La Zona Muerta

Sorry; at a bit of a deadline crunch this week so a truncated column… but I won’t leave you hanging too much. Last night’s Dynamite was another REALLY good show, full of great wrestling AND angle advancement. YES, VIRGINIA, YOU CAN DO BOTH. We had a Nitro-esque opening involving Master P (!), the Death Riders, Samoa Joe and the Opps, Swerve Strickland, Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks… and you know what? None of it felt bad or forced. Everything flowed into everything else; the chaos was controlled and measured. Kudos to whoever set this little bit of business up! The end game here was establishing Joe vs. Jon Moxley in two weeks (so NOT at the pay per view) and that would lead me to believe we are looking at some sort of iteration of either Anarchy in the Arena or possibly (Lord Steven Regal voice) BLOOD AND GUTS at the PPV. I’m not as big on A in the A as some since I feel that’s probably a fun thing LIVE but a bit of a chore to follow at home… but it would make sense here and give another way for the bad guys to show some rear.

And then, after a VERY solid opener with Mark Briscoe and Ricochet (and the kind of surprise win by Briscoe… could he FINALLY be getting a pushski?) it was TAG TEAM TIME. Ad hoc teams, uh… teaming to advance storylines, actual tag teams, a big, no selling tag team cutting a promo… another tag team getting a big time bad guy manager… a classic tag team getting laid out… TAG TEAMS WERE GO.

The two things that stood out to me here… listen. I’ve never been the world’s biggest Young Bucks fan… but when they are here, being shitbag, smarmy heels, when Matt Jackson is coated head to toe in Hot Stuff, his chest blazing with probably broken capillaries… when he and Nick are doing their ridiculous tag team offense, having a mirror match with Speedball Mike Bailey and Kevin Knight of all people…

AEW feels like AEW again. It just does. The crowd (the GREAT crowd) in New Orleans were on their feet by the end of this, living or dying with every nearfall. Just fun stuff, the best wrestling of this type on TV.

And then the other really notable thing… FTR came out with new manager STOKELY HATHAWAY (YESSSSS! PERFECT fit) and trashed the Rock and Roll Express. This was better than most everything they’ve done with FTR in AEW to date, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that. Pounding their square peg of heeldom into the round hole of, um… babyfaceness was a tenuous, tedious thing, with the bald one constantly talking about his daughter and fighting for a paycheck and BLAH BLAH BLAH. I don’t like forced babyfaces. I like dickheads who finangle their way into victories and who write checks their mouths can’t cash. I like heels who put over OTHER heels, FTR taking up the billet for the MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (MY favorite team of all time) and hell, since they have been doing MX cosplay for the last three years anyway, you may as well have ’em kill the Rock and Rolls. This made a LOT more sense than the LAST time the R and R were on AEW TV. Anyway, this stuff, and Stokely running around, telling them that he’ll get the rules changed and the suspension stricken from their records and being an officious little weasel? *Chef’s kiss.*

As I say, I don’t have a ton of time today so I’m going to wrap it up here. Right around the time Dynamite started yesterday, Steve “Mongo” McMichael passed away. Obviously, if you know that I have a WCW soul, you know that this passing hurts… but never mind THAT shit… HERE COMES MONGO.