Sunday’s AEW WrestleDream 2023 pay-per-view event from Seattle, WA at Climate Pledge Arena featured several high-quality bouts, including the AEW World Tag Team Title #1 Contenders Fatal 4-Way Match.
The match saw The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) vs. The Gunns (Austin Gunn & Colten Gunn) vs. The Lucha Brothers (Rey Fenix & Penta El Zero Miedo) vs. Orange Cassidy & Hook with the AEW EVPS coming out on top.
Fenix, who was injured in a recent Dynamite match, pushed through the pain to work the bout ahead of his International Title defense against Nick Jackson on this Wednesday’s Dynamite.
While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez noted Fenix was limited in the bout by doing one spot before being kept out of the ring because they wanted to do the Fenix vs. Jackson match.
“Rey Fenix, that was just a plan to get him out of the match early because he’s hurting,” Meltzer stated before later adding, “So Rey Fenix very early, took a bump, started selling his shoulder. The doctors came out. They took him to the back. I mean, they all attacked his shoulder. So it was very clear that this was part of the match and the match.”
Alvarez proceeded to recap what happened with Fenix that led to this moment.
“What happened is that when he had that match with [Jon] Moxley when he did that dive and landed on Moxley’s head, he hurt his tailbone in his back. And so he almost didn’t get cleared. And so he gets cleared. And then he went into the ring this Wednesday and he hurt his back again and he was limping. He got back limping by the end. But, I mean, he was hurting badly. And so here this was an angle because they want him to do that match with Nick Jackson on Wednesday. And so they let him do one spot, and then they did the injury angle and they got him out of there. And I guess he told people like, you know, ‘I’ll be good to go on Wednesday,’ but I think they didn’t want to take any chances with him getting hurt here because it’s the anniversary show. It’s the anniversary, or it’s the fourth anniversary of the show, but it’s also a rematch of one of the best matches they ever had in the first year. They got him out of there anyway so that he wouldn’t be injured. Penta was working by himself, but the way they did the match, I mean, it didn’t really matter whose partner was who. It was like everybody’s just doing everything with everybody else.”
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