10 Ups & 1 Down From AEW WrestleDream

8. A Very Good - But Not Great - Party Match

WD Fenix
AEW

The Young Bucks won a four-way match over the Lucha Bros., the Gunns, and HOOK and Orange Cassidy, earning an any time, anywhere shot over FTR in the process.

(A win in California in a ladder match is a neat way of withholding the answer to the question of who is the best pure tag team of their generation, incidentally).

It was a very good match in places without ever reaching that heady rush of exhilaration that the Bucks elicit in their best, most demented party matches. What transpired to be an injury angle did not help the mood. It was all too believable that Fenix would suffer yet another setback; even before the events of the last few weeks, he was prone to injury and has regularly missed not inconsiderable stretches of action. Rather than galvanise the fans into getting behind Penta El Zero, the necessitated spot dampened the vibe - and the high-octane match quality, since Fenix is a genre specialist.

The action was still great, mostly, and the interlacing of fun and drama was effective. The Gunns calling back to the New Age Outlaws pinning one another back in 1998 was daft, amusing character work - of course they are dumb enough to think that would work - and in a cracking false finish, HOOK thought he'd tapped out Austin Gunn with REDRUM before it was revealed that Nick Jackson had made a blind tag.

This was a lot of fun, anxiety surrounding Fenix aside, but a certain delirium that the Bucks deliver on PPV - their clutch player run has been phenomenal - was missing.

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!