AEW All Out 2021 - September 5, 2021

[Coffey]

Friendly reminder that Chris Jericho finished #73 in the PWO GWE list & I don't think his AEW work would move him up. If anything, I think it would move him down. That being said, I remember enjoying his List stuff in WWE, but that was more for the comedy skits than it was the actual wrestling & if anything, it was Kevin Owens that looked good from it when he turned on Jericho. I guess the JeriShow tags were... OK?

For PWO GWE comparison sake, in 2016, Kenny Omega was ranked 259 behind Kevin Von Erich & Eric Embry.  Think those have changed... just a hunch.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, Coffey said:

For PWO GWE comparison sake, in 2016, Kenny Omega was ranked 259 behind Kevin Von Erich & Eric Embry.  

This board was *way* behind the times in 2016 (and that includes me BTW, I did not get Omega nor the Bucks at all while if I voted now Omega would get #1 or 2 and both the Bucks are easy top 20 as they would be #1 tag team by a wide margin).

[MoS]

Fun fact: Bollywood blatantly ripped off Final Countdown, but used it in a romantic/seductive context. I use that loosely, cuz this was late 80s Bollywood and pretty much no intimate touching was allowed. I believe Europe has never got a dime out of this. You win some, you lose some. Anyway, enjoy: 

 

 

[cm funk]

Are the old podcasts with Lars still up anywhere?  I remember listening to them a long, long, long time ago

I love the use of real music, but using such established old classic songs in a major promotion in 2021 is taking a bit of getting used to for me tbh.  The crowds love it though and it's a hook for randos so I'm def with it.  I can accept that I'm becoming a cranky middle aged man and that a lot of the kids don't necessarily have a 30 year relationship with The Pixies already or remember Tarzan Boy from the 80's

The bands that license with them are smart, it's going to juice their sales like it did for Living Colour back in the day.  I get why Europe didn't want to.  That song was in a big commercial campaign in the US semi-recently (so effective I don't remember what it was for lol) and the lead singer was in the commercial.  I'm sure he got a fuckton for that one, gets a fuckton when it's in movies, and he might not understand rasslin fans

I actually like a lot of the AEW original music a ton and don't think they need to go wild with the licensed music.  Like, I thought Mox's original theme was great and there was no reason to change it.  The original P&P theme.  Kingston.  Miro.  I love Statlander's music, that one def gets stuck in my head.  Omega.  The Elite.  etc. etc.  They were already beating WWE handily in the original music department IMO

[FMKK]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

This board was *way* behind the times in 2016 (and that includes me BTW, I did not get Omega nor the Bucks at all while if I voted now Omega would get #1 or 2 and both the Bucks are easy top 20 as they would be #1 tag team by a wide margin).

I’m sure there are still some Omega resisters amongst the people who would have been posting a lot back then. I guess that vote wrapped up just before his legendary G1 Finals in 2016 so you basically have his entire run as a top worldwide star missing from the process.

My top ten would skew so modern that Parv and such would write a fucking book about it.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, FMKK said:

I’m sure there are still some Omega resisters amongst the people who would have been posting a lot back then. I guess that vote wrapped up just before his legendary G1 Finals in 2016 so you basically have his entire run as a top worldwide star missing from the process.

Yeah, I'm sure of it. It took a while for me to adjust and get cleaned off a whole lot of pre-conceived notions, even when I saw that GOAT match (back then) between him and Naito (it was G1 16 I believe) I wasn't sold on Omega (aka I was resisting mostly because of confirmation biases). By the time the third Okada match happened, it was done, I was in synch. He only has piled up more and more all-time greatness since then.

1 hour ago, FMKK said:

My top ten would skew so modern that Parv and such would write a fucking book about it.

Ah ah you don't say ! The way things are going in term of how great wrestling has become in the last decade and how my reflexions have evolved (and keep on evolving), my top 10 in 2026 would give a bunch of people PTSD, considering what I still read on regular basis around here. 

[NotJayTabb]

8 hours ago, Coffey said:

For PWO GWE comparison sake, in 2016, Kenny Omega was ranked 259 behind Kevin Von Erich & Eric Embry.  Think those have changed... just a hunch.

All that says to me is that in 2016 Omega was too high and Kevin was too low ;-)

[Matt D]

6 minutes ago, NotJayTabb said:

All that says to me is that in 2016 Omega was too high and Kevin was too low ;-)

And Embry! 

