AEW’s All Out involved multiple (fictional) attempts of murder. For years, the idea that the hatred and heat between rivals should convince fans that these men and women want to kill themselves was taken to its furthest point.
For some, like me, this was a watershed moment in modern wrestling. A return to something old, while also finding something new. For others it’s garbage.
Horror and violence aren’t for everyone. Truly, Saturday night helped cement AEW as an alternative to WWE in its storytelling philosophy. This is not to argue one is better than the other.
It was not for everyone. That’s understandable and acceptable.
However, to dismiss the artistic value of this brutality and physical sacrifice has its limits. I’ll discuss this in its article later this week. However, I am going to explain how at All Out two key acts of violence worked as storyline devices to progress characters, storylines, and bigger arcs. Some will say this is reaching because that’s an easy no-thinking required reason to not even debate something they disagree with. Others have or will come to similar conclusions; it will be harder to dismiss. Especially when…
Violence is More Than For The Sickos
As human beings, our relationship with violence is complex and ever-present in our culture and world.
It’s emotive and depending on context can inspire feelings as broad as excitement, catharsis, disgust, and retaliation. Our opinions whether individual or collective vary on what’s right and wrong. What’s defensive and what’s offensive? What’s justified and inexcusable?
And yet it is everywhere in our histories, present and future. It’s defined history through wars and conflict. The right to bear arms, and to react with possible violence, against oppression is written into America’s constitution. It features religious iconography. The Christian symbol represents literal and metaphorical suffering. It seeps into our media and is inherent in wrestling.
It’s not all fun. Even excess can have merit. Look at Shakespeare. The greatest similarity with wrestling is the depiction of violence to gain an emotional reaction. 2/3s of Bard’s plays explore a spectrum of violence and questions linked to human nature that are still relevant to our world today.
People forget likewise Shakespeare was somewhat of a carny. They are writing to pack a house for the money with all members of society. Politicking for financial security and writing to please patrons. It’s relevant because pro wrestling as an art form is often reduced to business terms.
Violence sells. As pro wrestling fans, we pay for the performance of it, even when the risk of pain and hurt is real. It’s not new, but a certain level of violence that threatens to cross the line has been absent since the end of The Attitude Era.
AEW brought that back to mainstream wrestling storytelling. They’ve pushed the envelope not for the sake of it, but to purposefully disturb. Make us as fans feel something for the stories and characters they progressed. Makes some of us want to see what happens next.
Homage in Plastic
Eddie Kingston cinematically walked to the ring covered in blood and carrying a petrol can at Double or Nothing 2022. Like a horror film, it was what you didn’t see that was captivating. The imagination of what happened when Kingston disappeared off-screen made this image powerful. The look of determination and hatred, the real feeling that Chris Jericho was about to be torched. What’s fiction felt like it would become (shoot) real.
Kingston is the man some are thanking (others blaming) for the plastic bag spot with Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson. This spot was grave robbed from Clash of the Champions VIII. Terry Funk covered and choked Ric Flair with a plastic bag in 1989. This was in the build-up to their classic I Quit match at Clash of Champions IX.
TBS came down hard on the spot and stopped replays fearing lawsuits and children copying the spot. Kingston pitched it several times, but “I know how scared Turner was” (Fightful). Instead, AEW waited until now and for PPV for maximum impact.
Bryan Alverez reported that Jon Moxley’s new gimmick takes its inspiration from the Australian cult film, Romper Stomper. You can find the full film on YouTube. It’s about disenfranchised youth who find unity and purpose in skinhead Nazi ideology. It’s an unflinching depiction of the uselessness and cycle of violence.
Like Russell Crowe, Moxley is no hero. Mox feels alienated (both by philosophy and choice) and different within the landscape of AEW.
The All Out spot was a homage to both. Crowe’s character tries to asphyxiate someone they care about, just as Mox does.
The intention was to shock and disturb.
