La Zona Muerta

You’ll have to forgive the (relative) brevity of this week’s column… I’m very under the weather thanks to my plague carrying wife. She’s forced to go into our office three times a month and clearly the last time she was there, she caught THE DREADED SKUNGE and passed it along to me, so we’re coughing and snotting and gross all over the place.

It’s hard to shake the feeling right now that AEW is hot again, that AEW is back. Are things perfect? No. Are there things I hate, things I could nitpick? Oh yes, and we’ll talk about at least one of them during the course of this column… but overall… If you’re a wrestling fan, an actual wrestling fan, not a weirdo who screams about how AEW ‘stole’ people from NJPW and STARDOM or someone who swears that five mediocre wrestling matches on a four hour ‘premium live event’ is fine… AEW has been such a gift, and one most of us don’t appreciate enough. We got to watch them broadcast from CMLL’s Arena Mexico, a show that blended both products in front of a fucking MOLTEN hot crowd. What a time to be alive. Not even the lack of ROSHFRANS SIGNAGE could dampen my spirits.

As I said, though, there were some things that were head scratchers. Look, pre pandemic (more accurately, pre RUSH being fired), I was a big CMLL guy (and I would happily be one again if their pricing scheme on YouTube wasn’t so ridiculous)… so I’m used to crazy multi man matches, demaskings leading to challenges that go nowhere, all of that sort of thing. But this is also the world in 2025 where America is an evil, disruptive force, gutshot with stupidity. Personally, I’d be a bit leery of doing America First, LOS GRINGOS DORKOS shit right now… and they chose to have Maxwell Jacob Friedman, he of the bad instincts, he of the it’s better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission school do a ton of anti-Mexican shit leading up to this match. It was all a collar tug for me.

It’s not that I don’t understand that the foreign heel isn’t a time honored, dumb wrestling trope. I get it. One time, back in 2017, RUSH and Los Ingobernobles (the unfiltered, unadulterated version, not the fan favorite Japanese offshoot) came out wearing shirts they had freshly made at the mall that proclaimed:

Money.

Power.

TRUMP.

purely for rudo heat (and it worked), so again, I GET IT. I just don’t think it’s APPROPRIATE today, and having Mistico, a man who was LITERALLY DRAPED IN THE MEXICAN FLAG, fail to conquer MJF: America Man in ARENA FUCKING MEXICO… I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have done ANY of that. The foreign heel is passé. WE DON’T DO NAZI GIMMICKS ANYMORE, EITHER (unless you somehow made a career of pretending to be a bad ass biker man… but surely there are no wrestlers like that, right? *cough*). The NO YOB SYNDICATE could have got their heat post match in the exact same way they did if Mistico had simply WON; the rudo beat down leading to a demasking is a lucha tradición más grandiosa probably dating back to 1933… but you know what else is a tradición más grandiosa in lucha libre? Making a grandstand challenge that never, EVER pays off. How many times have I seen RUSH, Volador, LA Park, even Mistico himself make a challenge for an apuestas match that NEVER had a chance of happening? And here’s the thing, we all THINK this dumb disqualification / demasking angle is leading to an apuestas match between MJF and Mistico… but what if it doesn’t? What if it’s just a lame multi man with the Syndicate versus, I dunno, Jet Flight Speed (or whatever Kevin Knight and Speedball Bailey call themselves, Mistico and maybe Mascara Dorada or whomever? People told me UP AND DOWN that MJF was GUARANTEED to lose to Mistico clean in the middle of the ring last night, but no… he continues to be the most protected man in wrestling outside of the Fed. There was something else, too… I always stick up for MJF as a WRESTLER… part of his heat is that he doesn’t wrestle much and talks ENDLESS shit but then ends up delivering in ring EVERY TIME. Last night? Mistico wrestled at three quarters speed and it appeared Max couldn’t keep up. I dunno if it was the elevation or if Max took a nasty spill in that hard ass ring or what… but last night was NOT Max’ best effort. One of the cretins I don’t care for in the wrestling reportage sphere claimed that apparently Max was allegedly attacked by a fan after the show. I wonder who sent that hot scoop in? A Mr. M. Friedman? No, that’s too obvious. How about Max F? Look, maybe this all worked for you. Great! To ME, it was dumb and crass.

Compare and contrast all of this nonsense with Hangman Adam Page coming out at the beginning of the show, putting over the immigrant workers that worked on his family farm and saying how we’re all stronger together. IN SPANISH. Two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT philosophies, two different ways of working. What a time for Page, who comes off like the most authentic thing in wrestling, especially when the guy AEW passed him over for is now busy revealing how shallow the beliefs he always espoused were over on the other channel.

And people STILL are talking themselves into thinking Hangman isn’t beating Jon Moxley in Texas.

