BRM Reviews AEW All Out 2022 (I have A LOT to say, and some of it won't be what you're expecting)

All AEW Related Reviews and Discussions
Post Reply
User avatar
Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

BRM Reviews AEW All Out 2022 (I have A LOT to say, and some of it won't be what you're expecting)

Post by Big Red Machine » Sep 5th, '22, 12:28

AEW All Out 2022 (9/4/2022)- Chicago, IL

BUY-IN:
Yeah… the main show already has eleven matches. I’m not watching four more, squeezed into the space of one hour. And didn’t I see this Sammy & Conti vs. Ruby & Ortiz match a week ago?

I was doing something else with the pre-show on and the volume off. I saw someone jump the guardrail to save Hook from a post-match beat-down by 2.0. Why is this dude allowed to jump the guardrail?

MAIN SHOW:
CASINO LADDER MATCH FOR A FUTURE SHOT AT THE AEW WORLD TITLE: Wheeler YUTA vs. Rey Fenix (w/Alex Abrahantes) vs. Rush (w/Jose the Assistant) vs. Andrade el Idolo (also w/Jose the Assistant) vs. Claudio Castagnoli vs. Dante Martin vs. Penta el 0m (also w/Alex Abrahantes) vs. “the Joker”- no rating; good segment
Wrestlers are listed in their order of entry, because AEW still thinks this idea isn’t silly.
Claudio turned the ladder into some sort of contraption that was just a long and convoluted way for Andrade to get bumped to the floor. People took turns taking big bumps for a while and trying to climb up the ladder until a bunch of guys in black shirts, pants, and masks ran out. No security came out to try to stop this mob of mystery people from assaulting the wrestlers.
One of them climbed the ladder and pulled that stupid oversized casino chip down, then unmasked himself as Stokely Hathaway. The others then unmasked as well. Why wear masks if you’re just going to take them off? And doubly so when (if there were logic being applied here) you’d be a lot more likely to have security try to stop you if you were wearing a mask than you would without one, because all of these people are people who were allowed to be here!
The other people in the group were W. Morrissey, Gunn Club, Lee Moriarty, and Ethan Page.
This all happened before the Joker came out (to Sympathy for the Devil). He, too, was wearing a mask, which he kept on while walking to the ring. Stokely handed him the poker chip, and Justin Roberts told us that the winner of the match was “the Joker.” He teased unmasking himself, but then didn’t, and they all left. What does this gain him? AEW Management knows who the Joker is, so what’s to stop them (or anyone else who happened to know) from just spoiling this guy’s big surprise? And if he's not an AEW employee and has attacked the person who they were expecting to be the Joker, this doesn't help him, either, as the casino chip is merely symbolic, as opposed to the MITB briefcase, which contains a contract signed by management that the winner theoretically signs which entitles him or her to the title shot with the "any time of your choosing" stipulation.
Doing this kind of f*ck finish in a PPV match is the kind of thing that should only be done if you’re sure the thing you’re doing is really worth it. Doing it with a bunch of guys in masks jumping the barricade is… well… Russo-esque. If this plays out poorly, I think it will change a lot of people’s opinions of Tony Khan.
Coming back to this after having finished the show, I have to say that I do think it was worth it, and that with the exception of “why were the invaders wearing masks in the first place?” everything here checked out quite well.


