AEW Double Or Nothing 2024: 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved
Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s annual review of AEW Double or Nothing, the show where everything in the world happened, including a man getting set on fire and somehow still pinning Bryan Danielson! Truly, we live in an age of miracles.
Ground rules apply as always: Can we covering everything in this column? Not even under the best of circumstances, and there were 10 matches and an MJF speech on this show, so these are not the best of circumstances. Detailed information on everything that happened in Las Vegas on Sunday is available via our Double or Nothing results page, so if you just want to know everything that happened, go there. If you want to know which matches and segments the WINC writing and editorial staff felt strongest about, this is the place to be, because these are three things we hated and three things we loved about AEW Double or Nothing 2024.
Loved: Will Ospreay gets his first AEW championship
There is a general rule in professional wrestling that you give your top stars a belt to carry and exemplify, an obvious yet somehow not always followed concept. But at Double or Nothing, AEW did the right thing and strapped up perhaps their most exciting talent at present. Some will argue that it should have been the World Championship, others perhaps that Ospreay should have won his first title at All In. But wrestling often suffers from crowning its champions after they have cooled off. Such has actually been the case frequently with AEW in particular, with the likes of Wardlow and Eddie Kingston arguably winning titles to lesser fanfare than they would have done sooner. And that's not even without mentioning the thermonuclear wrestlers that AEW never managed to pull the trigger on.
Ospreay, Kazuchika Okada and Mercedes Mone — Tony Khan's much-lauded class of 2024 free agent signings — are now all holding singles titles, which is likely by design. It's clear to see Ospreay is someone the promotion should and likely will look to build around, and the International title also seems an apt first accolade for someone who made their way to AEW through their international working relationship with NJPW and continues to travel between the UK and USA to wrestle on nights like Double or Nothing. Not to mention the fact the match itself was a sensational way to continue Ospreay's undefeated singles record in AEW, putting to bed yet another veteran in an impressive back catalog of scalps.
Written by Max Everett
Loved: Toni Storm finally wrestles an opponent who gets it
Toni Storm has been wrestling a lot of modern opponents, and while her old-school approach can be an interesting clash with modern sensibilities, sometimes it can get a little weird. In Serena Deeb, Storm finally had an opponent who understood the antiquated rhythms of Storm's "Timeless" character.
Movies and TV often have problems similar to this — "faces that look like they've seen a smartphone" litter modern period pieces — but finally Storm had an opponent who could go toe-to-toe and hold for hold. The match ended up being a thrilling display; competitive and athletic at the start, and then brutal and smash-mouth at the end. The intensity of the closing stretch of Storm and Deeb's contest was utterly thrilling, possibly the best match of Storm's title reign. Some opponents just click together, and these two women had tremendous chemistry. The mid-match drama between Luther, Mariah May, and Storm, which saw Storm tossing her towel into the stands lest one of her minions throw it in the ring, was a spell-binding reminder of what most mid-match community theater attempts to achieve.
Too often, Storm's character devolves into parody and caricature, but against Deeb, Storm felt like a flesh and blood champion who put forth a tremendous effort to retain her title. The match wasn't as showy as other matches on the card, but substance-wise, it was second to none.
Written by Ross Berman
Hated: FTW Championship match a story of interference, but few pops
I know I shouldn't be complaining about the Buy In pre-show on Double or Nothing, but even with two matches, it just felt so incredibly long that the ridiculously FTW Championship match would have been an excellent fit for it. Even though I wasn't a fan of the match to begin with, at least the Buy In would have been more interesting with this zany stuff. Overall, I hated the fact that Chris Jericho walked away with the championship, even though I predicted that to begin with. The belt in itself is extremely silly, especially since AEW has a million and a half belts, especially with Ring of Honor. All these guys — HOOK, Big Bill, Shibata, Bryan Keith — getting pulled into Chris Jericho's vortex just kills me. They deserve so much better than being attached to a dying act in the company. When HOOK first started tagging with Jericho, it was immediate cringe for me, and it just hasn't gotten any better.
I thought the match in itself was pretty clunky at points. Obviously, it's supposed to be a hardcore-type match with FTW rules, but there were a few notable spots that just looked dangerously bad. The first was HOOK getting clipped by the table when it didn't break after Shibata sent HOOK crashing onto Jericho. It looked like HOOK hit the back of his head, and I'm surprised he didn't knock himself loopy after that. The other spot I'm thinking of also involved a table, when HOOK sent Big Bill through one from the apron onto a table on the floor below. The way Big Bill crashed through it, the legs of the table were dangerously close to his face and head; it looked like it broke weird, to me.
One of the worst things about this match was what I thought was clever interference, but there was absolutely no reaction from the crowd. Bryan Keith was the one to take the double submission from Shibata and HOOK on "Dynamite," that caused this match to be a triple threat in the first place. He interfered wearing all black and in a luchador mask when Jericho was being set up for the same spot that her succumbed to. It made perfect sense, and forever whatever reason, I didn't see it coming, so I thought it worked well. The crowd in Vegas however? Not so much. The fact Jericho "hired" "The Bounty Hunter" was actually a good plot point that fell completely flat.
