AEW Battle of the Belts IX Review - January 13, 2024

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

AEW World Tag Team Champions Ricky Starks and Big Bill def. Le Sex Gods in a Street Fight

Wait, when was this made a Street Fight? Was it always supposed to be a Street Fight? I must've missed that. Honestly, this probably benefited the stipulation. It was definitely a mess and all over the place, and I can't imagine it would've been any better than it was if it was a standard tag team match. I just can't bring myself to care about almost anything involving Chris Jericho and Sammy Guevara at the moment, but they put forth a commendable effort here, I'll give them that much. Of course, Starks and Bill retaining was the right call. Konosuke Takeshita and Powerhouse Hobbs interfered a few times, so their feud with Le Sex Gods will continue.

AEW TBS Champion Julia Hart def. Anna Jay

Jay picked up the win in the eight-woman tag team match on Wednesday's Dynamite and apparently that was enough to earn her this opportunity. Both of these women can be the future of the division, but Jay has to be booked better in order for that to happen. They've both improved immensely from where they were a few years ago, though. This was a fairly average outing, but it was well worked and it gave Hart another successful title defense.

AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy def. Preston Vance

You can take the first sentence from the previous paragraph and apply it to this one as well. Vance hasn't had a meaningful match on TV in ages, but he won on Wednesday and now viewers are supposed to take him seriously as a championship challenger. Wasn't Tony Khan complaining on Twitter about the lack of logic with title shots in WWE earlier this week? Nonetheless, they had a quality contest. I wish Vance had been built up a bit more beforehand, and I doubt we'll see him featured much coming out of this. I'm very much ready for Cassidy to lose the AEW International Championship to Roderick Strong, who was seated at ringside with The Kingdom throughout this bout.

Overall Show

I'm definitely in the minority of those who wasn't overly entertained by the Street Fight because I feel like we see that sort of that stuff way too often in AEW, but I can't argue that this was one of the better Battle of the Belts specials AEW has done to date. No championships changed hands and these specials are still pointless, but it wasn't as much of a waste of time as it has been in the past. The hour breezed by and the action was enjoyable on the whole.

SEE MORE: Battle of the Belts Reviews