Full Gear 2024 Review - Steel Step Cinema
Modern Marks is a wrestling-focused newsletter written by Rory Young. Follow Modern Marks and Rory on Bluesky.
In my preview for Full Gear 2024, I described the PPV as a test. I expected Full Gear to be used by AEW to question its audience, to measure how it would respond to shifts in content priorities and presentation. In recent months, AEW television has deprioritized workrate quality while increasing promos and video packages. Theatricality is amped up across the board. AEW has even cut back on declaring its in-ring exceptionalism. The times, they are a-changin’. PPVs, however, have largely been protected from AEW’s experiments with sports entertainment. And that was the big question going into Full Gear. Would AEW soften its dedication to peak in-ring performances in trade for a more broadly appealing and sensational product?
The answer is, quizzically, yes. It may not have been as inescapable as on TV, and it may not have prevented Ospreay from delivering yet another Match of the Year contender, but it was nevertheless pervasive and impactful. There were glaring examples, like the too-silly Mariah May champagne celebration, the clusterfuck Benny Hill finale, and Adam Cole’s late arrival to the execution of Roderick Strong (and a later backstage promo, to boot). AEW has done promos and skits on PPVs before, though. Where the changes mattered the most were in the matches themselves, though how much they mattered deserves further discussion.
A Story of Steel
There is no better case of AEW’s many ongoing changes than the biggest star of Full Gear 2024 — the steel steps. Let’s start with an easy-to-recall illustration. Kyle Fletcher pulls the steel steps away from the ring early in his match against Will Ospreay. Fletcher lines up a front facelock suplex onto the steps, Ospreay reverses but cannot complete his suplex either, and the two of them step back. Fletcher pulls Ospreay toward the steps hoping he’ll go into them face first but in a feat of incredible athleticism, Ospreay leaps over the heavy stack of steel and rolls through the momentum. He quickly stands, turns, takes a single step onto the steel steps, and delivers a hurricanrana to the shocked Fletcher. A single camera has captured this entire sequence in one shot with no cuts. It’s pre-planned and practiced, and it is exceptional. Fletcher will, much later in the match, deliver a leaping tombstone piledriver to Ospreay onto these carefully positioned steps. The same cameraman from largely the same angle will capture it. Cinema!
But as Full Gear viewers know, this wasn’t the first time the steel steps were used, nor was it the last. Mercedes Mone performed an augmented Meteora into them, driving her knees into Kris Statlander’s head as she sat against them stunned. Swerve Strickland would later deliver a running leap off the steps to Swerve Stomp Bobby Lashley through the Spanish announcers’ table. Finally, Jon Moxley would offhandedly stomp Orange Cassidy’s head into the steps, the attack that led to Cassidy’s bloody cut. Some might say this was sloppy planning, with multiple matches stepping on each others’ creative toes. I’d argue this was an intentional repeated use of a great narrative element. Why not use a toy after taking it out of the toy box? AEW first made clear the danger of the steel steps (Mercedes/Stat), escalated it to its extreme (Fletcher/Ospreay), toyed with viewers’ expectations (Swerve/Lashley), and then when casually used the steps to explain why Cassidy started bleeding. I would argue none of these choices are as impactful without those that came before. It’s a perfect representation of how increased theatricality, of synergy between production, creative, and the performers, can be used to enhance the product.
If you’d asked me whether I expected to see such an obvious example of AEW’s shifting content priorities leading to improvements in PPV matches before Full Gear, I would have laughed. But the steel steps of Full Gear mattered, they made these matches better, and that is something I’m just going to have to live with contradicting my argument on how these changes are negatively affecting AEW.
When Things Go Wrong
The problem with the pervasive effort to increase theatricality across all of AEW is that it grows so normalized that it especially stands out when things go wrong. Think how WWE uses fake audience noise in its television product. It’s near-constantly played in live broadcasts, layered with genuine audience noise, but viewers only notice when it’s egregious that it’s being faked — like when the crowd is dead, or when a scripted crowd pop doesn’t match the moment. So let’s talk about the 4-team tag match and the Konosuke Takeshita vs. Ricochet matches.
