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ALL IN LONDON (08.27.2023)
I really need to get into the habit of ending every single work week with a hot, hot bath, without any delay, there simply is nothing like it for patching over all the burnt out holes in my soul. NINE-DAY WORK WEEK HAS BEEN SURVIVED.
So I started watching the All In preshow while I set up my BuJo for the week, because I had missed the first hour, because they decided to make it two hours long this time around?? Big show! With the Big Show! But then it just turned into rewatching the entire PPV and eating Mini Chips Ahoy, which turned into posting through it until the sun came up, because why the hell not? I stopped doing these posts right at this time last year, mainly because Teddy dying during All Out combined with everything that happened afterward kinda took the wind out of my sails, but the last year has certainly succeeded in rejuvenating my passions (it's funny what touching so many of these people will do for you!), so let's go!
Loved Renee opening with that Bray quote, that's gonna end up being one of the Iconic Wrestling Posts now, isn't it? Obvs wish Kip could have been on the actual card instead of the preshow panel, but this was a great showcase for his personality, too, so I shan't complain. "Clementine is Clementine," GOD I WISH HE COULD BE THE ONE TO BEAT ORANGE. Also nice to see Ogogo again, even though he was never the same in my eyes after the Olympics made him gets rid of his rad as fuck logo.
RJ City is legit one of AEW's most important signings ever to me. "Who could forget THIS moment?" The Miro/Hobbs bit was solid, but they still have so much to set up for All Out! How are they gonna get a full card together in half a week??? But BREE WOO BREE WOO I am very happy for the Grado people, getting their moment even if it meant absolutely nothing to me. Would have been even funnier if TK had shelled out for the rights to Madonna for it, though.
Aussie Open (c) vs. Better Than You Bay Bay for the ROH World Tag Team Championship: This really put into perspective how long this BTYBB thing has been percolating for me; knowing that Fenix can't leave the US right now, this moment may very well have been the entire reason Aussie Open took the belts off of the Lucha Brothers in the first place. It's a bonkers conceit, having them both open AND close the show, but goddamn did they pull it off. They got tens of thousands of people to spontaneously chant KANGAROO KICK ffs. Mark Davis your giant ass will always be legendary.
Jack Perry (c) vs. Hook for the FTW Championship: I finally changed my morning alarm from Baltimora; Jungle Boy is dead, long live Jack Perry. If his stupid dig about glass ends up being the reason CM Punk finally gets bounced from this company, that will be the funniest possible fucking outcome. Anyway, this was a twink fight between bitter exes while one of their dads watched in front of 80,000 other people and it ruled, the end. ONTO THE PAPE.
CM Punk "(c)" vs. Samoa Joefor the Real World Championship: No, fuck it, I'm not dignifying that dumb shit. I'm so tired, Punk. Please can you just stop? For five minutes, just stop being so... you. Please? This was a great match, and watching it back, knowing all the drama that went down just minutes before it started, makes me that much more thankful for Samoa Joe's everything. He was having so much fun out there and NOT letting anyone take away his Wembley moment with their backstage bullshit, gdi!!! I'm pretty sure he's still got some of Jungle Boy's blood on him when he comes out from breaking up the fight??? Special shout out to the guy in the front row who got lots of visibility for his BEST IN THE WORLD... AT BEING A BITCH sign before security took it away.
Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page and Kota Ibushi vs. Konosuke Takeshita, Jay White and Juice Robinson: To all the people whining about Kenny not having a big singles match at this show: look at this! His exes are unionizing! He needs to keep an eye on this situation, okay! God, Jay in the white gear and Juice going full feral gremlin, they are truly the only Bullet Club offshoot with ANY relevance at the moment, long live the Bang Bang Gang. I just realized both teams have an American guy, a Japanese guy, and a guy from a Commonwealth country; perfectly balanced. Didn't even really care who won this one! I love everyone in this bar! Though obviously the ending does dovetail with the ending to the upcoming tag match. To what end? No fuckin' clue yet! Gonna need that Hangman/Switchblade feud I've been wanting for years immediately though!
FTR (c) vs. Young Bucks for the AEW World Tag Team Championship: Fantastic match. On par with their first two bouts, for sure. No, I don't want to talk about the outcome, so I will just say that neither of these teams are each other's best/most iconic rivalries, and I've honestly never understood the way people talk about them like they're the end all be all (it's the Lucha Bros for the Bucks and the Briscoes for FTR and it's not even close). FTR with the THREE black armbands for all of their friends who have died super young in the last couple of years was something of a gut punch! So nice of the Bucks to wear Emi Sakura tribute gear, Lady Cutler you have once again outdone yourself and Tony Khan you will pay for your crimes.
