The 2021 All Out was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by All Elite Wrestling (AEW). It was the third annual All Out and took place during Labor Day weekend on September 5, 2021, at the Now Arena in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the first All Out event to be held on a Sunday. It was also AEW's first pay-per-view held outside of Daily's Place in Jacksonville, Florida since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The event aired through traditional PPV providers, as well as on B/R Live in North America and FITE TV internationally.
Ten matches were contested at the event, including one on the Buy In pre-show. In the main event, Kenny Omega defeated Christian Cage to retain the AEW World Championship. In other prominent matches, CM Punk defeated Darby Allin (which was also Punk's AEW debut match and Punk's first professional wrestling match in seven years); Chris Jericho defeated MJF in a career threatening match; Lucha Brothers (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fénix) defeated The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) in a steel cage match to win the AEW World Tag Team Championship; Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. defeated Kris Statlander to retain the AEW Women's World Championship; and Miro defeated Eddie Kingston to retain the AEW TNT Championship in the opening bout. The event also saw the AEW debuts of Minoru Suzuki, Adam Cole, Ruby Soho (who won the women's Casino Battle Royale), and Bryan Danielson.
Tickets for All Out sold out within a day, and the event was attended by over 10,000 people. It also received over 200,000 pay-per-view buys, making it the most bought non-WWE professional wrestling PPV event since 1999.
All Out received critical acclaim, particularly for the cage match and the newsworthy surprise debuts, and was also highly rated by fans. Since its initial airing, All Out has been hailed as one of the greatest wrestling pay-per-views of all time.
Production
Background All Out is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event held annually during Labor Day weekend by All Elite Wrestling (AEW) since 2019. It is one of AEW's "Big Four" PPVs, which also includes Double or Nothing, Full Gear, and Revolution, their four biggest domestic shows produced quarterly. Announced on May 31, 2021, the third All Out event was scheduled to be held on September 5 in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, returning the event to the Now Arena (formerly Sears Centre Arena), which is where the inaugural All Out was held. It was AEW's first PPV held outside of Daily's Place and the adjacent TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, following AEW's resumption of live touring in July 2021. Presale tickets were available July 8 before they went on sale on July 9 to the general public and quickly sold out.
Following the September 3 episode of Friday Night Rampage, AEW's second weekly TV show that premiered in August, TNT aired a half-hour television special called Countdown to All Out which averaged 361,000 viewers. "Champion Sound" by Cypress Hill was the official theme song for the event.
Storylines All Out featured professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing feuds and storylines. Storylines were produced on AEW's weekly television programs, Wednesday Night Dynamite and Friday Night Rampage, the supplementary online streaming shows, Dark and Elevation, and The Young Bucks' YouTube series Being The Elite.
Kenny Omega has held the AEW World Championship since December 2, 2020, when he captured the title from Jon Moxley at Winter Is Coming. In March 2021, when Christian Cage was about to make his first Dynamite appearance, Omega and his manager Don Callis interrupted the segment, eventually leading to a confrontation between Omega and Christian. After Christian racked up eight wins, he was anointed in August 2021 as the number one contender for the AEW World Championship, The match was subsequently scheduled for All Out. Before the event, Christian defeated Omega to win the Impact World Championship on the debut episode of Rampage on August 13, which was Omega's first singles loss since the 2019 Full Gear event.
Beginning in July 2021, rumors began circulating that former WWE wrestler CM Punk, who had been retired from professional wrestling since 2014, had signed with AEW. At Fight for the Fallen on July 28, Darby Allin announced that he wanted to face the "best in the world", a nickname Punk had used during his time in WWE. At The First Dance on August 20, Punk made his highly anticipated debut for AEW and challenged Allin to a match at All Out.
In September 2020, Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) started a storyline with Chris Jericho on whether MJF could join Jericho's faction, The Inner Circle. At the Full Gear event on November 7, 2020, MJF defeated Jericho, thus per the match stipulation, he joined Jericho's faction. On the March 10, 2021 Dynamite, as Jericho was about to eject MJF from the faction for plotting against him, MJF revealed that he had secretly built his own faction instead: The Pinnacle, which attacked and laid out The Inner Circle. At Blood and Guts on May 5, The Pinnacle defeated The Inner Circle in a Blood and Guts match when MJF threatened to throw Jericho off a steel cage, leading to The Inner Circle surrendering. Despite this, MJF threw Jericho off the cage. When Jericho pursued a singles match against MJF, the latter in July set Jericho a challenge to whereby MJF would choose Jericho's match-types and opponents in a five-match series, but Jericho could not lose any match if he wanted to face MJF in the fifth match. In the "Labors of Jericho" storyline, Jericho beat Shawn Spears, Nick Gage, Juventud Guerrera, and Wardlow, but lost the final match against MJF on the August 18 Dynamite, where everything "Judas" was banned, which included his signature move, the Judas Effect, which MJF used on Jericho. The following week, Jericho challenged MJF to another match at All Out, stipulating that if Jericho lost, he would never wrestle another match in AEW; MJF accepted.
