New York in early summer is the best version of itself, an irrefutable fact for anyone who has spent even a little time here. The city begins to emerge, slowly at first, shaking off whatever the winter and the world did to it. Then, alarmingly quickly, the whole world opens up.
Easing into the summer is ideal, but there is an unhinged beauty in that first real heat that a gentle May afternoon cannot provide. The first 90 degree day, the one that wallops you with its density the moment you step outside, the one that feels like walking through a stick of butter, that’s the day that reminds you that you’re alive. The city doesn’t ease into that day. It arrives all at once, and you hope the air conditioning is ready.
AEW arrives in New York City on the heels of exactly that: the first real heat of the season and, coincidentally, leading into the first real weekend of summer.
Double or Nothing is a card that, in pieces, reminds you how to feel alive – a stirring World championship match tends to have that effect. It is also a card that is the beginning of something significant. The road to All In is peeking over the horizon. The Owen Hart Cup is taking shape. Careers are arriving at their conclusions, willing or otherwise. The second half of the year starts here, in the heat, in New York, in the world’s borough that insists on the real thing.
Let’s run through it.
AEW Double or Nothing main card preview & predictions
Will Ospreay vs. Samoa Joe in an Owen Hart tournament quarterfinal
Ospreay’s relationship with The Death Riders is the most interesting thing happening in AEW right now, and the most interesting character development they’ve done since Hangman Page’s downward spiral. Ospreay is a lot of things to a lot of people. Divisive, transformative, it’s all subjective. But at his heart, Will is a simple man. He wants to make the fans happy. He would also like to win matches, and sometimes these two things are in direct opposition.
Others are driven by ego (MJF), by competition (Jon Moxley), and by testing the limits of the human spirit (Darby Allin). Ospreay is driven by love: of wrestling, and of the fans. He specifically craves their adoration. His turn to The Death Riders is an unexpected and welcome bit of introspection by a performer who had previously shown very little. I’m bullish on his journey with them and, through The Owen, I’m curious to see what lasting change might come from it.
As always, Joe will be a test. He doesn’t give you space to be spectacular. He doesn’t create distance for convoluted counter sequences or opportunities for a flashy highlight reel. He takes up all the space in the ring and limits the oxygen. His arrival is an avalanche, slowly, then all at once.
Ospreay has been everything we could have hoped for since his return. Joe is a test, but one he should pass.
Prediction: Ospreay
Swerve Strickland vs. Bandido in an Owen Hart tournament quarterfinal
AEW is better when both of these cats are on TV. Too often, whether by injury or unfortunate ROH responsibilities, Bandido floats in and out of our lives. His presence and matches are full of light. Seeing his name on the marquee promises, at minimum, something worth watching with the ceiling for something truly special.
Bandido’s joy and exuberance meet its seething match this weekend. Many people snarl and claim to be the best, the most dangerous, but none do it like Swerve. There is no one as cool or as confident. There is grit and realism to his words and actions, a testament to his capabilities as a performer that he’s smooth enough to hit the interview circuit and do media up-fronts while playing the role of an objectively terrible person.
When MJF plays the bad guy, we’re all in on the performance; we can see and acknowledge the winking to the camera. When Swerve does it, the menace feels all too real.
Prediction: Swerve
Athena vs. Mina Shirakawa in an Owen Hart tournament quarterfinal
Before we dive in, a moment for our fallen TBS Champion and being of pure light, Willow Nightingale. She’s one of the performers whose presence fills an entire room. Louis Armstrong Stadium is going to feel a little emptier without her.
Athena seems primed for her semi-annual AEW proper tour of duty, and it’s always a treat. She is everything she’s ever claimed to be and backs that up in the ring and on the microphone. Said simply, she’s great. ROH’s gain remains AEW’s loss, and AEW feels it every time she walks back through the door to remind everyone what they’ve been missing. With two staples of the division out for the foreseeable future and Mercedes Mone still off television, I do wonder if we get more Athena on AEW TV going forward. The division would be better for it.
Prediction: Athena
Chris Jericho, The Hurt Syndicate (Bobby Lashley & Shelton Benjamin) and The Elite (Kenny Omega, Jack Perry, Matt & Nick Jackson) vs. The Demand (Ricochet, Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona), Don Callis Family (Mark Davis & Andrade El Idolo), and The Dogs (Clark Conners & David Finlay) in a Stadium Stampede match
Whatever goodwill Jericho’s return generated, and admittedly I provided some, has been squandered with frightening efficiency. His insistence on killing anything natural and good, the relentless, painfully unfunny slogans, create an unwanted cocktail I’m glad to send back. The master of reinvention has watched his creative well run dry in real time, in public, repeatedly. The Learning Tree was an outright disaster. Whatever this current iteration is shows little promise.
Fortunately, the Stadium Stampede format and the significant talent of others will dilute his presence across fourteen people, and however many minutes this thing runs.
These matches are thrilling at best and silly curios at worst. The individuals will all get their spotlight moments. Ricochet, freed from any obligation to carry a serious program, should thrive in the chaos. Andrade can pop off his pants and pop the crowd. The Dogs get a chance to shine in an AEW trademark match. Additional critical analysis of this is not required. We know what this is, and you know if it’s something that tickles your fancy.
Prediction: Jericho, Hurt Syndicate & The Elite
AEW Continental Champion Jon Moxley defends against Kyle O’Reilly
These two have wonderful chemistry, capped by a bloody, visceral n holds barred match at Full Gear that reminded everyone in the building, and everyone watching, what O’Reilly is capable of. More importantly, it reminded Kyle. Moxley has that effect on people. Something about his brand of violence awakens things in his opponents, pulls the best and most dangerous version of them to the surface, whether they planned to show up that way or not.
