AEW All Out General Discussion

[smarkmouth]

We're a little over a week away from AEW All Out, and if you're familiar with the card, one of the marquee matches has just been turned on it's head. The rivalry between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley was supposed to come to a head at the event, but Moxley tweeted the following this afternoon;

I'm absolutely gutted to have to deliver this news but I'd rather it come directly from me. In a nightmare scenario, a serious case of MRSA has returned in my elbow. The timing couldn't be worse. In this circumstance I am forced to pull out of the fight 8/31 vs Omega at All Out.

I apologize to all involved, most importantly the fans. I am incredibly frustrated and pissed off. I'll have surgery this week to remove the bursa sac in my elbow and be done with it for good. Should be a quick recovery so I will be 100% for AEW Wednesday nights on TNT.

Still, I expect All out to be an amazing ppv and hope all the fans out there looking for an alternative tune in. You will be blown away by AEW and be excited to be a wrestling fan. I'm looking forward to watching as a fan myself.

This fucking sucks.

Moxley suffered from an MRSA (a staph virus resistant to antibiotics) which kept him off of WWE TV towards the end of his contract. It's unfortunate news for AEW, but the company was quick to name a suitable replacement;

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECr1edjXUAASuhu?format=jpg&name=small

I'm a big Moxley fan but this one has me excited. It will be interesting to see how they develop the match between PAC and Omega in short order. With that, take a look at the rest of the card;

AEW World Championship Chris Jericho vs. Adam "Hangman" Page
Kenny Omega vs. PAC
AAA Tag Team Championship Ladder Match Lucha Brothers (c) vs. The Young Bucks
Cody vs. Shawn Spears (w/Tully Blanchard)
Best Friends vs. Dark Order (Winner gets a bye in tag team championship tournament)
Joey Janela vs. Jimmy Havoc vs. Darby Allin
Riho vs. Hikaru Shida
Women's Casino Battle Royale (Winner receives shot at inaugural women's title) Confirmed entrants: Britt Baker, Jazz, Sadie Gibbs, Teal Piper, Big Swole, Aerial Monroe, Brandi Rhodes, Nyla Rose, Allie, Yuka Sakazaki, Ivelisse
Private Party vs. Angelico & Jack Evans (The Buy-In pre-show)

I'm also interested in the Women's Casino Battle Royal. Jazz has been making a splash in NWA, Sadie Gibbs debut, Roddy Piper's daughter Teal, and the person I'm most hyped about Ivelisse. Ivelisse has been vocal for the past few years of being bound by a questionable contract with Lucha Underground which wouldn't allow her to compete elsewhere, but as the show is more or less dead the contract was virtually frozen. I was a big fan of Ivelisse in Lucha and am glad to see she's free.

Who's tuning in?

[Jack-Hammer]

There might be further trouble as Lucha Brother Fenix suffered an apparent leg injury last night at a Rhode Island show where he and Pentagon Jr. took on Juventud Guerrera and Teddy Hart. Fenix delivered a superkick to Hart then picked up Guerrera for something, collapsed to the mat holding his knee. The report didn't specify as to which knee he grabbed but that he was able to "weakly" walk on it backstage and he's hopeful it's just a sprain.

If this match winds up being changed or cancelled, then there goes one of the primary draws of the whole card. The match is scheduled to be a ladder match, so you know it'll be even more of a wild, crazy spotfest than normal, even for these two teams. Injuries can happen at anytime in pro wrestling, but it seems that AEW is going to have to start thinking about exclusive deals before too long. Mutual cooperation and relationships with others is fine and all that, but AEW is also going to have to start thinking of and putting its own plans first and foremost.

[smarkmouth]

I had just read that, but Taya Valkyrie followed up by tweeting that Fenix is okay. Hoping that's accurate!

Either way, Fenix needs to settle the fuck down. Feels like he had an injury scare just before Double or Nothing as well. At this rare I won't be surprised if Khan and the Elite start signing folks to exclusive deals come October.