TOURNAMENT FINAL TO CROWN THE FIRST-EVER AEW WORLD TRIOS CHAMPIONS: The Elite (w/Brandon Cutler & Michael Nakazawa) vs. Adam Page & the Dark Order (John Silver & Alex Reynolds)- 8.5/10
This match was both the best and worst of Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks. The positives were the action and athleticism. The pace of this match won’t be for everyone. It’s not my ideal, but it doesn’t bug me, either, unless I’ve seen too much of that already on a show.
The other big positive was the construction of the false finishes, pretty much all of which got me to bite on them. God bless them, several times during the match, they had me believing- just in the crucial split second between two and three, but that’s the time that really matters- that John Silver or even Alex Reynolds was going to pin Kenny Omega.
As for the worst… there was the terrible over-drama.
Do you all remember about four years ago when Matt Jackson’s back was constantly injured? Well, that’s back now, and we’re supposed to treat it as if this was an injury that has been ongoing the whole time, to the point where Schiavone said he was surprised Matt was even able to wrestle tonight… even though this hasn’t been an issue on TV at all. The Beaver Boys naturally started to work on Matt’s back… and f*cking Adam Page tells them not to.
IT’S A F*CKING PROFESSIONAL FIGHT, YOU MORON! You are a professional combat athlete, and so is Matt! If you have a problem with hurting someone on the other side of the ring from you- even if they’re your friend- you’re in the wrong business. Every single announcer thought Page was an idiot for doing this, and rightly so. This is the same kind of bullsh*t that ruined the Bullet Club Civil War storyline, and that ruined the Bucks’ turn on Jon Moxley to join Omega and Don Callis eighteen months ago.
Similarly, there are two other spots I need to call attention to. One was when we finally got the big face-off between Page and Omega again (after John Silver took it away from us in a spot I will talk about in a moment)… and Rick Knox picked that moment to decide to start enforcing the tag rules. The crowd, of course, booed this, but then popped huge when they each dragged their legal partner back to their corner and tagged themselves in. And that is exactly what the spot was designed to do. The psychology is sound, but the spot fails because in order to set it up they had to rely on a logical inconsistency (why is Knox enforcing this rule right now and only right now, when he ignored it for pretty much the rest of the match, both before and after?), thus making it feel artificial, and thus manipulative.
The other spot I want to talk about is the callback spot with the Buckshot Lariat. That’s the kind of thing that some people go nuts over, but in matches like these I find it frustrating. That’s the sort of thing that takes you from an A to a A+, but it doesn’t help if your logic isn’t already an A. It’s the equivalent of building a building and using the majority of your marble for ornate gargoyle carvings on the roof instead of pillars that will hold the building up (in addition to making the inside look prettier).
I think these moments are illustrative of the big problem with Kenny and the Bucks (and Cody, and Adam Page). You’ll often hear people refer to blood or the use of weapons or flips or finisher kickouts as “shortcuts,” and when they’re not earned by the story or the intensity of the match, and correctly punctuated with selling, that is true. Similarly, these spots are also shortcuts. They might be rooted in psychology rather than “aren’t I so tough/athletic?” but if they’re not earned by the story (by being artificial in the first case, or being ornamentation on a shoddy foundation in the second), they no different than the others: a spot designed to get a pop without being properly earned by the story.

I had one other big issue with this match, for which the blame seems to lie with the overall story of the build more than with the wrestlers, although the wrestlers themselves did things that certainly didn’t help matters (though it’s possible they were directed to do so by management).
This was the final of a tournament for a new championship. It was also- as Excalibur noted here, and as Page said in the segment where the Bucks tried to recruit him to be their partner- potentially a HUGE moment for the Beaver Boys because it would be their first championship in AEW. If this is such a big deal that their families flew in just in case they won, how about you let them cut a promo about it on TV at some point so that someone might actually get emotionally invested in the outcome?
On the other side, we have the Bucks, who got turned on by reDRagon and apologized to Adam Page, but they’re still assholes to Brandon Cutler and their long-awaited reunion with Kenny Omega comes with the caveat that not only was Omega himself last seen as a heel, but he is also still accompanied by his heel manager Don Callis... and yet they seemed to be telling a story designed to make us want to see Kenny succeed because he is coming to aid his friends even though his injuries haven’t fully healed. Am I supposed to root for these guys or not?
This match, unfortunately, not only offered no clues, but had moments that seemed to be constructed specifically to get in the way of what seemed like the more natural path of making people want to see the underdog Dark Order get the win and get their big moment.
For example, we got the big face-off between Page and Kenny and they did some spots, and then John Silver tagged himself in… and everyone booed because he was preventing us from seeing the big stars go at it. Everyone but me, of course, who looked at this situation, which came at most three minutes after Page’s aforementioned stopping the Bucks from working over Matt’s back, and thought that if I was John Silver (uch), I’d have done the exact same thing because I wouldn’t want Page in the ring at all against a former friend who has a bunch of preexisting injuries, because Page has just shown that he can go soft at a moment’s notice.
There were a few other spots designed to create dissension between Page and Dark Order as well, including the finish, which saw Page’s Buckshot Lariat accidentally hit Silver, allowing Omega to pin Silver for the win. The overarching story of this match was setting up a situation where there could be a major rift in this wonderful friendship between Adam Page and the Dark Order, and upon seeing this finish, the fans- who at one point were loudly chanting for f*cking ALEX REYNOLDS… all cheered. This championship match with a potential big moment for an undercard team on one side and someone overcoming injuries to help his friends in their hour of need on the other was not designed to make us want to see one of these sides win. If it was designed to make us want to see anything, it was a future singles match between Adam Page and Kenny Omega.


