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AEW All Out (2022) - Results & Afterthoughts + Media Scrum Fallout

All Out (2022) was the fourth annual All Out professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by All Elite Wrestling (AEW). It took place during Labor Day weekend on September 4, 2022, at the Now Arena in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the first event to feature the AEW World Trios Championship.

Fifteen matches were contested at the event, including four on the Zero Hour pre-show. In the main event, CM Punk defeated Jon Moxley to win the AEW World Championship for a second time. In other prominent matches, Chris Jericho defeated Bryan Danielson, The Elite (Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson)) defeated "Hangman" Adam Page and The Dark Order (Alex Reynolds and John Silver) to win the inaugural AEW World Trios Championship, and in the opening bout, MJF made a surprise return as the disguised "joker" entrant and won the Casino Ladder match.

All Out received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Praise was given to the AEW World Trios and AEW World Tag Team Championship matches, but the length of the show was criticized. The event was also notable for its post-show media scrum, which saw CM Punk insult and berate several fellow wrestlers, leading to a legitimate backstage fight between Punk, Ace Steel, Kenny Omega, and The Young Bucks. All involved were suspended with Punk and The Elite stripped of their respective championships.

Match Card & Results:

Zero Hour: Mixed Tag Team Match for the AAA World Mixed Tag Team Championship

Jericho Appreciation Society (Sammy Guevara and Tay Melo) (c) defeated Ortiz and Ruby Soho by pinfall

This started in the back as Ortiz and Soho chased them to the ring in a golf cart with Sammy shoving Tay out of way for he could get run over. That spot looked brutal and definitely more devastating than anything else in this match. The rest of this match played out like something on Rampage or Dynamite, but the finish saw Ruby Soho get legitimately injured from Tay's finisher as you could see her immediately rolling out of the ring and holding her nose afterwards.

Zero Hour: Singles Match for the FTW Championship

Hook (c) defeated Angelo Parker (with Matt Menard) by submission

It was pretty much a one-sided affair until Hook trapped Parker into the submission for the win. Nothing much else to write home about this one outside of Action Bronson (the dude who made Hook's entrance music who just happens to be sitting in the front row for this match) making the save when Menard and Parker tried to gang up on Hook in the post-match attack.

Apparently, there's news that Action Bronson is currently training for a match at an upcoming TV special/live event for the company.

Zero Hour: Singles Match for the AEW All-Atlantic Championship

Pac (c) defeated Kip Sabian by pinfall

This match felt like it went on for an eternity and just wouldn't end. Pretty run of the mill stuff from Pac, but I honestly didn't give a flying fuck to see Kip Sabian challenging for title when he's been sitting around with a cardboard box on his head for months on end.

Zero Hour: Singles Match

Eddie Kingston defeated Tomohiro Ishii by pinfall

Where the fuck did this match come from? I don't even remember them announcing it on Dynamite last Wednesday when Excalibur was running down the match card. This wasn't a bad match, but you could tell that they were rushing since they were running short on time. All I can say is that I was glad to see Kingston actually get a win on PPV for once.

Casino Ladder Match

Winner receives a future AEW World Championship match.

The Joker (with Stokely Hathaway, Ethan Page, Lee Moriarty, Colten Gunn, Austin Gunn, and W. Morrissey) defeated Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta, Penta El Zero Miedo, Rey Fénix (with Alex Abrahantes), Rush, Andrade El Idolo (with José the Assistant), and Dante Martin

My stream was fucking up at the start of the PPV, so I missed majority of this match except for the finish where Stokeley Hathaway's goons beat up everyone for the masked Joker could get the poker chip. Interesting. At this point in the show, I (like a lot of people) had already pegged the Joker to be MJF.

I was honestly thinking that he would cash it in Money in the Bank/Gift of the Gods style later on this show - namely in the main event. We'll come back to this result later into this show...

Tournament Final for the inaugural AEW World Trios Championship

The Elite (Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson)) (with Brandon Cutler and Michael Nakazawa) defeated "Hangman" Adam Page and The Dark Order (Alex Reynolds and John Silver) by pinfall

It's a Young Bucks multi-man match. You know what to expect with one these car wrecks. Whether you're into the endless spots with little rhyme, reason, logic, nor psychology behind them or not is going to determine that you're going to love this match or flat out hate it. These "trainwreck" multi-man spotfests have their moments for me nowadays, but I feel like we see FAR too many of these matches in modern wrestling these days, especially in this company in particular. That being said, there were some exciting near-falls in this match that kept everyone interested, so I can't honestly say that this match didn't do it's job of keeping people engaged.

