11 Ups & 0 Downs From AEW All Out 2021

Ups...

11. The Buy-In Match Does The Job

Jurassic Express Best Friends
AEW

And so, mercifully, does the Hardy Family Office.

This wasn't an unqualified success; really; 'The Matt Hardy Vs. The Entire AEW Midcard Feud Must Continue' is a reprehensibly tedious and damning sentence. But continue it must, for some reason. AEW ran its millionth post-match continuation in which Hardy's three - three, for f*ck's sake! - concurrent storylines all tied together. Before the Dark Order, Best Friends and Jurassic Express all came together in a forced-fun post-match scene, the 10-man tag proved effective in its remit as a crowd-pleaser.

It wasn't anything special. At times, and your writer is fairly lenient with daft for-the-sake-of-it spots, this was indierrific in the extreme. Shindieriffic, even. It was however a lay-up for this particular crowd, and Jungle Boy elevated (literally) a boilerplate PWG house style match with moments of genuine creative invention. Elsewhere, it was every overtly cooperative multi-man spot-fest you've ever seen elevated also by a red-hot crowd.

The upshot of a worn genre is that it is so familiar in 2021 that the sloppiness that so often blights the mid versions of these matches didn't creep in to undermine it.

Advertisement
In this post: 
Adam Cole
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!