AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/24 - 8/30

All In 2026 8/30/26

Willow Nightingale vs Mercedes Mone

If you live by stories, you die by them too.

Willow Nightingale chose to live by them and she ended up dying by them in the end.

Mercedes Mone entered the ring preceded by a ballet performance, then attended to by those self-same ballerinas. The message was clear. She deserved art. She was heralded by art. Art respected her. Art served her. She was art. A transcendent pinnacle.

Willow, on the other hand, was preceded by a storybook narration, with images highlighting her unlikely ascent as a brave knight, her fantastic triumph, and how she would never, ever stop smiling.

Willow Nightingale lost to Mercedes Mone. That was not how the story was supposed to end. Yet as the match careened towards its finish, its unfortunate inevitability revealed itself. When? It was the moment where a line was crossed, the moment when the story ended even before the match did.

How did Willow Nightingale lose to Mercedes Mone?

Was it because Willow entered injured? That would be the most logical reason, no? Even though she bedazzled her cast, she came in at a disadvantage. That made it hard for her to do things as simple as whipping Mercedes across the ring or as difficult as climbing the ropes for a moonsault. It gave Mercedes a wedge to take back over at any point in the match and it let her drive a dagger through that wedge to split Willow asunder and tear apart both the cast and her hand late in the match. Yet Willow still had her strength, still had her resolve, still had her savvy and her bravery and she was able to fight through that pain and disadvantage again and again.

Was it because Mercedes Mone wanted it more? Because she was more dangerous? Because she was the better wrestler? Mercedes knew Willow’s moves, knew her tricks. Early on, Mercedes broke her nose and she spent the entire match with blood splattered across her visage (a visual that enhanced every single thing within this match turning even practiced sequences into gripping moments of unpredictable drama), but she obsessively fought on. She had answers for Willow’s biggest weapons, hand or no, strength or no. But then Willow knew Mercedes too, had defeated her before, was the defending champion, wanted it every bit as much, maybe even too much.

Was it because Mercedes was a dirty cheater? Towards the start of the match, the corner turnbuckle pad inadvertently came sailing off as Mercedes tried to block a strength move by Willow. Twice, Mercedes was able to get an edge by running Willow’s head into the corner, and once it even allowed her to hit her finisher. Later on, on the floor, Mercedes tried to wield the belt against Willow, but Willow is not one to back down and let bad people do bad things. She knew exactly who and what Mercedes was. She was able to wrest it from Mercedes and turn it back upon her. In that moment, it was justice. In that moment it was warranted. She met that moment with a smile.

Was it because Aubrey Edwards was knocked down? The referee was knocked prone. Willow hit the Babe With the Power Bomb. She had a visual pin closer to ten seconds than to three. She should have won. She hit her best shot. Mercedes survived. It wasn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. The trick then is to smile anyway, right? So long as she did that, she’d win in the end. So while this and everything that preceded it led to her loss, none of them caused it. Because up until this point, it was still her story.

It was none of those things.

It was what happened next in the face of all of them.

Mercedes had survived her best shot. Willow looked up, momentarily at a loss. She was not smiling. Her cast had been mangled. Her hand hurt. For just a moment. even her monumental spirit faltered; for brave knight or not, she’s human like the rest of us. If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t care nearly as much. We see ourselves in her, the best of us and the rest of us as well.

Looking around the ring, Willow tried to figure out what to do next. She pointed to the corner, to the exposed turnbuckle. She rose with resolve. She slammed Mercedes into it without mercy or hesitation. She doomed herself in the process.

Willow Nightingale lost because in a moment of doubt and confusing, she transgressed. Willow broke a rule. Willow faced the consequences, for in stories, everything has a price.

Yes, Mercedes had used the exposed turnbuckle on her twice, and to high effect. Yes, Willow had used the belt on Mercedes. But when she used the belt, it was after stopping Mercedes from attacking her with it. It was justice. Here? Now? This? Mercedes was helpless, prone. It wasn’t justice. It was desperation at worst and revenge at best. A wrestler can do that, even a babyface, but not a storybook knight. 

That was the moment this stopped being a story and became a match once again. Her armor, just like her cast, was torn asunder, but unlike the cast, this was her own doing. 

She tried to escalate matters, to hit another power bomb, this time from the top rope, but Mercedes was still all of those things that she had always been, the best at what she did. Now, with Willow no longer protected by fate, Mercedes took her over with an avalanche ‘rana and let that momentum carry her to a cruel, unyielding victory, all the way to adding insult to injury by pressing her foot into the damaged hand after the ref’s call. 

