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WAS IT WISE TO DEBUT BRYAN AND COLE TOGETHER, DID PUNK DELIVER AND MORE - THOUGHTS FROM LAST NIGHT’S EXCELLENT AEW ALL OUT PPV

Back in the old days of PPVs, before we would start a post show hotline we would state whether we thought the PPV was worth the price tag so that anyone who wanted to watch it before hearing our views could purchase the replay and then watch the show first.  If you are someone wondering if I think last night’s AEW All Out PPV was worth the price, the answer is a resounding hell yes.  From top to bottom, it was a thoroughly enjoyable night of wrestling filled with drama, surprises, cool storytelling and a lot of hard work from the talent.  If you are thinking of buying the replay I just made your decision for you.  It’s worth your money, and then some.

Who will be the winner of the next PPV event? You can try your luck and make a wager by using the bet365 bonuskod.

Last night was also a different experience for me.  With the rest of the team doing a fabulous job covering the moment to moment element of the show, I got to sit back and just watch.  I got to just take it all in.  It may not sound difficult (and in truth it’s not, it’s just different) but typing throughout an entire show is a much different experience than just sitting back and watching it.

I did so with my son-in-law Joe.  He’s not a wrestling fan anymore but he does keep his toe in the water as to what is going on and he is a big CM Punk fan so he (like I am sure many others) were very interested in last night’s show.  He even asked me if I was going to get the show when he came down on Saturday for the holiday because he wanted to watch it.  So throughout this column, I will intersperse his thoughts as well because they are important.  He is the fan that Tony Khan hoped to reach by signing Punk so what he thinks will at least represent some of the lapsed fan base that has returned to the business since Punk was signed, and I can back that rise in fans up with numbers we have seen here at the site. As JR would say, “Business is picking up”.

He also watched SummerSlam with me, since he and my daughter were down for the weekend and it was on.  He enjoyed AEW a lot more and what AEW is doing appeals to him a lot more than the WWE product.  Why does that matter?  Well, he is in the coveted demo but more importantly anything that can generate real interest, as opposed to passing interest, from someone could translate into money generated for the company, be it buying a show or something as simple as searching out videos on YouTube.  After last night, and actually since Punk signed, his toe is back in the water.  AEW on is on his radar.  WWE?  Not so much.

Before I get into thoughts on the show, I will briefly address whether AEW is competition for WWE (which I tweeted about on the PWInsider account last night).  I was asked this question by an Elite member:

“I saw your comment about AEW being competition.  It’s clear to me that it is as well. If you were tasked with explain to Vince McMahon how AEW is indeed a threat to his company, how would you do it?”

That will be the subject of tomorrow’s Q and A column.  I will tweet the link on our Twitter account (@pwinsidercom) when it’s written.  It will go live tomorrow morning.  In short, I have a LOT of things I would tell Vince McMahon about why AEW is competition if he asked me, which of course he never would.  But make no mistake about it, even before last night AEW had to be an opponent WWE took seriously (even if they choose not to).  After last night?  Well, only an idiot wouldn’t see them as a threat.  That doesn't mean they will topple Vince's empire but they are absolutely a threat.

With that said, onto my thoughts from the show.  I won’t go in chronological order but rather in matter of importance.

