La Zona Muerta

It seems like a pretty easy formula… you start Dynamite hot with dudes the crowd likes and that puts ’em in a good mood for a fun show… LO AND BEHOLD. With maybe one or two little missteps, Dynamite started hot, hotter than it has in a long, long time. Will Ospreay and his hotel inflicted low water pressure hair called out Kenny Omega, proclaiming that he was a changed man and that Omega could trust him in a battle against the dastardly Callis Family. Kenny told him to get bent, remembering the BAD SHIT Ospreay has done to him in the past… and just when things were about to get hairy… Callis himself appeared. I was already pounding my fists on the floor with glee. Kenny was so GOOD in this segment, calmly letting Will know that Will was relegated to being number two now that NUMBER ONE WAS BACK. RRRRAAAAARRRR. Kenny, tell me who to smite and they shall be smoten. Anyway, Callis came out, leading Kenny into an obvious trap, but Ospreay, despite being rebuked, helped Kenny anyway, leading to an extensive crowd brawl, an appearance by AEW merch guru Jake Manning, and Kenny and Will leaping off of a big, metal truss (even if the camera work didn’t quite capture it; a HUGE pet peeve of mine. These dudes are RISKING THEIR BODIES FOR US, SO AT LEAST DO THEM A SOLID AND CAPTURE THEM ON TAPE).

LZM wartime correspondent Brute McVein was on the scene to capture both Will and Kenny’s terrible hair. Note the resemblance of Kenny’s ‘do to famous differently abled wrestler Eugene

Forging bonds through both fighting the Callis Family and hating Don, a truly hateable man to be fair, Kenny relented and decided teaming with Will made sense, challenging Kyle Fletcher and Konosuke Takeshita to a tag match in Australia. For a few minutes, all was right with the world and I was ready to tip over a small, foreign car with pure glee. Except for the camera gaffe, and Kenny mentioning “restoring the feeling” (ugh, please stop), this was just pure adrenaline, fun and exciting. THIS IS WHAT DYNAMITE SHOULD BE. THIS IS WHAT AEW SHOULD BE. It’s more than clear… Kenny is the straw that stirs the drink.

What came next, I have mixed feelings about, even if most people were probably happy about it. It’s also a situation where I have to watch what I say a little bit, and things like that make me just not want to talk about them, make me want to clam up.

Look, I get it.

Private Party’s tag team victory last October (!) was definitely a feel good moment (and apparently a bit of an impromptu one), and there’s probably only “money” with them in the chase… but their reign as tag champs has been an utter bust. HOWEVER, AEW did them NO favors. When they came out last night, their 2025 record read ONE AND ZERO, meaning they have had only ONE title defense so far this year. Even with however many hours of TV AEW has, this is where not having a Rampage hurts because PP should have been racking up wins to lead to this match with the Hurt Syndicate. Lest we forget, this sudden run up with Party began with Jon Moxley CRIPPLING one of them and then treating them like MEGA DORKS for three weeks running. Why SHOULD we get behind them? PP should have been running rampant… instead they’ve done a couple of backstage vignettes, a little movie film and got merced last week in a trios match.

I don’t really want to get into the Hurt Syndicate stuff. I’m clearly on an island about my feelings for them, and I feel like my true thoughts will be vindicated soon enough (so take that as you will). Suffice to say that I’m unsure about the shiny new toys (well, not so new in this case) smashing the old ones and undoubtedly leaving them in a worse position than where they found them. I know everyone hopes that the dominant (VERY dominant) HS win means there will now be focus on the tag division. I’d like that, too, but I’m skeptical. We’ll see.

Remember that awful, hideous Jeff Jarrett business from last week? I said “Jeff had better apologize” when his leathery mug appeared on my screen… but, shockingly… HE DID. Karen Jarrett, bless her evil heart, had clearly admonished him and gently told him that he needed to remember what she and him had discussed. He agreed, telling the Knoxville crowd a story about getting his ass kicked by Jerry Lawler, where Lawler told him to NEVER crawl into the gutter with his opponent. Jerry Lawler, famously never one to sink to gutter depths, amirite? Jarrett didn’t ENTIRELY move on from Maxwell Jacob Friedman, promising that they would collide somewhere down the road, but he said that he wanted to change his focus… AND CALLED OUT JON MOXLEY. I audibly gasped, both due to the fact that AEW appeared willing to PIVOT FROM A MISTAKE and that Jeff was also apparently calling for his own live, televised demise. CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI was the one to answer the call, essentially saying anything Jeff had to say to Mox, he could say to Claudio, instead. Jeff was into it and challenged Claudio to a match next week. HUH. Helluva pivot.

Next up was AR Fox versus Swerve Strickland. MY BRUDDA FROM DA WAR (IYKYK). Since Fox has now been used like three times in the last three months, I assume that means he’s FINALLY out of TK jail? I hope so. Excalibur talked about their long history and after Swerve, looking huge and JACKED, beat him, he extended hands in (hopeful) friendship, hopefully meaning that Swerve is righting the wrongs of his bad guy past. It’d be nice to see Swerve roll with a crew again instead of standing there like a dope when he and Nana get killed by superior numbers.

