AEW Worlds End

AEW Worlds End 2023
Uniondale, NY
Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum
Dec. 30

AEW finished off 2023 with another new PPV offering – Worlds End – an uneven event to conclude an uneven year. There was a lot I loved about AEW in 2023 – a lot of truly excellent matches every week on TV, great PPVs, the spectacle of All In, the rise of a lot of younger talent, etc. And then there was a lot I disliked, primarily the scattershot, head-scratching booking, the backstage drama, and the complainers like CM Punk and Andrade souring the perception of the company. Worst of all was the steep decline in attendance, and AEW’s stubborn insistence to keep booking large arenas every week, creating dark and cavernous environments that look dreadful for live TV. I really miss the smaller and unique buildings with hot crowds and electric atmospheres from years previous. With the addition of Collision, there’s a lot of monotony setting in. Excellent matches are always appreciated, but they need to invest in character development and storylines to get fans truly emotionally invested in the company. Some major tweaking definitely needs to be done in 2024.

All told, Worlds End was a pretty good pay-per-view from start to finish. There were some solid storylines going into the show, and a lot of the focus after Full Gear centred around the Continental Classic tournament, AEW’s version of New Japan’s G1. While the matches were great, the finishes were fairly predictable, and there was zero reasons given why certain wrestlers were included or excluded from the tournament. They just announced it out of the blue and selected a bunch of random wrestlers, and it was quite obvious who’d be eating a lot of pins. Still, it made for great wrestling, as everyone was motivated and competing hard. It boiled down to Jon Moxley in the Gold bracket and Eddie Kingston in the Blue bracket. Everyone was hoping to see the red hot Swerve Strickland advance to the final, as he’s been by far the fastest rising star in the company, but in true AEW fashion, he was relegated to a pointless midcard match on this show.

WCW Bash at the Beach 1994

WCW Bash at the Beach 1994
Orlando, FL
Arena
July 17, 1994

A huge crowd filled the Orlando Arena for one of the biggest PPVs in WCW’s history. The main event was a dream match fans had been dying to see since the 80s. The WWF really missed the boat by not running this match at Wrestlemania VIII, as evident here. Hogan-Flair had a big fight feel, and this whole show is focused entirely on the main event, which not only lived up to the hype, but also totally over-delivered. The fans in Orlando were electric for the Hulkster, though there was a solid contingent of Flair supporters as well, making for an incredible atmosphere.

I thought this was yet another stellar 1994 pay-per-view, as WCW was on an incredible roll up to this point. The undercard matches overall weren’t quite as great as the last few events, but this was really all about the main event, and it made the entire show feel like a huge deal. The Orlando Arena was a perfect venue, looking as great as it did for Royal Rumble 1990, with that cool band of lights around the arena. I loved the entrance setup, with classic beach props incorporated around the video wall. I’ll say it again, WCW’s production in 1994 was world’s better than the WWF’s. Also interesting is the re-branding of the former Beach Blast, into Bash at the Beach, something that was never explained, and I’ve never found the story for. I do think that Bash at the Beach is a better name, but I’d love to find out what was behind the change. Knowing WCW, they probably just forgot it was called Beach Blast.

WCW Clash of the Champions XXVII

WCW Clash of the Champions XXVII
Charleston, SC
North Charleston Coliseum
June 23, 1994

And so it begins, the dawn of Hulkamania in WCW. I was FURIOUS when Hulk Hogan debuted in WCW. FURIOUS! I was still a loyal Hulkamaniac at heart, and to me, Hulk Hogan was the WWF. The two were synonymous, and I figured it was only a matter of time before the Hulkster returned to a WWF ring. The very idea that Hulk Hogan could even show up in WCW, let alone come to dominate the company, made me feel sick to my stomach.

The moment Hogan debuted, I almost immediately stopped watching WCW entirely, but continued on a little bit into summer 1994 before getting even madder when other WWF stalwarts like Hacksaw Jim Duggan soon showed up. I’ll never forget turning on Worldwide one Saturday morning in June and seeing footage of the ticker tape parade, with Hogan, Jimmy Hart and Brutus Beefcake celebrating their signing in WCW. It was a feeling of betrayal and anger! I eventually came to accept Hulk Hogan in WCW and was watching off and on again into 1995, but my WCW fandom was never really the same for the next two years.

