AEW All In 2025 Discussion

[RedTwoster]

42 minutes ago, mrtrickio said:

It was a call back to Christian's "Go fu** yourself" to Edge when he signed. I presume that's the best they could come up with given they obviously wanted to use an F word to play on it... but, yeah. Cringe still nonetheless.

I liked it!

I rewatched the main event and I can’t decide whether I prefer that, or the Storm/Mone match. Either one could be my match of the year. The show was definitely too long, but I still loved it. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Say what you will about WWE’s 5 Match PPVs, but I should be able to put a show on at 6pm and finish it the same day with more than 4 minutes to spare. 6hrs regardless of promotion is taking the piss

Royal Rumble this year was longer than 4 hours. And had 4 matches. 
 

6 hours is long, but considering what they were doing with regards stories, it felt acceptable to go long on this occasion. But yeah let’s not repeat it.

[FLips]

I dunno, I could pick 4 matches you could take off this card and either replace with a backstage segment or put on Dynamite.

[Cousin Jim Bob]

It was way too long, whatever they were doing to mess with the WWE. The main event was absolutely incredible though. 

[RedTwoster]

54 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

6 hours is long, but considering what they were doing with regards stories, it felt acceptable to go long on this occasion. But yeah let’s not repeat it.

I agree with @FLips - there were several matches that could have taken place elsewhere - or, alternatively, you could have trimmed time from almost every match to save more than an hour, and dropped some of the elaborate entrances too to save further time. 

I really enjoyed the show, but Khan needs to be a bit more ruthless with that kind of thing.

[Supremo]

*Looks both ways*

*Confirms no-one is listening*

*Whispers*

Chris Jericho didn’t appear! Not even in the Casino Gauntlet! Maybe he’s finally done!

[Snitsky's back acne]

2 minutes ago, Supremo said:

*Looks both ways*

*Confirms no-one is listening*

*Whispers*

Chris Jericho didn’t appear! Not even in the Casino Gauntlet! Maybe he’s finally done!

Didnt he sign a ten year contract a couple of years ago? Or did I misremember that? 

[RedTwoster]

23 minutes ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

Didnt he sign a ten year contract a couple of years ago? Or did I misremember that? 

His deal apparently expires in October. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

28 minutes ago, Supremo said:

*Looks both ways*

*Confirms no-one is listening*

*Whispers*

Chris Jericho didn’t appear! Not even in the Casino Gauntlet! Maybe he’s finally done!

I suspect given the events of the weekend, he's trying to secure an early release as we speak.

A vortex for a vortex.

[Ulf ist Gut]

Finally finished it all having split it into three chunks and still feeling like I need a tinfoil blanket and a Mars bar - I know it's their biggest show of the year and the quality was generally consistently high throughout but six hours is far too much for me in one go these days. Agree with what's been said above about bumping a few matches to the following Dynamite to actually have a decent post PPV show for once. Couple of other musings:

• I liked the Hobbs Doomsday Device powerslam spot in the trios match, that looked cool.. It felt pretty dead up to that point and it woke the crowd up a bit.
• I also liked that the seconds in the women's gauntlet match actually got involved given it's no DQ rather than just standing about. When Skye Blue came running down at the same pace as Julia I thought they were both going to dive straight in so not sure why she waited a bit first before getting stuck in but between her and Penelope it was nice to see some heels using the format to their advantage and Mina getting confused in all the mayhem and thinking she'd won after making Skye tap.  
• Women's title match was match of the night for me. There wasn't anything insanely flashy but there was a genuine feeling it could go either way that you don't really get in title matches anymore that completely drew me in and I was hanging on each near fall. Really pleased Toni retained to the extent that I did a little cheer at the end. Not sure who eventually takes the belt from her/what happens to Mercedes now but there's plenty of depth in the division to do something good with both belts going forwards (if they try).   

[Kamran]

3 hours ago, FLips said:

I dunno, I could pick 4 matches you could take off this card and either replace with a backstage segment or put on Dynamite.

 

2 hours ago, RedTwoster said:

I agree with @FLips - there were several matches that could have taken place elsewhere - or, alternatively, you could have trimmed time from almost every match to save more than an hour, and dropped some of the elaborate entrances too to save further time. 

I really enjoyed the show, but Khan needs to be a bit more ruthless with that kind of thing.

