10 Moments That Literally Stopped AEW Wrestling Matches
Sometimes the action in the ring has to take a pause.
There's an old saying in the world of entertainment - the show must go on.
Whoever said that clearly never had to get bonked on the head with a steel chair for a living, because if they did, they'd realise what a rubbish motto that is.
Wrestling is a dangerous game, which means that promotions have to make safety their number on priority. Unfortunately, this can sometimes come at the expense of a match.
Alternatively, run-ins, false finishes, and other storyline beats have been used throughout wrestling history to purposefully create breaks in the action to varying degrees of success.
In their short history, All Elite Wrestling has used several of these techniques to bring matches to a halt. Equally, their high-flying, high impact style of wrestling has also meant that a fair few of their matches have needed to be stopped on medical grounds.
Sometimes a paused match can restart with no issue, but sometimes there was just no way they were going to roll on.
As for one specific encounter, it should have been stopped completely, but wasn't. Try and guess which match we're talking about, you'll never get it...
10. The Devil Gets His Due
MJF's journey to becoming AEW World Champion was a long and complicated one, but it began in earnest with this pretty spectacular moment at All Out 2022.
It went down during the closing moments of the Casino Ladder match to determine a number one contender for the top prize.
Men like Claudio Castagnoli, Rush, and Penta El Zero Miedo battled it out before Stokely Hathaway and a group of his clients laid waste to everyone in the ring.
The group that would go on to be known as The Firm brought the match to a total halt, dispatching of all the competitors before Hathaway himself retrieved the large poker chip hanging above the ring.
This heralded the arrival of the Joker - no, not the Batham one - who was immediately handed the chip and the title shot that came with it. As revealed later on in the show, the man under the devil mask was none other than Maxwell Jacob Friedman.
It was a very intriguing angle that eventually lead to a great payoff. Just a shame about all the other nonsense we had to get through to get there.