AEW World's End 2023

AEW World's End 2023

Long Island, NY - December 2023

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into tonight's show, the AEW World Champion was MJF, the AEW Women's World Champion was Toni Storm, the AEW World Tag Team Champions were Big Bill and Ricky Starks, Billy Gunn and the Acclaimed held the Trios Championship, Orange Cassidy was the International Champion, the TBS Champion was Julia Hart, and the TNT Champion was Christian Cage. 

The opening contest saw Continental Classic also-rans tagging up in an "All Star 8-Man" with Claudio Castignoli, Bryan Danielson, Daniel Garcia, and Mark Briscoe taking on Brody King, RUSH, Jay Lethal, and Jay White. Lots of good moments here in a match that went close to 20 minutes (more with entrances). Brody King's work with Matt Menard on commentary was gold and has me wondering if Brody King might not be worthy of including in my Greatest Wrestler Ever list as he's excellent in this match and the verbal smackdown he lays on Matt Menard is just brutal (it almost seems like Menard might cry). I also really liked the not-so-subtle work that Garcia and Danielson did building up their rivalry. Castignoli delivering an airplane spin to King is unreal. The finishing stretch is exactly what one would expect with all 8 men delivering - or getting cut-off from delivering - their signature moves. Really fun opener. (3/5)

Andrade El Idolo took on Miro in the next match. The story here is that Miro's real-life wife CJ Perry had become Andrade's manager, which angered the self-proclaimed Redeemer and led to this match. I wasn't a regular viewer of AEW at the time so I don't know who the face was and who the heel was and I'm not sure the New York audience knew either. Good action overall with heavy emphasis on CJ on the outside as she yelled and screamed, encouraging Andrade and instigating her husband. Perry eventually cost Andrade the match by breaking up his Figure Eight submission, essentially turning on her client. Miro then dropped him with a devastating kick but it only got 2 (it should've been the finish) and applied the Accolade (camel clutch) for the W. I didn't really understand the "turn" here and wish it would've been built up with CJ appearing more conflicted throughout the contest. (2.5/5)

Toni Storm defended her AEW Women's Championship against the first woman to hold that title - Riho - in the next match. The crowd did not seem to care much about this match, which wasn't surprising considering Riho, like Hikaru Shida, has never been particularly over even with the AEW die-hards. They got 12 minutes and there were some good moments - Storm getting onto Luther's back to run Riho off the apron and onto the floor, the should've-been-the-finish Storm Zero piledriver at the end - but this lacked heat and Storm still felt a bit like a work-in-progress at this point balancing her character work and her physicality. (2/5)

Swerve Strickland took on Dustin Rhodes in the next match. The match started so promisingly with Swerve attacking Dustin before the bell and stomping his ankle into a concrete block (which broke into pieces). I wasn't a fan of the usage of the phony concrete in the match with Hangman, but I would've accepted it here had they treated it seriously. Instead, the medical team rushes out, Dustin looks like he's being carried out with a legitimate injury, and then instead of allowing Swerve to bask in the heel heat and treating this as an angle, Dustin comes back and they proceed to have a near-10 minute match in which Rhodes manages to get some offense in and even a couple nearfalls. As big of a fan as I am of both guys, this was ineffective in every way. Rhodes didn't need to be protected but was given superhuman abilities that undercut Swerve's push as being the most dangerous heel in the company. Even knowing that this was booked-on-the-fly due to an injury to Keith Lee (as of this writing, 2 and a half years later, Lee has yet to return to the ring), this was bad. (1/5)

A second 8-Man All Star match followed with Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Sting, and Darby Allin taking on the team of Ricky Starks, Big Bill, Konosuke Takeshita, and Powerhouse Hobbs. This started out okay but then just descended into a sloppy mess. Sting's retirement run was generally good with lots of well-placed "smokes and mirrors" to make it work. Here, his age shows terribly as the little bit of offense he tries to execute barely connects and he's moving like he's wearing actual concrete blocks on his feet and not whatever Swerve used earlier. Chris Jericho, who gets booed by what is essentially his hometown crowd, doesn't fare much better. Hobbs was wasted and practically invisible while Takeshita had a few brights spots but not enough to save the match. Big Bill has a noticeable botch and Sammy Guevara's final 450 hits Starks' knees, which are two small critiques but are also just more blemishes on this match. Darby Allin throws himself into everything he does and there is a great hemoment when Hobbs and Bill swing him across the ring, but this was a mess. (1.5/5)

Julia Hart defended her TBS Championship against Abadon in the next match. This was fought under "House Rules" but it's unclear what that even means or how it makes it different from any other match because the stipulation's elements - no rope breaks, 20-counts for countouts, the challenger getting to select the type of match (Abadon selected "biting is legal") - don't make this too much different from any other AEW match (where guys bite eachother on the reg). I like Abadon's presentation but she's a mediocre wrestler. The same is true of Julia Hart, unfortunately, which means you didn't really have anyone "leading" this match that is better than average and capable of connecting the dots. This went 11 minutes but had lost the crowd and my interest about halfway through. A point for the effort. (1/5)

