I had the pleasure of attending last night’s AAW Don’t Stop Believing event at 115 Bourbon Street in Marionette Park, IL. Below is a detailed recap of the show as well as some of my thoughts on the night as a whole. Make sure to check back soon as we’ll be uploading photos, videos, interviews and more from AAW over the weekend.
– Doors opened at 6:30 but the show didn’t get started until after 8:00 so people had plenty of time to buy merch and interact with the wrestlers. That’s half the fun of coming to AAW, outside of the great matches and ongoing stories, is that most of the guys are accessible before, during and after the show and I’ve never heard a single complain about a bad experience with a member of the AAW roster.
– By the time the show got started most of the seats were filled, and by the second match there were no empty seats. I think you can technically call it a “sell out” and the crowd was super hot throughout the night, but it wasn’t standing-room-only packed like a can of sardines, like the New Years show was.
1. OI4K (Jake & Dave Crist) def. Homicide & Eddie Kingston in a steel cage match. This was utterly chaotic, in a good way. There was a long brawl around the ring before anyone ever got into the cage, which was never actually closed, and definitely didn’t keep anyone out or in. It was kind of just there for Jake to jump off of at the climax, but it was still a lot of fun. We got chairs, barricades, a cage dive, a spike, and Homicide pouring a bottle of tequila into some open wounds because…well, because he’s Homicide. Nearing the end when Homicide & Kingston had things in the bag, Sami Callihan ran out and got in the cage and took them out. Abyss came out to everyone’s surprise and looked like he would be the equalizer for the babyfaces, but instead dropped Homicide with a chokeslam. Abyss is now a member of the Killer Kult.
– After they all left, Homicide was still lying motionless in the ring, and Kingston started freaking out screaming for someone to get a doctor. Then it got weird, because a bunch of people came out to check on him and Kingston chased them all off and started swearing at everyone, dropping f-bombs faster than anyone could keep up. Eventually Homicide recovered as Kingston had started screaming at fans, and had left the ring leading to some very tense moments as the crowd went silent and some thought he was legitimately pissed off and ready to attack someone. Homicide held him back and eventually they left together. Weird. For what it’s worth I talked to Eddie for a considerable amount of time about an hour later and he was completely chill, so… I don’t really know what to do with this segment, but it was somewhere between compelling and you-crossed-a-line levels of believable.
2. AR Fox def. Moose, Dezmond Xavier and DJZ in a four-way match. Because the last time Moose was at AAW they had a hilarious dance-off, they decided to do it again. Moose literally just did a mannequin pose. Once they got going this was exactly what you’d expect: a ton of fun, with a million dives, a lot of cool counters, and Moose’s obvious size difference over everyone involved being a key factor in most of the segments. Always good to have the underrated DJZ in the house. We already know how good AR Fox is, and has been for a long time, but keep an eye on Xavier if you’re not already.
3. Jack Evans & Andrew Everett def. Davey Vega & Matt Fitchett to retain the AAW Tag Team Championships. Evans isn’t normally one of the champions, but Everett was forced to find a replacement partner after Trevor Lee was removed from the show. Really solid tag match between guys who are consistently at the top of their game at almost every single AAW show, month after month. Vega and Fitchett are gonna have great 2017s, I guarantee it.
– Sami Callihan came back out and ranted about how he’s the best wrestler on the planet because he has the “big f’n belt”, and how he embraced the fact that all the fans hate him and even encouraged them to keep doing so. He showed the tweet from Steve Austin where he joked about showing up to answer the open challenge, and bragged about it. Sami asked who AAW management had found for him tonight and he got an answer in the form of… Candice LaRae!?
– Candice gets a massive pop when her graphic hit the trons, as absolutely NO ONE was expecting it to be a woman who answered the champion’s challenge, much less one of the greatest female wrestlers in the world today. Sami immediately backpedaled and said that he was the champion and was making new rules because he was sick of the way he’s been treated. He declared that he would be deciding who gets title shots, and that a contender must first defeat him in order to be in line for his belt. So this is going to be a non-title match I guess…
4. Candice LaRae def. Sami Callihan. This lasted a little over one minute, and Sami was just as surprised as everyone else. People were disappointed until she announced that her title match would be taking place immediately.
