AEW Surpasses Expectations With a Wonderfully Varied ‘Revolution’

Ask any fan what their favorite match was on Sunday’s pay-per-view and you’ll get a wide range of answers.

Bryan Alvarez, Wrestling Observer | Mar 7, 2022

AEW Revolution 2022 is in the books, and as is often the case with AEW, there was something for everyone.

It was a long show, 12 matches and almost five full hours if you count the “Buy In” preshow. But in those five hours there were five main-show matches that could arguably be voted best match of the night, and it really came down to your personal taste in pro wrestling.

You love hard-hitting, old-school Japanese-style wrestling? Chris Jericho vs. Eddie Kingston was the winner by a mile. You love Young Bucks–style tag team frenzy with wild highspots and boatloads of action? You have Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus beating the Bucks and reDragon. How about bloodbaths? Have I ever got the match for you, MJF vs. CM Punk in a brutal, thumbtack-filled dog collar match. If you just want to see two dudes hitting and kicking each other as hard as they can for 21 straight minutes, Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley delivered everything you could have wanted and more. And as far as old-school, main-event, professional-wrestling world championship matches are concerned, “Hangman” Page vs. Adam Cole was an excellent capper to a great night of action.

A bloody Jon Moxley kicks Bryan Danielson in their match at AEW Revolution — Courtesy of AEW

It wouldn’t be an AEW pay-per-view weekend without a big company-wide story blanketing the surroundings. This time, it was the announcement that Tony Khan had purchased Ring of Honor from Sinclair Broadcast Group. Khan talked about the purchase after the show, and while he acknowledged that he planned to run ROH as a separate organization as head booker, many questions remain regarding touring, talent, his own personal workload and more. But the company was mentioned frequently on the show, and Punk’s ring entrance harkened back to his days working ROH as a member of the Second City Saints, complete with his old-school music and ring attire (which, conveniently, including enormous oversize white shorts, perfect for contrasting buckets of blood).

And there were angles. Jericho had promised to shake Kingston’s hand if he lost (and he did, via submission, in fact), but when the time came, he refused. Wardlow, who won the Face of the Revolution ladder match to win a shot at the TNT title, finally turned babyface when he “couldn’t find” MJF’s Dynamite diamond ring, resulting in a distracted MJF eating Punk’s GTS finisher. But then, lo and behold, THERE IT WAS! and he handed it to Punk, who then knocked MJF out with it for the win.

Based on multiple reports to me and throughout social media, the ring spot got the biggest reaction among people-watching in sports bars and theaters, which is what you’d want when putting together a story line that spans over two years.

Dr. Britt Baker retained the women’s title over Thunder Rosa in a match jam-packed full of interference, which one would presume is leading to a cage match, likely in just a couple of weeks in Rosa’s hometown of San Antonio. And while it wasn’t played up as an angle, Matt Hardy got pinned in a six-man tornado match and then apologized afterward on Twitter, which one would think would lead to the Hardy Family Office turning on him shortly to set up the likely debut of his brother, Jeff, and one final run for the Hardy Boys.

We live in a time when fans are very tribalistic, perhaps more than ever before in wrestling history (although perhaps not—the idea of Twitter during the Monday Night Wars is enough to make your brain explode). But it is impossible to watch Revolution and not see the incredible contrast to WWE’s own Madison Square Garden house show that ran the night before.

WWE had, for the first time in forever, promoted the event hard on television, largely because it hadn’t drawn well recently in the Garden and wanted to make sure, more for image reasons than anything else, that it drew a big crowd. It pushed over and over that universal champion Roman Reigns vs. WWE champion Brock Lesnar might not be a title vs. title match at WrestleMania because a secret opponent might very well beat Brock at the Garden. It pushed that angle hard on television, and then, when the day came, who should walk out for the main event but midcarder Austin Theory. Between that and a Roman Reigns title defense with surprise opponent Seth Rollins that only went a couple of minutes, there were numerous complaints from fans feeling let down by the surprises. Twenty-four hours later, AEW ran a show in which for virtually every case, it not only delivered on expectations but exceeded them.

At the end of the day, as always, whether fans were happy or sad about MSG is irrelevant since WWE is, at this point at least, idiot-proof. But AEW is not yet idiot-proof, and the reason there hasn’t been an AEW since the death of WCW is because when you’re not idiot-proof you have to consistently give fans more than they’re expecting for their money, and you have a tougher hill to climb everything else being equal. But with few exceptions AEW is successfully serving its audience, as evidenced by the announcement that the next PPV, Double or Nothing in May, has already broken its gate record by surpassing $1 million (something WCW was never able to do in their history), and the positive feedback to Revolution.

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Published Mar 7, 2022

BRYAN ALVAREZ, WRESTLING OBSERVER