[Jack-Hammer]

I had just read that, but Taya Valkyrie followed up by tweeting that Fenix is okay. Hoping that's accurate!

Either way, Fenix needs to settle the fuck down. Feels like he had an injury scare just before Double or Nothing as well. At this rare I won't be surprised if Khan and the Elite start signing folks to exclusive deals come October.

Fenix toning down his in-ring work is something that'd piss off a lot of fans but, at the same time, how long can he be expected to last doing the stuff he does when he's at the level AEW can potentially be. IF he only works anywhere from 50 to 75 matches a year, things MIGHT work out okay for him but a lot depends on AEW's schedule. We've heard that AEW will have a lighter schedule than WWE but only time will tell if it turns out to be feasible. AEW doesn't have to grind its wrestlers into the ground and still make money, something I very much wish Vince McMahon would or could understand, but Vince almost always seems to feel that if a little is good then more must be better.

Exclusive deals for the wrestlers are going to have to happen because AEW doesn't have the roster depth that NXT has and will have access to if injuries pile up. Last year and in early 2016, it seems that only a few days would go by when there'd be someone in WWE wasn't getting bitten by the injury bug. Injuries can and do happen at anytime but there are some guys that AEW, in my opinion, is going to have to tone down if they want them to be around on a long term basis and Fenix is one of them. A lighter schedule will help but, at the same time, since when is it a bad idea to be a more well rounded wrestler and put your body through less impact? Lucha Libre is a style that's extremely hard on the body in the first place, it's one of the reasons why you have so many luchadores with obliterated knees and hips by the time they hit their early to mid 30s after starting wrestling in their teens. On top of all that, Fenix has a lot of pots boiling right now as he's one half of the AAA World Tag Team Champions and he's be3en AAA Mega Champion for almost a year, though he's only defended the title once in all that time.

Doing some things differently than how WWE does business is a good idea, but it does no good having access to top talents if you run the risk of having them miss out on an important show for you because they get hurt working for somebody else who, quite frankly, can't pay them nearly as much.

[Jack-Hammer]

As for the kickoff show, maybe holding what should be an important match is a way of trying to get fans to tune in there and create the impression that AEW doesn't consider any match they put on their PPVs to be filler. After all, a BR to determine one of the women who'll fight for the AEW Women's Championship a little more than a month down the road on national TV. I'm going with Nyla Rose to win this and possibly to become the inaugural champion; it'd be a hugely progressive statement for AEW's first Women's Champion to be a transgender female though I'm sure you'd also have some who'll feel a woman who was born a man being the first "women's" champ is a mockery because, let's face it, it's still a highly controversial topic. In either case, this decision could wind up getting AEW a lot of buzz and discussion. Now, that doesn't mean it'll happen as I think the most likely thing to happen would be Brandi Rhodes winning here, via help from Awesome Kong, though I think it sends the wrong message right from the start. Having a woman who's very limited winning big matches due to interference a lot of the time being one of the women involved in the match to determine the first champion sounds like something WWE would do, quite frankly. It seems even more so like something WWE would do considering Brandi is an AEW executive and is married to Cody. I don't think Brandi will be the first champ, though it's not impossible and that's killed what slight interest I'd have left.

As for Private Party vs. Jack Evans & Angelico, I think this is mostly a showcase match that'll be mostly just flips and athletic spots. Not necessarily a bad thing if you're someone that's not familiar with either of these two teams. Don't know who wins but I'm going with Private Party.

Riho vs. Hikaru Shida is one of those matches that's on the card because Kenny Omega is impressed with both women. I know nothing about them so the interest in this match is virtually nonexistent. Of course, this is all just setting everything up to October 2, which is what's important so that fans will be at least a little familiar with just about everyone.

The Best Friends vs. the Dark Order, to me, has meh written all over it. It's a case of one team that's trying to be funny up against another team that's trying to be tough and edgy with neither of them really succeeding. The winner of this match gets a first round bye in the AEW Tag Team Championship tournament and heels almost always get byes, so expect the Dark Order to go over here.

