AEW Full Gear notes: Main event finish, early PPV number, trios best-of-seven series

Some notes from last night’s Full Gear show:

The main event finish with William Regal handing MJF Brass Knux was Tony Khan’s idea and you can look back at the last several weeks of the build-up and see the signs leading to it. It appears from the press conference that MJF and Regal will be a heel champion pairing not unlike Kenny Omega and Don Callis.

There was another finish brought up by several of the most influential wrestlers. We don’t know what it was although I presume MJF winning was not the question and it was just a different way to get there. It was an alternative way of getting there. Khan was strong on his finish that the direction this goes.

Regarding the PPV number, Khan noted to us regarding his comments last night that it was based on what they have now. It looks to be similar to All Out, which I’d consider to be a success if it ends up in that realm without C.M. Punk. All Out was 140,000 buys. It was below last year’s Full Gear, which did 155,000 buys. Most did not expect this year’s show to have a shot at beating last year’s numbers. The two other Full Gear shows were about 90,000 and 100.000 buys.

The numbers he had last night were very preliminary and based a lot on advance order numbers, but the company would have a better idea today or tomorrow on streaming numbers. Television PPV numbers don’t come in for 90 days but we usually get very strong estimates later in the week. With Thanksgiving that could be delayed a little.

The point is the number is a very early estimate and could vary significantly but right now the best info is a positive.

The show was announced on the air as a sellout and standing room only. It was actually a near sellout, about 600 shy of what would have been a full sellout for the PPV set up at the Prudential Center. As noted, the show just topped $1 million, hitting that mark the morning of the show and ending at $1,040,000.

WWE tops this on every PPV show as well these days, and greatly topped it for shows like Clash at the Castle and WrestleMania that topped $8 million. But historically, aside from the five AEW seven figure gates this year, there has only been one other non-WWE $1 million gate in U.S. pro wrestling history. That was the 2019 MSG show that New Japan and ROH put on,.

Adjusting for inflation there are others, including a few WCW shows during the glory period of that company in 1998 and January 1999, and a few of the most historic matches in the early days of the business.

Just for confirmation since there have been a number of questions about it, the trios titles are not up every match in the best-of seven series. It’s been confirmed that Death Triangle will be champions until or unless The Young Bucks & Kenny Omega win a fourth match from them. A number of people thought it would be up in all seven matches based on consistency, in the sense last night’s match was for the title and was the first match of the later announced best-of-seven.

Jim Ross only doing the first half of the show was a decision made before the show. Tony Khan decided to use Ross for the first half and Tony Schiavone for the second half.

The song “Wayward Sun” by Kansas that the Elite used last night will be their trios entrance music. If won’t be used if they are in regular tags or singles matches.

The Young Bucks have wanted to use the song for a long time as they and their father were big fans of that song and that style of music. The thoughts by people that it had to do with the situation of the past two months was something that they were aware of but the decision to use that song preceded that and in actuality has nothing to do with it.

The Young Bucks actually used that song as their entrance music when they did their own backyard wrestling as teenagers.