La Zona Muerta

Sorry I didn’t grind out a Full Gear review.

Honestly, I didn’t really have any great takes, lukewarm or otherwise coming out of Full Gear, and I knew it would be covered to death, anyway. The show largely went how I figured; oh, they could have killed Orange Cassidy a bit more dramatically, and maybe the ending thing with Christian teasing cashing in The List of Jericho or whatever his little clipboard is called was a bit dumb… and maybe the chaos ending with the car crashes and laundry bins and ambulances skateboards and getaway cars was a lot dumb but… *shrug*. Maybe I’m getting numb to the 200X WWE Universe mode feeling of it all. WHO RAN OVER TEDDY LONG IN THE PARKING LOT?

I was happier that AEW finally released the Continental Classic participants and bracket info Sunday night if only because it finally put an end to the constant bitching about same (actually it didn’t; people were STILL upset because it came out too late at night or whatever and at some point, you just have to realize you can’t please people). There; content makers rejoice! I’m a lousy bracket filler and fantasy booker so I abstained from comment there, too.

Then, for yet more crunchy discourse with a chewy outrage center, there was a tremendously dumb kerfuffle with Ricky Starks appearing at a GCW show and then being pulled from subsequent appearances because a loudmouth wrestler who works for GCW, trying to paint AEW in a bad light, said some pretty shitty things and, on top of that, the owner of GCW, a fool, said some dumb stuff to try to babyface himself against the big, bad corporation. PLAY STUPID GAMES, WIN STUPID PRIZES. A lot of bandwidth was consumed by these things these last few days so LUKEWARM TAKES were kind of on the backburner. You genuinely need a Full Gear opinion from me? Uh… watch the Ospreay / Fletcher match. Chef recommends. Duh.

Fortunately, Dynamite this Thanksgiving Eve was good, even very good. One has to wonder… do the twenty eight or so people who are allegedly in “the Room” with Tony, helping him create the show every week, hate this time of year since half the show is devoted to the Continental Classic, which carries a fairly literal guarantee of bullshit-free in ring wrestling? That’s a lot of people sitting on their hands.

One thing about the CC or C² (never the “Connie,” as I saw someone call it earlier… ye gods) that chafes… it has an iron clad “NO ONE AT RINGSIDE” rule, one that is apparently backed by threat of termination. YOUR ASS WILL BE FIRED IF YOU INTERFERE.

Of course, one year, they could probably put that to the test for some real heat (HEAT® Bully Ray Griftlord Enterprises, all rights reserved) but the thing that bugs me is this…

Why is the Continental Classic so fucking sacrosanct that you can have NO ONE at ringside, there can be NO interference…

BUT THE REST OF THE TIME IS OPEN FUCKING SEASON? They can enforce the rules super strictly once a year (and, I suppose during any Continental Title matches) but the rest of the time it’s Stay Puft Marshmallow costumes, car crashes, backstage beatdowns, match interference and house burnings? It’s not THAT big of a deal but it’s just sort of a head scratcher to me, a bit difficult to willingly suspend disbelief for.

Anyway, all three CC matches tonight were solid affairs. I suspect most of them will be. It can’t be much of a surprise that new toy experienced tournament veteran Shelton Benjamin went over Mark Briscoe, one of two likely main pin eaters (the other being the reviled Juice Robinson, at least reviled by yours truly and all good hearted people). I’m still fairly ambivalent on Shelton but the crowd and the internet have already made their mind up; they love him and he can apparently do no wrong. The Hurt Syndicate act is almost begging already to turn face… the crowd figured out tonight that there is a SING ALONG OPPORTUNITY (sort of like a title opportunity, one supposes) in the Hurt Syndicate theme song and were happily chanting along and cheering for MVP until MVP reminded them that Swerve Strickland is their mortal enemy. The crowd came back down to Earth a bit after that but obviously, much like when they went underutilized in WWE, people like big ass kickers and want to see them, well, you know. Heelish or not, the Hurt Syndicate won’t be heels for long.

Speaking of Swerve, he did the greatest thing all time all my life and committed Castercide on the obnoxious wannabe edgelord Max Caster. Caster walked by during a Swerve interview, snickering. Swerve then utilized what I can only refer to as an OUTDOOR VOICE and asked “YO, MY MAN, WHAT’S SO FUNNY?” and I HOWLED with laughter. Caster tried to, I dunno, rap or something and got HELLMURDERED for his trouble, just beaten and kicked and mauled. We cheered. The crowd cheered. Almost everyone I know online cheered. MAX CASTER, UNITING PEOPLE SINCE 2024.

