Welcome to Wrestling Inc.’s annual review of AEW Full Gear, the show where scrappy underdogs must battle for the soul of All Elite Wrestling — but first, The Costco Guys! And yes, we will be discussing both the highly dramatic Full Gear main event and the presence of The Rizzler in this column, which differs from our Full Gear results page primarily in that it deals in opinion rather than fact. The WINC staff have opinions about all kinds of stuff that happened on Full Gear, from an epic TBS title match to a slightly less epic Women’s World title champagne celebration to Daniel Garcia finally being able to call himself a champion in this company.
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We’re covering as much as we can in the space we have, but especially for AEW PPVs, there’s a number of things we’re not going to talk about. This review isn’t comprehensive, it’s focused — a look at the things that gave us the strongest feelings, either positive or negative. In other words, here are three things we hated and three things we loved from AEW Full Gear 2024.
Loved: Zero Hour brings the boom
This is not what I thought I was going to be writing about following Full Gear, but it can’t be avoided: On a show that didn’t entirely live up to the standards set by past AEW PPVs, possibly the most compelling thing on the card from top to bottom was the celebrity pre-show match that involved children who make TikTok videos about Costco. And if that wasn’t unbelievable enough, it also involved QT Marshall.
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I don’t understand why literally everything about this worked, but it did. I barely know who these people are and I swear I popped every time they showed The Rizzler at the timekeeper’s table doing his little face. Jokes aside, Marshall worked his ass off as the heel in this one, and Big Boom AJ continues to look shockingly natural in the ring (his kid hits a mean spear, too). More than the in-ring stuff though, there was just a feeling, a vibe surrounding this match that you just don’t really get very often with AEW PPVs. It was big and loud and extremely dumb, but the characters were invested in it (no winking at the audience in this one, they played it entirely straight) and the crowd was just incredibly into it. Rather than the usual fast-paced AEW showcase, this match was slower and simpler, with an understandable narrative built around a formula that’s been suckering marks out of their money for well over a century. It was just a really well-constructed match that did everything it had to do and executed to perfection, and the combination of that plus the audience buy-in was nothing short of magical (it also made the next four hours of fighting spirit spots and finisher kick-outs harder to swallow for some of us, but that’s our problem, not yours).
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I don’t have any grand proclamations to make about how AEW should do more of this going forward or they should have put it on the main card or anything like that. That’s not what this is about. This is about professional wrestling, in its purest and most distilled form. That’s what we got on the Full Gear Zero Hour this year, and I for one had a great time watching it.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
Hated: Too much too muchery
I am begging for a wrestling company to strike the balance between WWE’s minimalist approach to PPVs and AEW’s desperate attempts to stuff as much of the roster on one PPV card as possible. There was apparently a four-way match on the AEW Full Gear Zero Hour preshow. I think Komander was in it, I remember seeing him make an entrance. Who else was in it? No idea. Who won? The results tell me Buddy Murphy won, and Olivia Quinlan has not let me down yet so I trust she’s right. I remembered none of it because there was just so much going on on Saturday’s show.
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From the convoluted show closing, to the multiple blood-feud grudge-matches that turned into a blur of nearfalls and low blows in the middle of the show, to the manic, scattered four-way tag team title match, Full Gear was simply too much too muchery. I had no time to process anything. Similar matches blended together, character developments went unnoticed, and nothing had any time to breathe. There is no way there is any dignity in someone like Deonna Purrazzo being shoved out in front of her hometown crowd as it’s half-full and filling in, there’s no way it’s worth it to anyone. Wrestlers had to work twice as hard to get a reaction out of the overstimulated crowd, and it made the entire show smack of desperation.
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The sad thing is that AEW Full Gear didn’t have any matches that I would call outright bad, even the worst match was serviceable, but it was so overstuffed that none of the quality showed through. It was a collection of matches, not a show, and to some that might not matter, but the lack of cohesion is only going to make the road to Worlds End and beyond that much harder.
