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 TNT Championship
Coffin Match
Darby Allin vs Jack Perry (c)
The purpose of a pillar is to hold a structure up. At Wembley Stadium, two pillars will be fighting not to hold a structure up but to put one of the pillars down inside one.
AEW has had five coffin matches in their history, four of which involved Darby Allin and one called the Final Burial with Jack Perry. Neither man has been on the losing end of a coffin match.
It was actually at the last All In that Darby Allin teamed with Sting in a coffin tag match against Christian Cage and Swerve Strickland. Since then, Sting has retired and Swerve Strickland is now the AEW Men’s World Champion.
As for Jack Perry, he was in the Zero Hour of All In facing Hook for the FTW Championship. One knock on car glass and everyone forgot about the match in which he lost to Hook for said FTW Championship. Perry would get in one little backstage fight and Tony Khan got scared and had him move up with his auntie and uncle EVIL in New Japan Pro Wrestling for a half a year.
As one half of AEW’s “Pillars” Darby Allin and Jack Perry have met in the past as babyfaces both going after Maxwell Jacob Friedman for the AEW Men’s World Championship at Double or Nothing 2023. While this is Perry’s first experience as TNT Champion, Darby Allin is arguably the best known TNT Champion in the history of the company, or at least the most celebrated. Both of his runs with the championship were well respected, and honestly at this point the belt does feel underneath him.
This program is an extension of the Team AEW vs. The Elite program which culminated in the Blood and Guts match where Darby Allin got the win by threatening to set Jack Perry on fire. Matt Jackson surrendered to save Perry who was more than willing to be sacrificed for the cause. The Scapegoat has repeated many times about the necessary sacrifice needed to save AEW, which is in reference to the backstage fight he got into. Him taking a cheapshot leading to a top star being fired was the sacrifice. What sacrifice is he willing to make to beat Darby Allin, friend of the man who he was scapegoated for?
What hurts the tension of this match is the fact that Darby Allin already has an AEW Men’s World Championship title shot at Grand Slam in September. It’s possible that like Will Ospreay winning the AEW International Championship he then won the Casino Gauntlet for a shot, but I don’t really see AEW repeating that here. It certainly feels more like Darby is here to do favours for Jack Perry before moving to the main event while Jack holds down the fort as TNT Champion.
Still, it’s an interesting capture of the two men at this point in their careers. Darby Allin feels like he has done everything he can in the midcard and needs to get to that level of his career. Jack Perry on the other hand is catching up on lost time, continuing a heel run that began only a month or two prior to All In 2023. Perry as TNT Champion has a lot of time to still work, and my only real gripe is he hasn’t been on TV enough defending it.
Even if he’s a heel? It’s a workhorse championship. Darby’s last run as TNT Champion lasted for 28 days and he defended the title four times before losing it in the fifth match against Samoa Joe. Jack has crossed 50+ days on his reign and he’s only defended it against Marko Stunt. It was a good match too! Post All In, we need to see Jack Perry on television more defending the TNT Championship.
It’s interesting for this to be a Coffin match. It’s really the signature of Darby Allin at this point, but Jack Perry is the one winner of the Coffin match that didn’t involve Darby. This should be the final nail so to speak that the match shouldn’t really be done by anyone other than Darby going forward, even if he ends up in the Coffin by the end of the night.
That’s really what makes the result interesting. If the Coffin match is a Darby signature he shouldn’t be losing it, but Darby really needs to move up and away from the midcard. Jack putting Darby in the coffin should help him more than the other way around, but it might hurt Darby’s momentum to his title shot if he’s dropping to Jack Perry weeks prior. AEW might need to think of how Darby factors into All Out to keep him strong going forward.
Currently out of the four pillars, three are holding championship gold right now. The only one who isn’t is Darby Allin. If it doesn’t happen at All In, will it happen at Grand Slam? Maybe. There’s no doubt his time is coming, and when it does? It will be for the top prize in the promotion.
