Best and Worst Booking Decisions of 2023 WWE Payback and AEW All Out Results

Credit: WWE.com

Labor Day weekend in the United States brought with it a packed slate of professional wrestling as WWE presented its Payback premium live event from the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh while AEW produced its annual showcase, All Out, from the United Center in Chicago.

Both events featured their fair share of both good and questionable booking decisions, both of which may prove to have lasting effects on both promotions.

Which creative choices enhanced the company's respective events and which left fans scratching their heads?

Find out with this recap of the best and worst of the weekend's booking.

WWE Payback

World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins defeated Shinsuke Nakamura

Women's World Champion Rhea Ripley defeated Raquel Rodriguez

Finn Balor and Damian Priest defeated Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens to win the titles

United States Champion Rey Mysterio defeated Austin Theory

LA Knight defeated The Miz

Becky Lynch defeated Trish Stratus in a Steel Cage Match

AEW All Out

Jon Moxley defeated AEW International Champion Orange Cassidy to win the title

Bullet Club Gold defeated The Young Bucks and FTR

Konosuke Takeshita defeated Kenny Omega

Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler Yuta defeated Eddie Kingston and Katsuyori Shibata

Bryan Danielson defeated Ricky Starks in a Leather Strap Match

TBS Champion Kris Statlander defeated Ruby Soho

Miro defeated Powerhouse Hobbs

TNT Champion Luchasaurus defeated Darby Allin

ROH World Television Champion Samoa Joe defeated Shane Taylor

ROH World Tag Team Champions MJF and Adam Cole defeated The Dark Order

AEW World Trios Champions The Acclaimed and Daddy Ass defeated Jeff Jarrett, Satnam Singh and Jay Lethal

Skye Blue, Hikaru Shida, and Willow Nightingale defeated Diamante, Mercedes Martinez, and Athena

Hangman Page won the Overbudget Battle Royal

Becky Lynch and Tiffany Stratton Come Face-to-Face

Becky Lynch has never held the NXT Women's Championship, a fact current champion Tiffany Stratton was eager to point out Saturday at Payback. The backstage confrontation, moments after The Man's extraordinary victory over Trish Stratus inside a steel cage ignited a feud the competitors deserve.

For Lynch, the rivalry represents an opportunity to achieve something she was never really considered for during her time with NXT. She struggled to find herself with the black and gold brand during her time in Florida and, while she undeniably helped revolutionize the industry through her work with the Four Horsewomen, she was never the focal point that her peers were.

Feuding with Stratton allows her to return to the brand on which she made a name for herself and win the title that has, to this point, eluded her.

Conversely, the feud provides Stratton the opportunity to work with a star who has main evented WrestleMania and is one of the faces of the company. She earned it, evolving from an inexperienced yet athletic "daddy's girl" to one of the brightest young stars in the game and someone brimming with confidence.

The feud allows Lynch to share some of her star power with NXT and prep the future of the industry while allowing Stratton the chance to appear on Monday nights and form an early relationship with the WWE Universe.

With no other obvious direction for Lynch right now, bringing this feud to life and reaping the rewards is the right call and one of the most obviously great creative decisions of the entire Payback broadcast.

The Judgment Day's Dominance

Finn Balor, Damian Priest, Dominik Mysterio, and Rhea Ripley have been central figures in WWE Raw's creative efforts for the last year. Whether they were headlining broadcasts against top babyfaces like Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes, Kevin Owens, and Sami Zayn, or Ripley and Mysterio were infuriating fans as one of the most over acts in the company, they have been integral to the flagship show.

Though Ripley and Mysterio entered Saturday's show as champions, and Priest arrived as Mr. Money in the Bank, it was The Archer of Infamy and Balor's victory over Zayn and Owens for the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championship that served as the official coronation of the faction as the premier group in the company.