[Timbo Slice]

It wasn’t a show that had me bouncing off the walls, but there was a level of satisfaction, even with two days of discourse, knowing exactly how things went, etc. that was unrivaled from a PPV experience in a lot of ways. So much here stemmed from matches presented in ways to really give everyone a chance to do what they did best, and even in the situations where a match type wasn’t to your liking, you came away thinking it was done in a way that truly made basically everyone come out of it looking better. Which is tough to do when you’re cramming so many folks in there. Individual match thoughts:

-Eddie Kingston leading off the biggest PPV in years to set the tone is one of the great match placement moves I can remember. Maybe since leading off WM30 with Bryan/HHH to both get Hunter out of the way and set up Bryan’s night to shine. Miro was sensational here, and Eddie sold and fed for him better than anyone has since Miro arrived, while also putting on the classic Eddie gatekeeping performance. The inevitable rematch, most likely to close the Arthur Ashe show, will be magical, and with a match this good to build on, they have a shot to top it. 
 

-Moxley/Kojima had a match style I really enjoyed, even if there were some disjointed parts when the match veered towards Mox in control. They both went for it, and Kojima looked great for being 50 and not having been on a big stage in quite a while. I still don’t know what to make of Mox without a title, as I think it gave him an aura that was difficult to get past, but I think he’s finding his stride and Minoru is gonna help. It’s alluded to that he’ll be checking the new adds, which should be fun. 
 

-The women’s title match I really enjoyed, even though I agree with the first half not having a lot of snap. I wonder now if a sprint would have been a better option here, but the finishing stretch was brutal and definite, and puts Baker on a huge level above everyone else ahead of Ruby. Statlander really showed out here.

-The cage match was probably the best possible outcome here, as the lax selling off some huge spots and usual Bucks stereo nonsense were to be expected, but from a pacing and big moments standpoint? It kinda worked! Usually Bucks control segments in these plunder matches are a bit mundane, but they upped the brutality thanks to the Lucha Bros bumping their asses off, and the timing, especially from Fenix, on the comebacks were pretty fantastic. Tons of nitpicks, but they got the important stuff mostly right, and that means it ended up working. This was basically the show rolled up into one match for me: Rough in some spots, but never taking away from the enjoyment. 
 

-The battle Royal was fine, I liked the shine moments for Thunder Rosa a ton, and liked how Tay Conti looked, too. Ruby was expected and still made everything look great, and Tony calling out a possible singles match for her and Rosa has me salivating. That should rule hard. 

-MJF/Jericho was a great work carry job from MJF, who I hope does more show off stuff in his big matches going forward. Dude is kind of a freak athlete and can really be great as a bump and feed heel, but I’m not sure how much he intends to play to those strengths when his shtick is what brings him to the dance. Jericho didn’t make anything too much worse than it should have been, and I liked the Dynamite match better, but this was still fine and had some eye-popping MJF stuff that jumped out at you. Not sure where he goes from here, but he becomes an amazing wild card on the heel side after the additions to the roster. 
 

-Punk/Darby was a fantastic work of subtleties, as Punk knew folks would have the microscope out to pick apart his match. He knew he’d be rusty, so he did what he did best, and threw in some flair when he needed to. The best things he did in this match was respond to Darby’s flurries. Especially his final one, which played right into the finish. He made all his stuff look incredible, and in a match where Darby indeed took some insane bumps, Punk was happy to let Darby throw his body into him however he wanted to, which made Darby’s work carrying even more incredible by comparison. It will take some time getting used to this version of Punk, but he by no means put on a subpar performance. If anything, it showed a blueprint of what he feels his focuses should be, and I think it’ll be great to see what he does bringing the young guys along. Especially given how amped they’ll be to do well with him. 
 

-QT/Wight was great pro wrestling bullshit that did exactly what it set out to do. Wight doesn’t have much of anything left, but he can be used effectively as a bellwether for malcontents, and that’s fine. Just don’t know how much he should be used going forward. 
 

-The main event was an absolutely fantastic Kenny performance, even with some of the mannerisms being too much. He was vicious, he was showing off, he knew when to turn it up, he bumped fantastic for Christian’s offense, and it was my favorite performance of his this year outside the Jungle Boy match. Christian absolutely got in his ear about how to pace and structure, and I know he’s banged up, but he needs to think of matches like this going forward. It never veered into going overboard, it had some fantastic transitions, and when a big moment came, it was hit with conviction. This is the Kenny I’m fine seeing. More of this please. Christian was his usual self, which gave the match pacing and importance, but the booking not being in doubt hurt a lot of his comebacks, even with the Killswitch near fall. Still a great performance, and a great capper. 
 

-The postmatch stuff was wild to watch even 48 hours later, as Cole’s debut was so great, even if I fell for it being the ending of the show. I’m a huge Mount Rushmore mark, so Steen’s eventual move is going to make that group even better for me. Kenny running away from Bryan ruled, and there really isn’t a single person on that roster for a Bryan match I wouldn’t see. This run could absolutely cement his GOAT status, and it’s going to be the most insane thing to see him pick who he wants to work with over the next several months, which should lead to him in the 2022 G-1, perhaps the most anticipated month of wrestling I can remember. 
 