5. Sami Callihan def. Candice LaRae to retain the AAW Championship. Match of the night, for me. Probably the best match I’ve seen this year so far that wasn’t on the Wrestle Kingdom card. Callihan hit these brutally stiff elbows and kicks and knees that Candice sold like she’d been shot by a cannon. Sometimes mixed gender matches work, sometimes they don’t. It’s really a testament to how good Sami is as a heel, and how good Candice is just in general, that there were times in the match when I questioned if Callihan was actually a piece of human garbage for how mercilessly he was beating up a woman; and this is a guy who I consider a friend, and someone I think very highly of. But Candice’s comebacks were so believable, because she really is that good, that by the end of the match there wasn’t a single person in the building sitting down. As a guy who loves the Callihan character and his AAW title reign, I was convinced she was winning at certain points, and when she didn’t I was upset. LOOK MOM, WRESTLING PSYCHOLOGY! This was some of Sami’s best promo work, by the way. He just kept going, and going, and getting more worked up, and by the end it was like watching a more psychotic version of the 2008 Chris Jericho character.
– Callihan gets back on the mic after the match, and asks “who’s next?” Kongo Kong makes his way out and cleans house, and ends up stealing the AAW Championship. Sami teases going back to get it, but then says he can keep it and they’ll get it back another time as he wants nothing to do with the big man. After Sami leaves, Braxton and Machete come out with Scarlett and try to beat up the big man, but end up getting laid out as well. Not sure if that was an actual handicap match or just a short brawl.
6. Matt Sydal def. Davey Richards. This match was really good and the fans were into it. There wasn’t really a clear crowd favorite, but both guys are loved here at AAW. I wish I had seen more of this actually, but this was the moment people decided they wanted to have conversations with me at the bar while I was trying to get a beer. What I saw was good though. Sydal won with the Shooting Star Press.
– Davey got on the mic and said it was a bummer to lose twice in a row in front of the Chicago fans, but noted that he wasn’t the only “Richards” competing on the card tonight. People had to really think about this one, as some even started looking around and thinking “Stevie Richards? What?”, but then there was this kind of collection “Oh duh…” moment when Angelina Love came out.
7. Mercedes Martinez def. Angelina Love. Martinez is the Shimmer Champion, but this was a non-title bout. Some good stuff over all, but I was mildly distracted by Eddie Kingston during the entire match.
8. Drew Galloway def. Silas Young in Young’s last match with AAW for a long time. Not sure where he’s going to, but he wont’ be around here anymore. Galloway thanked him for his service to the fans and the promotion after all these years, and said that if he beats him tonight it’ll be a big opportunity fo him to become the new measuring stick. The crowd was super into this on behalf of Silas, who hung around after the show until every single fan was gone, and was the last wrestler to pack up and go.
9. Abyss def. Colt Cabana. I didn’t get to see most of this unfortunately. But I’ve actually seen a lot of these two guys at indie shows recently, so I imagine it was a lot of fun!
10. ACH & Fenix def. The Unbreakable F’n Machines (Michael Elgin & Brian Cage). Very physical and stiff match. It was a slightly odd choice for the main event when they could have done Sami’s challenge, but they’ve been really spotlighting the Heritage title lately and ACH just won it, plus Elgin and Cage are bigger guys outside of the indies with New Japan and Lucha Underground being popular right now, plus the actual quality of the match makes it very hard to complain. The big guys got their big moves in, the high flyers got their high flying in, but they also had ACH suplexing people and the Machines doing some dives, so it really showcased the diversity of these great talents.
– Overall this was a great show. I’ve talked about being a little disappointed in the New Years show for several reasons, but this absolutely made up for it, which I expected that it would. The crowd was on fire throughout, which isn’t anything new, but nevertheless makes for a good atmosphere. There wasn’t a bad match on the card, and I felt like everyone who worked tried to add something special and unique to their time to stand out. My biggest complaint with the New Years show was actually that it felt thrown together, because nothing was announced ahead of time (unusual for AAW), but here we had a massively stacked card built around ongoing stories, with a ton of TNA guys brought in, and it’s impossible to look at that lineup I just wrote about and not see some of the best wrestlers in the world right now.
– For those interested, Elgin is working the New Japan Cup this year, which does have dates over WrestleMania weekend, but many of them are just house show dates and he hasn’t been told whether or not he’s working them yet. So we’re still waiting to see if he’ll be in Orlando for all the festivities. I know who his opponent is, if he can make it back to the U.S., and while I won’t spoil anything I’m really hopeful it happens because it’s something of an indie dream match for me.
