AEW All In is a big deal... I hope AEW realizes that
The best time for All In's card to start coming together was two months ago, the next best time is now.
Last night (July 26, 2023) was a perfectly fine episode of Dynamite. A good episode of Dynamite even. Things happened: heel turns, new feuds, new twists in existing stories, but AEW is about to run the biggest non-WWE show in the history of pro wrestling. They are 31 days away. Now, to be fair, they have 4 Dynamites and 4 Collisions left and that's a lot of time to hype, especially when there is no hard brand split (not that there's one in WWE either), plus Rampage, plus social media, but WWE would have a WrestleMania main event firmly in place by now - they often start hyping their April WrestleMania main event in January. And All In is a WrestleMania caliber event, bigger than even some WrestleManias.
At least I think it is? It sure doesn’t seem that way to AEW right now. It would be nice if they would even let us know how we're going to watch the thing! One week after Blood & Guts, they didn't even have The Elite on the show in any capacity after their highest rated show in quite some time that saw them standing tall. I personally don't even really care that much about The Elite, but the promotion is named after them!
You don't have to have matches down on paper, but they need to be talking about this show more. Excalibur at least acknowledged it outside of "tickets available," but when they announced this show, they talked about how it ties into 100 years of Wembley and 100 years of Warner Bros. Do stuff with that! Make video packages, have the wrestlers talking about how important this show is going to be to AEW and how excited they are to be there. This just feels like "yeah we're doing a PPV at Wembley Stadium in a couple weeks," but like... YOU'RE DOING A PPV AT WEMBLEY STADIUM IN A COUPLE WEEKS! That's a big deal! Be proud! Yell about it from the rooftops! I know the tickets are sold, but this should be a quarter of a million buys, minimum if it is in fact a PPV. And if it is a PPV (MAX is a disaster right now and I wouldn’t rely on it to run a live episode of Arli$$), you better be selling me on a package deal with All Out. While I'm a lunatic and will excitedly pay $100 in a week for two AEW PPVs, that's a big ask from the average person.
I know AEW loves pushing to the next appointment and I suspect (hope) Dynamite 200 will have me eating my words next week with the card coming together. But this is my issue with AEW: they suck at creating the moment. They put on tremendous shows, aside from July 1, every Collision episode has been better than most WWE PPVs this year. And I know they love surprises, they love playing things close to the vest, but this is something very special. This isn't Full Gear, Double or Nothing, Revolution, or All Out: this is 80,000 people. Most of these wrestlers have maxed out at 20,000 at Grand Slam and we're talking four times the amount of people. In a hot market they've never been to that is obviously very excited about their arrival.
This is the culmination of four years of something that hasn't been possible since WCW died, and even then, not something WCW themselves could've pulled off after 1999. We didn't even think it was possible five years ago for anyone besides WWE to do 10,000 people for any show at any level of hype regardless of the card or wrestlers appearing. It's easy to take it for granted that AEW is pulling in 4,500-9,000 people on a weekly basis, but that's more than 95% of any Impact or ROH shows in the last 20 years. AEW needs to show us that and not just rest on the fact that the tickets are already sold.
This ain’t the time to be the humble #2, distinguished competition. It’s time to show the wrestling world that AEW is Where the Big Boys Play.