Gonna take a minute here to mention that I really loved the stage setup they went with? So much more simple and stripped-down than you might expect from the biggest show of all time, but this ain't WrestleMania, it's All In, it's an indie show blown up to the big time and it looks the part. The wrestling is the attraction, not the glitz and gloss surrounding it, you know? Also there is simply no set dressing anywhere near as stunning as watching the daylight slowly give way to night on a giant mass of humanity over the course of a show.
Blackpool Combat Club, Santana and Ortiz vs. Best Friends, Orange Cassidy, Eddie Kingston and Penta El Zero Miedo in a Stadium Stampede: MATCH OF THE NIGHT, BABYYYYYYY. God, I loved everything about this. The BCC's adorable Boondocks Saints cosplay, having Santana & Ortiz back, Orange's updated titantron with the dead Yuta stick figure and insane pyro lighting up London, Eddie just STORMING IN TO MURDER CLAUDIO FUCK THESE ENTRANCES, split screen being the only possible way to capture enough of the unfolding chaos, Mox finally getting to do a skewer spot in AEW, all of the umbrella-centric beatdowns because they are in London, bloody bloody Orange, IT'S SUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEE, Penta doing a fake injury angle so he could do a costume/gimmick change like he's on fucking Drag Race I AM STILL LOSING IT ABOUT THIS, the ladder fucking COLLAPSING under them and them just going ahead with the spot anyway, the Best Friends hug and the zoom out encompassing the ENTIRE FUCKING STADIUM AAAAAAAHHHHHH MY BOYS not to mention the fact that they included Yuta in the hug before beating the crap out of him, Eddie and Mox bringing the Terry Funk tributes as we all knew they would before ending the match tangled in barbed wire and covered in gore and flipping each other off and leaving together anyway like the fighting married couple they are, Orange doing a fucking TAIPEI DEATHMATCH PUNCH;AL;SKDFJ;ALKDSJF;ALKSDJF;LAKSDJF I'm sorry, this match was everyhing. It was everything. And it was so fucking moving to me, seeing Best Friends get a win in front of the population of a decently-sized city after being there and waiting to get their flowers from day fucking one. I'm still not over it! I may never be over it!!
Hikaru Shida (c) vs. Saraya vs. Toni Storm vs. Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. for the AEW Women's World Championship: Ugh, Shida deserved so much better than to be an interim champion to a woman who has barely even wrestled any singles matches since her underwhelming debut just because she's fucking British. Champ for less than a month and I'm gonna go ahead and guarantee she had more and better defenses than Saraya will in her entire run LET'S REVISIT THIS COMMENT AT A LATER DATE. At least Toni came out to God Save the Queen and was fucking amazing, god I adore this new 'disgraced Old Hollywood starlet' gimmick. Also this was the only women's match on the card and it lasted like ten minutes in a six-hour show. Tony Khan, c'mere, I just want to talk, honest.
Darby Allin and Sting vs. Swerve Strickland and Christian Cage in a Coffin Match: This was just a lot of fun, man. From Christian changing the countdown in his titantron to Big Ben to "the skateboard as unforgiving as a British table" and everything in between (why yes, that is a sixty-four-year-old man dressed as the Joker dressed as Jack the Ripper, why do you ask), just a nice, low-stakes hoot to set us up for the back third of the card. EXCALIBUR FINALLY GOT TO CALL A COFFIN FLOP, YOU KNOW HE'S BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR THAT. Pleasantly surprised that Christian wasn't the one to end up in the coffin twice in a row, my favourite asshole lives to taunt people about their dead dads another day!
Chris Jericho vs. Will Ospreay: Goat fight! Baaah! Jericho singing himself to the ring was very funny, you know he just did that so he could say his band performed at Wembley. Ospreay has quietly become one of my favourite wrestlers over the last year, even if that feels like the most basic bitch of opinions at this point, having seen him put on a 6-star match with my favourite wrestler in person, really loved seeing him get this moment. Turns out you don't have to totally derail other wrestlers to get a big deal home country win, SARAYA. Shame that Doncallis had such a good night, though!
And they're doing this all again next year! SOMEONE TELL ME NOT TO GET MY PASSPORT IN TIME, PLEASE. Also they should really do a full week of television in London next year so more of the roster can get the chance to show out for it!
