This past Saturday, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) returned to the Prudential Center for their annual Full Gear pay-per-view show. The event, billed as one of the company’s “Big Five” shows, took place in Newark for the second time, the first being in 2022.
There were 12 matches, three of which appeared on the “Zero Hour” preshow and the remaining nine bouts on the main telecast, which started at 8 p.m. The main event featured an AEW World Heavyweight Championship match between champion Jon Moxley and challenger Orange Cassidy, as the two men are at the forefront of the battle for the company’s soul.
Moxley and his outlaw group called the “Death Riders” have been running through the mainstays of AEW as they are attempting to bring the company back to the values that helped start the company five years ago. The younger talent of the company has been trying to hold down the fort against the renegade group but has yet to be successful. The match between Moxley and Cassidy would continue the fight, and after Moxley won, chaos ensued as wrestlers like Christian Cage, Jay White, and “Hangman” Adam Page made their intentions clear and that is to get the title from Moxley.
A major draw of the show was a match featuring “Big Boom” AJ facing Q.T. Marshall. AJ and his son, Big Justice, are prominent social media stars known as the Costco Guys. AJ, who is from Colts Neck, was an independent wrestler for 15 years, so his entry into the ring is very different than many other non-wrestling personalities who attempt to wrestle. AJ was able to pull out the win over Marshall after Big Justice delivered a spear to Q.T., and AJ ended it with a powerbomb. The reaction to AJ, Big Justice and “The Rizzler” was among the biggest of the night at The Rock.
“We have such a great time making our TikToks, making our YouTube videos, meeting with some of the greatest creators in the world,” AJ said at the post-show media scrum. “I just always knew with professional wrestling, when you come through that curtain, and you feel that connection with the audience, especially here in my home state of New Jersey, there’s no greater feeling in the world.”
“I love it here [in AEW]. I loved every minute of this,” said AJ about returning to the ring. “If I’m welcomed back, I’m going to be back, and I’m going to bring the Boom!”
Besides AJ, there was some more New Jersey representation on the card. Deonna Purrazzo, who fell to Anna Jay in the preshow, is from Livingston. Anthony Bowens, one-half of the tag team The Acclaimed, is from Nutley and a graduate of Montclair State University. The Garden State has many independent wrestling companies throughout the state. It is also home to The Monster Factory in Paulsboro, one of the most prominent wrestling schools in the country where stars like Bam Bam Bigelow, Paul “Big Show” Wight, Raven, and the late Chris Candido.
Former WWE Champion Bobby Lashley made his in-ring debut in Newark on Saturday night. He joined former stable mates MVP and Shelton Benjamin in AEW after attempts to restart this group in the WWE did not come to fruition. All three men saw their contracts expire as they came to All Elite Wrestling to become “The Hurt Syndicate.”
Lashley’s debut match came against former AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland and in a hard-hitting match, Lashley came out victorious via submission. During the media scrum after the event, Lashley reiterated that he was looking for gold in the company but made a point after a reporter asked about being in a company with multiple black champions.
“I don’t like that, I don’t like that ‘Black champion.’ It’s just a champion,” Lashley said. “We’ve normalized this already, and that’s what I want to do with it. Winning a title as a ‘Black champion’, and there’s other Black champions here, we can kind of erase that word now and we can just say champion.
“It can be a Black champion, it can be an Asian champion, it can be a Latin champion, it can be any champion. So we have already normalized us, and we can kind of erase that ‘Black champion,’ and it’s just champion now.”
AEW has been struggling with live attendance recently and fans not enjoying certain stories told weekly on the company’s television shows Dynamite, Rampage, and Collison. But with over 10,000 fans in attendance at Prudential Center and the crowd on their feet at multiple points of the show, All Elite Wrestling may be returning to being the alternative for fans.
Heading into 2025, AEW has a new media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery and other deals on the horizon, so the new year could prove to be the most lucrative and exciting in AEW history.
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