If the below is true, it wouldn't have mattered as TK would have needed to fill the time. All In started at 8pm UK time and SNME was 1am, either way he was going to have to go over 5 hours to begin to cut into SNME's time. I'm hoping, like everyone else, that this is just a one-off. If there is counter programming next time, TK should just go head-to-head, especially if it's an AEW PPV vs something like SNME. The audience must have been shattered, especially if they were attending any of the other AEW-related events during the week.

5 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

Dave also mentioned that the PPV purposely ran that long so they could go head-to-head with SNME and show WWE that they won't be bullied by them.

 

4 hours ago, RedTwoster said:

I liked it!

Agreed, most people know their history and after Christian's antics over the past few years, I thought the go find yourself line was a nice way of linking everything.

[RedTwoster]

31 minutes ago, Kamran said:

If the below is true, it wouldn't have mattered as TK would have needed to fill the time. All In started at 8pm UK time and SNME was 1am, either way he was going to have to go over 5 hours to begin to cut into SNME's time. 

But AEW didn’t need to cut into WWE’s time. 

[DavidB6937]

Maybe Cope should've hurried up instead. I blame him.

[BomberPat]

I enjoyed the show immensely, which says a lot considering how bloody long it was. There's definitely stuff that could have been cut/trimmed.

I don't know how you pull it off without slightly annoying the audience, but one of the Casino Gauntlets should have been much shorter, partly to keep the show length down and keep things moving, but also to put over the gimmick and show that these matches can end early. Work an angle with one of the announced entrants not making it in and being pissed off about it. 

Pre-show was the pre-show was the pre-show. I was on a Zoom call so it didn't have my full attention. Absolutely baffled that Sons of Texas still had to work a meaningless eight-man pre-show tag after they had both been announced for the TNT Title match. A roster as massive as this one, and you've got Dustin and Sammy working double duty, having already worked the night before. Maybe the Von Erichs are really so shit that they can't string a match together without Dustin there to tell them what to do. Coming up on a full year with Dustin Rhodes as a double champion, with titles that, before this weekend, he hadn't defended since February and April. The main things that stood out in the other eight-man tag was Big Justice being taller than Rocky Romero, and Hologram and Hechicero having negative chemistry and Hologram seemingly competing with himself as to whether he could drop Hechi or himself on his head more often. I assume he couldn't see out of the new mask. Outrunners vs. FTR was good - I didn't see the Collision match, don't know how it compares.

The Trios title match was fine. The misuse of those belts and that division is one of my longest standing AEW complaints - second only to having existing champions challenge for other belts with no storyline justification - so I'll shock you and say I'd have cut this match from the card. There could have been more of a sense of menace and looming threat if we didn't see the Death Riders until the main event. It was nice to see the belts defended, though - the babyface champions won those belts from a heel team whose schtick is hiding belts away, yet they went longer without defending them than the heels ever did - but they could have done this match, and the Samoa Joe injury angle, on Dynamite or Collision. I don't know if Joe is taking time off or anything, but my instinct was that this was about writing out the Opps to explain why they're not able to help Hangman in the main event - in which case, they should have shown the others leaving with Joe in the ambulance to hammer that home, but that's a minor criticism.

As I said, they could have cut the Casino Gauntlet much shorter and told a more coherent story, rather than it being a "get everyone on the show" match. It never really landed, and I can't think of a combination of tropes I'm less interested in than MJF with a Money In The Bank style "cash-in" deal; it gave me the fear that they would have Hangman win in the main and then have MJF immediately challenge him. With Briscoe and Mistico announced, I hoped that this match would be a lot of MJF getting his comeuppance - just a succession of entrants that he's pissed off, taking turns to beat him up. Should have had Jarrett in there. It was nice to see Juice Robinson and the Gunns back, though Juice urgently needs to add some colour and personality to his look, but otherwise I felt this match was severely lacking in surprises and novelty, which is half the point of some of these matches - especially as commentary talked about Nigel being in the last one, it would have been nice to get a real outside the box entrant in there. This might just have occurred to me because I saw that James Storm was backstage, though.

