Write Forever: A near-perfect AEW All Out 2026

I've been doing yard work all day long, so my body is tired and my brain is in a feeble state. I don't really feel the standard PPV excitement I normally would, but I'm hoping I'll wake up a bit once the show begins.

This is one of those AEW PPVs that seems like it could be a sleeper hit because there aren't a ton of matches up and down the card that are making me super hyped. Like, I expect everything to be a baseline of very good but I'm not emotionally tied up in every match or storyline on the show.

Still, "baseline of very good" is the AEW curse so that's not really a complaint! If nothing else, I can expect to see great wrestling matches all night long even if I'm not deeply attached to who wins or loses.

I'm very intrigued to see who answers Persephone's open challenge. I've seen speculation that it could be Dani Luna, who is someone I know nothing about other than knowing they just wrapped up with TNA. Are they a big enough name to be a surprise opponent? I don't know! I'm holding out hope for Kairi.

Some solid opening matches

The show opened with Andrade El Idolo defending the National Title against PAC in an excellent match to set things off on the right food. Was it the big cup of coffee I was drinking or was it the quality of the match that woke me up? Jury's out!

I'm going to bold and say that we need to lay off the Eddie Guerrero Three Amigos tributes in wrestling, especially in AEW. They often happen multiple times a show, usually at least once per show, and it's just too much. Such a thing should be reserved for someone who actually had a close, personal connection to Eddie or just doing them in El Paso.

Condolences out to Marina Shafir who got thrown over the railing and had to land at the feet of both the annoying ref fan and the Brock Lesnar guy, a fate worse than death. I hope she can recover quickly.

The match ended with one of my least favorite finishes – the roll-up while in a submission hold. This was the second time this happened at this point on the show, with Jack Perry beating Shibata by rolling back into a pin while in a choke. Stop doing the things I don't like!

Dani Luna debuted to challenge Persephone for the TBS Title, in what I found to be a fine match. For some reason, I just couldn't get into it. The match was technically good! Just never got its hooks in me. It also came from after the referee stoppage in the Darby/Borden vs Kyle/Kevin tag match, but I think that only affected the crowd in attendance and not me at home.

I do want to look up more Dani Luna, though – she seems like a beast and this was my first time seeing her. The right woman won here, as Persephone has so much more left to do with the championship.

Kazuchika Okada is the greatest of all time

Okada proved long, long ago in New Japan that he was the greatest technical professional wrestler of all time. Over and over again. There was never any doubt that he was one of, if not the, best wrestler of all time.

Then he lost his fuckin' mind. He dyed his hair red, he started carrying around balloons, he started shouting SCOOBY DOOBY DOO when springboarding off of the ropes. But he still kept having amazing wrestling matches.

He eventually got his mojo back and, even more eventually, made his way to AEW.

Since coming to AEW, Okada has had great matches but at a much slower clip than his heyday in New Japan. Not that he's been phoning it in or anything, just wrestling a bit of a slower, simpler, less insane style than the highly physical main event matches of years past.

Not only that, though, but he has also proved that he has the soul of a perfect comedy wrestler. This came to the surface again tonight when he flipped off Tommaso Ciampa's daughter, sitting front row for her eighth birthday. The young girl, after getting permission from her mother, flipped Okada the double birds and he sold it like death.

And then he just kept wrestling an incredible match against Ciampa! He's a man who can truly do it all, and he can switch between comedy and serious graps in an instant. I don't think there is anyone else quite like Okada in professional wrestling, except maybe Kenny Omega. Wild how that worked out.

Where's the Chicago street fight at? In Chicago, you big dumb bitch

The Brawling Birds and Divine Dominion went full bonkers from bell to bell, playing all of the hits of a good street fight. And not just playing the hits, but playing them with precision and fucking brutally so.

I'll be thinking of Alex Windsor taking a double chokeslam onto two chairs that didn't budge an inch for a while. Why didn't those chairs crumple like they usually do?! Just nasty, nasty stuff.

We got a bit of blood in this one from Windsor and Bayne, perhaps a sign of things to come in November for Blood & Guts if these four women are still feuding by then.

A well-deserved win for The Birds, but now I must wonder where we go from here with the Women's Tag Team Titles. There has not been a lot of work developing potential challengers for the belts. The Sisters of Sin picked up a win on the preshow against Queen Aminata & Mina Shirakawa, and they can always be heated up for a feud but I wouldn't expect to see them take the belts from Hayter & Windsor.

In Ring of Honor, the women's tag division has been developing nicely with new teams seemingly being created weekly. I don't know if this is in service of testing out new teams for AEW runs or for eventual ROH Women's Tag Team Titles, but I'd love to see the same focus on the women's tag division on AEW TV week to week.

As long as The Birds stay active on TV and don't fall back into another rematch with Divine Dominion, I think we'll get someplace good eventually. I just hope we begin to see the division deepen now that the champs have put the former champs behind them.

A New Chapter for Hangman and Swerve

Early on in this match, Austin Creed shoved Hangman Page into the New Level/Swerve corner and Hangman collided with Swerve. Swerve jumped off of the apron and starting complaining about someone or something to Prince Nana, my initial fear being that Swerve was holding this against Creed. After all, it was just this past Wednesday on Dynamite when Brodido & Hangman informed New Level that Swerve isn't one to be trusted and can turn on a teammate for any transgression.

This question was quickly answered, though, when Swerve dragged Hangman out of the ring and began brawling with him on the arena floor. He tossed Hangman over the timekeeper's table and the two had to be separated to get things back on track. This turned what was a bit of a friendly competition into a much more heated affair with the demented, toxic energy of the Swerve/Hangman relationship seeping into the four other men in the match.

