AEW All Out (2021)
Results & Afterthoughts

I watched this match on the Buy-In but I can't say that I necessarily cared enough to garner an opinion on it. It's more stupidity with the Hardy Family Office against The Best Friends with Wheeler Yuta. I would love to know the story behind Yuta joining the Best Friends, but I don't care enough to dig through episodes of Being The Elite or episodes of AEW Dark/AEW Dark: Elevation to find out. That dude really has been around over the past year, from Ring of Honor's Pure Title Tournament, to a WWE tryout (where they passed on signing him), to now currently in AEW. He really impressed me in ROH's Pure title tournament last year and I honestly think it's beneath him to be wasting his talents as part of The Best Friends. You can't tell me that you couldn't book this guy to be on a tear as a singles competitor instead of lumping him into yet another faction/stable.

This match was everything that we've come to expect from these multi-man matches in AEW: all of the dives with everyone clustered and hugging together at ringside, multi-man combination spots without any tagging in and out, the back slap tags like they don't know how to work a proper tag team match, etc. I will give them credit for Jungle Boy FINALLY getting the win on a show that's not Dark or Dark: Elevation as I was fed up of seeing him be the one who eats the losing fall on Dynamite or Rampage. I will definitely applaud this match for that at least.

The post-match attack where we saw the return of The Butcher joining in with the rest of the HFO to lay waste to Orange Cassidy didn't make a lick of goddamn sense to me at all. Why did all of the babyfaces LEAVE to go to the back, knowing that OC was still in there, wait a few minutes, and THEN came back to help him from getting his ass kicked? This company does these post-match attacks and brawls so bad to the point that it's a parody of a fight instead of anything close to realism.

AEW TNT Championship Match

Miro (c) def. Eddie Kingston

This was definitely the best match both of these guys' AEW careers. Kingston paided to his strengths with his roughneck/brawler style but when he tried to play power versus power with Miro that's where he fucked up. Miro had the endurance and much more reserves of power to dig into to keep him into the fight. Kingston lasted a lot longer than I gave him credit that would though.

The referee botched the near-fall where he was putting the exposed turnbuckle back on in the corner while Kingston hit a spinning back fist followed by his finisher, but only got a two count to the chagrin of the live crowd. The referee OBVIOUSLY was stalling and completely killed the drama of that near-fall.

The finish saw the referee getting in the way of Miro running into the exposed turnbuckle with Miro using the distraction to nail a low blow outside of the official's visibility range. This allowed Miro to connect with several follow-up strikes before picking up the three count.

This wasn't a bad match to start things off and I honestly wouldn't mind seeing them have another match down the road with Kingston picking up the win.

Minoru Sizuki is here to kick the forbidden door right on down.

Steel Cage Match for AEW World Tag Team Championships

Lucha Bros. def. Young Bucks (c)

After Fenix ate the pin on Rampage two nights ago, I had a little hope that AEW would make the right decision to put the belts on the Lucha Bros. They have been denied these titles far too many times for my taste over the last two years. Then they had this amazing entrance for this match like it was WrestleMania and I can totally blame WWE for conditioning my mindset to think that they were losing after AEW went all out (no pun intended) on their entrance here. Boy was I glad to be wrong though.

This match being under tornado tag team rules played to both teams' strengths as they didn't have to worry about tagging in and out and it allowed them to consistently keep things moving. That was to this match's benefit and it's detriment at times. These teams were doing very little selling early on and I was scared that they would completely burn out this crowd at this point with all of the high spots, but to both teams' credit, they kept the crowd into this from bell to bell.

There were a lot of moments where I was convinced that AEW were going to be stupid enough to have the Bucks go over from how hot this crowd was for the Lucha Bros to overthrow them. I was glad to be wrong, but boy I could have done with the sneaker with the thumbtacks glued all over the bottom. This is already a steel cage match. It's like putting a hat on a hat on a match type that's already guaranteed to get some color (read: blood) from the combatants involved. I've been saying it since Lucha Underground but the things that Fenix can do in that ring in terms of aerial athleticism is nothing short of amazing.

I would have to go back and think about it, but I think this is one of the Lucha Bros' best matches with the Bucks, if not in the conversation of the top 3.

When the Lucha Bros finally sealed the deal and got the 3 count over the Bucks, that crowd were so happy that they could toss babies up into the air.

What was crazier was that we weren't even halfway through this card at this point. I did like to see that Pentagon's wife and kids ran up to hug him at ringside after the match, even though that had to be pretty jarring to be covered in his blood too.

Career Ending Match

If Jericho loses, he will be forced to retire from AEW

Chris Jericho def. MJF

MJF coming out to the intro of Jericho's old Y2J entrance was great for the heel heat from this crowd. Jericho would then enter with one of FOZZY's guitarist playing him to the ring without the vocals to Judas, despite the crowd singing along anyway.

MJF carried Jericho throughout this being great match for both of them. It amazes me time and time again that MJF is THIS damn good despite being this young into the game. I just hope he doesn't pick up any bad habits from prolonged time in this company and end up getting pigeonholed in the long run. I know people don't want to hear it, but guys like MJF are the future of this sport, not the dime a dozen flippy guys who rely on cheap pops.

The false (not quite a "Dusty" finish) finish/restart made Referee Aubrey look like a fucking moron, especially when she was arguing with the other referee where you could clearly hear her questioning whether or not Jericho's foot was on the bottom rope when anyone with two functioning eyes could see that it was still there.

After this, let's hope that MJF and Jericho are FAR FAR FAR away from each other in terms of booking going forward. There's far better uses of his talents than being pigeonholed by the aging (failing, wannabe) rockstar having a mid-life crisis. And if this means that we have to endure more of Jericho screaming on commentary on Rampage on a weekly basis, then I wish he would have seriously retired because commentary is not his forte.

Singles Match

Paul Wight def. QT Marshall (w/ Nightmare Factory)

Why the fuck was this match slotted after Punk's first match in 7+ years? This must've been the cooldown/bathroom break match to settle the crowd down at would have been the 4th hour into this show if they have been watching live since the Buy-In.

Fortunately, this didn't last long at all. Big Show got his shit in and laid waste to the Nightmare Factory running interference. The Gunn Club were nowhere to be found, despite attacking Wight and turning heel on Dynamite last week. I did laugh that Comorotto barely sold the WMD and it took Wight coming off the ropes with a Spear/Pounce to floor him. Wight then caught QT coming off the top rope into a chokeslam and slam dunked him into the trash for the win. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. That's all what this needed to be.