In twenty-four hours All Elite Wrestling will present ALL OUT 2024 live on pay-per-view from the NOW Arena in Hoffman Estates, just outside of Chicago. It's been one of AEW's biggest nights of the years since 2019, and this one will be no different, but before we get there, tonight we bring COLLISION and RAMPAGE to the NOW for a special three-hour broadcast of the greatest professional wrestling on the planet!
We will see a loaded bout that can only be dubbed “Match of Champions” as it features the AEW World Champion and AEW World Trios Champions facing the AEW Continental, TNT, and AEW World Tag Champions in an all-star eight-man tag! Speaking of the Continental Championship, fans will also see three Continental Contender's Challenges go down with the winners of each moving on to ALL OUT 2024 to face Kazuchika Okada in a Four-Way title bout! We also know Hikaru Shida will take on “The Virtuosa” Deonna Purrazzo just 24 hours before her TBS Championship fight against Mercedes Moné, and so much more on tap for your Friday night festivities!
It all begins at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TNT, immediately followed by the COUNTDOWN TO ALL OUT 2024 special, and you can check here (https://www.allelitewrestling.com/aew-how-to-watch) for viewing options outside the United States. No matter where you're located, fans can always visit the official AEW YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@AEW/featured) to catch highlights from DYNAMITE, COLLISION, and RAMPAGE, as well as HEY!(EW), to get prepared for tonight's fights! Then it's all about the ALL OUT 2024 (https://www.allelitewrestling.com/aewonppv) pay-per-view extravaganza tomorrow also hailing from the NOW Arena!
MATCH OF CHAMPIONS...
AEW World Champion Bryan Danielson and AEW World Trios Champions Claudio Castagnoli, “The Bastard” PAC, & Wheeler Yuta vs.
The Elite (AEW Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada, TNT Champion Jack Perry, & AEW World Tag Team Champions The Young Bucks)
What a way to wrap up that wild Trios match on DYNAMITE, chaos reigning everywhere, and Claudio Castagnoli challenging The Young Bucks to step up and defend their AEW World Tag Team Titles tomorrow night at ALL OUT 2024. Thankfully the decision was not left in their hands and AEW CEO Tony Khan made the match between The EVPS and The BCC official for Saturday, but that's not all that was set in stone for this weekend!
Tonight during COLLISION fans will bear witness to one of the most star-studded spectacles we've seen to date as eight of AEW's champions clash in one eight-man tag team affair! On one side it will be the whole of The Elite, AEW Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada, TNT Champion Jack Perry, and AEW World Tag Champions The Young Bucks, and on the other it will be AEW World Trios Champions Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta, and PAC uniting with AEW World Champion Bryan Danielson.
This is a giant preview of what's to come on Saturday night with the participants in the AEW World Championship match and World Tag Team Championship match all involved, so the question is which quartet will parlay this bout into victory in their respective ALL OUT 2024 bouts?
CONTINENTAL CONTENDER'S CHALLENGE...
ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe vs. “The Murderhawk Monster” Lance Archer
Speaking of The Elite, one member of that unit will have to wait through three separate matches to see what his fate will be come ALL OUT 2024. Continental Champion Kazuchika Okada knows he will be defending his title against three other men come Saturday night, but the identity of just who those three opponents will be determined over the course of the night between three different singles matches. One of those matches going down tonight pits two of the wildest, most unpredictable athletes against one another in their first-ever singles match when ROH World Champion Mark Briscoe faces “The Murderhawk Monster” Lance Archer!
These two have met in tag and trios competition before in Ring of Honor, but never before in a one-on-one match, but that will change tonight with very high stakes involved! These are two wild men, as likely to start their fight before they even get onto the AEW stage as they are to wait for the bell to ring, and have no qualms about indulging in a little extra violence to get their victories, especially if it means getting one step closer to a title shot.
Mark, though part of the original Continental Classic, did not have the greatest tournament success and thus was nowhere near contending for the title at the end, nor has he since it concluded at WORLDS END 2023. Lance Archer has never been near the Continental Championship, but he's got plenty of experience where it comes to Okada, and would love nothing more than to be the one knocking him off the top of the mountain as Continental Champion. First things first though, for either man to get near “The Rainmaker” and the Continental Championship, they've got to make it past this match tonight!
CONTINENTAL CONTENDER'S CHALLENGE...
“Bad Apple” Bryan Keith vs. “Freshly Squeezed” Orange Cassidy
In the second of these Continental Contender's Challenges, we've got a rematch nine months in the making that has a four-year old grudge motivating it. On the December 16th edition of COLLISION, then-International Champion Orange Cassidy turned away the challenge of “Bounty Hunter” Bryan Keith, a match that really kicked off the AEW career for Keith, led to him becoming a member of the roster a few months later, and unfortunately brought him under the learning tree of Chris Jericho.
Now rewind back to the summer of 2020 and we will find that same Chris Jericho engaged in an heated rivalry with one Orange Cassidy. During the course of that rivalry, Jericho and his Inner Circle crew were engulfed in a torrential downpour of orange juice that ruined a jacket Jericho claimed was worth $7,000.
