AEW Redemption preview & predictions: Slouching toward Wembley
Editor’s note: There are spoilers for Saturday’s AEW Collision in this post.
Summer in professional wrestling means everything is pointed at something else. The summer is a runway, not a destination, and every match on every card between now and All In is in service of what comes next.
This is not a takedown of Sunday’s first-ever AEW Redemption although it is as empty as I can remember an AEW PPV being. This is just the calendar.
Even on the other side of the fence, the lead-up to a two-day “sports entertainment extravaganza” involves a lot of “entertaining” and far less “sport.” There aren’t enough quotation marks in the world to express my disdain at calling that entertainment. I’d encourage everyone to use this time to explore other things. Consume art, consume other forms of media, consume the outdoors. You do not owe your attention to anything.
Redemption makes no bones about what it is. The moment does not require grandeur, and this card is all too happy to oblige. The matches are good enough. The stakes are there if you squint. The road to Wembley runs directly through this building, and several of the people inside it will leave Sunday night with their directions clarified and their trajectories confirmed. Let’s run through it.
AEW Redemption preview & predictions —
Death Riders (Jon Moxley & Will Ospreay) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson)
The question Ospreay has never fully answered is a simple one: who is he when the crowd isn’t rapturously enjoying his matches? His character works beautifully as a vessel for their entertainment. As a protagonist in a story with stakes, it has clear limits. The greatest main event performers in AEW’s history have all shared one quality: you believed, at some fundamental level, that what was happening mattered to them beyond the performance, that it touched something real.
You cannot make an audience feel the weight of a moment if you’re signaling that the weight is negotiable. You can’t pal around with and wink at, the World Champion whose belt you’re after. Hangman Page never winked at Jon Moxley. Bryan Danielson never palled around with Swerve Strickland. They made you believe because they believed first. It mattered to them. Ospreay performing intensity and Ospreay actually feeling it are two different things, and the audience, unconsciously or not, knows the difference.
All In is in a month. This match is the last major opportunity to close that gap before the biggest stage closes it for him.
The Death Riders were supposed to make him real, but Ospreay is essentially the same person who just does an armbar now on occasion. It feels more like setting up what comes after All In — a wild thought to even have considering what that event means — when Moxley and the Death Riders ruin Will’s precious field trip.
Because that’s what’s going to happen and that’s what has to happen. Week after week, Moxley’s omnipresence in and around what should ostensibly be AEW’s biggest match of the year casts a shadow so enormous it’s hard to breathe. How does this match fully land when at every turn Moxley is there, reminding these two anime geeks (not derogatory) that he is so much tougher and so much more real than either of them?
I hope that Ospreay comes out of this feeling more like someone worthy of the main event on the biggest show of the year. The Young Bucks can bring out the best in anyone, and they’ll work their usual magic here. But Ospreay has to want to go.
Prediction: Ospreay and Moxley
Jack Perry vs. The Beast Mortos vs. Komander vs. “Speedball” Mike Bailey vs. Nick Wayne vs. El Clon in a ladder match
This is a six-way ladder match for a future International title match that apparently was going to Mistico in a match that was never announced.
There are six people in this match, and most have a reasonable shot at winning. Perry should not be one of them. Making his contract status a television talking point was odd and wholly unnecessary. I’m sure there is genuine affection for an AEW original backstage, but nothing on screen suggests his contractual situation should, or would, ever matter to a paying audience. The biggest reactions are for his entrance song which is never the best sign.
Negativity out of the way, this should be a clear runway for the Canadian native Bailey, the only performer in this match who has consistently moved the needle on television. His beef with the Don Callis Family is justified and ongoing, and his highlights are weekly. It’s time to answer the question of whether he’s ready for a sustained solo run.
Prediction: Speedball
Bang Bang Gang (Jay White & Juice Robinson) vs. The Dogs (David Finlay & Clark Connors) in a double chain match
The middle class is mostly dead in America, but it continues to thrive in AEW. The return of White gives the Bang Bang Gang the leader it desperately needs. Without him, they come off as zany, unserious cats. They still largely are that, but White’s presence gives that irreverent zaniness a grounding it both lacked and needed.
