Thursday, September 17, 2020

AEW All Out 2020



So it took me a while, but I was able to catch the replay on the Fite.TV app. A rather eventful PPV, to say the least. Let's dive right into it, shall we?




Big Swole defeated Dr. Britt Baker DMD via morphine dosage in what they called a "Tooth & Nail" match that translates to "let's have a fight in Britt's dental office and see if we can outsuck Money In The Bank in Titan Towers." Apparently, people threw a fit because this was on the pre-show and felt they deserved to PAY for this match on PAY PER VIEW. The end result? A pretty short segment that would've been fine on an episode of Dynamite than on PAY PER VIEW. I get that Britt might not be 100% to get back in the ring or anything like that and they had to smoke & mirror this whole deal, but watching the match... this match where REBEL was delivering more offense and that's never a good thing... this whole time I was thinking, "THIS is what you open your big PPV event with?" A lot of noise made over nothing.

The Young Bucks defeated Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus... and the Bucks are meaner... so mean that they'd later superkick that guy who wrote the Death Of WCW... Alex WhatshisFace... anyway, this is a fun little tag match. The Bucks adopting a meaner streak and less showmanship is an interesting twist. Them kicking poor Alex Marvez on Dynamite was bad form; he had nothing to do with that book about The Death Of WCW; that was Dave Meltzer.

(Disclaimer: The Death of WCW was not written by Dave Meltzer.)

They had the Casino Battle Royale thing that was won by Lance Archer, who earns a future World title match... and that's about all I remember that's positive. The only other stand out moments is Matt Sydal making his debut and fucking up a Shooting Star Press, which is a bad omen... and then there's the bit where Darby Allin is stuck inside a body bag full of thumbtacks and tossed out while in the bodybag full of tacks... that must equally suck. Other than that, the match did nothing for me. Battle Royals remain an AEW weakness.

And then we had this match... this Matt Hardy/Sammy Guevara Broken Rules match, where apparently the goal is to do a really wreckless spot, hit your head hard on the concrete, possibly get a concussion, stop the match, have the doctors do a quick check up, restart the match, and then do another dangerous spot to get hurt even more... but yeah, if you want more concrete details, you can look elsewhere because it's been talked about quite a bit. But basically, Matt hit his head on the floor, looked out of it, they stopped the match, but then it just kept going, Sammy did another bump, and Matt won. A sour point.

Listen, if one of your guys gets really hurt to the point where you question their health and ability to continue the match without doing anything to cause further harm, you stop the match. There have been many occasions where a match would stop due to severe injury; Darren Drozdov, for example, when he took a power bomb and lost all mobility. That one time Paul Orndorff was in a tag match and got paralyzed after doing a move and they stopped the match to check on him. Or, if you just HAVE to finish the match, then you do a finish that isn't dangerous or stupid. The best example is the match where Owen Hart dropped Steve Austin on his head and damn near broke his neck. Originally, the finish was a couple more piledrivers before Austin hit the Stunner. What they ended up doing a shitty roll-up finish that got a pop regardless.

Now, all that having been said, Matt Hardy is moving about, he is not dead, and going by his appearance on Dynamite, he looks fine and on his way to a full recovery. Everyone involved was very fortunate to not have this go south, because it easily could have. Let this be a lesson for the future and not some that's going to get mocked in the future.

AEW Women's Champion Hikaru Shida defeated NWA Women's Champion Thunder Rosa to retain the title. Perfectly fine little match and a rare treat to see two champions from different promotions on the main stage. It was certainly good to see Thunder Rosa back in action after the NWA took its sabbatical and she hadn't missed a beat. And then, of course, Shida is Shida and that's good.

Kip Sabian and Penelope Ford announce that they're getting married. Kip then plugs his Twitch channel; a plug that is approved by All Elite Wrestling. There you go, kids. One company wants their talent to stop using Twitch, the other will not only endorse their talent using Twitch, but will even plug their channels... I've got nothing.

Dustin Rhodes, Matt Cardonas (the former Bro guy), and QT Marshall (that other guy) defeated The Dark Order (Brodie Lee, Colt Cobana) when Brodie laid out Dustin for Colt to pin, but Colt HAS TO HIT HIS MOVE and he does a moonsault, but misses and Dustin rolls him up for the pin. Brodie then chew out Colt for being an idiot, but doesn't toss papers his way.,

Orange Cassidy defeated Chris Jericho in the Mimosa Mayhem match, where the goal is to either pin/submit your opponent or toss him into the pool of orange bubbly... and well Jericho took the plunge, thus doing the job without doing a job. He's finally reached that WCW legend status and it only took him a quarter-century to make it there.

And in the main event, AEW World Champion Jon Moxley defeated MJF to retain the title. Added stipulation is that Mox's Paradigm Shift DDT is banned... so it's a pretty fierce match. MJF gets some color and after 20+ minutes of action, Wardlow tosses the ring at MJF, who doesn't catch it and MJF looks at Mox, Mox looks at the ref who is occupied with Wardlow, Mox hits the DDT, and gets the pinfall. Yes, Mox cheated, but MJF cheated first and got his comeupperance as a result. This was fantastic and a clear sign that MJF can deliver the goods when put in the position to do so. For a guy who's only been around for a couple years, he comes across as a season veteran and exudes the kind of aura that most seasoned veterans of this generation lack. If MJF had won the title on this night, I wouldn't have an issue with it. Honestly, part of me was surprised they didn't just go in that direction since he's clearly ready for it... but Mox coming out on top was a good finish too.

This year's All Out PPV was a fairly good PPV that was marred by a particularly ugly moment that might not have been handled the best way possible, but fortunately, Matt Hardy did not die. And so if you're willing to look past that, the rubbish battle royal, and the Big Swole vs. Reba match that nobody liked, you've got a pretty good show on hand here.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Keep it real and keep it clean.