AEW Double or Nothing 2023

AEW Double or Nothing 2023

May 2023 - Las Vegas, Nevada

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into this show, MJF was the AEW World Champion, the Women's World Champion was Jamie Hayter, FTR were the World Tag Team Champions, Wardlow was the TNT Champion, Jade Cargill was the TBS Champion, Orange Cassidy was the AEW International Champion, and the World Trios Champions were the House of Black (Brody King, Buddy Matthews, and Malakai Black).

The show began with a 21-Man Blackjack Battle Royal for Orange Cassidy's International Championship. The fact that it was for Cassidy's title and that he had been on a streak of successful (and highly entertaining) title defenses meant that it was fairly obvious he would likely be one of the last men standing, taking away a good bit of the suspense and intrigue of the match. Still, despite a predictable finish, we did get plenty of good moments here because there was simply too much talent involved for this not to work. Highlights included Brian Cage getting to showcase his incredible strength, a great exchange between Jay White and Penta, the furthering of the Swerve/Keith Lee feud, and Ricky Starks and Big Bill both getting to shine a bit towards the end. It was chaotic and hard-to-follow at times with so much going on, but the crowd was into the big moments. Like every other battle royal I've seen in AEW, the final minutes were better than anything that had come before it with Cassidy and Swerve being the last two standing. I didn't like how they ended up on the apron - why would an Orange Punch, striking Swerve in the jaw cause him to fall back and over the top rope? - but thought their minutes together were excellent otherwise. It almost seemed like a breakout moment for Swerve as, even in the loss, his offense, selling, bumping, and execution was fantastic. (3/5)

Adam Cole took on Chris Jericho in an Unsanctioned Match next. Sabu and Roderick Strong were in Cole's corner to even the sides against the Jericho Appreciation Society. Fun chaos to start before this becomes a 1-on-1 contest. I'm glad they opted to keep this "hardcore" with tables and weapons and didn't try to transition it into a wrestling contest as that would've made no sense considering what Jericho had done to Cole and his real-life girlfriend Britt Baker in the build-up to this match. Speaking of Baker, she eventually came in and absolutely wailed on Jericho with a kendo stick in what was probably the high point of the match. Cole eventually got the W with a series of Last Shot knees to the back of the head, including one with a steel chain wrapped around his leg, and the referee calling off the match as Cole rained down with punches directly to Jericho's eye. The finish would've worked much better had the match not been billed as an "Unsanctioned" match, which, historically, means that the only reason the referee is even in the ring is to count a pinfall. This match has an ultra-low Cagematch rating, but mostly because of the finish, Jericho losing a ton of fan respect over the past 5 years, and the match not living up to what were probably unrealistic expectations (Cole nor Jericho are especially known for the level of bloody violence that most people would think of if they heard "Unsanctioned AEW match"). I'm not a Cole myself but I thought he actually had a good performance here by not overloading it with "movez" and superkicks. (2.5/5)

FTR took on Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal (with Mark Briscoe serving as guest referee) in the next match. This was a fairly standard tag match that was more than a bit overbooked due to the involvement of Jarrett's own stable of misfits - his wife Karen, Sonjay Dutt, and Satnam Singh. Briscoe disappeared in plain sight during this match, basically calling it down the middle the whole time until he was accidentally struck by a guitar. I was surprised to read that Meltzer gave this 4 stars because, while FTR always bring the goods in terms of match layouts, timing, and execution, I'm not sure this one needed a 20-minute runtime and it was felt very much like a good "TV match" rather than a PPV-worthy contest. (2.5/5)

Wardlow vs. Christian in a Ladder match for the TNT Championship was up next. I'll give credit to Wardlow as he took some crazy bumps, crotching himself on a ladder, going through a pair of tables from a huge height onto the floor, and, at one point, leaping from the top rope onto a ladder (that then basically buckled under his weight). It was a super gutsy performance from a heavyweight who so clearly wanted to be loved by the fans but was in a tough position as the "smart audience" tends to get cold on monster babyfaces (at one point, you could hear part of the audience break into a "Let's Go Christian" chant). Speaking of Christian, he was his usual self here, but it wasn't a career performance. Christian is certainly not the risk-taker he was even 10-15 years ago, but he's still a super smart worker who knows how to build a match and raise the stakes from beginning to end, and this match was well-paced. I wasn't a huge fan of Arn Anderson's involvement (I completely forgot he was even involved in this feud), but at least he didn't make Luchasaurus look like a jabrone. (3/5)

Toni Storm challenged Jamie Hayter for the AEW Women's World Championship in the next match. It is remarkable how much the "Timeless" character not only saved Storm's career but the entire division because this was absolute dreck. Before the match, Hayter got attacked by Storm's stablemates in The Outcasts - Saraya and Ruby Soho - and then Storm targeted her injured arm even more. Britt Baker and Shida eventually came to even the sides, but not until Hayter had been spray-painted in the face and Soho had exposed one of the turnbuckles. The little bit of action between Hayter and Storm was good but it also made Saraya and Soho look especially weak and ineffective by having Hayter survive a 3-on-1 beatdown at all. The finish was very poorly executed as Hayter ran into the exposed turnbuckle seemingly on-purpose and without being whipped into it (if she was, the camera didn't catch it). It tlater came out that Hayter was suffering from legitimate injuries - which is why the match was booked the way it was - and I can understand TK not wanting to do yet another "Interim Championship" storyline following all the confusion and drama around CM Punk, but this was a sloppy, overbooked mess. (0.5/5)

