It's time for All In, the biggest AEW show of the year! We were supposed to be there but things just didn't work out vacation-wise, but I'll happily sit at home and eat my own fish & chips while petting our cats and dogs.

I can't say that there is a single match on this show that has dud potential and nothing on the show is a bathroom break for me the way Jericho/Ciampa was at Redemption in Montreal. Just a neatly stacked pile of matches ready for my greedy little eyeballs.

The Buy In

I was very, very cold on Lio Rush when he first brought the Blackheart gimmick to AEW. I'd seen it on the indies and it always felt so cheesy to me and not cheesy in a way that looped back around to endearing. I felt the same way when he first starting portraying that character in AEW, but then something switched and I don't know what it was.

Maybe it had to be toned down a little bit to be less goofball on TV combined with Lio's complete commitment to the bit. Whatever it was, after a month or so I really started to fall in love with the gimmick. It's easy to do so when it's clear someone is having so much fun.

All this to say, I'm so glad Lio (and The Rascalz) got on this show, even just on the Buy In. On another note, I found out that if I do the Lio Rush pre-tope gremlin run it gives my dog instant zoomies. Do with that information what you will.

It's very cool seeing STP in Wembley but it'd be even cooler if Trish Adora was doing something more than just accompanying other people to the ring. She's far too cool and good to not be on AEW television every week.

Persephone finally won the TBS Title, though she sadly needed help to do it. I've not been the biggest fan of Britt Baker at all times. The women's division definitely left her behind in terms of match quality long, long ago but damn it if I don't love a big return/reveal. I'm at least up for giving her a shot to see where this goes and how things pan out this run.

And now Maya & Hyan can get back to teaming and get properly built up for a future tag title run.

The New Level's House

While I don't like the name at all, The New Level debuted as expected in the final spot of the Trios Roulette once the PPV went live. With Swerve Strickland as their partner, they withstood the rest of the teams to become the brand new Trios Champions.

I think this makes the second time someone has won a title in their first match following Tommaso Ciampa?

A fun match overall though it did seem like Bandido went down with an injury late in the match. He was able to get back in for a few but was officially tossed back out before too long. Hopefully it's nothing serious and we won't see him relinquish the ROH World Title due to injury.

It'll be fun to see Kofi & Austin in AEW and see how they fit into the existing stories and feuds. I know you were never going to get the crowd to boo them on their debut, but I was somewhat surprised to see Swerve working babyface alongside them rather than them adopting a more heel style alongside Swerve. Though, I suppose they can always go the Mercedes route and get there eventually.

A good night for England, mostly

The Brawling Birds won the Tag Titles from Divine Dominion which should open the door for some fun new feuds and stories in the women's tag division. I wouldn't be surprised to see them run the match back at least once, but after that I'm excited to see the heel teams that surface to challenge the Birds.

I'm sure Sisters of Sin will be waiting in the wings, but who else is there to step up? Do we get some new teams debuting? It feels like we have far more babyface teams than heel teams, so I'm intrigued as to what the landscape of the division looks like over the next couple of months.

Very happy for Hayter and Windsor, though. It felt like Windsor never got momentum behind her as a singles wrestler for whatever reason in AEW, and the tag division + partnership with Hayter really breathed new life into her. I think she's a supremely underrated and underappreciated wrestler on the roster and one only needs to look at her match with Hayter in Pro Wrestling EVE to see what she can really do.

I wanted Nigel McGuinness to win the C3 because I love Nigel and I am so supremely bored of Jon Moxley and Death Riders. But, as we got closer and closer to All In I started to accept that Mox was going to take it. He's presented as the Ace of AEW, and I suppose if you're Tony Khan you want your Ace to win all of the big matches – including the first-ever Continental Challenge Cup.

The match itself was good and the ending was extremely good, especially elevated by the commentators all losing their minds for Nigel to reach the extra few centimeters to get to the ropes. A really great job by all involved, just with the most uninteresting winner of the overall tournament.

Plus, they couldn't give all the hometown folks the big wins tonight. At this point in the show, we already got the Birds and I assume we're getting Ospreay's coronation – maybe three nice things in one night is one too many.

An all-timer three way match

Kyle Fletcher, Kazuchika Okada, and Konosuke Takeshita had maybe one of AEW's best three-way matches of all time for the International Title. It avoided the common trope of taking one guy out for extended periods of time to turn it into a singles match for large portions and, instead, focused on the interweaving stories between all three wrestlers.

Extremely well-done storytelling and an ending that surprised me as I thought there was no way Okada was going to leave this one with the belt. I thought for sure this was Takeshita's redemption after dropping the belt to compete in the G1.

While I love Okada, it didn't feel like his first run with the belt had matches consistently at the level of Fletcher or Takeshita's reigns. I don't expect this run with the belt to be quite as long, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Okada drop the belt to Takeshita in a few months.

