12 Match Star Ratings For AEW Revolution 2022
4. Dr. Britt Baker Vs. Thunder Rosa - AEW Women's Title Match
Vince Russo's booking philosophy only worked for a short, electrifying period because he missed the point entirely.
The aim isn't to swerve the audience. The aim is to make the audience want something, reassure them that it's going to happen, and then create the most dramatic path to the destination.
Dr. Britt Baker Vs. Thunder Rosa represented the opposite of that extreme.
It was obvious, by the umpteenth interference and visual win, that Rosa would be made to wait. This didn't work; AEW had already relied on the original match without doing enough to build interest in this sequel. The programme was only a saga insofar as length, and this story beat amounted to little more than pissing about. Really, this only served to diminish interest in the switch. It's more than likely going to happen in Texas, and the moment should compensate for this, but the sheer length of the match diminished the overall experience of the pay-per-view. AEW and Tony Khan packed a long storyline build onto an overstuffed show, and the crowd wasn't up for it because the build didn't unfold on the preceding episodes of TV. This was an ironic misfire that will be salvaged by geography.
The work was uneven - a few frightening near-misses on certain bumps created the wrong strain of drama - but Baker and Rosa deserve immense credit for doing enough by the end (and in spite of an overbooked layout) to salvage the match from outright disaster territory.
When they were allowed to just wrestle, this bordered on very good, particularly by the finish, but the sequencing and bullsh*t made their job so much harder than it needed to be.
Star Rating: ★★¾