It’s Bryan Danielson. A man whose honesty and authenticity are well known and were fully displayed in the build for All In’s Final Countdown.
If You Won’t Go Gently
Memes tell us a lot. Those displaying the contrast between All In and All Out highlight the difference in emotional manipulation caused by the events. Each stands separate but paired fit together in telling an interesting story of Bryan Danielson’s in-ring mortality. The end of the American Dragon’s career.
The euphoric fairy-tale ending of All In recaptured a feeling for me that was akin to Wrestlemania XX, a pivotal moment in my fandom. “Brittle” Bryan overcame age, wear and tear. The power of love powered Bryan through torment. The ultimate underdog won in front of his wife and kids in a stadium Danielson missed performing in last year.
Danielson refused to go gently into that good night. Then at All Out, after beating Jack Perry, Danielson and fans were greeted by the sickening reality. The nightmare is the approaching end.
Memento mori. Remember you must die.
Danielson didn’t go gently, but Moxley with the stoicism of a man putting down an old dog took Danielson by force towards that light.
The magnitude is more powerful because of who the target is and what Danielson stands for. Attacking Danielson, a rare wrestler who in and out of the ring is universally respected. To interject and try to destroy the man’s ending and life was transgressive. Heinous. Cold.
Danielson is not an innocent. The dragon kicks expletive heads in! Yet a sacred GOAT who weeks ago seemed invulnerable and who could it seems go on forever, was shown to be weak. The opposite of Sting ended his career looking ageless.
Danielson isn’t an icon or superhero. He’s a vulnerable man. It’s selling the idea that soon Danielson’s reign will end.
Betrayal Building Issues
The betrayal came from “friends” Danielson has known since the Indies and ROH. That makes it personal. Add the plastic bag, gimmicked or not, and it’s viscerally horrifying. Like Julius Cesar, Danielson was stabbed in the back by men who he trusted.
Never has Danielson suffered a beatdown as humiliating or as brutal. Although the wrestling cliché is everyone, even your brother will betray you, it hit differently.
The Blackpool Combat Club for both better and worse has not been your standard faction. While on screen in recent months their relationship has seemed tenuous. The betrayal hits because all the men seem to share the same code and mutual respect.
While the sight of Wheeler Yuta, helplessly held back and crying for his mentor might have stung more if that bond with Danielson had been more obvious. Moxley was the one Yuta fought and bled against to join the group. Danielson in front of Yuta thoughtlessly proclaimed Daniel Garcia was the future best technician. Besides a press conference mention of mentoring Yuta to get the victory in the Anarchy in the Arena against The Elite, the relationship between Danielson and Wheeler seems thin. It could have hit harder.
It might still do. Depending on if the follow-up re-glosses and redefines this moment as it did for Swerve Strickland breaking into Hangman Adam Page’s house.
Like Moxley, the BCC has needed a change or to end. What an emphatic way for either. By demonstrating and being the cold-hearted fighters, the men always talked about being.
There is a strange and perhaps unintended irony with Justin Roberts ringside. Once Danielson choked Roberts with his tie to get over that his faction was taking over. Live by the code, you die by it.
The Grey and Blindness of Vengeance
The expectation of violence was intrinsic in the year-old feud between “Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland. It’s violent history I’ve reviewed here. The rate of escalation while quick between their first match and the Texas Death Match was justified by the house invasion angle. This angle, like All Out and All In, had its contrast. Each man has played the role of the transgressor, going far and beyond the line of decency.
Both have had justification and yet both are right and wrong by societal standards contrasted with their code. Human beings are exceptionalists. As a teacher, if I had a penny for every time a student tried to excuse their behavior with reasoning, justification, pointing out what I got wrong or did not understand, I could have retired before thirty.
Let’s be fair, not many folks grow out of that defense mechanism of a code of exceptionalism. The ends justify the means. Swerve felt loss and anger after his childhood home was burnt down. Not the same or equal to the hurt inflicted on Page. More than Old Testament vengeance. Both eyes for an eye.
