“Timeless” Toni Storm presented “All Out’s” four-way match as a can’t-miss blockbuster to close out the summer, but in this writer’s humble opinion, this should have stayed as a straight-to-DVD film.

Saturday, Storm defended her title against Jamie Hayter, Thekla, and Kris Statlander in a wild four-way match, and while the in-ring action made it one of the more energetic bouts of the night, I just can’t let that excuse this film’s near-infuriating ending. Storm, who is, to date, the only person to get a singles win over the unstoppable Mercedes Mone — Storm, who got a win over the longest-reigning Ring of Honor Women’s World Chamber Athena — had her record-setting fourth AEW Women’s World Championship reign ended via flash pin, courtesy of “I always move forward” Statlander. What are we even doing?

First of all, this is no hate towards Statlander. I’m sure she’s as shocked as the rest of us, and, even though this is a debatable creative turn from the AEW writers’ room, she has an amazing opportunity set before her. I’m sure that she will do what she can to make this inaugural title reign a great one. That being said, I am still confused and annoyed at the sequence of events that led to her title victory, due, in part, to my respect for her, for Storm, and everyone Storm has overcome before.

People, as of late, have found that Storm’s timeless reign has become a little stale. This is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, but we can’t just end title reigns overnight because they’ve become a little stale — especially when Storm’s current reign began in one of AEW’s most successful and compelling storylines, male or female, to date. I don’t need to sit here and give you out-of-ring examples about unsatisfying endings or disrespect to tell you that this finish was both unsatisfying and disrespectful. It’s disrespectful to Storm, the incredible work she’s put in, and her recent proud show of AEW loyalty. It’s disrespectful to competitors like Mone, Athena, Megan Bayne, and Mina Shirakawa, because now all of their hard work — both from a storytelling sense and an in-ring sense — seems wasted. It’s disrespectful to Statlander, because Statlander was robbed of a potentially career-defining feud with Storm — if the plan was for Statlander to go over this entire time, then why not give us a reason to be happy for her?

This decision feels like it was made for shock value. It doesn’t make sense from a backstage perspective (I admittedly don’t have as good of an insight to that as I’d like, but I wasn’t born yesterday). It doesn’t make sense creatively, since Statlander seems to be shacking up with Wheeler Yuta and the male-dominated Death Riders. It doesn’t make sense, period. Again, glad for Statlander, but she deserves to be champion because she deserves to be champion. I hate that her feud is already marred with Tony Khan’s trigger-happy, rash booking. She deserves better.

This film scores 0% on my Tomatometer.

Written by Angeline Phu