La Zona Muerta

Shout out to the late, great Buddy Wayne. A big regret of my life is that I never got to meet him.

Also, I must offer a belated mea culpa to the people of Everett, Washington. On Monday morning, I wrote the following:

“At any rate, Vancouver was a terrific crowd, up for everything, even through Rampage. Bless their hearts. I, uh… I don’t expect the same out of Everett this week. We’ll see.”

I’m a big man… big enough to admit that I WAS WRONG. Everett loved them some Dynamite. Didn’t catch the ticket sales; I’m sure the sky IS STILL PERPETUALLY FALLING in regards to tickets (a forum I’m on says that them selling only around seven thousand of the currently eight thousand tickets out for Forbidden Door, a show over 45 days from now with ZERO MATCHES ANNOUNCED is somehow bad), but the crowd looked and sounded great on TV, so *shrug*.

Was it a great in-ring show? A lot of people thought so; I’m not a huge fan of Jon Moxley or Dax Harwood, so I was not especially gripped by the opening or closing matches. Similarly, I’m not a big Brian Cage guy, so the long Swerve match that began hour two wasn’t really my favorite thing, but I must hasten to add all three matches were good… just on my personal barometer of enjoyment… *waves hand noncommittally*. It was a pretty talky / angle heavy show, and that’s fine. I do hate stuff like “contract signings” and “face to face” confrontations being prominently advertised, but, to give AEW their credit, one of the two “face to face” confrontations was actually really good, and while the contract signing sorta sucked and had one of the talent use the word “TitanTron,” it ended with someone taking a Doctor Bomb through a table, so I can’t be too mad about that.

A couple of irritating sticking points for me… AEW did something that WWE does when they are embarrassed about a location they are running… instead of just embracing where they are, they constantly had to say that it was adjacent to the big city the folks in Peoria may have heard of. So, instead of being in Everett, Washington, we had to hear about how Dynamite was emanating from THE SHADOW OF SEATTLE. They said this at least twice and someone later pointed out how Swereve was from Tacoma, right down the road (Swerve is actually from Ft. Lewis, a military base outside of Tacoma, and only lived in Tacoma a short time before moving, since he was an Army brat. It’s like me saying I’m from Juneau, Alaska… I AM, but I lived there for like under five months before my parents moved to Seattle, where I have lived my entire life). Amazingly, the only correct application of distance was given by evil foreigner CHRISTIAN CAGE, of all people, who correctly pointed out that Buddy Wayne’s house was just down the road from the Angel of the Winds (?) arena. Everett is probably around an hour and a half outside of Seattle.

Anyway, tired, old man rant aside… Swerve was a king of men here, just BELOVED. I have friends and acquaintances, smart ones, smarter than me when it comes to this sort of thing who look at segment placements and time cues and all sorts of metrics, who aren’t always pleased with how AEW has or has not got behind Swerve as champ, but… I have to say that, if you’re just looking at the TV product, Swerve appears OVER AS FUCK and the angles he’s been in, even if you don’t rate Christian as a good challenger, have been strong, really good.

Excuse me; I’m out of breath from generating that run-on sentence.

A lot of people get mad about AEW’s lack of follow up to things and while, sure, sometimes that’s true… they honestly are REALLY good about picking up certain little details and tying them back in. Swerve is now a good guy, due to the crowd treating him like one, but the reality (of his character) is that he did some questionable things to get here to this point. He really DID break into Buddy Wayne’s garage and smash a picture of Buddy and his son over Nick Wayne’s head, so here it comes back to bite him on the ass. His treatment of the Mogul Embassy? Came back to haunt him. The shit with Hangman will, too.

A great man… but where the Hell is Prince Nana, dammit?

The Young Bucks continued their reign of terror and FUTURE ENDEAVORED CHRISTOPHER DANIELS. The fiends! I’d imagine when Kenny Omega or Tony Khan come back, Daniels will be standing there smugly with his job back, wielding his company key fob placard like Ian Faith in the end of “This is Spinal Tap” wielding his cricket bat.

Eddie Kingston is out of the Anarchy in the Arena match (he may have been legitimately injured on the New Japan Strong Pay Per View, I’m not sure, but they did do an injury angle if nothing else)… and we had to wait until the end of the show to see his replacement. Again, being in the SHADOW OF SEATTLE, a fairly canny replacement was chosen… the indomitable Darby Allen. Came broken foot, bus accident or dumb facial tattoo… nothing will stop this man, bless his Jackass-inspired heart.

So, a good, strong episode of the show that certainly helped set up Double or Nothing. I did want to shout out the Roderick Strong / Will Ospreay “face to face verbal confrontation” or whatever they billed it as. Ospreay was very good, but Roddy, of all people was GREAT, just screaming in Ospreay’s face, telling him that he had zero respect for what Ospreay has done in wrestling and that he’s still the same, stupid kid he’s always been. Folks, this was an EXCELLENT little piece of business.

Bless Roderick Strong AND his neck.

So, before I go, always remember, from the SHADOW OF SEATTLE (literally; the city limit sign is like two blocks away from my crummy apartment):

Rossy 13:10 Arrest Rossy Big Dawgs

I dunno exactly what that means but I but TK liked it.