“Did I do a good enough JOB for you, Vince Russo?”

Touchy feely friendship aside, something happened that I didn’t quite understand. Ricochet snuck to the ring, and threatened to stab Swerve with his scissors (“Those scissors Ricochet has been running around with all the time,” clarified Taz, which made me laugh heartily). King Prince Nana produced a LEAD PIPE (from where, it’s best not to worry about) and successfully ran Rico off… but apparently he didn’t, since after the match, Ricochet put his scissors to Nana’s throat, backstage. RICOCHET SHOULD HAVE THREATENED NANA’S EYES. Felt like we missed something… how did we go from Nana running Rico off to having his life threatened? Swerve was appropriately furious and I again have to applaud the job they have done with Ricochet turning him from a big timing, fresh from WWE geek to a sick of being bullied, dangerous geek.

My goodwill evaporated a little bit when MJF came out next, chasing some LOCAL TALENT out of the ring, which indicated that AEW might not be pivoting as hard from the program with Jarrett as I had dared hope. It was still better than last week, though. Fortunately, CRAZY HANGMAN PAGE’S music hit and he mean mugged MJF out of the ring. A FACE TURN. Hanger then proceeded to kill the poor LOCAL TALENT to death, HITTING ANGEL’S WINGS post match which had me FIRED UP (that’s arsonist talk). A NOT FACE TURN. Then Christopher Daniels came out to indicate that maybe HE had been the one who messed up, approaching Hanger incorrectly, pouring gasoline on the fire (that’s ALSO arsonist talk)… and he admitted that Hangman had, for all intents and purposes, probably retired him, which gave even justified arsonist Hangman pause. THIS WAS TREMENDOUS STUFF.

Jamie Hayter had another match with Julia Hart. I haven’t really said much about Hayter since her return as, frankly, I don’t think she’s looked very good. Before her injury, she was EASILY the number one woman in the company and someone I very much enjoyed seeing, so despite my relief that she returned, I’ve been a little lukewarm on how she’s looked in-ring. Towards the end of this match, she started to look like the Jamie Hayter I remembered, the Hayter of old and that makes me happy that she’s found her ring legs. Also hanging in there well was Hart, someone who gets far too much fawning praise for whatever reason but, for her experience level, is decent and (hopefully) getting better. She’s still a kid and has a LOT of room to grow. Good to see everybody getting back on track. Hayter told Hart they could have a rubber match whenever Hart wants. Oh, speaking of Hart, she, Brody King and Buddy Matthews (and a big ol’ slobbery bulldog) appear to be remaining together as a faction despite the absence of Malakai Black (is he done for real real? Who knows? What a disappoint that guy has been). Brody filed a trademark for something called “the Hounds of Hell” the other day, sooooooo…

Swerve wants Ricochet. Powerhouse Hobbs wants Big Bill. Everybody (here) wants you.

Suddenly, the Earth, maybe the entire solar system fell close to a black hole as time began to dilate and sloooooooow down to a crawl as the main event approached. Edge Cope and PAC (a bastard’s bastard) had a slow, heatless match where PAC had to go at a quarter speed as if he were wrestling underwater and Cope had to hit a big move, rest, get up, hit a big move, rest and so on for what felt like an eternity. I watched the hair on my forearm grow a bit. Finally the match came to an end when Cope hit the TKO OUTTA NOWHERE. Oooookay.

We immediately cut TO THE BACK (TM Mike Tenay) to see FTR bound to chairs and Mox and EMO SHAG BOY WHEELER YUTA looming over them. I thought it was gonna get real Reservoir Dogs-y in here, but instead, the Death Riders killed the Rock and Roll Express to death with chair shots, which I guess is supposed to make me mad or something. Who cares? They should tie up Loverboy Dennis Condry and Sweet Stan Lane if they want ME to care. FTR grunted and struggled, watching their heroes or whatever get creamed. Then the DRs came out from the back and surrounded Edge, beating him up, too. Of all people, Jay White tried to make a save… but apparently had no plan, and got beat up for his troubles. WHAT MAKES BABYFACES IN AEW SO DAMNED DUMB? White is never (NEEVAH) without a plan! The show went off the air with another heavy HEAT angle, but I didn’t get the feeling anyone cared. I mean, I sure didn’t. The Death Riders thing could probably be salvaged, but their quest to save AEW from complacent youngsters now apparently has changed to ridding AEW of OLDS. Maybe they’re good guys, after all? MAYBE I SHOULD CHEER THEM. Anyway, the combo of the DRs and Edge has really created a toxic brew, a concoction that’s hard to swallow. The rest of this episode was good enough that the main event didn’t bring it down too much, but there was a BIG difference between the energy the show started with and the energy the show ended with.

Still, after last week’s debacle, I’ll take it.