AEW All Out 2024: TAPE's Road Report

Been a long time since I’ve done a Road Report. Don’t get out to the wrestling so much, really. Not that there’s any lack of shows in the Chicagoland area, but the opportunities just don’t present themselves as often these days.

All Out was my second AEW show, following the first episode of Collision, and the first time I’ve been to NOW Arena (formerly the Sears Center) out in Hoffman Estates. This one came about in unexpected fashion, as friends of a friend were doing a suite for the show, and I chipped in a little, and about 12 other folks chipped in a little, and there I was, suite-ing it up.

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I will say that I did miss, a little bit, being more in the thick of things with the fans, just the energy for the big moments. But I also didn’t miss the more disagreeable aspects of being in the thick of things, and I gotta say my suite-mates were a great bunch of folks and fun to watch the show with, PLUS you get a special VIP entrance where you bypass all the normal nonsense and get to take an elevator. I quite enjoyed my moment of pretending to be rich, looking down from the suite floor to see the commoners filing in. I really understand the appeal of having a lot of money and being smug about it now, if I’m honest. I like to think I wouldn’t really be like that, but you never know until you know, and luckily I’ll never be in a position to actually know. But it was a fun character to play for a few minutes.

Then reality set in, as the layout for food was basically NOW Arena’s cafeteria food — a couple of frozen pizzas that turned into goddamn bricks by the middle of the show, as did the hot dog buns in the warmer drawer on the roller. There was a platter of fries that I kinda dug, greasy and had this odd crisp/soft mix in texture. This wasn’t exactly high-end; not complaining, I got a couple slices of the pizza before it became pieces of the cinder block we’d see later in the evening, and I’m not above cafeteria ass frozen pizza, but my arrogant rich guy fantasy wasn’t making it past this food.

Otherwise, there were about six buckets of beer that I didn’t drink any of, and Coca-Cola and Sprite cans in a fridge. I drink, but I have gotten to an age where I only drink if, like, that’s the thing I’m doing, and I’ve never drank at wrestling. There’s so little in life I really, truly want to be “present” for, and wrestling just happens to be one thing I do, no matter how bored or grumpy I might appear to be while watching it live.

The view was alright, ring unobstructed, obviously no fan obstruction, no need to stand up and sit back down 117 times, and closer than it looks in a JPEG. These basketball/hockey-type arenas are never as big as 10-20,000 capacity makes it sound in my head, I’m always reminded how relatively cozy they are when I go again.

It was also kinda rad having “private” bathrooms on the floor — I mean, they’re public, only the people on that floor are using them. I heard the ladies say it was nice to have a clean bathroom to use at an arena, and I sadly had to report back that the wrestling fan men of the floor were, as a group, still animals pissing all over the goddamn place and leaving faucets on and what have you.

Anyway, let’s get to why you’re really here, beyond pizza doubling as a weapon and piss floors: the wrestling I saw.

Zero Hour Notes

• Max Caster is decidedly not the best wrestler in the world, but I dug Acclaimed vs Iron Savages, and I thought the Savages got to have a better showing than you likely would see from them in this same matchup on Rampage or Collision.

• Was great to see Dustin Rhodes in action, as I think this was the first time I’ve seen Dustin wrestle live. He teamed with Sammy Guevara (bleh) and Hologram (yay!) against the Premier Athletes, who as always did their fine job losing. Crowd was really hot for Dustin, Guevara looked good, and Hologram did some cool shit even with a couple shaky moments that you just kind of accept, especially because he recovers so quickly.

• Bang Bang Gang were also over, especially Juice in Chicago-ish, which is kind of his hometown, a little bit. Dark Order feel like an act from some long ago time.

• Skye Blue is not the most charismatic speaker, but was nice to see her in Chicago. Mariah May interrupted this to postpone her own championship celebration yet again, so the AEW women’s world champion’s contribution to this show was shoving over a one-legged woman and punching her in the skull before being chased off by Skye’s friend Queen Aminata before she could make it even worse.

• My man Tony K threw together a three-way trios that featured Undisputed Kingdom, Shane Taylor, and THE BEAST MORTOS, plus Lee Moriarty and Top Flight/Action Andretti, so it was kind of a lil’ TAPE’s Faves mish-mash. missed part of this but was cool to see The Beast Mortos live, and worth noting that Top Flight have transitioned from being commercial airline pilots to fighter pilots, which is probably the right idea, but now makes Leila Grey’s outfit seem kinda dumb.

