AEW Revolution review: Thank you, Sting

Sting ended his career at Sunday’s AEW Revolution on his own terms, capping off what will probably be one of the top shows of the year.

Over 16,000 fans packed North Carolina’s Greensboro Coliseum to watch AEW Tag Team Champions Sting & Darby Allin team together one last time to defeat The Young Bucks in a fantastic, heated, bloody and brutal match that gave us the happy ending that everyone wanted: Sting winning his last match with the Scorpion Death Lock.

It wasn’t the best match on the show, but it was the perfect one to end Sting’s career.

Allin nearly killed himself (and I mean that literally) by taking a huge bump off a ladder through a real glass pane on the outside of the ring. I cannot stress enough how crazy of a bump that was on a show full of crazy bumps. But this was Sting’s time to shine, kicking out of all the Bucks’ finishers as the crowd ate it up. After spending most of the match recovering from his insane stunt, Allin helped Sting pick up the win.

Sting could have spent the last three years of his career doing nothing and he still would have got a big response because he was a star in one of the most successful eras of pro wrestling ever in North America. But he did the complete opposite: working his butt off in every match, giving us amazing moments that I don’t think anyone will forget anytime soon, including on Sunday. 

For that, thank you, Sting.

Here are thoughts on the rest of the card, which is very easily a show of the year contender:

• The AEW World Championship match was an excellent three-way bout. It was pretty hard to have to follow a match like Will Ospreay vs. Konosuke Takeshita, but they held their own with Samoa Joe retaining by choking out Hangman Page. I think one of the stories for 2024 has to be Swerve Strickland getting the win and the title. It doesn’t have to be now, but I think with his recent face turn, he should be at the top. His time seems to be coming.
• Ospreay made his AEW debut with an incredible match against Takeshita, as expected. Getting match of the night honors on a show like this is extremely hard, but these two got the job done. They put on a clinic and did all of their crazy moves as one would expect in a big time match like this. The sheer drop brain buster into the turnbuckle was sick and one that made Ospreay’s back looked so trashed afterward (although Allin outdid him later). Ospreay was also super over with this crowd — so much so that it’s plainly obvious he should be one of the top babyfaces on this roster.
• There’s not much to say about the Women’s title match which was two people wrestling and doing okay stuff in front of a crowd that absolutely did not care. Despite her work elsewhere, Deonna Purrazzo just hasn’t connected with the AEW audience and while Toni Storm’s act does connect, for whatever reason, it almost never results in a good match. People want to cheer her, but she’s a heel doing heel things. All of this, of course, is a backdrop to Mercedes Mone’s eventual debut at Big Business on March 13th, so we’ll see if the division picks up from there.
• Orange Cassidy and Roderick Strong told a very good story. There are some who absolutely loathe the character, but these people never want to accept how good of a worker Cassidy is. His selling here was so great and Strong was excellent as being the heel in control and working on the back, naturally as he’s the messiah of the backbreaker. Kyle O’Reilly made his return after Strong won the International title, but didn’t immediately join with his friends, so there’s some drama here for the near future.
• Boy, was FTR vs. Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli fun to watch. I don’t know how long they went but every minute felt like a tribute to tag team wrestling with tons of cool callbacks to teams of the past and some hot near falls. None of these four wrestlers ever have a bad pay-per-view match and this more than delivered. Both teams should absolutely be in the upcoming Tag Team title tournament and probably in the finals.
• Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston and Bryan Danielson had an excellent match. This would probably rank as the second or third best match on this show, but easily could have been the top match on any of the big shows last year. A battle of attrition that just kept going, this was a tribute to Japanese pro wrestling in North Carolina. I think at this point, Danielson needed the win more as he’s been doing plenty of jobs lately, but I can’t complain at all. It was excellent.
• The opener for the pay-per-view saw Christian Cage retain the TNT Championship against Daniel Garcia. This was a great opener and the last few minutes were fantastic with some great near falls. Of course, this was a buffer match for the eventual Adam Copeland return, which I am guessing will be at AEW’s next pay-per-view, Dynasty, in April.
• Kris Statlander and Willow Nightingale defeated Julia Hart and Skye Blue. These four have been feuding with each other for what feels like forever and all of them just seem to be treading water. What is the Stokely Hathaway stuff leading to? Is Willow going heel? Is Statlander turning on someone? The story is moving so slow, I just want it to go somewhere. They tried here and this wasn’t a bad match, but a lot of stuff looked sloppy.
• The opener, pitting the Bang Bang Scissor Gang against Jeff Jarrett’s crew and Willie Mack, was good. This was nothing special, but fine work. I feel like everyone in the Bang Bang Scissor Gang feels less over being in this group for some reason. There really hasn’t been much advancement in the story and Max Caster is now doing a gimmick where he can’t rap anymore. I don’t like that.

And that will do it for Revolution as AEW’s next big show will be April’s Dynasty PPV in St. Louis. After ending 2023 on a sour note, I hope we see more shows like Revolution from the company. WWE is hot right now, but they aren’t putting on these kinds of shows which needs to be AEW’s strong suit going forward.