Swerve Strickland, Hangman Web page and the Actual Winners and Losers from AEW All Out 2024

On the heels of a momentous All In pay-per-view from Wembley Stadium in London, All Elite Wrestling returned Saturday night time with All Out, its second extravaganza in as many weeks, this one from Chicago.

Headlined by the Lights Out Metal Cage Match between Swerve Strickland and Hangman Web page, in addition to Bryan Danielson’s protection of the AEW World Championship towards Jack Perry, the present introduced a number of high-profile applications to a detailed whereas propelling others with long-reaching penalties ahead.

It additionally left a handful of winners and losers, wrestlers whose utilization both positively or adversely affected them.

Who have been these stars, which aspect did they fall on, and why?

Discover out with this recap of the September 7 occasion.

Make no mistake about it: Daniel Garcia is a proficient skilled wrestler with a vivid future, one thing that was on full show in his opening match towards MJF. He confirmed an applicable quantity of depth given the hatred that existed between them and went blow-for-blow with the previous AEW champion, proving he belonged on that stage.

He additionally misplaced the match and consequently, earned “loser” standing on the night time.

We now have seen Garcia flip in star-making performances earlier than. He has battled world champions, future Corridor of Famers, and giants within the trade. He has given it his all, fired up, and regarded the a part of a star of the longer term, solely to inevitably lose one other high-profile match.

He has to win finally or the entire effort that has gone into pushing him at completely different factors in his AEW run can be for naught.

Saturday was the time for him to get that win; a victory that will have propelled him onward and upward. As an alternative, he fell for a similar low blow that everybody does and ate one other defeat.

Making issues worse was the post-match try and warmth him again up, wherein he blocked a low kick from MJF and proceeded to ship a piledriver from the ropes earlier than leaving by way of the gang.

Why would Garcia be capable of telegraph that low blow however not see the predictable one coming 30 seconds earlier? That he did solely highlights how unsatisfying the end and consequence of Saturday’s opener truly was.

Defenders of the match will level to the narrative of Garcia permitting his feelings to get the very best of him however once more, we’ve got seen related out of the Buffalo native earlier than. He wants the massive win and an evolution in his character to get to the subsequent stage in AEW as a result of as we noticed once more in Chicago, the in-ring efficiency is already sturdy.

Expectations have been lofty for Will Ospreay vs. Pac and true to the reputations they’ve developed over their careers, they lived as much as them.

Pac focused the neck and shoulder of Ospreay all through the match however the resilient AEW worldwide champion repeatedly fended off defeat and fought his method again into the match.

The followers in Chicago have been into each spot, driving the rollercoaster of motion together with the opponents, culminating within the Aerial Murderer delivering a Kinds Conflict and Hidden Blade for the win.

The tone of each AEW telecast modifications when Ospreay takes to the ring, because of the thrill he brings to the world. Saturday, he shared the ring with a wrestler in Pac who may match his athleticism and has his personal resume of show-stealing efforts.

With nice skill comes larger accountability to ship night time in and night time out. Two of the very best wrestlers within the universe did simply that in entrance of a grateful and respect Chicago viewers.

Kris Statlander is just too good to be as underutilized as she had been earlier than the heel flip that ended her friendship with Willow Nightingale and necessitated their feud. Even the months-long program had felt reasonably one-sided, with the babyface shining within the highest profile moments, reminiscent of All In Wembley.

That modifications Saturday in an intense, violent, hard-hitting Chicago Avenue Combat.

Statlander settled her variations with Nightingale, surviving a lightweight tube assault, a nasty spill right into a guardrail, and an uncomfortable stumble upon thumbtacks to wrap a metal chair round her opponent’s face and drive a submission.

The win gives Statlander the kind of momentum she has not had since that preliminary heel flip.

Now could be the time for Tony Khan and AEW artistic to capitalize on her defining win and elevate her again into relevance within the ladies’s division and, maybe, championship rivalry.

How that works with two heel champions stays to be seen however Statlander is among the finest in-ring employees within the division and shouldn’t be allowed to slink again into obscurity, particularly after a win the magnitude of which we noticed Saturday night time.

Hikaru Shida is arguably the very best ladies’s wrestler in AEW historical past.

She is unarguably its most embellished, successful three ladies’s world titles.

She is as constantly sturdy an in-ring performer as the corporate has produced and an AEW authentic.