I just can't say that I believed anyone but the Bucks and Omega were going to come out on top. This company flew out Will Ospreay and Aussie Open just to lose in this tournament to The Elite in the semi-finals on free TV (when that could have been the finals of this match on PPV instead), but instead, they are fighting the Dark Order with former AEW World Champion "Hangman" Adam Page as their third man. How the mighty have fallen there, but he's only got himself to blame on that one from how he's been booked and allowed himself to be presented since that loss.

The post-match of how egotistical that The Elite are was REALLY telling in the post-match shot of this match where Kenny Omega specifically told the cameraman to tell those guys in the back to "follow that" - as if their match was really anything revolutionary.

Singles Match for the AEW TBS Championship

Jade Cargill (c) (with Kiera Hogan and Leila Grey) defeated Athena by pinfall

Jade came out dressed in a She-Hulk-inspired cosplay while Athena's gear was inspired by Khonshu (with some steampunk style wings) from Marvel's Moon Knight Disney+ series. I should also point out that Athena was back to wearing her "Ember Moon" style contacts in her eyes. Even though I saw people raving over Jade's She-Hulk cosplay on social media, I personally found it to be a piss poor costume as it looked like she half-assed the body paint.

Not going to lie, but I thought Jade was going to lose it when Athena hit the O-Face/Eclipse right off the bat. Jade managed to kick out and continue this for a few more minutes until she was able to successfully hit the Jaded (after several attempts since Athena kept constantly reversing it) for the win.

Right call, but there wasn't much to talk about this match outside of what these ladies were wearing in terms of their cosplay gear. I understand that Jade takes pride in having her daughter watch her matches, but I don't get how audiences are supposed to feel when she's portrayed as the heel in these matches yet we're supposed to have warm feelings of mother and child after the fact. AEW needs to make up their minds on these mixed messages they putting out there with her when they do this.

Jade and Athena are wearing gear inspired by She-Hulk and Khonshu (Moon Knight) respectively, but it looks like bad, half-assed cosplay costumes to me.

Six-man Tag Team Match

Wardlow and FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) defeated Jay Lethal and The Motor City Machine Guns (Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley) (with Satnam Singh and Sonjay Dutt) by pinfall

The difference between FTR bringing out Dax's daughter and Jade's being shown in the post-match as FTR's was a point of contention for several weeks (months even) after they mentioned his daughter's health condition that she was very fortunate to overcome, hence why the "Fight like an 8 year-old girl" line was so beloved during the build to their legendary match against the Briscoes.

While I didn't care for the 6-man layout for this match, they managed to make it work without it being chaotic like the Elite vs. Dark Order match before it. Nothing against Wardlow, but I would have MUCH rathered to see FTR against MCMG in a tag team match, or simply not booked on this card at all if they weren't going to put all of the tag titles for grabs with the final rubber match between FTR and the Young Bucks.

At first I was salty about Lethal eating the Powerbomb Symphony but I quickly got over it after realizing that Lethal taking the fall here protects the Motor City Machine Guns from not getting a tag team title match against FTR in the near future. I personally hope they do that match on IMPACT, but that's just me. This booking just continues the mishandling of Jay Lethal since his arrival into this company. I'm not saying that he should have gone over FTR nor Wardlow, but Jesus Christ, this former ROH World and TV Champion should be more protected than this.

There was a post-match attack where the heels attempted to get over on the babyfaces until Samoa Joe made his return for the save, leaving Sonjay Dutt in the ring by himself after the rest of the heels bailed. This setup Dax's daughter joining the babyfaces in the ring, where she broke his pencil before Dax was laid out for she could pin him in the middle of the ring. It was cute and harmless, much like the stuff they allowed Brodie Lee's son to do in the past, so I'm not going to knock them for doing it in the middle of this show.

Singles Match

Powerhouse Hobbs defeated Ricky Starks by pinfall

I didn't get why this match didn't get more time than it got. Sure, it was the right call to have Hobbs go over, but they really didn't do either of these guys any favors by rushing through this (what should have been a grudge match) match and making it feel insignificant on this card in comparison to everything else.

C'mon, these are two young stars that this company should be doing a LOT more with right now and it's a damn shame that they are treated like a mere afterthought.

As of this posting (9/8/22), I haven't seen any reports about any possible injuries so if that's how they booked this match without any injuries affecting it then that was just plain stupid in my eyes.