And this all happened in one night. Incredible. 

[Dale Wolfe]

Man i would definitely watch Embry vs Omega

[MoS]

I checked and 22 years and 4 months would be Slamboree 1999, which did approximately 195,000 buys - https://wrestlenomics.com/resources/wcw-pay-per-view-buys/ Looks like the PPV definitely cracked 200,000 buys. It would be interesting to see how many WWE B-shows were getting 200k buys in the last few years of the PPV era. 

[MoS]

(Also, interesting that Road Wild that year was so successful, outdrawing Bash at the Beach and Halloween Havoc. Was Road Wild when Goldberg returned after his injury angle?)

[NotJayTabb]

No, Goldberg injured himself in the Russo era, and his comeback match was against Tank Abbott on Nitro . Road Wild 99 had 3 big matches (Sting/Sid, Goldberg/Steiner and Hogan/Nash retirement match), plus Dennis Rodman wrestling, so it was a pretty big name card. Hogan had just returned to the yellow and red too.

[El-P]

The answer is probably Dennis Rodman vs Randy Savage.

[kas]

http://www.2xzone.com/wwe/buyrates.shtml

These are all WWE PPV buy-rates not including In Your House. Aside from Mania, Summerslam, and Royal Rumbles, WWE started dropping to around 200,000 average at around 2009-2010ish.

[MoS]

Goldberg shoot injured himself punching the non-gimmicked car window, but I remember him working some injury angle with the Steiners prior to that too, when Hogan and Flair were having their drama. I had absolutely zero memory of Rodman wrestling Savage though, like literally none lol. 

Looking at the WWE buyrates of the 2010s is interesting. Unless headlined by a Lesnar match, most B-show PPVs were struggling to hit 200k, so if All Out does crack that number, that's a gigantic success. It would also be poetic if this outdraws Money in the Bank 2011. 

[Jimmy Redman]

What does it say about the absolute fucking state of me that I still remember off the top of my head that MITB 2011 did 195,000 buys.

[NintendoLogic]

Dave also said that it should double or come close to doubling ECW's biggest number (Heat Wave 1999, which did 99k buys).

[Zoo Enthusiast]

It deserved every buy it got.  I’m hoping to fly down to STL in November, too.

[funkdoc]

We'd have to assume those numbers include BR & fiteTV buys, no?  That would be the obvious place for the truthers to nitpick, to be fair.

[C.S.]

2 hours ago, funkdoc said:

We'd have to assume those numbers include BR & fiteTV buys, no?  That would be the obvious place for the truthers to nitpick, to be fair.

What is there to nitpick though? Services like BR and Fite weren't around 22 years ago. The landscape was different. Today, ordering a show over the internet is the norm. Cable boxes are passé. 

[sek69]

As someone who gets deluged at work from people calling in to order every major PPV event, the idea that cable boxes are some dinosaur relic from a bygone era is kind of an inside the bubble thing. Yes more people are comfortable doing things on the internet, but it's still a relatively tiny percentage. It's not just The Olds Not Getting Technology either, a lot of people have the capability of doing things online and just prefer watching it via their TV provider because it's what's they are comfortable with.

[SirEdger]

6 hours ago, Zoo Enthusiast said:

It deserved every buy it got.  I’m hoping to fly down to STL in November, too.

BTW, Tony Khan mentioned that Full Gear isn't happening in St. Louis because they moved the date back not to compete head-to-head for the UFC PPV that weekend. St. Louis I think is still getting Rampage on the same date but they might have Full Gear in Minneapolis instead.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

43 minutes ago, SirEdger said:

BTW, Tony Khan mentioned that Full Gear isn't happening in St. Louis because they moved the date back not to compete head-to-head for the UFC PPV that weekend. St. Louis I think is still getting Rampage on the same date but they might have Full Gear in Minneapolis instead.

Oh shit that's driving range for me.

[MoS]

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

As someone who gets deluged at work from people calling in to order every major PPV event, the idea that cable boxes are some dinosaur relic from a bygone era is kind of an inside the bubble thing. Yes more people are comfortable doing things on the internet, but it's still a relatively tiny percentage. It's not just The Olds Not Getting Technology either, a lot of people have the capability of doing things online and just prefer watching it via their TV provider because it's what's they are comfortable with.

While this is true, I don't see why that needs to put an asterisk on modern PPVs' success using streaming platforms to buy PPVs. Sure, this means there are more options to purchase PPVs now, but it's not as if the ones who wanted to buy one 10 years ago couldn't find a way to order one. I am sure there were such cases and there were some PPVs which were affected when WWE would occasionally have a dispute with cable companies. But by and large I don't think that number was statistically significant. The question is whether those who purchase on a streaming platform today would have bought it on cable 10 years ago and imo for a show like this, they would have.