AEW's All Out had a ton of interesting action and a slew of big-time bouts to keep the 10,000-plus fans in attendance plus the hundreds of thousands more watching from home entertained. There were title changes – though not the one many an Acclaimed fan wanted to see – titles christened, and more than a few deep-seated grudges that were either finished off for good or elevated even further.

That's the beauty of professional wrestling, right? Promotors build up long-term storylines with complex emotions, both imagined and with a shred of truth to them, and the performers in the ring are tasked with acting out these interactions as a sort of live-action play. At best, wrestling can be a transcendent medium that elevates the craft of storytelling in a way that few other means of entertainment can, as the AEW World Trios Championship match between The Elite and “Hangman” Adam Page plus Dark Order proved at All Out. And when it doesn't quite reach that level? Well, it's still dudes in tights doing flips; what could be cooler than that?

But what if I were to tell you that the most contentious interaction between wrestlers at All Out wasn't in the match between Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs, the “Professional Wrestlers vs. Sports Entertainers” match between Bryan Danielson and Chris Jericho for the allegiances of Daniel Garcia, or even the main event bout between CM Punk and Jon Moxley, tw0 men who clearly don't like each other.

No, as it turns out, the craziest battle of the night came in a random hallway of the NOW Arena, as Punk, his trainer, Ace Steel, and the members of The Elite, Nick Jackson, Matt Jackson, and Kenny Omega reportedly came to blow over the assertion that The Elite leaked negative news about “The Best in the World” to the media.

Folks, if you were hoping Tony Khan's talent meeting was magically going to fix everything and bring AEW together as a unified front, you might be severely disappointed, as All Out may have just been the eye of the storm.

Dave Meltzer and The Wrestling Observer staff detail AEW's backstage issues.

After participating in the entirety of AEW's post-All Out media scrum, Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez returned to their hotel to detail the initial rumblings of the backstage altercation on their podcast Wrestling Observer Radio. Though the story was still developing at the time, even the “in the mud” reporting was salacious, to say the least.

“(So after his media availability, Punk) was obviously very mad, and we had multiple, multiple sources state that there was an altercation,” Alvarez said on Wrestling Observer Radio. “And I wasn't there, and I don't know everything that happened, but many people said there was an altercation with Punk and the Young Bucks, I don't know who else was there, but it happened, and everybody knew about it, and a security guard did, in fact, go running out of the press conference so I would presume there were people who did the press conference that knew that this happened but Tony Khan did not know that it happened because Tony Khan did not have his phone and nobody told him until after.”

“There was a melee,” Meltzer added. “Tony is in a real tough situation. We've been talking for weeks about how this has been boiling over ever since the promo that Punk made, you know, that's really what set everything off.”

If all of that was the end of it, AEW would be looking at a pretty tough situation for the still-young company to overcome, but as also of Wrestling Observer reported on Monday, things were even worse than initially reported, with “Punk allegedly starting things by swinging fists at the Bucks' Matt Jackson. Punk trainer/friend and AEW producer Steel (part of the storyline that got Punk into Sunday's Jon Moxley match) threw a chair that hit the Bucks' Nick Jackson in the eye. Steel (Chris Guy) allegedly bit Omega and grabbed his hair.”

Goodness gracious, to paraphrase Jim Cornette, Punk and Steel might have just worked themselves into a felonious assault.

While fans immediately made light of this situation, with Nick Jackson's name trending on Twitter and fans around the world making light of his reported eye full of Steel(‘s) chair, it's hard to imagine Khan and company find this too much of a laughing matter, even if he previously stated that wrestlers don't have to be friends to work together, as you can read below via a transcription from Wrestlezone:

I’m actually pretty excited about it. I think our roster is gonna be stronger than it’s been in a long time, there’s a lot of competition for the spots. As long as everybody’s being professional, and it’s professional wrestling, the first word is professional. But the second word is wrestling, and this is not a doll factory, this is not a normal place of business. Our product here is professional wrestling matches, and people not liking each other and not getting along can actually be positive, as opposed to most work places, where people not getting along detrimental.

Not everybody needs to get along in the pro wrestling business. They don’t need to all be friends to do this. I’ll be honest, a lot of the pro wrestlers don’t like each other, and that’s fine with me. I don’t think people watch wrestling to watch people be friends.

In hindsight, those quotes read a little differently now.