If there’s one thing I love, it’s a hardcore stipulation match (not a crazy one, like the opening match here, however), and AEW’s Anarchy in the Arena matches are some of my favorites in recent memory. I love the chaos around the arena, a slightly more contained chaos than say, a Stadium Stampede match, and AEW is usually pretty good at following the action with various cameras. If a spot is missed, they replay it picture-in-picture. I’m not always the biggest fan of AEW production, but they usually make up for their blunders of the year in the AITA match, for me, at least.

The Blackpool Combat Club and The Elite were the perfect teams to pit against each other in this match type. I’ll admit, Double or Nothing 2023 was slightly before I started to really get in to AEW, so I wasn’t entirely sure who was meant to be the heel team here after watching so much recent AEW. The crowd response when both teams entered the arena helped me none, so did have to look it up, and was surprised that a BCC with Bryan Danielson on the team were the bad guys. The Elite met the BCC on the stairs in the crowd to kick off the match and we were off to the races.

While this match felt just slightly too long at 27 minutes and fell off even more slightly at the end, there were plenty of notable big spots throughout that were a lot of fun. The match was so hard hitting to start out immediately, the referee was one of the first people bleeding. There was an interesting barbed wire poker chip set piece spot where Kenny Omega went back-first onto the wire with a suplex by Jon Moxley. Claudio Castagnoli and Matt Jackson started fighting in the concession area of the arena, then got to the back of a pickup truck outside. Omega started wielding a trash can lid like Captain America’s shield, and who could ever forget the exploding superkick from one of the Young Bucks to Moxley.

The finish was a big moment that I don’t think many saw coming with Konosuke Takeshita turning heel and aligning himself with Don Callis, something I guess we’re all so used to these days. It was Wheeler Yuta to get the pin on Omega, which was pretty big deal and cool for him. This AITA was a good blend of in-ring action, with crazy spots, of course, but also packed with a lot of actual wrestling and plenty of storytelling. It was an excellent match to conclude the PPV and personally, I think it has a lot of rewatch value.

Written by Daisy Ruth