30 Best AEW Matches Ever (So Far...)

29. Toni Storm Vs. Mariah May (Revolution 2025)

A lot of people wanted this match to headline Revolution 2025, and with good reason. Several good reasons, come to think of it: the story was iconic, the neglected women’s division needed and deserved the promotional push, and Jon Moxley Vs. Cope was less a dream match, more a living nightmare.

The thing is, the match was absolutely no-notes perfect for what it was at 12 minutes and 55 seconds. There was no time to indulge in the melodrama and conflicted emotion that very slightly dragged down the original match at All In: London ‘24.

There was only time to kill.

This was ferocious, urgent, as drenched in hatred as it was in blood. Toni Storm’s way with the blade is something special. She draws on the artists of yore to craft her character, from a composite of golden age dames to Abdullah the Butcher. The best horror practical effects artist of the 1980s could not have made Toni’s visage look more ghoulish than it did in LA.

Mid-match dialogue is a controversial device - don’t the moves and the selling and the body language convey all that in the setting of the ring? - but Mariah’s performance was superb. So much helpless rage and disdain went into her cry of “I f*cking hate you”.

With no downtime whatsoever, and no love left in their complex relationship, Toni and Mariah engaged in a sprint to the death. The staged Taipei Death Match within a match was somewhat contrived, but in a way that made perfect sense within the context of the story: these were actresses, so of course they would make the idea of a performance overt.

Never less than faithful to the characters, a programme that was hilariously coarse throughout ended, naturally, with a glass bottle to the vagina.