Whatever's next, I do hope we get some new faces in the orbit of the International Title. While I love these three guys, I do feel it's time to shake things up a little bit.

Reintroducing the AEW Tag Division

Copeland & Cage successfully defended the Tag Titles against The Young Bucks in a fun little match with an outcome I expected but wasn't completely sure we'd get. But, The Young Bucks are addicted to putting people over so I felt pretty confident.

The ending will add a new wrinkle to the whole story here with Copeland, seemingly, being unaware that Cage used the world's tiniest wrench to bonk Nick Jackson on the ankle and Matt Jackson on the head.

Post-match, the Motor City Machine Guns came out to remind everybody that, yes they did actually debut in AEW in Detroit several weeks ago. They were followed up by the returning FTR and The New Level all setting their sights on the belts.

A nice way to somewhat reestablish the tag division, though three of the teams have been pretty constantly involved with the tag belts for quite some time. MCMG and The New Level will breathe new life into a somewhat stuck-in-its-ways division and it'd be nice to see some other new teams get the spotlight.

Gimme Busta & The Brain, The Infantry, The Gunns – hell, where's Kip Sabian and why aren't he and Nick Wayne doing more together?

What I'm saying is, AEW sometimes falls into a holding pattern with its tag division (and trios division) and I'm just hoping that we can eventually get to a place where the stories and feuds for the Tag Titles are as consistent as they are for the World Title.

Two of the best to ever do it with an unfortunately flat ending

Mercedes Moné and Willow Nightingale was probably my most looked-forward-to match of the entire card. I've followed Willow for a long time, first seeing her in Beyond Wrestling a decade or so ago. Mercedes has been a constant presence in wrestling for me since NXT, and being in the building for her match with Bayley at NXT Brooklyn was unreal.

Tonight, they had probably my favorite match of the night partly because I wasn't sure which way it would go. Either outcome seemed equally plausible and sensible so there was more drama throughout the match than with Omega/Ospreay.

My gut instinct told me Mercedes would win, but I liked the idea of Mercedes' one foil being Willow who she can't beat when it matters the most. My heart wanted Willow to retain because she's just been on such a roll in AEW the past year or so.

In the end, Mercedes came out with the belt on a finish that fell somewhat flat in our house. It's a tried and true finish, someone passing out in a submission hold, but it felt like the bell was called for way too early. Willow was still moving and reaching; in fact, reaching for the bottom rope and about to get her hand stomped like the then-Sasha Banks did to Bayley years earlier.

Instead, the bell rang at a bit of a puzzling time because it was clear Willow wasn't totally out of it yet. It put a damper on an otherwise incredible match for me.

Much is talked about online (at least in the places that I read) about Mercedes being one of the greatest of all time, and that's true. But, I think Willow is nipping at her heels. She's one of the most endearing babyfaces of the current era, constantly over, and has great matches with essentially anyone she gets in the ring with.

The future of the AEW women's division has never looked better with women like Mercedes, Willow, and Thekla as centerpieces with others like Athena and Red Velvet making brief appearances here and there.

Ospreay done did it innit

It was a foregone conclusion so, as said earlier, the drama wasn't quite the same as with Mercedes/Willow. That being said, the match was still fucking insane.

This was Kenny Omega at his best. He's a great wrestler, we all know this. But when he goes into full gremlin mode, muttering batshit stuff to himself and shit talking his opponent throughout the match, he fully shines. He's a maniac and he's funny and he's unhinged, and it all coalesces into the purest form of Kenny Omega. He even did the chainsaw face rake, albeit without revving the chainsaw first.

Ospreay ate shit for a lot of the match, including some horrifying bumps like a running powerbomb from the announce desk into a table that didn't break. Lots of shouting and yelping and gasping from the couch over here.

It was a pleasant surprise that there weren't any shenanigans with the folks around the ring. Ospreay has been somewhat quietly (quietly at least on AEW TV) telling the story of his rift with Callum Newman so his presence raised some questions for me about what the finish could be.

Happily, they just let Kenny and Ospreay beat the ever-living piss out of each other. Kenny's back-to-back kickouts at one sent the crowd into another dimension (another dimension?), and Ospreay's subsequent victory would have torn the roof off if the roof had been on.

A match without any flaws, really. Though Ospreay's walk down memory lane backstage as part of his pre-entrance was hilarious and corny. The handoff of the flag from Mox was bizarre and I don't know what they were going for, but it only got a round of laughter from us. Just pure goofball shit.

Wrapping Up

An incredible day of wrestling! No real stinkers on the show at all and perfectly timed at about 4 hours and 15 minutes for the main show. It didn't start to drag at all which sometimes happens with AEW PPVs just because of how late they can run. Did this show avoid that because it was during the daytime for me, or because it was just better paced overall?

I can't think of a single thing to complain about other than Mox still being Continental Champion, but I can't say I ever truly expected him to drop the belt here anyway. Just a continuing annoyance of a title reign and Death Rider stuff that I've been over for quite some time.