The House of Black - Malakai Black, Brody King, and Buddy Matthews - held an Open Challenge for the AEW World Trios Championship next and it was accepted by The Acclaimed and "Daddy Ass" Billy Gunn. This was fine, but felt like a TV match more than a PPV-worthy match. Anthony Bowens did the bulk of the in-ring work, which was unsurprising. The best minutes of the match were Brody King's as he is excellent at being the powerhouse bruiser that comes in and just destroys people. I liked the finish too - a simple but effective sequence that saw Gunn hit his Fame-asser but then eat a nasty Malakai Black spin kick leading to the fall. Good enough. (2.5/5)

Jade Cargill defended the TBS Championship against Taya Valkyrie in the next match. This had to be one of Cargill's longest and most back-and-forth Championship defenses up until this point, but the finish was never really in question. Some of Valkyrie's offense looked outstanding here and I'm legitimately curious why she hasn't been utilized more in AEW since this initial run. The issue here was that Cargill was still fairly green and the transitions weren't as smooth as what one would hope for a PPV championship match. I also thought the finish was noticeably bad as Valkyrie hit her finish - the same as Cargill's - got a 2.9 but then Cargill came back with the identical move and got a 3 count with adequate build or really any explanation beyond Cargill just delivering the move "better"? (1.5/5)

As much as I disliked the previous match, I kinda dug the impromptu Kris Statlander vs. Jade Cargill "match" - more like an angle - and how it was caused by Cargill's manager, "Smart" Mark Sterling issuing an immediate open challenge and Statlander making her AEW return to take her out in under 2 minutes. Really well-executed, crowd-pleasing moment that was something of a head-scratcher at the time, but made more sense once it became clearer that Cargill would be leaving the company for the WWE.

The AEW World Championship was on the line next in a four-way between AEW's "Four Pillars" - World Champion MJF, Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara, and Jack Perry. Before the match, Guevara came out with Tay Conti and revealed - via his trademark poster boards - that he and Tay Conti were expecting their first child, which was nice. Anyway...this was exactly what I think most fans expecting it to be, a non-stop, action-packed, false-finish heavy battle that was arguably too "cutesy" at times, including when MJF essentially stopped the match altogether to try to have Guevara lay down for him for "the money he needs" as an expecting father. At close to 30 minutes, this match went long but never really felt like it was anybody's win aside from MJF's. Looking back, Guevara and Perry still feel as out-of-place challenging the AEW World Championship in 2025 as they did back then while Darby Allin sorta "nerfs" himself with a lame pre-match video built around Elvis Presley, not exactly an introduction that makes one think he's going to become the new World Champion. That being said, the sheer amount of crazy multi-man spots and sequences push this well into good-to-great territory (even if the 8.83 rating on Cagematch seems high to me). (3/5)

The second half of the night's double-header main event was next - an Anarchy In The Arena match between The Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson, Jon Moxley, Wheeler Yuta, and Claudio Castignoli) and The Elite (The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, and "Hangman" Adam Page). This isn't the type of match where guys like Danielson or Omega or even "Hangman" truly excel (at least in my opinion). You're not going to get much in terms of technical wrestling or extended selling or even intricate sequences; this was a wild brawl from beginning to end built around a handful of "moments" and lots of "filler" that didn't really leave much of an impression. Unlike the Stadium Stampede matches, which could be straight-up surreal at times due to the company's ability to film, edit, and stage segments in non-traditional settings, the Anarchy in the Arena concept has to exist within stricter parameters. While there was ample brawling and fighting outside of the main arena area/ring (including a cool spot where Claudio swung one of the Bucks in an airplane spin on the concrete floor of the concession area), this match was much less comedic/madcap/zany than some of the other editions over the years (Jericho not being involved is probably at least part of that). I liked the various callbacks to the multiple storylines and rivalries between everyone involved - from Moxley and Omega's use of barbwire picking up where their classic Unsanctioned Match left off to the Young Bucks busting out their trademark sequence-of-suplexes spot that they'd done across a football field years earlier. The MVP of the match may have been Claudio, though, as he was everywhere at once at times, making saves, airplane-spinning folks, playing the "base" for the Bucks' high-flying - it was the kind of performance that highlights how good Claudio is but also how much him being "the glue" of a match also sometimes leads to him being lost. The best moment - or at least most surprising - spot of the match was Mox getting superkicked by an exploding sneaker, which also felt like a not-so-subtle allusion to Mox's (somewhat notorious) history with explosives. All in all, a fun match and a crowd-pleaser, but not my favorite of the genre. (3.5/5)

With a comparatively low Kwang Score of just 2.44-out-of-5 (tying it with All Out 2020 as the lowest scoring PPV produced by AEW that I've reviewed), Double or Nothing 2023 was an uncharacteristic miss from Tony Khan. The fourway for the AEW World Championship was designed to spotlight AEW's future stars but the outcome was never in question. The other half of the main event was a somewhat forgettable installment in the Anarchy in the Arena series, a gimmick that allowed AEW to get creative and surreal during the Pandemic Era but yielded less consistently interesting results in the years that followed, with this edition being specifically a bit zestless. Cargill/Valkyrie and Storm/Hayter were outright poor and at least two of the other matches felt like they would've fit more on an episode of Dynamite (the Trios Championship bout and the FTR/Lethal and Jarrett contest). It is rare when an AEW show doesn't offer at least one match that could make a Top 10 Match of the Year list, but this show featured nothing that would even deserve an Honorable Mention.

FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver