LOS ANGELES, Calif. — AEW Revolution took place in Crypto.com Arena Sunday night, and the event lived up to the hype, featuring plenty of violence, supersyta and most importantly, cheers from the Los Angeles crowd. Here is a match-by-match breakdown.
AEW Revolution: Zero Hour
Big boom AJ and QT Marshall vs The Infantry
The crowd loved this match from the very beginning. Aside from the excellent wrestling, including from Big Boom AJ, TV show host Wayne Brady got involved when the Infantry’s Shane Taylor threw him from over the barricade into ringside. Taylor then threw Big Justice onto the ground before Big Justice speared him, which then led to the good guys getting the win back in the ring, many ‘Boom’s’ being yelled out and the Rizzler hitting his patented ‘Rizz Face’ to the elated Los Angeles crowd.
TBS Championship: Champ Willow Nightingale vs Lena Kross
This was a technical masterclass between Nightingale and Kross, as these two started out slow and built the match with sheer physicality and intensity. Kross played the ‘Giant’ role well, making it hard for Nightingale to fully put her away. After a slew of reversals and counters, Nightingale hit Kross with a surprise roll-up, winning the match and retaining her title. Kross’ partner Megan Bayne attacked Willow after the match, putting her in jeopardy for the tag team match later in the evening.
21 Man Blackjack Battle Royale for AEW National Champ
When you google the definition of chaos in the dictionary, you might find the Blackjack Battle Royale match. Featuring crowd favorites like Tomasso Ciampa, Jungle Jack Perry and champion Riccochet, this match went all over the ringside area. With amazing spots like Komander walking the tight rope into a dive, it was easy for the crowd to get into this one. With Ciampa being eliminated large, it came down to Perry and Riccochet, when Perry countered the champ, slamming his head into the ring apron and sending him onto the floor, simultaneously sending the crowd into a frenzy as he became new AEW National champion.
AEW Revolution
AEW Tag Team Titles: FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) vs Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson)
Wrestling aside, the beef between FTR and the families of the Young Bucks ringside was interesting enough to sell this fight. Add the in-ring action with two of the best tag teams in wrestling going at it, and the result is exactly what you’d expect. A grueling, bloody and must-see match. To understand just how grueling, look no further than the tandem superplexes the Young Bucks delivered from inside the ring to the hardwood on the outside. After many OMG moments, super-kicks and nearfalls, it was FTR that retained after a Monster Shatter Machine from the top rope.
After the match, the roof was blown off of Crypto.com arena when Cope and Christian Cage returned and attacked FTR, making their intentions known for the tag titles.
Timeless Toni Storm vs Marina Shafir: Everyone Banned from Ringside
Shafir dominated the early goings of this match, inside the ring and out. How did Toni Storm get back into the match? Well, she bit her way back, biting the feet of her opponent multiple times to get herself going. It worked, as she used that momentum to hit a flurry of German duplexes on Shafir. After her Storm Zero wasn’t enough to finish the match, she bit Shafir again, this time in a much less desirable spot… and then capitalized, using a roll-up to win the match.
Afterward, the arena went into shock when Ronda Rousey came out and confronted Storm, only for us to see that she was working with Shafir. Ronda Rousey vs Toni Storm soon? Book it now.
AEW Continental Championship: Jon Moxley vs Konosuke Takeshita
After his hardcore entrance to the ring, Moxley got right to work on Takeshita, keying in on his left knee repeatedly. The challenger never backed down, kicking out of multiple pile drivers from the champ. Mox continued showing his intensity, even going as far as licking the blood of his counterpart, much to the disgust of the fans. Takeshita was unstoppable once he got going, kicking out at one numerous times and hitting Raging Fire, before Mox kicked out. Mox then hit two Death Riders to no avail, but was able to tap Takeshita out with a sleeper, retaining his title.
After the match, the ‘Aerial Assassin’ Will Ospreay returned and attacked Moxley. An AEW crowd favorite is back after an eight month hiatus due to injury, and he looks ready to go.
AEW Women’s World Tag Team Championship: Babes of Wrath *Harley Cameron and Willow Nightingale) vs Megan Bayne and Lena Kross
Though she was attacked after her title defense earlier in the night, Willow Nightingale still forced herself to go out and defend the tag team titles along with Haley Cameron. This would prove to be a costly decision, as Bayne and Kross would dominate the champs and take the titles in just a few minutes, leaving the Los Angeles crowd in shock.
