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

One has to complete the set.

If you're even tangentially aware of AEW, you've probably heard the phrase "The Feeling Is Back" at some point in the past six years of its existence. AEW fans hold the company to such high standards on a week-to-week basis, mostly out of desperation. The desperation that AEW has reached those heights so often that it does feel like a loss when it goes through the normal dips of any weekly TV show (and one that doesn't get a summer off). Desperation to prove to the world that there is other wrestling besides for the industry leader, and much better wrestling. Desperation to be proved right, in all of it.

The fact that, for a majority of its life, AEW has met those expectations and demands will be something we marvel at somewhere down the road. Because AEW was still so new when it hit a dip a couple years ago, there was always going to be panic that it wouldn't be able to pull out of it. It had no track record of recovery. It had no track record of anything.

Fans were understandably stressed. After finally having something of our own on TV every week, to have that "better way" of wrestling right on our TVs, or to feel part of the coolest club in the business, just the faintest thought that we might have to go back to the old ways was a horror. That we'd have to listen to those who said they'd "won" was a torturous vision. It's easy to see how even a hint of that would send us over the edge.

I suppose that sense of urgency that still accompanies pretty much every AEW show heightens the highs as much, if not more, than throws the lows into the absolute depths of hell. Certainly after Saturday's All In, that feeling is back for the fans.

If measured in a vacuum, I don't know that All In would rate as AEW's best show ever. It's certainly in the team photo. But the stakes of it, just like with any match, are what's important. This was AEW's biggest domestic show, in a market they've spammed with shows before. This was the show that the competition went all out to try and counter-program, suggesting some level of concern about it (though the way they threw their women's roster under the bus to do so requires further scrutiny). This was the show that AEW had basically built its whole year around. Everything leading up to this show was about what would happen at All In, and now everything feels like it is starting fresh after it. It is the pivot point.

So in that sense, with a lot of ways making this show AEW's most important, it certainly feels like the best.

That feeling carried through the most important matches. Perhaps there's no better example than Mercedes Mone vs. Toni Storm. I'm not sure either of Mercedes's matches with Kris Statlander weren't better than this one, and Toni's blowoff with Mariah certainly was. However, from the moment these two got in the ring, it felt far more immense than anything these two had done in the company before (saying something, given that the Toni-Mariah match was set up over a year). That's credit to the build of this specific match by both, and by the figures these two have cultivated since coming to AEW. The moments in the match just felt bigger than they did in any other contest, because it felt like two genuine titans finally harnessing their energy for just long enough to get them in between the same ropes. Toni's win felt like a seismic shift.

Same goes for Kazuchika Okada-Kenny Omega. It's not even the biggest stage these two have been on, considering this all started at The Tokyo Dome eight years ago. It was never going to be the same match as these two put on seven and eight years ago, because how could it be? It was still great, but felt immense because AEW was able to bring what had been arguably wrestling's biggest rivalry (in terms of quality) from streaming in the middle of the night to American shores and the middle of the day. Merely importing such an occasion for all to see felt huge.

Of the three main events (which is always a little silly to say), the Texas Death Match between Hangman Adam Page and Jon Moxley is probably the only one to surpass the occasion. But then, that's what Adam Page does. I'd have to go back and watch their Texas Death match from Revolution 2023 to see if this one was definitively better. My hunch is that they're on par with each other, but one was in the middle of a card and one was at the head of the biggest show in AEW's history. That makes a pretty stark difference.

It would be easy to dismiss it as run-in heavy and just Cody and Roman again, and they're already doing so in the NY-pilled circles. But the match, show, and company isn't for them. It's for those who are watching every week. It's a reward for them, not candy for those who only drop in once a year and need names they can recognize to think it's good.

Everything tied together, everything made sense for fans who have followed this for 10 months or so. Everything linked. It was all a stripping away of the flimsy facade Moxley had been keeping around his title run. Without his easy outs, without his fake braggadocio, Mox could only pay lip service to the depths and violence he would inflict upon Hangman, and it wasn't enough. Page, with a far more solid base on who he was after years in the wilderness, showed that was necessary to go farther than Mox could, with his house of cards foundation. It was brilliant storytelling, and ended with the kind of moment that gets fans leaping off the couch (this household very much included).

The show was always going to hinge on those three matches. They were the seven monologues in Hamlet. Get those right, and no one really cares what else goes on. And the rest of the show was good! The women's gauntlet was probably the best of the rest, as the men's version dragged on a bit. The trios match that opened took a minute to get going, but the crowd popped once Powerhouse Hobbs countered the Doomsday Device into a power slam from atop Claudio Castagnoli's shoulders.

AEW is never going to be the dominant wrestling company in the country. Most of its fans wouldn't want it be, given the sacrifices that would have to be made to the barely-interested and bland to give it such an audience. It wouldn't be AEW like that. What it did on Saturday is solidify itself in terms of identity and style. It can carry AEW into a really big show and not lose anything about itself.

It won't hold this standard every week, or month, or year even. That's impossible. But after Saturday, AEW fans can probably panic a little less next time there's a dip, now fully confident that the company will round back into form pretty quickly whenever required.