10 Best Wrestling Matches With The Worst Builds

While it was bold and important that AEW attempted to position the core of its original youth movement as the next fleet of headliners, the premise was asking a lot of the audience.

There was too much tell, don't show here: while MJF had certainly ascended to the main event bracket, and Darby Allin with a better story and build could have challenged him on PPV in a singles, fans simply did not take Jack Perry nor Sammy Guevara seriously at that level.

Unconvincing premise, weird storyline: MJF and Sammy Guevara shared wonderful and legitimately funny chemistry, but Guevara, a natural heel, was booked on a babyface redemption arc by refusing to throw the match. There were babyfaces in the double digits that fans would have preferred to see at that level. Darby Allin was one of them, but he celebrated a bye in an ill-advised Pillars 'Tournament' that meant nothing, since the Four-Way had been signposted. Perry's worked shoot edgelord promo work was annoying, bluntly. This all made sense of his turn in retrospect, but it was exhausting and small fry in real-time.

The match was an incredible spectacle, mind: a 28 minute sprint that never once stopped accelerating, somehow, it was worked with the demented OTT creativity of peak PWG. Folding in wit (the ganging up of MJF), warmth (the tributes to each Pillar's mentor) and absurdly complex and electrifying sequences (the quadruple Canadian destroyer exchange being the highlight), it was a heart-pounding fireworks display.

But a noble failure all the same.