10 Things We Learned From Attending AEW All In 2023
6. The NXT Layout Can Still Be Great
As the brand ate itself and numerous key performers from the era found their work becoming increasingly more like a parody of what they'd done in the past (or worst, what their head coach had done in the past), NXT's trademark melodramatic main event epic found itself the subject of much scorn from many wrestling fans. Chiefly AEW ones, who'd frustratedly left the brand behind for pastures new right as the worst excesses were reached.
It appears as if there's hope for the style yet.
MJF's AEW World Championship main event with Adam Cole (a notable and divisive practitioner from the time) will have much written on it and deservedly so, but the old black-and-gold influence was both celebrated and improved upon here.
Never in those tortured morality plays did anybody find a moment of levity like the audible laugh break between the knocked out Bryce Remsburg counting one and two. Rarely was the violence as believably transgressive as Adam Cole following through on a table piledriver when MJF couldn't. It's perhaps no surprise then, that even the best TakeOver-style epics weren't trusted on WWE's grandest stage. This was, and proved its worth over and over again.