Say what you like about Adam Cole as a wrestler - and many of us have - but he seems like one of the nicest guys in wrestling, and that announcement from him was scary and heartbreaking. I don't envy anyone having to wrestle after that. I still think that adding the Sons of Texas to this match and not taking them out of the pre-show match was a silly choice, and assumed that - home state pop aside - maybe they put Dustin in there as a veteran because this match was added really late in the day and they needed someone with his experience to hold things together. Pre-Adam Cole promo, I assumed Fletcher was winning as he likely would have done had the match gone ahead as planned, then started to consider that maybe they should do a babyface win after such a downbeat moment and that they'd give Garcia the belt back. Massively taken by surprise by Dustin winning it - and I've seen suggestions that he was reverse screwjobbed, with Garcia effectively pinning himself and Dustin not being told he was going over - but the reaction shows that it was the right call under the circumstances. Still, the match should have been much shorter and not had Sammy Guevara in it. 

Swerve/Ospreay vs. The Young Bucks was very good, stupidly long entrances aside. It took a while to really find its pace, and never got to the levels of Omega/Hangman vs. the Bucks, which it felt like a spiritual successor to, but it was still fantastic. Everyone on this match is shit hot when it comes to timing, and finding ways to keep things escalating way past the point where you're buying every near fall and thinking surely this one is it, without exhausting the crowd, so it got very silly, but it always worked. A very difficult thing to pull off. I love that, stipulations and story aside, the fundamental story of the match was "can two great singles wrestlers beat a great tag team?", which is a very old-school approach to wrestling, tag wrestling in particular, that is missing in a lot of modern wrestling.

Women's Casino Gauntlet was fine. Probably better paced than the men's, with less downtime, but more awkwardness, particularly with the likes of Skye Blue, Anna Jay and Penelope Ford getting involved despite not being in the match, and no one ever questioning why they weren't just in the match - do they not want a Women's Title match? It was only during this match that I realised that they've got Joey Janela's ex managing his current girlfriend, and that feels like a rib, I just don't know who on. I felt like this one could have done with more surprises - I know we got Syuri and Alex Windsor, and I love Alex so was over the moon to see her in there and getting a good reaction, but this match felt primed for a big debut - I can't think of any massive male free agents that would have made sense for the men's gauntlet, but there have been a lot of women released from WWE recently, and I could have seen one of them being brought in even if just for a one-off, though maybe all the good ones are still in a no-compete. Athena was the right choice to win.

The Tag Title match was fine, but too long, even though it was the third shortest match on the show. Too much had gone on, and at this point in the show you're totting off what's still to come and feeling tired just thinking about it. It felt like it had only been made a Triple Threat because the Hurt Syndicate were due to lose but wouldn't get pinned, so I was surprised by the result. But there was a point where a pin was happening, without the Hurt Syndicate involved, and MVP jumped up on the apron to distract the ref and save the match for his team, and I realised that this match had absolutely zero tension if that was going to keep happen, because of the sheer number of people at ringside - MVP, MJF, Mama Wayne, Kip Sabian, and FTR all hanging around, as well as the actual people in the match. There was a point where Lashley dragged Speedball off the apron and then tagged Kevin Knight to make himself legal and I hated it. I especially hated that the ref didn't want to call it and then did, which screams "he knew what he was doing, but he has someone in his earpiece telling him to allow it". If Lashley can tag himself in from the other team's corner, what's the point in having corners in the first place? The match was a means to an end to get to the post-match angle, and as much as I love JetSpeed collectively and individually, I'd have cut this match and just run the angle to break up the matches. As it was, there was just too many moving parts.

And I guess this is an appropriate point to bring up that MJF in the Hurt Syndicate is one of my least favourite things in AEW right now. The weeks of him courting the Hurt Syndicate was the lowest point on AEW TV at a time when everything else was great, and stuff like him trying to win over Lashley and Shelton by offering them women smacked of the most misogynistic elements of the Attitude Era or latter day WCW. I said at the time and I think it's been borne out in reality, that neither MJF or The Hurt Syndicate's act would be measurably improved by them working together, nor is there any outcome to an MJF/Hurt Syndicate angle that I'd care to see. It's diminished the Hurt Syndicate by making them feel less cool and organic, and putting MVP in a position of doing MJF-style cheap heat promos, and it's diminished MJF by having a former (and potentially future) World Champion just hanging around midcard angles; just look at this match, a guy who just won a guaranteed World Title shot, and he's maybe the thirteenth most important person in this match and post-match angle. His feuds with Briscoe and Mistico haven't benefited in any way from him being in the Hurt Syndicate, it's just an additional layer than doesn't need to be there, and one of MJF's biggest problems is that all of his stories have three or four layers beyond the core thing they should be about, rather than him focusing on just one thing. He's not been leaning on the Hurt Syndicate to help him win matches, or to be his heavies, they're not going after Trios Titles together, they're not helping MJF win the Casino Gauntlet or get closer to being World Champion, they're just there, diminishing both acts, considerably less than the sum of their parts. Not a fan.


