La Zona Muerta

I don’t really have the energy to rant about four hours of AEW action being too much this week… and I think the more militant weirdos about it have largely backed off, anyway. People sort of figured it out… this wasn’t really a four hour “blockbuster,” if you’ll excuse the term, a four hour “pay per view on TV.” It was an episode of Dynamite flowing into an episode of Collision with a bit of connective tissue. This show was full of heel HEAT (literal heels in one segment), some good, some great, and some an eyeroll… but it was largely enjoyable and featured what may have been the best match on TV all year (and when it comes to end of the year best match balloting… probably a top ten match, I reckon). So in the end, the babyfaces being cut down like wheat, Maxwell Jacob Friedman doing a tired and ill timed “Mexico bad, America good” throwback literally while our brothers and sisters in Los Angeles battle deportation agents of nebulous authority, being mad about a lack of time calls or a draw finish… it’s not really all that important, not really a big deal in the grand scheme of building the Grand Slam Mexico show next week and the All In show next month in Texas.

So, I would be remiss in my duty of… well… what is my duty, exactly? I would be remiss in my duty of typing five hundredish words about Dynamite every week if I didn’t wax poetic about Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay. Ospreay, the one that got away from the Fed, so they pretend he isn’t the best wrestler in the world. Strickland, the one the Fed PUSHED away, so he decided to become EVEN BETTER to prove them wrong.

Simply stated; these men are two of the best professional wrestlers in the world.

Swerve and Will started the match off slow. Ospreay appeared to get an unrelated nosebleed early on (like in the first 30 seconds early) and they did a rope break clench which appeared to be non contentious…

…until Swerve BLASTED Will in the face with a forearm and ZOW! the blood did begin to flow. The announcers, for a change, did a really good job in calling this seriously… pointing out that a nosebleed can come just merely from constant travel and how hard it is to breathe with a bloody nose. Taz, when he tells you WHY holds work is fantastic (so lay off the “_____ Jones” stuff, please) and at one point he explained that he wasn’t a fan of THE LATERAL PRESS since you aren’t really hooking the leg. MORE OF THIS, PLEASE. The nose bleed seemed to either be serendipitous or Swerve is just that damned good; the match became him slowly trying to cut off Osprey’s oxygen, grinding him down with facelocks and the like. The match was slow and deliberate to start, but not in a bad way… it was the GOOD kind of deliberate… and then the match started BUILDING. Ospreay took a chance and hit Swerve with a Hidden Blade THROUGH THE ROPES TO THE OUTSIDE which made Prince Nana catch a severe case of NXT Face (TM). After that, all bets were off and they started swinging for the fences, just trading bombs. Ospreay hit the Sasuke Special… no big thing. Swerve hit a DEADEYE (Hangman Page’s reverse piledriver) for a crisp nearfall. Ospreay STARTED TO GO FOR THE TIGER DRIVER ’91, but Swerve got out. Guys, gals, non-binary pals… I don’t say what I’m about to say lightly… Will and Swerve were WALKING THE KING’S ROAD, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

For better or worse (I have ranted about this plenty in the past), this match reached a time limit draw. It didn’t REALLY look like they were going for a draw until probably the mid point of the match or so (I know plenty of people guessed it last week, so congrats). Strangely, they didn’t do time cues over the house mic… the announcers were the ones who started to panic about “urgency” on the call. I HATE the draws, but at least it’s not like last August or whatever it was where they did… was it three? over the course of less than four weeks. At least this is a reasonable draw. AEW sorta messed up by not doing the time cues, here. EITHER DO TIME CUES FOR EVERY SINGLE MATCH OR DO NONE AT ALL. NJPW does time cues for EVERY MATCH, without fail. Swerve WASN’T SATISFIED WITH A DRAW and knew Ospreay wasn’t either… but then the Death Riders attacked, along with the Young Bucks who still aren’t done with Swerve. Are we getting Ospreay and Swerve against the Bucks at All In? That would totally work. The Bucks laid out Swerve with the EVP trigger and handcuffed him to the ring. The DRs slipped the Bucks some shoes (Swerve’s new shoes which look pretty cool, coming from a guy who couldn’t care less about shoes) with tacks POORLY huckled to them (seriously, these things were shedding tacks like a dog shedding fur in summer). The Bucks went to superkick the prone, bound Swerve…

…and Ospreay dove into the ring at the last possible second and took the bullet, so to speak as the Bucks blasted him into the LOCAL MEDICAL FACILITY. EXCELLENT stuff, here, just tremendous on everyone’s part. The match was almost STUNNING in it’s excellence, the post match played out great. If this were CHEF RECOMMENDS, this match would have my highest possible recommendation without a second thought.

