An All In Preview So A.J. Will Shut Up (Free)

It's my favorite company's biggest show, we're careening toward the weekend, so let's do a preview because it'll be fun and lessen my annoyance.

I have one yappy reader...well, I'm sure there's more than one, but one in particular who keeps pestering me to include wrestling in the portfolio on this here platform. I've been hesitant, but we're hitting the slow season for sports, AEW is about to run their biggest show, and I do enjoy writing about some graps. So here you go, Air Traffic A.J. Now shut the fuck up!

Social media can definitely warp your view of what the world really looks like, he says in perhaps the most obvious statement he's ever made. It couldn't be truer in wrestling. BlueSky probably isn't a great gauge of where the wrestling world lies at the moment.

But what I feel is that Saturday afternoon will be something of a spike or culmination of AEW's momentum of late. They've had a run of excellent TV for months, Adam Page has emerged as their biggest star (on the men's side) and they're finally going to treat him like it, they'll have one of the best women's matches of all-time (though there should be more than one on the card, clearly), and it feels like they're about to really establish themselves (again) as not just a viable second company on TV but truly what they are to the masses. It's a "coming into their own" moment.

Fuck, they've put together a PPV where Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada V is the third most important match on the show, and might end up being the third-best. That's insane!

The reality, of course, is that the competition is simply too massive, too ubiquitous to ever really be knocked out of the top of the consciousness of anyone who is even remotely aware of wrestling. They can always claim victory simply due to legacy, no matter how garbage their product is.

All of the above about AEW is true though, no matter what else is going on in The Business, and it really does feel like the crest of a wave on Saturday. So let's go through the card and try to figure out what might happen:

Trios Championship (I'm assuming this match): The OPPS vs. Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta, and Gabe Kidd

This one hasn't been officially announced, but feels like that's what they were getting to at the end of Dynamite last night. If it doesn't happen, just picture it in your mind.

The Death Riders won't collapse at All In, but this will be the start of it. Any section of this match where it's Kidd and Joe in the ring might be a preview of a Forbidden Door match, if Kenny isn't feeling up to a sequel with Kidd. I kinda wish Claudio was in the men's gauntlet and winning it to be Hagman's first feud as champ and the first, major fissure between Claudio and Moxley, but that's not happening.

Anyway, the OPPS retain here, and probably some dissension starting to show between Claudio and Yuta, while this kind of slapped together and a bit strange alliance between Kidd and the Death Riders comes to at least a pause.

Tag Team Championship Match: The Hurt Syndicate vs. JetSpeed vs. The Patriarchy

I always fool myself into thinking AEW will do something tricky with PPV booking, and they so rarely do. This seems set up for the Hurt Syndicate to lose without getting pinned, probably to Christian Cage. And yet I'm not buying it.

There's still plenty to do with Shelton Benjamin and Bobby Lashley, and they need to be holding titles while MJF fucks up his chances in the coming months to create that imbalance. Plus, neither JetSpeed nor the Patriarchy feel like big enough teams to be taking the titles off champs who have barely had to breathe hard so far in this division.

There's a bigger moment to be had in some team beating the Hurt Syndicate for the tag titles. It isn't either of these teams. Maybe Brody King and someone, maybe Ospreay and Swerve, fuck maybe even a completed Outrunners journey in six months. I think we're staying status quo here.

Women's Gauntlet Match

Sadly, this will stand in as the second women's match on the card, and there really should be another singles match. Oh well.

This one's tricky because if it acts as a straight-line for someone to Toni Storm, who is up for that right now? A rematch with Megan Bayne doesn't have quite the juice that it should at the moment. Kris Statlander hasn't had enough of an arc to be thought of as a real threat and possible top of the entire division. Willow Nightingale seems better used to topple Mercedes out of the TBS title, should Mercedes not hold both come the end of the night. Though Willow is about the only one who could feel bigger than Mercedes while holding the top title.

I feel like there's going to be something a bit out of left field for this one (as mentioned above, I always do). Something like Athena winning and using her title shot to chase Mercedes instead of Toni. Could also see them using it to make Thekla and giving her Toni's first post-All In Feud and save bigger matches for PPVs down the line.

Men's Gauntlet Match

Again, this is where I talk myself into something far more goofy than what will actually happen. They've certainly been positioning MJF as a title-challenger to augment his stay in the Hurt Syndicate. He would make for a pretty great first program with Hangman after All In. When he loses it, it begins the separation of him and his faction. The math is all there.

And yet... I always think "that's too simple." MJF losing the gauntlet could be a first step in MVP and the Hurt Syndicate looking at him sidewise. When he backdoors his way into a title challenge farther down the road and loses that too, that could be a final straw type thing.

If Jay White were healthy, that's the obvious answer. But he isn't, and that doesn't leave much. Part of me wants to say Ricochet, marking a year in the company for him, and he makes for a decent enough, simple TV feud with Page to start the latter's championship run.