They pushed home the point that Omega has become the first person to ever hold the AEW World Title, the AEW World Tag Team Titles, and the AEW World Trios Titles. Before anyone calls this a Triple Crown, I’m going to start calling it being a Pyramid Champion, so that Triple Crown can be reserved for the traditional world title, tag titles, and secondary singles title.

AEW TBS TITLE MATCH: Jade Cargill(c) (w/the Baddies) vs. Athena- 5/10
Athena has new dumb wings. I assume this means she’s a horseman of Apocalypse now. Tony Schiavone says he likes the look, which is how you know it’s a bad look. Speaking of looks, Jade’s hair is a lot longer, and now it’s black. She also appears to have bathed in green paint earlier, so I guess this is some sort of She-Hulk cosplay.
Excalibur said that Stokely Hathaway was “conspicuous by his absence.” There had better be a damn good reason for Stokely’s absence, too, because even if he has his own group, dumping Jade as a client is just stupid. Or so I thought when I typed that sentence. But Stokely’s new boss is someone that it might well be worth dumping Jade for (and in Stokely’s mind, he probably thinks he can work with both of them... but then why be absent for Jade?).
Athena dominated Jade early and hit the O-Face, but the Baddies pulled her out of the ring at two. This happened right in front of the referee, who didn’t do sh*t. Athena did murder Leila Grey with a shotgun dropkick into the guardrail, though.
Other than that, this was a really great short match. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it was excellent for the 4:40 it got. Pretty much everything they did was a big move, but they did a great job of pacing it out and making every move count. It is a little disappointing to me that this far into her career, Jade still can’t go very long, but her promos and star-power are enough to justify keeping the belt on her until you have a babyface who you really believe in who you can make by having her be the one to finally beat Jade.

EARLIER TODAY, ALEX MARVEZ INTERVIEWED CM PUNK AS HE AND ACE STEEL AND PUNK’S DOG WERE ARRIVING AT THE BUILDING- odd
This was just Punk cutting a much lesser version of the promo he cut on Dynamite. Marvez addressed Punk as “CM,” like that was his first name. Excalibur drew attention to this, calling it a “very interesting choice,” and Taz said he had never heard anyone do that before. They’re trying to do something with this with Punk, but I can’t tell what it is. It’s such an odd thing to focus on that they must be trying to do something.

FTR & WARDLOW vs. THE MOTOR CITY MACHINE GUNS & JAY LETHAL (w/Sonjay Dutt & Satnam Singh)- 7.25/10
Sonjay was wearing a t-shirt making fun of Dax’s daughter’s medical issues and Dax’s promo about it. And, of course, Dax brought said kid out to the ramp, because PATHOS.
This was a good, long match. Cash was the babyface in peril, and he sold very well. Wardlow got the win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- hated it
The heels were going to attack the babyfaces, but Samoa Joe made his big return to make the save. For those wondering, the Joker was clearly too thin to be Joe. If this had ended here, it would have been fine, but instead we got Sonjay getting surrounded by the babyfaces so that Dax’s daughter could come out, take his pencil away, and break it, and then Dax could knock Sonjay out with a punch. Then the kid- like a total jerk (are we sure she’s really Dax’s daughter and not Wardlow’s?)- put her foot on Sonjay’s chest… and then the f*cking referee counted the pin.
First of all, I hate this kind of cheap pathos bullsh*t, and doubly so when there is a child involved. Then there is the putting the foot on the chest, which is a dick move in pretty much any context, especially when someone else did the work. It’s also absolutely not the sort of thing that an eight-year-old would do on their own… and it’s not even like there was a reason for it. There was no match going on. I could see an eight-year-old playfully diving on someone to pin them, but doing this made the whole thing come off like the rehearsed segment that it was. And to have a referee see this and be the one to go down and make a count? No. It’s the sort of thing a referee shouldn’t be involved in, especially with such a disrespectful cover. This sort of thing is just as phony as those “moments” WWE tries to create.