The image of all four draped in gold, pyro exploding behind them, the elation of victory painting their faces, was that of a faction that had finally realized its potential. After a rocky start and the ill-fitting leadership of Edge, the group reset and was afforded the time to discover its chemistry.

It has and Saturday was the culmination of hard work from all involved to make the group work.

Shinsuke Nakamura attacked Seth Rollins after Payback went off the air Saturday night, suggesting the feud with The Visionary over the World Heavyweight Championship is not over.

So...why beat Nakamura clean, without controversy or doubt, in the main event?

Some may argue that the challenger dominated the match; that he was the better wrestler who slipped up just long enough for the gutsy resilient babyface to win the match and retain his title.

That explanation has merit, except Nakamura is not nearly believable enough as a top-tier heel to be eating losses at this point. His creative has been too uneven and inconsistent for him to be losing his big title opportunities

Instead of a questionable finish that left fans wondering if Rollins really was the better man, The Artist ate the pinfall clean and now, WWE Creative must work doubly hard to establish him as a legitimate threat to the top prize on Monday nights.

It is not impossible, but it is not a position the creative team had to put itself in.

Bryan Danielson and Ricky Starks Steal the Show

Following the events of the last week, AEW found itself in a difficult position with regard to Ricky Starks and his continued elevation up the card on Collision. He needed to have a match at All Out, needed for it to be against a big star and most importantly, desperately needed a defining performance he could hang his hat on.

He received all of them, with the opponent in question being the returning "American Dragon" Bryan Danielson, in a brutal Leather Strap Match.

Their bodies marked with welts and bruises, their will tested, Starks and Danielson wowed the fans in Chicago with a legitimate Match of the Year contender.

Starks lost, but did so in a way that showcased a defiant toughness, while his opponent re-enforced the idea that he is one of the greatest to ever don a pair of boots.

There was no storyline behind the match but the crowd was appropriately amped for the showdown and AEW, facing an unprecedented situation, came through with a massive make-good in the form of Danielson and one of the best PPV matches of 2023.

Konosuke Takeshita defeated Kenny Omega

Omega does not typically lose back-to-back matches. He has consistently answered one defeat with a bounce-back victory but that was not the case Sunday night as the former AEW World champion succumbed to a Konosuke Takeshita managed by the deceitful scumbag Don Callis.

Takeshita rocked Omega with a running knee for the win and, as Excalibur pointed out, it was a second-consecutive loss for The Cleaner without Callis by his side.

Not only was the win of the utmost importance in terms of continuing the momentous run of Takeshita, but also from a storytelling standpoint.

If Omega powers through and wins the match, it essentially negates the effect Callis had on him as a manager. Without the insufferable heel, he has not quite gotten back to the world title form he enjoyed with him by his side.

The idea that Omega is in a rut and unable to turn things around, all while Callis continues to taunt him and throw challenges in his path, is much more appealing than seeing an established star of his ilk score another win that may derail his opponent's momentum.

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

So, Like, Are The Outcasts Done?

Ruby Soho challenged for the TBS Championship Sunday night, battling Kris Statlander in a match that started clunkily but developed into a solid title clash by the midway point.

Late in the match, it looked like The Runaway may score the win and the first major title of her career when Toni Storm emerged from under the ring, pulled a can of spray paint from the challenger, and distracted her long enough for a recovered Statlander to score the win off of Sunday Night Fever.

But why?

We know Storm has delved deeper into madness since losing her AEW World Women's Championship to Hikaru Shida but this apparent split came very quickly after the first hints of dissension within the group a week ago inside Wembley Stadium and feels like a copout.

Yes, Storm is better without the group. She is a genuine star who does not need to be bogged down by the sub-par creative that has turned the trio into a shell of what it was formerly intended to be. She has also been one of the best parts of AEW television over the last month or so.

Still, it would have been nice to see Storm break free of the group in some sort of grand angle that brings that chapter of her career, and the women's division as a whole, to a suitable conclusion.