The world has awoken from last night's WrestleDream, and many have a difficult taste in their mouths, following the brutal retirement of Bryan Danielson at the hands of his former allies in the Blackpool Combat Club.
Saturday's show was an immense one, boasting 9 matches and an extra 4 on the preshow. For the "what" of last night's show, let me direct you to our fastidious results page. Here we will be dealing with the winners and the losers of Saturday's big night in Tacoma, WA. A night full of ups and downs is sure to have plenty of winners and losers, and not just in the usual winners and losers sense in wrestling. Sometimes winners are losers and sometimes losers are winners, and sometimes people who didn't even take part were the biggest winners and losers of the night.
Without further ado, the WrestleDream winners and losers.
Bryan Danielson lost his AEW World Championship, lost his full-time wrestling career, and was beaten and asphyxiated within an inch of his life by his former friends. The sick f*** really did it.
He didn't stand in the middle of the ring and tell fans how much they, and wrestling, have meant to him. He died fighting and was carried out of the Tacoma Dome on his shield. If that was all he had done, it would be a victory, but in falling to this new version of the Blackpool Combat Club, Danielson has "made" AEW's most heinous stable yet in the purest sense of the term. Darby Allin watched, heartbroken, as Danielson was sacrificed to the BCC and it will now be up to the diminutive psychopath to avenge Danielson for the AEW fanbase. Wheeler Yuta is also now in a much more interesting position, as the once-cuddly cub of the BCC has shown his claws, and his journey will be one to watch for the next year or so.
The Blackpool Combat Club as a whole, feels like a much more dangerous faction now that their threats have been fulfilled. Wrestling is loaded with empty promises and empires of sand, pledging to put their heroes' tender necks on the altar of a better tomorrow, only for their plans to be undone at the last moment. The crime scene left by the Blackpool Combat Club at the end of WrestleDream was a promise fulfilled, and the storytelling opportunities for AEW will be all the richer for it.
Hook just won a six-month feud with Chris Jericho, regaining his FTW Championship, and retiring it in an emotional moment with his father Taz. As much as it was the end of the FTW Championship, it felt like the beginning of something. Finally, free of his father's legacy title, a big win over Chris Jericho under his belt, Hook can set out on his own as an established star, maybe even challenge for the ROH World Championship.
What's that? He's not on the show? At all? Who's challenging Mark Briscoe then? Jericho? You're kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. Please tell me you're joking.
I don't care that Jericho lost. What the hell was Chris Jericho doing on the AEW PPV, wrestling for a title belt, while Hook is off searching for his father's attacker?
Will no one rid me of this f***ing Learning Tree? What kind of feud does this washed-up wax sculpture have to lose to go the hell away for a while?
The frustrating thing about Jericho is that on paper, a win over Chris Jericho should mean something, and yet Mark Briscoe was stuck wrestling the slow, heatless cartoon character that is Chris Jericho in the year of our lord 2024.
AEW has something in Hook. Hell, they have something in Mark Briscoe. But this ridiculous obsession with Chris Jericho is like an albatross around the neck of anyone he has to wrestle, dragging them into the muck where win or lose, they will never be seen again, and now Hook has been lost to that terrifying netherworld.
Around this time last year, AEW was heading in the direction of a feud between Adam Cole, as a treacherous heel, and MJF as a sympathetic babyface, and after writing that out, it sounds like an absolutely insane idea. What were they thinking!? MJF is not a likable guy, everyone likes Adam Cole, the whole idea was all wrong. Luckily, Saturday righted that course.
Adam Cole is back from his catastrophic ankle injury, getting a hero's welcome at WrestleDream. MJF is back to being the scumbag that everyone loves to hate. It feels like it always should've felt, and highlights a big issue that I had with last year in general. AEW tends to want to show off people's versatility.
It's a noble endeavor, and sometimes it even pays off, like when they turned the affable, loveable Hangman Page into one of the vilest heels AEW has, or for that matter, turning the psychopathic Swerve Strickland into something of a hero. It also means that we end up with months of MJF trying to be a sympathetic good guy, while unable to help himself from calling his fans "poors." Adam Cole can actually play either end of the coin convincingly, but it always felt like AEW was getting in their own way with the convoluted, tragic bromance between Cole and MJF.
No longer, everything is back in its right place. Adam Cole is being cheered, MJF is being booed, no devil masks, no Undisputed Kingdom, no Kowloon advertisements, just these guys doing what they do best.
Ricochet has been in AEW for just over a month and he's already starting to feel like The Washington Generals. For the uninformed, The Washington Generals are the team that tours with the Harlem Globetrotters, losing night in and night out to the Globetrotters to the delight of young children nationwide. While I don't think Ricochet is going to lose every match he's ever in, he does feel like he's mainly in the company to enhance Will Ospreay.
Ospreay has done a stellar job at breaking free of his rivalry with Ricochet, as he's gone on to have so many notable matches since then, that it feels like their heavily-lauded match was just the start of an illustrious career. I can't say the same for Ricochet. He's always felt like someone in search of another Ospreay, unable to craft the resume that Ospreay has over the years. This isn't Ricochet's fault, WWE didn't exactly care about Ricochet's legacy in the way that NJPW and AEW have carefully crafted Ospreay's.
Nonetheless, Ospreay feels like he's on the ascent, while Ricochet seems to be hitching a ride to Ospreay's star. Takeshita might've won the three-way dance for the International title, and Ospreay might've been pinned, but Ricochet was the only one who truly "lost" the match, not quite having the impact that many expected upon his arrival in AEW in August, and not even playing a role in the overbooked finish. It feels like AEW has freed up former champion Ospreay to feud with Kyle Fletcher, and when he finally beats Fletcher decisively, he moves on to either regain the International Title from Takeshita or advance to the world title scene.
But what about Ricochet?
Yes, what about Ricochet indeed.