WILL HOBBS vs. RICKY STARKS- 4.5/10
This went a lot shorter than I was expecting. Hobbs worked the neck, Starks made a comeback, and then Hobbs hit his Spinebuster and won cleanly… and I think that was the right call. Starks is the babyfaces with an injury. He can work his way back up. For Hobbs, a loss to Starks here, so soon after his turn, would feel like it was defining him down; like he was no more than a stepping stone for Starks. That being said, I probably would have done this on TV instead of spending PPV time on it.

AEW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Swerve in Our Glory(c) vs. the Acclaimed (w/Billy Gunn)- 8.75/10
Bowens got to be the babyface in peril after his knee gave out, playing off of a promo from Rampage. The crowd had been into the Acclaimed at the beginning because of their stupid scissors thing, but once this injury story started, they stopped singing about scissoring and started reacting to things actually happening in the match... and it got MAGICAL.
Compare this to the trios title match to see the benefits of structuring a match to make us want to see one side win. The atmosphere here is noticeably different, and, from my end, while that match had me believing in just those crucial split seconds between two and three that one of the Beaver Boys might pin Kenny Omega, this match had me spending the second half of the match talking myself into believing in an outcome that at the beginning of the match I would have thought completely outlandish.* If the Acclaimed had won the belts tonight, that place would have absolutely erupted. I’ll go as far as to say that I think this pop would have rivaled the pops we got at the end of the night for Punk’s title win and for the reveal of the Joker.

*Points in favor of the Acclaimed winning that went through my head included the following:
1. You have a potential rematch down the line with new Stokely-rebuilt Gunn Club.
2. This can be used to add fuel to the issue between Private Party and Rush and Andrade by having Rush and Andrade get a title shot and being so confident that they can beat the team that beat the team that beat Private Party and win the titles that Private Party failed to win, thus creating more tension when they fail and Private Party make a comment about it.
3. It would bring focus back onto a team perceived as home-grown guys after there has been a lot of criticism over the past few months of focusing on guys like Punk, Lee & Strickland, Christian, Adam Cole, reDRgon, Athena, Jay Lethal, NJPW bring-ins, and (before Jeff’s issues) the Hardys.
4. A finish where Lee accidentally hit Strickland would let you start Strickland turning on Lee, which would justify Strickland’s continued dickish behavior even though he is supposed to be a babyface.
5. If you do the above, you’ve actually got a pattern that something bad has happened to every team that dropped the tag titles this year, either in their loss or soon afterwards (Fenix got injured in the title loss, Christian turned on Jurassic Express, Undisputed Era turned on the Bucks, and now Lee and Strickland will have broken up), making people wonder if something will happen to the Acclaimed when they eventually lose the titles as well. You see the kind of lengths this match had me going to in order to talk myself into believing that a title change was coming?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- grrrrr!
It comes time for the champs to show the Acclaimed the big show of respect… but instead of Bowens and Caster being on the receiving end of the scissors handshake, it’s f*cking BILLY GUNN front and center, taking the handshake. WHY?!

FOUR-WAY MATCH TO CROWN AN INTERIM AEW WOMEN’S WORLD CHAMPION: Toni Storm vs. Hikaru Shida vs. Jamie Hayter vs. Britt Baker (w/Rebel)- 6.75/10
They did stuff. There was a bit of a story with Baker and Hayter working together. The big spot came when Hayter had Toni pinned, but Britt pulled the referee out of the ring. Their argument allowed Toni to hit Hayter with a Strong Zero and Britt swooped in to steal the pin for an excellent nearfall. Toni eventually knocked them both out with DDTs and pinned Hayter for the win, so I guess we’ll finally get that turn.


