AEW All In preview & predictions: London Calling

The biggest wrestling show of the year has to be just that. Sunday’s All In (1 PM Eastern from London’s Wembley Stadium), the most important show since AEW became a proper company, needs to be can’t miss (sports) entertainment. This should be a card full of massive feuds, dream matches, and worthwhile conclusions to long-simmering stories. 

Not having Kenny Omega in a singles match or CM Punk trying to regain the title he never lost are just some of the more egregious misses.

The lead-up to what should be AEW’s magnum opus has unfolded with a lamentable lack of finesse, leaving even their most ardent supporters with shrugged shoulders. This is a haphazardly constructed card, devoid of any narrative finesse that defines the truly historic shows.

But what am I even saying? When the bell rings, all of this will probably be forgotten, and the performers will deliver like they always do. Consistently relying on high-quality in-ring performances to make up for subpar builds is a dangerous rope to walk and it’s become a rope AEW increasingly finds themselves crossing.

These misses won’t be felt in this particular box office, but you only get one chance to run “the biggest wrestling show of all time.” You can’t just slap a “part 2’ or an ‘Again’ at the end of that moniker and expect folks to buy in. By running a second major show the following week, they put themselves in an unwinnable position. They have to try and book for two shows at the same time when the focus should be entirely on All In.

Fans will forgive a subpar All Out card and Chicago will get over it if they run a B-show. Book for the show that people could remember forever, not the one they will forget by the following Dynamite. The lineup for All Out somehow being better than All In will be my Joker origin story.

AEW is in desperate need of good news and solid momentum. This is the biggest two-week stretch in the short promotion’s history. Sunday in sunny London town will, for better or worse, define the future of AEW.

Now, as always, let’s preview the action.

AEW Trios Champions House of Black (Buddy Matthews, Brody King & Malakai Black) defend against The Acclaimed (Anthony Bowens & Max Caster) and Billy Gunn

I don’t even care that this got announced four days before the show. I was smiling like a goon when Gunn came out on Wednesday night. Getting The Acclaimed on the Wembley card is a great call. They aren’t as popular as they were at their peak, but the crowd still loves them and is really going to love Gunn being back. The number one thing a wrestling show should do is make the crowd happy and few things make a crowd happier than an Acclaimed live entrance.

I love The House of Black. They have been workhorses on Collision and the individual styles of King, Matthews and Black fit so well together. Their presentation is top-notch and they never disappoint in the ring. But this is really about giving the fans what they want and Daddy Ass/Bad Ass getting some gold will do exactly that.

Prediction: The Acclaimed and Billy Gunn win the titles

Darby Allin & Sting vs. Christian Cage & Swerve Strickland

I had a wonderful preview written about this match. The booking wasn’t complicated; it was straightforward and simple. Strickland and Allin are rivals from the same area, Fox and Allin have a long history, and Sting is Sting. Throw in some Nick Wayne-related assault, and folks, that was a story worth telling. No winks and nods to the internet, no meta commentary about the state of wrestling just paint-by-numbers storytelling. It was the best-booked match on the card.

For reasons that remain unclear, Fox was replaced with Christian Cage. (At least it wasn’t Brian Cage!) Even if this was done because Fox had visa issues, is injured, or whatever, this is such a confusing mess. At best, it’s another example of sloppy decision-making with little foresight. If there was even a risk that he might not be able to make the trip, why have him there in the first place? It’s a shame, because Fox was a great fit with Swerve, and someone who grinded on the indies as long as he did deserved a spot on the card.

If nothing else, All In will do one thing that fans should remember forever: give Sting a massive, well-deserved platform. 80,000+ people going absolute nuts for the 64-year-old Stinger is going to be incredible. He spent much of the internet age of wrestling in TNA before his far too brief WWE run. His one WrestleMania moment was nowhere near good enough for a performer of his caliber. Few things are worse booking decisions than having HHH beat Sting at WrestleMania. On Saturday, The Icon will get to cap his career on the biggest stage, a stage he so deeply deserves.

