One thing you can say about All Elite Wrestling is that it always delivers exceptional pay-per-views, and Sunday’s Revolution from the Chase Center in San Francisco was no exception.
I attended Revolution live, and it was a very interesting thing walking into the building for the show and walking out. On the way in, I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was arguably the least-anticipated AEW PPV that I could remember. On Friday night I attended the Rampage show at the legendary Cow Palace, and, while it was a fun show with some entertaining matches, if we are being truthful, it was a horrible go-home show for the PPV. Literally, nobody who wrestled on Rampage had a match at the PPV. There was no big go-home angle. The only match AEW set up was a dark match for the Revolution preshow. None of the biggest stars made an appearance, with the exception of Chris Jericho, who is usually there doing commentary. Purely as a wrestling fan, I enjoyed myself, and some of the matches, including Konosuke Takeshita vs. Jack Cartwheel, were really good, but as I was leaving I heard from fans who said, point blank, “I’ll never go to a Rampage again.” The show has been struggling in the ratings on Friday night, and this certainly was not an event that would lead one to speculate that this was about to change.
The company also didn’t feel like it was clicking in terms of story lines. A ton of time was devoted to the main event, MJF defending the AEW title against Bryan Danielson in a 60-minute Iron Man match, but outside of that the build for the rest of the matches ranged from either very good to totally lackluster. Both the fan base and various wrestlers within the company complained that the storytelling during this PPV cycle was weaker than usual, and that wrestlers weren’t being given the opportunity to go out there and really build interest in their matches, either because they weren’t being given the time or because the angles themselves weren’t all that special.
