Spearsovations Bulletin #0 - PREVIEW - AEW Double or Nothing 2022

NOTE: As this is a special preview edition of the Spearsovations Bulletin, I am solely focusing on the Double or Nothing preview. The Business Wrap Around along with Weekend Preview will debut Friday.

All Elite Wrestling formally enters year four this Sunday as they make their return to Las Vegas for Double or Nothing for the first time in three years. On the surface, it’s an uneven show from a progressively more and more uneven promotion. Where in the past, AEW could be trusted to have a giant tentpole show without a lot of bloat, this is a pay per view with a four hour clearance window and thirteen matches. This certainly doesn’t feel like the next edition of what Aaron Bentley called the greatest North American PPV, but let’s get into it and make some sense of this show.

AEW World Title - “Hangman” Adam Page makes his seventh defense against CM Punk. Keeping the injury list (Kenny Omega) in mind, this certainly feels like the biggest match the company can put on with its own talent. With a successful defense, Hangman will have beaten each of the big stars who joined AEW last summer (Bryan Danielson & Adam Cole). I’ve kind of come to a conclusion that there just isn’t a real ace in AEW, as the company has quickly down cycled all of the previous champions. CM Punk still is the most popular person in the promotion and could prove me wrong. If you’re going to give him a run, this does feel like the time before Punk gets older. The build has been somewhat uneven with Punk doing some of his SNL host schtick and Page making me want to bring back the Is Hangman a Heel meter? The go home promo muddled this enough for me to be 50/50 at this point. Both guys play into each other’s strengths so reasonably optimistic about the match.

AEW Women’s World Title - Thunder Rosa makes her second defense against Serena Deeb. On a macro-sense, one of AEW’s big issues is an inability to follow up on wrestlers after they’ve had a big moment, and the test case in this is Thunder Rosa. Consistently one of the most over wrestlers in the building, Thunder Rosa has been hurt with her first two championship feuds. In building a title match, the promotion/Tony Khan elected to base this around promos, with one hit or miss promo (Rosa), and one of the worst talkers on the roster (Deeb). Deeb comes into this after completely destroying Hikaru Shida in their endless feud, but whatever momentum she’d have is gone with how prolonged that feud was. The match itself should be fine to very good, Rosa’s a Swiss Army Knife that plays into Deeb’s sole strength as an in-ring wrestler. Feel like the result here isn’t in doubt at all, it’s just seeing if Rosa feels bigger as a champion coming out of this.

TBS Title - Jade Cargill makes her seventh defense, and second in this reign, against Anna Jay. There’s not a champion in AEW who feels more like “the champ” than Jade Cargill. For the last fifteen months, AEW has handled an incredibly inexperienced wrestler as well as one could wish. The problem with rookie undefeated streaks is figuring out when to end it, how to handle the wrestler in the aftermath. If this is the point where Jade’s streak ends, from an outside observer, there’s not an obvious next step after this. Anna is someone who I feel like really hasn’t impressed outside of the Lights Out tag. Both of these women have been recipients of the AEW talent development program for good and for bad: they get their young wrestlers to the point where they don’t embarrass you, but it’s hard to grow if you don’t get a chance to wrestle different people in different places. Since it’s a rematch, one would normally assume the challenger wins, but with “what you do next” looming large for Jade, I’d keep the belt on her and try to get her into a few programs that can grow her in-ring before moving the belt off of her.

AEW Tag Titles - Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus, Jurassic Express, make their seventh defense in a three-way match against the Team Taz team of Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs as well as Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland. This title match is evidence that the AEW roster is over inflated: Two new stars who debuted before or at Revolution are already saddled in a tag team to give them something to do and not waste them. I personally am against single fall multi-team matches (both for Lineal reasons and just “what are we doing here” reasons), so this match is already on its back foot with me. I don’t get any sort of sense of future plans with Jungle Boy and the other teams are more makeshift, so I don’t get the purpose of a title change (or defense for that measure). Team Taz are much better than their booking and could probably get the most use out of the belts, so for the sake of dynamism let's go with this being a title change on the night.

Women’s Final of the 2022 Owen Hart Foundation Tournament - Britt Baker and Ruby Soho face off to decide the women’s winner. Here’s a piece of evidence showing that Khan/AEW does understand what to do after your long-term champion drops their belt. I feel like Ruby Soho has been a disappointment after her hot debut and mitigation soon thereafter: one of the worst promos in the company, with the exception of the tournament hasn’t been booked strong, and with the one finish that a bad camera edit can make look terrible. Soho probably needs a big win like this more than Baker at this point. Baker will be the focus of the women’s side of the roster as long as she remains in AEW, so losing the title and then losing in the final of the tournament won’t hurt her. The match itself? Both Baker and Soho have laid eggs with better opponents. Their chemistry is pretty solid and their title match last year I thought was decent, so that’s my expectation here!

