15 Match Star Ratings For AEW All Out 2022
1. Jon Moxley Vs. CM Punk - AEW World Title Match
The first three minutes of this match were scintillating.
CM Punk, high on the rush of an adoring hometown crowd, took the fight to Jon Moxley and subverted the unification squash match by drilling him with the GTS. The execution was perfect, which informed the heart-stopping near-fall perfectly. What a false finish this was.
Mox during the subsequent heat sequence literally drank Punk's blood, because he's the best. It really feels as though, had this match taken place literally anywhere else, Punk would have been booed out of the building.
The tone both men created in the spaces between moves was exquisite. In one small masterful detail in a thoughtful war, a claret-drenched Punk, on his knees, slapped Mox in defiance when he was told to bring it. He couldn't even stand back up, he was pissing that much plasma, but he was never not in the fight. His selling was immense throughout, and Mox pulled off, yet again, the most difficult job in wrestling by performing as the hardest and most daunting player in the game.
In a theme that continued long into the night, in shocking fashion, Punk's defiance was threaded throughout the match. Trapped in the figure-four leg lock, he flipped the bird directly in Mox's face. He also gouged his eye out in a spot intended to put Mox over. He wasn't above cheating; he had to cheat to stand a chance. In a glorious spot, Mox reversed Punk's elbow drop and seamlessly countered with the bulldog choke in just one of several fantastic, suspenseful submission sequences.
Bonus point: Mox deprived us of Punk's sh*tty elbow drop.
The atmosphere was incredible: proper main event stuff in a company that has failed to engineer it during the last match on a marathon PPV half the time. That is an enormous credit to both men.
The duelling chants gave way to an insistent swell of "CM Punk!" chants. The noise was rabid, not remotely performative. The people who wanted Punk to win - and amazingly, in Chicago, it was far from everyone - really wanted him to get it done.
And he did, following an incredible Death Rider near-fall, with a double GTS shot. In the aftermath, MJF returned, and despite putting in a near-unparalleled level of work to get his heat, Punk extinguished it in about 20 minutes during an incendiary press conference.
A bit empty-headed, no?
Star Rating: ★★★★½