La Zona Muerta

So God came back the other day.

Look, I know I was not particularly kind to the Kenny Omega / Gabe Kidd match, but that was largely due to my distaste for both Kidd as a performer and the match layout casting Kidd as a virtuous defender of New Japan Pro Wrestling. KENNY, in the match, was fantastic. He legitimately overcame an illness that would have sidelined anyone else, perhaps permanently and looks pretty much indistinguishable from a work perspective from when he left. Frankly, the time away while convalescing probably helped him rest and heal some nagging injuries, to boot. KENNY LOOKED GREAT. And then he gave an emotional post match interview which I got into a little bit in the previous column, and then a further promo where he pointed out that God is coming back, and he’s not well pleased.

And there are still people that say this man is a bad promo. SHAME.

The question then becomes… what do you do with him? Do you pivot and crash him headlong into the main event scene, cutting off this tired Death Riders thing? Do you make him kind of (ugh) the Roman Reigns of the promotion, putting his importance OVER that of the heavyweight title?

That doesn’t seem to be the idea, at least at the moment. I don’t say that as an indictment, by the way; where they are going seems logical… Kenny has unfinished business with his treacherous “uncle,” Don Callis. It looks like Kenny will have to run thru the Callis Family… but you have to remember, even if you’re disappointed about his first AEW in ring match up being Brian Cage, the retooled Callis Family now has Kyle Fletcher, a man who will be the best wrestler in the world and Konosuke Takeshita, a man who IS the best wrestler in the world. That’s no bad thing… but I do think the next big move should be Kenny saying something to the effect of “I see there’s a guy running around here, talking about how he owns this company, how it belongs to him. No, it belongs to ME.” Would *I* have Kenny face Cage on TV? Probably not, I’d rather save Kenny for something more special, but it’s not like it will be a bad match, and it will serve the story.

At any rate, Kenny is back and AEW feels more like AEW when he’s there. He’s the straw that stirs the drink. I hope they actually utilize him to his fullest. I see arguments online about how they HAVE used Kenny to his fullest, and point to the belt collector thing… my brethren, the belt collector deal climaxed at the END OF 2021. Yes, there have been injuries and two long stretches of down time since then but the belt collector gimmick ended OVER THREE YEARS AGO. Kenny is SPECIAL, and needs to be treated and showcased as such.

End of rant.

Besides the return of GOD, there were indeed two other hours of Dynamite last night… and you know what? These were two of the strongest hours they have put on TV in some time. Really, there was only one big clunker of a segment… but unfortunately, that clunker was Edge Cope confronting Jon Moxley and then trying to remember names of people in the company who the crowd likes. The crowd was not the most demonstrative crowd in AEW history but it was CRICKETS when Edge talked about how he had overcome MORE HARDSHIP THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE COMPANY to be there. Dunno about that one, big dawg. I know a lot of AEW fans have embraced Copeland and fine, I’m not going to gainsay what they like, but for me personally, bringing him in feels like a late stage WCW move. WWE used him up, wouldn’t meet his asking price to stay and he jumped. He makes no difference to ratings, ticket sales and frankly, hasn’t has a great match, at least not in my opinion. I’m still sore that he didn’t put over Daniel Garcia or Kyle O’Reilly and now inhabits the Edgeverse with FTR. Can you imagine if he really WERE the one to dethrone Moxley? Oh, good lord.

They did something I like and that “restores the feeling,” even if incrementally; they started the show with a hot match between Buddy Matthews and Will Ospreay. Post match, Will accidentally called him Buddy Murphy. Ooops. You see Matthews’ hulking body and boy, it’s really, REALLY surprising the other place let him go. The missus and I decided that maybe someone backstage at WWE asked him a question and, since he’s Australian, they couldn’t understand the inflection of his voice when he responded and decided that he was a bum. The match itself was very good; Matthews is a perfect get the crowd hyped MOVEZ guy and Ospreay is that who Ospreay is. Post match, they teased Buddy not needing a leader, which led to a fresh round of “Is Malakai Black still in AEW?” speculation and, you know what? Who knows? And I hate to say it but… who cares? They’ll probably keep calling the group “House of Black” if the Blackpool Combat Club is anything to go by, and if they dissolve the group, I wouldn’t cry over that, either. Hopefully Malakai lives up to his potential wherever he goes because they certainly didn’t bring it out of him in either WWE OR AEW.

The Hurt Business (I think Bobby Lashley called them the Hurt Syndicate. Oops, again) declared their intentions to take the tag titles from Private Party. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen tiny Isiah Kassiday bowing up to Lashley who looks like he hails from a time where men fought each other with nets and tridents and spears. Lashley also crushed Mark Briscoe. Actually, Briscoe made a decent go of it, and it certainly was NOT a squash. I think I would have preferred Lashley killing more “local talent,” instead, if I had my druthers, but it was good TV action and difficult to dislike.

There was a tremendous Casino Gauntlet Battle Royal thingamabob. I don’t know who puts these together in the back, but with the exception of one they tried with tag teams, these are almost always good… and this one was REALLY good. All the stories, all of the motivations, everything here was logical and there were a surprising amount of upper mid or even main event people in it. At one point, I had to temper my excitement slightly; whomever wins is really just losing next week to Moxley… but after quite a bit of solid action, Powerhouse Hobbs picked up the duke. Even THAT is a good callback as Hobbs was hurt in Moxley’s one disastrous IWGP title defense in AEW, so we’ll see if they had a good match in them (jury’s still out on that one). There was a part where Hangman Adam Page puffed out his cheeks, bowed up his arms and stomped around, imitating Hobbs and I HOWLED with laughter. Such a tremendous troll. Also a tremendous troll was wee little Wheeler YUTA who kept foiling pins and prevented Jeff Jarrett from even getting in the match.

Speaking of Jeff Jarrett, that gives us one last thing to talk about… an MJF segment that didn’t make me angry or sad! Newsworthy in and of itself! Seems they are making Jarrett a bit of a side quest for MJF, who copped to feeling like getting the heavyweight title was “a lot of hard work right now,” so he wanted to “help” Jarrett climb the mountain one more time and get the title, as long as Jarrett gave him the first title shot when he becomes champion. As they were in Tennessee, Jarrett had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand, and he shot down Max, calling him a “one hit wonder” (Get it? MUSIC CITY) and a “prick.” This seems like a good use of both performers; someone Max can insult endlessly with no ill effect and something interesting to do with Jarrett that we can buy. A lot of the people who follow me on Bluesky, I suspect of the younger generation, thought that when Jarrett declared his intentions to get into the title picture last week, that meant he was guaranteed to get the title. I genuinely don’t get where that comes from. He will win the title no more than he won the Owen Tournament. It’s there to be an emotional story of a gunfighter rising to make one last challenge, not to put yet another old guy over everyone else. Get mad about EDGE if that’s what’s upsetting you. I mean, who has ranted more about OLDS in AEW than me?

Ideally, AEW would have a mix of men like Kenny, Moxley, Takeshita, Swerve, Hanger, Ospreay, Jay White, Okada, maybe MJF if he could get back on track… all battling on top for supremacy with a hot under current of your Hobbses, your Garcias, your YUTAs and whomever else (a Darby, an OC) got hot nipping at their heels. I hope that’s a direction we’re moving in. I can’t really offer any fantasy booking for the Death Riders stuff… that’s not really my bag, but I hope Tony Khan, et al. are not too proud to embrace the pivot and get back to the stuff that works.