Swerve Strickland vs Brody King
Probably the slowest match to this point, but for good reason, these two heavyweights took their time dismantling each other. From King slamming Strickland onto the exposed concrete on the outside to Strickland powerbombing him onto the ring apron, they had their way with one another. Brody hit the ‘All Seeing Eye’ but Swerve kicked out, before hitting the ‘House Call’, and pinning King 1,2,3.
After the match, Swerve was going to try to end the career of King with a cinder block, but Kenny Omega came out to stop him from doing so.
AEW Women’s World Championship: ⅔ Falls: Kris Statlander vs Thekla
Kris Statlander is a force, and she made that clear right off the bat, flattening the champion Thekla with a monster clothesline, resulting in a flurry of “OOH’s” from the crowd. Still, it was the ‘Toxic Spider’ Thekla who crawled her way into a first fall victory by way of roll-up. Stat responded by doing some damage to Thekla on the outside, throwing her around wherever she wanted. Stat took the second fall after countering the champ’s Black Widow choke and turning it into a piledriver. To start the third Thekla took the belt from the pants of an unconscious referee, but Stat intercepted it, delivering a whooping of epic proportions. Once the referee woke up, he saw Stat holding the belt and grabbed it, allowing Thekla to take advantage and spear her, before hitting two stomps to secure the win and retain her title.
AEW World Trios Championship: Don Callis Family (Kyle Fletcher, Mark Davis and Kazuchika Okada vs Kevin Knight, Mike Bailey and Místico
The challengers all came to the ring wearing Luchador masks to pay respect to Místico, but the Don Callis family ripped the masks of Bailey and Knight early on. The match featured one high-flying feat after another. Mark Davis almost single handedly took out the good guys on his own, before the high flying attack of Knight, Bailey and Místico proved to be too much, with Knight’s final UFO Splash sealing the deal, winning the Tag Team titles for them. They then lifted Místico up on their shoulders and as the crowd cheered, in a feel good moment.
Andrade El Ídolo vs Bandido
This was a battle of egos almost more than it was a wrestling match. From Andrade taking his shirt off after the match began, to Bandido attempting to remove his pants to Andrade later actually removing his pants (which the crowd loved), it was pure crowd service. The wrestling content was good, with Bandido having a few high-risk high-reward spots, and Andrade hitting a picture perfect moonsault of his own. Andrade kept up the antics, talking to a few women in the audience, before getting back to work. After more near-falls, Andrade got the upper hand and hit the DM from the top rope, good enough for the victory.
Tornado Trios: Roderick Strong, Orange Cassidy and Darby Allin vs The Dogs (Gabe Kidd, Clark Connors, and David Finlay
This is a tornado match, so it was all over the place, until Clark Connors hit Darby Allin with a spear from inside the ring to the outside, in perhaps the craziest spot of the night. Allin was then tied with a chain to the ringpost while his teammates gained the momentum, and once he was unchained, immediately threw himself off the top rope onto the Dogs, backwards. After Allin hit Kidd with his skateboard and tied him up away from the ring, Roderick Strong finished things off in the ring, and gave Orange Cassidy the pin, picking up the win for the good guys.
AEW World Championship Texas Death Match: MJF vs Hangman Adam Page
AEW is known for its crazy stipulations and matches, with one of the more popular ones being the Texas Death Match. Page and MJF alone was enough to sell this match, but if that wasn’t enough, Page let everyone know just how brutal it would be from the first few minutes, stapling a paper onto MJF’s chest and ripping it off. This set the tone for the glass, barbed wire, and more devious weapons they would use. It was all Page early, busting MJF open completely before he could really get any offense in. His time was coming though, as he would soon turn the tides and make this match even more graphic, injecting a syringe into the mouth of Hangman, and Alabama Slamming him onto a barbed wire steel chair. Both men hit their finishing maneuvers through tables, and smacked each other with the barbed wire chair some more, before they came to a stalemate once more, with the crowd chanting both names back and forth. Then, Hangman grabbed a complete stack of… skewers. He and MJF, now chained together with dog collars, tried sticking them into each other’s faces before Page was successful, stabbing his opponent in the head, before hitting a monster clothesline, getting the first near victory. The crowd started chanting ‘we want fire’, to which Hangman responded “who’s got a lighter’? This was of course before MJF used his chain to throw Page into another table with barbed wire on top of it. They worked their ways up to the stage area, when Hangman hit MJF with a suplex through a table off the stage, where pyro exploded around them, but still both men got up. Back in the ring, MJF punched Hangman with the chain, before Hangman fell off the ringpost, and was being choked to the point of going unconscious. The referee started counting, and while fans were hoping for a miracle, that was all, MJF retained, and Page can never challenge for the title again.