This was, perhaps, the perfect wrestling match. I have zero complaints.

What an excellent way to continue telling the story of Hangman and Swerve while also dragging everyone else into it seamlessly. This match would likely have never gotten this vicious and physical had Swerve not cracked a bit, as it seemed like New Level and Brodido were happy to simply wrestle a wrestling match without any personal stakes fogging up their vision.

Correctly, Swerve and New Level retained the titles when Swerve hit Big Pressure on Bandido to pick up the win after a bit of a Finishers Parade. Everyone came out of this looking good and strong and better than they looked going into it. I only hope that we keep this energy for the trios division for the next three hundred years because the division has been on fire* the past few months.

A Willow/Thekla classic to lead to a Thekla/Mercedes classic

The women's division in AEW is just so fucking stacked right now from top to bottom. We got three women's matches on the show tonight – two of them whipped complete ass and one was fine, but had some extenuating circumstances around it that I think stopped the crowd from getting too into it.

But even that match (Persephone/Luna) was technically very good! The Tag Title match was nutty! Thekla vs Willow Nightingale was basically perfect! And in all three matches, one thing rang true: the AEW women's division hits fucking hard.

I don't remember seeing such physical matches since Jamie Hayter was World Champion and the entire division had to step up to be on her level. That went away a bit when she had to drop the belt, and it's been back in waves but right now it feels like the entire division is just firing on all cylinders.

In this match, I picked Thekla to win. But wrestlers being wrestlers and storytelling being storytelling, I still found myself pulling for the ultimate babyface Willow Nightingale as the match went on. She's the Ricky Steamboat of this generation, just a pure babyface who can create a connection with the crowd at the snap of a finger.

Willow and Thekla beat the piss out of each other and didn't let up. Did the match need interference from the Sisters of Sin? Absolutely not. But, at least it didn't really cause the ending of the match and just served as a stopgap. I will say, though, that there was a lot of this type of interference up to this point on the show and it feels like an AEW crutch at this point.

Thekla won the match and was greeted by The Beast Mercedes Moné afterward to build toward their looming encounter at WrestleDream. I can not fucking wait.

An unbelievable tag team ladder match

I've been watching professional wrestling my entire life. Like legitimately, my entire life. I was born in 1983 and my older siblings/the rest of my family watched wrestling as I was a baby, caught up in the grips of rock 'n' wrestling and Hulkamania.

So I don't say it lightly that this may have been the greatest ladder match I've ever seen, almost certainly the best tag team ladder match. There were things done in this match that I've never seen before. Messy, chaotic ladder spots that looked awful and cool at the same time.

I saw the original Edge & Christian vs Hardy Boyz ladder match, the E&C/Hardyz/Dudleyz ladder match, and the following TLC Match as a kid. They were mind-blowing at the time. We would emulate them in the backyard as best we could.

I haven't watched them in probably 20+ years at this point, but I have to imagine that this match is just as good if not better than those matches (adjusted for time and star ratings). Whatever your feelings are on who won the match, the match itself has to go down in history as a classic, all-time-great ladder match.

Personally, I had Copeland & Christian winning this one because I also picked Kyle Fletcher & Kevin Knight to win the number one contender's match. It felt like a C&C vs young guys in the Don Callis Family feud would write itself. Instead, we'll get The Young Bucks once again intertwined with Don Callis which is fine but not where I would have gone.

The eventual Bucks/DCF match will, of course, be completely bananas so I have no real complaints.

Oh, and RIP Stokely. I don't think I've ever seen someone fall that fast and hard off of a ladder. Pure madness.

Wrapping Up

Nothing super noteworthy on the Tailgate Brawl preshow, other than Samoa Joe making his return to knock Jungle Jack Perry on his keister.

THe main event four-way between The Bang Bang Gang & Death Riders/The Dogs was a very fun bit.

Do you remember those couple of weeks where Juice Robinson wanted to be a serious wrestler and not the "fake dog pee on guys" guy? I hope looping back around to being the "fake dog pee on guys" guy (amongst other quality traits) doesn't feel like a step back to him, because oddball lunatic Juice Robinson is the best Juice Robinson.

I thought that by the time we got to the main event that I would care about it. But I didn't. And I don't. I'm exhausted by Jon Moxley and Death Riders and I'm still not fully bought in on Will Ospreay as World Champion yet. Then, of course, we got the gigantic fucking Death Riders schmoz that went on forever.

And then we got Pained Acting by Jon Moxley unsure of whether or not he should hit Will Ospreay with the dreaded briefcase. And it's all just so.fucking.tiresome. The main event really took away from what was, otherwise, an incredible All Out.

But thank god we got Moxley handing Will the title after the match and shaking hands so we all remember Jon Moxley is a good guy even after all of the attempted murders of Bryan Danielson and The Rock 'n' Roll Express and everyone else.

Steven Borden went down with injury in a spot that looked bad but was good on paper, where he and Kevin Knight springboarded from opposite ends of the ring to meet in the middle. Borden went down and was clearly injured, going into a fencing response. The match ended moments after and a shook-up announce team tried to keep things on track while Borden was stretchered out.

Obviously I don't know what happened with Andy Williams. A lot of news stories about his last match and death reference hitting his head on the ring post, and I don't know if that's just people who aren't familiar with wrestling thinking that was a real thing and reporting as such or if a head injury did happen and cause everything that happened after. But, I know Excalibur was extremely broken up on commentary talking about Borden as he was being checked on and I can't imagine being Excal and seeing someone get injured like this twenty feet away from you after everything that just happened with Andy.

Just a tough situation all around, and I hope Borden recovers quickly and fully.