La Zona Muerta

Scuttling around my various internet haunts yesterday, there was a weird vibe. I mean, there usually is after an AEW Pay Per View, successful or not, but there’s generally a feeling of “I hope they follow up all the cool stuff that happened” mixed with some “this company can’t promote, what are they doing,” a pinch of “shut up, this show looks like fire” (followed with three fire emojis) and a soupçon of “oh my god, the ratings, AEW was in the mud last week! MUUUUD.” I found all of these various feelings and viewpoints yesterday, to be sure, but also with a large undercurrent of “this show better be a home run, or…” as if WBD was going to renege on the new rights deal or something. All day long, people were bitching, some rightfully, some foolishly about venue sizes and tickets and lineups and fake lineups and blah blah blah. I could really feel the mild optimism I came away with for AEW last week deflate a bit.

As negative as I get (and you know by know, despite my seemingly friendly nature and generally fairly lukewarm HOT TAKES, I am fairly pessimistic by nature), I REFUSE to sit there and fantasy book reasons why the show will be bad. LIFE IS TOO SHORT. Some shows will be better than others, be it due to travel issues, injuries / sickness, the amount of drugs available to the creative team creative… that’s just the way it is.

All of that being said, I did not love last night’s edition of Dynamite. I’m not even really sure if I liked it. I don’t think it was the weird vibe of internet commentary getting me down; it was how the show came off. I enjoyed parts of it, to be sure, but I’m a little worried about certain things.

I may as well skip right to the heart of the matter. We had three NuBCC (or whatever) segments. I’m not begrudging that; NuBCC is going to be the driving force behind the shows for awhile until Darby Allin unseats Jon Moxley. The first segment was the by now traditional preshow pretape with music. People seem to LOVE these. It was fine; NuBCC got in a truck Saturday night and got the hell out of Dodge (or Tacoma). Mox looked at us and solemnly intoned that all the wrestlers in AEW work for him now. I’m not really sure what that means. He again went on about complacent people in the back happy to be there and earn paychecks, which I’m sure there’s an element of truth to but I don’t know if I’d want to point that out. He pointed out that he HATED AEW and was willing to burn it all down to reseed it. REFORESTATION TIME WITH JON MOXLEY, BAY BAY. This was fine, but I get that sinking feeling a little bit when they talk about the company being bad. They showed Wheeler YUTA looking pensive. Hold onto that thought.

Segment two happened about halfway through the show. The Elite were taking on The Conglomeration, playing off of the confrontation (of sorts) on Saturday between Kyle O’Reilly and Kazuchika Okada. One assumes they meet at the nest PPV? The match started heating up and went through a break… but as Orange Cassidy tried to mount a comeback… YUTA suddenly appeared and blitzed OC with the Busaiku Knee. The rest of NuBCC came out and ran roughshod. YUTA, by the way, showed absolutely NONE of the remorse or reticence he had on Saturday or in the pretape. The AEW FRONTLINE (now apparently consisting of Dark Order and Top Flight) tried to save the day as Tony Schiavone underwent a startling transformation and became Tony Schiavone from thirty years ago. “THAT MAN ORANGE CASSIDY IS THE LEADER OF AEW! HE’S BEEN THE MAN WE ALL RALLY BEHIND! FOR FIVE YEARS, HE’S BEEN THE MAN WE LOOK TO!”

What?

This guy?

You can’t deny that Cassidy has been anything but a stalwart member of the AEW roster, and SURE, I suppose you could say he’s the “leader” of the Conglomeration, I GUESS, but Schiavone was screaming about this like the New World Order had pinned down Sting or maybe more accurately Lex Luger (someone else is gonna be Sting in this particular story) in 1996. The exact same way, same cadence, even the same WORDS. It was really weird and Tony Khan is too big of a wrestling dork to not see that… therefore I have to think it must have been done at his behest. “Talk about this attack like you did about the NWO in 1996, Schiavone!”

I found it bizarre and honestly, a bit off-putting.

Anyway, the Elite noped the fuck out and got out of the ring. Dark Order yelled at them, asking why they weren’t helping. Obviously, you could eventually turn the Elite back face this way if this stuff lasts long enough but in the short term, it’s already annoying. “WHY WON’T YOU HELP US?” “We’re bad guys. Duh.”

The final NuBCC segment was towards the end of the show and even MORE NWO-like. NuBCC were still beating up Top Flight and Dark Order somewhere in the back, presumably for the last half hour without surcease. Imagine if that were real and the wrestlers had to come up with interesting things to do during the fight for thirty minutes non stop! YUTA again was a completely unrepentant heel here, hitting John Silver with kidney punches. Action Andretti did a flippy doo off of a tall thing. For whatever reason, although they had the upper hand, NuBCC got in their getaway truck and bailed out. Evil Uno cut an impassioned promo about Moxley taking food off of their tables and wanting to fight. Silver ran after the getaway truck EXACTLY LIKE WHEN MACHO MAN RAN AFTER THE LIMO AFTER THE NWO LAWNDARTED REY MYSTERIO IN 1996. I was BEGGING for the camera to cut to Rey Fenix lying in a heap moaning the word “QUATRO” over and over again.

