La Zona Muerta

Warning: post contains rambling, potential gatekeeping, eye rolling and gushing, plus rampant speculation. Very much a first draft, stream of consciousness thing. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

When I woke up this morning, a buddy of mine had posted a reaction (likely from someone a lot younger than I) from a person over the weekend, pertaining to All Out:

“Violence has no place in professional wrestling. This is performance art, not hate”

Wow.

This person clearly does NOT watch wrestling for the same reason I do.

AEW… look. I hate being part of the AEW defense brigade sometimes. AEW does shit wrong. A LOT of shit wrong. What they deserve, though, is a level playing field, a place where criticism is fair, and man, do they not get that AT ALL, even up to the highest level of professional wrestling criticism.

They put on a tremendous pay per view on Saturday, not flawless, but fantastic from almost top to bottom and they still can’t catch a break.

AEW have signed their TV deal with WBD but because it hasn’t been officially announced on WRESTLING FANS’ TIME, it’s not good enough.

These fuckers can’t catch a break, man.

Instead of the discourse being about AEW delivering an all time pay per view on Saturday, much like the last time Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland had a match, the talk is all about “did they go too far?” A feud where one guy broke into the other’s house, and then one guy BLEW UP the other guy’s house… and we’re stuck here asking if things went too far. I saw someone, presumably in good faith, but it’s awful hard to tell these days, saying that he wasn’t sure if he could show this show to his children. If you had seen the previous match or anything leading up to this match, you would have known they were going to try to top their previous encounters, right?

Apparently, the spot that has caused everyone to freak out was one of the safer ones in the match; at one point, Hangman Page pokes Serve’s cheek with a hypodermic needle. Gross, visceral, but ultimately fairly safe.

This, of course, has everyone up in arms. “A CZW deathmatch,” I saw someone say.

Sigh.

The spot everyone SHOULD be upset about was Swerve being powerbombed onto a fucking REAL CINDER BLOCK, in no way gimmicked. THAT was dumb and made me scream out loud. The needle was gross but not really dangerous. An impact on the spine is something you can (and maybe should) wring your hands over! As always, we want to yell at AEW, but not over the right thing.

The other incident that was pretty heavy on the show besides the Swerve / Hangman match was a big angle after the Bryan Danielson / Jack Perry match. By the way, I thought that match was one of the two slightly disappointing matches on the card (the other being Mercedes and Hikaru Shida)… I don’t know. It wasn’t heatless or anything, but Danielson didn’t blow me away and I’m not sure Perry rose to the occasion. It would have been a good TV match, I guess. Anyway, the big angle post match was Moxley seemingly rejoining the Blackpool Combat Club but then turning on Danielson, and asphyxiating him with a plastic bag to declare… intent? Disappointment? Who knows… but it was compelling as shit.

People are losing their minds over this, and I assume the quote above from the person who didn’t want “violence” in professional wrestling was specifically referring to either this bag thing or the needle spot.

If the bag is too far for you, fine. If you think it’s AEW coming up with something random, desperately seeking attention, fuck you. Terry Funk did this in 1989 live on a Clash of the Champions on TBS. Does that excuse this? I don’t think an excuse is necessary. JONATHAN GOOD DID NOT ACTUALLY ATTEMPT TO MURDER BRYAN DANIELSON any more than, I dunno, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds did during the filming of Deadpool and Wolverine. Let’s put it another way; just because YOU can’t make the distinction between a simulated act of violence on TV and a real one doesn’t mean there isn’t a distinction. It was a stunt performed by two consenting performers.

Sorry, but in ring: NWA > WWF and AEW > WWE, and if there is a crazy, violent angle… good! AEW needs the shot in the arm right now and will benefit from changing a boring, moribund BCC to a new, more focussed heel Moxley and co.

Now I’m seeing this morning that AEW is unsafe to bring children to and other criticism of that ilk. I’d say that’s on the parents bringing their kids to the culmination of a year long feud where things had gotten well out of hand. “Will a *checks notes* unsanctioned cage match be violent?” I had a friend who took his son to the show and actually shielded his kid’s eyes during the needle spot… he’s a good parent who isn’t blaming AEW for some sort of imagined negligence. He decided that was a bit much for his kid to see and he covered his kid’s eyes.

That should really be the end of the discussion, right there, but it’s AEW so of course it won’t be. My friend exercised perfect dad-ly judgement and shielded his child from the thing he didn’t want his child to see. Would be that all the other parents who supposedly took their kids and were allegedly offended could do the same.

Anyway, the discourse was dumb. As usual.

So, the other thing. The TV deal is done but might have a component none of us suspected… at the scrum (abbreviated to sell the gravitas of the bag angle and the cage match), Tony repeatedly mentioned the word Shockwave.

He was not referring to this guy:

Is Shockers replacing the FOX football robot?

AEW registered a trademark for “Shockwave” the other day, as well. So the interesting thing is that Big Dave alluded to WWE possibly making a mistake on the last episode of SmackDown on FOX by thanking them for being their broadcast partner for the past few years. Is Shockwave a new show slated for FOX?

My feelings are VERY mixed on this one.

Keeping in mind we do NOT know what Shockwave is going to be yet, assuming it is indeed a new show for FOX (or more likely FS1):

I mean good for them, of course, diversify across multiple delivery vectors and get that bag, but Collision, more often than not, sort of… I guess the best way to put it would be “doesn’t utilize it’s time well.” It’s rare where I come away from an episode of Collision the same way I do from a good episode of Dynamite. I’ve long been a Rampage defender; I like that being a quirky little show with some goofballs and then usually one or two strong matches, but Collision has never fully clicked with me.

Now, of course, we don’t know yet what Shockwave will be (besides a flying purple space gun, that is)… but AEW is so soft right now that I would be concerned if they add another show to their touring schedule. The market is not demanding MORE AEW content even if TV partners are. Do they have the talent to do THREE shows (plus ROH and Rampage). I suppose… but they will likely also be increasing the PPVs. I genuinely think that besides Punk’s meltdown, of course, Collision is sort of where it started to go wrong for AEW a bit; they didn’t seem to have much idea for it besides “it’s the CM Punk show,” and he ain’t there no mo’. They sometimes struggle to move tickets for and it often feels vestigial unless it’s a PPV week.

Would it be hilarious if they had a show on FOX (and again, lower expectations; it would likely be FS1)? Yes, of course. A black eye for the other guys? Yeah, a bit… but I really, REALLY want them to shore up what they HAVE before they expand AGAIN without a game plan.

Anyway. AEW discourse bad. AEW good… for now. AEW media deal, likely very good. Hope everything is on MAX.