The highs and lows of AEW's All Out

Andreas Hale

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The highs and lows of AEW's All Out image

The final pay-per-view before All Elite Wrestling makes their debut on TNT took place when All Out hit the Sears Centre Arena in the suburbs of Chicago. An old face became the inaugural AEW world champion, arguably the best pro wrestler in the world came up short yet again and tag teams proved that this promotion will offer something that the House that McMahon built won’t as The Young Bucks and Lucha Bros tore the roof off with a hellacious ladder match. 

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But not everything was great, as AEW still has work to do in a few areas before heading into the “Wednesday Night Wars” with WWE’s NXT brand. Nevertheless, the budding promotion has provided just enough to prove to be a viable alternative to World Wrestling Entertainment where fans will most certainly be in tune with what AEW has up their sleeve once they become a weekly program in October. 

With that, we take a look at the highs and lows of AEW's All Out.

The Highs

AEW crowned the right champion

Some immediately took to social media to complain that a 48-year-old Chris Jericho had no business defeating a man two decades his junior to become the company’s first world champion. 

They are wrong.

Dead wrong. 

Chris Jericho is exactly what this company needs as their champion heading into television. The reasons are pretty simple to understand. For one, every pro-wrestling promotion needs a great heel and understands that there is far more juice in the babyface chasing the title than having the good guy already at the top of the mountain. 

What Jericho provides is a recognizable face that can reel in the lapsed fan while also being charismatic enough to carry a feud with some of the younger talents on the roster. You can best believe that whoever dethrones Jericho will have earned it. Until then, Jericho should carry the title long enough for the fans to beg for a title change. The age doesn’t matter as much as the talent behind the wrestler who is holding that lofty spot. 

It’s also important to note that Adam Page’s time will come. But he’s not well known enough just yet and still learning the ropes on how to cut an effective promo. Page will be a star, just give it some time so it feels earned rather than a situation where fans will say that The Elite are only looking out for themselves. 

The Young Bucks and Lucha Bros showcased a fantastic tag team division

What AEW will offer that the WWE simply doesn’t care about is an excellent tag team division that is far more than two random singles stars teaming up. What we saw between The Young Bucks and Lucha Bros is exactly what the alternative should provide. It was a brutal ladder match that featured a death-defying Canadian Destroyer off the top of a ladder and through a table and a host of other stunts that had the fans on the edge of their seat. 

With the AAA tag team titles likely disappearing from the scene now that the Lucha Bros have taken them back into their possession, the focus will shift to a tournament to crown AEW’s inaugural tag team champions. 

The division is stacked with talent and the addition of the tag team formally known as L.A.X. has only pushed it further ahead of the competition. Add in the fact that Private Party are set to be breakout stars and you have a division that could be the reason why people tune in to AEW over NXT.

Cody has it all figured out

Cody Rhodes may not be as talented in the ring as Kenny Omega, PAC, Page or the Young Bucks, but he’s found his niche as a character wrestler who relies on storytelling and theatrics over high spots and brilliant chain wrestling. 

It’s a strange twist of irony considering that he’s essentially become the Triple H of AEW with his dramatic entrances. Fortunately, he’s decided that he doesn’t need to be the main event and has allowed the other talent on the roster to shine.

He is now three for three in AEW PPV matches as his bouts with Nick Aldis (All-In), Dustin Rhodes (Double or Nothing) and Shawn Spears (All Out) have all been either very good or great. 

He’s found the formula and it is clicking with audiences.

The Lows

Lackluster entrance themes

Outside of Cody, Omega, The Young Bucks, Jericho and Page, the entrance music and video packages for the rest of the AEW talent is supremely lacking. There should be no expectation that AEW would eclipse the fantastic presentation that WWE provides, but what is being delivered is unacceptable for a company that is about to head to television. 

Simply put, AEW needs a music director and somebody who can put together engaging video packages that set the tone for the talent as they head to the ring. There’s nothing worse than the talent being unable to get over with the crowd because of how they are presented. Which leads us to…

The Dark Order needs a reboot

From the moment that Evil Uno and Stu Grayson appeared at Double or Nothing, they were doomed. They were given the grand debut at AEW’s second PPV that fell on deaf ears because few knew who they were and even fewer understood what the hell their gimmick was. 

To make matters worse, the tag team formally known as Super Smash Brothers were excellent on the indie scene. But everything that made Uno and Grayson great has been stripped away. Instead of having Uno punish his opponents with his size and Grayson provide the athleticism, they have kind of meandered in their matches and lacked the dominance needed to overcome a gimmick that has fallen flat on its face. 

They were gifted with a hot crowd after the Omega-Pac match and proceeded to suck the air out of the arena when they beat Best Friends for a first-round bye in the tag tournament. Not all was lost as Orange Cassidy’s appearance sent a jolt through the crowd. Nevertheless, Uno and Grayson could use some time away to have a reboot that will reintroduce them at some point after the company makes their debut on TNT. Because, right now, they are dead on arrival. 

Show Length

What makes NXT TakeOver such a special show is the length. It’s never over three hours and the matches all have meaning. With “The Buy-In” preshow, “All Out” clocked in at a whopping five hours. In the arena, you could feel the fatigue that set in during the Dark Order vs. Best Friends match and continued into the competent, but underwhelming affair between Riho and Hikaru Shida. To be clear, it wasn’t the match that underwhelmed, but the energy for a match between two women that American audiences don’t know very well.

Shave those two matches off and you have an excellent paced event. But the promotion has made every effort to get as much talent on the card as they can. Maybe that will change once they go to television and some of these feuds can be blown off during the week. As of right now, the PPVs are doing more to wear the crowd down than keep them engaged. The term "less is more" certainly applies here.  

Andreas Hale

Andreas Hale Photo

Andreas Hale is the senior editor for combat sports at The Sporting News. Formerly at DAZN, Hale has written for various combat sports outlets, including The Ring, Sherdog, Boxing Scene, FIGHT, Champions and others. He has been ringside for many of combat sports’ biggest events, which include Mayweather-Pacquiao, Mayweather-McGregor, Canelo-GGG, De La Hoya-Pacquiao, UFC 229, UFC 202 and UFC 196, among others. He also has spent nearly two decades in entertainment journalism as an editor for BET and HipHopDX while contributing to MTV, Billboard, The Grio, The Root, Revolt, The Source, The Grammys and a host of others. He also produced documentaries on Kendrick Lamar, Gennadiy Golovkin and Paul George for Jay-Z’s website Life+Times.