Fools.

Anyway, not satisfied with having a mere ten man match on the show, it was revealed last week, after Atlantis and his son had un enfrentamiento muy malo with FTR, that there would also be a TWELVE man match on the show, and then, thanks to some last minute jiggery pokery, it grew into a FOURTEEN man match. You had the likes of Bandido (already beloved by the Arena Mexico crowd), Adam Cole, Danny Garcia, the Atlantis clan, Brody King, Dax Harwood, Konosuke Takeshita, Kyle Fletcher, Lance Archer, Hechicero… the talent just thrown out here was staggering. The notable stand out here was the crowd COMPLETELY TURNING on Atlantis Jr. Now, if it was a few years ago, I would have understood… I watched his debut and probably the first six or so months of his career, and frankly, he was eclipsed by whichever Villano he was feeding with (I genuinely can’t remember if it was Villano III Jr. or Hijo del Villano III)… but it’s been a few years and he’s developed into a decent worker. Still, it appears shoving Atlantis Jr. down their collective throats has led to a sort of Shota Umino styled backlash. Poor guy… By the end of the match, the go away heat even translated to Atlantis himself (and if you’ll recall, the Atlantis family were the wronged party)!

One shot away

Despite the slightly messed up rudo / technico dynamic due to Atlantis heat, the fourteen man was a ton of fun. The crowd, to my surprise, knew all the AEW guys. They did the BAY BAY for Adam Cole (actually he got a HUGE reaction, which goes to show how funny the online reaction to him is), they did the barking for Brody King, they popped for Danny Garcia doing his little dance. Good stuff, a good blending of styles.

Another fun standout was the Four Million Peso High Flying Clockwork Orange House of Fun match (or whatever it was called). Simple enough… Take Ricochet, Hologram, Lio Rush and Mascara Dprada and let them do a fun sprint. They missed a fun outcome here… Ricochet should have won and then he could have started bragging on TV about how he was now a millionaire. They could have done fun, little skits where he was shown living beyond his means and then his financial planner could have called him and explained four million pesos is only around two hundred thousand dollars, and then he could have sank into financial despair.

Okay, this is why I don’t fantasy book.

While I’m on the subject, I’d like to shout out Lio Rush, here. He was having the time of his life in this match, and it showed. I’m really glad he got a second (perhaps third?) chance in AEW. I watched his rise on the indies and Ring of Honor before his disastrous WWE run… and while I respected his athleticism and his unique presentation, I really HATED some of his matches. That one match he had with Joey Janella in, GCW? CZW? Whatever company it was where he had developed his ‘Blackheart’ persona (and why did this kid have a Great Muta / Kishin Liger type gimmick when he didn’t really have much of a personality in his typical gimmick yet? Totally bush league) and he no sold a Canadian Destroyer off of a ladder through a table… I HATED IT. But now? His transitions are so unique, so different. He has quickness and speed but he uses them to MEAN something, he’s not just doing video game spots. He’s had to eat a lot of humble pie and he’s come out all the better for it. Good for him… I now find him a joy to watch.

The main event saw (deep breath) the Young Bucks, the Death Riders (and the Beast Mortos, subbing for Claudio Castagnoli) face the Opps, Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay and was just as fun and wild as you would suspect. Man, how psyched must Mortos, Hologram (the former Aramis) and Bandido have been to work this show, huh? Bandido was an indy guy and Mortos and Aramis were AAA guys so I bet working Arena Mexico means a LOT to them. Too bad AEW couldn’t mend fences with CMLL and RUSH. Will Ospreay KISSED THE RING MAT. I don’t know if there’s anyone on this dismal ass planet who loves wrestling as much as he does. I was pretty surprised to see Swerve Strickland eat the pin, here, but they are trying to get the Bucks versus Ospreay and Swerve on the tracks for All In, so I understand… and at the end, Hangman Page came out and beat up Moxley (even accidentally nailing one of the Bucks with his Buckshot lariat). This was a strong main event and post match deal, so well done.

Listen, AEW right now? They have momentum. They went to their partner promotion’s house and played (mostly) fair. They delivered a hot show in front of an INCREDIBLY hot crowd and advanced a lot of threads for All In. I don’t think you can ask for much more than that. In light of what that wee l’il sell out Rey Mysterio said last week about WWE putting it’s stamp on ‘authentic’ lucha libre… I’m glad to see that AEW was mostly respectful of their partner and were able to showcase ACTUAL lucha libre and not Konnan’s vision of it or Jeremy Borash’s vision of it or Shawn Michaels’ vision of it or Paul Levesque’s vision of it. I hope they make this iteration of Grand Slam a yearly event. Why not? I also hope this leads to luchadores getting roles in AEW that are a bit more substantial.

Viva Grand Slam Mexico!