La Zona Muerta

I didn’t feel especially moved by Dyna one way or the other last night… there’s usually a show or two in their cycle to build the next PLE PPV that just treads water a bit, and this one surely did that, although it did feature some good in ring action (and some not so good in ring action). The big news, obviously, is that Toni Storm returned, sans the TIMELESS gimmick, which itself is interesting news. Those DC mini comics they did a couple of months ago (you know, where they said Will Ospreay trained with the world’s greatest assassins and PHILOSOPHERS) featured the Timeless deal (and even had her saying “tits out!” which I was surprised by) and the Timeless character has featured pretty prominently in what we laughably call their marketing… but maybe someone finally realized, as fun and creative as the character CAN be, it’s… uh… a little grating in the long term. I’d say the final tally with Timeless Toni is that a little goes a long way (ooh er, missus) and they should use the character SPARINGLY, to best effect. Don’t get rid of it… just maybe she lapses into it once in a while as time and space permit.

Mariah May, by the way, is still dreadfully mediocre in the ring. I do NOT see it with her, at ALL. They can’t get the belt off of her soon enough and I hope when Storm beats her, she’s relegated to go do jobs to Billie Starks on Ring of Honor TV for a year or something. Just suplexed by Layla Hersch for HOURS AND HOURS.

Speaking of Ring of Honor (must I?), this Matt Cardona / Chris Jericho stuff is lousing up one of the final episodes of my beloved Rampage. CARDONA STINKS. He can blither about reinventing himself all he wants but he certainly did NOT reinvent himself in ring. Just an obnoxious, odious personality in and out of the ring. I will never forget, during the pandemic, that he and his crew took over the Highspots wrestling auction internet show and were just the most obnoxious shitheads, him in particular. BROSKI? MORE LIKE NOSKI.

Everyone, of course, wanted to talk about Will Ospreay’s fresh new haircut, straight from 1994.

Get a load of Jonathan Taylor Ospreay over here

but who cares about that floppy mess. What WASN’T a floppy mess was the tremendous match he and Claudio Castagnoli had. I noticed Claudio’s ring jacket was festooned with tags. I asked the missus if Claudio was on sale (BANTER), and she looked at me. “He’s had those tags for weeks.”

That’s me, observant as a brick.

Ospreay didn’t sex anyone up (tick tock, you don’t stop) but he did score a roll up on Claudio in what I termed as “tremendous professional wrestling.” Two guys who get it, two guys who have devoted their lives to the craft, and it shows.

The Death Riders junk… I dunno. It’s kind of reaching the “shit or get off the pot” (forgive the crudity) point for me. Saturday’s installment was disastrous on an otherwise great show… Orange Cassidy came out to confront them with no friends, no plan, and then was killed, taken to the back and about to be rekilled until the insufferable FTR noticed that there was SOMETHING HAPPENING and intervened. Terrible TV, just DEATH. Anyway, at this point of the angle? direction? tedium?, the ANNOUNCERS are trying to understand and / or fill in Jon Moxley’s motivations and about two months too late, desperate to tie together the connective tissue but not really helping. It doesn’t help matters any when Mox is in ring with the ultra smooth Jay White. Mox is a lot of things but SMOOTH is not one of them, and some people probably dig that… to me, he just looks… out classed. They did a classic “the guys who will be in the four way all clobber each other on purpose or by accident” thing, and that’s fine… but I feel like I’ve already seen that… and so we begin treading water for the next couple of weeks.

Ricochet continues his campaign to try to big league his opponents (“Oh, sure that Brody is big, you know what he not? HE NOT RICOCHET! (sic)” but then shooting himself in the foot by going “HAAAA HAAAAAAW” like the biggest Kentuck goober you’ve ever seen. Just terrible. He had an OKAY match with Brody, I guess. The Komander match on Saturday was better (I’d go so far as to say FAR better, and that’s NOT a knock on Brody King); Rico still hasn’t found consistent footing in AEW.

I don’t have it in me to decry Christian bringing up Moxley’s REAL LIFE STRUGGLES WITH ALCOHOLISM FOR HEAT simply because I don’t want to be here for hours. Suffice to say I found it distasteful. We did get a chuckle out of HOOK smashing thru the door and attacking Christian. Probably the best way to use HOOK, honestly.

So yeah, not great, not bad. Sort of 2024 AEW in microcosm.