The final segment was where this jumped the shark for me. It was much too much like 1996 Nitro, and as someone who lived through that, not via bad punditry and gifs, but through actually watching those shows, I’m not keen to relive them. NWO was cool… until it wasn’t and the time it took for them to become uncool was a LOT faster than you may remember. I’m sure Moxley can pull it back to be not so derivative, but if all this is going to amount to is NWO 2024… much like the Elite, I want no part of it.

Sigh. So much for optimism.

The other thing I found irksome on this show is very much going to be a your mileage may vary type thing. Shelton Benjamin debuted and beat the (officially re-signed) Lio Rush. Right now, when AEW is trying to “restore the feeling,” when they are trying to (presumably) not be like WWE, the last thing AEW needs to is put over a forty eight year old dude from outside the company over a twenty eight year old one (yes, I know what happened in the main event, and I don’t love that either but that at least served a story). It’ll be even worse when BIG BOB LASHLEY comes in and beats Swerve in their first match, but at least there, Swerve will ultimately triumph. Lio is… I don’t want to say a flake because that isn’t fair, but he has had issues in AEW in the past and hell, maybe he has some residual heat from that past. I don’t know; I’m not talking to Tony Khan on the phone or anything. My point is that, even if Lio left the company under acrimonious circumstances in the past, he’s back, he’s rehired and 99.99% of the people watching don’t know he left under a cloud and just see him as this cool, young, fast guy who does neat shit. Shelton’s best year in American wrestling was nearly 20 years ago. I realize you don’t beat Shelton right away, obviously… he needs to have credibility, but then put him over LOCAL TALENT and not a young up and comer who could potentially be something for your company! I realize this won’t bother most of you, maybe any of you, but Lio isn’t gonna get a win back. Obviously he’s talented enough to overcome that but I’m very, VERY leery of AEW putting old WWE lifers over young guys (see Billy Gunn vs. Jay White, Edge vs. Daniel Garcia, etc. etc.). The match itself was fine… Shelton still looks like Shelton… he was a little blown up by the end but whatever. There was a segment earlier with MVP sort of recruiting and he ran into the Acclaimed. My immediate thought was PLEASE SAVE ANTHONY BOWENS FROM THE ACCLAIMED but I won’t get my hopes up.

The rest of the show…? Adam Cole came back and told us that he knew he was getting into bed with a snake when it came to MJF. As a fan, you can either buy that and move on or you can’t. I’m reasonably onboard with hand waving the whole “Devil” thing. MJF promised that he would never wrestle Cole ever again. If only (I kid, I kid). FTR did some stuff with the Learning whatever and, I dunno, the Outrunners came out or something. I was bored and started doodling. Mark Briscoe vs. Chris Jericho MUST CONTINUE, and everyone who fell all over themselves to praise Jericho for cleanly putting an opponent over (including yours truly) may wish to pump the breaks.

Don Callis SAVED THE SHOW (for me, anyway) with a TREMENDOUS “press conference” where KING OF MEN KONOSUKE TAKESHITA growled in English and Japanese that he will defend his international title all over the world. I generally pay attention to Callis stuff… Has Brian Cage been an official part of the Callis family before and I just didn’t notice? I know he was in the Street of Rage match and has served as a hired hand before. Anyway, I guess he is official now, and he’s gonna form a HOSS team with Lance Archer. HELL YEAH. Then Kyle Fletcher WHO WAS EMOTIONALLY TRAUMATIZED BY THE EVENTS OF SATURDAY came out and got a CALLIS HUG. Just fantastic. This was countered by Ricochet saying that Konosuke Takeshita needs to have good matches or something to prove he’s a champion. HAVE YOU WATCHED HIS OUTPUT FOR THIS COMPANY OR DDT OR NEW JAPAN, YOU WWE REJECT. Ahem.

The main event saw Jay White and Christian tie it up in a match marred by lots of interference and commercials. I mean, you had Kip Sabian dorking around the periphery (WHERE IS MIRO WHEN YOU NEED HIM), the Patriarchy, Bullet Club Gold… it was a bit much. Anyway, the interference I actually liked and enjoyed was at the end when SNEAKYMAN ADAM PAGE absolutely LEVELED Jay with a Buckshot Lariat before, I swear to Gotch above, PLANKING DOWN BY THE RING APRON. Somehow, the planking rendered him COMPLETELY INVISIBLE TO DETECTION. The new king of sneaky style, folks! Jay losing to Christian leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, but the idea of him feuding with Hanger is good.

So, all in all, another odd Dynamite. They did actually set up some matches on other shows and PROMOTE (gasp! choke!) other dates which is a slight step forward, I suppose. Nothing in ring particularly grabbed me and I was largely bored until probably the final thirty or forty minutes. I suppose the Elite / Conglomeration match was starting to get somewhere but obviously that ended up just being a storytelling device, not a match. Not dooming… I just didn’t feel this show. It felt a bit unfocussed and the bits that DID have focus felt weird or are treading well trod territory.

Also? I’m BEGGING one of the wrestlers sometime to say to Renee Paquette “hey, why is your husband killing us and sending people to the hospital?” instead of her standing there trying to stifle a laugh.