Aaaand now the real stuff!

Daniel Garcia vs MJF

The energy change in a building where MJF opens the real show after a parade of also-rans is pretty crazy, no offense to some of my very favorite also-rans. The crowd really, really wants to treat Garcia like a star, and this match was largely about graduating him in-ring to being a guy truly on that path. Part of it, of course, comes from simply working with MJF; we’ll see how it works with less over/made opponents going forward. But not yet! The finish was cheap/clever/annoying enough to continue this, plus the post-match where Garcia delivered — even in defeat — on his promise to inflict bad violence on Max should keep them locked in a while longer.

Also want to say that MJF is really a great Opening Match Star. He’s done this a fair bit on PPV and with big matches on Dynamite, and he’s really kind of perfected that craft. Opening matches have been increasingly treated as important over the years, and rightly so. We’re long past the days where any ol’ turd of a match would open a PPV. Rating Guess: ****

Young Bucks (c) vs Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta
AEW World Tag Team Championship

Claudio again looking particularly fiery, loving it. Actually thought the Bucks looked a bit more interested in wrestling than has often been the case in recent months, maybe just from facing fresh(er) opponents, maybe a low/no-pressure sort of undercard spot was just helpful for them to go out, wrestle, and that’s about it.

Bucks retained, obviously. Rating Guess: ***¼

Will Ospreay (c) vs PAC
AEW International Championship

Pretty sure this was my first time seeing Ospreay live. He was in Florida for 2017 Mania week, but he worked a couple of the WrestleCon events and the ROH show, and I was down there on the FloSlam dime.

Oh, BROTHER, the crowd was rock hard for this as soon as the graphic flashed on the screen. I have a theory about the “chinlock rally clap” from the crowd, which is basically that modern crowds usually start clapping too quickly, they’re so impatient with anything slowing down unless they’re already super into a match.

Much of the middle part of this match was spent with the crowd in “anticipation” mode, in a good way, as this is a powder keg matchup and everyone knew that. Watching what these guys are athletically capable of doing, and the intensity with which they both do it, is really kind of insane when you actually start to think about it seeing it in person and not on a TV screen. Like, I’ve had this realization hit me many times over the years, and it definitely happened again here. Those are human beings of flesh and blood, just like me and all our grandmas are or were. This got into epic without going over the line into super cornball about the Fighting Spirit. Hard hitting, explosive, great finish. Rating Guess: ****¼

Willow Nightingale vs Kris Statlander
Chicago* Street Fight

*Hoffman Estates.

These two got put into one hell of a tough slot in the lineup, and I want to stress what incredible work they did in holding about 75 percent of the crowd’s enthusiasm from the last match. It’s so easy for a crowd to come down after something like Ospreay vs PAC, and Willow and Kris just did not let them go.

This came from hard, nasty work from both of them. Tables, tacks, chains, and just some filthy normal wrestling, too. Really got the feeling this match meant a ton to both of them and that (1) they wanted to show how great they can be, and (2) they knew very well how tough an assignment they’d received, and they were determined to succeed.

They were both fantastic. Truly great, and I thought this was the show-stealer of the undercard. Statlander really needed this win more than Willow did, and I think the call to have Stat take it is the right one. Huge, huge props to both of them, this match was violent as it should have been and kicked ass. Rating Guess: ****½

Kazuchika Okada (c) vs Mark Briscoe vs Konosuke Takeshita vs Orange Cassidy
AEW Continental Championship

Kind of a blur, honestly, and this is sort of where the crowd really got a chance to start chilling back out, but not just dying, either. This worked them down a bit even though there was plenty of good action.

The Okada vs Takeshita interaction is clearly hoping to build to something big down the road. A little surprised at first that it was Orange eating the pin, but with a bit more thought, you don’t want to have Takeshita lose to Okada yet, Briscoe does hold the ROH title still, for whatever that’s worth (and it’s clearly worth something), and Orange … is fine losing a fall here. It does nothing. He’s Orange Cassidy, a made man. And the four-way adds the element of randomness to anything, really.

