10 Best Wrestling PPVs Of 2019
7. AEW All Out
Something like Joey Janela retrieving a tennis racquet from under the ring - and bantering it off as an in-joke - has simply never happened on a big-time North American wrestling pay-per-view.
That's what endears fans to AEW. It's a promotion of expression. Who cares if only a set number of fans were ever going to understand the reference? Niche is so much more interesting than the broad, if done well, and the demented Cracker Barrel Clash was done very well. It was a phenomenally entertaining horror comedy.
The opener also intersected the fun and the dramatic: Jungle Boy's ace babyface work created a grand platform for the blitzkrieg pop hot tag of Luchasaurus. Kenny Omega Vs. PAC saw the Cleaner enter a superb, restrained performance designed to put over the BASTARD's top-level heel character by de-emphasising his cloudburst offence and struggling through a physical beating. The low points of the show were in fact good - the blow-away in-ring standard comes with it a warped perception - but the final three matches were all very good, at a minimum, and were all different.
Cody Vs. Shawn Spears was over-booked, but it over-delivered as an old-school spectacle; Escalera de la Muerte was as astonishingly violent, creative and rich ladder war; Chris Jericho Vs. Hangman Page, a physical banger that told a neat story of experience as a weapon, was one hot crowd away from being a classic.