CHRISTIAN CAGE vs. JUNGLE BOY (w/Luchasaurus)- no rating, bag segment
Luchasaurus turned on Jungle Boy during his entrance. He chokeslammed him off the ramp and slammed him through a table, then dumped him into the ring. Jungle Boy insisted on wrestling the match. He got hit with a spear but kicked out, then got hit with an Unprettier for the finish.
I said it when they first did it, and I’ll say it again: this turn is a mistake. Going back to it with the “I was just biding my time to turn on you again” BS is even worse. And the specifics of this situation, both with the specific characters involved and with the big-picture outlook, make it even worse.
AEW only has four PPVS a year. They are asking us to pay $50 for these PPVs, and want us to sit through about five hours of content, some of which was barely built up on TV (there is a reason I skipped the pre-show). To take one of the matches you have spent the most time building up and turn it into an angle just makes people feel like you’ve wasted their time.
Now let’s look at the specifics of the players involved. Luchasaurus turning on Jungle Boy is a terrible idea. I’ll just come out and say it: Luchasaurus is a f*ckig stupid name. It works in the context of being partners with someone called “Jungle Boy,” but other than that, it’s prohibitively stupid. And not only is it stupid, but it’s goofy, and as a result there is no heat to be gained from having a heel named “Luchasaurus” because the name is kind of amusing. What future does he have away from Jungle Boy?
He could be Christian’s enforcer, you say? Christian is already larger than most of the roster. He doesn’t need an enforcer, and especially not at the expense of Jungle Boy losing his large friend. If you wanted Christian to bring someone in to counteract Luchasaurus, that could work, but teaming him with Luchasaurus won’t.
But never mind Luchasaurus’ future. Let’s talk about Christian’s for a moment. Specifically, the fact that he really doesn’t need one. Christian Cage is almost forty-nine years old. In AEW, people who had been big parts of the TV just a few months ago like the Men of the Year, Lance Archer, Serena Deeb, Matt Hardy, and Shawn Spears, or people who are supposed to big up-and-coming stars like Dante Martin, Lee Moriarty, Anthony Ogogo, and Brian Pillman Jr. can’t get on TV. People who were big parts of the show before that (Dustin Rhodes, Nyla Rose, Frankie Kazarian) are barely even thought about. Hikaru Shida, one of the top stars in the women’s division, returned from a kayfabe injury, and it took an entire month for her to get to wrestle a televised match. Pac won a championship, and then was off TV for a month. On tonight’s pre-show, he defended that title against Kip Sabian, with whom he had been apparently feuding for quite a while, in a storyline that took place almost entirely off of TV. Anna Jay had a big heel turn, and has barely wrestled since. And this was during a period of time where CM Punk, MJF, Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe, Adam Cole, Bobby Fish, Kyle O’Reilly, Sting, Hikaru Shida, Thunder Rosa, Kris Statlander, Jeff Hardy, and Santana have all been off TV for various issues and injuries, some shoot and some worked (and that’s ignoring injuries to people lower on the card, like Mercedes Martinez, Darius Martin, etc). Bobby Fish just announced his intention to leave the company, despite having a ready-made main-event angle of Undisputed Era vs. the Elite lined up for whenever UE get healthy. With Triple H now running Creative in WWE, and with no Vince around to overrule him (and one of the two people who can overrule him being his wife), he won’t be the last.
This company simply cannot afford to spend more time on Christian Cage. Bringing him in to do this big storyline with Jungle Boy was a great move, but at this point they needed to end the story with him putting Jungle Boy over strong, and then no longer use him as a featured character. He can be a valuable member of the locker room and a fine heel gate-keeper for a bit (essentially the role Dustin Rhodes is in on the babyface side), but he is not the sort of person they need to be putting on TV very often. He’s the sort of person who should be in the ring working out with and teaching the likes of Jade Cargill, Satnam Singh, and Parker Boudreaux, or assigned to give feedback to people like Top Flight, Leyla Hirsch, Kris Statlander, Brock Anderson, Lee Johnson, Anna Jay, and Red Velvet. But he is not someone AEW can afford to be spending TV time on.

EDIT: In the time it took me to write this review, it came out that the reason we got a short match here is because Christian was injured. If that was the case, then it would have been better to just not do the match at all, and have Christian claim that he was injured? Don’t turn Luchasaurus just to give Jungle Boy a new opponent. Just bring someone else in as Christian’s hired gun until Christian is healthy (and if the plan was to turn Luchasaurus all along, then my criticisms in that area still apply. Actually, they apply either way, but I can be a little more forgiving, depending on how much notice Tony had about the injury).

