Winter is here! Although it was 42 degrees and raining today in upstate New York so you could've fooled me.

Tonight's show is a mix of Continental Classic matches and some fun non-tournament matches that have been brewing for a while – the unlikely team of Orange Cassidy and Jay White against Jon Moxley and PAC; Mariah May defending the World Title against Mina Shirakawa; in C2 action, Claudio Castagnoli vs Will Ospreay and Ricochet vs Brody King; and the pure, unadulterated misery of Adam Cole vs Kyle O'Reilly to continue the never-ending story with MJF.

Crowds have seemed a bit up in recent weeks for AEW with this show filling out around 4,000. I'm not really someone who gets deep into ticket sales or ratings or whatever, but it is extremely noticeable when it's a small TV crowd – especially when they're sitting on their hands the whole show.

I read somewhere recently that AEW is planning on running smaller buildings in 2025 and I think that's great. It's a bummer watching a show where it's clear they haven't filled out the crowd and so much of the crowd is visibly dark on TV. You can always tell when they've done good ticket sales on TV by the way they light the crowd.

But, nevermind that shit – I've got a cup of ginger lemon tea and I'm ready to light the fuse!

The rapid unraveling of "Hangman" Adam Page and everything he touches

Just when it looked like Orange Cassidy was going to get the win for his team, Hangman Page appeared to beat Jon Moxley's ass. The match was thrown out in favor of Death Riders, but things didn't end there.

Cassidy watched on, frustrated, as Hangman battered Mox. After a moment of pause, OC ripped Hangman off of Mox so the two could tear each other apart instead.

Jay White got involved in the fray and ate an errant Orange Punch meant for ole Hanger. In response, Jay laid OC out with the Blade Runner.

The alliance of AEW guys imploded as quickly as it was formed, leaving Death Riders yet again standing atop the company without any cohesive group to tear them down.

To be honest, it felt like having Death Riders come back in and stomp the guys out after all of this was a bit overkill. This kind of feels like the way it goes with a lot of these Death Riders segments for me, though – they hang on a little too long with Death Riders getting in the last shots so they can stand as the big tough guys.

I don't think we needed it here. The story could have stood on its own with the breakdown of the tempestuous relationships between OC, Jay, and Hanger. Hangman is too much in his own shit to see that his own actions are hurting people who share his same end goal – or, at least, a similar end goal.

Obviously everybody wants to unseat Moxley as the World Champion. But, is it more that they want to bring the World Title "back" to AEW, or is it selfishness in wanting to be the one to do it? For Hangman, I think it's the latter. For OC, I think it's more of the former. Jay White sits somewhere in the middle which is perfectly in line with a guy whose character is that he's a gigantic sleazeball but is also a beloved babyface.

After a break, Moxley delivered us the news that we all expected was coming: at Worlds End, Mox will defend the World Title against OC, Hangman, and Jay in a four-way match.

This gets us through December with Moxley as World Champion. Then he has to contend with the winner of the Continental Classic. And then? After he climbs Mount Everest, I guess, Mox has a reckoning with Darby Allin whom I still firmly believe will be the next AEW World Champion.

Overall, I love how dynamic the World Title picture is right now and how many other main event guys are involved in the overall story with Death Riders.

I C2 Death Riders post-match beatdowns and I change the damn channel

Will Ospreay came out with the win against Claudio Castagnoli in the Continental Classic in what a was a fun match, but the finish was a bit of a miss for me. We just saw Daniel Garcia win with a jackknife pin in a C2 contest within the last week.

This is a gripe I seem to be having with the tournament this year – repeated, or extremely similar, finishes. Whether it's the same pin or two heels cheating to win on the same night, it's wearing a little bit and it'd be nice to see a bit of variety.

After the match, we got back to another complaint I lodged: the need for Death Riders to beat someone down after a segment has had a conclusive finish. While I appreciate the visual of Darby saving Ospreay from a beating with a chair from Claudio after Brody saved Darby from a similar fate, did we really need Claudio to lay Ospreay out with the Neutralizer first?

I'd argue we didn't need it. The same thing could have been achieved by Claudio grabbing the chair without needing to get the upperhand on Ospreay by attacking him post-match.

A Brody King loss in service building a character for Ricochet

It's no secret that I want all good things for Brody King. Give him all of the wins, give him all of the belts. He's simply the best!

Ricochet has been aggressively fine since coming to AEW. He hasn't really had any bad matches, but he's also not blown me away on a regular basis. So, while I expected him to have a decent showing in the tournament I didn't expect him to get the points over Brody tonight.

The match ended with what is becoming a staple in the tournament – a little bit of cheating leading to a victory. Earlier in the show, Ricochet eluded to the invitation from MVP to join The Hurt Syndicate and in the match he used an exposed turnbuckle to weaken Brody enough to pick up the win.

Was there this much cheating in the C2 last year? I haven't gone back to watch all of those matches so there very well could have been, but it seems like there have been so many bullshit finishes with a heel using a low blow or some other trick to get their points.

I wish we could just get back to a couple of guys simply wrestling until one wins based on the quality of their wrestling. The thing is, it makes sense for Ricochet to win in an openly underhanded way here if they're teasing a turn to join MVP. But in that case, don't do a bunch of cheating finishes throughout the rest of the tournament! Make it mean something that he's not winning clean!

Maybe it's a minor complaint, but it's souring me a little on the tournament this year.

It's the REAL Toni Storm!

Mariah May successfully defended the World Title against Mina Shirakawa in what was, predictably, a very good main event. A much better match than Mina had with Emi Sakura on Collision last week.

The crowd got behind Mina quite a bit here and bit on a number of nearfalls that could have led to a new World Champion. But, alas – it was a headbutt (missed because we needed to get a shot of Thunder Rosa in the crowd instead) and Storm Zero that led to Mariah retaining the title.

Post-match, my first thought was that we had a clear build to a quick Worlds End match with Mariah defending against Thunder Rosa.

But then? Toni Storm's old music kicked in and the former champion returned in her, as Tony Schiavone referred to it, "real" form.

Not much happened here outside of the return. Toni posed at the entrance looking like she was genuinely moved by the crowd response to her return. Thunder Rosa looked perplexed, holding up a "WTF" sign at ringside. And Mariah, still the reigning World champion, looked on puzzled that the woman she drove out of AEW was suddenly back.

Although, Mariah hasn't experienced this Toni Storm in AEW yet. Her arrival came only after Toni was in her "Timeless" era, so this is new territory for the feud.

I suppose we could blow through this whole thing in two weeks and put the belt back on Toni at Worlds End, but I think I'd like to see things develop a bit more. Rosa has a true claim to a title shot having beaten both Mariah and Mina in the past and holding onto the argument of "I was never beaten for the title."

So, it may be nice to have Toni run through some other opponents first to build herself back up as a contender while Mariah deals with Rosa at Worlds End. We shall see!

Wrapping Up

I'll give them this: tonight was probably Adam Cole's best match since coming back and it featured the least amount of overacting out of all of them. I expected it to have more of the dinner theater bullshit we've seen from feuds like Johnny Gargano/Tommaso Ciampa, but they restrained themselves!

I'm still not interested in seeing the MJF/Cole feud carry on, but this was at least not as much of a slog of a match as I expected it to be based on Cole's other matches since his return.

There were no Blue League matches this week on Dynamite, so that bracket is still in the same rough shape it was after Collision. I didn't expect Ricochet to beat Brody King, but I didn't think of the scenario where Ricochet may be turning heel (or at least teasing it) and using some nefarious means to get the win.

So, the picks are looking okay so far in the Gold League with no changes in the Blue League since Saturday: