Before anyone asks, yes, the banner does indeed feature a promotional mugshot of the late Don S. Davis, who is perhaps best known for his role as General George Hammond in the sci-fi television series, Stargate SG-1. One of the characters on the show referred to him as “Hammond Of Texas.”
So now why am I featuring the late, great General Hammond on the banner for an AEW Pay-Per-View event from Texas?
Because I feel like it… and also fuck you.
So Summerslam is coming up… and it’s the first edition to go two-nights, which honestly doesn’t surprise me if they eventually do the same with Royal Rumble as well…. which wouldn’t be a bad idea – two nights, each headlined by a Rumble match… makes the most sense, actually. But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about AEW’s big All In PPV event that took place from Texas. (No go on their annual New Japan get-together… undecided on All Out… but we’ll eventually cover Slammiversary, even though it’s a NXT show disguised as a TNA show.)
Anyway, this is the other AEW PPV that I planned on watching this month – the other being this year’s Double Or Nothing PPV – and really, nothing else in the horizon seems to be on my radar unless they book a really amazing card that has me going, “Yes! That sound exciting! Shut up and take my goddamned money!”
To date, there hasn’t been an AEW show that has done that. Double Or Nothing wouldn’t have been a blip on my radar if it had been a show under any other name. Quite honestly, neither has All In. But both were special events.
AEW World Trios Champions The Opps (Samoa Joe, Shibata, and Hobbs) defeated Death Riders (Gabe Kidd, Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta) to retain the titles in the opening match… and then the Riders get their revenge by hurting Joe’s neck with a chair, thus preventing him from doing any run-ins for tonight’s main event. I’d imagine Joe would want to fuck off early rather than stick around for another eight hours because the man has better shit to do with his time, but yeah, let’s go with that. The opening match was fun stuff while it lasted.
MJF wins the Gauntlet Battle Royal that earns him a guaranteed World title shot. This is one of those matches where someone new comes in every minute or so, but the match could end at any moment before the entire compliment could come out. I think that after 30 minutes, anyone who scheduled to be involved in the match was involved and MJF ended up gettig the win because of course, he did. It’s one of those matches where stuff happens and I zone out after a while.
Dustin Rhodes defeated Daniel Garcia, Sammy Guevara, and Kyle Fletcher in a four-way match to win the vacant TNT championship, after previous champion Adam Cole was deemed uncleared to perform. (Turns out he had xxxx…. which sucks. Get well soon, AC.) Fun little match with some cool high spots and hey, Dustin finally winning a title in AEW was a long time coming. I’m sure some folks would’ve preferred one of the other guys to have won it. Fuck them. I’ll take Dustin getting a run with the TNT title any day of the week… and he being able to lay claim to a singles, tag, AND trios title all at the same time is something to run with.
Swerve Strickland & Will Ospreay defeated the Young Bucks to strip them of their EVP powers or something. If the Bucks had once, Swerve and Ospreay wouldn’t have been able to challenge for the AEW World title for ONE YEAR… at least they put a hard limit on it unlike some other guy who sword he’d never challenge for the title if he lost… and then go on to LOSE. Anyway, this was the usual amazing Will Ospreay match with the usual amazing Will Ospreay performance and Swerve somehow restraining himself from stabbing people with syringes and shit. Not bad.
ROH Women’s Champion Athena not only gets an AEW PPV payday by getting booked, but she wins the women’s version of the Gauntlet Battle Royal to earn a future Women’s title shot in the future. This almost but didn’t break 30 minutes in runtime, but came close. The lack of familiarity with some of the ladies in this match caused me to zone out a bit quicker, though I was happy to see Athena win the thing, because that means they’ll actually use her on the AEW television show that people are actually watch.
Please, don’t start. More people are watching AEW shows than they are a Ring Of Honor highlight reel, let alone a whole fucking show… but not that whole fucking show.
AEW World tag team champions The Hurt Syndicate defeated some tag team named Jet Speed (comprising Speedball Mike Bailey and Kevin Knight… I’m guessing that he’s the jet of this equation) and Christian Cage & Nick Wayne to retain the titles in a 20 minute snorefest. Hey, there were some cool moves, but you can only take so much of them if the ending is never in doubt, as was the case here. And then Nick Wayne and the Patriarchy turn on Christian because he was a terrible father, but then out comes Adam Copeland Rated R COPE to scare off the FTR guys and tell Christian to go find himself… a blue circle… to put around his face… oh wait.
This is obviously going to lead us to the eventual Cope and Cage vs. FTR match that will happen in Toronto at the end of August or something… or am I getting the dates wrong on these things?
AEW Women’s Champion “Timeless” Toni Storm ended the long national nightmare and defeated Mercedes Mone to retain the title. If you want to call this one of the best women’s matches of the year, by all means, go for it because it genuinely was one of the better matches on the show… and I’m not just saying that because Mone did a fucking job for once. Both ladies put on their best showing here and gave people a match worth remembering… now I’m almost tempted to watch that Evolution show to see if anything measures up.
AEW Continental Champion OKADA defeated AEW International World Big Gold Western States Heritage Champion Kenny Omega to win both titles and also carry around another belt. AEW sure loves its belts. Obviously, this isn’t going to measure up to the great Okada/Omega battles of New Japan that garnered it eleventy billion stars from Dave Meltzer (most of them too place in the Tokyo Dome, after all), but this was still a fine match… more of a tease of greatness than actual greatness. Part of it is Kenny not quite being there yet (injuries and all that) and part of it is Okada phoning it in somewhat (because if it worked for Shinsuke Nakamura in WWE…) Still, fun match for what it was. Hopefully, there’ll be a better one at a much smaller arena or something.
Hangman Page defeated AEW World Champion Jon Moxley in a Texas Deathmatch via submission due to be hung by chain left by Swerve to win the title and get that belt out of that stupid briefcase. The match is exactly what you expect it to be. There’s a fork being used to stab people in the head. There are bags, there are run-ins, there are surprise appearances from Bryan Danielson as well as the return of Darby Allin, back from climbing mount Everest and striking fear into the heart of Jon Moxley because not even he would do something that daring (or stupid – either one works). The finish where Swerve leaves behind a chain for Hangman – they both hashed out their differences before, but will never be best of friends – which Hangman uses to hang Mox on the ropes for the submission win and the title. Whatever you think of the content of the match, it’s not for everyone. But as far as I’m concerned, it was exactly the kind of match that it needed to be. It needed a Hangman to show a side of himself that he needed in a good long while, it gave Mox a fierce battle before the fall, and it gave us the first nail in finally bringing this Death Rider nonsense to an end… which I suspect will happen in two years time because Tony Khan believes in decompressive storytelling or something.
I will forever be critical of AEW’s piss-poor time management; five hour PPVs are a pain to sit through and I’ve hated it when WWE did it years ago. But the one thing that I cannot fault them for is that when it comes to delivery the goods on their major supercards, they deliver in spades. I have no qualms about calling All In Texas one of the best AEW shows that I’ve seen in years… and perhaps the first time that a show has kickstarted my interest in the weekly television product in years. Is it a perfect show? No. But is it one of the great wrestling cards of my lifetime? Pretty close.
So yeah… I don’t know what we’re doing next week… probably not Summerslam – I’d need time to digest that show… maybe Slammiversary? Who knows? We’ll see. Later.
dtm666 