La Zona Muerta

No, not Swerve’s house. That guy is great.

There are two AEWs. There’s the AEW where Will Ospreay and Kyle O’Reilly kill each other for twenty five minutes; the AEW that casually put on that ridiculously great battle royal gauntlet, the AEW where world class wrestlers like Roderick Strong and Swerve Strickland struggle for ring supremacy.

Then there’s the AEW where they want you to follow a QR code for Mercedes Moné’s latest merch drop; the AEW where a set refresh merits podcast interviews and a press release, the AEW where MJF relentlessly buries his opponents without giving them anything back, the AEW where wrestlers stand in the back, watching the monitor at an inhuman, non perpendicular angle, the AEW where the announcers are too busy fucking around to really welcome back a wrestler who has been missing from TV for six months.

Guess which AEW I prefer? C’mon, guess.

I dunno. Dynamite was all right, I suppose. Yes, the blistering, sizzling hot takes you come here for; the show was okay. I just don’t have that much to say about the show, save some stuff that irked me.

It is super clear, no matter how much people I like and respect say to the contrary, that Maxwell Jacob Friedman learned NOTHING from his disastrous title reign. He thinks good business is to just bury people. Kazuchika Okada sucks because he’s from the Japanese company MJF doesn’t like and isn’t on as many drugs as MJF is to get that nice body doesn’t go to the gym, Swerve sucks because he needs to take classes in communication (?), Ospreay is a dumb dumb, bruv (okay, maybe he’s got SOMETHING there) and MJF has beaten all of your favorites so therefore he’s the best.

It’s an annoying, old timey wrestling axiom, but it’s a true one… if your opponent sucks, if they are irredeemably lame, what is the point of beating them? Either you beat a no hope goober with no ability or, worse yet, if they beat you, YOU were beaten by a no hope goober, and what the hell does that make you?

Max, in his tirade, burying the entire roster, Swerve, New Japan and all points in-between, did SORT OF take a moment to “put over” RUSH (and I use the term “put over” in the loosest possible sense… he acknowledged the fact that he had purchased RUSH’s services before because RUSH is a dangerous man) but then we got like two minutes of schtick about how he couldn’t understand RUSH’s accent. LOL HE’S FOREIGN AMIRITE. Just lowest common denominator stuff, right up there with anything WWE does when a star is up against someone from another country. Total turn off, total way to NOT build up a match. A pull apart doesn’t cut it. Why do I want to see that match? RUSH is an idiot who can’t speak simple English, according to Max.

The other thing that was particularly annoying was the constant backstage adventures of Chris Jericho where his new character, the disingenuous guy who over explains everything to anyone who will listen, in, I don’t know, at least three or four segments, maybe more. They took the already obnoxious character and turned up the irritation factor by at least several notches. I don’t know who’s chops they are meant to be busting, what scalp they are trying to collect with this character anymore. Is it all a rib on CM Punk? Who cares? It’s so inside that I, someone who owns VOLUMES of the Wrestling Observer, who’s read the fabled Figure Four Glossary of Insider Terms, someone who ACTUALLY OCCASIONALLY TALKS TO PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS, would need a fucking Rosetta Stone to decode the references. SOMEONE thinks this is great, but it’s sure not me.

“Well, it was Japan, so I had to get big.”

I’m torn about praising or burying the return of Wheeler YUTA; not on HIS part; he looked great and even picked up a win for his team… but the announcers sure dicked around a lot and read the notes that were meant to put him over but didn’t really put him over, if you see what I mean. I generally am a fan of the laid back AEW announcing, and Excalibur, later did a very good job explaining who the cats from CMLL were (and sort of explained the CMLL continuity flub of those four men teaming, as well, three teammates and a frenemy)… but there was a lot of grab ass and dumbness re: YUTA and his return. I think they realized they were dicking around too much and tried to course correct later, since YUTA was the one who was going to go over.

I’m starting to hate Blackpool Combat Club; only one guy seems to lose, and when BCC DOES lose it’s not always because they lost via pinfall. GIVE CMLL SOMETHING IF THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THESE AWESOME RIVALS. I fail to see why AEW has these great relationships with everyone; other than exposure, outsiders don’t get a whole heck of a lot.

They probably need to explain better what the Elite’s role backstage is if Tony Khan is back, but… I feel like I’ll get a migraine if I tug too hard on that particular thread. They are still wacky and entertaining, so that’s something.

The other nit to pick would be the fact that, although Forbidden Door was mentioned a lot… there wasn’t a lot of build for it. I really have no idea what cool matches we will get, if any, and if it weren’t for the intrigue of Swerve facing Ospreay, I think I might have skipped the show this year.