One other thing I absolutely have to comment on is Excalibur exclaiming with shock that “Luchasaurus came from the opposite tunnel!” This is an excellent example of how to do art wrongly.
In kayfabe, what does that mean? The idea of separate locker rooms for babyfaces and heels makes sense if the idea is that it is done to keep people who are feuding with each other and likely to attack each other on sight apart. In that scenario, someone coming out of the “other” entrance (especially a babyface coming out of the heel entrance) not looking like they have just been in a fight is something an announcer should say with suspicion, not the way Excalibur does here, as if the action itself is some kind of declaration of having changed one’s morals. And, of course, that scenario only works if you don’t have one big, combined backstage area. Having separate locker rooms to prevent fights will hardly accomplish that goal if everyone is just allowed to roam around together in catering and makeup and everywhere else.
The idea of separate entrance tunnels for babyfaces and heels simply for the purpose of being an artistic indicator of allegiance is idiotic. First of all, how are you going to draw attention to the concept without explaining that “some wrestlers have chosen to come out through this entrance tunnel because they believe X,Y,Z and others have chosen to come out through the other tunnel because they believe the opposite?” It can’t be done. The separate locker rooms works because it creates an alternative explanation that is logical. It’s something being enforced by the promotion, not a value statement by the wrestlers.
That brings us to our next problem, which is that this idea of it being a value statement really doesn’t work because most heels see themselves as the babyface. In their mind, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, and they are doing what is necessary to ensure that they have more money to spend on what makes them happy. They see themselves spending money on private jets and limos, or a fourth mansion or a better gym, or even coke and hookers as no different than the babyface spending money to buy toys for orphans, or to feed their families, or on a relative’s medical bills. And some heels even do spend their money on those babyface things. That’s the essence of the “prizefighter” Kevin Owens character, and that’s why Wardlow came into MJF’s service in the first place. And if you try to justify it along the lines of a value statement about what rules they are wiling to break, that also fails when you have people like the BCC preaching that biting and going to the eyes and leaving holds in when the opponent is in the ropes are okay. Why is it cheating when MJF does it, but just “getting a competitive edge” or whatever when Bryan Danielson does it?
And, of course, there is the logic issue that if your goal is to surprisingly turn on someone, you’re giving yourself away when you walk out through the “heel” tunnel in order to do it, giving them some warning that they otherwise wouldn’t have had (especially if coming out from the same tunnel as them would also let you attack them from behind). The only way this sort of thing could work artistically is if you never actually call any attention to it on the air.


ALEX MARVEZ IS BACKSTAGE WITH DEATH TRIANGLE, BEST FRIENDS, AND DANHAUSEN- snore
Apparently OC bothered Pac after Pac’s match, so Tony Khan has booked a six-man tag. Danhausen was there because Tony Khan seems to hate me personally.

CHRIS JERICHO vs. BRYAN DANIELSON- 8/10
They had the guy who did Dragon’s entrance music it sing it live. I didn’t remember it having any sort of lyrics.
This was just a wonderful wrestling match. They didn’t do anything fancy. They just wrestled, went for their moves, and made sure it built well. It was certainly missing a kind of spark, but the fact that these two were able to have a match this good without that little je ne sais quoi is just a testament to how great they are as workers. Jericho won after a low blow and a Judas Effect. We were shown Daniel Garcia backstage, disappointed in Jericho. He didn’t join the rest of the Jericho Appreciation Society when they came out to celebrate with Jericho.

DARBY ALLIN, STING, & MIRO vs. THE HOUSE OF BLACK (w/Julia Hart)- 7/10
This was a great match with a bad finish. Said finish saw Sting spit mist into Malakai’s face, allowing Darby to roll him up with the Last Supper for the pin. Why are the babayfaces cheating? There was an interesting dynamic early on where Miro wouldn’t tag out. I wish they had focused on that more.

TONY SCHIAVONE’S INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL GARCIA IS INTERRUPTED BY CHRIS JERICHO- great
Jericho demanded to know why Garcia didn’t come out to celebrate with him. Garcia said that Jericho let him down by cheating. In retaliation, Jericho said that he and the JAS wouldn’t be at ringside for Garcia’s ROH Pure Title match on Dynamite.