Robinson unmoored is a man doing bits in an empty room, no offense to the Gunns and Ace Austin. Robinson with White is a bit that lands because someone in the vicinity is a somewhat serious person.
The Dogs are the right opponents for this match: physical, defined, and clear in their identity from their first moment on AEW television. This is the mid-card doing its job. And hey, maybe Gabe Kidd will show up and bop around like an actual canine.
Prediction: Bang Bang Gang
Chris Jericho vs. Tommaso Ciampa in a no holds barred match
Everyone is complicit. We have allowed, encouraged, and indulged Chris Jericho far too much. The consistency with which he is on television is excessive. Occasion, with a hint of an editor’s red pen, is prudent. To say there is no value in Jericho in his current form is short-sighted. The struggle is what it always has been with him balance.
When Jericho is rationed, he is valuable. When he is everywhere, he takes over the atmosphere. He is the summer humidity you dread walking into. Extreme heat is livable in doses, but exhausting without respite.
And yet, this will likely be fun. Ciampa has fit into AEW like he was always supposed to be here, working harder than the situation requires, reminding us all what he’s capable of. The chip on his shoulder remains intact and fully operational. It’s what makes him stand out. He deserves a match that lets him show that. A no holds barred stipulation with the plunder and the spectacle and the latitude to do something memorable is the right vehicle.
Jericho’s excesses are easier to absorb when the structure accommodates them. The stipulation helps. It won’t fix everything, but it fixes enough. I bet that Painmaker vignette from Wednesday really ripped if you were 11 years old.
Prediction: Ciampa
AEW National Champion Mark Davis defends against Andrade El Idolo
I am looking forward to this one. My preferred style of professional wrestling is two people hitting each other extremely hard, and that this will be. There are not enough Mark Davis types in AEW; the snarling, physical brawlers who hit hard, drop people on their heads, and have no interest whatsoever in flash or pageantry. He is interested in throwing hands and is very good at it.
The evolution of Davis alongside former Aussie Open teammate Kyle Fletcher has been one of the more quietly fascinating developments in AEW over the past year. They were, to be generous, fine as a team. As singles performers, both are considerably more.
Andrade continues his months-long heater with no signs of cooling. His matches, his many, many coats, and his improbable and incredibly over catchphrase are all clicking. He has avoided his notorious bad habit of coasting on his natural gifts. He appears motivated in every segment and completely dialed in between the bells. The one slight criticism is that he should be pointed at more meaningful gold (the TNT Championship would be ideal) rather than a title still establishing its own identity.
That said, I amend my opening statement. I am very much looking forward to this.
Prediction: Andrade
TBS Champion Hikaru Shida defends against Maya World
AEW has something in World. Shida’s future is neither helped nor hindered by the TBS Championship. For World, though, this could be a launching pad to something more. She’s already aced her final exam with Professor Mone and passed with flying colors. She proved she can not just hang with the best around, but push her to the limit. In the ring they might not be peers, but the gap in their ability is not chasmic.
Shida is a known and steady quantity; a multiple-time champion and AEW original who has an acceptable floor and a clearly defined ceiling, and there is no shame in that. The most valuable thing she can do with this match is make World look like exactly what she is: someone who can meet the moment and take what’s in front of her.
Prediction: Maya runs the World
AEW World Tag Team Champions Adam Copeland & Christian Cage defend against The Death Riders (Claudio Castagnoli & PAC)
My lack of love for Cope is no secret to anyone who has read any recent AEW preview. He is black licorice. That’s not a reflection of his capabilities or his output, but it’s purely a flavor profile I do not, and never have, enjoyed. I continue to enjoy Christian’s work and probably always will. So while it’s nice for him to get time in the sun, I wish he was the headliner of this coupling, rather than riding shotgun. There are worse things in life.
Claudio and PAC are too talented for this to be a bad match. Claudio, in particular, remains one of the most physically gifted and slightly underutilized performers in AEW, and PAC is, well, PAC: supremely reliable, crisp, and incapable of laying an egg. Together, they are the best tag team the Death Riders can put forward.