While this match had some good points, like the bag Jericho pulled out from under the ring not being thumbtacks, but dice, the points that fell flat for me really fell flat. I'm also not sure where Jericho with the FTW Championship goes from here. It feels like it belongs with HOOK until the championship is just flat-out retired. If HOOK continues to feud with Jericho, that's going to be frustrating. I feel like I'm stuck in the Jericho Vortex myself, and on a pretty great show overall, this was a low point for me.
Written by Daisy Ruth
Hated: The cage match that wasn't a cage match
There will likely be someone who will point out that escaping a cage to win a cage match is a modern convention, brought about in the '60s by The Sheik's refusal to lose to Bruno Sammartino. I was born in 1990. For the entirety of my time on this planet, exiting a steel cage means you have won said cage match. This is an instinct that is baked into mine and many other wrestling fans' brains like a visual tap-out or a pinfall. So when Adam Copeland went flying out of the cage during Sunday's Barbed Wire Steel Cage Match. I assumed he won, as did many others in the arena.
The match then went on for another, I don't know, 10 minutes, dragging Copeland and the House of Black through an endless slog of wrestling storytelling. Maudlin and boring, House of Black teased betraying their leader Malakai Black, before they took Copeland back in the ring and were promptly taken out by former WWE superstar (and former pornography director) Gangrel, who evened the odds (sort of) and cleared a path for Copeland to put the endless match out of its misery.
I love chaos and blood and Gangrel. The fact that a match featuring the master of fangin' and bangin' and that much chaos was still boring speaks to it going against every single instinct I have when watching a cage match. What should've been a thrilling conclusion felt like convoluted post-match shenanigans, since I had already seen Copeland leave the cage, and the result ended up being the same as if he'd done so. Just a waste of a good helping of ultraviolence.
Written by Ross Berman
Loved: The People's Scumbag has returned
There are fewer surprises that would have served to surprise the fans more and bring a more needed injection to AEW heading into the summer than the return of MJF. Yes, it had been reported recently that he was to return imminently, but it cannot be argued that the crowd was electric for the return of Their Scumbag, who immediately picked back up with Adam Cole. The roster has already seen the likes of Kazuchika Okada and Will Ospreay taking center stage, but the return of the longest-reigning AEW World Champion adds a completely different complexion to things.
It can grease the wheels of the stuttered Undisputed Kingdom emergence heading into All In, potentially even giving Wardlow something substantial to get his teeth stuck into after so long floating in limbo. But it also gives fans a promise that there will be a pay off to Adam Cole's "Devil" reveal somewhere on the horizon. There can be much said about whether aspects of his return could or should have been saved for a future "AEW Dynamite" or "AEW Collision," but there is also something to be said for giving the fans in attendance and watching on pay-per-view something extra. MJF coming back and making his clear he is going to be staying for the long haul — that's something that could restore the feeling.
Written by Max Everett
Hated: All Filler Wrestling
I'm going to be blunt about this because I'm currently watching AEW CEO Tony Khan laugh and smile and give nonsense answers in front of reporters in spite of the fact that his company has apparently been taken over by his deadly enemies and it makes me want to scream. Anyway, these AEW PPVs are still too long, but at least you can somewhat justify it when you're putting on the "all killer no filler" bangers that AEW has become known for. It's less justifiable when you give your fans five PPV-worthy matches tacked onto a very long episode of "Dynamite."
Jon Moxley vs. Konosuke Takeshita did not need to be on this PPV. Orange Cassidy vs. Trent Beretta did not need to be on this PPV. The trios tag match did not need to be on this PPV. The FTW title match did not need to be on this PPV. And yeah, I'll say it, the International title match did not need to be on this PPV. Any and all of these matches could have easily been "Dynamite" main events and/or strong openers, but all they did on this show was contribute to a staggering amount of bloat. Add to that the fact that almost every match on Double or Nothing involved outside interference of some kind (this from the company that once prided themselves on the exact opposite philosophy) and it felt more like a "Winter is Coming" show than the company's five-year anniversary.
And do not — do not — get me started on doing MJF's return after the very first match and then giving away his first promo in six months to people who already bought the PPV instead of using it to pop a TV rating. How did this PPV need to be four-and-a-half hours long so MJF could squeeze in a segment that by all that's holy in the wrestling industry should be happening on May 29? I do not and will never understand this company.
There were many, many things I did not like about Double or Nothing, but the worst thing overall was AEW putting on a show that could have been a phenomenal three hours and stretching it out by 90 minutes for no good reason. Look at it this way: AEW put on a "triple main event" Sunday night, and we didn't even talk about any of those three matches in this column, because there was too much other weird s*** going on. That's just kind of a shame.
Written by Miles Schneiderman