House of Black (c) vs. The Acclaimed for the AEW World Trios Championship: What a beautiful couple of feel-good matches to end the night on, man, goddamn. HoB coming out with the lantern for Bray and the fireflies filling Wembley Stadium got me a little bit misty, not gonna lie! Such a great, insane ending to a great, insane feud between possibly the two trios with the most cohesive and unique identities in AEW at the moment? Which are, naturally, as insanely different as it's possible to get, which just makes everything that much better. Everyone looked like a million bucks in this, and since it was pretty much inevitable that the Acclaimed would be champs again at some point with how insanely over they continue to be, throwing Billy in the mix makes it a lot more poignant. The man will be sixty in a few months; this is almost certainly the last world title he will hold in his career. When he kicked out of The End, man, chills. Hell yeah, boys. ALSO THEY GOT TO BREAK THE UNSPOKEN RULES AGAINST INTERGENDER VIOLENCE, HELL YEAH JULIA YOU KEEP PUSHING THAT ENVELOPE AND GETTING BABYFACE DUDES TO BEAT ON YOUR SPOOKY ASS, YOU ARE A FEMINIST ICON NEVER FORGET IT.
MJF (c) vs. Adam Cole for the AEW World Championship: WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW, FRIENDSHIP WON ON THE BIGGEST (paid) STAGE IN THE HISTORY OF WRESTLING AFTER ALL. This was just a fantastic mix of over-the-top melodrama and good-ass wrestling, exactly what this feud (IF THAT'S EVEN THE RIGHT WORD) deserved after the brilliant summer it's had. Bryce eating a Panama Sunrise and then counting the pin in between his death saving rolls is why he remains my favourite ref. Was the double pin kinda dumb? Yes, but it was needed to bring us back full circle to MJF denying Cole his five more minutes and really show just how far he has come as a person since June!! Because he made one (1) real friend!! WE'RE GOING 'TIL WE GOT A WINNER IN FUCKIN' WEMBLEY!!!!! MJF being unable to hit the piledriver through the table followed by Cole not even hesitating a LITTLE before murdering him for it, goddamn. That sheer drop brainbuster onto the stairs was so nasty, too. Adam absolutely went into this with nothing but selfish intentions and accidentally made something beautiful in the process, I'm so glad even he couldn't bring himself to destroy it in the end. I don't think his better angels can keep winning out forever... but who knows???? LET THE SOAP OPERA CONTINUE, I genuinely think I'm gonna have to make that picture of Roddy sobbing in Matt Taven's arms my new lockscreen, I'm too obsessed with it. Anyone who says this level of melodrama is too WWE has clearly never been a fan of the Elite, this shit is their bread and butter and always has been. It's all about getting the right mix!!! Brochachos 4 life!
hang it in the fucking louvre
Unsurprisingly, the ZRX update just makes me want to subscribe to Marvel Move to supplement my Zombies, Run! diet, so we shall see how weak I end up being as I finally start tackling season 6 and continue to hyperfixate. The guy who played Jack in ZR is playing Loki, and you KNOW I miss those radio husbands.
So I started watching the All In preshow while I set up my BuJo for the week, because I had missed the first hour, because they decided to make it two hours long this time around?? Big show! With the Big Show! But then it just turned into rewatching the entire PPV and eating Mini Chips Ahoy, which turned into posting through it until the sun came up, because why the hell not? I stopped doing these posts right at this time last year, mainly because Teddy dying during All Out combined with everything that happened afterward kinda took the wind out of my sails, but the last year has certainly succeeded in rejuvenating my passions (it's funny what touching so many of these people will do for you!), so let's go!
Loved Renee opening with that Bray quote, that's gonna end up being one of the Iconic Wrestling Posts now, isn't it? Obvs wish Kip could have been on the actual card instead of the preshow panel, but this was a great showcase for his personality, too, so I shan't complain. "Clementine is Clementine," GOD I WISH HE COULD BE THE ONE TO BEAT ORANGE. Also nice to see Ogogo again, even though he was never the same in my eyes after the Olympics made him gets rid of his rad as fuck logo.
RJ City is legit one of AEW's most important signings ever to me. "Who could forget THIS moment?" The Miro/Hobbs bit was solid, but they still have so much to set up for All Out! How are they gonna get a full card together in half a week??? But BREE WOO BREE WOO I am very happy for the Grado people, getting their moment even if it meant absolutely nothing to me. Would have been even funnier if TK had shelled out for the rights to Madonna for it, though.
Aussie Open (c) vs. Better Than You Bay Bay for the ROH World Tag Team Championship: This really put into perspective how long this BTYBB thing has been percolating for me; knowing that Fenix can't leave the US right now, this moment may very well have been the entire reason Aussie Open took the belts off of the Lucha Brothers in the first place. It's a bonkers conceit, having them both open AND close the show, but goddamn did they pull it off. They got tens of thousands of people to spontaneously chant KANGAROO KICK ffs. Mark Davis your giant ass will always be legendary.
