La Zona Muerta

I think I’m off the Mox train. I’m not sure I was every fully ON the Mox train, but now I’m off.

Longtime readers will know I don’t particularly care for Jon Moxley; sure, I recognize his value to the company and so forth… he just doesn’t really do it for me on a personal level. I have (mostly) enjoyed NuMox but the company take over / Mox Club / iron sharpens iron angle officially ground to a halt yesterday. Honestly, it probably reached a critical point of no return the night they did the dumb thing with the AEW FRONTLINE, but I’ve been trying to remain open to it. Now, instead of threatening the company at large, the angle largely just seems to be about dominating Orange Cassidy and, to a lesser extent, Darby Allin. We’ll talk about Darby in a bit, but the main event saw OC and his protege, Wheeler YUTA locked in a struggle that was… okay, I guess. Not a blow away match or anything. It sort of ended out of nowhere; OC rolled YUTA up and got the pin, which shocked YUTA. Then the DEATH RIDERS (TM) arrived. They bound OC with duct tape (ooh er, missus) and I figured the play was gonna be that they BEAT WHEELER YUTA TO DEATH FOR LOSING IN FRONT OF A BOUND AND HELPLESS OC. After all, this whole thing is supposed to be about Mox hating complacency, right? Being mad at the young dudes in the back for not stepping up? They beat the LIVING FUCK out of Private Party for like two or three weeks in a row to tell them to toughen up and those cats won tag team gold. Now YUTA has to die for Cassidy’s sins, right? The ultimate mind game, Moxley takes out someone else close to OC and he’s powerless to help?

Nah, they just did a Horsemen beat down. OC survived the onslaught and eventually stood up. The end.

What’s the point? Why is this angle off in it’s own Codyverse universe? Did Moxley turn SUPER HEEL just because Cassidy beat him last year and he wants to avenge that loss? Because that’s what it’s beginning to feel like.

It’s boring. It has no momentum. And it’s not the fault of the crowd or Orange Cassidy’s promos or any of that. There was this huge, company affecting thing that’s now narrowed considerably in scope to just beating up a guy. JUST BEATING UP A GUY IS STANDARD WRESTLING. Moxley killed (all but literally) Bryan Danielson, brainwashed Danielson’s (and Cassidy’s) protege and now they’ll have a match on Saturday. *shrug* So what?

I sure hope they have some crazy post Full Gear plans for this stuff. I’m not big on fantasy booking, but the threat of Moxley and his new found beliefs should be both physical and existential, a genuine concern to the company at large instead of… whatever this is.

I don’t want to bag on Claudio Castagnoli as I enjoy his work so much, and his complete and through drubbing of Darby Allin was spectacular in the literal sense of the word; you couldn’t turn away as Darby was thrashed over and over again… but it feels like maybe Darby should have somehow won? Claudio’s chyron read that he had nine losses and my wife scoffed. “When has he ever lost? I can only think of once or twice.” she said and I have to agree. He feels a little… let’s be nice and say “job-adverse.” We KNOW OC isn’t going to be able to be the one to put down Moxley… it has to be Darby… but Darby can’t even beat the second to last boss, let alone the final one? Adversity and triumph and blah, blah, blah. Like I said, I don’t wanna bag on Claudio and the match was wild, but I didn’t really get it. The point of a heel stable in wrestling is that the babyface has to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to meet the final boss, but Darby apparently wasn’t up to the task. Maybe they meet again, sure. Maybe I’m over thinking, maybe Claudio is the first one to jump up and down and say “PIN ME, PAY ME,” maybe he puts over Allin in incredible fashion at World’s End and builds Darby convincingly for Mox. I dunno. It just all feels off, somehow.

Speaking of which… the never ending saga of Adam Cole / Roderick Strong / Kyle O’Reilly and Maxwell Jacob Friedman continued with Adam slipping further into spray tan hell, KOR delivering a ROUSING speech that would have done well at any middle school debate class and MJF unleashing one of his patented “I use enough real life facts about you to look like I’m shooting” pretapes.

