AEW All In Texas 2025 Ended A Bad PPV With A Great Main Event

Forbes

5 days ago

AEW All In 2025
AEW All In Texas came, almost overstayed its welcome, and went in the span of a six-hour pay-per-view showcase. This was an eight-hour show for those who watched beginning with Zero Hour.
All In Texas was a slog of long matches that seemed designed to ensure the show remained on the air during WWE Saturday Night's Main Event, the event WWE aired to counterprogram All In. AEW actually moved to an earlier timeslot because of SNME, only for WWE to add NXT's Great American Bash head-to-head with All In.
If AEW All In only kept the final three hours of the show, it would have been a lowkey masterpiece. Instead, a half-empty Globe Life Field sat through a series of slow-paced wrestling matches before getting to a masterful ending.
One that just barely made it worthwhile.
It wasn't even 4:00 pm PST by the time AEW started its triple main event. Before then, the entire show's momentum was carried by the Young Bucks vs. Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay. This was a much-needed pallet cleanser after a heartbreaking moment where Adam Cole tearfully relinquished his TNT Championship. After suffering an undisclosed injury, Cole poignantly admitted retirement was on the table. The announcement soured the mood for what was a bittersweet moment when Dustin Rhodes became AEW's second three-belt champion. Kazuchika Okada went on to join Rhodes and Mercedes Mone in that category later on that night.
Mercedes Mone and Toni Storm effortlessly set a main-event tone during a heated matchup between two main eventers that could have gone either way. Storm vs. Mone was arguably the best match of the night. So much so, Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada—who went on to win the first AEW United Championship—struggled to follow it. Omega vs Okada has become a brand unto itself. The fervor is mostly online to a niche audience, and mostly because of Dave Meltzer's overpraise through his imaginary star-rating system.
The latest installment of a 41-year-old Kenny Omega and a 37-year-old Kazuchika Okada was a decent pay-per-view match. Still, it gave the same vibes of AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, an overhyped WrestleMania 34 match between two aging legends that had no chance living up to its unreasonable expectations.
AEW's main event was a true high-stakes world title match. Hangman Adam Page vs. Jon Moxley delivered a satisfying finish to a show that aggressively tested the patience of its paying customers.
The final hour of AEW All In was its most important. The vast majority of matches at All In were disappointing and overlong. But when it counted—when it came to the matches people paid to see—AEW delivered. All's well that ends well. Hangman Adam Page's big win was a good end to a bad pay-per-view. For AEW, hopefully it creates the positive momentum the promotion needs after years of poor perception.