Jack Perry (c) vs. Hook for the FTW Championship: I finally changed my morning alarm from Baltimora; Jungle Boy is dead, long live Jack Perry. If his stupid dig about glass ends up being the reason CM Punk finally gets bounced from this company, that will be the funniest possible fucking outcome. Anyway, this was a twink fight between bitter exes while one of their dads watched in front of 80,000 other people and it ruled, the end. ONTO THE PAPE.
CM Punk "(c)" vs. Samoa Joe
Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page and Kota Ibushi vs. Konosuke Takeshita, Jay White and Juice Robinson: To all the people whining about Kenny not having a big singles match at this show: look at this! His exes are unionizing! He needs to keep an eye on this situation, okay! God, Jay in the white gear and Juice going full feral gremlin, they are truly the only Bullet Club offshoot with ANY relevance at the moment, long live the Bang Bang Gang. I just realized both teams have an American guy, a Japanese guy, and a guy from a Commonwealth country; perfectly balanced. Didn't even really care who won this one! I love everyone in this bar! Though obviously the ending does dovetail with the ending to the upcoming tag match. To what end? No fuckin' clue yet! Gonna need that Hangman/Switchblade feud I've been wanting for years immediately though!
FTR (c) vs. Young Bucks for the AEW World Tag Team Championship: Fantastic match. On par with their first two bouts, for sure. No, I don't want to talk about the outcome, so I will just say that neither of these teams are each other's best/most iconic rivalries, and I've honestly never understood the way people talk about them like they're the end all be all (it's the Lucha Bros for the Bucks and the Briscoes for FTR and it's not even close). FTR with the THREE black armbands for all of their friends who have died super young in the last couple of years was something of a gut punch! So nice of the Bucks to wear Emi Sakura tribute gear, Lady Cutler you have once again outdone yourself and Tony Khan you will pay for your crimes.
Gonna take a minute here to mention that I really loved the stage setup they went with? So much more simple and stripped-down than you might expect from the biggest show of all time, but this ain't WrestleMania, it's All In, it's an indie show blown up to the big time and it looks the part. The wrestling is the attraction, not the glitz and gloss surrounding it, you know? Also there is simply no set dressing anywhere near as stunning as watching the daylight slowly give way to night on a giant mass of humanity over the course of a show.
Blackpool Combat Club, Santana and Ortiz vs. Best Friends, Orange Cassidy, Eddie Kingston and Penta El Zero Miedo in a Stadium Stampede: MATCH OF THE NIGHT, BABYYYYYYY. God, I loved everything about this. The BCC's adorable Boondocks Saints cosplay, having Santana & Ortiz back, Orange's updated titantron with the dead Yuta stick figure and insane pyro lighting up London, Eddie just STORMING IN TO MURDER CLAUDIO FUCK THESE ENTRANCES, split screen being the only possible way to capture enough of the unfolding chaos, Mox finally getting to do a skewer spot in AEW, all of the umbrella-centric beatdowns because they are in London, bloody bloody Orange, IT'S SUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEE, Penta doing a fake injury angle so he could do a costume/gimmick change like he's on fucking Drag Race I AM STILL LOSING IT ABOUT THIS, the ladder fucking COLLAPSING under them and them just going ahead with the spot anyway, the Best Friends hug and the zoom out encompassing the ENTIRE FUCKING STADIUM AAAAAAAHHHHHH MY BOYS not to mention the fact that they included Yuta in the hug before beating the crap out of him, Eddie and Mox bringing the Terry Funk tributes as we all knew they would before ending the match tangled in barbed wire and covered in gore and flipping each other off and leaving together anyway like the fighting married couple they are, Orange doing a fucking TAIPEI DEATHMATCH PUNCH;AL;SKDFJ;ALKDSJF;ALKSDJF;LAKSDJF I'm sorry, this match was everyhing. It was everything. And it was so fucking moving to me, seeing Best Friends get a win in front of the population of a decently-sized city after being there and waiting to get their flowers from day fucking one. I'm still not over it! I may never be over it!!
Hikaru Shida (c) vs. Saraya vs. Toni Storm vs. Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. for the AEW Women's World Championship: Ugh, Shida deserved so much better than to be an interim champion to a woman who has barely even wrestled any singles matches since her underwhelming debut just because she's fucking British. Champ for less than a month and I'm gonna go ahead and guarantee she had more and better defenses than Saraya will in her entire run LET'S REVISIT THIS COMMENT AT A LATER DATE. At least Toni came out to God Save the Queen and was fucking amazing, god I adore this new 'disgraced Old Hollywood starlet' gimmick. Also this was the only women's match on the card and it lasted like ten minutes in a six-hour show. Tony Khan, c'mere, I just want to talk, honest.