AEW WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jon Moxley(c) vs. CM Punk- 8/10
Punk is wearing tights, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do before. He’s also wearing large boots, which appear to have extra padding built into them, presumably to protect his foot. Excellent.
I really could have done without that pointless brawl through the crowd, which seemingly only existed to flout the count-out rules. Other than that, this was awesome. There was lots of hate here, and Moxley was absolutely vicious in going after Punk’s injured foot… but babyface Punk persevered through the pain and a lot of blood loss to get the win and recapture the title.
I’m usually not a fan of short title reigns, but pro wrestling is, first and foremost, a storytelling art, and when something works for the story, that’s what you do, even if it would contradict the general principles of the best way to do things (this is NOT the same as violating rules of logic)… so long as you don’t find yourself doing this too often. The story that AEW told with Punk losing the belt to Moxley in the fashion he did, then getting this big pep talk from Ace Steel and coming back and beating Moxley to regain the title tells the story of Punk suffering this injury but coming back stronger in the end (even if he wasn’t stronger when he first came back). It also has the added bonus of legitimizing Moxley’s interim title reign, which avoids any future fuzziness on the question of who the first two-time champion was. In fact, the only negative here is the fact that Moxley becoming the first two-time AEW World Champion was completely lost in all of this.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- great
The lights went out, and a recording played of Tony Khan agreeing to put someone in the Casino Ladder match if that person would come back to AEW, ending a months-long unauthorized absence, and also Tony would give that person a lot of money. Obviously, this was MJF, though we got a bit more footage (including the “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing you people he didn’t exist” line from Punk’s heel turn promo at ROH Death Before Dishonor III, which I think MJF referenced earlier this year) before that was fully confirmed, and MJF came out to flip the crowd off for a while and then leave.
What I really want to talk about, though, is the recording of that phone call, and just how important it is to making this angle work. Tony’s framing of the decision to bring MJF back was that his absence was hurting the fans, and while MJF might not care about the fans, Tony does. This explains not just why Tony would bring MJF back, but also why he would stick him in a match for a title shot that he doesn’t deserve to be in, and do so in a way where he is at a big advantage (the others don’t know he’s coming, and he’ll be entering the match fresh when everyone else has been wrestling and getting hit with and/or falling off of ladders for a while) and MJF, being crafty, put together a plan to negate the possibility of the match ending before he could get in there, and which also doubled as a way to ensure that he would win. It also explained why Tony would be willing to do things like create this special recording and video for MJF and turn the lights out during someone else’s big moment to play the video, and even not out MJF as the Joker on Twitter after MJF cheated to win the Casino Ladder match and then didn’t even reveal himself afterwards.
Now knowing that this masked man is MJF, I also have to give Tony Khan credit for the group he has assembled around MJF. Other than Morrissey, who is in the limited role of being the heavy and doesn’t have to wrestle often, it’s a group of wrestlers with a lot of upside, but none of whom are in danger of being cheered by the crowd instead of the babyface (for the record, I’m saying that Morrissey doesn’t have much upside. I don’t think he is in danger of being cheered). Unfortunately, that brings me to the one rather foreboding negative to this segment: The crowd were all chanting for MJF. Against CM Punk. In Chicago.

This was an excellent show from AEW. It was a lot longer than it should have been, and essentially getting cheated out of three PPV-quality matches was frustrating, but at least for the Casino Ladder match, the payoff appears to have been worthwhile. This was the sort of show that leaves me with more faith in Tony Khan than I had going into it. We knew the wrestling would be good, but when the Joker stuff happened, I was dreading the direction it would go in, given Tony’s track-record, but he definitely delivered the needed details by the end, and was also justified in the booking of some matches that had people looking at the card a little funny (particularly the tag title match). It has been rare that I have come out of a show feeling more positive about Tony’s technical booking ability than I did going in (although I still don’t quite have faith in his judgement), so that’s a win for AEW.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Excalibur speculated (and Schiavone agreed, and then Callis admitted) that the compression tape and the almost screwing moves up that Kenny was doing in his first two matches back “was all a ruse.”
What would such a ruse get him? How would he benefit from it?
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests