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Welcome to the #AEWeekly review discussion where PWM contributors reflect on the highlights of the last week in AEW. The eligibility week always includes the most recent episode of Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision, plus any social-media exclusives up until publication.
This week’s contributors are Tim [@TimmayMan] covering match of the week, Sergei [@SergeiAlderman] covering interview, and Peter [@PeterEdge7] giving us the MVP of the week.
And please welcome to our team the awesome Emiliana! [@emiliana_rtb].... Even with her on the team, we are still shorthanded, so she gamely took on both Moment and Story Beat for this week!
A page of links to prior installments may be found here: #AEWeekly
Kyle Fletcher vs. Kazuchika Okada
"By the numbers..."
by Tim.
I can honestly say that this week was the hardest week I’ve had in picking a match. With Continental Classic matchups, surprise wins, and workers just going nutty in their physicality, I had to devise a system to pick a “best of” because going with my gut wasn’t doing it. So I went back into the archives and dug out my entry from August 12th of this year in which I came up with a way to rate matches (back then it was for a hypothetical Olympic presentation of pro-wrestilng). I devised a scorecard and awarded points for strength, technicality, personality, variety, and reversals.
After tallying the scores of nine potential winners, Fletcher vs. Okada came away with the win (barely beating Fletcher vs. Shelton Benjamin).
Both are great, but the match with Okada from Collision just barely got the edge. Maybe it was the atmosphere of the smaller venue that gave off similar vibes to Korakuen Hall in Japan. Not in history of course, but in the energy from the crowd. The more intimate setting resulted in the audio (both from the crowd and the workers) just hitting differently.
Fletcher plays to the crowd after dropping Okada and the Australian’s thousand yard stare makes him look like a psycho. After exchanging blows, Okada also plays to the crowd but in contrast to Fletcher he does so in order to get cheers. Okada then runs the ropes and this is a hard thing to measure but to me it looked like it was the fastest he’s run the ropes while in AEW. Tony Schiavone on commentary notices the demeanor change in Okada’s face and it’s noticeable but also subtle. He’s focused as he delivers a DDT and Fletcher does a PAC-like sell that focuses on his neck. Fletcher’s hubris starts to catch up to him as Okada hits a big time flapjack. Things look even worse for Fletcher as he’s hit with a slam, elbow drop, and a dropkick. He does get some momentum back and hits his big Last Ride Powerbomb, but Okada kicks out. So what does Fletcher do? Well he digs a couple pages into the book of Don Callis and cheats! Distracts the ref, low blow kick to Okada, brainbuster, and the pin. He also cheated to win against Shelton Benjamin and I’m really looking forward to where this storyline goes for the rest of the tournament.
This was a very good week for fans of workrate watching AEW programming. As good as a run AEW is on right now (depending who you talk to), Fletcher is having an indisputably great run to close out 2024. Recent wins over Will Ospreay and now Okada shows that the rocket is strapped to the young Protostar. With Grand Slam Australia coming in early 2025, his meteoric winning streak looks to continue.
Jon Moxley
"Hometown Zero..."
by Sergei.
One of the perennial conundrums of pro-wrestling storytelling is "how to deal with a villain who remains a hero to his hometown supporters?" It's a common enough situation — the bad guy hated by everyone in the world except his peeps who were with him since Day One. One way to handle it is what I would consider the "cheesy af" way — having the heel reassert their alignment with a cheap heat promo. Remember Christian and Jericho in their WWF days talking about how "sure, Canada is great, but Western Canada? …Everybody knows: it's the shits."
A more organic solution is to roll with it — to just accept within the story that there is a special, magical place where all alignments are reversed: Long Island for MJF, all of Canada for anti-USA heel Bret Hart back in the day, the planet Lexor for Lex Luthor. What's more rare is what we saw between the Ohio crowd and home-field hero Jon Moxley on Saturday night: the throng simply accepted his role as villain without the need for any cheap "actually, I always secretly hated it here" verbal contortions from Mox.