The 4-way tag match shows AEW’s clashing priorities coming together and ruining something straightforward. This is Private Party’s first defense, and its first PPV as AEW Tag Team Champions. It should be simple. Let Private Party have a great match, show its worth, put over some opponents, and potentially start a story for it looking past Full Gear. That is not what this match is about, though. The creative synergy is unbalanced, and it grew increasingly apparent no one advocated for Private Party when booking the match. Instead, The Acclaimed’s breakup story is prioritized, The Outrunners’ cheap popularity is prioritized, and House of Black is made to look strong and protected likely in no small part to Malakai’s backstage leverage. Camera time is eaten up by Max Caster flaunting his boos, Brody King setting up his signature moves, and The Outrunners posing. You can’t blame the wrestlers for wanting to get their shit in. This isn’t the wrestlers’ fault (okay, maybe a bit Caster’s). It’s a strong sample of production that prioritizes theatricality and creative that favors those with popularity. Dear Private Party, this is your opportunity. Fight so that it doesn’t continue to be taken away from you.
The Konosuke Takeshita vs. Ricochet match is, unfortunately, another instance of clashing priorities and power dynamics failing those involved. Takeshita faces many barriers in AEW. He’s not a fluent English speaker, he’s young, and he has to routinely deal with Visa issues and overseas booking. This is a stacked deck against him when it comes to AEW, with Tony Khan historically punishing wrestlers in small and large ways who stymie his sporadic booking. From this match, we can tell that someone at AEW is extremely frustrated that Takeshita remains a popular heel and isn’t being booed. For over half of the match, Takeshita dominates Ricochet. He brutalizes him. Ricochet has flashes of offense, but Takeshita remains near entirely in control. And there’s a moment, close to five minutes into this slow-moving walloping, where Takeshita stands and turns to the crowd with arms outstretched… and the crowd cheers him. Whatever AEW creative’s plan with this match, it’s at this point a failure. At some point, someone needed to tell those involved with arranging this match that these are two talented wrestlers. Forget trying to build heel or face heat. Forget Ricochet’s underdog narrative. Let. Them. Cook. And hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is Konosuke Takeshita making self-destructive decisions on his own. Maybe he’ll have his back-to-back NJPW matches against Shingo Takagi and Tomohiro Ishii in January and will let character and narrative issues limit him to mediocre performances. I somewhat doubt it, though.
Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention that an otherwise solid main event between Orange Cassidy and Jon Moxley did have a fucky ending. Jon Moxley beat Bryan Danielson clean in the middle of the ring at Wrestle Dream. He has since been presented as an indomitable figure, though he hasn’t wrestled since the last PPV. Orange Cassidy, on the other hand, struggled against Wheeler Yuta just this past Wednesday and had to win with a shock roll-up. While the match did do a decent job of showing OC’s rage and determination, it did not in any way frame Moxley as out-wrestled or desperate in any way. Yet Moxley could not defeat Orange Cassidy on his own at Full Gear, instead relying on Yuta to do a Busaiku Knee interference spot to put Cassidy down. The Death Riders have always been presented as both vicious and cowardly, but it does feel too early to have Moxley outmatched. Interference is now going to be expected in all of Moxley’s future matches, or will otherwise raise questions about why Moxley can handle some opponents but not others. As such, the ending comes across as drama for the sake of drama, and a lack of confidence in the wrestlers to deliver a quality finish on their own. The clusterfuck after the main event already provided plenty of drama, too. I do wonder if this was a Mox request to protect OC, in which case Mox deserves his portion of the blame, too. There’s a good amount of Mox blame already, after all. What kind of AEW is he trying to make, exactly?
There will be those who see my criticisms of these matches as perhaps flawed executions of a necessary shift in direction, or entertaining and so undeserving of critique. Those are valid perspectives, and I ultimately agree that experimentation is healthy and that an entertaining product should always be important. I don’t think in-ring wrestling quality should be sacrificed, and do believe better in-ring wrestling is not only more entertaining but inherent to AEW’s success. Full Gear managed to persuade me that there is room for positive change in PPVs, despite how poorly those changes have impacted TV. But it’s also shown me that these changes can and do hurt PPV wrestling, too. One can only hope that AEW takes away the right answers from its test.
