AEW struggled to find its identity after the ugly breakup with CM Punk in 2023.
The company’s 2024, in particular, felt like a lost year – creatively, certainly, and with marked declines at the box office and in the TV numbers.
If ever a wrestling company needed a pay-per-view to be a home run, it was AEW and its “All In: Texas” show, which went a record six hours on Saturday afternoon and into the evening, and ended with the crowning of a new world champ, “Hangman” Adam Page, who defeated four-time AEW champ Jon Moxley just before 9 p.m. ET, side-by-side with the end of the first hour of WWE’s counterprogrammed “Saturday Night’s Main Event” show.
ICYMI
“All In” also featured the first match in seven years between future Hall of Famers Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, a banger of a women’s title match between Toni Storm and the unbeaten Mercedes Mone, and the surprise returns of Adam Copeland and Bryan Danielson, among much else.
Dustin Rhodes, at the age of 56, is a singles champ, with an upset win in a four-way match for the TNT title.
Athena, after a convincing win over former AEW champ Thunder Rosa at Friday’s “Supercard of Honor” ROH pay-per-view, is the new #1 contender for the women’s title, with her win in a gauntlet match.
There’s so much to unpack from what we saw on Saturday.
I’m going to try here to forecast where things are headed post-“All In.”
World title picture: It starts with the Cowboy
They tried to sell us, a couple of months back, after “Double or Nothing,” that Tony Khan was undecided until almost the last minute on who would win the final of the Owen Hart Tournament between Page and Will Ospreay, with the stipulation that the winner would get the shot at Moxley at “All In.”
There’s no way that could have been true.
Page had to be the guy to take down Moxley, given how things had gone down with his title loss to Punk at “Double or Nothing” in 2022, and the fallout from that – Page’s shoot trash-talking of Punk in the leadup to the title loss being a factor in the backstage brawl after the 2022 “All Out” that was a precursor to the Punk-Jack Perry brawl moments before the opening match on the main card at “All In” in 2023 that led to Punk’s dismissal a week later.
Khan, as the head booker, has been patiently building up a series of contenders to Page over the past few months, with what seemed like non sequitur backstage interactions with Page and MJF, who won the men’s gauntlet match for the #1 contender spot on Saturday, and the duo of Ospreay and former AEW champ Swerve Strickland, Page’s blood rival, who played a pivotal role in the “Bloodline Rules”-style finish in the main event on Saturday.
Darby Allin also played a role in Page’s win as one of the multiple run-ins – in his case, rappelling from the roof of Globe Life Field, after the big screen showed us the promo that he had the mind to cut on Moxley from the summit of Mount Everest.
Allin and Moxley are destined for a sidebar feud, but we can presume that Allin will be a player in the world title mix after that one wraps.
MJF, for his part, has some unfinished business to resolve with Mark Briscoe, so I don’t expect him to be cashing in the #1 contender contract anytime soon
I really don’t have a handle on who Page’s first dance partner is going to be. It might make sense to start his second world title reign low-key, with his first PPV opponent being somebody from outside the main group of contenders who wins a match in a battle royal or similar gimmick match, before we get into the bigger names.
Women’s title picture: How about that swerve?
I assumed Mone would be booked to win, given her lengthy unbeaten streak, so the move to put Storm over caught me by surprise.
Looking back, the booking that put Athena over in the gauntlet match for the #1 contender spot earlier in the show should have made it obvious that Storm was going to get the win in the women’s main event.
Athena is edging ever closer to the 1,000-day mark as the “Forever Champ” in Ring of Honor, so giving her the #1 contender spot for a program with Storm, the four-time AEW world champ, is a logical next big-money match on the women’s side.
I hope Khan gives this one time to breathe, because I don’t know where you go next, after Storm-Athena, unless we get a return from Britt Baker, which, please, right?
Tag teams: FTR vs. Edge & Christian, ASAP
The Hurt Syndicate is The Road Warriors at this point – it’s time to get the belts off them, because it’s not logical that anyone could ever legitimately beat them, and that makes it hard to book for them as the champs.
Khan seems to be moving toward having the Hurts turning face to lose to FTR, with the wise move by Khan to have Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler on commentary for the triple-threat tag title match on Saturday to give them mic time to put themselves over as the #1 contenders.
The post-match angle that had Nick Wayne finally turn on Christian Cage, with Adam Copeland making the save, edges (see what I did there?) us closer to a Cage-Copeland reunion, which, again, please, Tony, give it time to breathe.
I say that because, we need an FTR vs. Edge & Christian feud (Khan needs to figure out how to get the rights to the name Edge for Copeland; a check with a bunch of zeroes to TKO should do the trick) that plays out like the FTR-Briscoes trilogy from 2022 that took eight months to come to a conclusion.
The way to book this one would be to start with FTR winning the belts from the Hurts, as Copeland and Cage slowly rebuild their broken friendship.
Don’t start out with the match that we all want to see – TLC.
Instead, the first match in the series needs to be a conventional tag match, with FTR getting the win with a heavy dose of f**kery involved.
Match 2 is a no-DQ match, with Copeland and Cage going over.
Then we get to the finale, the TLC match, and if you can book the Rogers Centre in Toronto for next summer’s “All In,” by all means, because you will put 60,000 butts in seats for this one.
Quick hits
-
Mark Briscoe vs. MJF. Photo: AEW I loved the booking that had MJF winning the gauntlet match after Briscoe used the Jay Driller on Roderick Strong. Classic f**kery. … I’ve also been a fan of Briscoe taking a more serious tone in his promos since the Talky-Talk with MJF. He’s good at the comedy stuff, but he’s so much better as the ass-kicking chicken farmer.
- I didn’t mind not putting the TNT belt on Kyle Fletcher, with the swerve to put the title on Dustin Rhodes, following the awful news that Adam Cole is back on the shelf with another concussion. Fletcher can benefit from having to chase Rhodes for a month or two before earning his first AEW singles title.
- For all the criticism that Matt and Nick Jackson get, they do business when business needs to be done. The Founding Fathers bit was over-the-top annoying, but it was supposed to be over-the-top annoying, to make the payoff that we got Saturday night, with their loss to Ospreay and Strickland, which strips them of their kayfabe EVP status, that much more satisfying. Now they get a few months off, to, as they say in the wrestling business, go learn a new hold.
-
Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada Photo: AEW Omega-Okada V wasn’t on a par, athletically, with any of the first four, but that was to be expected – both guys are seven years older than they were when they were last regularly mixing it up in New Japan. I really liked the psychology in Saturday’s match, with Okada working Omega’s core, a nod to Omega’s real-life issues stemming from the diverticulitis diagnosis in 2023 that nearly ended his career, and Omega working Okada’s neck and shoulders, a throwback to their earlier matches. … Okada’s win puts their series at 2-2-1. Cue the “one more time!” chant.
- Go back and watch the “Supercard of Honor” main event between ROH champ Bandido and Konosuke Takeshita. Based on what we saw there, I want to see more Bandido on AEW weekly TV.
Support AFP
Share
Chris Graham