Prediction: Sting & Allin

The Golden Elite (Hangman Page, Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi) vs. Bullet Club Gold (Juice Robinson & Jay White) and Konosuke Takeshita

Again, if this is truly the biggest wrestling show in history, having Omega in a multi-man match is a huge miss. No slight to anyone in the match, but there are levels to this. Omega is a man who broke and rebroke the star rating system that this site popularized. This is also a man held together by KT tape and positive thoughts. He doesn’t have a ton of big matches left in him. If this isn’t the place to use one of the bullets left in that chamber, what is? Maybe they are saving the big singles match with Takeshita for All Out, but that should happen in London, not Chicago.

Collision has become the best weekly wrestling show due in large part to Bullet Club Gold aka The Bang Bang Gang which is one of the silliest and best monikers in wrestling. They should lose the Bullet Club part completely and just go by that. White’s sense of humor and timing has been a revelation. Collision puts all of its talents in positions to succeed and gives them time do to so. It is consistently the best weekly wrestling show.

Prediction: The Golden Elite

Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta) & Santana and Ortiz vs. Eddie Kingston, Penta El Zero Miedo, Orange Cassidy & Best Friends (Trent Beretta & Chuck Taylor) in a Stadium Stampede match

It broke my heart to delete “and Rey Fenix” rom the match listing. Fenix is one of the best wrestlers in the world, and there are very few people who can replace him and what he is capable of doing in the ring. It’s a huge bummer he’s missing the show, but it is a delight seeing Santana and Ortiz back together in AEW. Santana, with his hair looking straight-up delicious, is the goods. Look for him to show out on Sunday. Hopefully he and Ortiz put any issues they had to bed because they are such a good team.

I’m never going to turn my nose up at a Stadium Stampede match, but this is not a feud that warrants a spectacle like this. More than most matches on the card, this seems like a way to clearly set up matches at All Out like Moxley vs. Cassidy and Kingston vs. Castagnoli. Both will be great, but using one of AEW’s signature spectacles to get there is backward. This should be the blow-off to a program, not a transition into the next stage.

Prediction: Blackpool Combat Club & Santana and Ortiz

Will Ospreay vs. Chris Jericho

Another match that came out of nowhere and a match that would have been better served by more than one week of build. Can Jericho even work a Ospreay match now? I’m a bit worried that he will try to keep up with one of the more insane people in modern wrestling who wrestles such a physical, taxing style. Not only that, he has to wrestle Ospreay after a live performance of Judas. Brother is going to be gasping for air before the bell even rings.

Who are we supposed to root for here? Is Jericho supposed to be the sympathetic babyface after being so terrible to his friends that they all left him? How is the audience supposed to root for him when he just tried to link up with someone well-established as the most loathsome character on AEW programming? Not only that, but Ospreay is the hometown boy. There is a zero percent chance he’s getting booed no matter how hard he tries.

Ospreay beat Omega in a match that’s on the shortlist for match of the year. He finally beat Okada. There is no chance he loses in a home game.

Prediction: Will Ospreay

AEW Women’s Champion Hikaru Shida defends against Toni Storm, Saraya and Britt Baker in a four-way

Each wrestler brings something unique to this match and AEW in general. Shida is a well-deserving, wholesome champion. Storm is the best overall talent in the division and is doing incredible work with her failed Hollywood glamour character who throws footwear at backstage interviewers. Saraya brings, by far, the most notoriety, name recognition, and Britishness. Baker is the homegrown talent conspicuously absent from the main stage and premier spotlight. Four great talents who should be able to create something lasting and meaningful on Saturday.

Rather than put together a cohesive story, AEW fell back on hastily spinning up a tournament to get the Women’s title match on the card: a crutch they too often lean on. The song remains the same, no matter how many times the record gets spun. There had been such little interaction between the four of them that I had to double-check this match was happening. Dynamite had an Adam Cole and MJF sit-down but this only got a 60 second pretape, a Ruby Soho singles match, and a tag team main event on Rampage.

Shida just won the title three weeks ago and AEW rarely hot potatoes their World championships. I’ve seen some talk of crowning Saraya because of where the show is, but I can’t see that happening

Prediction: Shida retains

AEW Tag Team Champions FTR (Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood) defend against the Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson)

As is federally mandated (attention FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, etc.), no major wrestling show can exist without someone, somewhere claiming to be the greatest of all time.