Toni Storm vs. Mercedes was great. Don't really have anything more to say on it than that. Loved it, love Toni, Mercedes has been on exceptional form in-ring for the last year, and the right person won. As funny as it would have been to have Athena challenging Mercedes and have six million belts on the line, this was the right call. I'm really interested in how Mercedes is booked now; there's no way they do the typical AEW thing of fading her into the background now she's not the top contender, and she's still TBS Champion, but I don't know if she has the acting and promo chops to pull off dissent into self-doubt as she starts to lose the titles she defines herself by. I imagine we're not far from a babyface turn, though.

I loved Omega vs. Okada. They can't work the kind of match they used to, and they were smart to make it clear from the outset that it wouldn't be that match, and build it around heat and around Okada working Omega's stomach. I actually like that Okada half-arses it half the time, because it means it really matters when he shows up, and he showed up for this one. I've been fascinated by Omega's gradual transition into being a bit of a brawler, which began in his heel run and as he started aging, and has become more pronounced post-diverticulitis; it reminds me of Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania 15, this glimpse of the wrestler behind the flashiness, when stripped down to the bare essentials. There was a lot of talk of finality and Omega not having much left; I can't help but wonder if this was the beginning of the end for him. Just a hunch, but I wonder if All Out being in Canada becomes a regular fixture, and he announces a retirement run this year, culminating in a final match in Canada as the focal point of next year's show. 

 

Hangman vs. Moxley was great. Mox is a lunatic. Something that I think has been under-appreciated in the Death Riders run is that Mox had long had a reputation for bleeding at the drop of a hat, but despite being in a gimmick built around him being violent and unhinged, has bled considerably less in this role than he ever did before, so it really matters when, for example, Hangman stabs the fuck out of his head with a fork. A lot of the match was unrelentingly grim, but needed to be. It almost feels like so much of the slog of the Death Riders angle was worth it, to make it all the more cathartic when Hangman won here. The parade of run-ins worked, and it was satisfying in all the ways it should have been. Hangman and Swerve are phenomenal, and Bryan Danielson is the best. 

[tiger_rick]

What an awesome show. I tapped out after about 5 hours (from the start of the pre-show) and caught up Sunday morning but we had a fucking great time on Saturday night.

I don't think the run time on the show was unreasonable. I normally would, don't get me wrong, but the main show started at 12noon-3pm coast to coast and delivered ridiculous value for money. If people were sat there till 2am local time, then, yes, it would be ridiculous. If the crowd had died at some point, then, again, I would agree they'd fucked up. But they didn't. Everyone in attendance and paying on PPV got everything they wanted for the money.

Plenty been said on the show itself that I can't add to. Both gauntlets were a bundle of fun. The tag title match was fun over-booked nonsense. The Bucks vs. Swerve and Ospreay was brilliant. The opener was OK. Porbably the weakest match aside from the TNT Title match which was the only thing I thought was unnecessary and had the wrong outcome. 

Never been an Adam Cole fan but I hope the guy is OK. I know it's private but I'd feel more comfortable if they told us what's wrong. Otherwise, I just assume the very worst.

Toni and Mercedes was just wonderful. The build, the entrances and the match were outstanding pro-wrestling. These two are the absolute best. 

What on earth could you add about that main event. The whole deal is almost perfect. The build was incredible, the anticipation off the charts, the brutality was what they had to deliver, I guess, and the match with it's rollercoaster of run-ins and potential finishes that I bought over and over was wonderful. The "almost perfect" is dependent on the follow-up. The last Hanger reign wasn't great. That's all that will harm this outcome when we look back in years to come.

Edited July 14, 2025 by tiger_rick