Over the past 12 months, although, she has been utilized as a way of getting others over. Her function has been to raise her friends or lend them credibility. Saturday night time, she was however the newest challenger to Mercedes Moné’s TBS Championship. She was neither the seasoned veteran enhancing her opponent or a plausible challenger, because of the champion’s star energy and the way wherein she has been haphazardly heated up, then cooled off.

Her loss to Moné, clear and within the heart of the ring Saturday night time in Chicago, did nothing to alter that notion.

Shida is top-shelf skilled wrestler and somebody who ought to be higher utilized, to not point out extra constantly than she is. She is an asset to the corporate, which has taken the mandatory steps to enhance the ladies’s division right here in 2024.

A foundational member of the division, she may be champions or challenger and the whole lot in between.

For the sake of her legitimacy within the eyes of the viewers, which has watched her lose too typically with out gaining a lot of something from it during the last 12 months Khan and Co. should deviate from their sample of reintroducing her, then constructing her up, solely to make use of her to place another person over.

The return of Jon Moxley introduced with it a renewed edge to the previous AEW world champion, to the purpose that his place within the Blackpool Fight Membership was in query. His current affiliation with Marina Shafir and the chaos they precipitated steered he had moved onto greater, extra harmful issues than what Bryan Danielson, Wheeler Yuta, Claudio Castagnoli and satellite tv for pc member Pac have been concerned with.

Moments after Danielson efficiently defended the AEW World Championship towards “Scapegoat” Jack Perry, it turned clear that was not the case.

Moxley, Castagnoli, Pac, and Yuta arrived on the scene to forestall Christian Cage and The Patriarchy from stealing the title from The American Dragon by the use of the heel’s assured title alternative. From there, nonetheless, the state of the BCC modified perpetually.

Castagnoli delivered an uppercut that shocked the champion earlier than Moxley utilized a plastic bag in an tried suffocation, all whereas Pac neutralized Yuta and Shafir laid out referee Bryce Remsburg. The commentary staff denounced the actions of the group, with Jim Ross dropping expletives in disgust over using the bag.

In a single angle, a BCC that felt disjointed and watered down of late rediscovered its sense of hazard whereas concurrently giving followers a sneak peek of what the ultimate weeks/months of Danielson’s in-ring profession would possibly appear like.

The wheels are in movement for Moxley to probably be the star to dethrone his former teammate and make good on his claims that AEW now not belongs to the individuals.

Whereas there’s an argument to be made that revamping BCC and letting them run wild over the roster in the identical method they’ve during the last two years isn’t the reply to AEW’s artistic shortcomings, having the soundness that the group has and can proceed to deliver must be welcome.

The hatred between Swerve Strickland and Hangman Web page coming into All Out was so intense that it demanded the primary ever Lights Out Metal Cage Match. The one drawback was that the violence the 2 had inflicted on one another over the course of their rivalry, courting again to final 12 months had been so visceral and graphic that there have been actual questions on its skill to reside as much as the hype.

Even with the loftiest of expectations, it managed to.

Chairs, tables, a staple gun, a concrete block, and the metal confines of the cage itself all inflicted punishment on the combatants. Nonetheless, it felt comparatively tame given all that followers had witnessed between them to that time.

Enter, the hypodermic needle.

Web page retrieved it from his plastic field of implements and proceeded to stay it by way of the cheek of his opponent in a match that had even the hardest followers squirming. From there, he uncorked an unprotected metal chair shot to the top and the referee referred to as for the bell, awarding the match to the villain.

Hangman took sickening delight in his actions and celebrated the win as if he had someway been confirmed proper; as if he was the conquering hero to Strickland’s vile heel. As Harvey Dent famously mentioned in The Darkish Knight, nonetheless, “you both die a hero or reside lengthy sufficient to see your self turn into the villain.”

Web page had way back surpassed that and his actions in the primary occasion have been reflective of that.

Kudos to each individuals for creatively taking part in on a spot from considered one of their earlier encounters, when Strickland actually drank Web page’s blood. Saturday, the latter repaid him by fairly actually utilizing a picket stake from Swerve’s now-charred childhood dwelling, as if he was trying to extinguish Nosferatu.

The match-ending chair shot was a bit a lot, particularly after we simply witnessed Jack Perry get bludgeoned with one on the conclusion of the newest Blood & Guts match, and AEW could be clever to loosen up on the wicked violence, however this was the primary occasion it wanted to be, that includes two guys whose rivalry has helped carry the promotion for the higher a part of a 12 months.