Willow Nightingale is a knight. Maybe even more than that, she is a superhero. And her superpower is perspective. She finds the positivity in life. She uses that positivity to carry her forward and to take all of us along with her. She makes us better. But she’s human like the rest of us. Just like Mercedes, if you break her nose, she will bleed. 

People aren’t going to like this, just as I don’t like writing it, but Willow Nightingale lost this match because just for a moment, she lost her smile. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. You can be mad at me for saying it. We’re not supposed to like it. 

But it is supposed to make us feel something. I felt something while watching this match. I feel something writing this now. I hope you feel something reading it. 

The thing is… I know something else too.

The joy and frustration of pro wrestling is that it is a story that never ends. And even if for all the reasons above, Willow faltered on this night, she has given us every reason to believe in her, not to believe that she is infallible, but to believe that given time, given a moment to shake of the dust, she will find her smile once again. She will cling to it, she will rise up, and she will take everyone she can with her. 

The story of her reign ended, but the story of Willow Nightingale has not. She may have not been able to write the ending at All In, but the next chapter is wide open and I know that you believe just as much as I do that we’ll all be smiling when she comes back to write it, all of us except for maybe Mercedes Mone.

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Jon Moxley vs Nigel McGuinness 

(1) Jon Moxley understands the power of time and place. He lost last year to Adam Page in Texas, a cowboy bringing down the man with the black hat in front of another stadium crowd. This was England. This was Nigel McGuinness' dream.

Moxley has spent the better part of a year pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, most of all himself. He presents himself as the warrior prophet, the shepherd of violence and battle and righteous combat. If you look at his actions, however, you find someone who does not practice what he preaches. But he (a champion) wins, and so long as he wins, it doesn't matter in the end. What Moxley truly practices is that might equals right, the same damn thing he practiced at the height of his reign of terror.

Usually, he'll wrestle even to start, get down on the mat, make a show of it. It's only when it gets hard or inconvenient that he'll turn the screw and show his true colors.

Not here. Not against a Nigel McGuinness in this stadium, in front of this crowd, on this unlikely path, with this apparent destiny.

(2) Against Nigel, he didn't even pretend. At the first opportunity, the first chance to break in the ropes, he went in on the ankle.

Nigel had hurt it against Shibata utilizing an all-too-clever block of a Penalty Kick with his own leg. It helped win him the match but at high cost. How high? He had to drop out of his match against Moriarty at the ROH PPV. He almost didn't carry on in the Cup.

Nigel has seen it all and done it all as well. He's world weary. He's known great highs and even greater lows. He understands how the world works, just like Moxley does.

When Hechicero tried to attack his ankle, he went straight to the mask. He's an expert, a practitioner, a technician, a commentator, Staff, but if you cross a line, he'll cross it twice as quickly and twice as cruelly.

So against Mox, he did just that. He went after the nose, the face, the eyes. Every time that Moxley went for the ankle, he came back twice as vicious and desperate and mean. If Mox was going to fight dirty, he'd make him pay.

(3) That changed the tenor of the match. Mox, the leader of the Death Riders, a man constantly looking back over his shoulder, a man who can only look into the eyes of his own reflection for so long, was already paranoid of Nigel, paranoid of what his destiny might be. Instead of having a match wholly focused around working the ankle, they went other places instead, Mox too hesitant to unleash whatever create grown from years of desperation and despair might still lurk within McGuinness.

It became a game of counters then. Nigel tried for the London Dungeon but Mox was ready of it. Mox went for the charging corner clotheslines, but Nigel caught him and hoisted him up with an uppercut for the Tower of London. Nigel tried for the Les Kellett lariat, but Mox was ready for a cutter. Mox tried one of his own and Nigel was ready with a Lariat. Mox was lock in the LeBell Lock, but there Nigel was to reverse it into one of his own.

(4) Still, when the opportunity arose, when things got desperate, when he realized he couldn't win through conventional means, Mox, his true colors already revealed, had no choice but to roll the dice. He had been able to get the bulldog choke on, but Nigel escaped through pluck, determination, and an  understanding of human anatomy, driving his own chin into the nerve in Moxley's arm.

The ankle, then. Moxley stomped down on the ankle, went for ankle locks. Nigel fired back with everything he had, even locking in the London Dungeon, but at the end of the day, while both men were desperate, only one was healthy. Moxley had found bravery within his own cowardice as he honed in on the ankle.

Both men were not just desperate; they were also clever. Moxley realized that he was about to lose the lock, that Nigel was about to make it to the ropes, so he let go and spun him, keeping the advantage and setting him up for a stomp to the skull. From there, it was one last scissored ankle lock. Nigel stretched valiantly, but was forced to quit. This time, destiny was averted, and Moxley wrestled his way through it all yet again.

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