10 Ups & 2 Downs From AEW Double Or Nothing 2021
8. Tag Team Title Match Shows Fans What Wrestling Is All About
The Young Bucks Vs. Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston was a match as special as it was dramatic.
And it was f*cking dramatic.
In 2021, years and years and years after AEW's predominantly millennial audience stopped earnestly feeling anything, an incredible story and dynamic - and two incredible and incredibly distinct teams - generated a white-hot atmosphere and stripped away every last layer of the husk. Through such overwhelming, twisting brilliance, the Young Bucks and Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley made you want the goodies to beat the baddies.
Kingston and Mox battered the Bucks at the bell, before the streamers were cleared away, in a scene of total sensory overload that visualised the feeling. This was overwhelmingly special. Kingston, the brawler, smashed into Matt and Nick Jackson with a dive to set the balls-to-the-wall tone, but amid the fury and the feeling, Mox and Kingston smashed Brandon Cutler with their finish. There was a crafted elegance to the chaos; this spot informed the unbelievable drama of a near-fall deeper in the match because it reminded the fans that the newly-formed team had a finish in their locker.
You could literally give consciousness to faecal matter, and train it to be a wrestler, and it wouldn't be as much of a piece of sh*t as Matt Jackson. The man was on bravura, Roman Reigns-mimicking form in this match - so great that he elicited a level of fired-up emotion out of Jon Moxley we haven't seen even in this outstanding AEW run.
Kingston's selling was first-rate; just exquisitely done on a level you rarely see in the modern game. The man looked hobbled, and this of course informed the drama of Mox's badass last stand. Mox, juicing a gusher after eating an Indytaker on the ramp, kicked out of a double superkick at 1 in another awesome twist in a match that was as good for the soul as it was murder on the heart.
The result was what it was - it's probably not a great idea to abandon long-term plans for the sake of a pop - but the goodies should have beaten the baddies.
This match reduced all watching to marks, your writer included, and the word has rarely been defined so positively.