La Zona Muerta

A rerun from the Observer Board from 04 Mar 24:

No more Sting.

Hurts to type, hurts to think about.

I often feel a fraud… of course I’ve watched a metric ton of 80s wrestling… probably more than all but the most ardent fans of that era… but save some SNMEs and a WrestleMania… I didn’t LIVE it. I thought wrestling was fake and goofy as a kid. I barely watched WWF, so I DEFINITELY didn’t watch NWA / WCW. I didn’t start watching wrestling in earnest until I was around 15 or so, and even then it was largely so I had something to do with my dad, something to have in common with him.

Fortunately for me, while he watched WWF, when we would get together on the weekends… it typically meant WCW Saturday Night… and that typically meant the man was Sting.

Oh, sure, he was probably the third tier babyface behind Macho Man and the all but unwatchable Hulk Hogan… but I could tell there was something special about him… the way the other characters were deferential to him, the way the stories seemed to often revolve around him. His best friend Lex Luger would mouth off too much and get him into trouble, so he’d have to be the bigger man and stand by his pal. I dug that, I got it.

And then suddenly… the only thing sure about Sting was that nothing was for sure. Suddenly, he was painted up like the titular Crow from the comics and even more important to me, the movie that I had watched three times in the theater the summer it came out. Suddenly he was a dark, brooding avenger who would appear at times of dire peril and beat everyone to death with a bat or with the Scorpion Death Drop. One man, pitted against insurmountable odds. It was like catnip for surly teenagers… a revenge fantasy come to life or a power fulfillment fantasy writ large. My notebooks were filled with the same existential angst found in the pages of the Crow, the same interminable Joy Division and Cure lyrics, the same literary pretensions. Whatever emo zeitgeist J.O. Barr had tapped into with his comic, whatever the film tapped into with the death of it’s star, Brandon Lee, Steve Borden had somehow tapped into by borrowing that look and falling silent due to betrayal and hatred.

This meant something. Wrestling had a deeper meaning than just half naked dudes rolling around on a mat. Wrestling was more than just a way for me to relate to my dad. At it’s best, it was a way to touch primal emotions, to evoke feelings. Guys like Sting could touch you in that way, could let you think that there was something more to it all.

And nearly thirty years later… it’s all come to an end, in the best way possible.

Was his retirement better than Flair’s? If we’re talking his “real” retirement match with Michaels, probably not. If we’re talking his final match? Yes. Was it better than Mutoh’s final match? Yes. Was it emotional and scary and wonderful? Yes, yes and yes.

Also, is Darby Allin a dumb dumb and a lunatic? Yes and yes.

Cry me a river.

Sting meant a lot to me, and it’s fulfilling to see that his story didn’t end badly as so many others have, It’s gratifying to know that he’s touched the lives of so many others and that he went out completely on his own terms. I thank the Bucks, I thank Darby, I thank AEW for allowing him to be a place where he could paint his own canvas for the last three years and I thank Sting himself for sharing himself with us, for sacrificing his body and his time and his relationships for us… I thank him for being a goth-y weirdo in face paint and a fired up surfer dude and all the rest.

Thank you, Sting.

And, oh yeah, they cut off the feed while Sting was making a speech. Oops, and so what? I REFUSE to let that be the narrative coming out of the pay per view.

Speaking of which the rest of the pay per view ended up being probably one of the all time best, too. I almost forgot.

Will Ospreay and Konosuke Takeshita had a match of the year contender (and while the story will be that everyone is fawning over Ospreay or agonizing over him doing “flips” or the fact that Dave will rate the match five and a half stars and so on, the main takeaways should be that 1) AEW has a new babyface to build around. If Kenny doesn’t come back, if MJF is a heel when he returns, it’s all okay. AEW is gonna be okay because the crowd has INSTANTLY taken to Ospreay and 2) Takeshita finally got to go all out against an opponent. This match made him as surely as it cemented Ospreay as the MAN going forward).

Bryan Danielson and Eddie Kingston had a beautiful expression of the art of pro wrestling that had me screaming in my seat. Twenty minutes of hard strikes and joint manipulation and emotional manipulation. Just the best wrestling you will find anywhere.

Even the matches I didn’t think were hot (Toni / Deonna, the scramble, BBC / FTR) were largely fine. PAC and KOR are teasing returns. Jay White is out there cutting the most disingenuous babyface promo ever, doing the traditional PPV rah rah speech. AEW is UNTOUCHABLE on PPV and this entire show really felt like a “quit sleeping on us” statement.

Oh, and the other big news out of the show is that there’s a new PPV on 4/21; AEW Dynasty. See? No eyeball emojis necessary.

Quite a show, quite a weekend.

On the other channel, with the other guys, on Friday… the Rock had such a long promo to try to “fix” the Mania booking that it was relegated to Twitter due to length. The answer? He cut TWICE as long of a promo on TV. Mazeltov to those who enjoy that; I prefer wrestling.