AEW’s Double or Nothing 2023 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas promised “Anarchy in the Arena,” and as is always the case with AEW stipulation matches, it delivered.
The main event saw the Blackpool Combat Club of Jon Moxley, Bryan Danielson, Wheeler Yuta and Claudio Castagnoli beat The Elite (The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega and “Hangman” Adam Page) in a bloody, violent eight-man tag that spilled into the crowd, the mezzanine, and even out into the parking lot. It turned what had been a good-but-not-great AEW PPV into what felt like an outstanding PPV, and the crowd, which had its ups and downs throughout the night, absolutely ate it up.
What helped was a gimmick that AEW had actually done for the last “Anarchy” match, where Jon Moxley’s music, “Wild Thing,” played over and over again as the wrestlers brawled. The first time it did this, at last year’s Double or Nothing, the song played all the way through, and then when it started over again the fans exploded in cheers. But then Chris Jericho destroyed the speakers and put an end to it. This year, it let the live band play the song all the way through three full times, and every time they started up again it got an even bigger reaction. After about eight or nine minutes you started to get the sense that maybe it was going to wear out its welcome, and literally at that moment The Young Bucks superkicked the lead singer and put an end to his singing. But by that point the fans were in a frenzy, and they maintained that energy all the way through to the end, when Konosuke Takeshita turned heel and joined up with Don Callis, laying out Omega and allowing Wheeler to get the pin. Takeshita turning was not unexpected if you had been following the story lines, but it certainly was a shocker to see Yuta pin Omega in the main event of a PPV. After the show went off the air, Omega did a promo where he teased two friends from outside of AEW who might be available to even the odds, and while nothing is confirmed it is believed that he was talking about New Japan’s Kazuchika Okada, and former New Japan star turned free agent Kota Ibushi. Ibushi and Omega have been linked together in story lines through the world of wrestling for more than a decade, and Moxley and Okada are also feuding on New Japan shows. With Forbidden Door, the now annual combined AEW–New Japan show, scheduled for June, the finish seemed to set up a major league 10-man tag.
