AEW All In 2023: Proper PPV Review (Part 1: the Build Up)

Alright, so we’ve had all the niceties, I’ve given all you sick freaks a few thousand words and what it felt like to watch ‘The Biggest Event In Wrestling History™’ live in attendance, now let’s take a look at the actual show itself. Immediately, this means two things:

1. The photos are going to be a lot better. But, I dunno, lacking some of that charm, you know warra mean? Not as legitimate somehow? Like, sure, you’ve got your complex autofocus tracking and your high-ISO capabilities, but where’s the heart, y’know? Hey, Isa, if you’re reading this, you’re the real star. And, also:
2. There’s gonna be a lot more complaining. The Wembley show was an absolute triumph (as I write this intro, I still haven’t watched the PPV broadcast that I’m about to review), but most of the build-up, decsions and angles leading up to it were weak as The Weeknd covering that Skunk Anansie song for seven days straight. Shut up, that line worked perfectly. The card was borderline piss poor on paper, I would suggest that there were maybe (maybe) three matches that fit the historic hugeness of the event, and they were all rematches. OK, maybe four, but Grado v Jeff Jarrett was on the pre-show so I’m not counting it. Hey, I’m a wrestling fan, all we do is complain. If you’re ever forced to go undercover to infiltrate a terrorist group of fat, middle aged wresting fans, make sure you never say that you enjoy wrestling: it will blow your cover immediately.

In fact, I’ve written so many complaints, that I’ve had to split this post into two parts. Here, we’re getting general pre-show thoughts, then the events of Zero Hour before the main show began. Net, I’ll just review the matches, I promise… I kinda promise… and that post will come out over the weekend.

Because I don’t write about wrestling that much on a blog that mainly concerned with psychosexual fetishization of suicidal ideations music, so when I do I tend to write under the delusional idea that non wrestling fans might read it. Hence I often have to stop and explain what an ‘Irish Whip’, ‘Tope Suicida’ or ‘Singlet’ is. I’ll be forced to translate carny sentences such as ‘He ribbed the worker and their shizon with the gimmick before taking a bump himself, a total shoot’ into the proper English (‘He murdered his wife and their seven-year-old son before hanging himself at their residence in Fayetteville, Georgia’) to make sure the normies could keep up. Well, screw the normies: I’m preaching to the perverted in this post and assuming at least a base knowledge of AEW in this post. It’s going to get pretty scary, but we’ll all emerge from the other side as better people.

General Pre-Show Moans

*rubs hands* Oh boy, unrestricted complaining about the product I love before I even get to the show! This is what being a wrestling fan is all about!

Back in April, when AEW had Lovely Adam Cole (bay bay) announce that the young promotion would be coming to the UK for the first time and doing a show at Wembley Stadium, the reaction was unanimous: “Oh my God, how embarrassing. That sweet, sweet, stupid American has said Wembley Stadium when he obviously meant Wembley Arena. I better brace myself, the memes on Twitter* are going to be brutal…”. The swinging dick of the world’s Problematic Fave, WWE, had managed to get 62k+ (49’000 paid) fans into the Cardiff Arena in 2022. They had already announced they’d be staging a PPV in London that summer at the O2 Arena, which they sold 18k tickets for. Wembley Stadium holds 90’000. Sorry, I’ll say that again: Wembley Stadium holds ninety thousand. That’s nineTY. Not nineTEEN. Are you with me? The original, 2018 All In – which would directly lead to the formation of AEW – stemmed from a desire to prove that non-WWE wresting could sell 10’000 (ten thousand!) tickets for a show. The biggest crowd that AEW had ever done was just over 20’000 (twenty th… yeah, you get it). Wembley Arena holds 12’500, it would have been fine, Oh, Adam, why did you have to feed the trolls?

(*I’m just being historically accurate. You might not remember, but everyone’s favourite bigotry bottom feeder X was actually called ‘Twitter’ back in those days. I know, ‘Twitter’ doesn’t sound right does it? What does that even mean?? Anyway, remember to follow me on X)

But no, the crazy fuckers actually meant Wembley Stadium. Before tickets went on sale, a lot of AEW fans started speaking in caveats, barely supressing the underlying fear that this might possibly be embarrassing. If they just get 50’000, that would still be an amazing achievement. They don’t need to open the whole stadium, just let 30’000 fans into the lower parts of the stadium. 20’145 fans would still be a massive achievement, their biggest gate ever. Just use creative camera angles, maybe shroud the tens of thousands of empty seats in darkness? Don’t let the WWE fans know how we live!!