CM Punk is back and he showed that there is a lot left in the tank.  If you want to make the argument that the surprises at the end were the biggest thing about last night’s show, I won’t argue with you.  But, I won’t agree either.  While the build for this show was strong and I felt they had earned my money before Punk’s return, the fact of the matter is that a lot of eyeballs were on the PPV (and many extra buys) because of Punk’s return.  He resonates with a lot of people.  He always has, and he seemingly always will.  He brought people to the party last night so his match was extremely important.  After seven years away, how would he fare?  The answer was pretty damn well.  He and Darby Allin worked a strong match that people were 100 percent into.  The beginning moment where they both sat there and stared at each other got a massive pop from the crowd as not a single bump was taken.  As I say all the time, moves are great but what gets the fans who aren’t engaged now into the product are the wrestlers and their stories.  That was the case last night.  It reminded me of when The Shield and The Wyatt Family faced off and before the match the fans were chanting that it was awesome.  For his first match in 7 years, Punk did a great job and it was very clear to me that the muscle memory was where it needed to be.  He will be an asset to AEW for sure.  I also loved the booking of the match.  Darby came out stronger in a loss, which was important.  I loved the little thing that they did where Punk was taking too long to hit GTS and Darby was too good to just be a victim.  I said to my son-in-law that Punk needed to catch him and hit the move immediately and get the win, and that is exactly how they ended it.  They did exactly what they should have done and the crowd loved every second of it, as they should have.  My son-in-law, the fan who came back for Punk?  He loved it too, thought it was perfect.  The moment where the three generations (with Sting in the ring) shook hands was awesome and will be on an AEW highlight reel forever.

Surprise, Surprise. As I am sure you all know right now, Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson debuted at the end of the show.  It was very well done.  While I don’t want to see Cole hanging out with The Elite for long, as I think he should on his own since he is a great talent, the way they used him as a red herring to then bring out Bryan was well played.  I love Cole but the fact of the matter is he doesn’t push the needle super far where mainstream fans are concerned.  Bryan?  Oh yeah he does.  Remember that in addition to being a top guy in WWE, like Punk he was a talent that the disgruntled WWE fans forced the company to push to the top when they really didn’t want to.  Just as Punk has brought former fans disgruntled by Vince McMahon to AEW, Bryan will do the same.  It was a huge get for the company.  In the case of Cole, I think his decision was a no-brainer.  At his size, he knows what his future would be in WWE, especially with Vince McMahon taking on NXT to “fix it”.  He made the best move for himself going to a company where his strengths should be maximized.  Bryan?  Well his decision was trickier due to his connection with his former company.  He made it clear after the PPV that he likes WWE and all but he wanted to go to AEW to wrestle, to do the thing that isn’t sports entertainment.  That has a great appeal to a lot of workers.  One could question with debuting two people at once is worrying about them getting lost in the shuffle. It’s a concern I often have when WWE does the mass debuts after WrestleMania.  Part of my problem with WWE's process is that they don’t make people special and it all just blends together.  In this case, I don’t see that happening.  I liked how they did it last night.  They had hype and eyeballs on the product and it made perfect sense to use that to continue the momentum, and build up interest for this week's TV.  They can’t do it all the time, of course, but in the moment, it was the right call.  Cole and Bryan are now in AEW.  Tune in Wednesday for the follow up.  Will ratings spike?  I hope so but even if they don’t, they made all the right moves and as Triple H says, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

The Main Event.  While I am no Jim Cornette, I am often critical of Kenny Omega.  He’s one of those talents that can do it all and when he is on, he’s great.  When he goes into what Cornette calls his “Olivier” mode, not so much.  For the last few months, Kenny has been great.  Last night?  I saw him regress to that character I don’t care for or enjoy.  He went back to doing the goofy stuff that I hate.  When he said, “Did I do that” on the floor I was like, “Did he just quote f’ing Urkel?”  Why yes he did and at the end of the show he did it again and name dropped Steve Urkel, who was on a show that aired its last episode in 1997.   People abused JBL for making dated references on commentary, and rightfully so.  The champ should get the same treatment here.  He had been a cool heel.  There is nothing cool about quoting Urkel.  He also did more of the overly dramatic stuff I hate as well.  I felt bad for Christian because he did everything he could (and was super lucky the leg from that table didn’t impale him when it broke).  But when Kenny is in that mode, it’s hard to have a good, serious match, and the champ should be having good, serious matches.  I didn’t say anything during the match because I wanted to wait for Joe to chime in.  About 10 minutes into the match said, “This just isn’t working.”  That’s how I felt.  We noticed that much of the crowd felt the same way.  I get that there was an element of burn out after Punk and all but as we saw with the post match angle, the crowd was live as hell for that so if this match had worked, they would have been live for that too.  Recently I have watched Joe Coffey and Rampage Brown raise the bar as their matches progressed.  The same can be said for WALTER and Ilja Dragunov.  Last night, the second match between Christian and Kenny paled in comparison to the first and I put the blame on the champ here.  Kenny needs to do better (and stop f’ng quoting Urkel).  This roster has a lot of options now to put the Title on.  Kenny had been really upping his game of late so I am just hoping that last night was a minor regression blip.

