McGuire’s Mondays: AEW’s All Out spotlights a wrestling world that sure is a lot – a lot of a lot

By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer

AEW’s All Out happened over the weekend, bringing an end to a merciless run of pro wrestling pay-per-views (or Premium Live Events) for all of us to digest. In the last two weeks, we’ve had five Special Shows from three different companies – AEW’s All out and All In; WWE’s Bash In Berlin; NXT’s No Mercy and TNA’s Emergence. And if you want to throw a sixth show in there, you could probably cite New Japan’s Capital Collision and not necessarily be wrong, either (depending on how much stock you put into NJPW’s American arm these days).

It sure was a lot. A lot of a lot. It’s so much that it made me wonder if AEW felt an added pressure to deliver moments that would rise above its peers during Saturday’s event. Maybe so. Maybe no. Either way, All Out gave the wrestling world two things to talk about heading into the first NFL Sunday of the season: 1) Jon Moxley trying to suffocate Bryan Danielson to death with the help of a plastic bag. And 2) Hangman Page vs. Swerve Strickland. All of it. The staple gun. The cinder block. The chair shot to the head. The needle (and the damage done). All of it.

And, for the first time in my pro wrestling viewing life, all of it gave me pause.

Now, first, let’s get the potential of hypocrisy out of the way. I loved ECW. Couldn’t get enough of it. The further that company went, the further I followed it. I was a teenage boy that found pro wrestling that looked like it was produced in a janitor’s closet at 3:30 a.m. on a Friday night. It felt fresh, rebellious, interesting – a departure from the milquetoast of WWE and the incoherence of WCW (not that ECW wasn’t incoherent, but there’s charming incoherence and there’s shit show incoherence, and WCW was more often the latter). ECW had fire and barbed wire and blood. I fell in love with it, found a way to get my hands on a VHS copy of the 1995 IWA Kawasaki Dream show and the rest was history.

Since then, that sort of insatiability hasn’t been challenged much. I’ve attended GCW shows without blinking an eye. The Dark Side Of The Ring episode on XPW is still one of my favorites. I only recently brushed the dust off my copy of the Barbed Wire City documentary that, as it turns out, was one of the first wrestling documentaries to dive into the ugly side of ECW’s complicated history. Ultra violence in pro wrestling doesn’t really bother me as much as it might some other people.

Or, well, does it?

I don’t know, man. The plastic bag angle from Saturday wasn’t nearly as affecting to me because we all know it’s a work and it’s safe, but the visual itself will never not be jarring, no matter who it is and no matter what context in which it is shown. Then, as for the Hangman/Swerve stuff … how can you not objectively look at some of that and say it’s not gratuitous? Did we actually have to use a needle? And on a different night, did someone actually have to pour someone else’s blood down their throat?

Maybe I’m just old now. Or a prude. Or both. Or maybe it’s this: I was thankful I watched those All Out moments unfold alone because it wasn’t long ago when my almost-three-month-old son was watching an episode of Dynamite with me and Mariah May turned on Toni Storm. His mother was in the room as this happened and she looked over to see what was on the screen – which was Toni Storm bleeding from the head and Mariah May holding the bloody heel of a shoe. “Oh, come on,” she said. “He shouldn’t be watching that.” She then promptly turned him away from the television screen. I laughed it off.

But the moment stuck with me. Surprisingly, actually. It stuck with me a bit. And now, I’d be lying if I said the potential of ultra violence happening in any pro wrestling company doesn’t turn me off slightly. Yes, I know. As so many have said, this isn’t ballet. And I certainly am not interested in turning on the TV to find a garbage man or a pig farmer head to the ring again. But there were a few moments during All Out that made me have to wrestle with this question: When is enough, enough?

The Swerve/Hangman build was fantastic. And I’m all about blood feuds in pro wrestling because anything else begs the question of why we’re even investing in this stuff in the first place. The program has featured logic, hatred, violence, realism … all of the things turned to 11. So, if we’re following that train of thought, we must accept that having a good, old-fashioned wrestling match would be a brutal letdown. In many ways, they are having the in-ring feud that CM Punk and Drew McIntyre want us to believe they want to be having in WWE. Page and Swerve, because of how far they have been willing to go, are simply more believable.

But is it worth it? That’s the question I can’t figure out anymore. It’s also one that makes me wonder about a wider view of AEW as a company. It’s almost like AEW dares its fans to not like AEW sometimes. We can either celebrate or mock the sickos (because that’s become a thing now) but are these exercises in excess an attempt to see how far AEW’s fan base will ride with the company? Because in today’s climate – and especially in the AEW universe – I could see a lot of what I’m trying to say in this very column being mocked. “Oh, so now we’ve found the line for you, Colin,” is the hypothetical response. “Well, fine. We don’t need you anyway. You just don’t get it. Now, someone go find Darby and make sure he’s OK with stabbing himself in the stomach with a pocketknife during the next segment.”

I just don’t understand why we have to even find where the line is in the first place. We can preface so much of what pro wrestling is by saying, “I know this match might not have been for everybody, but … ” and that’s all well and good for a while. But, damn. Does AEW always have to work in extremes like this as often as it does to set itself apart from its competition? In five years, AEW has used the phrase “Lights Out” more than a summer camp counselor. I commend the wrestlers – both men and women – for being willing to go through a lot of this stuff, and I also recognize that this is probably the safest time in the history of the medium that any of this could happen. But hell. Will Ospreay vs. Pac was pretty great, wasn’t it?

And nary an inch of barbed wire was found during that match, from what I could tell.

Maybe it’s just my own existential crises and therefore my own problem, and I recognize that. I also believe that I can’t be the only wrestling fan in the world who looks at some of the stuff from All Out and think … “Eh, I don’t know.” It’s made for an alienating culture, one where, no pun intended, you’re either all in or all out with this kind of stuff. Company-wise. Style-wise. Whatever the case may be. This is just where we live now. But in a world like that, where every match, every promo, every minute of a pro wrestling product is dissected, reviled, adored, over-thought, celebrated and scolded, I came away from Saturday night thinking one thing above all else: It sure was a lot. A lot of a lot.

And for this viewer, at least, I’m not so sure that’s a good thing anymore.