Welcome to the AEW All In 2024 PPVPreview presented by GrapPro.com
We will be previewing all matches from the pay per view this week. On the day of the show I will do an all encompassing predictions as I have done in the past.
AEW World Tag Championship
The Acclaimed vs FTR vs Young Bucks (c)
When All Elite Wrestling first began there was a sigh of relief for fans of tag team wrestling.
“With the Young Bucks at the top of this company there is no way that tag team wrestling won’t be focused on!”
In the first years this was correct. In fact, we had too much tag wrestling at some points on television. Wrestlers with no plans to be in title contention getting tag matches when other divisions struggled for time and attention. Today what is even the tag division in AEW?
From Hardy’s to Better Than You Bay Bay
It will take some time to explain how the division lost its way, but it starts with The Hardy’s. At one point, the Hardy’s were in AEW, both Matt and Jeff Hardy. It seemed like it made sense to build up to have that one last big tag team championship run. The Young Bucks would put over the Hardy’s at Double or Nothing 2022, but post match Jeff Hardy was said to have suffered a concussion according to his brother.
Only weeks after that concussion, Jeff then got himself suspended for driving under the influence. Jeff would be gone for the rest of the year, as would any plans to put the AEW World Tag Championship on the Hardy’s. The Young Bucks would win the titles but only to move them to Swerve Strickland and Keith Lee.
While Swerve In Our Glory wasn’t a true tag team and was really two singles wrestlers working in the tag division together, it was still pretty successful. It’s actually something AEW doesn’t utilize enough (I am begging for this company to stop these singles pushes for Powerhouse Hobbs and Wardlow and just put them in a Road Warriors style tag team together. The world begs you Tony Khan. Before it’s too late) because they want to be about pure tag teams. Swerve In Our Glory would pass the championship to The Acclaimed, who were the first team purely developed in AEW to reach the tag gold. It felt like the new generation of tag wrestling was going to take over for the company.
Unfortunately, the run for The Acclaimed wasn’t very strong and it definitely felt like it was missing an established team like the Bucks or Lucha Bros to really carry things. The loss of Proud and Powerful hurt as well. The Acclaimed faced a lot of undercard teams (they did beat FTR but the focus was more about FTR and the Briscoes for the ROH PPV. The Briscoes, a team that would have shot huge adrenaline into the division but Jay Briscoe was not allowed on AEW television due to WBD orders) before dropping to another young team in The Gunns.
The Gunns winning the championship was very much derided at the time but I really like them as a tag team and thought they got way too much criticism. But it was clear that a lot of people didn’t believe in them, and they were just champions to get the belts back on FTR.
FTR as tag champs and being essentially exclusive to the new AEW Collision show meant they’d be focusing their matches on there, and in July 2023 two interesting things happened which I feel was sort of a giant flashing red sign for the division ignored.
The first was Jay White and Juice Robinson having a 58 minute two out of three falls match with FTR, which is one of the greatest TV matches in AEW history, the greatest match in AEW Collision’s young history, and one of the greatest tag matches of all time in AEW. It was absolutely incredible and felt exactly what the division needed. It’s also the second match Jay and Juice had with FTR, as their first one is now sort of forgotten but was also incredible. It’s clear these four men had out of this world chemistry against each other.
Jay and Juice have only had one tag match since that two out of three falls match. It didn’t go anywhere. It was dropped and never picked up again. Juice and Jay have had some injury trouble but it was a clear moment for the company to move forward with this and they didn’t.
The next was Adam Cole and MJF. Better Than You Bay Bay was the hottest act in the company, but with MJF as AEW Men’s World Champion, it felt too much to have them focus on two divisions. But they did get a tag title shot on Collision, and it ended up one of the highest rated episodes in Collision history.
Here is this very clear top star duo that need to become AEW World Tag Champions and instead of pulling the trigger on it they had FTR win. Better Than You Bay Bay would instead become ROH World Tag Champions, which was extremely over and got PPV matches, and honestly overshadowed the AEW World Tag Divison.
In hindsight, Better Than You Bay Bay should have won the AEW World Tag Championship then feuded with FTR and Jay/Juice. You could have moved from a Better Than You Bay Bay vs. Juice and Jay match to the title match between Jay White and MJF instead of cococting the Devil storyline. Instead, FTR won, and AEW has yet to have a tag team as hot as Better Than You Bay Bay was.
FTR would continue to be the champions until a random loss in October 2023 to Big Bill and Ricky Starks. Big Bill and Ricky would drop to Sting and Darby Allin in February 2024, with Sting retiring as AEW World Tag Champion.
Oh right AEW All In 2024
That’s where we get to now, where The Young Bucks hold the AEW World Tag Championship but have only once defended the titles. They won them in April and they defended them once in August. If you just read my PPVPreview of Darby Allin vs Jack Perry, you’ll notice I talked about Jack not defending the TNT Championship. This isn’t just an issue for The Elite, it’s an issue in AEW altogether. They are not supporting the men’s divisions properly.
Despite being arguably the greatest tag team of the 21st century, The Young Bucks current AEW World Tag Championship run has been extremely weak. This doesn’t feel like one of the greatest teams of all time anymore. I don’t know if they were waiting/hoping for the Motor City Machine Guns to come in, or Mark Davis to return to elevate Aussie Open, or if they have been hiding injuries (which if they are? I don’t care if the story is The Elite are hoarding the gold. Drop the titles.) The Tag Division has lost its way.
Once we realized it was going to be FTR and Young Bucks again, who fought last year at All In 2023, there was a cry for something else. That’s how The Acclaimed get involved, who were on Team AEW in the Blood and Guts match. The Acclaimed are without question an over tag act, but once the bell rings? There’s only one man that matters in Anthony Bowens. Max Caster might like to call himself the best wrestler in the world in promos but it’s pretty obvious that when The Young Bucks wrestled Acclaimed, they just knocked Max to the outside so they could do all of their spots with Bowens who can actually go.
Add in the Attitude Era nostalgia act of Billy Gunn lumbering around and scaring heels who should never ever be afraid of him and you can see why I’ve spent 1,000 words talking about anything other than this match. I’m not interested in FTR, Acclaimed, or the Young Bucks at this point.
The gap between these teams and the rest of the division, teams like Top Flight, Private Party, Gates of Agony, Iron Savages, Spanish Announce Project, The Righteous, The Outrunners (the greatest tag team of all time), and anyone else is extremely wide. The Gunns and Kings of the Black Throne are currently caught up in the Trios division (which trust me I have some words on that too), and the reality is none of these teams from bottom to top have the momentum and heat that Better Than You Bay Bay had last year.
What I’m trying to get at is unless this match is absolutely spectacular? None of these teams in the three way should be the leaders of the tag division going forward. They should be used to create the next leaders. Whether that’s Aussie Open coming back together or someone else, it’s clear the division needs a babyface team to truly rally around again. Until that happens we are going to be going circles with stale top teams and fresh but struggling for popularity bottom teams.
The AEW World Tag Division needs saving and I don’t know who that will be.