The First Three Matches FLEW by.  By the time Britt Baker pinned Kris Statlander, a little over an hour had gone by.  I said to Joe, “Can you believe it’s been on over an hour now?”  He said no way.  Way!  I loved all three matches.  They were very different and yet exactly what they should have been.  Miro and Eddie just killed it and told a great story of Kingston never saying die.  I am happy for both of those guys because they are finally getting the chance to show the world what they can do.  As an aside, there’s something that I have noticed of late with Tony Khan’s booking.  He has learned that when something isn’t working, cut it loose.  Miro is the perfect example.  He came in doing a goofy character.  In real life, he is a funny guy.  On TV, he should be a killer.  He came in badly and now as The Redeemer, he’s a monster. … Moxley and Kojima was exactly what it should have been.  Kojima is in amazing shape, amazing.  Suzuki coming in at the end was very cool.  I like that they are using Moxley as the New Japan conduit at a time when he is not in the Title picture.  It keeps him important in the storylines.  That is another thing that Khan has vastly improved on in his booking, he keeps people strong after their Title runs/shots when early on he used to have nothing for them after getting out of the Title picture. … Britt Baker has gotten so good.  Her and Kris Statlander had a great match and like I said, when it was over I couldn’t believe over an hour went by.

And then time stopped. First I want to say this. I know a LOT of people love Young Bucks’ matches.  I have always said if people love it, you give it to them if you are the promoter.  Me personally?  It was just like watching a Roadrunner cartoon, with the humor.  Joe made a very interesting point when seconds into the match he said, “That move they did was have almost killed someone in the first three matches and it didn’t slow them down a bit”.  Yep, that’s exactly why I don’t like Young Buck matches.  They are not a wrestling match, they are performance art.  I can’t take what they do seriously because they don’t take it seriously.  I expected a spot fest here and that’s exactly what I got.  The sad part for me is that when the Bucks actually do work a match, they are great at it.  They can tell stories and sell when they want to.  But it just seems they prefer to do every single solitary move that they know in almost every match.  So again, if you love that kind of wrestling, I respect that but to me, it’s boring and just unrealistic, so I don’t believe a thing that they do.  I did like that the Lucha Brothers got the Titles though.  The story that they told to get us to that point made the payoff satisfying.

MJF finally goes down. Going in I thought that MJF would get the win and the way they booked the match, it kind of bummed me out because by the end I wanted Jericho to overcome and he did.  Early on Joe said he liked this so much better than the Bucks because when a move that looked like it hurt happened, they sold it like it hurt.  Again, this just shows that there are two distinct kinds of wrestling fans.  This match was a really good story match because of the stakes and everything mattering.  To me, when the story is compelling I invest more and they don’t need to do every move that they know.  Even though Jericho won, I would like to see him cut back on how much he wrestles.  I respect the hell out of him attaching his name to the product when he started, and potentially putting his relationship with Vince McMahon in jeopardy.  They needed him and his name value when it started.  Now, they don’t.  If it’s me, I save Jericho and use him judiciously.  They should save as many of his matches as they can for PPV and make them a draw.  He can talk on TV all the time but he shouldn’t wrestle every week.  Save him and use him when it makes the most sense financially.  As for MJF, he has the plausible deniability that a heel needs and he can move on to the next feud now.  As another aside, to my earlier point about Khan’s booking this match was as important as the Title match and that is all do to the story that they told.

The rest of the show. The Casino Battle Royal was all about the debut of Ruby Soho.  I like the addition and she is definitely another talent WWE shouldn’t have let go in my opinion.  Now, she has Baker in her sights.  The women’s division got stronger. … Paul Wight vs. QT was exactly what it should have been.

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