And for a pretty long time, attendances at AEW shows had been pretty poor, bordering on abysmal. Artistically*, it was also in a bit of a rut. The organisation had never really recovered from the toxic draining of a million dark, pus filled boils that was the All Out 2022 press conference, and had been aimlessly moving storyline pieces around since, seemingly just relying on the most talented wrestlers in the world to get them out of whatever lazy logical hole the haphazard booking had got them into**. In the company’s previous years, even when there were a few misses, you could at the very least say that, well, it’s still no way near as bad as that shite they’re pushing over on WWE. But this decline in quality coincided with the big swinging dick of the world’s Problematic Fave, WWE, crafting what may have been their hottest and most widely beloved storyline in maybe 20 years. What made that sudden upturn in quality even more poetically cruel, was that the epic tale of the Bloodline Saga was obviously leading to former AEW star (and founder) Cody Rhodes beating the champion Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania***. AEW had never been less hot, and could even arguably be less buzzing than the squillion dollar company run by one of the worst human beings on the planet. If they ever thought they could fill Wembley, now was not the time.

(*because this is art. It’s not a pantomime pretending to be a sport where actual adults pretend to be dinosaurs and aliens while play fighting each other. It’s art. Ever seen Takashi Murakami’s ‘In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow’? Well, it’s like that. But better

**but at least that obvious locker room cancer CM Punk was gone. Hmmm? What’s that you say?

***lol)

But those tickets sold. And sold big. Soon after tickets went on sale, us filthy denizens of the dirtiest sheets were hearing how this souped-up indie wrestling show had already sold forty, fifty, sixty thousand tickets. My friends and I had a maximum price that we were willing to pay for a ticket, but soon broke all of those rules as we became seriously anxious that this stupid fake fighting extravaganza, from a secondary company experiencing a major downturn in popularity, at Wembley freaking Stadium, would actually sell out (or at least sell out of tickets in seats within a kilometre of the centre circle).

AEW, in an obvious reference to WWE’s historic and continued marketing histrionics, soon started cheekily calling the show ‘The Biggest Event In Wrestling History’. It then later became clear that, in terms of paid attendance at least, they could maybe legitimately make that claim?? And all of these sales, save perhaps the last few thousand, happened before a single match was announced for the show. Tony Khan knew they’d be playing AEW’s biggest show ever for months, knew that it could potentially be the biggest attendance for wrestling ever – at least in Europe, possibly the world – he knew that they’d be motherfucking calling it ‘The Biggest Event in Wrestling History’, so nipples were rock hard with the anticipation of the sort of once in a lifetime classics that we were going to be served.

Back in May, I made this joke with a friend that I would be going to the show with:

…so maybe I jinxed it.

Maybe AEW were confident that the event itself didn’t need the extra razzle dazzle to succeed (which, fair enough, it didn’t); maybe they didn’t think it would make business sense to have some of their biggest matches on a show that they had no problems selling tickets for; maybe they just thought that the thrill of seeing some of the best wrestlers in the world in person for the first time would be enough of a thrill for the audience, whatever context they were presented in; maybe (ugh) they didn’t want to take too much away from All Out, the PPV in Chicago that was taking place the week afterwards, one the were struggling to sell tickets for and one that…

…nobody gave a flying fuck about (even before Punk was removed from the show due to “complications arising from strangulation“), but the card and the booking for All In was poor.

The first match announced was the headliner between MJF and Lovely Adam Cole (bay bay). Awesome, no notes. We’ll come back to it. We were then given FTR vs The Young Bucks, which is fair enough. The two best tag teams in the world – two best of the last decade??* – a match guaranteed to simply shit stars, and nobody’s complaining. Not a new match, but at least it would complete their AEW trilogy. Samoa Joe vs CM Punk is an obvious classic, one of the most important and influential feuds in wrestling history, who first clashed almost exactly 20 years before All In in front of 400 people at Sacred Heart University , Connecticut. The thrill of seeing two of the most important wrestlers of the 21st century in front of 80’000 people? Yeah, alright, sold. Even if it’s a match we’ve been able to see on free TV twice already in 2023. And we were getting Will fackin’ Osprey, bruv!! Sure, an absolutely odious human being, but the world’s best wrestler right now! And not only that, but we’re going to see him complete his historic trilogy against AEW legend Kenny Omeg… Hmmm? What’s that you say? Chris Jericho?? I mean… fine… I guess… Jericho – despite his undeniable influence and importance in wrestling history, despite him being a notable name in the industry for more than 30 years, despite him being so closely associated with some of the biggest wrestling movements of the last three decades – is kind of easy to mock as a bit of an egomaniacal tool with a MAGA wife. Oh, what’s that Chris? Your crappy band will also be playing live?? That’s such an amazing idea that everyone ese really wanted! In all seriousness, nobody doubted that the 87 year old Jericho was still talented enough to deliver a decent match, but to secure Osprey and have him in this match was like booking Herbie Hancock and then announcing that, instead of a piano, you’re going to ask him to play a cow bell. A pretty rusty cowbell. A cowbell that would want to come out first and play their own music. Oh, and this cowbell was also somehow involved in the January 6th riots.