Fans cheered regardless for Swerve at times. Fans chanted when Page burned down Swerve’s childhood home. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, being a villain is attractive. It’s not modern, it’s historic. See Shakespeare’s most influential main characters from Macbeth to Richard III. See classics from The Godfather to the hitman in No Country For Old Men.
As much as wrestling must have faces and heels, good guys and bad, the grey between them can blur. Switches occur. See Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin. Or Swerve vs. Hangman’s time limit draw. When characters are clear, the binary can be blurred.
Men Are Not Heroes
In reality, there are not always clear-cut good guys and bad guys. Stories that reflect reality, like those of The Attitude Era were praised for blurring these lines. Here’s perhaps the greatest difference in AEW’s history of violence. AEW can be gratuitous and liberal in terms of blood, plunder, and weapons, but its most vicious kill shots have made a point that there are levels of violence that aren’t glorious. Rather are character-defining.
Anyone who considers that Moxley or Danielson, Swerve, or Hangman were supposed to be accepted as cool characters to emulate like an Austin or DX missed more than just the commentary team’s disgust and shock.
Swerve and Hangman went far because of hatred and their egos. Their justifications in Swerve’s case wanting glory, the spot, and the championship. For Page, for his family.
As made clear by Hangman, Swerve as a character has nothing but success in his life. No wife, or children elsewhere, Swerve has nothing but ambition and demons in his head. Page is similar to the demons, but the opposite with a wife and children to care for. Both men in some ways reflect issues of Imposter Syndrome that’s been present in Hanger’s character since his first arc.
Their justification is about dealing with the empty holes in their psyches. Page’s justifications are flimsy when you look back closely, as I’ve outlined elsewhere. Choking Danielson with a belt in the Owen Hart Cup or threatening to hit Karen Jarrett had nothing to do with Page protecting his family.
Both are men. Insecure and driven and blinded by a goal. They are pretend heroes. Yet Swerve never promised or tried to be anything but himself. Page promised to be more. Saturday, he failed himself and the fans.
There’s No Going Back
Ends justify the means, right?
It’s cliché to suggest that the hero might live long enough to be the villain. It has truth. How many liberators have become dictators? How can real-life “good” people slowly become evil without realizing it? It’s not just fictional. No one sees themselves as the villain.
The dilemma is whether can you live with the pain you caused. Swerve could. The terror Strickland caused was psychological and mental. Page’s revenge in burning the house was likewise mental, and psychological, but also financial and physical.
Page stabbing Swerve with a syringe felt not sporting, low, even for an unsanctioned match. It was about torture and satisfying himself, not his family. That could have been it. Instead, the chair shot to the head narratively might have been a gunshot. Page is a cowboy.
The discussion on safety I’ll explore as part of the criticism of AEW’s violence. There is no argument that it was somehow necessary. That’s the point.
Page went somewhere that many wrestlers talk about that feels corny. A dark place. Too far.
Page with his actions went there. Now there’s the hint that the cowboy himself believes there is no going back. This was seen when post-match. Page looked to return to the ring and stopped. The crowd’s reaction felt genuine. The look on Page’s face. The realization once the fog of war was gone. All that’s left is what he did to another man.
Art Leads to Buy In, Red Leads to Green
And I as a fan of engaging fiction want to see what’s next. If there are stories like this, feuds where the violence is not just justified but helps tell complex stories, take my money.
Red leads to green. Blood for some draws money. Not everyone. Not everyone enjoys the thrill of horror. Yet done in the right ways, with the right emotional heft, and sparingly, just as great works of literature, plays, TV shows and films do, their audiences will invest.
More From LWOS Pro Wrestling
Header photo – AEW – Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world. As well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can catch AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights at 8 PM ET on TBS. AEW Rampage airs on TNT at 10 PM EST every Friday night. AEW Collision airs Saturday at 8pm Eastern on TNT. More AEW content available on their YouTube