Tag Team Match for the AEW World Tag Team Championship

Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland) (c) defeated The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens and Max Caster) (with Billy Gunn) by pinfall

This match was arguably the best tag team match of the evening, just from the reactions for everyone involved, but I honestly thought the match was ruined for the rest of its duration after Keith Lee CLEARLY botched the timing on breaking up the near-fall and the referee actually counted three. Instead, they made the match continue, much to the ire of this crowd, who booed heavily and shat over the remainder of the match, especially after Swerve and Lee retained. I couldn't blame that crowd at all as Tony Khan should have played an audible and went with the title change for the actual TAG TEAM that got over organically and not just two random singles guys that they slotted into a team since they couldn't think of anything else better to do.

Let's not forget that Swerve and Lee were on the verge of splitting a few weeks prior to their impromptu tag title win. Mind you, those tag titles that they have been carrying have been booked as much of an afterthought as the Women's Championship that Thunder Rosa had after she won it, so that tells you right there what they thought of that booking.

Them winning the tag titles isn't ever going to sit well with me, especially when it's pretty obvious that the Young Bucks dropped the titles to Swerve and Lee for they wouldn't had to lose the rubber match against FTR with all of the tag titles on the line. That wise crack/dig that Swerve and Keith Lee made at The Acclaimed about being a stereotype really irked me when that's clearly the pot calling the kettle black given how they have presented themselves in wrestling.

The silver lining here is that during the media scrum (oh boy do we have stuff to talk about from that...) Tony Khan did mention that they should run this match back at Grand Slam coming up, so maybe The Acclaimed will win the belts there? I know wishful thinking, but they are the most over tag team there (that isn't FTR) that was there since Day 1 and won the fans over organically.

Four-Way Match for the interim AEW Women's World Championship

Toni Storm defeated Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. (with Rebel), Jamie Hayter, and Hikaru Shida by pinfall

I'm begging this company to get Jamie Hayter FAR away from Britt Baker. It's been long enough. Let her thrive on her own. That girl is WAAAYYYY too talented in-ring to continue settling to being content with just being Baker's lackey/lapdog like Rebel. We all know how Rebel's in-ring skills are (just revisit that singles match between her and Shelly Martinez from that infamous One Night Only Knockouts Knockdown special), so that's why she's content in that role with no other aspirations higher on the card, but Hayter's clearly better than that.

Dave Meltzer himself said that the original plans for All Out was to get that belt off of Thunder Rosa and to have Toni Storm win it, so I wasn't surprised in the least at the result, but I was a little let down that they didn't take a chance with Jamie Hayter winning it to cause a split/rift between her and Baker. I will give them credit for teasing it here (again as they've done it in the past), but it seemed to really hit home here. I'm just glad that Tony Khan didn't feel the need to put the title back on Britt Baker just to play off of their real life heat/hatred of one another.

I had to feel sorry for Shida as it felt like she was a mere afterthought in the booking here. She was just in this match merely to have another (capable) worker and former Women's Champion in there. I'm honestly surprised that they didn't call in Riho and Nyla Rose to compete in this either to be honest.

I'm anxious to see how Toni Storm does in this role when Meltzer was complaining about the ratings weren't up when she was on Dynamite over the last few weeks. Is Tony Khan going to give her a chance to run with it or is he going to give up on her and book her as poorly as Thunder Rosa then act like he doesn't know what's going on? Only time will tell.

Singles Match

Christian Cage (with Luchasaurus) defeated "Jungle Boy" Jack Perry by pinfall

Luchasaurus coming out and chokeslamming Jungle Boy on the stage made Jungle Boy look like the biggest loser and the poster child for D.B.S. (Dumb Babyface Syndrome). Christian promptly hit him with a few moves and ended this fast. Apparently, Christian is dealing with a legitimate injury, hence why the hasty finish here. I have heard that it's pretty serious, so no idea how they are going to continue this feud after this. I suppose that Jungle Boy could feud with Luchasaurus but man, that would make him look even worse after the past few weeks of blindly trusting him.

Singles Match

Chris Jericho defeated Bryan Danielson by pinfall

By this point in the show, I was struggling to continue paying attention. Jericho has this uncanny knack for placing his matches so far into these lengthy cards that it's hard to care.

I will give Jericho credit for keeping up with Bryan here and actually not getting gassed within the first few minutes of this match. Him and Bryan actually had a "wrestling" match for the most part, but I struggle to see how this was any different that Jericho's usual offense. When he pulls off these "variants" or blasts from the past, it comes off as pandering for cheap pops as he continues to hang onto his glory years that are well behind him. Not to mention that the lack of any effort of changing his offense (or better yet, his moveset) makes this come off as lazy and lackluster as Jeff Hardy switching to his "Willow" persona, only to fight the EXACT same way as he would normally do, just wearing a different outfit/ring gear to the ring.