(*I think you’d have to also consider the New Day, Usos, the Briscoe Brothers and – most importantly – Irn Jew. In all seriousness though, sadly one of those teams was definitely not going to make it onto the show. Come on, dude, ain’t no way Punk is letting Colt Cabana perform)

The rest of the matches? Meeeeeeeeeeh… Lot’s of multiperson affairs, which were obviously designed to get as many wrestlers as possible a payday (though if that were the case then many of the notable absences make even less sense), but just meant that fan favourite wrestlers such as Orange Cassidy, Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston were hidden away in matches when the crowd would much prefer them to be the main attraction. And then there’s Kenny Omega and Adam Page. The Cleaner and The Hangman. The central characters and main relationship of AEW not even given a) sole matches in their honour; b) privileged positions on the card; or c) any freaking angle or storyline at all. It’s a wider issue with AEW, but Omega and Page should always be a central concern, and their years long psychodrama needed to be one of the major selling points of the biggest show in the company’s history.

Oh. And only one woman’s match. Standard AEW problem. I’ll get more onto that later. Seriously, I might have to turn these two posts into a book, it’s probably going to be more words than ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ (and, that’s right, a lot better).

Admittedly, the injuries were unfortunate, even possibly tragic. Newcastle’s own Pac has been in AEW since day one, one of the best wrestlers in the world and his injury was so cruelly timed. Then there was Brian Danielson, whose injury denied so many people the chance to see the greatest wrester of his generation (and still one of the best in the world 24 years after his debut) in the flesh for the first time. The biggest loss, however, was Jamie Hayter. The Southampton born 28 year old was fast becoming one of the most popular wrestlers on the roster, has convinced a lot of people that this one is going to be the one that saves AEW’s women’s division, would have been guaranteed a nuclear response from all 80’000 fans, and would have not been a bad choice to headline the entire event as a real statement of intent of how seriously the company is now going to take its women’s division. I don’t deny that this all…

…sucks, and would have obviously harmed the boking of the show to lose such central characters.

But, at the same time: fuck that. You’ve lost three big wrestlers. You still have an embarrassment of riches on that roster, you still have some of the most talented performers to ever work out how to get to a wrestling show, you also have the ability to book and hype up matches. Which, y’know, is kind of your job?

Let’s look at MJF vs Lovely Adam Cole (bay bay)/LACBB as an example. When the feud first began in June, a friend wondered to me if this was the match that we’d be getting at All In. I kind of pooh-poohed it, because, as great and as popular as these two wrestlers are/were, that feud definitely didn’t feel anywhere big enough to be at the company’s biggest ever show:

First of all, ‘lol’ to the “AEW will want more first time matches” take.

Secondly, what AEW then did in the next two and a half months was actually book and plan an amazing angle between the two, putting them in a tag team against their will that eventually blossomed into a genuine friendship. This became the biggest angle in wrestling, selling tons of incredibly dumb merch and managing to make moves as basic as a double clothesline more over and appreciated than a Canadian Destroyer from the top rope through a flaming table covered in thumb tacks (wrestling fans are so fucking weird). By the time the match was announced in early August, nobody doubted that it was big enough to headline Wembley, because the wrestlers had made it big enough to headline Wembley. This is true for all great wrestling angles – when Tommy Dreamer wrestled Raven in a Loser Leaves Town match in 1997 it would have felt like it could headline Wembley Stadium, even as it played out to 1’250 people – and here’s an excuse to actually build toward the biggest show ever. Maybe this is all down to the genius of MJF (or LACBB?). If so, get that man on your booking committee, because all the other match’s angles – if they existed at all – were a broken freezer dribbling out onto the kitchen floor in comparison to this build.