At the inaugural All Out event in 2019, The Lucha Brothers (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fénix) defeated The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) in a ladder match. On November 7, 2020, at Full Gear, The Young Bucks captured the AEW World Tag Team Championship from FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler). After The Young Bucks conducted several successful title defenses due to illegal interference by their faction, The Elite, it was announced on the August 18, 2021 episode of Dynamite that The Young Bucks would defend the championship at All Out in a Steel Cage match to prevent any outside interference, and their challengers would be determined by an eliminator tournament consisting of four tag teams. The following week, The Lucha Brothers defeated the Varsity Blonds (Brian Pillman Jr. and Griff Garrison) to advance to the tournament finals, which occurred on the August 27 episode of Rampage, where The Lucha Brothers defeated Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) to qualify for the steel cage tag title match.
On May 30, Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. defeated Hikaru Shida at Double or Nothing to win the AEW Women's World Championship. Meanwhile, Kris Statlander returned to television in March 2021 after being out with an anterior cruciate ligament injury since June 2020. Statlander went on a winning streak and eventually became the number one ranked competitor in the women's division; due to this, AEW announced on August 25 that Statlander would challenge Baker for the title at All Out.
Miro defeated Darby Allin for the AEW TNT Championship on the May 12 episode of Dynamite. On the August 25 episode of Dynamite, Miro, as "The Redeemer", challenged Eddie Kingston for being a "sinner". On the August 27 episode of Rampage, after Miro attacked and unmasked Fuego Del Sol, Kingston attacked Miro. A TNT Championship match between the two was scheduled for All Out.
In February 2021, AEW was reported to have established a working relationship with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). On the August 25 episode of Dynamite, Jon Moxley said that he had sent out an open challenge to Japanese wrestlers, but only NJPW wrestler Satoshi Kojima had accepted, therefore he and Kojima would wrestle at All Out.
On the August 11 episode of Dynamite, when Q. T. Marshall and his allies attacked the son of commentator Tony Schiavone, fellow commentator Paul Wight came to the aid of the Schiavones. The following week, Wight announced he would face Marshall at All Out, marking his first match in AEW after having signed with the company as a commentator in February.
On September 2, a 10-man tag team match pitting Best Friends (Orange Cassidy, Chuck Taylor, and Wheeler Yuta) and Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) against the Hardy Family Office (Matt Hardy, Private Party (Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen), and The Hybrid 2 (Angélico and Jack Evans)) was announced for the Buy-In pre-show.
Canceled match On the August 11 episode of Dynamite, a match between Andrade El Idolo and Pac was scheduled for All Out. On September 1, it was announced that the match would instead take place on a future episode of Rampage due to Pac having travel issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic in England.
Event The Buy In On the 'Buy-In' pre-show, Best Friends (Chuck Taylor, Orange Cassidy and Wheeler Yuta) and Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) faced the Hardy Family Office (Matt Hardy, Isiah Kassidy, Marq Quen, Angélico and Jack Evans). Luchasaurus performed the Tail Whip on Angélico, after-which Jungle Boy locked Angélico in the Snare Trap hold for the submission victory at 9 minutes and 25 seconds. Post-match, The Butcher made his AEW return by attacking Cassidy, reuniting with The Blade, And joining the Hardy Family Office. Jurassic Express, Varsity Blonds, Dante Martin, and some Dark Order members saved Cassidy from a haircut by The Hardy Family Office.
Preliminary matches The commentators for the show were Excalibur, Jim Ross, and Tony Schiavone. The event's ring announcer was Justin Roberts, while the interviewer was Alex Marvez.
In the opening match of the pay-per-view, Miro defended the AEW TNT Championship against Eddie Kingston. When Miro performed a German suplex on Kingston, the latter pulled a turnbuckle pad off. Kingston landed a DDT, but the referee was temporarily distracted by the turnbuckle pad, leading to Miro kicking out of the pin attempt. The referee stopped Kingston from sending Miro into the exposed turnbuckle. With the referee's vision obscured, Miro hit a low blow on Kingston. Miro followed with a roundhouse kick and a Machka Kick (bicycle kick to the head), pinning Kingston at 13 minutes and 25 seconds to win and retain the championship.
Next, Jon Moxley faced NJPW's Satoshi Kojima. Moxley avoided Kojima's lariat and twice performed the Paradigm Shift for the pinfall victory at 12 minutes and 10 seconds. Following the match, Moxley was confronted by NJPW wrestler Minoru Suzuki in Suzuki's unannounced AEW debut. They traded strikes before Suzuki eventually landed a Gotch-style Piledriver to put Moxley down.
The third match saw Britt Baker (accompanied by Jamie Hayter and Rebel) defending the AEW Women's World Championship against Kris Statlander (accompanied by Orange Cassidy). Baker avoided Statlander's Area 451 splash and escaped the Spider Crab submission hold. Statlander kicked out of two pins, one after Baker landed a Pittsburgh Sunrise, and one after Baker landed a curb stomp. Baker applied the Lockjaw hold for the submission victory and successful title defense at 11 minutes and 25 seconds.
In an interview, Andrade El Idolo hyped his future match against PAC.