La Zona Muerta

Just a full warning here; despite the good parts of last night’s show, the bad stuff or the too little, too late stuff is really what I’m going to blither about here. If you loved Dynamite… this is probably not going to be your cuppa today.

Don’t get me wrong; there WAS good stuff. If that wasn’t Will Ospreay’s best promo ever last night… it was close. Sure, he was able to lean into local references and stuff a bit, but that’s no crime. Swerve Strickland also deivered what had to be a near if not career best performance on the mic (with a sneering, repulsive Nigel McGuiness channeling his best inner Jesse Ventura). Bryan Danielson FINALLY showed the fire he should have been showing for weeks now. The crowd was amazing, even if it took me a half hour to figure out what the clicking noise was (I guess Welsh footie crowds click their keys together to show appreciation). The good stuff, for me, unfortunately just contrasted and spotlighted the bad:

1. Mercedes Moné on the mic. There is NO WAY she was this bad in WWE. My wife said to me “are you sure she paid for some lady to come in and write for her?” Dreadful. Britt is fine, and I did chuckle when she attacked the imposing Kamille, but… I just don’t have a lot of faith on this one delivering.
2. Saraya Knight on TV having a so-so match with Toni Storm? Oh, perish the thought. It’s contract season, you know, and Saraya wants big money to stay. *cough* I can’t believe they spent so long building up Storm and Mariah May, pulled the trigger on the angle, which had everyone frothing at the mouth for a resolution and then the last month is what we got; their program becoming progressively colder and colder. I don’t even know what I think the “best” outcome would be here. Mayyyyyyyyybe TOni comes out as her old, serious self?
3. The never ending saga of Chris Jericho and HOOK. Another match we’ve already seen, another match that I don’t care about. Let’s say Jericho actually gives HOOK the rub. So what? Where do you go from here?
4. Another time limit draw? They just did one FOUR DAYS AGO on Collision. The last time I complained that they were doing too many of these I was told that AEW has gotten it’s audience used to the idea of a draw as being a valid finish. I don’t agree, and it’s clear that they simply do too many of them, now. I can not imagine Claudio Castagnoli being a political animal, certainly not after his long career of putting everyone and their mom over but in AEW… it feels a little like he’s allergic to leaving his shoulders on the mat. As if there is ANY shame in losing to Kazuchika Okada! The fact that so many big players in AEW are relegated to a dumb Battle Royal on Sunday is appalling. The fact that the boss apparently can’t or won’t tell his people that sometimes some have to lose for the greater picture is appalling. I think my main gripe with All In is how so many of the big names are twiddling their thumbs while Jericho is wrestling HOOK. AGAIN.

A poor equation

1. Of course, I had to save the best (or worst) for last. So I mentioned Ospreay may have had the promo of his life, right? This would have been a really good time for Mr. Maxwell Jacob Friedman to step up, to show us the old Max, to go toe to toe with the young gunslinger Ospreay. Nah. Instead, we got a “you people” and “kangaroo kick” and “who are you, agin?” promo. Just the bottom of his playbook, just the easy, rote stuff he always does. Just dull tedium, sound and fury DEFINITELY signifying NOTHING. “Oh, you did it for the fans? The fans are dumb.” I don’t know what was worse, the part where Max “let slip” that he was mad Ospreay had eclipsed him in the heart of the fans, biting his knuckles as he realized he DUN GOOFED UP (what a Wembley Moment® that will be when they play that back) or the part where max insinuated that Ospreay’s wife will inevitably cheat on him. Oh, and sidebar for a moment… can we talk about that? Can we talk about how this is 2024, not 1984, and cheap heat like that is no longer a fun thing? The Voices of Wrestling boys talk a LOT about “hate and heat,” and yes, absolutely, wrestling programs tend to work better with liberal amounts of both… but I think we need to collectively understand that the old ways don’t always work 100% anymore. I watch wrestling as an escape, not to hear about looming infidelity. There are other ways to arouse Ospreay’s ire if they are so desperate to go the cheap heat route…

“The jerk store called, and they’re running out of you!”

“What’s the difference? You’re their all time best seller!”

“Well, uh… I SLEPT WITH YOUR WIFE!”

I’m standing by my decision not to get All In. They left far too much on the table and didn’t really replace any of the big possibilities with anything worthwile. I’m sure Swerve / Danielson will be good, even great. I’m VERY unsure about how they pick up the pieces from there. This is NOT the time to remove the belt from Swerve. I don’t particularly care about the outcome of MJF / Ospreay, which, again, will probably be great… but I JUST saw them have an hour match (albeit with a fuck finish) on TV. I don’t care about the tag match. I actively am mad about the ladder match (sick of these guys killing themselves on ladders for no good readon; at least it’s for a stadium show, I guess) and the dumb gauntlet. I feel like they certainly did do some build this time for All In… it’s more focussed than last year’s… it’s just that they didn’t really build to anything I was desperate to see. Ces’t la guerre.