Chris Jericho and Tomohiro Ishii had a hard hitting match for the ROH World Championship. Hope this is leading to an ROH TV deal if only to actually get ROH truly up and running again. Jericho seems to be settling into that kind of Minoru Suzuki “I can’t really do a whole lot anymore, but I’m still a tough, old guy” mode and slugged it out with Ishii, a tough, old guy himself. I’m not going to sit here and tell you Jericho looked awful… but I’m not going to tell you he looked GOOD, either. People will get sick of the chop fests and such, and he really shouldn’t do the Lionsault anymore. Ishii’s face was red, puffy and purple from I assume an errant shot, maybe a slap, maybe an elbow. Commentary wondered if he had an orbital bone fracture. I haven’t heard yet; hopefully he’s okay. I’ll be REALLY annoyed if he got seriously injured in a 2024 Jericho match.

I won’t even mention the fact that “Big Bill” (sigh) came out with a fucking houseplant. Surprised it wasn’t named “Mitch.”

Ahem.

The Stone Pupper in earlier days. I’m too lazy to see if he and Jericho legitimately crossed paths in WAR

I’m tired; I forget the order in which things happened. At some point, the very much on double speed Mercedes Moné / Kamille break up angle came to a head and Kamille quit, leaving Moné shrieking. Well, it was not exactly Shawn Michaels breaking up with Diesel. It was fine… just felt a bit rushed and unearned.

Claudio Castagnoli and Ricochet had a decent enough match (but realistically, Claudio could drag a couple of stars out of me by beating me up for five minutes if I were to enter the “squared circle”). Ricochet did a half speed topé at one point, so slow that even the announcers had to point it out. I hereby dub it the Slowpé (Slowpé® Convoy Industries, patent pending). Rico showed up here; he apparently knew the match with Konosuke Takeshita wasn’t up to expectations but again… it’s Claudio. Claudio won clean in the middle and Rico didn’t get to do his dumb finger gun gang sign thing (see previous entry “Happiness is a Warm Gun”).

Hangman Adam Page hit the ring at some point.

People always wig out when Hangman Page isn’t winning, getting promo time or otherwise isn’t being treated as the center of attention. It’s the “Where’s Hangman” skit on classic Being the Elite come to life. Hangman’s fine, his new character is GREAT and he came out to explain his actions at Full Gear. Some prominent wrestling pundits seemed to have ZERO UNDERSTANDING as to why he would assist Christian Cage in his quest to cash in the Money in the Bank dumb number one contender’s contract, but he pointed out that he did Christian a favor and expected to be the first one to challenge Christian if he successfully cashed in. IS THAT CLEAR ENOUGH FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE BACK? WATCH THE PRODUCT. Jay White came out to bag on him; the Death Riders attacked them both. FINALLY, it feels like the DR stuff is spreading to other parts of the company. Dark web rumblings are that World’s End will feature a four way for the Heavyweight title, so this is probably getting that going. Marina Shafir was involved with the beat down (and choking!) of both men… I did see some gnashing of teeth about that. I don’t really have a problem with it, but I get the griping to a degree… unless intergender (sigh) contact is allowed, there can’t be a pay off to that type of heat, right? I know Jay is nominally a face, but I feel like he could probably hit Marina with a Blade Runner and get a pop, face or no. Hangman is a lunatic, but he’d be justified in laying hands. Are they gonna go that way? Hard to say. There was no Willow to counter Marina this time, but Willow wouldn’t realistically be aligned with either Jay or Hanger, so that’s fine.

The final match was part, I dunno, four? five? in the never ending Brody King / Darby Allin series… and I don’t mean that as a knock. They have a great dynamic together; Brody knows how to do big man spots well and Darby knows how to get his ass stomped. Darby got so destroyed that, at one point, he apparently unplugged the commentary feed (!) so we were treated to spot calls, grunts and chats with the referee. You mean to say commentary is just connected to the truck by an extension cord or something? You trip over it and *zap* nothing? FIVE YEARS OF QUALITY AUDIO, FOLKS. Brody went over clean as a sheet and Claudio came in after the match (thereby not getting FIRED) to menace Darby, but Brody, now RESPECTING Darby, showed back up to warn Claudio off… which ties into the Claudio / Brody tournament match next week! I thought that was a clever little bit of business and again finally makes the Death Riders a bit more integrated into the show. Well done!

C² time is a time where AEW has to make the dots connect without using a lot of smoke and mirrors and instead have to rely on the best wrestlers in the world telling stories with their bodies, in ring. I like that. We seem to be off to a promising start.

Happy Thanksgiving, if that’s your kinda thing.