There have been many games in 2023 that felt like they wouldn’t ever come out, thanks to all the delays that had been put onto them to ensure they were good. One such title was AEW Fight Forever, as the game had many issues in development, mainly with the ESRB, which didn’t appreciate the amount of blood they had in the game. However, things worked themselves out, and now the wrestling game will arrive on June 29th. On Sunday, All Elite Wrestling held their famous Double or Nothing PPV, and they used the game to highlight one of the key matches of that night.
The co-main event was the long-awaited “4 Pillars” matchup. The term references what current AEW World Champ MJF said about the four young men, all in their 20s, whom the company was truly built on in terms of the future. The pillars included MJF, Jungle Boy Jack Perry, Sammy Guevara, and Darby Allin.
He’s not wrong in that analysis. All four of these men were with AEW in the beginning and have long since proved themselves in the ring and have headlined PPVs and TV shows like Dynamite in one form or another. As a result, many see them as inevitable world champs, and many were pumped for the PPV fight this past Sunday.
As you’ll see in the game footage below, there’s plenty of things you can do in a fatal 4-way match. That includes picking the opponent you want to fight, doing tag team moves on a single foe, and more. Check out the footage below:
There’s plenty of irony with the video, as it ends with Jungle Boy, Sammy, and Darby all holding up the world title, but at the PPV, it was MJF that came out on top.
However, the match was easily one of the best that All Elite Wrestling has ever offered. Even the co-main event, Anarchy in the Arena, wasn’t a perfect match for how great the 4 Pillars title fight was. Some even consider the fight a “Match of the Year” contender, which is high praise.
Regardless, AEW Fight Forever has many people excited because it feels like a callback to the arcade-style wrestling games many people grew up on. It’s not about the visuals, which many people have called out over the past week, but about the gameplay and feeling like you’re in a true wrestling match.
We’ll find out next month just how well they accomplished that feel.