It has been a genuinely tough run for O’Reilly, the wrestling intelligentsia’s favorite weirdo, since joining AEW. Injury and personal tragedy have a way of hollowing things out and creating a distance between a performer and the thing that made them want to do this in the first place. Finding meaning in the thing you love after it’s been taken from you, even briefly, even partially, is its own kind of victory. It’s great to see Kyle back.
O’Reilly’s story is a good one. Moxley, though the ace, grappling with whether he can beat Kyle is a nice character beat. But a character beat might be all it is.
Prediction: Moxley retains
AEW International Champion Kazuchika Okada defends against Konosuke Takeshita
Takeshita’s moment, sadly, has long passed. This is not permanent, this is not irreversible, but for now, the version of Takeshita that felt genuinely inevitable has receded, and what’s replaced it is a performer going through familiar motions with diminishing returns. The exaggerated big move spots, the bomb-throwing without narrative connective tissue, are indicators of a performer doing what he thinks ‘good’ looks like rather than just being it.
When he first started moving up the card, there was a buzz in the arena and online. Now he’s receded into the chaff of the Don Callis Family. Big DC can tell us he’s the alpha and that he’s the best thing going today (there were glimpses of that in his title match with Darby Allin) but he’s lying to himself as much as he is the audience. What Takeshita needs isn’t a new direction so much as a return to his own. He had a natural, easy connection to the crowd — one that still wants to love him.
It would be genuinely funny if, after all this time, after all the deferred moments and missed windows, he finally gets his big win here. Maybe I’ll be awarding myself the ‘fell for it again’ award Monday morning, but I think the big man gets it done.
Prediction: Takeshita wins the title
AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) defend against Adam Copeland & Christian Cage in an I Quit match where if Cage and Copeland lose, they must retire as a tag team
I have tried, genuinely and repeatedly, to locate the feeling this program is supposed to produce in me. Alas, I cannot find it. Even with a heavy, heavy stipulation, there is nothing. My fondness for FTR mixed with my lack of appreciation for the Cope of it all makes a 40 degree day. No one has anything to say about a 40 degree day
The I Quit stipulation at least has the virtue of theater, and theater is what Copeland and Cage have always done best. Someone has to say the words out loud, has to submit not just physically but verbally, has to admit it in front of everyone. That’s a fine idea. I just can’t make myself care who says it.
FTR will make sure the match is worth watching. The history books will be kinder to Wheeler and Harwood than to their opponents. Let the work speak.
Prediction: Copeland and Christian win the titles
AEW Women’s World Champion Thekla defends against Hikaru Shida, Jamie Hayter and Kris Statlander in a four-way
I don’t buy the Statlander and Shida pairing, and it doesn’t seem like they do either. This is a doomed and empty pairing that is not working on any level. Is anyone really invested in the inevitable breakup? Why can’t Statlander achieve a stretch of character consistency? No matter the season, no matter the year, she always seems to be going through something. Must be exhausting!
Thekla remains insistent on being a star unique to herself: doing her thing, performing her act. It’s not revolutionary, but when something feels this well-worn and natural, it sure is impressive. This doesn’t feel like a flash in the pan but a character with real staying power. This type of performance is extremely for me, and I have enjoyed her more than I ever thought — a complete home run signing and a boon to the entire division.
Hayter continues her slow rebuild. Shida is not what she once was, but she has done good enough work since returning. Statlander is Statlander. The only person in World title form is the one who already holds it. That’s not changing.
Prediction: Thekla retains
AEW World Champion Darby Allin defends against MJF in a title vs. hair match
Allin is a comet ripping through the night and challenging the notion that a title reign has to be long to be historic. Producing this level of output in his preferred style is equal parts remarkable, breathtaking, and psychotic. Just about every match has required a cigarette afterward. Other wrestlers could hold a World title for years and if they produced 20% of matches as good as everything Allin has done, it would be considered a legendary run. I am hard-pressed to recall a title reign that I have enjoyed more than his.
Allin is on the short list for mainstream wrestler of the year on this run alone, and the year isn’t half over. What he has done with this championship, with this character, with this body that somehow still functions at this level, is something that should be appreciated loudly and in real time before it becomes something we remember.
If he isn’t the (again, mainstream) wrestler of the year, it’s because MJF is. His edges have been smoothed, the work tight, and the hair lusciously full. Firmly in his prime and also on the run of his life, the self-proclaimed prophecy of being a generational talent is being fulfilled. MJF risking his hair is as old school as professional wrestling gets. It also makes complete and total sense for who he is.
This is a man driven entirely by ego and vanity. The stipulation isn’t an escalation imposed on the character from outside; it emerges directly from it. MJF, without his carefully cultivated perception of perfection, is a man with nothing left to hide behind. Strip part of the gimmick away and the rest crumbles. Max has done an incredible job of not being above the stipulation but cowering in the face of it. This is a man’s existential crisis with a title match attached.
Restraint can be a weapon. It’s one MJF should wield this week, and one that Darby does not have any interest in having. It will be a battle to see whose style of match prevails. Is it the devil-may-care shape-shifting style that Darby has perfected? Or is it a methodical, slow build like MJF favors? Styles typically make fights, but desperation throws structure out the window. Comets pass our eyes for fleeting and unforgettable moments. Darby’s burns out in Queens.
Prediction: MJF wins the title