Adam Copeland and Christian did battle in a No DQ match next, saving the show from being an all-time stinker. Christian took a hell of a beating to start things out, with Copeland attacking before the bell and taking him all the way into the stands. There were chairs, there were tables, there was even fire (though Copeland was in such a rush to powerbomb Nick Wayne through the burning table before the flames went out that he nearly killed him). In AEW, where No DQ and Texas Death matches tend to result in buckets of blood, Copeland and Christian's work could be described as "tame," but because of their chemistry and timing, the match worked for what it was even if it didn't really touch the level of sadism that Hangman and Swerve hit at the previous pay-per-view. The post-match - which saw Killswitch/Luchasaurus lay out Edge and signal that he intended to cash-in his guaranteed TNT Championship title shot only to give the opportunity to his "father" Christian - was an unexpected twist, though I can understand why some fans may have felt like it was unnecessary and took away the strong sense of finality that the match itself had done a good job of delivering. The clear match of the night up till this point. (3.5/5)

The finals of the Continental Classic was next with Jon Moxley taking on longtime friend Eddie Kingston (with Kingston also putting his Ring of Honor World Championship and NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship on the line too). I'm not sure why this match worked when so many of Kingston's other AEW PPV matches over the years have left me cold, but he and Moxley just have the pacing and intensity and chemistry to somehow get a match like this over against each other and very rarely anyone else. This was super physical with lots of intense striking and grappling, very much inspired by the puro resu style of 90s Japan, which means it also got a bit repetitive towards the end. Just like with some of the King's Roads classics, the final 5 minutes or so wasn't necessarily about who was going to bring some new, surprising move to the table as it was about who was going to connect at the right time with the right strike. I find Mox and Kingston to both be pretty uneven, but this was really good. (3.5/5)

Main event time - MJF defending the AEW World Championship against Samoa Joe. Before the match, a video plays with various "Long Island folk" proclaiming that MJF is "their scumbag." Its fun. MJF comes out to a big ovation and a "He's Our Scumbag" chant and then points to the entrance ramp, welcoming Adam Cole to the ring, who comes out on crutches. They start with a collar-and-elbow tie-up before gets in some boots. Joe shuts him down with his signature "STJoe" sidewalk slam and then batters him with punches in the corner. Joe goes to work on his previously injured shoulder (MJF is wearing a sports brace on it), even attempting a Muscle Buster early. MJF tries a series of quick pins, using Joe's momentum and size against him, tiring Joe out but in the process. Joe turns a Kangaroo Kick attempt into a catapult but MJF catches the ropes. When MJF tries to pull himself back into the ring. Joe boots him in the face in a terrific spot. Joe follows it with a suicide dive to the floor and then a DVD in the ring. MJF gets some chops in but Joe hits him with a German and then a dragon suplex and a straight-jacket suplex (something he doesn't always bust out, as Tazz noted on commentary). MJF tries to go to the outside to regroup but ends up on the apron. Joe follows him out and hits him with a Muscle Buster on the apron! Holy cow. Because its AEW, MJF kicks out. Yuck. That's the kind of move that should be protected. Joe goes for another one but MJF blocks it with headbutts and escapes the corner. MJF gets some offense in, but its mostly just fists. He goes for another Kangaroo Kick but it gets blocked. Joe goes up to the top rope but MJF grabs hold of him, attempting a Samoan Drop. MJF crumbles under Joe's weight but does manage to hit a double stomp on Joe's arm as he holds onto the ropes and then bumps him onto the apron and hits the Heatseeker. MJF goes for another, but Joe counters it by climbing into the ring with MJF on his back. Joe goes for an Alabama Slam but MJF counters that into a Fujiwara Armbar that Joe then counters into one of his own. Good, effective sequence there. MJF gets to the bottom rope to break the hold, but Joe locks him in a sleeper soon after. MJF backs him into the corner, inadvertently taking out the ref in the process. With the ref down, MJF is able to hit a low blow and an impressive F5 but Remsburg doesn't wake in time to make the count. MJF looked to Cole to give him the Dynamite Diamond Ring but Cole didn't get it quickly enough and Joe locked him up into the Coquina Clutch! Remsburg raises the arm once...twice...and the third time, it falls to his side! A bit of a flat finish just because it was so unexpected and so (relatively) clean that the audience didn't seem to register it as it was happening. As a Joe fan, I dug it. I also thought MJF's selling, from beginning to end, made it one of the more "believable" losses I've seen as MJF never did get a string of offense going. The crowd chanted "Bullshit" until a group of masked men surrounded the ring. They held down MJF and Cole and threatened to hit one of them with a chair, but then the lights went out and, when they came back on...Cole was sitting on the chair with the masked men behind him in a terrific image. The masked men then revealed themselves to be Roddy Strong and some other dudes. They beat down MJF, with Wardlow hitting him with a powerbomb. Cole put on the mask, making it clear that he was "The Devil" all along. In terms of longterm storytelling, I didn't love that it was Cole who was The Devil, mostly because it was widely predicted, but the actual execution of the angle here was excellent after one of MJF's best performances. (4/5)

If it weren't for the last three matches on this show, this would've easily been the worst AEW PPV in company history - and it still might be depending on your appreciation of an aging (but, in my opinion, still capable of brilliance) Samoa Joe, MJF's babyface work (which I thought was more palatable here than in any other match from that run), and the Christian/Copeland match (and post-match), a match built around two guys that nobody could be blamed for being a little tired of in 2026. The rest of the card was mostly disappointing aside from the opener, which would've felt like a "TV match" had it not been for the crowd's enthusiasm. With a Kwang Score of just 2.44-out-of-5, World's End 2023 falls into the category of...

FINAL RATING - High Risk Maneuver