It’s AEW WrestleDream 2024 – the show where Bryan Danielson’s full-time career came to an end.
A bit of disclosure here: I had already watched the show earlier this year and had this whole thing written up. The idea was to post it in between the 2015 and 2025 Royal Ramble posts, since I wasn’t planning on watching the Genesis PPV from TNA due to the whole deal there, but then I ended up watching the Genesis PPV where the right guy won and so this ended up in the backburner while that Genesis show got the spotlight.
And so here we are at WrestleDream, which is our last AEW PPV for a while. Next week, we’ll probably do another TNA PPV or something.
The returning Jay White defeated Hangman Adam Page in a tame but enjoyable enough opening match. Yes, Hangman Page went from almost murdering Swerve Strickland in the unsanctioned cage match at All Out to jobbing to Switchblade Guy a month or so later in the opening match of a nothing PPV. I suppose having Jay White lose his return match would have been stupid, but I wouldn’t have beaten Hangman after THAT match in particular. That came across as stupid and they should have held off the match for farther down the road. Next.
Women’s Champion Mariah May defeated Willow Nightingale to retain the title in a nothing match. May as champion did doing nothing for me and it doesn’t help that Willow – a charismatic talent that people seem to like – is always losing the big matches that she SHOULD be winning in order to increase her stock. That’s part of the larger picture problem plaguing AEW; they put out these matches and some of these are good, but I’ve no real reason to fully invest in these matches and that emotional investment is the key difference between a merely good match and a truly great match.
TNT Champion Jack Perry defeated Katsuyori Shibata to retain the title in a good enough match where the ending was never in doubt. Perry continues beating on Shibata to bring out Daniel Garcia for his big return from contractual purgatory before getting laid out by the returning MJF, who is eventually run out by the returning Adam Cole, who has FINALLY been cleared for action. Reactions baffled me here, since the last time Adam Cole was around, he was a heel feuding with MJF due to the whole Devil mask business, but now that MJF is back to being a heel, we’re booking Adam Cole as a babyface… despite the fact that he was the one who stabbed MJF in the back and… yeah, this whole Adam Cole/MJF thing hurts my head thinking about it and from what little AEW I’ve seen these past couple months, it hasn’t gotten better over time.
Konosuke Takeshita defeated Ricochet and International Champion Will Ospreay with an assist from Kyle Fletcher to win the title and basically kick Ospreay out of the Don Callis Family or whatever it’s called. Takeshita finally getting a major win and a title to his credit was long overdue and to do it in a match with two high-caliber athletes was a tremendous boon on top of that. Very entertaining match with a good, surprise ending for once.
Prince Nana pops up to give an update on Swerve, which prompts the All Elite debut of MVP, who gives Nana a business card. This would lead to the eventual debut of the Hurt Business Syndicate into AEW and basically continue that run, which has been… hurt business as usual for lack of a better term. I don’t say that as a bad thing.
Hologram defeated The Beast Mortos in a best of three falls match (2-0). Not familiar with either wrestler other than they typically wrestle on Collision, but they did put on a good performance if nothing else.
Darby Allin defeated Brody King in the usual Darby Allin match where he does crazy spots and the big guy just kills him. That’s always going to be entertaining because Darby is a lunatic (good luck with Everest, by the way) and Brody is just a huge presence of a man. Fun times.
AEW Tag Champs THE YOUNG FUCKS defeated Private Party to retain the titles. A perfectly acceptable Young Fucks match, but no one ever bought Private Party as a threat to the titles, nor should they have considering their on and off booking over the years. Fortunately, it take a potential team split stip to get a rematch between the two teams that would see Private Party usurp the Bucks to win the tag titles.
ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe defeated Chris Jericho to retain the title… only for Jericho to win the title two weeks later on an episode of Dynamite; his ninth World title win, apparently. The match itself was fine; Briscoe is a great babyface champion and Jericho is… well, Jericho is Jericho and that’s all I have to say about that.:\
Jon Moxley savagely executes AEW World Champion Bryan Danielson to win the title and effectively end Danielson’s run as a full-time wrestler. Mox beats the crap out of this dude, Bryan tried a comeback or two only to get hammered savagely. And then on top of that, we have the rest of the Death Riders come in to beat up Danielson some more before Yuta shows up and puts a bag over Danielson’s head in a repeat of the All Out thing. Hey, you know what? The match was pretty good as far as giving the departing Danielson one last hurrah before he is eventually massacred and it gives Mox a strong enough win to cement his new direction, which… still has me wondering what the hell is going on here all these months later and I’m usually a fan of Mox’s stuff. As for the bag over the head deal… I’ll save my thoughts on that for the eventual All Out musings (which I probably should have watched first, but oh well…), but needless to say… eh.
And so we end Wrestledream with the grim reality where all your reigning champions are heels or people nobody gives a shit about. Take your pick; this would mark the beginning of the dark days of AEW where everything revolved around Jon Moxley and his Death Riders running roughshod and nobody gives a shit because none of this shit is particularly interesting. Even now, that shit is still going on and it’s not going anyway. As for the PPV… it was a fine show for the most part with a really good match or two, but my interest was pretty much waning at this point and coming out of this show, I was like… “There’s nothing to look forward to with this promotion.”
To date, I have not bought another AEW PPV and only watched a handful of Dynamite shows. They got a new TV deal and that’s great and all; I just wish the product on-screen was actually worth watching because right now, it’s just there.
Next week is a trip back to memory lane before we stumble across a series of WWE PPVs from… well, you know… we’ll get there eventually…
dtm666 