I honestly was in shock that Jericho actually went over on Bryan Danielson AGAIN for seemingly the third time in the past few months. Like what the fuck is going on, does Bryan not even care how this company is using him anymore? Between his fall from grace when he was removed from the World title conversation, to reducing himself as a third (or fourth or fifth) fiddle player in the Blackpool Fight Club, and now this. It just comes off like he's just THERE instead of the massive star that he was when he first arrived.

I swear, AEW has an uncanny ability to dilute and devalue big name talents when they come to this company.

Six-Man Tag Team Match

Darby Allin, Sting, and Miro defeated House of Black (Malakai Black, Brody King, and Buddy Matthews) (with Julia Hart) by pinfall

I wanted to care about this match since I wanted to see what Darby and Miro were going to do in this match, but I was paying attention more to the Season 6 premiere of Rick and Morty on the other monitor. Even if that wasn't on, this was the THIRD 6-Man tag team match on a 4+ hour show at this point and I doubt I would've felt any different in terms of my nonexistent efforts to care about this match.

Sting, Darby Allin, and Miro went over - and rightfully so as the House of Black's booking and appeal has fallen off a cliff. Don't get me wrong, but hear me out on this. They are a group of collectively great workers between Black, King, and Matthews and have a pretty bad ass entrance, but that where you can draw the line. They added Julia Hart into this thing as their valet - a decision that still makes not a lick of damn sense to me, especially when it was at the expense of burying the Varsity Blondes in that storyline. I personally thought that Abadon would have been a better fit for their faction if they were looking for a creepy valet, but that's just me.

It should be noted that fans who attended the show live saw the members of the House of Black embracing in a "curtain call" of sorts after match, with Malakai Black waving to the crowd. As of this posting (9/8/22), the word that is going around is that he was granted his release from the company to deal with some personal and health related issues, possibly not coming back to wrestling at all, if ever. Whatever is going on with Tommy End, I wish him the best and hope that it works itself out. I would love to see him back in WWE with Triple H handling his character direction again like when he was on NXT.

Singles Match for the AEW World Championship

CM Punk defeated Jon Moxley (c) by pinfall

The best thing about this match was that it wasn't over in 3 minutes again. It ran on a little TOO long for my taste, especially when we're clocking in roughly 5 hours of wrestling at this point, but I get that they wanted to give the people what they wanted with their hometown hero.

I have to say this time and time again, but I don't hate Jon Moxley. I just don't understand what is the utter fascination with him as a main event talent. People talked him up in WWE when he was Dean Ambrose for all of his previous accolades and exploits from what he did on the indies. For years there, people said he was being "held back" from showing what he's really capable of. His contract runs out and he opts not to renew and exits from WWE. He served his time in the "asylum" in Connecticut and ready to run the indies again as he quickly signs to AEW as this "uncut and uncensored" version of his own brand of violence. Here, he opts for a lot of brawling and taking pleasure in all of the deathmatch style matches, but I still don't see what's the big deal about him. His strikes don't look particularly devastating and I don't believe for an instance that he's going to bite off people's heads and drink all of their blood like he loves repeating in all of his promos.

That being said, this was still a Moxley match, so someone had to bleed, so Punk got some color, even though it was looking like food coloring on his forehead at first from how bright it was. They brawled inside and outside of the ring, but still made it look competitive even though I thought it was a little strange that they never brought Punk's foot injury as a deciding factor here. That was cited as the main reason he lost to Moxley so fast two weeks ago on Dynamite, but he didn't have a single issue with that same foot tonight. I should have known that AEW's booking would have done some hand waving bullshit where they were going to ignore that issue when it came to this match on PPV.

I was willing to overlook that as long as the right man won here and he did, with CM Punk walking away as the AEW World Champion in his hometown of Chicago. You would think that would be the fairy tale ending to this show, but it wasn't...

During CM Punk's post-match celebration, MJF comes out and reveals himself to be the Joker (or rather the Devil since he comes out to "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones) who won the right to challenge for the World title at any time he chooses by winning the Casino Ladder match that opened this show. Like previously mentioned, I was thinking MJF was going to garner even more heel heat than the last time that he beat Punk in his hometown by cashing in his opportunity right now, Money in the Bank cash-in style. Surprisingly enough, Tony Khan didn't want to blow his load early on this and merely teased what was yet to come as this show came to a close. I have to tip my hat to Tony Khan for not putting this out there right now but to give it time to marinate in the minds of the AEW fans before they move into this program.

Afterthoughts:

Truth be told, but I immediately went to bed following the end result of the main event and didn't care to watch the Media Scrum live. I woke up the following morning to see multiple people on Discord and Twitter inboxing me with clips of CM Punk going off on people in the company, specifically Colt Cabana, "Hangman" Adam Page, and the EVPs (the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega), while Tony Khan is sitting right there with a look of horror and confusion on his face. I ended watching the Scrum in full that morning and laughing my ass off from start to finish.