The Young Bucks vs. the Lucha Bros is a ladder match for the AAA World Tag Team Championship. This is ultimately going to be the mega spotfest of the show, nothing more and nothing less. They've traded the AAA straps, due in part to AEW not having its own yet, so I see the Bros retaining the titles whereas the Bucks move towards becoming AEW's first tag champions. Some sort of gimmick match to blow off this program is really all that they can do with them right now and this will do.

Cody vs. Shawn Spears comes off to me as more of a "nyah, nyah" to WWE. Cody and Spears are really close friends in real life, both feel Spears could be a big star and they're putting him in that spot. Truth is, I'm not buying Spears as a top guy right now. I do believe he was better than the level WWE had him pegged into but I think AEW is trying to go the extreme in the other direction. From what I've seen of Spears over the course of the last 5 years or so from his time on both the NXT and main rosters, he's someone who could be a very, very solid mid-card and tag team guy like Matt Taven in Ring of Honor. As to who wins this, it's obvious that Spears goes over otherwise it makes the entire exercise utterly pointless. Cody Rhodes is going to be one of the top guys in AEW, if not THE top guy no matter how much some might be against it, so losing here doesn't hurt him one bit. Spears is the heel, Spears is the nobody who they claim is really a somebody who was treated like a nobody in WWE so it goes against all logic for him to lose here.

Darby Allin vs. Joey Janela vs. Jimmy Havoc is mostly about showcasing three young guys in a triple threat match. Nothing wrong with that. I see Allin pulling out the win here as he's this 21 or 22 year old kid that Cody really likes and has sort of taken under his wing. After all, he and Allin wrestled to a 20 minute draw at Fyter Fest.

Kenny Omega vs. PAC is, I think, the Dave Meltzer jerk off match. These two will probably wind up going for at least 30 minutes where Omega hits a few dozen V-Triggers, PAC nails a good baker's dozen reverse hurricanranas, both do the "I hit you hard, now you hit me hard" Japanese style spot of trading shots several times during the match and Omega finally wins after hitting his 3rd One Wing Angel. It'll get 5+ stars from Meltzer, fans'll declare it a MOTY candidate and all that though I don't expect PAC to win. It'll be something of a surprise and upset if he does, though I don't see PAC winning his debut match, especially after all the drama circulating around PAC pulling out of an AEW show earlier this year due to not wanting to lose while he was Open the Dragon Gate Champion.

Adam Page vs. Chris Jericho for the AEW World Championship is something of a head scratcher. Not that it shouldn't be a good match or anything it's just that...I dunno, I guess maybe it's just where AEW is in such a strange place right now that this doesn't feel as big of a deal as it should. For a company to have the type of buzz AEW has, you'd have expected them to be around a few years and have an established brand on TV but that isn't the case. All of their buzz and hype comes from a small handful of PPVs, relying on the reputation of some of the wrestlers involved to sell the brand and by branding itself different from WWE. The story here is you've got the young gun in Adam Page against the old lion in Chris Jericho; Jericho is a legend renown for the quality of his work that's remained top level, for the most part, even though he's approaching 50 years of age and for being a major player in WWE for almost 20 years while Adam Page has struck me as young hungry hanger on of the Elite. Compared to Cody, the Bucks and Omega, Page is nobody and looks like he's ridden their coattails to stardom by being associated with them so this could be an opportunity to start things off in AEW with the top guy being a young, hungry kid who's quite good and looking to establish that. On the other hand, maybe the smart way to go would be fore Jericho to win here because he has name value and name value is going to matter a helluva lot to a fledgling company like AEW, especially now that they're going head to head with NXT on Wednesday nights. Of course, we're still slightly more than a month from AEW's debut on TNT and while anticipation will be high, some of it for whomever the first World Champion is will have dissipated a bit. I think Jericho will win, thus establishing a well known name as the first champion to help with TV ratings only for Jericho to lose the title after a few months to the first long term champion, probably someone like Kenny Omega or Jon Moxley.