AEW Battle of the Belts IV Review - October 7, 2022

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

AEW All-Atlantic Champion and AEW World Six-Man Tag Team Champion Pac def. Trent Beretta

From a storyline standpoint, why the hell would Pac wrestle in the main event of Rampage and then kick off Battle of the Belts minutes later where he has to defend another one of his championship? I understand it was done to make Beretta feel more like a threat to the title, but I still didn't think he had a chance in hell of winning. Don't get me wrong, it was a very good match, but the storytelling here was questionable. Pac cheating to win led to Orange Cassidy running him off last week, setting up yet another match between them on Dynamite next week.

AEW TBS Champion Jade Cargiil def. Willow Nightingale

This was a vast improvement over their last one-on-one encounter a few months ago. I also appreciated how it was competitive and that Cargill didn't squash Nightingale in a matter of minutes as she has everyone else. Nightingale is, in fact, great and I'm happy she's getting more chances to shine. Surely she's signed to an AEW deal by now, right? Nyla Rose stole Cargill's title belt afterward, so Rose appears to be her next challenger. Personally, I couldn't care less.

ROH/IWGP/AAA World Tag Team Champions FTR def. The Gates of Agony (IWGP Tag Team Championship and AAA World Tag Team Championship Were Not Defended)

FTR are extremely over at the moment, but you'd never know because it feels like they're barely featured on AEW TV. They got the main event slot here, but the crowd was quiet for a majority of it because, oh, I don't know, barely anyone is aware of who Gates of Agony even are? You can count the matches they've had in AEW/Ring of Honor this year on one hand. The match itself was well wrestled (which was unsurprising given who their opponents were), but the whole thing was a waste of time.

Overall Show

I had hope coming off Battle of the Belts III two months ago that AEW would start to take these specials more seriously going forward, but this may have been the weakest one yet, begging the question of why AEW bothers to hold them in the first place. I truly have no desire to see more Battle of the Belts specials in 2023 if they're going to be as meaningless as this was. The in-ring action was largely average and, once again, no championships changed hands. All in all, this "Friday Night Fight Night" stuff AEW was promoting didn't deliver.

SEE MORE: Battle of the Belts Reviews