Men’s Final of the 2022 Owen Hart Foundation Tournament - The men’s half of the tournament will end with Adam Cole facing Samoa Joe. It’s very neat how AEW stumbled into a first time ever match with this. Both tournaments had a sense of AEW doing another tournament for the sake of having another tournament, but giving the novelty in the final is nice. Cole probably is due a big win after losing two big title matches against Hangman, Joe has the ROH TV title and the Jay Lethal feud. It does feel a little bit like Adam Cole is in some sort of holding pattern until Kenny Omega returns so they can do their big Elite vs Elite angle. Samoa Joe has been a pleasant surprise in AEW. Expectations were that he was a shell of who he was, but smart planning and wrestling has proven that Joe still has a lot to offer. Since I think Cole is due/this would be something to keep him busy until Omega returns, I think he wins the tournament

MJF vs Wardlow - The reason why this preview has taken so long to publish! This would be the culmination of the three year story if this match actually happens. As of press time, MJF has no-shown a meet and greet, and allegedly had a ticket out of Las Vegas Saturday Night. There’s really only one result that should happen here: Wardlow vanquishes the guy who has made his life a living hell for the last three years. But how can you get to it with a massively unhappy superstar who may or may not show up to the event, let alone actually do business on the day. Other than the content, which is tremendous and great and I fiend for it, it’s a shame that this is happening right now. This feud has been the best built thing done in AEW since the end of Hangman and Omega’s story last year. Each week, Wardlow has gotten more and more over, and the catharsis of him getting his hands on MJF would likely be the biggest pop of the night. Now the bigger question is left unanswered by Tony Khan and MJF.

The Hardys vs Young Bucks - If you bring in Matt and Jeff Hardy into your promotion in 2022, you better get all the matches you can out of them while you can. Although Ring of Honor ran this match in 2017, it’s something with a lot of cache and worth running here. The Bucks are another case of “what do you do with them now?” and an all-time dream match solves this problem. The build was fine (it doesn’t require much to build up this kinda match), and we will be reliant on the health of the Hardys for the sake of the match itself. Unless you really want the Hardys to have a AEW Tag Title run, there’s no real reason why they should win this unless there’s a face turn or return screwing over the Young Bucks.

Anarchy in the Arena - Jericho Appreciation Society takes on Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson of the Blackpool Combat Club along with Eddie Kingston, Santana & Ortiz in the night’s set piece plunder brawl. As AEW has shown, a modern plunder stunt brawl can work incredibly well in today’s wrestling. The problem will be that these kinds of matches need a lot of time for walking and brawling. This is one of the first matches where I wonder if this would have worked better on a special edition of Dynamite or Rampage, where it can get the time it needs and helps solve the bloat issue of this pay per view. They are going to brawl, someone will jump off of something, hopefully there will be a lot of blood and the former 2.0 doing funny things. I can’t see this being the end point of the feud, so I expect JAS to win here leading to a Blood & Guts/Wargames match this summer.

Men of the Year & Paige Van Zant vs Sammy Guevara, Tay Conti & Frankie Kazarian - The TNT Title might as well weigh 200 pounds given how it’s sunk basically everyone since Sammy’s first title run with it. Paige Van Zant gets received by the AEW crowd as a big outside star, but she’s shoved into a trios match (probably very good wrestling wise to have her hidden) with a heel act opposite a babyface act rejected so heavily, I’m surprised we haven’t seen Sammy Guevara death threats yet. Other than Scorpio winning the belt for the first time because Sammy went through a table for no reason and PVZ interference, there’s been nothing in this feud that I've found has helped anyone tangentially involved. There’s a stipulation where Sammy and Frankie can’t face Scorpio for the TNT if they lose, so I’m personally hoping American Top Team wins solely so this division changes in some fashion.

Death Triangle vs House of Black - Given how long this feud has gone on, and the fact that my favorite AEW roster member (PAC) is a part of it, it feels like there’s nothing to this match. Sure there was all the injuring and gooping from House of Black, but it’s so spread out and happens so intermittently that it lost whatever heat or affect I feel like they were going for in this. The nice thing is that everyone knows how great these six guys are in the ring, and even if this gets short changed, I trust Death Triangle to make the match worth everyone’s while. Unless Death Triangle is going to vanquish the spooky guys for good, I feel like House of Black has to win through either chicanery or maybe Julia Hart will finally join. Personally, I just hope the Lucha Brothers have the most elaborate and involved entrance and gear, but PAC still just shows up oiled up in his trunks.

Darby Allin vs Kyle O’Reilly - I don’t think this match really helps anyone other than people wanting more matches on a show for no reason. So a few weeks ago, the Undisputed Elite Pillmanized Sting’s leg so now Darby wants to defend his mentor. He’s been majorly adrift, bounced out of the Owen for Jeff Hardy, and just sort of exists in the upper mid card. O’Reilly made it to the semi-finals of the Owen, but is representative of the bloat of AEW in that other than tagging in reDRagon and random Undisputed Elite stuff he’s just existed. Other than stalling for the Miami Heat vs Boston Celtics Game Seven to be over with, I cannot rationalize a reason why this match is happening at Double or Nothing.

Pre Show - “HookHausen” vs Tony Nese & Smart Mark Sterling. If you aren’t going to use the pre show to hype the crowd, then you should use it to get everyone in a good mood. This is a good mood match. Nese will destroy Danhausen, mess up in some way or tag in Sterling, Danhausen tags in Hook, and then Hook just makes Mark Sterling go to sleep with a funny look on Sterling’s face. I originally feared that Hook would be dampened and not taken seriously with Danhausen around, but the crowd’s reaction to the two have overwhelmed that worry. Sterling is a lot more important in the greater scheme of things than Tony Nese, who will come out of this match with nothing and will only exist on AEW YouTube shows.

After running through the card, my opinion on All Elite Wrestling and this show remains unchanged. The matches where the company has put in time and care, such as Wardlow and MJF, remind us of the promise and exhilaration of the first Double or Nothing show. The rest of the show along with the alleged unhappiness backstage and uneven writing should give viewers pause. If the alternative offers this alternative, then is it truly serving anyone? Or is it offering a completely different bill of goods than the one the company offered in 2019?