Mercedes Mone (c) vs Hikaru Shida
TBS Championship

Don’t think Chicago is really a Mone town these days. Not saying she doesn’t have fans, but she has a fair few detractors, too, and I don’t mean because she’s a heel. Chicago is an extremely opinionated wrestling crowd, and Mercedes is the sort of wrestler who has always demanded a real reaction from every fan. She’s never been happy to just exist.

I don’t know, I didn’t think this was very good. This was closer to the Britt Baker mess at Wembley than it was Mercedes’ DC match with Momo Watanabe. I wish it had been better, I like them both, and this didn’t fail in the ways the Baker match did. Their Dynamite match a few weeks ago was better than this, too. Rating Guess: **½

Bryan Danielson (c) vs Jack Perry
AEW World Championship

Most likely, this was the last time I will see Bryan Danielson wrestle live. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it won’t be, but it seems probable at the moment. First time was just over 20 years ago at ROH’s first Chicago Ridge show, where he had the best match of the night, even with some other really good stuff.

This was not the best match of the night, I am confident in that, but I’m not gonna guess a rating because honestly, I was just having a great time watching and trying to take the moment in. That’s corny, but this is the greatest professional wrestler to ever live, in my opinion. I’m gonna see a lot more great wrestlers if I keep going to shows, but I’m not gonna see someone better than Bryan Danielson. Someone better might come along, sure, I’m not dismissive of the idea, but by the time one does, good chance I’ll be dead.

The big story here was the post-match. First the little interaction between an attacking Killswitch and his old tag partner Perry, nothing physical happens there, then the tease of Christian Cage coming down to “cash in” his contract for a title shot, only to be confronted instead by Jon Moxley, then followed by Claudio, Wheeler, and PAC to stare them down and send them away. The Patriarchy bailed — nice of PAC to join them so that Mother Wayne didn’t slip the lines and take Bryan out herself — and that’s when I was certain something bad was about to happen.

One guy with me asked, “Who’s gonna turn?” And I said, “All of them.” Almost. Claudio dropped Bryan, and then Moxley plastic bagged the champ to death, which the Chicago fans responded to not with any sort of belief in what they’d seen, but by doing a comedy chant about murder. That’s Chicago for you, though. I’ve been in these crowds a long time, they are who they are.

I thought the angle was great. Moxley, his enforcer Marina, Claudio, and PAC left together. PAC held Wheeler back from helping Bryan, but Wheeler did not exit with them. They also didn’t attack Wheeler for it — yet. The trios champs now have their own issue, and it’ll be whether Wheeler sides with them or they decide to take him out, too, but for the moment the choice appears to be his.

Swerve Strickland vs Hangman Page
Lights Out Steel Cage Match

With that angle at the end of the last match, and the whole vibe of this match coming in, there was a sense of violence and dread in the crowd that I’ve never felt at a wrestling show before. The air was heavy. Helping that was the fact that these two both have themes that aid in creating a tense atmosphere in the right situation, and this is the right situation.

I don’t know what to try putting into words with this match, but it was the sort of thing that, especially combined with the angle to close the previous match, is going to make wieners and babies ask if AEW “went too far,” either from a place of “bad faith” nonsense, or one of sincere misunderstanding about what AEW is trying to be, or, frankly, the maximum upside of their audience size. WBD, the people who matter the most, just do not seem to care about this stuff any time it happens and someone from 25-35 years ago is convinced they’ve cooked their own asses for sure and for good this time around.

But yes, this was exceptionally violent and ugly for a promotion of this size and exposure. And eventually they’ll probably top this, too. This is not the first time you could say that about something with AEW. This time, it was earned. This has been a truly hard-edged and vicious storyline, performed incredibly well by a pair of really outstanding young talents who are going to be cornerstones for a long time.

I loved it. And I, too, felt weird about it, I just think it’s cool to feel that way when it’s done well, and this story has been done well for a long time now.

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I had a great time at this show. It maybe wasn’t the best show I’ve ever gone to, I don’t think, but it might have been the best “big time TV” company show I’ve ever gone to, and realistically, other than personal attachments to time and place — yeah, possibly the best show I’ve been to, period. And I can say for certain that I’ve never been to a show quite like this one.