I don’t believe the match was ever announced for the PPV, it was just the assumption. Might have been the backstage plan, but they never said the bout would occur at All Out.
Ok fine I do have something for you.
On the 8/17 Dynamite, Punk said verbatim "
We've got a match coming up at the PPV where I'll soundly defeat you." to Moxley's face during their dueling promo and pull apart angle.
And later that same night before they announced the match was being moved to Dynamite, AEW's own Twitter account sent out the video of Moxley attacking Nese that said
"Moxley has no intention of waiting until #AEWAllOut" with the announcers also saying "
Why wait until All Out? Do it right now!"
If you want to say that was all simply assumption that we shouldn't take seriously because AEW didn't formally run a graphic saying that was the main event of the PPV, so be it, but everyone - the talent involved in the match, the announcers on the show and obviously the fans, were pretty well clued in that it was the main event of the PPV.
Top of the hour isn’t a dead zone time slot. Middle of the hour right before the main event is. That’s usually where they throw the women (which I don’t agree with)
This feels like you're focusing on the wrong thing and arguing semantics here. Whether or not 9 to 9:20 is a "dead zone" or not is less relevant to the fact the much larger point that they didn't even hype the match during the show and more or less buried it in a spot on the card that wasn't the main event.
Before they ever even talked about the fact that they were having a UNIFICATION MATCH ON FREE TV - which if they really wanted to pop a rating, they would promoted the ever living shit out of it in every single segment from segment 1 all the way until the entrances begin in the final segment to get people watching to tell their friends to tune in. But AEW didn't do that. They, in fact, went out of their way to announce that the trios match was closing the show as the main event even before they said anything about ostensibly the literal biggest match they could put on as a company right now. They treated it like a total afterthought for an hour and then immediately moved on to other business when the segment was over.
They could have built the entire episode around this match, done insert promos, talked to other wrestlers, done all sorts of hype and they did nothing. It was just another random middle of the card segment that was immediately moved on from the moment it went to commercial.
I don’t see the issue. The main event was an absolute banger that sets up a showdown next week between two of the biggest wrestling stars in the world.
Even if the main event was a banger, and admittedly my mileage varies on these no one sells anything multi-man spotfests anyway - is it bigger than unifying the freaking AEW world title? I don't think so.
If that match doesn’t interest you, fine. The rest of the card rocks. I’m interested to see what they do with it. There’s a compelling story to be told. Let’s hope they tell it.
I’d be shocked if they went with the “Punk overcomes the odds” line because he’s been 100% heel since he returned.
The card, at least to me, is the weakest they've ever had on paper. But they generally deliver in the ring even if the setups aren't any good. So I'm not too concerned about that part.
The annoying part for me is that the Punk/Moxley unifying titles match actually
was a legitimate drawing match. It had never been done in AEW and hadn't been done period in almost 10 years. It was something I was very interested in before Wednesday. But now I've seen it and it was uncompetitive. If this really was a shoot, then why would I now pay to see the same match I just saw 10 days ago that wasn't competitive the first time I saw it?
And look maybe I'm the dummy here, but isn't the point of wrestling to suspend your disbelief and treat what you're watching like it's real?
Personally, if I watched two guys fight - whether it was boxing or MMA or whatever combat sport you prefer - on free TV and one guy absolutely destroyed the other guy in 3 minutes flat and on top of that the guy who lost was carried out like he needed to have his leg amputated, am I going to really be interested in watching those two fight again 10 days later? Only the second time I'm being asked to pay $60 to see it? Looking at it logically, the main event is just less appealing than it was before.