Written by Ross Berman
Loved: Kris Statlander takes Mercedes Mone to the limit
I can honestly say that I haven’t been the biggest fan of Mercedes Mone’s TBS Championship reign or her gimmick as the “CEO” in AEW, however, I thought she had one of her best, if not her best, matches in AEW Saturday night against Kris Statlander. Statlander took Mone to her limit, and it was one of the best matches on the card. Thankfully, because it was the only women’s match on the main card. I also read that this was officially the longest women’s match in AEW’s five-year history, which is first, an extremely important milestone for them to finally hit, and two, pretty great that Statlander and Mone were the two women to set a record.
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Mone thankfully left “The Brickhouse” Kamille in the back for this match due to their ongoing dissension and inevitable breakup, and the match was mostly clean and well wrestled because of it. No distractions needed. This was one of the matches of the night that had a few perfect near-falls that really made me think that Statlander was going to win the championship. The women hit all the classics in the match, Mone with the Three Amigos, many meteoras, and Statlander with the F5 and even an attempted 450 Splash. Everything that I saw looked pretty clean, and it just overall an excellent showcase of women’s wrestling, especially if you’re only going to have one match on the show. Mone’s frustration with Statlander when she kept kicking out was just palpable, and she voiced it all, which made me feel like Statlander really had a chance, since she was obviously getting into Mone’s head. In the end, she just couldn’t pull it out, but it was an excellent, hard-fought match.
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I’m not sure who exactly Mone’s opponent is going to be next, it’s possibly, but hopefully not, Kamille, but I think that Statlander should eventually get another shot at Mone and the title, if she’s not set to challenge Mariah May following her Mina Shirakawa feud. Statlander put on one hell of a match and helped Mone get her groove back a bit, in my eyes at least, and it was a big highlight for me on Full Gear.
Written by Daisy Ruth
Hated: Champagne celebration lacks Toni Storm, much of anything
The champagne celebration was something I was looking forward to as a little breather among the many great matches on the Full Gear card, but it ended up falling flat, and in one way, was actually pretty confusing. I really love Mariah May and Mina Shirakawa together, but of course, they were never going to work out with May as a heel and Shirakawa as a babyface. So, of course, May turned on her best friend, but Shirakawa came out of this looking great. Her kicking the champagne bottle, shattering it, clear out of May’s hand looked great, and the image of her bleeding from her mouth, biting May and smearing her blood on her face, was also great. It was a bit predictable, but well executed.
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However, the main thing wrong with this was the lack of “Timeless” Toni Storm after her media tirade this week, letting everyone know “they wouldn’t be hearing from her,” which many media outlets took as Storm “announcing her retirement.” While I personally don’t think that’s the case and it’s all part of her over-dramatic gimmick, I definitely thought that was all setting up for her return Saturday night to confront her former protegee. When that didn’t happen, and it was Shirakawa spearing May off the stage following her betrayal, things just fell a little flat for me. This feud is going to be excellent and I love both these women as performers, but I’m just confused. Maybe Storm actually is taking time off to herself after losing the championship, then wrestling across the world in Japan and in Mexico. If that’s the case, good for her. It just really felt like the media storm surrounding her was going to lead to something. I thought maybe she’d even appear with a new gimmick, if nobody was hearing from the “Timeless” version of Storm anymore.
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Maybe I’m being worked in some way and Storm shows up to rejoin May as a heel, or attempt to and May denies her, and she teams up with Shirakawa instead, but it just felt like something was missing. You book one talking segment in the midst of a ton of great matches, on a super long card, as per usual, and I guess I just assume a bit more is going to happen. We didn’t see any surprise returns at Full Gear at all, and Storm is someone who was greatly missed. Hopefully we’ll be seeing her soon, as the AEW Women’s Division can always use more higher-profile talent, in the hopes things are finally booked better.
Written by Daisy Ruth
Loved: The young AEW originals hold the gold
Jon Moxley and the Death Riders have put AEW on notice. They’re tired of the way things are going. One thing that they had an issue with was the fact that Private Party weren’t champions after five years. Marq Quen and Isiah Kassidy took that personally and won the titles on “Friday Night Dynamite”.
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A tournament followed to name their challengers in a four way match at “Full Gear”. Private Party faced a new fan favorite in The Outrunners. Kings of the Black Thrones aren’t heavily featured in the tag division since their focus on the Trios. Finally, former champions, The Acclaimed, rounded out the match. It was a big test for Private Party, especially since they could’ve lost their titles without being pinned. They retained by hitting Gin & Juice on Max Caster.