There was a backstage encounter with an announcer and Kazuchika Okada… Don Callis interrupted the Rainmaker, saying that both Konosuke Takeshita and Kyle Fletcher have had a better year than Okada, so why is Okada getting the match with Kenny? As with all the best heels, maybe Don had a bit of a point. Don did THE ONE UNFORGIVABLE THING WE CAN’T FORGET and put his finger on Okada’s chest; Okada bent it painfully until the Family rolled up around him. Okada looked disgusted, said “Bitch,” to Callis and left. FORESHADOWING.

We got some Mistico business (why on Earth didn’t he win his match against Blake Christian with the spinning La Mistica armbar?), some Hurt Syndicate stuff (they showed the Syndicate “hurting” and holding the mask of someone alleging to be Komander (I was later told he was legitimately hurt the other day so I’m not sure if they flew him out or not to do an injury angle) and then… you know what? With all of the real life strife we are having with our fellow citizens being attacked by fascist, faceless goons who are too cowardly to have name tags, or, y’know, CHECKS AND BALANCES, I don’t really want to talk about this too much. MJF did the “Mexico bad, America good” stuff that was tired twenty fucking years ago when we weren’t facing a literal crisis. He’d BETTER be eating a La Mistica next week in the CATHEDRAL of Lucha Libre, Arena Mexico. That’s all I really have to say about it; I don’t even want to broach the dumb WWE comment MJF did. Oh, MJF wore MVP styled gear. IT IS TO LAFF. “Is he gonna go ‘BALLIN?’” asked Mrs. Convoy. HE WENT BALLIN’, all right. There was one thing worth pointing out during whatever match this was… Kevin Knight and Shelton Benjamin may as well be matter and anti-matter. THEY MUST NEVER SHARE THE SAME RING EVER AGAIN. Everything they tried to do together came out WRONG.

I believe around this point (I’m tired and it was four hours… my brain barely works), Hangman Adam Page came spilling out of the entrance tunnel, bound and gagged, being beat up by Wheeler YUTA and Claudio Castagnoli. The Death Riders had been lurking earlier when Hangman arrived at the arena and I guess Jon Moxley wanted to take this opportunity to arrange a real heart to heart with old Hanger. Claudio, by the way, looked VERY at ease with, uh… the binding and the torture. Hopefully he doesn’t care for killing the other thing. This was an interesting Mox promo, he didn’t shout and he acted very reasonable, saying he needed Hangman to focus if he wants to beat Moxley in Texas. We’ll see. Eventually, the Opps (Samoa Joe’s crew) came out to help and Hangman swore he would ride THROUGH DEATH ITSELF (?) to get Moxley and rescue the heavyweight title. Oh, I forgot; Hanger had been given a DAD LECTURE by the Fallen Angel, Christopher Daniels earlier in the show, saying Hangman no longer has any friends in the back and that he needs to mend some fences. Hmmmmm.

Wheeler YUTA tried to corrupt Kris Statlander in the back. I enjoy Kris Stat, I have since her days in BEYOND, but she’s reaching a Big Show critical mass level of alignment turns, here. I’m GUESSING it’s her and Willow at All In but I’m not sure. This was a neat segment playing off of the shared past of Stat and YUTA, though. Stat also got mean mugged by Marina Shafir, but that doesn’t need to be a PPV thing whereas the emotional battle with Willow could be.

Although AEW has been clearly, demonstrably building the match with Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada since the moment Kenny returned to the promotion in January, grifters, podcasters and pundits have been whining and in some cases SCREAMING about the need for AEW to run a video package about their rivalry. Through the blessings on New Japan Pro Wrestling UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE OF ANTONIO INOKI FROM ABOVE, they ran the MOTHER of all video packages, explaining Kenny and Okada’s NJPW rivalry, their places on the card and how the series of matches changed both men. This was TREMENDOUS STUFF… but if said grifters, podcasters and pundits COMPLAIN about a second of this or pretend this match hasn’t been built properly or ANY permutation of same…

…kindly tell them to go fuck themselves. As someone who is still (barely) a NJPW loyalist, I have seen all of these matches (a couple of them more than once) and even I wanted to go binge watch them all again.