Clash of the Champions XXVII marks the televised debut of Hogan and the very forced heel turn of Ric Flair. Watching through these events in order, it really puts into context just how abrupt the Hulkster’s arrival in WCW was. 1994 was proving to be a great year, at least in-ring, for WCW, with a renewed push for hard-nosed grappling and more serious feuds. There were ties to past NWA days, like the renewed Steamboat-Flair rivalry, and a push for no-nonsense types like Ravishing Rick Rude. Ric Flair was on fire as the top babyface, and this whole tonal shift and sudden heel turn hits like a slap in the face.

CM Punk: Best in the World

With the predictable and ridiculous WWE return of noted hypocrite CM Punk, it reminded me that I needed to finish watching the last couple matches of this DVD set, which I had originally started going through back in summer, when he made his first big return of the year.

I’ve always been a fan of CM Punk the wrestler, and am endlessly disappointed by his conduct and personality outside of the ring. His original debut in AEW was one of the things I had been hoping for since Double or Nothing 2019. If ever there was a company that was perfect fit for a rogue like Punk it was AEW, at least in the beginning. The outlaw, independent spirit AEW initially had felt so in-line with Punk, and if anything could have lured him back into the ring it would be an upstart, anti-establishment company like this.

At first it seemed like a perfect match. CM Punk’s debut in the summer of 2021 was fucking awesome! It rekindled my excitement about Punk the wrestler, the same feeling I had when he debuted in WW… errr…. ECW back in 2006. After years of rumors and speculation, Punk was finally back in wrestling and back in the ring, with a whole slate of fresh matches and feuds ready for him. I long for those first couple years of AEW when everything felt so thrilling. Of course we all know what happened a year after Punk’s debut. As per usual, he became a cranky malcontent, unhappy with his coworkers and various perceived slights. Things completely blew up in highly publicized backstage fight and resulted in Punk being suspended and injured concurrently.

AEW Full Gear 2023

AEW Full Gear 2023
Los Angeles, CA
Kia Forum
Nov. 18

For the fourth AEW PPV in the past three months, I was feeling a little supershow fatigue heading into Full Gear 2023. Compared to the previous two PPVs, Full Gear was a very well built and booked show, with feud-based matches up and down the card. Strangely though, I wasn’t overly excited by most of the matches. Some of these feuds and angles feeling like they’ve been treading water and a lot of the booking still feels very directionless. I’ve talked about it before, AEW is becoming all about the matches, and as long the matches keep delivering, the shows will always be excellent.

It was definitely a strong night of exciting matches and I had a fantastic time watching this live, but Full Gear was not my favorite event of the year. Maybe because I was at a work conference for most of the day, or maybe it was because of that supershow fatigue, I just wasn’t feeling that same rush at the end of the night.

WCW Slamboree 94

WCW Slamboree 94
Philadelphia, PA
Civic Center
May 22, 1994

Slamboree 94 proved to be a huge roadblock in my WCW viewing, and not because I don’t enjoy this event – I absolutely love it – but it’s the last PPV before the debut of Hulk Hogan. WCW was simply never the same again, and feels like a completely different company by the end of the year. After starting and stopping this PPV a bunch of times over the last year, I finally settled in and watched it straight through again, begrudgingly accepting the upcoming tidal wave of Hulkamania.

1994 had been a great year up to this point in WCW, with concise story lines and fantastic PPVs. After all the goofiness through much of 1993, the company had settled back into more of an old school NWA vibe, with hard-hitting, serious matches and feuds, and strong workers on top. Ric Flair was on a hell of a face run as champion, and I wonder where things would have gone had Hulk Hogan never came in? To bankruptcy according to Eric Bischoff, who claims the Hulkster saved the company.

Slamboree 94 is an awesome PPV, one of the few WCW PPVs I owned on VHS, purchasing it at Suncoast Video in the late 90s. I watched it over and over again, especially the tag team title streetfight, which was absolutely mind-blowing to me at the time. I’m pretty sure the tape included all the matches, but cuts down the brutally long legends segments that fill so much of the show. It’s so weird to me how Suncoast carried a certain handful of WCW tapes, but not others, and seemingly nothing older than 1993. Very strange distribution. I would buy as many as I could afford because of their scarcity here in Canada.