(Side note: there have been seeds for a split with The Acclaimed. There were more obvious signs with Caster throwing his mic so hard that Bowens had to chase after it. Bowens tried to pin Caster, knowing that wouldn’t count as a win. The fans had a particular chant for Caster several times to let him know just how they feel about him.)
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The TNT Championship match featured two AEW originals in Jack Perry and Daniel Garcia. Fans saw a different side of Garcia against MJF. Following MJF beating him, Garcia channeled “Red Death” and beat the hell out of MJF. That version of Garcia has been brewing under the surface ever since. Garcia and Perry have been at odds for months with Perry trying to push Garcia to bring out a more angry, violent part of himself. Garcia grabbed Perry by his throat and shoved him against the wall, but mostly restrained himself.
When the bell rang on Saturday night, Garcia came in fired up and stayed that way all match long. Garcia did consider using Perry’s TNT title to take him out, but didn’t. He eventually won when he hit a piledriver, followed by a Sharpshooter.
Team AEW picked up two crucial wins, although Orange Cassidy came up short in dethroning Mox as champion. It builds up AEW stronger and more united against the Death Riders. Even with Cassidy’s loss, their wins will hopefully energize the Originals in their fight to retake control of AEW.
Overall, it gives Team AEW momentum heading into the final pay-per-view of the year. Assuming the champs retain at “Worlds End”, they head into Year Six with AEW Originals holding gold. It’s time for AEW to have more balance between veterans and younger talent as champions. They have their new TV deal and can now focus on who will lead the company over the next five years and who is coming up behind the Garcias and the Private Parties.
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Written by Samantha Schipman
Hated: AEW doing the most with the closing angle
Much like with movies and books, it’s a personal peeve when a pay-per-view main event in wrestling spends greater time trying to set up the sequel. Granted, it is a concession that comes with running episodic storytelling, but at the same time the feeling for me is it has to make sense within the bubble of the story you are trying to tell. What happened to draw Full Gear to a close was far to the opposite of that, shoehorning several feuds into the already expansive Death Riders against AEW story and ending things with a literal car crash. First off, Jon Moxley retained his title in a fairly fun match against Orange Cassidy, marred by interference from Claudio Castagnoli and PAC, who were then mitigated by Kyle O’Reilly and Tomohiro Ishii, then Marina Shafir, herself mitigated by the returning Willow Nightingale, before Wheeler Yuta finally delivered the decisive interference with a running knee to Cassidy. Things were okay if not typically AEW circa 2024 at this point, but there were soon to be twists upon twists (not in a great way at all).
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“Hangman” Adam Page, he who had lost his grudge match to Jay White earlier, emerged to take out Yuta with a steel chair and confront Moxley. They would stare longingly for a while, only for Christian Cage to emerge and hit the Killswitch, looking to cash-in as he and Page likewise stared longingly at one another. Unlike Money in the Bank, this is a contract that has to be signed in the ring before the cash-in is official, so that was enough time with White to make his own cameo – after Page had left – and hit the Blade Runner to save Moxley. Then Castagnoli and PAC returned to jump White from behind, retreating with their leader as White just laughed it off. But that was not all: The Death Riders and Moxley were retreating backstage to a car, which then got crashed into by Darby Allin, forcing them to “steal” another car to make their get away. Allin then crawled from the wreckage, screaming after them as he bled from his head, failed to climb the hood of a car before trying again and closing the pay-per-view.
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Aside from the fact that a closing angle wasn’t needed in the first place, since the heel had just won with interference they could have just left, there is also the fact that Page confronting Moxley really didn’t make sense. He lost his last match, probably wouldn’t be in line for a title shot, and is another purported heel. He was interrupted, but was his intention to face Moxley for AEW or to help Christian? More questions: Why hasn’t Christian already signed the contract? Why did White help Moxley if he is in a supposed war against AEW? What was Allin hoping to achieve by crashing into a car with no one in it? None of it made sense and none of it was needed, so why waste the time?
Written by Max Everett