Exhausting in a vacuum, the claims and subsequent discussions are completely warranted here. I don’t write much about WWE on this site, nor do I have any real desire to, but it’s these two teams along with The Usos that make up the conversation for the greatest tag team of the modern generation and perhaps all-time. The main difference between The Usos, who are legitimately great, and these two teams, is that both the brothers Jackson and FTR have had enough memorable, historic matches that I don’t even need to list them here. Naming a memorable Usos match? That’s a much bigger challenge. They have had countless matches with The New Day, but how many stand out? How many compare to The Bucks Ladder Wars with The Briscoes or FTR’s trilogy with those same Briscoes? The answer is  they don’t. That’s why these are the two best tag teams of the modern era and two of the best in history.

Both teams have proven themselves across multiple companies and wildly different match types. A complaint directed towards a lot of Young Bucks matches is they all follow the same formula with the same moves, and sure, I’ll somewhat allow for that. You can’t say that about FTR. They have proven (actually, beyond proven) that they can wrestle any style, against any opponent, in any match type. That’s true greatness, and that’s why they are the best to ever do it. They had people in a full lather about a tag team match on a Saturday night in the middle of the summer. If that’s not greatness, I don’t know what is.

Bell-to-bell, this should be the best match on the card as no one does high-stakes tag team wrestling like AEW. Before Cash Wheeler’s legal situation, I thought it was Top Guys, over. The last thing AEW needs right now is more uncertainty and putting the title on The Bucks is the safer, more stable move

Prediction: The Young Bucks win the titles

CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe

Punk’s gravitational pull is unlike anything else in this industry. Like him or not, he is the sun that everything in AEW orbits around. When he’s on screen, he commands our eyes and ears. He demands we put down our phones and pay attention. When he’s not on screen, we’re wondering where he is. In a world increasingly full of NPCs – non-playable characters if you’re nasty – he is the Main Character, the star attraction. Of course, drama and intrigue follow him wherever he goes; it’s what makes him special. It made him special in WWE, it made him special in his unfortunate attempt at MMA, and keeps him special today in AEW. Historical greatness is frequently divisive, so why should he be any different?

At risk of being lost in this gravity, is Joe from Samoa. The only reason he hasn’t been swallowed by it completely is through his sheer force of will and talent. The true king of television is exactly that. He is appointment viewing no matter how long (or short) the match may be. Bar for bar, he is the most consistently excellent promo in the company (full apologies to Eddie Kingston, Jon Moxley, etc.) and remains their most believable mic artist. Like so many of our favorites, he’s closer to the end than the beginning and his current run is as good as anything he’s ever done. Long may he reign.

Even though I’d love to see Joe take this, there are so many other stories to be told and money to be made with Punk as the uncrowned champion. He keeps his belt.

Prediction: CM Punk

AEW World Champion MJF defends against Adam Cole

Even though this is not for me, I’ll still admit this pairing has been a shocking delight. Even though this is the most WWE thing AEW has ever done, the charisma and chemistry between the two carries the day. From the pre-taped vignettes to the live promos and everything in between, it all works far better than an enemy-turned-friend program should which is a testament to the singular talents of Cole and MJF.

The major issue with all of this is that it isn’t big enough for the main event of the biggest show in company history. It lacks the gravitas. Like everything else on the card, it needed more time — more time to establish them as a team and more time to make the inevitable turn that much more powerful.

The easy booking here is in the Cole turn, not MJF. MJF getting screwed over by Cole (and maybe big Rod Strong) sets MJF up for the chance to work as a true face for the first time. And it’s not like the audience can hate him more than they usually do. His turning on Cole won’t add to his character; it would just be more of the same. But Cole — fresh off a long absence and joyous return — turning on MJF would give this program legs and establish a new top-of-the-card heel for the babyfaces to feud with. Allowing MJF to have the crowd fully behind him would be something new and exciting. However, there is a huge Punk-related ‘BUT’ here.

Regardless of who wins, it would be inexcusable for the show to end without Punk coming out to confront the winner. If that’s the case, it makes more sense for him to confront MJF than Cole. Closing the show with the two biggest stars in the company setting up the next big title program will give AEW some needed momentum heading into 2024.

Prediction: MJF retains