AEW FULL GEAR (2022) -- Results & Afterthoughts

Steel Cage Match

"Jungle Boy" Jack Perry defeated Luchasaurus (with Christian Cage) by submission

This was an awkward as hell cage match that turned into a bland, boring singles match confined within a steel cage. Jungle Boy took forever blading himself to get some "juice" (blood), only for it look like he bladed himself as if he was in a horror movie as the match went on. I thought it was insanely stupid for Jungle Boy to hit the diving elbow drop from the top rope and not have that be the finish as he and Luchasaurus went into another finishing sequence right after that. For both of their sakes, I hope this feud is over as it's doing none of the people involved any favors. For me personally, I think they lost their chance on capitalizing on anything special that they could have gotten with Jungle Boy. Luchasaurus seems like a lost cause at this point too no matter what he does.

Six-man Tag Team Match for the AEW World Trios Championship

Match One in a Best of Seven Series.

Death Triangle (Pac, Penta El Zero Miedo, and Rey Fénix) (c) defeated The Elite (Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson)) (with Brandon Cutler and Michael Nakazawa) by pinfall

From the moment the Elite came out, I lost all shreds of respect that I had left for those three clowns. If that entrance wasn't the biggest circle-jerk to stroke their own egos, then I don't know what is. I can't even fault the fans for "FUCK CM PUNK!" chants either. He brought that onto himself. Maybe he was right for being fed up with everything he's had to put with in terms of unprofessionalism backstage by the EVPs but he didn't have to lower himself to their levels of unprofessionalism to air all of that dirty laundry in a public setting with his boss sitting right next to him.

I like Death Triangle, but after that entrance I didn't give a flying fuck about this match and I sure as hell don't care about the rest of this fucking Best of 7 series. Talk about wearing your welcome out. Jesus F'N Christ.

I will say that I was shocked that the Elite didn't win the trios titles back in their first match back though.

Singles Match for the AEW TBS Championship

Jade Cargill (c) (with The Baddies (Kiera Hogan and Leila Grey)) defeated Nyla Rose (with Marina Shafir and Vickie Guerrero) by pinfall

I have no fucking idea why Jade choose to come out dressed as Cheetara from the ThunderCats of all things for this match. At least that looked better than her She-Hulk cosplay from the last PPV, so that's something.

I have probably said it several times in the past, but I'm personally offended when I see Nyla Rose use that ropehung diving knee drop on someone and it's not the damn finish. That move looks like it should be killing 90% of the girls she's using it on.

As for everything else in this match, I'm sure everyone can agree that the end result was never in doubt.

Four-Way Match for the ROH World Championship

Chris Jericho (c) defeated Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, and Sammy Guevara by pinfall

There were points in this match where I really got into this match as this was the first thing on this show that perked my interest, but I quickly zoned out as I'm beyond fed up with this trope in modern day wrestling matches where everyone has to wait out at ringside (painfully obviously no less in front of the fans and the cameras) while pairs of guys fight 1v1 until the guys at ringside waiting run in with their next spot. That shit completely takes me out of the immersion of a lot of matches.

Can't say that I was surprised that Jericho retained though. Ring of Honor has another PPV coming up so they have to have him headline that for a good buy-rate.

Singles Match

Saraya defeated Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. by pinfall

I've seen people call this match best of the evening and I have to be honest. I don't see what the hell those people are talking about. Saraya was obviously rusty in terms of her ring work and she beyond blown up due to a lack of consistent ring cardio from being away from wrestling for five years. Let's not stray away from Britt Baker gingerly treating her like she was working with an egg in the opening moments of this match until she hit a goddamn neckbreaker on the floor at ringside and kept targeting her neck. I get that they are trying to play up the injury for psychology but playing around like that would really have her sidelined for good.

If I'm honest, I can't say that I remember any outstanding Paige/Saraya matches other than her bouts in NXT. Everything else I remember being better than the other women on that WWE roster at the time (at least until the NXT Horsewomen were called up), but that wasn't hard to accomplish when the Bella Twins were the top dogs in that division at the time. What I saw here was a lot of what I remembered from her WWE career, she was a solid worker, yes, but one with a lot of sloppy execution. It felt like she was forcing Britt to have her kind of match and that wasn't a fault of Britt at all, especially when she doesn't have nearly any amount of experience as Saraya has had in her career.

I was just glad this was over when it was all said and done. Great. She got the win in her first match back and was able to get through it without crippling herself or others. It was a nice touch to have her brother (who has been celebrating his sobriety) there in the audience to support her too.

Three-Way Match for the AEW TNT Championship

Samoa Joe defeated Wardlow (c) and Powerhouse Hobbs by technical submission

The finish to this match did absolutely NO ONE any favors. I'm sure the AEW apologists will say that the finish "protected" Wardlow and Hobbs, but when in reality it didn't at all. Joe shouldn't have been in this match to begin with and if they wanted to take the belt off of Wardlow then they should have had Hobbs beat him for it 1v1 or not have the goddamn match at all. This feud was always about Hobbs and Wardlow 1v1. The idea of just shoehorning in Joe in this for no apparent reason was moronic. Get the fuck out of here talking about Tony Khan is the booker of the year when I see him shitting the bed completely with how over Wardlow was following his feud with MJF. This company has squandered every shred of that momentum he had going for him. Hobbs has been handled even worse since Team Taz dissolved and they went their separate ways.

The only positive I can see coming out of this is that they did have the foresight to keep Wardlow undefeated after he royally thrashed MJF in the last encounter. With MJF as the new AEW World Champion, you know they will want to come back to that match with the title in the equation, so it would make perfect sense to keep Wardlow strong in that regard.

