BRM Reviews AEW Battle of the Belts V (terrible)

All AEW Related Reviews and Discussions
Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews AEW Battle of the Belts V (terrible)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jan 9th, '23, 19:20

AEW Battle of the Belts V (1/6/2023)- Portland, OR

NO HOLDS BARRED MATCH FOR THE AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLES: The Acclaimed(c) (w/Billy Gunn) vs. Jeff Jarrett & Jay Lethal) (w/Sonjay Dutt & Satnam Singh)- DUD!
Excalibur claimed that Lethal and Jarret “demanded this No Holds Barred match,” which doesn’t track at all with the interview on Wednesday where Jarrett seemed surprised to learn about it, and was also upset about it. And even if they did demand the match, why did Tony Khan agree to it. They just lost cleanly!
The moron director saw the heels running into the ring to attack the babyfaces from behind, and decided to cut to the crowd. They wrestled for a while, doing some goofy stuff, and then things went right to hell.
The heels friends were nice enough to not just attack the babyfaces the whole time, even though it’s a no DQs match. They weren’t the only heels to lose their brains, as Jay Lethal did a spot where he climbed up to the top rope and elbow-dropped the referee instead of just sliding into the ring and attacking the person who had his opponent in a submission, and who was also much closer to him than the referee was.
At this point we had our first real interference in the match, and it was by… the babyfaces’ friend, Billy Gunn. Because Billy took Lethal out, Satnam Singh decided to interfere and take out Bowens. More stuff happened. We got a replacement referee, and eventually Jeff Jarrett got his dreaded guitar… and took f*cking forever to get around to trying to hit Bowens with it so that Bowens could be saved by- you guessed it!- Billy Gunn.
Jarrett kicked Billy in the nuts, but this left Bowens with enough time to grab the boom box… but oh no! Sonjay Dutt tripped Bowens up, leaving him vulnerable for a guitar shot, but fortunately Bowens was saved by… once again, Billy Gunn.
Now it was Billy’s turn to take f*cking forever to hit someone with a guitar. This was done so that Satnam Singh could get into the ring behind Billy. He grabs Billy and spins him around… and Billy gets to be the one to make the big giant stumble, hitting him in the head with a guitar.
Alas, Billy was then felled by a Stroke from Jeff Jarrett, as only the world’s greatest politician Jeff Jarrett has the Stroke to defeat the mighty Billy Gunn.
With the fearsome Billy Gunn taken out, the terrifying giant Satnam Singh dispatched Billy’s two sidekicks with a double-chokeslam. Then, for no reason, he chokeslammed the referee. I mean really! All three babyfaces were down!
Singh kept going after the referee. Sonjay ordered him to rip the referee’s shirt off, so Singh did, and Sonjay put it on, as if this would make him an official referee. Lethal hit the Lethal Injection on Bowens and Sonjay went to count… and the fans went crazy for referee Aubrey Edwards coming out and yanking him out of the ring, as if she (and the fans) thought this was an official count.
So Sonjay Dutt and Aubrey Edwards start arguing, and she grabs the stupid pencil he keeps by his ear and snaps it, then shoves him down. At no point did Sonjay lay a finger on her. She attacked him for absolutely no reason. Lethal went to confront Aubrey over this, but Bowens grabbed the distracted Lethal from behind and the Acclaimed hit their finisher to retain their titles.
To recap, the biggest babyface stars in this match were:
1. A sixty-year-old man who career peak was an upper-midcarded twenty-five years ago.
2. A referee.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. The tag champs, who needed a whole bunch of help to retain their titles against a faction that was too dumb to take advantage of their numbers advantage throughout an entire no DQs match.
How does this even happen? Is Tony too dumb to understand what Billy Gunn does in these matches, or does he just not give a sh*t? At this point it is criminal that Billy Gunn has not been fired, and quite frankly, if I were running this company, I’d have fired Lethal, Jarrett, and Sonjay, too, because they should no better, and I’d have given Aubrey and the Acclaimed a firm talking to (ideally with the aid of someone like Moxley or Jericho) about who the star is supposed to be and (in the Acclaimed’s case) how to make sure you don’t get taken advantage of. I’d have Aubrey (and all the other referees, but this seems to be an issue with her in particular) under strict orders that any time someone wants her involved in a spot, it needs to be cleared with me, first.

WILL HOBBS PROMO- snore
Apparently he has a literal “Book of Hobbs,” which is essentially his diary. He says that everything that has happened to him “will happen to you.” He’s said similar things before during his vignettes, but this one made it more literal, which doesn’t work as well.

EDDIE KINGSTON & ORTIZ PROMO- bad
The house of Black’s clear and obvious ploy to get these two to turn on each other is working to perfection, because apparently these two best friends don’t trust each other at all. They’re going to have a match next week on Rampage.

AEW TBS TITLE MATCH: Jade Cargill(c) (w/Leyla Grey) vs. Skye Blue- 4/10
They made no attempt whatsoever to justify Skye Blue getting this title shot. They did claim that she is different that when she first faced Jade early in her AEW career. How, exactly? She was a jobber then and she’s a jobber now.
Skye Blue, the babyface, jumped the bell on Jade. Jade soon took control, and absolutely dominated the unworthy jobber. Red Velvet came out onto the ramp to watch the match. She eventually moved towards the ring and slapped Leyla Grey. Jade and Skye Blue had a finishing sequence that would have worked much better with someone who people thought actually had a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Jade.

LEXI NAIR INTERVIEWS STOKELY HATHAWAY (& BIG BILL, & LEE MORIARTY)- meh
He said they were literally going to murder Jungle Boy and Hook on Dynamite.

I was pretty sure that Kingston and Ortiz were going to wrestle each other, but apparently it’s them against Malakai Black & Brody King. That makes them look less dumb, but they really should have been more clear.

TAY-JAY VS. RUBY SOHO & WILLOW NIGHTENGALE VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMOS- decent
Apparently they’re having a Street Fight on Rampage next week.

AEW ALL-ATLANTIC TITLE MATCH: Orange Cassidy(c) (w/Danhausen) vs. Kip Sabian (w/Penelope Ford)- 4.5/10
Best Friends are not at ringside with Orange Cassidy because they’re upset with him for taking advantage of Trent being dumb and letting himself get distracted by Penelope Ford. As I said in my review of the match, that would have worked much better for me if they Trent and OC hadn’t been so overdramatic about having to hurt the other at random times in this match that they themselves set up.
In the middle of the match, The Bunny remembered that she and Penelope were aligned at one point, and so she came to ringside. She eventually got herself ejected from ringside, so The Butcher & The Blade came out to beat up Danhausen. They then came to ringside and got some chairs.
Kip Sabian wasted an advantage doing dumb Orange Cassidy sh*t. OC attacked him, but Kip recovered and got the advantage. He sent OC to the outside for Butcher and Blade to beat him up, but Best Friends ran out to save OC. Excalibur wondered if they were doing this to save OC or “because of what The Butcher & The Blade has done to Chuck Taylor & Trent Beretta.” I have no idea what he’s talking about.
They traded moves. Kip put on OC’s elbow pad to do the Orange Punch again, but OC fired up, made a comeback, and won.


This was a terrible show from AEW. Absolutely terrible. The tag match was a disaster, the Jade match felt completely unimportant, and the main event was a feud that I don’t understand how anyone could possibly care about over a title that I don’t understand how anyone could possibly care about, and most of the match was extremely boring.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests