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.
FTW (For The World) Championship
Last Chance FTW Rules
Hook vs. Chris Jericho (c)
Leave it to Chris Jericho to both prove me right and prove me wrong.
When I wrote that Chris Jericho needed a new era I was essentially correct. He needed to move on from his current boring form of an elder statesman trying to make friends with Hook and doing a retro pastiche of his old Lionheart gimmick. I was wrong (kind of) that he needed a break to accomplish it.
Jericho decided to lean into the idea he’s the valued locker room leader giving advice to the young guys in a really obvious and loud style. Loud was the name of the game as Jericho had been getting booed at the time with people even chanting for him to retire. It’s possible that this was Chris Jericho poking fun at CM Punk showing up unannounced to NXT tapings to give advice to the young talent.
Whatever “inside joke” about it slowly faded away to allow Chris Jericho to build a fully formed gimmick of The Learning Tree. While some picked up that “The Learning Tree” was a short lived faction name in TNA Wrestling, its real origin comes from that being the name WWE CCO Paul Levesque once gave to disgraced former ECW Heavyweight Champion Vince McMahon.
The Learning Tree was Chris Jericho essentially forming a new crew of sycophants who wanted to learn from him since Hook rejected his attempts. Jericho would take the FTW Championship from Hook and align with Big Bill and Bryan Keith. The faction would often border on comedy but Jericho has slowly got more and more sinister with the character, taking Samoa Joe out of action by crushing him through a wall on a forklift.
Jericho has also continued to antagonize Hook by having his father Taz removed from the commentary booth whenever he wants to, as a favour from The Elite.
While I still feel I would rather see Jericho one day go into the Sting role as a celebrated legend in All Elite Wrestling, I have to give it to him. The snake, he did it again. He completely shed his skin and found a new form that’s going to give his career more mileage than anyone imagined him to have. He refuses to be a nostalgia act. It’s admirable.
This feud with Hook, though? It’s pretty much gone as long as it possibly could.
Hook has often been subject of debate in AEW as to whether or not he has been handled correctly. He came to the company with little to no formal training back in 2021 so we’re talking about a 25-year-old with two years experience in the company. At times it looked like he was learning at an accelerated pace only to stagnate. But this is only a two year performer. Not two years on TV, but two years total.
I have often suggested for Hook to go on excursion to somewhere like New Japan Pro Wrestling where he could get an accelerated Young Lion apprenticeship and get a lot more reps in the ring. According to Cagematch he only has 67 matches to his name. While working programs with the likes of Chris Jericho, Matt Hardy, and Samoa Joe is a great way to gain extra experience, he needs that experience you can only find by spending tons of time in the ring.
I do think Hook is improving in the ring, but I also don’t think he’s in any way ready for a major push. His promo ability still needs work. He still looks lost in the ring sometimes. His selling can be inconsistent in the emotion being presented. I’ve heard WWE might be interested in him which makes sense since he’s young and built up some popularity. It honestly wouldn’t hurt Hook to leave AEW to go elsewhere and get more experience, but there isn’t much he’s going to learn in WWE aside from it being the same place that didn’t know what to do with his father after a week.
Working against Chris Jericho has been a good thing, and regardless of where this feud goes, Hook actually got the mentors he’s actually needed in the course of this program. Samoa Joe and Katsuyori Shibata are the perfect mentors for his style and attitude, and it’s been great to see week to week how they’ve grown on him. I’m looking forward to that trio once Joe and Shibata are back from their beatdowns.
My hope is that AEW All In 2024 is the climax of this feud between Hook and Jericho, with maybe a trios match between The Learning Tree and a returning Joe and Shibata aligning with Hook again to be the final match of the program. Both men have got what they needed in the feud. Chris Jericho needed a new coat of paint and to return to being a heel. Hook didn’t think he needed a mentor and in the end he’s gained two.
Should be a good match and hopefully both men move to strong programs in the fall against new wrestlers.
