AEW All Out 2026: 3 Things We Hated & 3 Things We Loved

Welcome to Wrestling Inc.'s review of AEW All Out 2026, the show that saw Will Ospreay make his first successful defense of the AEW World Championship! We have some thoughts about that here at WINC, as well as thoughts about many other things, from the world trios title match to Persephone's TBS title open challenge to the unfortunate injury suffered by Steven Borden, and more!

If you missed the show, you can catch up on everything that went down in Chicago on Saturday night by checking out our AEW All Out 2026 results page, especially if you want to read about things like the triple threat tag title ladder match, which we won't get into in this column. This column is strictly for the matches and segments that stood out to us the most, either from a positive or a negative perspective. That having been said, without further ado, here are three things we hated and three things we loved about AEW All Out 2026!

On a show with just one surprise debut, I didn't love that a big name like Samoa Joe didn't make his return on the main card of All Out, and if I'm remembering correctly, I don't even think commentary mentioned him at all during the show. Thankfully, Joe was out due to his filming schedule for "Twisted Metal," and not due to some devastating injury, but he's a former AEW World Champion, and The Opps need all the help they can get, so him returning at the very beginning of the Tailgate Brawl was pretty anticlimactic.

Sure, he just returned to answer "Jungle" Jack Perry's challenge, and I'm the last person to advocate for more matches to be added to the usually packed AEW pay-per-view cards, but I think this should have been slotted in there somewhere, or maybe this should have been saved for "AEW Dynamite" on Wednesday. We know that sometimes post-PPV episodes of the Wednesday show aren't the strongest, due to injuries and such, so having Perry take on Katsuyori Shibata then, with Joe returning, would have been more effective.

I'm really glad Joe is back, and I'm probably asking for too much after we got the huge debuts of the New Level just last month, but with the news of the former Ilja Dragunov's signing to AEW, as well as names like Kairi out there, I was expecting at least one more big surprise tonight. I'm glad Dani Luna is officially "All Elite," and I'm looking forward to seeing more of her, but I can't say I'm familiar enough with her to have been all that excited about her debut.

While it was obvious Joe was coming back for Perry, putting him on the main card, possibly to a bigger pop from the Chicago-area crowd when more fans would have been seated, might have been nice, especially toward the beginning of the main show, when things were slower. I'm glad he's back, I just think he deserved a bit more, and hopefully, there's something even better in store for him now that, in storyline, Perry's brought him back.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Dani Luna is now in AEW!

I've liked Luna's work in the ring for quite some time now after watching her do her thing in TNA Wrestling during her time there earlier this year, so I'm happy to see she's landed in another big promotion. Aside from having a lot of Britt Baker being involved from the outside and becoming a little distracting at certain points during her TBS Championship Open Challenge against Persephone, I thought it was a decent first showing for Luna among the AEW fanbase and it was nice to see the women be given some good time on a pay-per-view event. I was especially a fan of the German Suplex that Luna delivered to Persephone off the middle rope, as it made for a fun spot and something a bit different from the usual.

I also thought it was smart to have Baker grab onto Persephone's foot from the outside to hold her in place when Luna looked to drag her back into the ring and for Persephone to follow it up with a Razor's Edge on Luna in the closing moments of the match. While it's not great for Luna to be taking the loss in her first AEW match, it did keep her at least somewhat protected by having interference be the reason for her loss as minor as it might've felt compared to other points in the match. It gives AEW the option to continue the storyline between Luna and Persephone or to have Luna pivot into something new with someone else should they choose that instead. On a pay-per-view event that felt overall pretty middle of the road, this was easily one of a couple things on the show I found to be a highlight.

Written by Olivia Quinlan

All Out started surprisingly slow for me, and I still can't quite put my finger on why. I don't know if it's because the show opened with a championship match that I ended up not liking nearly as much as I thought I would, after a silly Tailgate Brawl tornado tag to end the pre-show, but something about the beginning of the show didn't click. Thankfully, things picked up, as I figured they would, but the slow start threw me off for a bit. There was also a super unfortunate injury that threw things off for everyone, performers and fans alike.

For whatever reason, Andrade El Idolo and Pac's National Championship match wasn't nearly as fast-paced or exciting as I hoped. I figured Andrade was retaining, so maybe another match should have been slotted in its place, with this one happening later on. Maybe the AEW Trios Championships should have kicked off the night, as that match was going to feel huge and be excellent no matter which team walked away as champions.

Then came the scary injury to Steven Borden during the tag team match pitting him and Darby Allin against Kevin Knight and Kyle Fletcher to determine the number one contenders for the AEW World Tag Team Championships. A big injury like that is always something to hate, no matter who it happens to, but it really sucked that it happened to Borden on his first pay-per-view on a big stage. The medical stoppage really put a damper on the evening, at no fault of anyone's, and it certainly didn't help the feeling of the first portion of the show.

The crowd was obviously trying to recover from seeing Borden taken out of the arena on a stretcher after the scary spot, and they were quiet for the beginning of TBS Champion Persephone's open challenge, which was answered by the debuting Dani Luna. The women worked hard to get the crowd into the match, and they were excellent, but in the end, Persephone retained the gold, and debuting a new star only for them to lose always feels pretty lame to me.

