All Out 2024 has become one of the more controversial AEW PPVs in recent memory and for once, none of that has to do with backstage drama.
Anyway, I finally got around to seeing this show and yes, I have plenty to say about the proceedings.
MJF defeated Daniel Garcia . MJF offers a handshake to Garcia, who goes for it before managing to catch MJF’s low-kicking foot and offering a kick to the balls of his own and following up with a piledriver that would put MJF – the guy who won the match, remember – out of action for months while giving us little reason to care about Garcia afterwards because he’s a geek who lost to MJF. I mean, listen, the match was fine and all. It was a good opener, but you’d figured after returning from injury, Garcia would gain a bit of revenge via a proper win over MJF. I guess not.
AEW Tag-Team Champions The Young Bucks defeated Claudio and Wheeler Yuta to retain the tag titles. Perfectly acceptable tag match, but one where the end result was never in doubt. Nobody believed that the Bucks were losing their titles and this was just a match to fill time. They’d eventually lose the titles to Private Party at a later show, who’d then lose the titles over to Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley… you know, real stars and shit.
AEW International champion Will Ospreay defeated that no-good rat bastard PAC to retain the title… sorry, I can only pull off the PAC gimmick so many times before I run out of juice. This was a Will Ospreay match that will no doubt get eleventy-billion stars from the Wrestling Observer because they have a hard-on for the guy and yes, this was very entertaining and all. Opsreay is fun to watch and it’s nice to see PAC show off some good stuff here and there. Match of the year candidate? That’s somebody else’s hyperbole to tout. I just watch the thing and was entertained by it. That’s all I want.
Willow Nightingale defeated Kris Statlander in a pretty brutal street fight… though, really, calling this “pretty brutal” in hindsight of the entire show is probably overselling it considering the only really brutal thing about this match were the overused bag of thumb tacks. And when people are shrugging or rolling their eyes over thumb tacks, it’s time to retire that spot. That said, I actually quite enjoyed this. Clearly, Willow and Statlander had a tough act to follow, but the crowd was into it and the match itself was a fine piece of business that also kept me thoroughly entertained. These two work well together; I’d like to see them fight forever until I eventually get bored with it. It’s just too bad that you had a “banger” of a street fight with these two fine talents and by the end of the show, it’s all but forgotten. A shame; these two deserved a better spotlight.
AEW Continental champion OKADA defeated three guys who don’t matter to retain the title in a four-way. Not much to say here, there were some spots here, but it’s Okada in a four-way match that he sure as shit ain’t losing. Never really into this one.
TBS Champion Mercedes Mone defeated Hikaru Shida in a near-seventeen minute match that was eighteen minutes too long to retain the title. Mone’s usual heavy, Kamille, was banned from ringside, but I doubt it would’ve mattered much because this was dreadful to watch. It looked less like a fight and more like two women stumbling over a routine and not knowing their pre-determined actions. It’s even more painful because Shida is usually capable of much better than this and Mercedes – once considered one of the Horsewomen of NXT – SHOULD be better than this. Something didn’t click here, the crowd couldn’t give two fucks if they had ’em, and it was just miserable. Almost as bad as Mercedes’ new finish, which still looks like ass. Maybe if this had been the first women’s match of the night and then you put Willow/Statlander on here… but then again…
AEW World Champion Bryan Danielson defeated Jack Perry to retain the title in a good match where the end result was never in doubt. Despite AEW’s vain attempts at turning Jack Perry into a top heel in the promotion, nobody bought him as a threat to Danielson’s title.
Then Danielson gets attacked by Luchasaurus/Killswitch/whatever the wrestling dinosaur’s name is this week so we can get the eventual Christian Cage title shot cash in before he’s cut off by Moxley and Claudio, who embrace Danielson for a bit before eventually turning on him, with Mox going so for as to stuff Bryan’s face in a plastic bag to suffocate him. This was apparently a controversial segment among folks. I didn’t have an issue with the bag being used – it’s been done before and honestly, it’s no more brutal than some of the other stuff I’ve seen in AEW alone. It does say something that I completely forgot about this bit until it played on my screen recently, so in a way, it feels like a bit of a waste.
And in the main event, Hangman Adam Page defeated Swerve Strickland in an Unsanctioned Lights Out Steel Cage match. Back when I did the DTM-Cast, I had someone ask what my thoughts were on the excessive violence in this match specifically. I had a rather lengthy response to that and it went something like this:
“Now… about the Swerve/Hangman match… I didn’t see the show… I’ve read reviews… I may have seen one or two clips… including one involving a needle that… yeah, no thanks… no buys. Fuck knows what else they did there. Whether you thought they went far with that match… that’s a matter of opinion and from what I’ve read… I’d probably skip that one to be honest with you. I wouldn’t want anything to do with that match if I were to watch the PPV at some point and I’d imagine… eh…
“That having been said… did anyone watch the last Swerve/Hangman match before this one? AEW Full Gear 2023 – Texas Deathmatch – it involved some drinking of the blood or something to that effect? The ruckus that caused online… and what did I wrote about it when I did my musings back in July? Hold on…
“Swerve Strickland defeated Hangman Page in a Texas Death Match. How sad is it that the only really good matches on this show involve copious amounts of blood? There’s some drinking of the crimson liquid that grossed some people out but was approved by AEW higher ups because they book for the sickos. (I’m not saying out as a slight; Tony Khan admitted that much on the Twitters because he’s a Twit at this point.)”