No Disqualification Tag Team Match

Sting and Darby Allin defeated Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal (with Sonjay Dutt and Satnam Singh) by pinfall

At this point in the show, I was asking myself why were they still going through with these matches when shit like this should have been on the Zero Hour preshow or on Dynamite/Rampage. Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal were able to carry Ric Flair through his final match a few months ago, but I'm the point where I'm tired of seeing Sting in this company still going through tables and having a hardcore matches to compete with the young guys. Yet these fans are the same ones who were saying that he was past his expiration date when he was in both TNA-IMPACT and WWE. Seeing Sting in there is getting to the point of how sad this is to watch as Kurt Angle's last WWE run.

I have to wonder if anyone cares about Darby Allin at all at this point. He just keeps getting slotted into all of these meaningless feuds just to end up in another tag team No DQ match with Sting. They could be doing so much more with Jay Lethal than what he is doing right now too. The sight of Jeff Jarrett in an active regular role on this show makes me feel like I'm watching NWA-TNA era TNA Wrestling from the early 2000s and that's NOT a good luck for this company. Double J is still a solid worker and overall talent, but there has to be something more that he can offer this company than giving people TNA flashbacks.

Singles Match for the Interim AEW Women's World Championship

Jamie Hayter defeated Toni Storm (c) by pinfall

Ever since her arrival into this company (and I was there the night she debuted live on Dynamite), Toni Storm hasn't done much for me in terms of charisma nor for making me want to see her matches, even after getting the Women's Championship. Fortunately, this ended up being one of the better matches of the entire night. Hell, I dare say this was the best match on the entire card. Hayter and Storm have great chemistry that is obviously a result of their prior history with each other internationally and it shows in their ring work. They went in there and beat the hell out of each other from bell to bell.

I could have done with the apron bump from Britt Baker but I guess they wanted to have that bullet in the chamber for Britt can hold against Hayter that she wouldn't have won that title without her help for future reference. I was really happy and pleasantly shocked that they made the right decision to put the title on Hayter instead of beating her here. Storm's reign wasn't nothing to talk about in the least.

As of this posting (11/29/22), Thunder Rosa has forfeited the AEW Women's Championship due to the uncertainty of her injury, so AEW has recognized both Toni Storm and Jamie Hayter's reigns as legitimate Women's Championship reigns without the "interim" attached. I thought they should have stripped her of the title in the first place the second they knew that she was going to be out for an extended period of time. That whole "interim" champion debacle makes everyone and everything attached to it looks less than they are worth and comes across as a slap to the face to the interim champion putting the work in their absence.

Tag Team Match for the AEW World Tag Team Championship

The Acclaimed (Max Caster and Anthony Bowens) (c) defeated Swerve In Our Glory (Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee) by pinfall

After what looked like a shoulder injury for Bowens during his match with Swerve on Dynamite during the go-home show for this PPV, I thought that The Acclaimed would have had to take the L during this PPV just to drop the titles back to Swerve In Our Glory while Bowens nursed that injury. To my surprise, he powered through the match, so the injury must not be serious.

Can't say much for the match itself as I was beyond ready for this show to be over at this point. The only thing that matters is that The Acclaimed retained and it looks like Swerve and Keith Lee are splitsville. I never thought they were a good team to begin with. They were just two guys who got put together on a whim since the Young Bucks didn't have to drop the AEW Tag Titles to FTR, who were painfully absent from this show.

That being said, I think Swerve has a massive upside as a singles star, especially as a heel. Keith Lee looks like he's going to falter here just like he did in his main roster run in WWE. I don't understand why he has to try to be yet another "big man" who can do high flyer stuff when he doesn't have to (same issue I have with Brian Cage and Luchasaurus) and is extremely capable with his strengths as a powerhouse alone. This guy is most effective when he has the smaller guys on the AEW roster bumping for him like ragdolls when he's tossing them around like a grown ass man on a kids' playground.

Singles Match for the AEW World Championship

MJF defeated Jon Moxley (c) (with William Regal) by pinfall

This was MJF's Casino Ladder poker chip cash-in match.

While I was happy that MJF was able to win his first World Championship, this match felt a little anticlimatic. I get that they were trying to play up Moxley being the heel with MJF attempting to fool the masses that he was a white meat babyface here, but that shit wasn't working at all for neither man. Mox was naturally going to get booed in enemy territory, so he was simply beating a dead horse. MJF attempting to be a babyface was comical at first, only to look downright horrible as the match went on, especially with those shitty punches he was doing trying to stomp along with the impact like Bubba Ray Dudley/Bully Ray and The Rock used to do that NEVER looked any fucking good. I never want to see him do that shit again.

For the most part, this was entirely a Moxley match for good and bad. There was the excessive need for fighting on the floor and the need for Mox to try to convince himself that he's this vampiric bad ass that is going to "grind up yer bones and drink yer blood dry" from them in every single one of his matches like this. I was only surprised that he didn't get busted open like he does in 98% of these matches. Maybe it was just me but watching this match unfold, it didn't seem like Mox was too thrilled about having to put MJF over here and drop the belt to him in the first place.

I think even Ray Charles saw William Regal turning on him in the end after all of the little teases and clues that they have been planting over the past month or two. The Blackpool Fight Club hasn't even been together for a year and that stable is falling apart from the ground up. I honestly can't say that I was thrilled with those guys becoming a stable to begin with but whatever. I'm all for Regal and MJF having some sort of partnership. I was even happier with the fact that The Firm didn't come out and try to act like this was MJF's plan all along as it would have diluted Regal's turn in the end. Then again, I may have spoken too soon as MJF hasn't shown up on Dynamite as of this posting so we still may be bound to get that "big swerve" bro. Ugh.