La Zona Muerta

As much as I’d like to have told you Dynamite was a home run, especially after a weekend where AEW announced a stinky match and it was OPEN FORUM WARFARE between the haves and have nots… it was probably a solid double, at best. If that.

It wasn’t all bad, certainly… Kenny Omega and his BOOB WINDOW OF FUN made their 2025 debut. He had a solid match with Brian Cage, decent but nothing to write home about (which was exactly why people were upset re: Cage being the first match for Kenny… everyone knew it would be decent… but people don’t want merely DECENT out of Omega. They want THE BEST BOUT MACHINE). The match was largely predicated upon attacking Kenny’s tum tum like a drum drum, which, hey… get used to it. This was how a lot of Bork Laser Brock Lesnar’s matches were booked upon his return from diverticulitis, as well; the previously indefatigable beast now had a weak point. SHOOT THE CORE!

More tantalizing was the post match… a beatdown from the despicable Don Callis Family teasing both a tag team with Will Ospreay (THE OMEGA POWERS TM and ® jluthy, all rights reserved) and a tease of an eventual confrontation with KONOSUKE TAKESHITA, for whom I would sit through one hundred Brian Cage matches. Genuinely good stuff, especially by the end.

I may as well get the other good thing on the show out of the way… Ricochet came out to a chorus of boos, unsure why he’s now HATED. Do you need me to make you a list, brother? I say that, but if this heel turn was a pivot, it was the right thing to do and if this was the plan all along, I have to admit that someone in AEW was smarter than I… having Ricochet come in and subtly big league everyone was enough to make me despise him, so good job.

As the boos rained down, the missus and I thought he was gonna pull a heel Dave Batista (surely Big Dave’s finest incarnation; the big time rich heel clad in all denim or a pink polo shirt) and say NOTHING AT ALL, but he finally opened his big mouth… AND IMMEDIATELY GOT GOT GOT BY PRINCE NANA ARMED WITH ONLY A CHAIR AND HIS LITTLE DANCE. I submit to you, dear reader, that Prince Nana should be UPGRADED to KING NANA. We HOWLED with laughter and joy as Geekochet continued down the path of the downtrodden dork. An angry, hulking Swerve Strickland came out to exact MAXIMUM CARNAGE with a big ol’ chain, but Ricogeek managed to flee just in time to be spared a RIGHTEOUS BEATING.

An aside: Why was this show (and Collision too) branded as Maximum Carnage? I didn’t spot this guy:

If you’re my age, plus or minus a few years, I KNOW you can hear that Green Jelly soundtrack THROBBING in your ears

That’s the good stuff out of the way. I’ve whined plenty about the Death Riders already. The Women’s Casino Gauntlet Thingie was what it was (and hopefully will put paid to the incredibly bizarre Megan Bayne / AEW conspiracy bullshit that has been haunting the dark web for years)… a bit too short to be truly interesting and I really couldn’t care less about New Toni Storm versus the absolutely mediocre Mariah May.

I want to spend the remainder of this column talking about two things.

One… any goodwill the Jeff Jarrett / Maxwell Jacob Friedman stuff got from me last week was cashed in almost instantly this week, drowned in a thick mire of misogyny, mild shoot comments, swearing, shouting and ultimately, tedium. “Your old lady is a whore!” “Well… uh… your old lady is a DOUBLE WHORE. WHATTA THINK OF THAT, SLAPPY?”

And on and on and Ariston.

The verbal… I don’t know if I feel right calling it a “confrontation,” lasted FAR too long, was too repetitive and just didn’t work as well as last week’s version did. Plus, MJF can insult Jeff and even Karen Jarrett all he wants… we all know that Karen would EAT THAT LITTLE BOY ALIVE if it ever come down to it. Just ask BRAUN STROWMAN (IYKYK). It truly felt like a TNA flashback as suddenly women were whores taking on the boys EN MASSE in the parking lot, at least according to Jarrett, apparently THE BABYFACE in this situation. That’s okay… Max was able to turn up the misogyny dial, too, and got in a crack about Karen tasting like Kurt Angle’s nutsack or whatever.

WHO IS THIS FOR? IT’S SURE AS HELL NOT FOR ME.

Then, even though this segment was so long that it may STILL be being filmed for all I know, they CONTINUED IT IN THE BACK LATER with fellow OLD Dustin Rhodes inserting himself into the mix, brothered out to the max. “Ah, Jeff, these damn kids don’t know anything about wrestling and they’ve only had a cup of coffee in this business and you and I have been up and down the roads and we’ve known each other for how many years and I’ve got your back and if you ever need anyone in your cor-”

AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHGGGGGGGGHGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH STOP TALKING OLD MAN STOP TALKING I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DON’T SHUT UP STOP

That brings me to point two: AEW no longer feels like where the best wrestle. It feels like where the OLD wrestle. Young, strapping hulk of a man Will “Powerhouse” Hobbs (of course) was unsuccessful in his campaign against Jon Moxley (did you REALLY think he was gonna lose in Cincinnati? C’mon) and as the Death Riders where gonna kill him… EDGE came to save the day because, gosh darn it, no one else can do it. Totally logical from a booking standpoint… totally dumb from the “I don’t want to see the over fifties on this fucking show anymore” standpoint. Then, I’ve got MONTEL VONTAVIOUS PORTER single handedly killing Private Party (shout out to unofficial La Zona Muerta editor br’er Dreamox for catching my mistake re: the Hurt Syndicate last week… a mistake I left in to prove that I’m a dumbass probably not worth listening to). Boy, that sure was a good tag team division AEW had once!

So, in summation, on this episode of Dynamite, you had MVP mercing young dudes, Christian Cage somehow surviving the wrath of HOOK (at least Samoa Joe returned, but he’s no spring chicken himself), EDGE saving the kiddos and the GERIATRIC EXPRESS of Jeff Jarrett and Dustin Rhodes taking shape. Oh, and lest I forget, you had Chris Jericho, King of the Old New York trying to justify that 12 man match everyone was / is upset about in a pretape. LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE ELDERLY!

I’m NOT saying that if you reach a certain age, you’re suddenly devoid of worth… I’M OLD, TOO. I’m saying there’s too fucking much of it in a short space on AEW TV, taking up too much TV time. I LIKE Jeff Jarrett! He should NOT be in multiple segments! I tolerate Dustin Rhodes, but he gets a lot more TV time than you think (and is one of the big baby complainers backstage when he doesn’t). You already know how I feel about Edge (you think you know me) and the continued reliance on him… it just makes me shake my head. They wonder why their numbers in the 18-34 demo are dropping… they need to get back to younger blood and not taking so long to pull the trigger on certain things. It feels like the older guys all saw what Tony Khan did with Sting and are stroking their chins thoughtfully. “HEY, THAT COULD BE ME!”

PS: That 12 man on Collision is gonna SUCK.