In Texas, July is less a month and more a state of suffering. The sun doesn’t shine so much as it slow-roasts, hovering over the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex like a malevolent god with a tanning fetish. Here, in the infernal blast-furnace of summer, two things thrive with the desperate intensity of a heatstroke hallucination: frozen margaritas and professional wrestling. And sometimes, when the stars align and your shirt sticks to your back before 9 a.m., you get both.
This week, the margaritas stayed frozen just long enough for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) to roll into town with the subtlety of a monster truck rally in a public library. Their annual mega-event All In has chosen Arlington’s Globe Life Field; a place where home runs and $18 nachos abound as its battleground. That’s right. AEW is here to rival WrestleMania, deep in the heart of Texas and mere spitting distance from where Post Malone apparently eats chicken tenders with the regularity of a man on a mission.
The four-day wrestling bonanza kicked off with Dynamite, AEW’s weekly live show, in a city that already reads like a wrestling Mad Lib: birthplace of the Von Erichs, training ground of Stone Cold Steve Austin, and the place where Mark Cuban once flexed on his orthopedic surgeon by climbing into the ring. Legends, all of them.
The red carpet, yes, they literally rolled it out, was unfurled for Mercedes Moné, the so-called CEO of wrestling, and, as the crowd was repeatedly reminded, the niece of Snoop Dogg. She clinked glasses of champagne with her All In opponent Toni Storm in what began as a mimosa brunch and ended in full-contact brunch brawl. Toasts were exchanged, insults traded, and then, like any brunch in Dallas, someone screamed “Eat shit, bitch!” and all hell broke loose. Grapes of wrath, meet Prosecco punches.
Next up, we were treated to the tag team spectacular of Takeshita and Kyle Fletcher (collectively dubbed “Protoshita”—a name that sounds like an experimental Japanese car or a mild gastrointestinal disorder), battling the improbably paired Bandido and Brody King. One looked like a tactical warlord, the other like he moonlights at a metal-themed Lucha Libre speakeasy. The match was as subtle as a boulder to the teeth. Suplexes were thrown like shade at a Real Housewives reunion, and I’d be remiss not to mention that Kyle Fletcher’s fanbase proudly calls themselves “Fletchlights.” You can’t make this up; and you shouldn’t try. It was genuinely a fight between the meanest metrosexuals on the planet and the best immigrant allies known to man. Full Stop.
The women’s division then took center stage with Megan Bayne, Tay Melo, Thekla, and Queen Aminata engaging in a four-way fight that felt less like a wrestling match and more like the climax of a particularly bloody Tennessee Williams play. This wasn’t some bikini-clad sideshow; this was a Texas-sized bar-room brawl in a squared circle. Faces were kicked. Teeth were tested. Somewhere, a mother clutched her pearls; and then probably body-slammed someone in the parking lot afterward.
There was a moment of reprieve; a Texas Talky-Talk, which, I assure you, is a real thing and not something invented by a rodeo-themed improv troupe. Mark Briscoe (think violent chicken farmer meets survivalist poet) and MJF (who makes Logan Roy look like Paddington Bear) verbally sparred about their upcoming Casino Gauntlet match. MJF, dressed like he’d been styled by the ghost of Patrick Bateman, told Briscoe that his dead brother wished it had been him instead. The crowd gasped, someone fainted into their nachos, and then Briscoe threw fists with all the righteous vengeance of a man defending his family name at a county fair pie contest.
Ricochet and Blake Christian were next, flipping more than a pancake cook-off. I counted no fewer than eleven rotations in the span of sixty seconds. It was ballet if ballet had theme music by Slipknot and ended with someone face-first in a folding chair.
Samoa Joe; perhaps the only man who can beat you up and then read you a bedtime story with equal conviction; demolished young Wheeler Yuta, who looks like if Fall Out Boy’s fanbase tried to form a militia. Goliath stomped David, yes, but in this version David had bangs and eyeliner and a real attitude problem.
And then the main event: an eight-man tag match that contained more testosterone than a protein shake convention in a Gold’s Gym parking lot. Moxley, Claudio, and the Young Bucks faced off against Hangman Adam Page, Will Ospreay, Powerhouse Hobbs, and Shibata in a match so violent it briefly caused my Apple Watch to alert me about “abnormal heart rhythms.” There were kicks, slams, betrayals, near-deaths, and an emotional cameo from a tractor. Swerve Strickland, ever the showman, appeared on the Jumbotron to flatten the Young Bucks’ limo like a modern-day Godzilla. And with that, the crowd reached something just shy of spiritual ecstasy.
When the cameras went dark, the arena exploded with a symphony of cheers as Big Boom AJ closed out the night with a flurry of Booming bliss and alluded to someone called The Rizzler, which I’m still not entirely sure is a person, a gimmick, or a new vape flavor.
And that, dear reader, is what wrestling gives us in the dog days of summer: a place to sweat, scream, drink, laugh, and feel something real; preferably while watching two women in sequins tell each other to eat shit. All In, indeed.