Now there may be extenuating circumstances — they were in Columbus on Saturday night, Moxley is actually from Cincinnati: perhaps there is some Shelbyville effect? And part of it was certainly the fact that he was talking shit on some beloved characters in Hangman Adam Page (in spite of his own alignment ambiguity) and especially Orange Cassidy, which prompted a "Freshly Squeezed!" chant so raucous that it summoned the Orange one from… wherever… to play out the cliché but welcomed promo-interruption bit.
BUT, even taking any extenuating circumstances into account, I think it's a credit to Moxley's (underrated) skills on the mic that (even with the ethical ambiguity I've mentioned in past weeks of the Death Riders mission) Moxley had no difficulty getting himself over as the villain of the piece, even with a home-state audience.
Switchblade, Hangman & OC
"Our teeth and ambitions are bared…"
by Emiliana.
It is not very often in recent months that I’ve felt the rush of adrenaline pulsing in my veins as I watched babyfaces have their comeuppance against a villain. After a stellar match between Pac and Jay White, we quickly saw the win devolve into a mess of Death Riders shenanigans in which I thought to myself - great, they’re gonna leave Jay White dead in the ring…again.
But instead, we saw something interesting. Where just a few weeks ago the whole roster seemed intent on ending the Death Riders before they could truly begin, now we find a desolate wasteland protected only by three men one would never consider a team to bring this outlaw king to justice.
The first man, hot off a win against the Death Riders’ own Pac, is Jay White. He is a man who has struggled to find his footing in AEW but chose it as his home nonetheless. While this transition into a “good guy” role has been anything but seamless, it is clear the crowd finds him entertaining as a wrestler - there is simply something about his crisp, countering moveset that leaves me in awe every time. On Dynamite, Jay White gave Jon Moxley the Blade Runner.
The second man, someone we didn’t expect to come back into the fold, is Orange Cassidy. This is by far the most exciting, as it shows that being a dedicated, loyal worker pays off. This man started in AEW as a “lazy,” minimal effort, cool guy type and over the years has evolved into one of the most badass men on the roster, and as he himself pointed out days later on Collision, he is the man that can live with not holding the AEW men’s world championship, but he absolutely will not rest until it is out of the hands of Moxley. On Dynamite, Orange Cassidy appeared out of nowhere, strangled Mox with a camera cord, and gave him an Orange Punch from hell.
The last man in this inconceivable trio is none other than my - let’s get this out in the open now - favorite wrestler, Hangman Adam Page. Though the end of Full Gear proved a tad confusing, what with Hangman distracting Mox to give Christian a chance to “cash in” his title contract, over the last week or so he’s been slotted back into a familiar role of reliable bridesmaid, which, while not my preference, is still better than nothing. One could argue that Hangman’s descent into madness started with losing the men’s world championship but was exacerbated first by Moxley himself and then pushed over the edge by Swerve Strickland, but the choices Hangman makes now are fully his own. And the truth is, I am not certain what his endgame is here, but I do know that he is a wounded animal with no choice but to team up with those who have one enemy in their sights. On Dynamite, Hangman had a high noon staredown with Mox and later gave him a Buckshot Lariat for his troubles.
None of these men have any reason to like each other. In fact, two of them have long standing histories of despising each other very much. But as Orange, Jay, and Hangman stood tall in the ring trading glances, the Death Riders slinking out injured on the ground like a pack of hyenas threatened by a pack of lions, with the vulture that is Christian Cage lying in wait in the shadows, it is easy to for me to say that, for the first time in a long time, I was fully locked in to the main event picture. This is a Team AEW I can get behind.
Mariah, Mina & Renee
"These violent delights have violent ends…”
by Emiliana.
This may not be everyone’s moment of the week, but I think this is a historic one for women’s wrestling. Some may boo me, but I think I have to give the gold star to a video package.