“I also called that match a highlight on the show, which was a largely meandering show by AEW standards… but yeah, that was a very polarizing match that I somehow had the stomach to sit through and I’m not much of a deathmatch connoseur or anything like that; you’ll never have me watch CZW, XPW, GCW deathmatch things or whatever. Don’t care for that shit, but other than the blood drinking, I survived it and that made it good, I guess… overly generous, probably… but they had that match and they had the online reaction that followed and what do they do?
“They get booked in an Unsanctioned Lights Out Steel Cage Match, which means anything goes… and so if you’ve seen the match that they had before this one, did you REALLY think that this was going to be scaled back? Did you honestly think that this wouldn’t go farther than the last one did? I don’t ask this to troll or mock anyone, this is a genuine question I’m asking. What impression did you get after that match and also after the last angle that played out in the go-home show – the one where Hangman Page BURNS DOWN Swerve’s childhood home that they showed a video online of him buying and it was a nice, touching moment. Ah, Swerve, good on him. He deserved it… and I’m watching this thinking… yeah, that was a colossal waste of money… and sure enough…
“So yeah, after THAT went down on the Go Home show for All Out… no shit they weren’t going to hold anything back. What were they going to do? Have a totally calm and by the numbers wrestling match that’s fun for the whole family? No, they’re going to fucking murder each other because they hate their fucking guts. And you know what? THEY SHOULD BE TRYING TO KILL EACH OTHER, ESPECIALLY IN AN UNSANCTIONED MATCH WHERE ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING GOES… I’ve seen so-called grudge matches in WWE involving home invasions and things of that nature and they get resolved in straight wrestling matches… and THEY FUCKING SUCKED. Seth vs. Ambrose had a grudge match – that sucked. Miz and Bray Wyatt had a grudge match – that sucked. HHH and Randy Orton had a grudge match in the main event of Wrestlemania 25 and it FUCKING SUCKED. Now try to imagine going from an angle involves your HOUSE getting BURNED TO A FUCKING CRISP by your opponent at the next PPV and you’re having to wrestle him in a straight wrestling match… it’s fucking ridiculous and totally unbelievable. Doesn’t matter if there’s precedence; it’s still fucking stupid.
“So yes, after that Full Gear Death Match where blood was spilled and then consumed and especially after that go-home angle, I expected this match to go even farther and I’m not even following the product on a regular basis these days. To anyone who regularly watches AEW, follows all the social media stuff, buys all the PPVs, keeping up with all the stories and all that… when you heard these two were going to have an UNSANCTIONED match, did you really think that they were going to scale things back? And even if this was your first exposure to AEW – you never watched a single show, you heard about it through word of mouth, you’re largely ignorant to the product and you’re bringing the whole family to the show… early on, you saw what I hear was a pretty hard-hitting street fight between Willow Nightingale and Kris Statlander. I heard they hit that one out of the park, especially following an Ospreay match. And then later on, you saw a man get suffocated in a plastic bag and some people found that disturbing. At that point, if you left the show after the bag, that’s fine… but if you stuck around for the unsanctioned match and you thought it wasn’t going to be as bad… yeah, I don’t know what to tell you.
“Anyway, with all that out of the way, the question of whether they went too far with some of the spots in the match… it’s a valid question and really, that’s a matter of your mileage may vary. You may be fine with some of it, you may be fine with all of it, or you might be appalled by the whole thing and never want anything to do with AEW. Totally understandable. And again, I’m only reading bits about the match and I’m already feeling a bit squemish about the match… but you also have to understand the context and the background behind this match. And this is something that AEW needs to do a better job with sometimes. We mock WWE for their overly long video packages hyping up each of their matches and feuds, but at the very least, they serve a purpose in bringing people up to speed. If you had a recap of everything that happened that led to this match, you’d understand why things would go far.”
Anyway, that was how I felt about the match BEFORE I watched it.
Now that I have watched it… I can safely say that this match didn’t work for me. Maybe the content was a little farther than I would’ve liked. Maybe the excess was pushing things into the realm of parody. Whatever the case, I was not a fan of this match and while I don’t regret watching it and can pat myself on the back for sitting through the whole thing, I have no qualms about never seeing this match again for as long as I lived. With that said, do I take back what I said about this match months ago?
No.
The match didn’t work for me, but I understood why it went this way. Did it need to go as far as it did? Probably not, but given the context of the match and what it was following in terms of the feud’s story, I knew that it wasn’t going to be for the faint of heart. The fact that this was unsanctioned and anything goes – I expected this to go farther than their fully sanctioned Full Gear match. To think otherwise would be foolish.
All Out would prove to be a somewhat polarizing show and for what it’s worth, I didn’t think it was that bad of a show. There were some good stuff in the early half of the show and the latter end certainly appealed to a segment of the sickos that Tony Khan admits to book for, but as a whole… eh… doesn’t work for me, brother.
Now I had already seen Wrestledream earlier this year and wrote about it, but delayed it because he who shall not be named did a thing and so I delayed that musings for a future date. That future date is next week.
Later.
dtm666 