Will Fucking Ospreay
With those “Big Idea” subjects out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff. My best match of Full Gear 2024 was easily the matchup between Will Ospreay and Kyle Fletcher. Call me a basic mark, but the combination of physicality and athleticism was a level above the rest of the Full Gear card. And if that wasn’t enough, the simple wrestling story of an angry good guy wanting to teach a lesson to the friend that betrayed him? That’s my cup of tea. Each wrestler’s performance also matched their character. Fletcher was a violent man, willing to hurt Ospreay to win, but also cocky to a fault. Ospreay was, in every way, the more polished wrestler, determined and capable. But unlike Ospreay’s earlier stumbles where he made specific match-losing fumbles, Fletcher beat Ospreay clean. He was the better man, the better wrestler at Full Gear. He did what he needed to do to win, and didn’t even give Ospreay the chance to fumble it. That, in my view, is the peak of wrestling storytelling. There are no excuses for Ospreay. He was excellent, at his peak even, and lost. There’s no lesson to learn, though I’m sure Don Callis will say Ospreay is flawed in a number of ways. What it comes down to is that Fletcher was better. Want to beat Fletcher, Ospreay? Get better. Cue the Rocky music.
My second favorite match of Full Gear was Mercedes Mone vs. Kris Statlander. I wouldn’t have expected it. If I’m being honest, even 5-10 minutes into this match I wasn’t persuaded it would be any better or worse than some of Mone’s prior AEW matches. Good but not great. What changed? Mone and Statlander escalated the action in both pace and intensity beautifully. Both lived up to the moment. Yes, there were a lot of back-and-forth power moves. Yes, they did a few two many pinning predicaments. But I was fully invested in the pair’s struggle, believed Kris would win, and was shocked and exhausted when Mone put the match to an end. This match could have ended at 15 minutes and been a perfectly fine addition to the card. Instead, it was given nearly 20 minutes, became the longest women’s match in AEW (not ROH) history, and I would have loved for it to go longer. Imagine how much better it could have been with a good story and build. At least Kamille didn’t interfere.
For my third favorite, I had to decide between Hangman vs. Jay White and Swerve Strickland vs. Bobby Lashley. But when I started to think about it I realized it wasn’t that hard of a choice. I may have wanted it to be the Hangman vs. White match since I’m such a huge fan of Adam Page, but the Swerve vs. Lashley match was better across the board. That is entirely due to the performance of Swerve. He’s grown so much over the past year, is astonishingly creative, will bump like a motherfucker, and then can take the loss in style. No disrespect for Lashley intended; he played his role in this match perfectly well. It’s just that Swerve makes it very easy to play that role well, much like Ricochet slotting into Ospreay’s feud with Takeshita. Let’s embrace the match for what it is, hope Lashley learns and loves the unique ways this match and AEW can bring out such incredible performances, and say, “Now do it again without Swerve.”
To comment quickly on Hangman vs. Jay White, I think it’s fair to say that this is a better match than their WrestleDream opener. But it is also frustratingly limited, as if the two are holding back for something more. Frankly, both Hangman and Jay White should know better given their experience levels. If you’re going to do a trio or series of matches, you put everything into the first match. And then you try and outdo yourselves the next time, and so on. Hangman doesn’t want to have spent half of a year on a series everyone is going to describe as a step down from the Swerve feud. Jay White doesn’t want to be the guy whose push was all filler. Still, it’s a bit late to rewrite history. The match was decent. It’s frustrating to have to wait for the two to get booked for a match they can put everything into.
Final Thoughts
Cutting to the chase, I had a perfectly fun time with Full Gear 2024. It wasn’t the best AEW PPV of 2024, by any means, but it also wasn’t the worst. And considering even AEW’s worst PPVs this year have been solid, that’s a good place to be. More specifically, I’d grade Full Gear above Double or Nothing, Forbidden Door, and Wrestle Dream, but below the Alls, Dynasty, and Revolution. Maybe I should be harsher, but after such a stretch of poor TV I’m just happy to see AEW PPVs deliver.
If I have a broader opinion of Full Gear, it’s that the PPV did underdeliver on my expectations. I hoped Full Gear would have two if not three Match of the Year-quality matches. Instead, it had one, with an honorable mention. The rest of the card may have been near entirely good, but I’ll always prefer a mix of great and bad matches to a mostly average card.
The stars of Full Gear weren’t a big surprise. It’s Will Ospreay, Mercedes Mone, Kyle Fletcher, and Swerve Strickland. Disappointments include Private Party, Jack Perry, and Ricochet. If I had to pick a storyline or two going out of Full Gear that I was excited for, it’d be Hangman’s continued unraveling and Darby’s, uh, continued unraveling. It’s Unraveled Boy Autumn.
That raps it up for now. Thanks everyone for reading the newsletter. Hope you all had a fun time with Full Gear as I did. Here’s to TV improving again with the Continental Classic! Expect a Dynamite review later this week. Cheers! Love ya.
— Rory