It is no secret that women are not short of glass ceilings to break in any industry, much less wrestling. But there is something to be said about the stories being told with Mariah May ever since she stepped foot in the AEW women’s division. In this video package, the dulcet tones of Renee Paquette narrated us through the origins of the “friendship, later partnership” of Mina Shirakawa and our AEW Women’s World Champion in Stardom. We followed Miss May across the oceans to North America, where she began her career in AEW under the mentorship of our own dearly beloved Timeless Toni Storm. Not one to be left behind, Mina also debuted in AEW, and thus a fruitful ménage à trois ignited passionately between these three spirited women - and the video package made it abundantly clear that this was what it was. Ultimately, this threesome would break up due to the desires of the Woman from Hell to be in the hottest spotlight of the women’s division - as the AEW Women’s World Champion - bringing her relationship with Toni Storm to a bloody end, an omen for what would become of May’s bond with Shirakawa.
Don’t you just love a good story? Despite uncertain pauses and setbacks in the Mariah reign so far, another chapter comes to a close, but not before it has a chance to become passionately violent.
This video package passes the Bechdel test. Let me be clear: this is a joke, because that requires two women speaking and having a conversation. But what I mean to say is - here is a story where two women are having a conflict in relation to each other, and it is compelling. In Mariah May’s interview with Renee earlier this week, she admits that due to her love for Mina, she wants to give Mina this opportunity to work for this title. It is two women, in conflict, nuanced in their feelings for each other and so mad as to believe it is about the title itself.
Did I mention Renee Paquette narrates the video package? All the love and respect to my Excalibur, king of commentary, but this is women’s business. And with women’s business, Renee doing the voice-over was peak representation for me.
I know we still have a lot that goes wrong in the women’s division. I know there is a lack of time, among other things. But there was something so special to me about watching Mina have a phenomenal, visceral match with a Joshi legend in Emi Sakura, and immediately after rolling into a video package where a woman told us the passionate story of two women’s love turned mad.
They lingered on the kisses. They bore witness to the blood. They leaned into the sapphic qualities of this story when Renee said, “all’s fair in love and wrestling.”
This was a reminder to us all that the women are not to be forgotten. I’m almost disappointed this match is happening at "Winter is Coming" on free TV. This emotional rivalry will steal the show.
Kyle Fletcher
"A star is born..."
by Peter.
As mentioned in our preview to the C2, the theme for this year's Conti looked like it was going to be opportunity and in the case of my MVP for this week, Kyle Fletcher has seized the opportunity with both hands (and a foot!)
While the vignettes heading into the 2nd edition of the Conti told the story of Okada's record in tournaments with his 4 G1's and 2 New Japan Cups, Okada can be vulnerable early in a block stage of a round robin tournament as researched on the Inside The Continental Classic on AEW's YouTube channel.
Of the 12 occasions Kazuchika had competed in a G1, he has come away without a win in his first match 4 times (and not won the G1 in any of those 4 years) and Kyle Fletcher took advantage of a cold Okada after his first match draw against Daniel Garcia and then some.
Kyle has been the breakout star of AEW in 2024 especially breaking any ceiling imposed after aligning himself with Don Callis full time and since then he has righted L's into W's since the betrayal of Will Ospreay at WrestleDream and this latest avenged victory from the Aussie will be remembered for how Kyle got there — his performance should be analysed for how great it was.
Kyle has always been a great wrestler who could connect with the crowd — remember the match with Mark Davis against Bishamon in New Japan Pro Wrestling in April 2023 where he single-handedly got the New Japan faithful to cheer for Aussie Open over perennial favourites with the crowd Hirooki Goto and YOSHI-HASHI? — but now the connection is totally different 20 months later.
In an industry where bad guys are needed to make the wrestling world go round, Kyle Fletcher has mastered being a heat magnet to an extent that people were booing him within 30 seconds, to such an extent that Kazuchika Okada starting acting like the Okada that relied on the fans to get him through the obstacles that Bullet Club put in front of him throughout his legendary run in NJPW.
While the kick in the groin and the following brainbuster will be the headline of the "shock of the year" this past Saturday, based on a performance of someone who looks born to be a bad guy after all, I believe that the shock of Fletcher beating Okada will feel in a couple of years time like the moment Roger Federer beat Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 2001.
In a world where Valuable Players under the age of 30 seem hard to find nowadays, on Saturday it felt like we found one.
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