To be quite honest, nothing CM Punk said was wrong. It's just that this entire ordeal with him airing out his grievances should not have been aired publicly for everyone to see and it definitely should not have been in front of the press either, making Tony Khan look like he has absolutely no control over the company that he is allegedly running while simultaneously undermining and clearly disrespecting his authority. How CM Punk handled this was completely unprofessional - simply put. There's no if's, and's, or but's about that.

If that "media meltdown" as how people are describing Punk's public outburst as wasn't the tip of the iceberg in terms of the shit hitting the fan in AEW for owner Tony Khan, it got relatively worse when news broke out that there was a brawl between CM Punk and Ace Steele against the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega while the rest of the media scrum was still taking place. Tony Khan had no idea that this was occurring at the same time once Punk returned to his dressing room. There's contrasting stories going around but the details are the same across the board concerning Punk punching Matt Jackson, Steele throwing a chair at Nick Jackson, and holding Kenny Omega at bay by pulling his hair and biting him.

As of this posting following the Sept. 7th edition of AEW Dynamite, Tony Khan addressed the fans in a pre-taped video, where he announced that the AEW World Championship and Trios Championships have been vacated. He never mentioned anyone who was involved in the matter by name, but it was expected that the title was going to be vacated anyway since CM Punk suffered some sort of triceps injury during the main event of All Out. Sports Illustrated and the Wrestling Observer both reported that everyone involved with this melee backstage have been suspended until further notice, with CM Punk and Ace Steele's fates up in the air (Steele has been taken off the road as an agent) with signs pointing to both being fired from the company entirely. Nothing hasn't been set in stone yet as of this posting (9/8/22), but both the Elite and CM Punk put Tony Khan into a hairy situation. This whole ordeal has made AEW look like how Taz has described WWE in the past, "a sloppy shop", from the sheer lack of unprofessionalism and authority/leadership directing this company.

After All Out, everyone should be talking about the return of MJF, but no one is talking about that in the least. Instead, all of the talking heads - from wrestling podcasters, journalists, and content creators to wrestling talents (Legends, former talents, and even currently employed talents) - are all weighing in with their opinions about this entire sad state of affairs and complete mismanagement of AEW right now. The topic of CM Punk is a popular one right now too as Tony Khan is in a really bad spot in terms of what to do about him. One year ago, CM Punk came back to wrestling after seven year hiatus following his own falling out with WWE. He was poised to be Tony Khan's golden goose that will lay the golden eggs for his new promotion. Fast forward one year later and it's looking like CM Punk might be the final straw that breaks the camel's backs with a lot of people in terms of the honeymoon period for this promotion being over.

Truth be told, I personally found the Media Scrum to be MUCH more entertaining than the ENTIRE All Out PPV as a whole, but that's just me. Watching this whole situation play out over the past few days is like watching a train wreck as it feels like we're witnessing the beginning of the end of All Elite Wrestling. This period was supposed to be a milestone for the company as they began to build towards another major PPV, this time headlining with CM Punk defending the AEW World Championship against challenger MJF in what would have been their third meeting in the squared circle. Instead, this drama between CM Punk and the EVPs overshadowed any positive buzz the company may have garnered from this PPV. I want to be wrong about this being the end, but the cracks were already beginning to show for quite some time, even though a lot of AEW's hardcore, highly devoted fan base choose to ignore any criticisms towards that product. If AEW loses CM Punk (along with his supporters), along with the Elite (and their elk), I could see this not ending well for the AEW brand as a whole. A lot of people tune into that product just to see those wrestlers, whether you love or hate them, and they have a lot of supporters and friends in that company. Tony Khan might have a literal civil war on his hands from the battle lines that have been drawn from this ordeal from the locker room being divided.

The best advice that I can provide is that Tony Khan puts his foot down and take control of the ship. It's "nut up or shut up" time. Otherwise, he's going to be the owner of a sinking ship. As of this posting (9/8/22), the Sept. 7th episode of AEW Dynamite was a solid show to start moving things ahead without the key players who were involved in this mess while simultaneously trying to put this negativity behind them and trying to put a positive foot forward. For me personally, I wouldn't have booked "Hangman" Adam Page so strongly in that match against Bryan Danielson when he was the one who set these events into motion with his off-the-wall comments to CM Punk in an unplanned shoot, despite not being present for the brawl that took place during the Media Scrum - but that's besides the point. Dynamite was great start to put this mess behind them, but they still have a lot of work to do to get their house in order.

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