This Saturday is shaping up to be a historic day for wrestling as AEW broadcasts All Out and WWE showcases Wrestlepalooza. While the companies have coincided and competed over dates before, including the Wednesday Night War and WWE’s NXT specials running up against AEW offerings, this may well be the combined biggest between the two companies since AEW’s inception in 2019.
All Out and Wrestlepalooza will not actually run against each other, though given the propensity for AEW shows to run long, it’s quite possible there will be some overlap. Nonetheless, each show feels as though it’s making a statement about the respective companies’ identities and what they offer the modern wrestling fan.
Featured Tag Team Matches Tell The Tale
For AEW, the tag team match pitting Cope and Christian Cage against FTR has to be the most hotly anticipated affair. The reunite legendary tag team worked Forbidden Door together, but it’s hard not to read that bout as a dry run to shake off the ring rust of the pairing. By contrast, stepping into the ring with FTR—deep personal friends, heated on-screen rivals, and one of the best in-ring tag teams of their generation—has all the makings of an instant classic.
Meanwhile, in WWE, though John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar has now been announced as the Wrestlepalooza main event, the match with the most buzz is AJ Lee and CM Punk vs. Becky Lynch and Seth Rollins. That interest largely owes to the novelty of seeing Lee in a WWE ring again for the first time in a decade, combined with the other marquee talent and the hot feud at hand.
In AEW’s case, the tag bout is largely a testament to nostalgia and the legends at hand having some creative freedom, as a testament to both Cope and Cage picking AEW over WWE to presumably wind down their careers. What’s more, the match quality is all but guaranteed to be there for the talents involved and their relationships.
For WWE, Punk and Lee represent a past generation of top WWE Superstars, and the match itself is a lowkey dream match. This scenario demonstrates Triple H’s patient booking style as well. There’s every possibility this is the first of multiple mixed tag team encounters between these pairings. What’s more, there’s every possibility both Punk vs. Rollins and Lee vs. Lynch have enough juice to carry all the way to WrestleMania.
Wrestlepalooza Boasts A Quintessential WWE Main Event
Though a vocal portion of the WWE audience would advocate for the mixed tag team match or Cody Rhodes vs. Drew McIntyre main eventing Wrestlepalooza, there is something quintessentially WWE about spotlighting John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar.
Both of these men are defining faces of the Ruthless Aggression Era. Moreover, when they met again in 2012 and in their 2014-2015 issue, it represented how timeless they are WWE main eventers—guys with superhero physiques, their own brands of charisma, and the ability to work the WWE main event style at the highest level.
So it is that putting on Cena-Lesnar last, with all the extra trimmings of Cena’s retirement tour and implications this is the last time these two will share a ring embodies a lot of how WWE develops attractions that feel must-see, especially for casual or lapsed fans.
Women’s Matches Are Representative Of The Respective Divisions
Both AEW and WWE are staging one women’s singles match, each for a title, on the main cards of their respective shows. In WWE, it’s Stephanie Vaquer vs. Iyo Sky for the vacant Women’s World Championship. In AEW, Mercedes Mone defends the TBS Championship against Riho.
On the WWE side of things, the scheduled match feels a lot like a fight for the future as two of the best in-ring talents square off. Sky has been heavily featured all year as her upset title win over Rhea Ripley on the Road to WrestleMania set her up to then successfully defend the Women’s World Championship in a banger at ‘Mania. Meanwhile, Vaquer’s a fresh face who garnered an early springboard promotion from NXT to become a featured player on the main roster. The victor here feels telling who will carry the division forward and ultimately prove the next major rival for Rhea Ripley over the belt—Vaquer is looking like the favorite.
On AEW’s side, Mone has been a largely dominant champion for over a year now, but faces a fresh challenge in Riho, who was the original AEW Women’s World Champion. This pairing represents a clash of AEW generations in a sense, from its earliest days when many considered their women’s division a relative weak point to the present, when Mone has contributed to elevating the TBS Championship to feeling an awful lot like a second top prize for women to go after, bespeaking a deep division with ample stars to chase each belt.
Both of these matches are all but assured to be pretty great. It does feel reflective of WWE’s growth that Vaquer will presumably advance to her first world title here, while it also bespeaks AEW’s steady, sustained push for its top female talents that Mone will likely keep rolling along.
The Macro-Scale Cards Reflect Each Company
The card for AEW All Out is largely reflective of the company. There are ten announced matches as of press time, featuring a range that includes a Tables ‘N’ Tacks Match as well as a Coffin Match, each of which all but guarantee hardcore plunder and blood given the gimmicks and talents involved.
By contrast, at press time Wrestlepalooza has five matches on the docket, sticking to a tighter formula Triple H has grown famous for that allows longer individual match times, the show itself not running to marathon lengths, and leaving plenty of meat on the bone for free TV and to hold off major bouts for other big events down the road. The card composition is also steady with one men’s world title match, one women’s world title match, a tag match, the mixed tag team bout, and a main event showdown between two marquee talents.
Wrestlepalooza Vs. All Out: Which Show Will Be Better?
In an increasingly tribalistic world of wrestling fandom, the question a lot of fans will boil things down is which show as better: Wrestlepalooza or All Out? Perhaps the biggest demonstration of how well each show shapes up to represent its companies is that earnest cases will come from both sides on the companies respective merits.
Fans who burn out on long shows and who privilege star power, not to mention the return of AJ Lee will but assuredly come out in favor of WWE and Wrestlepalooza. On the flip side, fans who just can’t get enough wrestling and applaud four-hour-plus shows—and especially those who like a little blood and guts mixed in—will probably enjoy the heck out of All Out. The coexistence of these shows is a very healthy thing for wrestling on the whole as there’s really something for everyone coming this Saturday.