Last-three matches and ending angle were great and it makes me excited for the future and wanting to watch the big matches at their next few shows. That fucking advil blade-job by Dustin, god damn. And it was so bizarre seeing Moxley in the ring with Kenny Omega at the same time. Like KO in the ring with Cena alternate-universe shit.
Criticsm-after-the-fact time though:
Awesome Kong being on the show was a fun surprise, but there's also like 3-4 reasons I didn't like how they did it (took away from Nyla Rose, Kong has a bad back and can barely move, changing matches randomly on the fly looks minor-league even when they do it in the WWE and it implied evil authority figures could be a thing in AEW)
I think there was too much indie shit in-a-potential-bad-way on the show and I think the wrestling and match lengths in the non-main-event matches should have each been cut down by 4ish mins each. A lot of indie wrestlers know two speeds, fast-paced moves with no-selling and then suddenly over-dramatic selling because it's near the end of the match, which leads to their matches peaking too early and then they just keep going and going and going and "it should've ended already." It really stands out because I'm also watching the NJPW BOSJ right now, and they have 10 singles matches every night but they're all done with guys who know how to pace it so that they don't overstay their welcome.
I'm mostly being nitpicky, but two things I absolutely hated:
- That they mentioned that tag team matches will feature a 10-count for illegal wrestlers leaving the ring after tagging out and then the referees never bothered counting and the wrestlers ignored it anyways.
- That the plan is to feature Japanese women in a similar fashion to the WCW Cruiserweights in the mid '90s before they got buried as a way of standing out from other companies, but then they throw six women into a tag match and maybe the hardcores in the building have heard of Aja Kong from reading Meltzer Star-Rating lists and everyone just kind of gets lost in the shuffle and no one gets over (I used to wonder if Cornette complaining about the multi-team Junior openers at Wrestle Kingdom was just him being too much of an old man, but I do get it now, it's hard to follow what's going on if you aren't familiar with the people involved and you kind of just forget about them afterwards.).
Buuuut I also can't tell if this was a dry-run for the future product or just working to the audience they knew was at the show. Feel like it's the latter because they do work their audiences.