AEW All Out: Jon Moxley pulling out has a silver lining

While it is terribly unfortunate for Jon Moxley to suffer such a serious injury and pull out of All Out as a result, AEW can turn lemons into lemonades.

We learned earlier this week that Jon Moxley will be forced to pull out of AEW’s All Out Pay-Per-View this Saturday in light of a serious injury. That injury being an MRSA infection, as he revealed in a tweet. What makes this so scary is that Moxley previously had a brush with MRSA just a couple years back and the injury almost killed him. His last MRSA injury kept him off of the shelf for nearly a year. Not only is this his second case of MRSA, the same infection returned to the same elbow.

All of us at Daily DDT can only wish Jon Moxley the speediest and most importantly, safest of recoveries. Meanwhile, in looking towards the future, the show must go on. What AEW can do going forward is do what professional wrestling has always been known to do in light of serious injuries like this: turn lemons into lemonade.

This isn’t the first time that a professional wrestling angle, feud, or match has been cancelled or postponed thanks to a serious, career/life threatening injury. There are several examples we can pull from wrestling’s past.

Triple H turned a career threatening quad injury into a WrestleMania comeback story. Owen Hart turned Stone Cold’s broken neck into an Owen 3:16 t-shirt. Billy Kidman used a fatal, botched Shooting Star Press onto Chavo Guerrero’s face as a springboard for both a heel turn and a feud with Paul London.

The list goes on and the same can be done to add fuel to the already enticing Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley feud.

As seen in the latest episode of Being the Elite, Kenny Omega intensified their rivalry by basically goading not only Moxley for the “boo boo on [his] elbow,” but his post-WWE career thus far. Particularly, in how Moxley failed to win the G1 Climax in NJPW, when the former IWGP Heavyweight Champion did so on his “first try.”

It almost appears as though a double turn has taken place with Omega becoming a heel while Moxley is bound for a babyface comeback; although both men worked more so as tweener characters up until this point. But only time will tell at this point just how far AEW goes with both man’s heel/face dynamic. But the fact that AEW found a way to incorporate this injury into their storyline is commendable in itself, and of course necessary.

As history has proven, beautiful moments take place in wrestling when art imitates life. By using a real life tragedy in Moxley’s injury, AEW could produce some compelling television in the coming months for his feud with Omega.

What Jon Moxley is dealing with now is horrible, but the silver lining here is that it could make his feud with Kenny Omega far more gripping and their eventual match even more satisfying to see. Just imagine the pop Moxley could receive upon his return – whenever that may be – to confront a bashful Omega on his words. It’s the best that AEW can do to make up for a terrible situation.

Until then, however, let’s enjoy and anticipate what Kenny Omega can do in the ring with PAC this Saturday at All Out.