All Out 2021 was the best pay-per-view All Elite Wrestling has produced to date. The company has put on better matches and hosted bigger moments, but from the opening bell of The Buy-In to the final f-bomb of Bryan Danielson’s post-show show promo, it was the closest an AEW event has come to flawless. Even its divisive moments — an MJF vs. Chris Jericho ending some didn’t care for and a Paul Wight vs. QT Marshall match that clocked in at three minutes — were overwhelmingly drowned out by its highlights.
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But I’m not here to tell you why All Out was good. By now you’ve seen why, heard why and probably read why. I’m here to tell you why the show mattered.
I’m a reporter who covers pro wrestling, and since October 2019 that means part of my job description includes being inundated with comparisons between WWE and AEW. From a thousand feet up it isn’t that fair of an argument. WWE is a publicly traded company with television deals with NBCUniversal and FOX, a massively lucrative 10-year agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, major international television deals and a lineage that traces back to at least 1953. AEW has a respectable deal with WarnerMedia and is (as admitted by Tony Khan himself) way ahead of schedule in terms of growth as a promotion. But its profits are nowhere near what WWE is making, and though the gap between audience sizes for Monday Night Raw and Dynamite is getting smaller, AEW’s flagship program is still a ways off from consistently toppling WWE’s B-show.
And yet it appears that AEW has begun to chip away at one of WWE’s greatest advantages, and Sunday night proved that fact. One of the greatest yet least acknowledged rewards WWE gained following the demise of WCW was its undisputed imprint on pop culture. For many, the history of professional wrestling in the United States is simply the history of the WWE. Entire generations of aspiring wrestlers dreamed not of simply holding a shiny gold belt in a four-sided ring, but of being the WWE Champion, main eventing WrestleMania, sticking it to the evil Mr. McMahon and battling the greatest names the business has ever seen.
But, as Mick Foley so eloquently put it in his video message on Tuesday, that idea that WWE is the ultimate destination for every man and woman aspiring to become a professional wrestler is starting to fall apart. A great deal of that is due to what WWE is currently doing with its creative process, developmental system and (reported) changes to its recruiting philosophy, but let’s push all of that to the side and focus on what AEW is doing.
During the company’s first two years its roster could be broken down into three main categories:
- Stars who had already made a name for themselves elsewhere
- Homegrown talent
Former WWE stars who had demanded their releases
While that second group is definitely something to keep an eye on because it’s slowly getting bigger, it was the third group that gave AEW its biggest momentum boost. The Superstars that openly demanded their releases from WWE were either midcarders who believed their talents were being underutilized or former champions who felt shackled by the creative restraints Vince McMahon had placed on them.
Those frustrations are nothing new, but suddenly there was another promotion that offered wrestlers creative freedom in their promos and onscreen personas. That’s how the likes of Jon Moxley, Matt Hardy, Shawn Spears, Brodie Lee (RIP), FTR and Miro all wound up entering the company. The artistic satisfaction those wrestlers found once they arrived in Jacksonville helped give AEW a reputation that if you wanted to be creatively fulfilled as a pro wrestler, that’s where you wanted to be. But aside from Moxley, the positive word of mouth wasn’t enough for WWE’s main event players to start jumping ship. Quite the opposite was true, as many of them signed contract extensions during AEW’s first full year.
But let’s look at who took part in All Out on Sunday night.
CM Punk left the WWE in 2014 and, for a time, swore off pro wrestling entirely. He wrestled his first match in seven years in front of his hometown crowd weeks after selling out the United Center on the rumor that he might show up.
Adam Cole was the most decorated wrestler in the history of NXT and met with Vince McMahon face-to-face about a new contract that would have (reportedly) seen him finally jump to either Raw or SmackDown. He has openly admitted in interviews that his childhood dream was to be a WWE Superstar, but he turned all of that down in favor of reuniting with The Elite.
Bryan Danielson main evented WrestleMania 37 less than five months ago, was a five-time world champion in WWE, had a healthy relationship with McMahon and was on the verge of signing a new deal to stay with the company. But he chose to leave because of the talent AEW had cultivated and the organic excitement that surrounds the promotion.
All of them could have just as easily signed new WWE contracts and remained in its massive content machine. But they didn’t, and each one of them has spoken publicly about all the positive things they had heard about AEW before putting pen to paper.
Having Punk, Bryan, Cole and Ruby Soho joining AEW won’t be a death blow to WWE. There will always be athletes who dream of main eventing WrestleMania and independent wrestlers who feel more comfortable with WWE’s system or simply take more money when offered. But, as All Out proved, AEW’s welcoming environment and sense of creative fulfillment will continue to attract bigger stars of the industry as the years pass. To some that opportunity will simply be more appealing than any lucrative, multi-year contract WWE can throw out.
That’s why Punk’s statement about Bryan and Cole’s arrival being bigger than The Outsiders going to WCW made sense. WCW was simply throwing massive amounts of money at WWF stars back in mid-90s, while AEW is calling out to the love of pro wrestling that convinced so many to lace up a pair of boots in the first place. And that strategy is working.
That’s why All Out mattered. That’s why there’s real excitement for AEW from people within the industry. That’s why AEW is suddenly flush with talent. And that’s why the next few years of pro wrestling will be the most interesting we’ve seen since the “Monday Night Wars.” If All Out ’21 was AEW’s Bash at the Beach ’96, I can’t wait for what’s next.
