8 Match Star Ratings For AEW Full Gear 2023
6. Hikaru Shida Vs. 'Timeless' Toni Storm - Women's Title Match
The great pro wrestling versus sports entertainment debate has raged across the AEW fandom in 2023.
Too much of the latter has corrupted the former, which is really, really less than ideal, since AEW wasted so many months last year on its anti-show-don't-tell Blackpool Combat Club Vs. Jericho Appreciation Society chore of a programme. There can be no more symbolic nor humiliating defeat of sports entertainment than in the finish of Toni Storm Vs. Hikaru Shida.
The match was good early, before the insistence on going broad and stupid and "creative" materialised in total disaster. To build on the damage that Storm had endured in her match against Emi Sakura on Friday, Shida chopped her in the minced chest over and over again. To stay in the fight, Storm chopped back. The fans in the arena bought and enjoyed the logical and wince-inducing exchange of strikes in the context of a professional wrestling match. Then, Shida lit them up more by striking Storm hard in the back of the neck. Things were going well enough in an unvarnished lip-purser of a scrap. And then the finish happened.
Luther, in a ruse, placed his small serving tray in Storm's trunks while visibly handing her a shoe as a decoy. Storm then tried to hide the tray in her trunks to compound the damage of the Hip Attack.
The problem, and how poetic, is that the silly gimmick kept slipping out in full sight of the referee, who couldn't do anything that wasn't in the script, so the visibly fake scene unfolded as "planned". Storm even had to halt her momentum to put the bloody thing back in just before successfully hitting the finish. What's worse is that every single weapon deployed in the Texas Death match that didn't score the fall looked infinitely more painful to take.
A small victory for those who don't want AEW to become a sub-WWE/TNA outfit - but not one worth celebrating.
Star Rating: ★★