All Out started surprisingly slow for me, and I still can’t quite put my finger on why. I don’t know if it’s because the show opened with a championship match that I ended up not liking nearly as much as I thought I would, after a silly Tailgate Brawl tornado tag to end the pre-show, but something about the beginning of the show didn’t click. Thankfully, things picked up, as I figured they would, but the slow start threw me off for a bit. There was also a super unfortunate injury that threw things off for everyone, performers and fans alike.
For whatever reason, Andrade El Idolo and Pac’s National Championship match wasn’t nearly as fast-paced or exciting as I hoped. I figured Andrade was retaining, so maybe another match should have been slotted in its place, with this one happening later on. Maybe the AEW Trios Championships should have kicked off the night, as that match was going to feel huge and be excellent no matter which team walked away as champions.
Then came the scary injury to Steven Borden during the tag team match pitting him and Darby Allin against Kevin Knight and Kyle Fletcher to determine the number one contenders for the AEW World Tag Team Championships. A big injury like that is always something to hate, no matter who it happens to, but it really sucked that it happened to Borden on his first pay-per-view on a big stage. The medical stoppage really put a damper on the evening, at no fault of anyone’s, and it certainly didn’t help the feeling of the first portion of the show.
The crowd was obviously trying to recover from seeing Borden taken out of the arena on a stretcher after the scary spot, and they were quiet for the beginning of TBS Champion Persephone’s open challenge, which was answered by the debuting Dani Luna. The women worked hard to get the crowd into the match, and they were excellent, but in the end, Persephone retained the gold, and debuting a new star only for them to lose always feels pretty lame to me.
After the National Championship match, I had tempered my expectations for the International title bout where Kazuchika Okada defended against Tommaso Ciampa, that also started out slow, but thankfully, Willow Ciampa’s double birds to Okada after he picked on the cute little 8-year-old at ringside is quite seriously where the show picked up for me. It was exactly the spot the crowd needed, and the match got super hot after that. AEW almost always pulls through with its pay-per-views, which it thankfully did tonight, but the start of the show had me worried for a bit.
Written by Daisy Ruth
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