Darby Allin and Sting vs. Swerve Strickland and Christian Cage in a Coffin Match: This was just a lot of fun, man. From Christian changing the countdown in his titantron to Big Ben to "the skateboard as unforgiving as a British table" and everything in between (why yes, that is a sixty-four-year-old man dressed as the Joker dressed as Jack the Ripper, why do you ask), just a nice, low-stakes hoot to set us up for the back third of the card. EXCALIBUR FINALLY GOT TO CALL A COFFIN FLOP, YOU KNOW HE'S BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR THAT. Pleasantly surprised that Christian wasn't the one to end up in the coffin twice in a row, my favourite asshole lives to taunt people about their dead dads another day!
Chris Jericho vs. Will Ospreay: Goat fight! Baaah! Jericho singing himself to the ring was very funny, you know he just did that so he could say his band performed at Wembley. Ospreay has quietly become one of my favourite wrestlers over the last year, even if that feels like the most basic bitch of opinions at this point, having seen him put on a 6-star match with my favourite wrestler in person, really loved seeing him get this moment. Turns out you don't have to totally derail other wrestlers to get a big deal home country win, SARAYA. Shame that Doncallis had such a good night, though!
And they're doing this all again next year! SOMEONE TELL ME NOT TO GET MY PASSPORT IN TIME, PLEASE. Also they should really do a full week of television in London next year so more of the roster can get the chance to show out for it!
House of Black (c) vs. The Acclaimed for the AEW World Trios Championship: What a beautiful couple of feel-good matches to end the night on, man, goddamn. HoB coming out with the lantern for Bray and the fireflies filling Wembley Stadium got me a little bit misty, not gonna lie! Such a great, insane ending to a great, insane feud between possibly the two trios with the most cohesive and unique identities in AEW at the moment? Which are, naturally, as insanely different as it's possible to get, which just makes everything that much better. Everyone looked like a million bucks in this, and since it was pretty much inevitable that the Acclaimed would be champs again at some point with how insanely over they continue to be, throwing Billy in the mix makes it a lot more poignant. The man will be sixty in a few months; this is almost certainly the last world title he will hold in his career. When he kicked out of The End, man, chills. Hell yeah, boys. ALSO THEY GOT TO BREAK THE UNSPOKEN RULES AGAINST INTERGENDER VIOLENCE, HELL YEAH JULIA YOU KEEP PUSHING THAT ENVELOPE AND GETTING BABYFACE DUDES TO BEAT ON YOUR SPOOKY ASS, YOU ARE A FEMINIST ICON NEVER FORGET IT.
MJF (c) vs. Adam Cole for the AEW World Championship: WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW, FRIENDSHIP WON ON THE BIGGEST (paid) STAGE IN THE HISTORY OF WRESTLING AFTER ALL. This was just a fantastic mix of over-the-top melodrama and good-ass wrestling, exactly what this feud (IF THAT'S EVEN THE RIGHT WORD) deserved after the brilliant summer it's had. Bryce eating a Panama Sunrise and then counting the pin in between his death saving rolls is why he remains my favourite ref. Was the double pin kinda dumb? Yes, but it was needed to bring us back full circle to MJF denying Cole his five more minutes and really show just how far he has come as a person since June!! Because he made one (1) real friend!! WE'RE GOING 'TIL WE GOT A WINNER IN FUCKIN' WEMBLEY!!!!! MJF being unable to hit the piledriver through the table followed by Cole not even hesitating a LITTLE before murdering him for it, goddamn. That sheer drop brainbuster onto the stairs was so nasty, too. Adam absolutely went into this with nothing but selfish intentions and accidentally made something beautiful in the process, I'm so glad even he couldn't bring himself to destroy it in the end. I don't think his better angels can keep winning out forever... but who knows???? LET THE SOAP OPERA CONTINUE, I genuinely think I'm gonna have to make that picture of Roddy sobbing in Matt Taven's arms my new lockscreen, I'm too obsessed with it. Anyone who says this level of melodrama is too WWE has clearly never been a fan of the Elite, this shit is their bread and butter and always has been. It's all about getting the right mix!!! Brochachos 4 life!
hang it in the fucking louvre
Unsurprisingly, the ZRX update just makes me want to subscribe to Marvel Move to supplement my Zombies, Run! diet, so we shall see how weak I end up being as I finally start tackling season 6 and continue to hyperfixate. The guy who played Jack in ZR is playing Loki, and you KNOW I miss those radio husbands.
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