On the August 12, 2020 edition of DYNAMITE the two engaged in a match in which, if Cassidy was victorious, he would no longer be indebted to Jericho for that $7K. Despite the interference of The Inner Circle, Cassidy pulled out the biggest win of his career to that point, pinning the former AEW World Champion, and washing away that debt Jericho arbitrarily decided he was owed by OC. Yet here we are four years and one day removed from their ALL OUT 2020 Mimosa Mayhem match that, theoretically, squashed that beef, and Chris Jericho is sending Bryan Keith into battle against Orange Cassidy with that $7,000 debt dug up once again.
It's not the first time Jericho has brought it up in the four years since Cassidy pinned him in that Obligation Match on 8/12/20, so perhaps “Freshly Squeezed” is just stating he'll pay up if Keith beats him simply to stop Chris' intermittent whining about the money. Yet it's that $7,000 that makes this such a fascinating situation because Jericho, as Bryan Keith's supposed mentor, should be there to root his branch on towards challenging for the Continental Championship but Jericho has expressed more concern about recovering a debt he himself agreed to wipe away four years ago. It goes to show once again that Jericho's priorities are Chris Jericho, but his branches certainly can't see the forest for the Learning Tree.
CONTINENTAL CONTENDER'S CHALLENGE...
“The Alpha” Konosuke Takeshita vs. The Beast Mortos
To steal the phrase from the legendary Jim Ross, this is going to be a slobberknocker! Konosuke Takeshita has looked better than ever since returning to AEW following competition in his first G1 Climax Tournament for New Japan Pro Wrestling. Last Friday night on RAMPAGE “The Alpha” competed in his first match back in All Elite Wrestling, and managed to take home the victory in Four-Way competition against Komander, Lio Rush, and the man he'll be facing tonight in singles competition, the fearsome Beast Mortos!
The Beast Mortos has been in almost constant competition since July 26th, competing on both RAMPAGE and at ROH's DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR 2024 pay-per-view event that night, and spending time fighting on every bit of AEW programming, as well as ROH ON HONOR CLUB, in the 40 days since. He's been in singles matches, four-ways, trios bouts, even challenged Mark Briscoe for the ROH World Championship, and win or lose The Beast Mortos has demonstrated himself to be a fierce competitor.
Given the physical gifts both Takeshita and The Beast Mortos bring to the table, this is likely to be a war of attrition where the winner is the competitor capable of absorbing the most punishment without crumbling to pieces!
ONE-ON-ONE...
Hikaru Shida vs. “The Virtuosa” Deonna Purrazzo
Hikaru Shida earned herself a TBS Championship rematch with Mercedes Moné by virtue of her victory over Thunder Rosa, Serena Deeb, and Queen Aminata during last week's COLLISION. Their first bout was about the championship obviously, yet also about securing a spot at Wembley Stadium for ALL IN: LONDON 2024. This time around it's still about the TBS Title, but it's also about vengeance after the way their first match was stolen from the 3-Time AEW Women's World Champion, yet before she gets to ALL OUT 2024, Shida has chosen to take on another rematch, this one from the 2024 Owen Hart Foundation Women's Tournament.
On the June 29th edition of COLLISION, in the Quarterfinal Round of The Owen, Hikaru Shida dropped Deonna Purrazzo with her signature Katana maneuver to advance in the tourney, but was assaulted after the fact by “The Virtuosa”. The timely arrival of Thunder Rosa prevented the assault from progressing much farther, especially considering moments prior to Rosa's appearance Deonna Purrazzo had picked up Shida's Kendo Stick, but with her focus on the rest of The Owen at that moment, Shida never got an opportunity to even the score for Deonna's brazen assault. That changes tonight when, just 24 hours before her TBS Championship bout, Hikaru Shida faces “The Virtuosa” one-on-one!
Will this be a match that allows Shida to build further momentum for ALL OUT 2024 tomorrow, or will it be Purrazzo picking up where she left off back in June and making Shida regret her choice to take this fight on one day before a title bout? FACE-TO-FACE...
We know that Kris Statlander will fight CMLL World Women's Champion Willow Nightingale on Saturday night at ALL OUT 2024, and we know that as a result of winning their ALL IN: LONDON 2024 Mixed Tag during ZERO HOUR, the defending champion has chosen a Chicago Street Fight as the stipulation for their battle. It's a sad twist of fate for a friendship that once seemed so strong, whose strength seemed to be in their mutual support of each other's successes, but that was before Stokely Hathaway got into the mix and spoke poison into Statlander's ear.
Instead we are on the eve of a Street Fight that, based on previous such bouts that have involved these two women, will be quite the violent affair, and tonight on COLLISION they will be brought together one last time for a face-to-face interview.
Will decorum be the rule of the day for this situation, or will it descend into a preview of Saturday's Street Fight?
Tonight's three-plus hour presentation gets started at 8pm ET/7pm CT on TNT, followed immediately by the COUNTDOWN TO ALL OUT 2024, and if you're located outside the United States, check here for your viewing options. Before the nights begins, be sure to drop by the official AEW YouTube channel to catch highlights from DYNAMITE, COLLISION, and RAMPAGE, as well as HEY!(EW), TIMELINE, CLOSE UP, and more, to get ready for tonight's event! Then tomorrow it's pay-per-view time with ALL OUT 2024 featuring Swerve versus Hangman in the first-ever Lights Out Steel Cage match and AEW World Champion Bryan Danielson defending against TNT Champion Jack Perry!
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