11 Ups & 3 Downs From AEW Double Or Nothing 2022

2. Anarchy In The Arena

The Jericho Appreciation Society, Blackpool Combat Club, Eddie Kingston, Santana, and Ortiz flung themselves into an arena-wide brawl while Wild Thing was still playing. Fights broke out all over the place. Wrestlers paired off, headed to opposite corners of the building, and raised hell, spilling blood with forks, bare fists, and other implements of destructions.

And Wild Thing kept on going.

And going.

And going.

The end product felt like a steroid-enhanced version of Stadium Stampede with added New Jack appeal, with X replacing Dr. Dre on the sound system. Matt Menard bled a gusher by Eddie Kingston's hand. Chris Jericho brought comedy into play without sacrificing the brutality. In the ring, Santana and Ortiz tried to have something resembling a wrestling match by going for pinfalls on Jake Hager.

So important to the experience was Wild Thing that the arena erupted in jeers when Jericho cut it. An S tier heel move in this environment, but the chaos never stopped even when the rock and roll died.

Tables were broken, buckets of plasma were spilt, and the production team did an unbelievably great job of capturing the lot. The whole thing was a riot - and one of the most cathartic wrestling matches of the year.

Wrestling will not conjure an image as harrowing as a bloodied, battered Eddie Kingston shambling down the ramp armed with a can of gasoline again in a long time. Ultimately, cruelly, this led to his team's demise in one of the bloodiest things AEW has ever put its name to.