AEW All Out 2026: Biggest Winners & Losers

AEW went All In, then completed the Wrestling Hokey Pokey on Saturday with All Out. The show was jam-packed with action, injuries, ups, downs, and in-betweens, all of which you can read about over on the AEW All Out – 9/26/2026 results page, as well as the 3 Things We Hated and 3 We Loved column.

All that's left is to assign the winners and the losers of the massive show. As always, the winners and losers won't be literal. Some winners are losers, like Will Ospreay, and some losers are winners, like the two other teams in the AEW World Tag Title ladder match, and sometimes it's just a whole company catching strays, looking at you, WWE. The only rule is there are no rules. If you want to keep the conversation going, the comments section will be open, as it always is.

Without further ado, let's get into Saturday's winners and losers, starting with a big loser.

I want to start off by saying that I did not make this a competition. AEW didn't make it a competition. WWE is a big boy company, full of big boy employees and executives, who decided to run a Chicagoland show opposite All Out. They made this a competition, and from a purely optics standpoint, looked like a complete non-entity.

Clearly, the plan was to hamper AEW ticket sales. They did not do that. They did manage their second goal, which was to steal some of the news cycle away from AEW's September PPV, but unfortunately most of the news was a "Will They/Won't They" story about whether or not WWE was going to broadcast the glorified house show. They have decided to broadcast it on tape delay, an hour before this week's "AEW Dynamite." Just typing this makes me a little sad. WWE has been moving in embarrassing ways.

The term "Streisand Effect" refers to any situation where a person or company tries to hide unflattering news, only to end up drawing more attention to it in the process.

Had WWE decided to just not broadcast Worlds Collide, it would've been a blip; maybe some tickets would be refunded, but it wouldn't have been the endless headlines we've seen. Now, we will once again have to revisit this blunder when they finally air the show, and then we will likely have to discuss the effect, or lack thereof, on AEW's ratings. They have not only lost this weekend, but have found ways to keep rubbing their own noses in the fact that they lost until at least Wednesday.

When the three-way ladder match between The Young Bucks, Cope n' Christian, and FTR was booked, I kinda felt like FTR were in the way of what could've been a tidy passing of the torch from one crazy team to another. I am so happy I was wrong.

FTR not only showed out in the match, but possibly stole it, through a mix of pathos-driven selling and bats*** crazy ring work. The match had a high bar to clear, as everyone was expecting something along the lines of the legendary TLC Matches of yesteryear. I think they cleared it. Adam Copeland and Christian Cage took bumps just crazy enough to make me wince, but everyone was still moving by the end. The Young Bucks got a certain crowning moment, beating two other great teams to cement themselves as living legends.

There was a certain mythological bend to the match, in the same vein as last month's match between Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega. The 21st century is getting older. The stars of the 2000s are finally passing the torch. The Young Bucks and FTR were close to being something of a silent generation in the conversation of great tag teams, for various reasons, but there was something special about Cope n' Christian ushering these two teams into immortality.

Last month, Will Ospreay wrestled one of the greatest matches of the 21st Century. He and Kenny Omega proved they belong in the same conversation when it comes to wrestling, but Kenny isn't here, which means that Will Ospreay has been left holding the bag. His next opponent, Jon Moxley, was as crucial to the history of AEW and the world title as Omega, which is why expectations were sky high for the All Out main event. Clearly, all the ingredients of greatness were here.

I don't know if it was Ospreay, I don't know if it was Moxley, but while they were mixing the ingredients together, someone accidentally tipped over a whole bottle of "run-ins and shenanigans" and threw off the entire balance. It felt like Moxley and Ospreay had ideas for a good match that kept getting interrupted by nonsense. It was the kind of match you expect from two old-timers on an indie show who need as many young guys as possible to hide their limitations, but Moxley and Ospreay simply don't have those limitations. I know they are both capable of much better.

Unfortunately, for Ospreay, he's the champion and the winner of the match. Had Moxley won, I'd be writing about how Moxley is a loser for winning such an underwhelming match. Luckily, Ospreay's next defense against Kazuchika Okada will give him a chance for a make-good, but as far as inaugural title defenses go, I have to believe this was not the first impression AEW World Champion Will Ospreay wanted to make.

I've said it before, and I'll say it once again: "I love when I'm wrong."

I really thought that Thekla was going to simply be an obstacle to overcome on Willow Nightingale's road to a big-money rematch with Mercedes Money, but luckily, AEW seems to see just how much people respond to Thekla. She is, quite simply, captivating. You have no idea what she's going to do next. She has undone all the damage to the word "B****" that Kazuchika Okada has done. In some ways, she reminds me of an early Jon Moxley. There's something dangerous about her. She's just a star, and her win on Saturday made sure that she won't just fade into the background. Nightingale will have plenty of opportunities in the future, but AEW is right to jump on the popularity that Thekla has going for her.

Mone and Thekla are as perfect for each other as Mone and Willow, truth be told. Thekla's roughness and unhinged personality put Mone's cold, sleek character in contrast. I'm sure there will be plenty of ways for Thekla to get under Mone's skin, and that's just good television.

Pac is an incredibly gifted athlete with a fascinating personality, but he has been relegated to a glorified tomato can. At no point on Saturday did I think that AEW National Champion Andrade El Idolo was in danger of losing his title. It doesn't even matter that it was the wildly popular Andrade. I can't think of a single star that Pac could defeat realistically at this point.

He played his part admirably on Saturday, but it was hard to find him a credible threat. Not because of his athleticism or his character, but just because of his history.

It is one of the oft-lambasted issues of a bloated roster: there simply isn't room in the winners column for guys like Pac. If he were a new hire, there would still be hope, but he is an "AEW Original," and it seems that all of the Originals' places in the hierarchy have calcified. Obviously, he's a winner compared to the likes of Kip Sabian or Sammy Guevara or any of the other Originals who have faded into the background, but once you put him in a marquee match, it becomes pretty clear how his prospects stand.

The New Level have simply taken to AEW like ducks to water. It can be easy to forget how Austin Creed ran parallel to The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega in the Wrestling Nerd Culture, so it probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but I did spend much of Saturday's World Trios Match feeling like they'd been a part of the roster much longer than they have.

It's been roughly a month, and even though they are still explicitly learning about all the AEW lore backstage, in the ring they are a perfect fit for the company. The New Level, in their final years in WWE, were simply not having fun. The New Day/Level has always been about fun, and it feels like they've found that spark again in AEW. Their rapport with Swerve Strickland has come naturally, and they've added an extra dimension to not only the Swerve/Hangman Page feud, but also Hangman Page and Brodido's chemistry. Page and Brodido were good before, but there is something so natural about the way they work with The New Level. Hangman Page especially has been a perfect fit for Kofi and Creed in the ring.

I'm curious to see what happens when the honeymoon is over, though. They haven't even sniffed AEW's stacked tag division, and with The Young Bucks having just bested Cope n' Christian, New Level might be the next dream match on the champions' schedule.