La Zona Muerta

I don’t know that AEW has a great record with go home shows.

Often times they overshoot the mark, miss the peak, end up DECREASING interest in matches, etc. I’d say they made a concerted effort with the build to Revolution to avoid that, and even if I don’t love Mercedes Moné and her same, repetitive-ass promo every week, even if I genuinely dislike Edge and the fact that only HE could beat the Death Riders, even if the Toni Storm stuff is so not for me it may as well be taking place on Netflix… they’ve built everything well, even the couple of matches I don’t have any interest in. And the ones that I do…? HOLY GOTCH ABOVE. Will Ospreay and Kyle Fletcher in a cage? Kenny Omega and Konosuke Takeshita? Swerve Strickland and Ricochet? Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Hangman Adam Page? Even if one or two of those manage to somehow fail catastrophically and suck, you’re still talking about at least two or three potential match of the year candidates. Plus, they threw Kazuchika Okada and Brody King on the card, and even that has a nice, logical follow through from Okada and Buddy Matthews at Grand Slam Australia.

You couple that with AEW’s shift to booking smaller, more intimate venues… the crowds have been HOT now for well over a month now and don’t look out of place… business metrics seem to be slightly ticking up… Revolution is selling nicely and on track to selling 10,000 tickets… All In is steadily moving tickets without a match announced yet… IS AEW BACK?

Go listen to your favorite podcast of choice (where they will probably tell you ‘no’ unless it’s the Flagship or the Trish and Sarah Podcast) for that opinion; I’m not the Shell Answer Man (despite my expanding size), but for me, it’s certainly been much more enjoyable for the past few weeks. It seems like things are looking up.

Once they move past this Edge / Jon Moxley business, we can hopefully put the unpleasantness there behind us (I suppose that will depend on HOW they move past it; there are a number of ways that could play out that might be a detriment)… maybe get Toni Storm doing something interesting without the albatross of Mariah May around her neck… maybe get the tag team division going again… the trios… if all of this comes to pass, you might well find yourself having a STEW goin’.

The other thing that will get that stew simmering is getting some guys back into the main event picture. We don’t need EDGE there; we need Swerve, Hanger, Ospreay, and maybe, dare I hope, Jay White. We need the Bucks back. I’m guessing Kenny’s gonna be doing his own thing; a slow burn with Okada building to All In… but it would be nice to have him flirting with the top of the card again, too.

In addition to all that, we need to get the young cats, the Nick Waynes, the Lee Moriartys, the Wheeler YUTAs, the Daniel Garcias up and running. For a time on the indy scene, any combination of Moriarty, Garcia and YUTA was a must watch match. AEW has all of those guys. Nick Wayne is part of a pretty good act, but he’s still basically just treading water. GET USING ‘EM. YUTA has a good upward trajectory. Garcia seems a bit stalled out. Moriarty is great… if you watch ROH and mmmmmmaybe Collision from time to time. A broadcaster I used to be mildly affiliated with was just today advocating for strapping up the joke-y gimmick tag team the Outrunners… the last time he wanted someone to be a babyface champion, AEW suffered so much damage that they are ONLY NOW just beginning to recover. The Outrunners are a fun act, probably valuable as an enhancement team, but they are not the future of the business. Lee Moriarty is. Daniel Garcia is. Nick Wayne is. Wheeler YUTA is. Let’s get those kids heated up so you don’t have to suffer an existential crisis when one of them hears a little birdie from Stamford offering them warehouse duty. IF YOU MAKE THEM FEEL VALUED, THEY WILL BE VALUABLE.

Maybe we can finally free my little shag boy from the clutches of MOX. Hey, does he still have the contents of THE DISC DRIVE? (IYKYK)

Anyway, that’s a lot of griping and State of the Unioning from me, especially when Dynamite was solid, even good. They MIGHT have overplayed their hand slightly with MJF / Hanger; MJF was RANTING in an alleyway, wanting the cowardly Hangman to show up, which showed a severe lack of judgement, especially when Hangman promised to run him over with his ethical electric truck last week. You just KNEW Hangman’s truck would come thundering around the corner, and it did. Page should have gunned the motor; he could have taken out both MJF and his other long standing enemy, Renee Paquette.

This was all fine; Hangman is good at being the righteous, angry cowboy. Where it got a little dumb was MJF cutting a tired “you people” promo inside the venue, taking off his shirt to reveal a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “MJF did nothing wrong,” to zero pop because AEW’s audience doesn’t necessarily live online the way Max himself does, and then he attempted to light Hanger on fire. You see, the justification there was that, since Hangman Page lit Swerve Strickland’s house on fire and “did nothing wrong,” MJF should be allowed to light Page on fire.

Yeah.

The worst part was the aftermath, with the referees holding their noses because Page was soaked with butane. EW, STINKY! IT SMELLS BAD, NOT GOOD! They were selling it like ETHER had been deployed. This was all a bit dumb and overwrought… and now some people will be disappointed if FIRE doesn’t come into play during their match on Sunday. It IS AEW, so there’s a non zero chance we get some fiery antics, but it was all a bit silly. Maybe a bit of missing the peak, but… it’s fine, I guess. The match will certainly deliver, regardless of pyrotechnics.

I guess the other big angle was finally aligning the actions of Aussie Open’s Marc Davis with what the announcers have been saying… essentially Don Callis owns his contract, so he has to go along with the er… callous deeds of the Callis Family. They have been drilling us with this fact on commentary… but Davis has not been especially demonstrative of this fact in ring. FINALLY, they had him displaying some regret over beating up his former friend Will Ospreay and he was essentially forced to smash Ospreay with a chair before the maniacal Kyle Fletcher gave Ospreay a brainbuster into said chair (DANGEROUS~!). Dramatic and well executed. WILL OSPREAY BE ABLE TO ETC. IN TIME FOR SUNDAY?!?!?!

Well, yeah. But this is how wrestling works.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the show also featured a hot eight man tag with sort of the Conglomeration plus Powerhouse Hobbs fighting the Callis Family and Bryan Keith, on loan from the Learning Tree. This is SUCH an easy way to get a crowd going; a fun, turn your brain off spot fest that invigorates the crowd, keeps multiple storylines on the boil… and is just a plain ol’ good time to watch. More of these, please.

Again, not everything was perfect. It never is. But you also had terrific performances from Swerve on this show, Ricochet (who I have stated my distaste for over and over in this space, but he deserves props for leaning into his new geek bully character) and even long time La Zona Muerta whipping boy JON MOXLEY, delivering by far the most coherent and straight forward promo he’s had since this Death Riders business began (“I’m all alone now, Copeland, and I’ll kick your ass… because I WANT to!”). Dynamite was good and REVOLUTION is fixing to be GREAT.