Whenever someone criticizes AEW (online, at least), there’s a response I see a lot, which is basically that it’s ridiculous to say a promotion is giving you too much wrestling. For example, if I say MJF vs. Daniel Garcia was too long, involved too many false finishes, and had an absurdly overbooked ending, you might think what I’m really saying is “I don’t like wrestling, I want less of it and I want it to be less good.” That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it would have been more impactful if it had been more tightly, efficiently told, like any story. I’m saying if there had been fewer false finishes, the actual finish would have hit harder — especially if it wasn’t a mess. I’m saying limits are real, and they’re valuable. They’re what make things matter.
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Look at Will Ospreay vs. PAC. More length. More false finishes, most of them egregious in the amount of belief they’re asking me to suspend. What I should remember as an incredible display of athleticism is instead rendered as white noise; instead of being carried away in the magic of the moment, the beautiful violent illusion of pro wrestling, I’m left staring at the screen, unmoved, as Opreay kicks out of another poison rana and PAC kicks out of the Hidden Blade. The battle has no discernible consequences until the actual finish, when suddenly it’s time to believe the battle actually does have consequences after all. By then, it’s too late. It was too much — and it was also everywhere.
Wrestling is often spoken of in terms of a variety show, but there was no variety at All Out, or at least very little. Most of the matches were about deeply personal grudges, about hatred and retribution, which would be fine if they didn’t also play out so similarly in the ring. Finisher after finisher, kickout after kickout; the same basic genre of match being repeated over and over again, just at different volumes. Jack Perry kicked out of the Busaiku Knee; Mercedes Mone won despite taking something vaguely resembling a third Katana; Swerve Strickland actually kicked out after the third Dead Eye. It happened over and over, with really the sole exceptions being the tag title match and the Continental title match, because each of those involved four people instead of two. The singles matches, though, uniformly involved “fighting spirit,” or maybe just the power of hatred. Either way, it was too much — from start to finish, from top to bottom. I won’t remember any of it tomorrow. I barely remember it now. It’s creative mush, it says nothing. It’s gibberish.
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It turns out I actually do want less wrestling, because I’ve seen what it looks like when as much wrestling as possible is squeezed in at all times, and I find it tiresome. Everything becomes less valuable the more of it you have. It’s only when the supply is limited that it becomes precious.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
