This was for Omega & Page’s AEW Tag Team Championships.
This match. This match. This fucking match.
Revolution 2020 was the only AEW PPV (starting in the Dynamite era) that I had never seen. All Out 2020 was briefly in this category due to me ordering it on cable, setting the DVR, going to an all day BBQ, and coming back to realize the DVR didn’t record it, so I had to watch the last half of the replay and then the next day watched the first half online.
For some reason, I just never got around to watching Revolution 2020. It’s arguably the beginning of AEW’s hottest run of its existence (Feb 2020-Feb 2022), and a lot of people cite moments or matches on this show when referring to some all time AEW moments.
With the top one being, of course, this match.
This fucking match.
I’ll be the first to admit I am guilty of recency bias to a staggering degree. It’s something that I’m trying to curb in my life between my use of Letterboxd for movies and this site/twitter for wrestling matches. But it doesn’t erase the recency bias completely, and it absolutely cannot erase the recency bias one would’ve suffered in real time.
Like I would’ve suffered with this motherfuck of a match.
If I had watched Revolution 2020 live on PPV, I could’ve seen myself drooling my way onto Twitter, and typing out some four tweet soliloquy about how this match changed my perception of what a true alternative to WWE could be, how it fully introduced me to the work of all four men at their peak and how it would be responsible for elevating both tag team wrestling and stories in pro wrestling forever more. I would’ve probably wet myself in my lil panties when I saw Uncle Dave’s 6* rating drop. I would’ve made AEW my home promotion, we would’ve all been bestest friends foreverest, COVID would’ve never shut the world down, 1/6 would’ve been avoided, and I would be taking part in #RestoringTheFeeling all the way here in the year of our lord 2024.
But this fucking match.
Let’s get the obvious crap out of the way before we begin: this isn’t a bad match. I don’t hate this match. I have major Elite fatigue, but I’ve gone on record numerous times in saying I don’t even hate the Elite, even post Brawl Out.
This, on the surface, is a perfectly fine, somewhat exciting tag team wrestling match that accomplished its two main goals: giving Page/Omega a remarkably big win to legitimize their tag title reign, and to further along the story they were telling (that still had about 21-22 months left on it, but I digress). There was some good work on Matt’s back as the focus, Hanger/Matt’s growing tension, Omega being frustrated with both sides because he wants to keep his belts and the friendships, and some cool flippy shit. And that’s all a-okay.
But the insane temerity the majority of you people have to call this the greatest tag team match in US wrestling history is worrying. And a special god damn you to the specific type of pervert who had the impertinence to even bandy about the notion that it may be the greatest tag team match in wrestling history.
Let a match breathe. Let a moment fucking sink in. Less than 24 hours after this show aired, the reaction on Twitter was like cavemen had just discovered fire. Part of me does understand it! There’s two generations of wrestling fans who wanted a legitimate alternative to WWE so bad, that when they finally got one, they willed themselves into thinking “AEW can do no wrong” (which has gotten them into a lot of the messes they’ve had, but that’s a different topic for a different time) and that is DETRACTIVE thinking.
You’ve forced this tag team match, among a lot of other good to great AEW matches, into this once-elite (no pun intended) pantheon of all-time wrestling bouts simply because — and stick with me here since a lot of are just willingly blind, dumb or ignorant — simply because “it’s better than what WWE has to offer.”
Oh okay, so, I had a ton of fun once watching Meng vs. Norman Smiley in a late era WCW Hardcore Match. It’s a blast, it’s funny. I enjoyed it. But does that make it an all time great match? Does that it rank it ahead or even neck and neck with literally any other major hardcore/deathmatch that’s ever taken place? Simply because I enjoyed this more than the hardcore stuff WWF may have offered that night, that should then erase the efforts of ACTUAL, GREAT MATCHES?!
Can’t we just all as a community learn the difference between objectivity and subjectivity?!
Sure, these are some extreme examples and I’m probably going a little too hard on this subject. But to tie back up together, I think what I’ve just said should make perfect sense! Stop calling matches these objectively all time great matches. Not because it pisses me off, not because someone on Twitter or Reddit disagrees, but because it devalues the match you’re speaking about and almost any other match like it.
Let a match breathe. Let a moment breathe. Learn to differentiate objective facts vs. subjective likings. Know that it’s okay to call this match, this fucking match, or any other match at all, your FAVORITE match, but also know that does not make it the greatest match ever.
I’m yelling into the void, I know. Because at the end of the day, AEW-only fans are going to do what they’re going to do. My whole final point is, there’s not as many “all time great” matches as you’d actually believe. Not because there hasn’t been an array of incredible matches, but because if we held so many of them up to this near impossible standard, suddenly they don’t look as great anymore.
Because maybe it hasn’t yet (and maybe it has, which I think it has, but…) one day soon, another match is going to happen and suddenly the torches you all carried for this match for these last four years will fall to the ground, igniting a wall of flames behind you, sparked by all the bullshit you’ve spewed since February 29th, 2020.
Enjoy this match. Stop being an asshole about it though.
And go watch Steiner Bros vs. Sting/Lex Luger from SuperBrawl I, you lazy, vulgar, rancid, little philistines.
Sorry, my Giamatti is showing.
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