Cage and Cope retain because the legacy tour has not yet reached its final stop, though I am more than ready to get off this ride.
Prediction: Cage and Copeland
AEW International Champion Kyle Fletcher defends against Bandido
Fletcher winning the International Championship was the right outcome and the right direction. The concern is how he got there.
The win over Konosuke Takeshita was a return to the vacuous, empty move fest that Fletcher had been actively growing away from. The thing that made his ascent so interesting in the first place was everything he was doing on the margins. Slowing down. Working the crowd. Resisting the urge to do everything simply because he can. That restraint is what separated him from a hundred other gifted athletes who never became stars.
Just because one can do everything does not mean one should. The highlight reel has done damage to careers in every sport. Fletcher knows better and should act like it.
Bandido, meanwhile, is the ultimate babyface whose superpower appears to be just about everything. Joy, technique, athleticism, crowd connection are all characteristics he has in spades. He does not go through the motions because he does not appear to know what the motions are. Every match is the match. Every night is the night. That is a rare and precious quality, and it makes him the perfect opponent for a champion trying to remember what made him special.
If Fletcher wrestles the way he had been before the Takeshita match, this should be loudly excellent. And, honestly, even if he falls into old habits, Bandido can cover for him. He shouldn’t have to, but that’s a heck of a security blanket. This is the likely match of the night.
Prediction: Fletcher retains
AEW Women’s World Champion Thekla defends against Willow Nightingale
The lightness you feel is the return of Nightingale to AEW. Few things in this silly sport are good and pure. This is one. This is the person who should be the top babyface in the company. Her fire and conviction in the ring are mirrored on the microphone. She has never dropped the ball and has made the most of every opportunity. Her injury was unfortunate, but her return set her up for something larger: the AEW Women’s World Championship.
Thekla has been revelatory as champion and will feature prominently in exhausting end-of-year conversations regardless of what happens Sunday. She avoided the dud, kept the title meaningful through the simultaneous absence of the two brightest stars in the division, and emerged on the other side as a legitimate peer to both of them.
She has positioned herself where she will never feel out of place holding or chasing a championship. That is the entire job of being a pro wrestler. She has done it completely.
The spot at All In belongs to Willow. It always did. There is a version of the biggest show of the year where Nightingale and Mercedes Mone meet for the AEW Women’s World Championship in a frothing Wembley Stadium, and that version is the proper one. Willow ensures it on Sunday.
Prediction: Willow
AEW World Champion Kenny Omega defends against Kevin Knight
The triumph of a god and the ascent of a jet.
Omega winning the title on Dynamite was a bold and correct decision. It was a move drenched in conviction. The reign formally begins here in the main event with the belt finally where it belongs and the calendar pointing toward Wembley. Everything between now and London is in service of that destination, and a first PPV defense against Knight is the right kind of opening chapter.
It’s significant enough to matter, and raises the standing of his opponent, one that suggests a frighteningly high ceiling with no visible proof of where it ends.
Truthfully, I’m not sure what a reasonable ceiling for Knight is. A conservative estimate involves a World title reign in the next calendar year. A more ambitious one includes a full decade as a main event performer. A trajectory like this befits someone with his nickname. This is his capstone. In the world of AEW, it doesn’t get any bigger than a Kenny Omega Match™ for the World title. There is nothing in Knight’s body of work that indicates he is not built for moments like this.
The one thing that sticks in my craw is that Knight should never have been turned. The heel alignment sits awkwardly on someone whose natural charisma is irrepressibly likable. Performers need to be versatile and to prove they can do whatever is asked. I’m just not sure he needed to turn to get this opportunity.
This works face vs. face and probably would have worked better here. A crowd is allowed to love both performers with their support coming organically based on the match.
A few months ago, I wrote that AEW needs to ride Omega until the wheels fall off. They have not fallen off. They are not close to falling off. And now, once again, he has the belt to prove it.
Prediction: Omega retains
Mike DellaCamera has covered AEW since it began. He's just as surprised as you are.