AEW All Out 2021: 3 things that went right for the promotion

While wrestling, like anything else, often boils down to an individual’s taste, many fans are already declaring All Elite Wrestling’s All Out pay-per-view as the best supercard of the year and perhaps one of the best PPVs of all time.

To be clear, the promotion still has glaring issues that shouldn’t be ignored because of the show’s quality. After all, no promotion is perfect, and that even includes AEW. However, mentioning them here in passing would only serve to trivialize how pronounced they are. So, let’s focus on the positives here.

On this show, there were a lot of them, so for the purposes of brevity, let’s take a look at three things the promotion got right.

These are the three things AEW got right at All Out 2021.

Ruby Soho wins the Casino Battle Royal

Anyone still defending the idea that the AEW women’s division’s lack of depth is why it isn’t properly featured on television and on PPV officially ran out of the last bit of an already flimsy, brittle rope with this Casino Battle Royal.

The match showcased that, in fact, the promotion has more than enough quality talent and should spotlight more of them on Dynamite. This is doubly true now that Ruby Soho has debuted and won.

The former Ruby Riott was the “surprise” “Joker” entrant (everyone in the building expected it to be her) and received a reaction indicative of AEW having a shiny new women’s star on their hands. If her mere presence in the match didn’t cement that, then her climactic back and forth with Thunder Rosa — arguably the top babyface in the women’s division right now — certainly did.

Now that Soho has an AEW Women’s World Championship match in her back pocket, it will be interesting to see if she receives the title shot on TV or at Full Gear in November.

The Lucha Bros. win the AEW World Tag Team Championships

Honestly, this entry is mostly here as a means to gush over what was easily the best tag team match of 2021, possibly one of the best tag matches of all time.

Going into this one, most fans thought the Young Bucks vs. Lucha Bros. cage match had a chance to earn Match of the Night honors, but these teams found a way to exceed those expectations. The end result — Penta El Zero M and Rey Fenix winning the AEW World Tag Team Championships — played a big role in that.

Sure, the cage stipulation and amazing entrance pretty much signaled that the Lucha Bros. would go over here, but seeing them do so as the capper of an amazing match made the title change that much more gratifying.

The finish to Eddie Kingston vs. Miro

Well, you can’t say that Miro didn’t give Eddie Kingston exactly what Kingston asked for. The main card for All Out opened the festivities with “God’s Favorite Champion” and “The Mad King” fighting over the TNT Championship.

Kingston — the babyface — was true to his word, as he focused most of his offense on weakening the champion’s neck, proving to be the toughest test for “The Redeemer” thus far; he even managed to survive being locked in the Game Over camel clutch.

Ultimately, it took Miro kicking Kingston low before connecting with another kick to the face to retain his title. That combined with Kingston getting a visual pinfall probably means that a rematch could happen down the line. In the short term, both of those things keep the title on Miro while protecting Kingston in defeat.