But I'm not going to twist myself in knots this time. The easiest answer is MJF, and we'll take it.

Swerve Strickland & Will Ospreay vs. The Young Bucks

There are just more ways to go here with the Bucks winning. A Swerve heel turn? A Will one? Swerve just lingering in the background of Hangman's entire run on top, waiting for the clock to expire on his title challenge ban and those two doing a match for the title at Wembley next year? These two in the tag division for a while? Ospreay going after Omega for their rubber match because he can't chase the top title?

The Bucks losing allows them to go on another vacation they love, but that's about it. They're going to do that anyway. I don't love the idea of them continuing to drop in from time-to-time and doing the whole "authority figures" thing, but they also haven't really been abusing it, either. At least not of late. The more angle-heavy result is where this goes.

TNT Title Match - Kyle Fletcher vs. Adam Cole

If this isn't Fletcher punting Cole over to Jerry World I'm going to be disappointed. Cole's run with the title has been ass, Fletcher has been doing great work for well over a year now, and he needs a title to validate it. There's certainly a list of mid-card babyfaces for him to wrestle for a good while (Kevin Knight, Danny Garcia, Briscoe, Brody immediately leap to mind). He's not exactly the guy to defend it on TV every week, which is what the TNT title really should be, but he's too good to get worked up about that.

Unified Title Match - Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hard to believe this is actually happening, but it is. And in the same summer as an Oasis reunion!

I'm curious how long this one goes. On some level, they know that they're not the most important match on the card. On the other, they're still going to want to ball out. I doubt they're going 45 minutes, but I doubt it's less than 25, either.

It hasn't really been made clear if the Unified Title will be like the International one, with whoever holding it defending it in various companies across the globe. If it is, I get the sense that Kenny would win. Little point in sending Okada back to Japan on occasion, and Omega is already doing that when he can. He also likes showing up in Mexico and the UK, or at least he did not so long ago. Maybe his health doesn't allow that now.

If it's just an intercontinental title with a different name, and a reason to get rid of the belt handed out for winning the Continental Classic (which never made sense), then it swings a little more to Okada's side. If Okada is the champion, it's not hard to picture a big-time Brody King match down the line to finally get something on Brody.

Can't call this one. Is it going to be on the level of the first four matches between these two? Almost certainly not. Will it still be one of the best matches we've seen in the past five years? Almost certainly yes.

Women's Title Match: Toni Storm vs. Mercedes Mone

I was actually surprised to realize last night that this isn't title for title, which I think makes it a little clearer Toni's winning. And she should. She's been the company's biggest star, she has done the best work both on mic and in-ring. Perhaps Toni's biggest accomplishment is she's always felt bigger than Mercedes, which is not easy to do given the way Mercedes has been booked (and rightly so). This would be the culmination of that.

There's a whole story to be told about Mercedes always failing at the biggest hurdle (she never actually won a Mania singles match, either) and at some point soon she needs to start losing all those belts. A loss here makes her vulnerable on the TBS stage, and there's plenty who could use that rub.

I don't know what would be next for Toni, but that's a concern for another time. This will absolutely cork. The best women's matches in history, on these shores, have mostly involved Mercedes, and she's rarely if ever gotten to work with someone doing the character work that Toni has been. This would be my bet to lead off the show, so as not to get buried between Omega-Okada and the main event.

AEW World Title Match: Hangman Adam Page vs. Jon Moxley

I haven't watched WWE in years, and yet they poisoned my mind so heavily that I still can't shake the feeling that a company would end its biggest show by pissing everyone off royally. It's not really something AEW does, and they certainly would have a contrasting ending and feeling just for the sake of it, but that's how deep the mind-rot can go.

Page is going to win. He needs to win. He's the biggest star on the men's side. He's the one popping the ratings, if you care about that stuff. He's the one moving merch. He's out front and center when they go to Mexico City. He's got the best story, a multi-year arc that fans connect to. He was probably jobbed out of the main even of this last year, even though he and Swerve was the best story then, so Tony Khan could fan-service Bryan Danielson (quite understandably). Page throws up match of the year candidates left and right. It's all so simple.

Yet I can't quite completely eliminate this tiny, nagging feeling that this could be a set-up for a returning Darby Allin, which I would hate. He's got the history with Mox that started this whole Death Riders thing. He was originally positioned as the leader of the babyfaces against them before he fucked off to climb Everest. It felt like they were looking for any way to get this to Darby before Hangman seized control of the story, because that's what he does.

I'm talking myself into circles again. Page is winning an absolute classic bloodbath, just like he did against Mox two years ago, just like he did against Swerve, just like he did against Ospreay. Darby has one trick. Page can do anything. That's what's happening. Yep. For sure. No worries. I think?

Sidenote: I will be part of the cast of thousands previewing the show for Wrestling Brain on Thursday night at 8 Central on their Twitch Channel!