8 Ups & 1 Down From AEW Dynamite (24 Aug)
1. Shock & Awesome
It's hard to imagine anybody feeling "meh" about what happened when CM Punk wrestled Jon Moxley.
To say the reaction has been divided wouldn't do it justice. On current evidence, you either enjoyed it to a 1/10 level or a full 10. Hated it or loved it. A Marmite match.
This is in the eye of the beholder. The idea that art (which wrestling certainly is) can be objectively good or bad is false. Quality is a feeling, not something that can be quantified through metrics, and one man's trash is another's treasure. If a viewer felt shortchanged by Jon Moxley crushing CM Punk in under four minutes where this once felt like a pay-per-view main event, that's a valid feeling. It isn't objectively wrong because no wrestling opinion is.
So, subjectively, this was incredible.
In an arena hotter than the surface of the sun, CM Punk sought to take advantage of a hot start by hitting Moxley with a high kick. He immediately collapsed to the canvas clutching his standing leg. The story that Punk's surgically-repaired foot was still badly damaged was established, leading to Moxley aggressively targeting it through holds, opening a window to blast Punk with two Death Riders and become undisputed AEW World Champion.
Breathless, shocking, and utterly exhilarating, it was a gobsmacking piece of booking on par with Brodie Lee's decimation of Cody Rhodes - and it leaves the All Out 2022 main event wide open.
The arena was all in on it, too. Enraptured in every single second, from the snug collar-and-elbow tie-up that opened things up to Punk's despondent glance back at Moxley while he was being taken away, Cleveland was hooked. Big time. Tony Khan's big booking gamble appeared to pay off for the ticket-buying public.
In delivering an outcome few would have predicted heading into one of the year's most unpredictable matches, AEW have ensured that debate on All Out's main event will remain atop the news cycle for the next week-and-a-half. Whether this was part of the plan or not almost doesn't matter. At a time when AEW's closest competition is making headlines for its creative turnaround under Paul Levesque (and Khan's own locker-room appears increasingly chaotic), All Out needed this bump.
Here we go.