AEW Worlds End review: Mixed signals heading into the new year

By Bryan Rose
Published: 29 Dec 2024, 08:00

Image: JJ Williams

AEW has had an up and down 2024. Of course, the biggest news was their new television deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, ensuring they’ll be profitable in the years to come. On the other hand, ratings & attendance are down and the shows have been a mixed bag.

Take Worlds End, for example. The good stuff was really good and Will Ospreay had one of the best one-night performances you’ll ever see. But the bad stuff was bad and it’s not immediately clear if there’s anything real hot heading into the new year.

Take the main event of the show, for example. There wasn’t anything wrong with the match itself which saw Jon Moxley successfully retain the AEW World title against Hangman Page, Jay White, and Orange Cassidy, the latter of whom had already been beaten the previous month. The problem was absolutely no one in the building thought any one of these three had a chance to win the title and sure enough, they did not.

At least the show ended on an upbeat tone compared to the last two shows when FTR and the returning Adam Copeland came out to clean house, setting the stage for the next World title feud.

I’m not particularly into this Moxley world title run as it reminds me way too much of Vince McMahon’s booking from the 2010s where the heels have all the heat in the world and repeatedly tell the audience that the faces can’t get their stuff together, only for the dumb babyfaces to prove the heels right. I’ve seen this on AEW television for two months now. It was boring in 2019 when WWE did it and its boring now in 2024. Hopefully, Copeland is the ingredient this storyline needs to get things moving because it hasn’t done anything for me thus far, and there’s no indication it’s doing anything for business either.

The rest of the show:

Kazuchika Okada defeated Will Ospreay in the Continental Classic finals to retain the title he held going into the tournament. This was a fantastic match and easily the best since Okada’s arrival in AEW. This is the Okada people wanted but haven’t really gotten thus far in his AEW run. The last five minutes were fantastic and reminded me of the top-tier NJPW style main events that Okada was known for. After the match, we saw the return of Kenny Omega who handed the title to Okada as an All In Texas banner hung in the background, clearly indicating what the future holds for those two. That show is roughly seven months away. This was great, but now I kinda have to watch them slowly build this when I’m pretty much ready to see it now.
It strikes me just how bad AEW missed going all the way with Ospreay this year. This guy has consistently been impressive every step of the way and is easily a lock for Most Outstanding Wrestler in the upcoming Observer Awards. Why isn’t he AEW Champion? Imagine if his matches headlined every show; the vibe surrounding AEW would change in an instant and for the better. It’s so weird that AEW is going with boring WWE heat at the top while Ospreay is killing it wherever he’s put.
Yet again, Mercedes Mone and Kris Statlander put on an excellent match. The crowd was silent at the start but really got into it by the end which saw Mone score the win with a modified roll-up. Mone is closing out 2024 strong with a string of great matches, I hope that bodes well for her 2025.
Konosuke Takeshita retained the International title over Powerhouse Hobbs in a pretty good match. This struggled for heat but I thought the work was good, Hobbs can definitely hang at this level and deserves to be here.
I don’t even know where to begin with MJF and Adam Cole. The match was fine. But after a full year of feuding, and after weeks of Cole looking to finally get his singles match with MJF, he simply lost after a low blow. The worst thing is they decided to make the win not matter anyway because Kyle O’Reilly and Roderick Strong prevented MJF from injuring Cole further, which eventually led to a full reunion between all members of the Undisputed Era Kingdom who promptly laid out MJF. So why did he win?
This easily earns worst feud of the year because it did the one thing that makes a feud really bad: everyone got less over as the weeks went on, to the point people were booing Cole for laying out MJF after the match. I understand plans changed due to things beyond anyone’s control, but even after Cole returned from injury, it was just one miss after another. Let’s all move on and forget any of this ever happened.
Thunder Rosa and Mariah May had a pretty good weapons match. The problem here is twofold. One: no one really thought May had a chance of losing the title. Two: I have seen so many weapons matches in so many different promotions they are starting to lose their appeal and are all blending into one match. I thought the pinata spot was pretty clever at least, and there was a memorable ending with May piledriving Rosa into a table.
Okada and Ricochet had a good match. Ricochet’s heel shtick is working but he’s just missing something in terms of being a top-tier worker in AEW. Okada can be here and there and he was fine here, but was a lot better later in the night.
Ospreay defeated Kyle Fletcher in a very good, bloody match that started off the show strong. I don’t think it was as strong as their previous encounter, but they worked hard and it became the second best match of the night. I kinda wish they went all the way with Fletcher as he’s someone special they need to keep hot, but there’s other opportunities and at least 10 other titles he can go for in this company. Besides, what we got later I can’t really complain about.