After the National Championship match, I had tempered my expectations for the International title bout where Kazuchika Okada defended against Tommaso Ciampa, that also started out slow, but thankfully, Willow Ciampa's double birds to Okada after he picked on the cute little 8-year-old at ringside is quite seriously where the show picked up for me. It was exactly the spot the crowd needed, and the match got super hot after that. AEW almost always pulls through with its pay-per-views, which it thankfully did tonight, but the start of the show had me worried for a bit.

Written by Daisy Ruth

Adam Page and Swerve Strickland shared the ring once more at All Out which inevitably meant a banger was on the way, especially with Bandido and Brody King joining Page and the New Level with Strickland. 

That provided multiple layers to be weaved into the match, chiefly of course the rivalry of Strickland and Page — the sheer violence of it, the actual subtext of them having done some despicable things just in the quest to one-up each other. 

There is all of that for them, but now how that can be interpreted by those on the outside of it, from Kofi and Austin Creed not quite vibing with the way Strickland does things to Brodido's tag team dynamic with the New Level and their own issues with the way Page gets when Strickland is involved. There was Strickland and Page staring at one another throughout the entire contest, getting distracted by one another and doing things specifically to p*** one another off. Until, of course, they eventually locked horns and gave a reminder of what makes their saga so iconic. 

Again, it's important to note while one could probably wax poetic all day about Strickland and Page, they were just a third of the contest. Bandido, King, Creed, and Kofi also killed it. Just pure, unadulterated tag team wrestling. Which, when done right, is always the best type of wrestling. 

There was that snap and zip to each move and particularly towards the closing stretch the result felt like it was on a knife's edge. Creed wound up taking a Buckshot for Strickland and Strickland went on to pin Bandido. 

Everything was done right. It was exciting and it felt like the latest installment of essential lore in a careers-defining rivalry.

Written by Max Everett

Tommaso Ciampa called his shot when he challenged Kazuchika Okada for a match at All Out. He demanded that he receive a title shot and that he got the best version of Okada, "The Rainmaker." Ciampa has wanted this match for nearly a decade and got what he wanted. The match was a slow build, with Okada not wanting to lock in and Ciampa forcing him too. Business finally began to pick up when Okada spotted Ciampa's daughter, Willow, sitting ringside, wearing a birthday hat with a big number eight on it. He taunted Willow and flipped her off. With her mother's permission, Willow hit double birds and called him a b****. Ciampa began to feed off the energy of the crowd and the match hit its next level. He fended off Okada's screwdriver attempt and although he came very close, Okada beat him with the Rainmaker.

This match really could've used a title change, especially on a night when only one title changed hands. Okada is one of my favorite wrestlers, but he isn't doing anything for that International title in his second reign. Ciampa surprised everyone by winning the TNT title his first night in the company and has been on the quest for another ever since. Since his arrival in AEW, Ciampa has looked like the NXT Black and Gold version of himself. He hasn't had a bad match and even pulled a fun match out of Chris Jericho. Ciampa may never get the world title, but he can certainly carry a midcard title and have really great title defenses. The title needs to be elevated beyond what it has been on Okada's shoulder and Ciampa is the man to do that.

Besides, Ciampa had all the momentum in that match once his daughter got involved. She already got a memorable birthday gift, but how much sweeter it would've been to celebrate a title win with her dad? Given the unfortunate injury to Steven Borden, a victory for Ciampa would've been something for the crowd to feel good about — although the spot with Okada and Willow really lifted the vibes of the crowd. All Out didn't have many misses, but this was one.

Written by Samantha Schipman

Will Ospreay looked to one-up his victory at All In over Kenny Omega, capturing the AEW World Championship at long last, with a defense against former mentor, rival, and the only man to defeat him this year: Jon Moxley. 

It was always going to be a different match. Moxley is a different sort of challenger and champion than Omega, but it was also necessary to cement Ospreay as the undisputed champion and fundamentally complete his story arc. This is what will make this match great or not-so-great in one's eyes: the match was very Bloodline Rules-coded, albeit with entirely different wrestling styles that just so happen to please this writer more than others. 

There was an exorbitant match that could only feasibly main event a pay-per-view. There was then a ref bump. There was then a whole bunch of interference from characters adjacent to the story. The Death Riders, both there to ensure Moxley won but also in their own vendetta geared towards Ospreay after he spurned them. On the other hand there is United Empire, in the form of Francesco Akira and Ospreay's own future challenger Andrade El Idolo. Marina Shafir gets involved and that draws Alex Windsor out, in turn joined by Jamie Hayter. 

When the bodies cleared and all was said and done Moxley knew before everyone else did that he was finished. His back was turned to Ospreay, and he himself had hammered it into him: pull the trigger. He laughed at that briefly before getting clocked with the stiffest Hidden Blade, and that was it; the torch had been passed. Another torch — there's a whole lot of torches being passed to Ospreay lately. 

The match itself was excellent in a way that will almost certainly divide opinion. This opinion just sits on one side of that line. But it's hard to imagine being able to say this didn't carry a big fight feel to it at any stage. 

There was some absolutely cool-if-you-know Assassin's Creed cross-over in Ospreay's entrance, an acknowledgment of the "Aerial Assassin" after years of modeling his big match style after that lineage. That brief opening stanza to the main event might actually be its exemplification; it went hard in being what it was. Being what it was might not be enough for someone who doesn't enjoy that sort of thing. As someone who does enjoy that sort of thing, it was brilliant.

Written by Max Everett