OK, 2’600 words of complaints. Shall I get to the actual show now?

The Pre-Show… Wait… I Called My Moans Previous to the Event ‘Pre-Show’ As Well! This Might Get Confusing. OK, This is for the ‘Zero Hour’ Thing. You Know What That Means? It’s What AEW Call the Pre-Show. Understand?

Yeah, I didn’t watch this again. Sorry, but I’m really conscious of how long this is taking me to write! There are a couple of incidents that I wanted to comment on.

Firstly, Better Than You Bay Bay winning the the ROH tag titles was completely unexpected, and essentially contradicted literally everyone’s predictions about what was going to happen in the main event. Some people had MJF turning on LACBB, some people had LACBB turning on MJF, but every prediction started with some sort of miscommunication or sly dirty tactic leading to them losing their ROH tag team match in the pre-show. Them winning was completely unexpected, but rather than messing up the carefully crafted narrative for a quick swerve, it only increased the intrigue for the main event. There was one overarching feeling though: what? So they’re going to be on Ring of Honor now?? Fuck that. Seriously, I actually pay for the ROH streaming service and I still don’t watch it.

Next? Oooh-hoo-hoo! Some-a spicy meatballs! Do you think it’s tea time? Because I’m ready for some tea.

Bit of background: CM Punk had some backstage drama* with Jack Perry a couple of weeks back on an episode of Collision. Perry wanted to do a spot using real glass. Punk thought Perry was… trying to hurt himself so he could get the next week off…? I dunno, let’s not try and understand Punk’s brain, that guy’s head is like a Tesla’s oscillator powered by angry bees and meat sandwiches. Anyway, Punk made it clear that it was not the kind of thing they did on ‘his’ show, and that he should take such antics back to Wednesdays (Dynamite). So anyway, Jack Perry was fighting Hook in the All In pre-show, there was a spot involving his car, and…

(*is it even necessary to write the second part of that? If I just wrote ‘CM Punk’ would your brain automatically follow it with ‘had some backstage drama’? If you type ‘CM Punk’ into your phone the next suggested words would be ‘punched’, ‘chided’ or ‘moaned’. Never change, Chick Magnet Phil, you’re a fucking psychopath and I love you)

lololololololololololololooooooooool!

Firstly, Perry can get rid of that dumb and basic Beethoven’s Fifth entrance theme, as he so obviously has a new song

Secondly…

…

…

…mate, what are you doing? CM Punk has the thinnest skin in the world. He once punched a man in the back of the head for ordering a thin crust pizza, which he took as a massive slight to Chicago. Steve Lombardi once tried telling him a knock knock joke and Punk kicked him straight in the dick, asking “Who the fuck gave you my address? How dare you knock on my door, you mid card motherfucker”. I once said to a friend that punk was overrated, and was actually a far less important social movement than rave was in the 80s and 90s. Two days later, knock on my door: it’s CM Punk! He slapped me across the face, called me the F slur, and ran off. I was talking about the musical genre, Phil! And how did you hear me?! He is widely known as

and what’s more, Jack, you’re smaller than him! And that means he’s more likely to go after you! Because he’s a fucking bully!

Perry probably should have left the arena as soon as possible before Punk sees him and… Nope! Punk was in the next match! He was waiting backstage to go on when Perry was walking back from his match! They ‘exchanged words’! They ‘got physical’! Punk apparently choked Perry! They were both later suspended! Jesus fucking Christ, man!

Seriously, you could make the argument that maybe Perry shouldn’t have made the statement without letting Punk know first. However, you can also see how dumb that looks written down. It’s the one thing that Perry has done as a heel that actually makes his character interesting, it built up a potential future feud with Punk that suddenly people would be extremely interested in seeing, it was funny while being essentially harmless. Most compellingly – and this is very important – this is bullshit fake fighting and Punk is acting like Perry just bummed Larry to death live on the Art of Wrestling podcast. You’re forty four years old, man! Has your skin not yet matured to the thickness of cigarette paper? Have your balls not grown larger than a couple of limply dangling cranberries? Bright red from all that impotent rage at anyone you think has crossed you? The fuck is wrong with you??

So anyway, Punk strangles a motherfucker, then casually walks on stage and has maybe the best match of the night.

Part 2 coming soon (still haven’t actually watched the thing)