BRM Reviews AEW Full Gear 2021 (awesome... but somehow still disappointing)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews AEW Full Gear 2021 (awesome... but somehow still disappointing)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 13th, '21, 22:10

AEW Full Gear 2021 (11/13/2021)- Minneapolis, MN


TONY SCHIAVONE INTERVIEWS ORANGE CASSIDY & FRIENDS- Really? We’re starting off the PPV with an interview to build up a match on TV?
They tease that OC will reveal a mystery partner from CHAOS tonight for a match on Dynamite against The Blade and Matt Hardy. Okada is already in the US, so it’s pretty clearly going to be him. Why waste PPV time with this crap instead of just announcing it?

MJF vs. DARBY ALLIN- 8.75/10
The moment MJF claimed he was going to beat Darby with a headlock takeover, I knew what the finish was going to be, but despite that, they had me biting on several of the nearfalls. Darby worked the knee while MJF worked Darby’s back over absolutely viciously. Both men sold beautifully and brought a tremendous intensity. This match was wonderfully brutal. Even the beat-down Sting gave Shawn Spears and Wardlow to prevent them from interfering looked brutal.

We were shown Max Castor up in Team Taz’s sky-box.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Lucha Bros.(c) (w/Alex Abrahantes) vs. FTR (w/Tully Blanchard)- 5/10
If you’re going to do the angle where the Lucha Bros. are so angry they offer FTR a title shot to get their hands on them, it makes the Lucha Bros. come off a little stupid that they didn’t bother to demand that FTR put up the AAA belts that they cheated the Lucha Bros. out of.

FTR got some heat for a bit, then the Lucha Bros did all of the MOVEZ they could think of. They also kicked out of just about everything. FTR got to kick out of Eddie Guerrero’s finish, because what better way to show how much you respect and appreciate someone than making their signature move look less effective?
This match had a lot of things that drove me nuts. Penta’s punches in the corner missed pretty embarrassingly. We had Tully interfere right in front of the referee without a DQ (or without him even being ejected from ringside). Ay one point in the match, both members of FTR had submissions locked in but the referee did what he should have done and started a five-count to get the illegal wrestlers out of the ring, but when the Lucha Bros. did a double-pin later in the match, the referee counted the pin.
Then there was the finish. For no explicable reason, FTR put o the masks they wore as disguises when they won the titles. The announcers immediately noted that the man in the ring was not the legal wrestler and told us “you can tell because of the hair.” The referee, on the other hand, could not figure out that this was not the legal man, and so the wrong guy got pinned. It felt like the entire reason they got the masks was so we could have a finish that build to a rematch.

AEW WORLD TITLE ELIMINATOR FINAL MATCH: Bryan Danielson(c) vs. Miro- 8/10
I know it’s weird to say about a match I’ve given an 8/10 to, but this was kind of disappointing. It felt like they never quite kicked it into that final gear. More power to them to have such an awesome match without doing so, I guess. Dragon won after a top rope DDT and a guillotine choke.

FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE MATCH: Christian Cage & Jurassic Express vs. Adam Cole & the Young Bucks (w/Brandon Cutler & Michael Nakazawa)- 8.5/10
This was what you’d expect. I thought everything they did once all six of them were on the ramp was great. The story with Jungle Boy being unable o go through with the Con-Chair-T early on but then volunteering to hit it for the finish did nothing for me. It came out of nowhere, as at no point during the built to this match was there ever a seed planted that he might not been unable to do what needed to be done.

MALAKAI BLACK & ANDRADE EL IDOLO (w/Jose The Assistant) vs. PAC & CODY RHODES (w/Arn Anderson)- 7.75/10
Interference in front of the referee with no repercussions. The crowd did not like Cody at all. Pac pinned Andrade.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- whatever
Tully Blanchard and Cash Wheeler came out and attacked Pac. I guess Dax must have been injured.

AEW WOMEN’S WORLD TITLE MATCH: Britt Baker(c) (w/Jamie Hayter & Rebel) vs. Tay Conti- 7.5/10
Despite these heels interfering in every match, Anna Jay was not at ringside…and, of course, the heels interfered and beat the sh*t out of Tay. This built well for a while, but it felt like it overstayed its welcome and finished well after it peaked. The roll-up finish really didn’t work for me, either.

CM PUNK vs. EDDIE KINGSTON- 7/10
This was a very good brawl. Punk won clean with the GTS. He offered Kingson a handshake afterwards, but Kingston ignored it.

STREET FIGHT: The Inner Circle vs. Men of the Year & American Top Team (Dan Lambert, Junior Dos Santos, & Andrei Arlovski)- 5.75/10
They did stuff. Lambert was a cartoon. Jericho beat him. Also, someone decided that we had to create a spot for Baron von Rasche to interfere on the side of the babyfaces, so the babyfaces can’t even win fairly in a fight where the heels have essentially four and a half people to start with. And I wonder how Sammy and LAX feel about Hager being buddies with a White Supremacist. Whoever made the decision to put this match on after the six-man weapons match is an idiot.

Orange Cassidy’s partner will be Tomohiro Ishii. That’s not very exciting.
JAY LETHAL IS COMING TO AEW- cool!
Jay Lethal vs. Bryan Danielson, please! Is Jonathan Gresham coming in, too? Lethal & Gresham vs. FTR would be awesome. Gresham vs. Danielson might well be the best thing ever.
Well… instead we’re getting Jay Lethal vs. Sammy Guevara for the TNT Title.


AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH: Kenny Omega(c) (w/Don Callis) vs. Adam Page- 8/10
Like Danielson vs. Miro, this just didn’t feel like it got there for me. Yeah, they did a lot of head-drops, but this was a match that should have felt epic and didn’t come close. The title change, quite frankly, didn’t feel to me like the big moment it was supposed to. The whole thing with the Bucks didn’t work for me, either. If they weren’t going to get involved, why come out at all? They’re pro wrestlers. Surely they know that even just coming out to ringside can distract someone and change the course of the match, so why take the risk of doing that?



This was an awesome show from AEW, that also managed to somehow feel disappointing. Dragon vs. Miro and Page vs. Omega (and, to a lesser extent, Punk vs. Kingston) while great, just didn’t feel like they hit the level the needed to be at, and the second half of the card was decidedly weaker than the first, with the opener being easily the best thing on the show. It was an awesome show, but it should have been epic and wasn’t.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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