exciting, with multiple stories all sewn together. This match became more epic as it went along, with the finish seemingly in reach at multiple points. The last 10 minutes were truly excellent, with so many twists and turns. The finish was particularly clever, as FTR had the Bucks seemingly defeated, when Cash Wheeler decided to break their own code and did a spectacular springboard somersault, only to miss! Matt Jackson finished him off with the superkick to claim the tag team championship. What an amazing storyline finish and a huge victory for the Bucks. It would have been an even better story without all the goofy Bucks nonsense leading up to this moment, but all that was pretty much forgotten with this epic match in the books. Phenomenal effort, and full credit to AEW for booking strong tag team matches at every pay per view.

6) The Elite Deletion match: Matt Hardy defeated Sammy Guevara 19:39

I groaned so hard when they announced this match. This feud has been a trainwreck and has gone ice cold. Hardy nearly fractured his skull at All Out, and for some stubborn and ridiculous reason, they decided to continue this terrible feud. A couple lame angles on Dynamite lead to this match. This feud felt so bottom of the barrel. And why in the world does AEW continue pushing the decrepit Matt Hardy? He looks truly broken now. I strongly disagree with this decision, especially because Sammy has a tremendous upside and should be working much better matches on PPV. Anyway, this was more of the usual Matt Hardy nonsense. The match took place at the Hardy compound, and was mostly a serious brawl, with the usual Matt Hardy Deletion stuff thrown in. This stuff is really divisive among fans, as there are people that truly love all this Matt Hardy baloney and go crazy for it. I like some of it, but am really tired of it by this point. The match had a couple cameos from both the Hurricane and Gangrel, who both got involved in the match seriously. Private Party and Santana/Ortiz also got involved as backup for Hardy and Guevara, so there was lots of action and brawling at least. The match took an inexplicably weird and dark turn at the end, as they fought inside the “Dome of Deletion”, that being a large garage with a ring set up inside. First Sammy hit a senton off of a huge ladder, but that didn’t end the match, and Matt Hardy came back to sickeningly put Sammy through a table on the concrete and smash the back of his head with a chair, pinning him, then stuffing him into a garbage can. I dunno… the match was okay, but the ending was weird and dark, and what the fuck was Matt Hardy doing winning anyway?! This was my least favorite match of the show.

7) MJF (with Wardlow) defeated Chris Jericho; since MJF won, he and Wardlow are allowed to join The Inner Circle 16:10

Here’s an example of the Stephen King length storytelling, as the idea of MJF joining the Inner Circle was first teased a year ago! Now that’s long term planning. The vignettes and segments leading up to this were tremendous, including a hilarious Inner Circle Town Hall discussion. There’s also some dissension in the Inner Circle, as Ortiz, Sammy, and Hager want nothing to do with the slimeball MJF, but Jericho sees something in him. Really great storytelling. Unfortunately the match itself wasn’t anything spectacular. Jericho has really run out of gas ring-wise in the last couple months. It might be due to wrestling outdoors, but after losing to Moxley back in February, Jericho’s ringwork has steeply headed downward. He’s still excellent in gimmick matches, but one on one matches like this, he’s greatly slowly down. Lots of storyline implications kept this interesting though, and in the end, MJF outfoxed Jericho and won with some sneaky cheating in true heel fashion, meaning MJF and by proxy Wardlow are now in the Inner Circle.

8) AEW World Championship I Quit match: Jon Moxley (c) defeated Eddie Kingston 17:35

There was a ton of buzz for this main event leading up to the show. Eddie Kingston has been an absolute gem of a signing. At 39 years old, Kingston is an 18 year veteran of independent wrestling. His poor attitude and personal problems kept him out of the majors for years, despite his A+ mic skills and promo ability. He was brought in to AEW in a one-shot deal to fight Cody for the TNT title back in summer and made an instant impression, leading to him getting signed. He’s been a treasure ever since, delivering some of the best promos of the year. All of this hard work built up to a natural story of him challenging former friend Jon Moxley for the title in an I Quit match. The packages leading into this match were tremendous, showing both guys from the beginnings of their indie days together. The promos got intensely deep and personal, with Kingston looking like a breakthrough star. There was much speculation that Kingston would find a way to win the title here. After all the intensity, talk, and hype, this main event was really good, but just didn’t quite hit the expectations I had for it. It was a real hard fought, blood and guts war, with barbed wire, thumbtacks, and assorted brutality, but Kingston didn’t take it to the next level like me and many others were hoping for. It felt slightly restrained. The promos were so incredible that the match just couldn’t quite hit those heights, but nonetheless was still an excellent battle. Moxley works so fucking hard in his matches and I just love his work. The ending was really sick, as Moxley wrapped barbed wire around his own arm and applied the bulldog choke to Kingston, forcing him to say I quit. Damn great ending. As Moxley celebrated with the title, Kenny Omega emerged, reminding him that he’s next in line for a title shot.

Holy shit, what a great pay per view! Revolution back in February was the best AEW PPV of the year I’d say, but that’s almost unfair, given what happened in March. Full Gear was just about equal and was hands down the best of the pandemic PPVs so far. This company really delivers and it’s well worth the $50 bucks I spent to watch this show live. Just an all around excellent night of professional wrestling excitement!