My Experience At AEW Double Or Nothing Phoenix

I know, not the usual content you see on here (but to be fair, not the first). This past Sunday, I was fortunate enough to get nearly unrestricted access to AEW’s Double or Nothing event at the Desert Diamond Arena. Double or Nothing is an annual event that typically happens over Memorial Day weekend. The card featured eleven matches (which includes two from the pre-show) featuring some of the biggest names from AEW like Swerve Strickland, Toni Storm, Kenny Omega, Mercedes Mone, Jon Moxley, and Will Ospreay.

I’m not going to go into detail of every match, there are plenty of other people who have done that but I will say the night featured so many good matches which was highlighted by Hangman Adam Page vs. Will Ospreay. The main event was probably the best wrestling match I’ve witnessed in person and will easily be the match of the year across the industry. The purpose of this article is to give you a recap of some of the things I got to witness and experience from the backstage area.

Firstly, I didn’t talk to anyone besides a quick hello to referee Aubrey Edwards and very quick interaction with Jeff Jarrett which I will get to in a bit. The last thing I want to do as an outsider backstage is to take up any one’s time when they are eating, preparing, and focusing on a delivering a top notch performance for everyone. The evening started out in catering where throughout the night I saw the likes of Kazuchika Okada, the previously mentioned Ospreay, Bobby Lashley, Toni Storm, Mina Shirakawa, Don Callis, and so many more. The food options were honestly really good, a few different chicken dishes, lots of vegetables, prime rib, rice, potato wedges on top of all the snacks and sweets. I will say I was surprised that the bananas were a huge hit, saw several of the talents absolutely crush them.

I did not have an actual seat in the arena but with my pass, I could pretty much watch the event anywhere so for parts of the night, I stood to left of the stage and watched the show from there. At one point, I had to clear out because some of the action from the “Anarchy in the Arena” match was going to come that way. If you look real close in the screen shot below, you can see my drink I accidently left before quickly clearing out. Oops!

They also had all of the televisions in catering displaying the event but the other area I would watch some of the event from was a monitor that was setup in the back with chairs where others could sit and watch. This is where I saw Samantha Irvin watch her husband Ricochet defeat Mark Briscoe in an stretcher match among others that would come and go. This is also where legendary wrestler and current New Japan Pro Wrestling president Hiroshi Tanahashi would hang out at times. Through out the night I saw MJF, Kyle Fletcher, MVP come and pay their respects to him. Jeff Jarrett eventually found his way to Tanahashi and spoke for a few minutes. At one point, he took out his cell phone and asked me to take a photo of him with Tanahashi which was a pretty surreal experience, I just didn’t want to take a bad photo.

Touching on the Anarchy in the Arena match again, I got to watch the first 10 minutes or so out next to the stage before having to move. I was going return to catering to watch the match but got stopped as they were also filming in the area that you have to walk thru to get to catering. Well, I found myself near the entrance to stage in the back, I watched with on a pretty small monitor with a few staff members and eventually a whole crowd showed up which include Adam Cole, Jamie Hayter, Harley Cameron, Konosuke Takeshita, and someone who was wearing an orange hoodie and had a golf club. It was dark and I couldn’t tell who it was until they left and reappeared on the monitor and it ended up being a returning Hook who helped out Samoa Joe. We had to move again because they were going to drive in the ambulance and I found myself right next to the table that AEW president Tony Kahn was using to direct everything alongside Christopher Daniels.

Eventually we got to the last match of the night, the finale of the Owen Hart Foundation Cup Tournament. For this match, I stood pretty close to the ring as I wanted to witness what I was guessing was going to be the match of the night. Little did I know it will also be the match of the year. It was such a great night that felt like it went really fast even though I was there for 6 hours. A huge thank you to my buddy Chris for this amazing experience. I put together a quick Tiktok of some of the visuals of the night. Thanks for reading!