La Zona Muerta

What the… ?! Doing this on a Wednesday morning? My whole rhythm is thrown off. I should be playing Balatro or something, wiling away the half hour before I have to turn on my work computer. Oops, I’m peeling back the curtain a bit too far.

I don’t know if I have much to say about Dynamite itself as much as I do things adjacent to it. The show was okay, I guess. Kinda promo heavy, kinda younger person heavy. I was a little surprised Bryan Danielson didn’t LOSE on his way to Saturday’s show. Of course, I’m surprised by a lot of things. I was glad to see Emi Sakura, but why didn’t they have her beating some gals on TV on her way to fighting Mercedes Moné? Danny Garcia is back and here to stay, but why didn’t they have him come rescue Wheeler YUTA (his indy rival and the guy the BCC passed him up for) and Danielson (the guy who Garcia has a HUGE past with?) to cement his babyface-osity and return to the company? Why was Jeff Jarrett and his multi-colored bag of wrestling cliches on commentary? And, perhaps most surprising of all… why on Earth did they run Spokane (or as Jarrett said at least once last night, SPOW KAINE)?

Lemme clue you in if you are not a Northwesterner… Spokane is not merely just down the road from Seattle or anything like that. On Saturday, they will undoubtedly say things like “from the shadow of the Space Needle in Seattle” or whatever to “explain” Tacoma to a national audience… but Spokane is a completely different kettle of fish. It’s distant, with mountains. treacherous roads and an entirely different climate barring the way. For those of us in Western Washington, Eastern Washington may as well be on the MOON, so different is life there. Eastern Washington is a place of heat and dust and anger where weirdos every once in awhile try to genuinely get ginned up about SUCCESSION (and I don’t mean the TV show), a place far different than the green and pleasant land I live in. Fair play to the wrestling fans in SPOW KAINE, though… the few that made it to the show were boisterous and seemed to really dig it, bless their hearts. In the past, I have been internet friendly with AEW head of numbers Chris (Mookieghana) Harrington… and I know that once, AEW used to pick where they went based on a calculus we couldn’t see, involving buy rates and ticket sales and interest. I find it hard to believe that those Venn diagrams overlapped and said “Hey yo, book Spokane!” I can only assume that, logistically, bringing the full AEW loadout to the PNW made more logistical sense with a stop along the way… but seriously, Eastern Washington? You may as well book Idaho, and I don’t say that as a knock; I say it earnestly. Perhaps no major venues were available? Obviously, it’s a side of things we don’t get to see and there is more going on than we know about, but it seems so arbitrary. Danny Garcia is back, and he’s announcing he’s back in a place near and dear to his heart *checks notes*: Spokane, Washington! (A certain, cock sure group of “analysts” or whatever they purport themselves to be in da mud, by the way, in regards to the landing point of young Garcia.They have been dooming about him going to NXT for MONTHS.)

Sure, booking Spokane seems odd, but it sort of dovetails with their booking of late; it feels like AEW is booking TV time simply to fill time. Oh, I’m sure the top guys have actual booking plans… Swerve, the (former?) BCC, etc. Those guys have some sort of end goal in mind… but everything else seems like it’s MYSTERY VORTEX TELEVISION, just stuff thrown together to fill contractual TV hours. Take my Emi Sakura example above… would it have killed them to put her on Rampage and Collision last week or a week prior to kill some local talent real quick? If she wasn’t available… why not hold off on a Mercedes match? I hope now that Penelope Ford is seemingly back in the mix that they actually remind audiences who the heck she is and they do something with her instead of just having another body to throw at Moné or worse, Mariah May. By the way, can I say what a ROTTEN job May did on commentary last night? Those of you that like her… I can’t see it with her AT ALL, character-wise, in ring, interviews. ALL BAD.

Hopefully they actually have a plan of action in mind with Jay White, another guy making his way back to TV after an absence. This is a man too good to be languishing in AEW’s midcard. He and Hangman this Saturday will be excellent and frankly, tipped my balance to me buying the show. I’m not particularly interested in Swerve having a talking segment with MVP (and presumably getting beat up by Bobby Lashley) or Danielson being killed by Jon Moxley (even if the new Moxley character is fun, he’s still just Mox in the ring and I’m frankly sick of Danielson and his “will his body last one more match?” stuff) but I’m sure the show will be fine. They’ve got the fat rights deal in place, people are coming off of the injured list and some things are starting to shape up. I just wish that AEW TV was firing on all cylinders and singing like it used to.