Ricky Starks and The Real Winners and Losers From AEW All Out 2023 Match Card

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

Any major pro wrestling pay-per-view carries with it the potential for winners and losers based on match outcomes, creative developments, and their overall stock exiting the event and Sunday's AEW All Out was no different.

The show saw young stars seize the spotlight and establish themselves as clear winners of the night while former champions with strong fan followings found themselves in the loser's column, an unfamiliar position.

Who landed where and what might it mean for them moving forward? Find out with this recap of the September 3 event.

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

Wacky "meat" chants aside, Miro and Powerhouse Hobbs had a hell of a heavyweight battle Sunday night in Chicago. It was unabashedly physical and punishing, exactly what you would want out of a battle between two guys as big as they are, with the styles that they have.

Hobbs wrestled the match of his career, selling when necessary and answering The Redeemer's clubbing blows with those of his own. He may have lost the match, but it was a triumph in the sense that it was his best match in quite some time, against a guy in a similar situation.

Miro needed a defining match to justify his newfound push on Saturday nights and silence any doubters about his in-ring abilities. He got it and even more than Hobbs, noticeably fed off the reaction of a red-hot Chicago crowd.

The post-match, with Hobbs attacking Miro, only for the debuting CJ Perry to come to her husband's aid, suggests we have not seen the end of this program. Based on the quality of this match, that is hardly a bad thing.

The question will be whether they can have the same match when the crowd isn't living and breathing on every big, power spot.

As long as the story is there, and one can only imagine where that will go, it should not be an issue.

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

It was an uncharacteristically rough night for The Acclaimed in Chicago Sunday.

Max Caster and Anthony Bowens are one of the most electrifying acts in all of AEW but an ineffective rap from the former gave way to a match, with partner Daddy Ass against Jeff Jarrett, Satnam Singh, and Jay Lethal, that never really clicked.

The presence of Dennis Rodman did not elevate its significance, the crowd was not nearly as hot for the perennial babyfaces as they have been before, and the result was a Zero Hour match that limped to its conclusion rather than effectively setting the tone for the night's main card.

The team still draws a big pop, and the audience loves the young duo and their veteran mentor, but that initial wave of momentum appears to have worn off.

Maybe it is because their most recent storyline was aimed more at highlighting Billy Gunn rather than Caster or Bowens. Perhaps the tag title loss to the Gunns did more to hamper that aforementioned momentum than anyone imagined it would.

Whatever the case, the team feels like it is on a treadmill of sorts, still heavily featured as AEW World Trios Champions, but lacking anything of real substance for them to do outside of debuting gimmicky title belts.

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

Ricky Starks arrived at All Out having seen his initial plans for the show scrapped, a new opponent in Bryan Danielson named, and a Leather Strap Match stipulation revealed.

None of it mattered.

"Absolute" rolled into Chicago, in arguably the biggest match of his career, and proceeded to deliver the best performance of his career. He did so with heightened expectations and the eyes of the wrestling world on him.

Danielson is one of the greatest wrestlers to ever lace a pair of boots. He has battled every star of any stature to set foot in the squared circle over the last 20 years and did so on the biggest stages known to professional wrestling.

There was no doubt he could hold up his end of the bargain but when it came to Starks, there was a bit of uncertainty.

He answered all questions, silenced all doubters, and in the process, wrestled a defining match that will only enhance his status in AEW and the industry at large.

It was a bloody, violent match that saw both men's bodies welted, bruised and lacerated from the leather strap at the center of it. They were brutalized and badly beaten but fought through the pain. In the end, Danielson trapped Starks in the LeBell Lock and used the strap to choke him out.

Defiant, the young heel refused to tap out, instead fading into unconsciousness as referee Aubrey Edwards called for the bell.

The toughness on display from Starks, more than anything, will earn him the respect of the audience and he will be better of for having gone through the physical hell that he did Sunday night.

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

It seems rather astonishing that there was nothing of greater substance for former AEW World Champion "Hangman" Adam Page to do than appear in a pre-show Overbudget Battle Royal that was announced no more than 24 hours before the pay-per-view, but that is the scenario facing the perfector of the Buckshot Lariat.

Page won the battle royal, but it felt hollow. It was a win for win's sake, with no indication of direction beyond the show. Based on his elimination of Brian Cage and Toa Liona of the Mogul Embassy to secure the victory, perhaps he could find opposition in the faction's leader, Swerve Strickland.

Maybe he moves onto something of greater significance in the wake of All Out, when there is more time to build stories and introduce new rivalries.

Whatever the case, it felt quite strange watching a guy who has been at the heart of so many significant events and matches in AEW history be relegated to a thrown-together preshow match of no meaning or consequence.

Credit: All Elite Wrestling

In headlining his first AEW pay-per-view, Orange Cassidy was already a winner.

A former comedy act by his own admission, he spent the last year proving that he could hang with any wrestler on the roster, all the while establishing the AEW International Championship as, arguably, the strongest title in the company.

Sunday night, he entered the famed United Center for a showdown with Jon Moxley, his historic reign on the line.

Bloodied and beaten down, his body wracked with pain from his previous defenses as well as the agony he endured at the hands of his opponent, Cassidy defiantly flipped Moxley one last middle finger before eating a second Death Rider.

He would lose from there, putting an end to the most unexpectedly great title reign in recent memory. In the process, however, he earned the respect of the AEW fans.

Like Starks earlier in the night, Cassidy's toughness was on full display. He never gave up, even under the most grueling and physically demanding of circumstances, and the crowd appreciated him for it.

Even as he lay in the blood-soaked ring, his body at rest for the first time in what felt like an eternity, it was abundantly clear that Freshly Squeezed had officially graduated from a joke, a comedic afterthought, to the gutsiest babyface on the AEW roster.

In defeat, he was victorious.

Do not be surprised if this is the start of something bigger, more significant for Cassidy, who has certainly earned it.