WWF Prime Time Wrestling Exclusive Matches 1991 Part 1

Prime Time Wrestling is one of the last old school WWF bastions that I have yet to fully tackle. Growing up here in Canada, we never had Prime Time, and it reached rare and mythical status in my mind, as I’d see pictures and read results in various wrestling publications of all the strange and wacky feature matches. Some of these matches wound up on Coliseum Video, further whetting my appetite for this stuff.

Since first discovering file sharing on the internet, I’ve nabbed and watched the odd Prime Time episode here and there, eventually downloading a complete collection of the entire run of the show. I’ve tried to watch it in full and in order, but the show can certainly be a slog, especially in the 80s with a tedious parade of terribly slow and boring low-card house show matches and recycled squashes from the syndicate shows. The hilarious banter and interplay of Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby the Brain Heenan during its golden era is far better than the matches, and probably worth watching on it’s own, but I’ve never been able to fully commit or invest in watching the entirety of the series. Perhaps one day, but for now, I finally settled on digging into the wacky world of Prime Time’s exclusive matches.

AEW WrestleDream 2023

AEW WrestleDream 2023
Seattle, WA
Climate Pledge Arena
Oct. 1

Following All In, All Out, and Grand Slam came AEW’s fourth major show in a month, their newest pay-per-view – WrestleDream. Holy shit – what an insanely packed month of shows. When they first announced WrestleDream, I was immediately confused by the name and the concept. It sounded like an existing Japanese PPV, and I thought maybe it was a tie-in with New Japan. Turns out the idea is to honor the death of Antonio Inoki, who passed away on Oct. 1 2022, and is considered one of wrestling’s greatest dreamers. Uh huh. Well in that case, you would then think that this would be an event full of dream matches, similar to Forbidden Door, or unique matches that paid some kind of special tribute to Inoki, but nope. It was a regular PPV full of matches that came together quickly over a few weeks leading up to the show, with only one actual dream match.

A new PPV wasn’t really needed after All In and All Out, but there are rumors of AEW adding more events to the schedule, possibly monthly PPVs even, and Tony Khan was insistent on following through on his idea of a tribute show in honor of Antonio Inoki. There was nothing overly special about the show, but as always it was a great night of matches and fantastic action. I ended up watching the show the day after, via a questionable streaming site, so my excitement wasn’t high as usual for the show, but I thoroughly enjoyed the wrestling.

AEW All Out 2023

AEW All Out 2023
Chicago, IL
United Center
Sep. 3

Only a week after the historic All In, came All Out, featuring the most uninspired and lacklustre PPV build in AEW history. The majority of the matches were thrown together the week prior to the event, leaving myself and so many fans questioning just what the fuck was up with AEW’s booking and planning. Seriously, how do you not follow up All In with a banger line up? From everything I was following online, so many fans were considering skipping this show all together, as ordering two events in one week was asking a bit much, and there was a collective lack of enthusiasm leading up to show day.

As the week progressed I strangely began to look forward more and more to All Out. I’ve always been a huge fan of mid-card matches and AEW has an amazing record of always delivering on pay-per-view, so even though I was feeling frustrated as a fan, I was weirdly anticipating this card. And then the news broke the day before the show. CM Punk was finally fired by AEW for his childish and unprofessional conduct at All In. Firing Punk before a weekend of events in Chicago was certainly a bold but necessary move. All of this created a perfect storm for shockingly one of AEW’s greatest pay-per-views! The Punk controversy, fan criticism, and low expectations seemed to light a fire under the entire company, as All Out exploded out of the gate and was one of the most fun and exciting nights of in-ring action.

AEW All In 2023

AEW All In 2023
London, UK
Wembley Stadium
August 27

I, like so many other fans, was a little skeptical when the announcement was made for All In taking place in Wembley Stadium. Could AEW truly fill an enormous stadium? AEW’s ticket sales have been sluggish this year to say the least, so my concerns were not unfounded. However, my initial skepticism was immediately blown away when ticket sales surged right out of the gate, and then kept climbing and climbing. I thought maybe they would top out around 60k, but was downright shocked when they cleared 70k and landed somewhere over 80k depending on who you would believe. This show was going to be HUGE!

Making things even more exciting was the announcement that All In would be shown live on PPV. Fans had been waiting for months for this news and there were rumors about All In being a web or TV special, but in the end was a true PPV, and fuck, what a classic it ended up being.