11 Match Star Ratings From AEW Double Or Nothing 2023

The Four Pillars match was outstanding. If it felt more like a passion project on the part of the creators than something the consumer was crying out desperately to see, it was put together with such thought and detail that those fans went apesh*t across its 27 minute duration.

They demanded the fans accept it as a worthy main event, and it paid off: this was an incredible achievement of a match.

Think of the worst "turn-taking" WWE triple threats. This was the opposite; how every four-way sequence flowed beat by beat without being too contrived, mostly, was astonishing. Now imagine every move, counter, reversal in this match listed down on a page. Imagine going through where you needed to stand at any given time. The memory recall required for this incredibly complex, twist-heavy match was unbelievable. Now, you could obviously make the argument that this worked against a match that felt stilted as a result, and while that is fair, wrestling, fundamentally, is about working to the audience - and this audience loved the lung-bursting, twist-loaded aerial warfare because and not in spite of the fact that it felt like there were about 10 insane destroyer variations in it.

The three-way pinfall exchanges towards the climax were scorching, incredibly creative. They didn't need to drop each other on their heads to get a pop, but when they did, Jack Perry looked like he'd broken his neck. The offence was demented at times.

While this accomplished a lot story-wise - Perry teased out a heel turn through being punished when refusing to cheat, Sammy Guevara drew closer to actually growing up - the match seemed to serve as an acknowledgement that it lacked a deep emotional core.

Instead, the Pillars opted for total brain-melting exhilaration, and delivered a genre masterpiece in the process despite the crowd psychology being off at times. They were always going to resent the three babyfaces for ganging up on MJF.

Star Rating: ★★★★½