AEW Double or Nothing 2021 5/30/2021

AEW Double or Nothing 2021 5/30/2021

Here's what I have seen so far:

Serena Deeb vs Riho

Deeb won this with the tequila sunrise. They somewhat went with the story of Riho having a bad knee but Riho didn't sell it that much and Deeb didn't really focus on it much. They hit each other hard and the crowd loved it but when you do the injured body part storyline, you have to focus on it.

We had a fan fest video package where they used WWE music, which was odd.

Battle Royal

Lio Rush is the surprise participant which I don't think anyone had. Naturally, he loses in his debut. I really hope he is not done with MLW as MLW has done a fantastic job with him. There was a bad sequence here where Rush was taking on HFO by himself and winning and Hardy was just standing there observing instead of nailing him.

Christian was the heavy favorite here but lost. Christian has had one of the worst debut runs of anyone I can think of as they have just done everything wrong.

As for the Jungle Boy win, well I'm always in favor of pushing new talent.

Cody Rhodes vs Anthony Ogogo

AEW is not the place for boxing gimmicks. Ogogo's punches had been protected strong but Cody got hit with multiple punches and was able to pick up the win anyway. AEW's time honored tradition of making the heels lose in their first big match continues as Ogogo joins the likes of Brodie Lee, Brian Cage and Lance Archer. Ogogo wasnn't too bad here for his real match. This went too long and they kicked out of too much.

Miro vs Lance Archer

Miro won with the camel clutch after Lance passed out from the pain. Neither guy needed to take the L here and I figured if anyone was going to lose, it would be Archer. Where does Archer go from here? I have no idea, but it's harder to buy him as a threat with every loss.

I didn't really care for the Jake spot but they did some alright hoss vs hoss stuff here.

Sting and Darby Allin vs Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page

Sting took a suplex on the ramp and no sold it, then he did a dive off of the stage which was cool. They did the Bam Bam/Spike Dudley spot here with Page gorilla pressing Darby into the crowd. You would think this would be it for Darby, but he was able to get some offense in and make the hot tag to Sting. Page like John Silver should not be doing spots like that as those spots should be saved for the bigger guys. They did a neat spot here where Darby and Page were both in submission holds near each other then started attacking each other while in it. Sting ended up winning with a sharpshooter on Sky. Sting's team had to get the win here but what do Page and Sky do now? The gorilla press spot just was unforgivable.

Kenny Omega vs Pac vs Orange Cassidy

Kenny reversed a crucifix for the win. This was going into hour 3 and they had a long match here. It was no DQ and nobody thought to grab a weapon or have anyone help them out until the end of it even though it is perfectly legal. You can justify the faces not getting help but why wouldn't Kenny or Pac(who knows if he is a face or a heel anymore)?

Don Callis screwed OC by getting involved when he was about to win it then Kenny started hitting Pac with belt shots and won it. They did some big moves here, then the match would stop for 30-60 seconds, then they would switch someone else and go to another big move. OC did a pockets spot that actually made sense for a change, but then he kept his hands in anyway and dove on Pac while Kenny was down after a super german suplex. The selling wasn't really here and while some of the OC winning tease spots worked, the rest didn't.

Mark Henry was brought out and announced as a trainer and an analyst. I'm not real sure what Mark offers in that role as he was never a great worker. I'm surprised to see him jump from WWE as they seemed like they had a good relationship, but that wasn't really the big surprise that we were expecting.

Stadium Stampede

MJF came in with a limo then the Inner Circle repelled down the tron in a cool entrance.  They did every spot you could imagine in the first SS so there was little left to do here. It's probably time to retire this match for a while. I didn't really like this at all. It felt like a good 20 minutes before we saw S&O and FTR fight once we went to Jericho/MJF. Why was FTR chilling in the bar during a match? Don't they want to win or hurt their opponents? The Spears thing with the lights was dumb and him throwing the bolt cutters was dumb. Why wouldn't he just put them on Sammy's throat or something until he quits and get the easy win? And why wouldn't he just beat the crap out of him with stuff while he was tied up? As I called ahead of time, S&O were piledrivered through tables Friday but were no worse for wear here and somehow a one armed Jericho beat the crap out of MJF. There just lots of logic issues here and they really needed to show us some picture-in-picture video so we could see what everyone was up to.