After the package, both Kenny and Okada were in the ring with the great Tony SKEEAVONE, who really drove home HARD that these two men have had the best series of wrestling matches in history and they were gonna do it one last time. They even unveiled a new, unified title (no, it’s NOT the Inter-Continental title, you smart alecks) that the two will be questing for. It will be interesting to see if the unified title follows the Continental rules or not… I think those rules elevate that belt a bit as opposed to the International title which is just kind of the placation belt, the secondary (or tertiary depending on how strongly you feel about the TNT title) belt. Okada and Kenny signed the contract with a minimum of fuss and slightly begrudgingly shook hands… which led to the appearance of the odious* Don Callis. Kenny screamed at Don to cut the shit (TM Jade Cargill) as Kenny already knows Don’s dirty bag of tricks…

…save one. Of course, OF COURSE, Okada blitzed Kenny from behind with the new belt… and then proceeded to lay waste to Kenny’s compromised tum-tum with the help of Don Callis and a collapsible baton.

“No, son, That’s just raspberry jam.”

Repeated elbow drops and baton strikes to the stomach led to Kenny coughing up AT BARE MINIMUM FOURTEEN PINTS of “blood.” It was actually a great visual even if they may have overdone it SLIGHTLY with the blood capsules or pig’s blood in a condom or whatever gimmick they used, here to simulate INTERNAL INJURIES. This is an interesting pivot… the other Kenny / Okada matches were largely about who’s better / may the better man win. Here, we have a definitive good guy and bad guy, especially after such a visually visceral angle. Does that make if better or worse? No… just different, which is no bad thing. I would have guessed Okada was gonna take all the marbles, but now after Kenny’s BLOODENING, I’m not so sure. They made it fairly apparent that this is writing off Kenny until the big show, which I’m not particularly happy about but maybe they just want to make sure Kenny is healthy and in great shape for next month. Again, another home run angle here, just fantastic pro wrestling nonsense. Don Callis grabbed Okada, and as they ran to the back, Callis screamed “THEY’RE GONNA KILL US; LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!” We HOWLED and HOWLED.

At some point, Hangman found his ancestral true enemy, Renee Paquette, in the back and asked on the status of Will Ospreay. Now, Kenny needed to go to the hospital (obviously; he lost 14 pints of FAKE BLOOD) but Will just needed the hands of the detestable Doc SAMPSON? Huh. At any rate, the Young Bucks tried to intercept Hangman and again told him that they were trying to do this stuff FOR HIM, to which Hangman said stay out of HIS business, Ospreay’s business… and after a pause, even SWERVE’S business. PRINCE NANA USED STEALTH (it was very effective) and listened to / watched all of this to report back to Swerve. Hmmmmmm, again. Again, really good stuff from all involved here.

Anthony Bowens had a match with Kyle Fletcher. Gotch love Bowens… he’s charismatic, he’s athletic, he’s talented… but his singles push is already dead in the water. Like maybe he shouldn’t still be doing the scissoring and coming out with Billy Gunn? Just spitballing, here. Bowens can BE something for AEW but they need to, you know, PUSH him. Gunn serves EXACTLY ZERO PURPOSE. LET HIM GO BACK TO THE FED. Go be in the eight hundredth DX reunion.

There was an old fashioned STAND BY MATCH with Bandido and my beautiful Beast Mortos. God, I wish he weren’t a pin eater… he actively makes everyone he works with better. I love Bandido as well, but the finish felt like it took roughly a minute to set up… an avalanche fallaway slam which looked cool… but just took WAY too long to get to. C’est la vie.

Probably the only other thing really worth mentioning was long time WWE then very briefly AAA and now AEW Spanish team announcer Carlos Cabrerra introducing the crowd to EL IDOLO DE LOS NINOS, the great Atlantis. Of course, FTR and Stokely Hathaway came out to poop on the parade. Now, FTR also did the tried and true “You are bad, Mexican legend guy” stuff but they didn’t have to do cheap WWE heat shit, didn’t have to use an American flag that looked like it came straight from the set of “Patton,” none of that. Needless to say, their cheap heat was about a million times more effective than Max and his ill timed horseshit. In other words, their cheap heat segment was enjoyable… Max’ wasn’t.

Anything I left out didn’t really grab me, I suppose. Mercedes Moné did let CMLL luchadora Xuexis just SMASH her with an elbow right in the mouth in a backstage segment setting up a title match next week at Arena Mexico. It’s amazing how no one in CMLL cares about their championship titles until Americans / foreigners come sniffing around for them, huh?

Next week, there’s MJF / Mistico (ugh), a 10 man tag, a 12 man tag (!), Mercedes / Xuexis and probably way more since they are also filming ROH down there, whatever FTR’s official match is (I don’t think it’s against Atlantis and Atlantis Junior since Junior is in one of the multi man tags) and maybe other stuff I forgot. I love Arena Mexico; the atmosphere will be off the charts. I’m NOT sorry that next week will be a “mere” two and a half hours, though. My brain is basically hamburger at this point.

*Not truly odious, Don. I STILL LOVE YOU