“And you never rest / you just fight the battle of who could care less.” – Ben Folds

Just put Undisputed Whatever they are called back together. Or don’t. At this point, who cares? Online discourse about Cole is basically insufferable, talking about how bad he is now (he isn’t) or how awful he looks physically (he’s clearly unable to train like he used to but he doesn’t look BAD) and then for some reason, he’s just drowning himself in six gallons of spray tan. We imagined him going through a car wash like scenario, with just jets and jets of yellow bronzer gushing out. You could see the splotches all over his hands. It’s like a rib or something; maybe it’s a joke with the boys in the back! I’m not sure what else could explain… this:

That Yellow Bay Bay (sorry Adam, I still like you, I promise)

My thought is that he’ll enter the Continental Classic and hopefully get back on track with the more hardcore folks but MJF ain’t losing to Roddy on Saturday as much as I would like him to, so who knows.

Beyond that, I don’t have a lot of sizzling, burning thoughts. The Callis Family stuff is still heating up well and the next point in the road will obviously have to be Mark Davis turning to rejoin Kyle Fletcher. That should be fun. My only real gripe there is I want to see Konosuke Takeshita featured more heavily. The Hurt Syndicate angle with Swerve Strickland… man, everyone seems to love it. I’m a bit less won over (to put it mildly) but I did howl MIGHTILY at Big Bobby Lashley taking on Joe Keyes and CHEESEBURGER, of all people. Lashley, why didn’t you hurl ‘Burger into the fourth row for me? I promise to start liking Shelton Benjamin matches if you do! At least this week, Swerve managed to outsmart this motley crew… but I’m gonna be bummed when he’s looking up at the lights on Saturday. Still, people are digging it, even if I’m only lukewarm.

Oh, one thing before I go where I do think AEW dropped the ball pretty badly… on Saturday’s episode of Collision, they had a fun bit of business where Jungle Scapegoat Jack Perry randomly absconded with the body of Matt “Daddy Magic” Menard during a Daniel Garcia match. The action switched to an absolutely ludicrous and hilarious pretape where Jack drug Matt outside and threatened to drag him from behind his short bus with a length of chain and a SODOMY HOOK. If it sounds like I’m making fun of this, I’m not (well, maybe a little); it genuinely got a huge laugh and enjoyment out of the denizens of Casa de Convoy. Eventually Garcia arrived to turn the tide, and Jack was lashed to the front of the short bus (“Where to, Stephanie?”) and driven out of the arena; we did not get to see the aftermath until Dynamite. Menard on commentary solemnly intoned “I’m not proud of this, fellas,” even though he presumably shot the tape and turned it into the truck to air, and we got to see what happened next.

Jack Perry was tied to a chair, not unlike the infamous scene in Reservoir Dogs where Michael Madsen takes a razor blade to Kirk Baltz’ ear and cuts it off. After some posturing, Jack laughed and pointed out Daniel didn’t have the guts to do anything drastic… Daniel said he was just there to wrestle, but then grabbed a crow bar, hit one of the headlights on the short bus and finally gave up and left while Jack laughed “is that it?” Matt Menard yelled “We’ll horse whip your ass!” at Perry in his inimitable fashion but then left, too. OOOOOH, PATHOS AND THE INNER STRUGGLE AGAINST EVIL.

Is that it, indeed. This was a TERRIBLE follow-up to what had been a fun, little angle. A complete miss. “I’M NOT PROUD OF THIS, FELLAS!” Nor should you be. I am not completely adverse to a little “sports entertainment” when it’s fun and I thought on Saturday this was great and built my interest in the match. Now? OH NO, GARCIA IS GRAPPLING WITH HIS EVIL INNER CHILD OR WHATEVER. Yuck.

I’m mostly looking forward to the PPV; Hangman Adam Page and Jay White should be even better than the last time, Fletcher and Ospreay will be worth the price of admission, Swerve will give us a show and who knows whatever else wacky they have cooked up… I just hope that the Continental Classic lifts us up out of the doldrums a bit and the big Mox deal regains some focus. 2024 has been a pretty mixed bag for AEW and I’d like to see them stick the landing.