12 Ups & 2 Downs For AEW All In 2023

6. A Bit Of The Old Ultraviolence

HOOK may have paid tribute to A Clockwork Orange with his attire on the Zero-Hour pre-show, but it was Stadium Stampede that truly brought a bit of the old ultraviolence made so infamous by Alex DeLarge and his Droogs.

If it's hard to recap FTR vs. Young Bucks in live time, it's utterly impossible to do the insanity of Stadium Stampede justice in that regard. But hey, that's part and parcel of uniquely penning a live Ups & Downs while an event takes place.

Full disclosure, Stadium Stampede is a stipulation that's never particularly done much for your writer previously, but this was a bunch of fun; violent, bloody, nasty, disturbing fun.

Every single person in this match is going to be feeling the impact of this for a good while, and each of the ten men got their moments to shine and also got to take some horrific looking bumps and strikes. There was Jon Moxley sickly receiving the skewers in the head from Penta El Zero Miedo, there was Mox hitting a Brainbuster onto a chair on Orange Cassidy, there was Trent Beretta taking a dreadful looking bump on a ladder in the corner, where he hit his back and neck, and then shortly after was thrown back onto that ladder by Ortiz and Mike Santana.

Speaking of Santana, isn't it great to see him back and looking in the best shape of his life? That dude is absolutely jacked right now.

In other highlights, there were a great few minutes were Moxley seemed to have a personal vendetta against Orange Cassidy, with Freshly Squeezed forever a fantastic fighting babyface. Or in this case, a fantastic, bloody fighting babyface.

The whole Sue stuff isn't particularly for me, and it was a little daft for Penta to leave the match for a substantial spell as he got changed into his Penta Oscuro gear, but they're minor complaints.

For the finish, it was the glass-covered, duck-taped hand of Orange Cassidy which scored the pin over Claudio Castagnoli, but arguably the bigger story here is that there was extremely minimal interaction between Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley. That said, the Mad King did put Mox through a table at the end of the contest, which opened up the opportunity for OC to strike Claudio.

One other small quibble is that Castagnoli's shoulders weren't actually down on the mat for the three-count, but that's kinda understandable when the mat was littered with pieces of shattered glass.