AEW and NXT Wednesday Night Wars: 3 winners of night #1

John Moxley

With one Death Rider DDT through a plated-glass table, John Moxley reignited his feud with Kenny Omega with a figurative blowtorch and a can of gasoline.

Thanks to a staph infection that took the IWGP United States Champion out of his match with Omega at All Out, fans didn’t know when Moxley and Omega would renew hostilities, but these two put that to bed with an intense brawl that migrated from the ring to the VIP area. Then, we got this.

You can quibble with how they got to this brawl — why didn’t Moxley attack Omega before Omega’s six-man tag match with The Young Bucks against Chris Jericho, Santana, and Ortiz started — and you can question some other logic lapses — why didn’t the referee call for disqualification when Moxley attacked Omega — but the angle did what it was supposed to do.

It accomplished three things: it reintroduced Moxley to the AEW audience in an impactful manner, it resets a hot feud that will keep Omega out of the title picture for a little while, and it set the stage for the show-closing angle.

AEW has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to top-of-the-card talent, so having Moxley return this way instead of a mundane squash match in the middle of the show establishes him as a potential championship contender.