La Zona Muerta

The Aragon Ballroom is a venerable location; it’s played host to acts like Nirvana. Metallica. The Smashing Pumpkins. Green Day. REM. Aerosmith. FUCKING KRAFTWERK.

And I hope you liked it because it’s now playing host to AEW. For a WHILE.

Amongst hardcore fans… they seem to get real excited about AEW and residencies and to me it’s like… I dunno. The Hammerstein Ballroom at the end of last year was a good set of tapings for the company (and arguably where AEW began to turn things around, booking-wise a bit)… but then you get to that third or fourth thing taped there and you kind of go like “oh, yeah… they’re still here, huh?” Ditto when they did the ESports whatever in Texas… it seemed pretty good once or twice but then…

Aragon looked good on TV (mostly… sometimes at these smaller buildings, the cameramen kind of have to be RIGHT ON TOP of the ring so it can feel a touch claustrophobic); the crowd seemed pretty into everything. But will they next week? Or two weeks from now? AEW is filming a LOT of TV from this venue and it seems to me like that’s an easy way to burn out the audience. No need to be a negative Nellie… we’ll take it as it comes but I just don’t really love the concept of being in the same venues over a half dozen times in a post pandemic world.

Ah, but what about the CONTENT of the show?

*shrug*

It was fine, I guess? A bit tread-y water-y, perhaps? You have the immediate problem of a lot of people probably being a bit beat up after the PPV so you’re probably already working with a limited hand just from that. You have the further problem of the next PPV to be promoted being Forbidden Door… and the whole (and I would even argue now outdated) concept of that show is AEW people matching up against NJPW people… and NJPW can’t really promote anything about it or even really reveal who’d gonna be in it until after the G1 Tournament which is just now kicking off. We had a strong tease of Kazuchika Okada and Swerve Strickland… Forbidden Door always has some non AEW / NJPW “dream” matches (and frankly there are ZERO matchups of that type I’d be “dreaming” about this year) so that may well be something on the show… but beyond that… I dunno. I do think the whole FD concept is a bit long in the tooth, especially when that “door” hasn’t been “forbidden” in a long time; your chances of seeing a guy from New Japan randomly on Dynamite are pretty good, you know? I keep seeing people say “well, there will be increased participation from CMLL” and it’s like, okay, that’s fine… but again, you can see CMLL guys on pretty much any given Dynamite. JUST LAST NIGHT, for instance. I think Forbidden Door should gracefully bow out and be something else, perhaps, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

Dyanamite started with Hangman Adam Page shutting down a “you deserve it” chant (thank you, Hanger. LOVE that man) and thanking everyone who helped him in his quest to rid AEW of MOXISM. It was hard for me to enjoy the promo, through no fault of Hangman; it was a great, fiery speech… I was just sure that, off camera, a shrill “HEEEEEY, BUD. YOU MAY BE THE CHAMP BUT YOU’RE STILL POOR” type interruption was coming at any time. Fortunately we didn’t get that… yet… but give ’em a week.

The biggest loser of All In weekend (besides the WWE), Kyle Fletcher, came out and had a solid match with CMLL’s (see?) Mascara Dorada. There has been “news” (it’s not news) of late that Dorada is “on WWE’s radar.” Jesus god, EVERYONE is “on their radar.” THERE, NOW YOU OWE CONVOY SELECT FIVE BUCKS. As I said , this was a solid match. I wouldn’t call it great and honestly, while I like Dorada, he has a long way to go in regards to becoming a complete performer. He reminds me a bit of Kommander when he first came in… capable of doing amazing highspots but the between the music notes aren’t all quite there yet. Fletcher, in my not so humble opinion, should be absolutely SLAYING dudes on his quest to get his rightful TNT title and obviously they didn’t want to just destroy Dorada, here, so it was a largely even contest. I probably would have kicked off the show with a wacky Max Caster thing and had Fletcher OBLITERATE him. To Fletcher’s credit, he shouted into the camera post match, LITERALLY FROTHING AT THE MOUTH that he was going to destroy Dustin RHodes and everything he holds dear. The move… the move should be, assuming THE NATURAL ALLOWS IT, would be for Fletcher to just DESTROY Rhodes to the point of soft voiced announcer concern and then Fletcher feuds with Sammy Guevara as Sammy looks for revenge… but everyone hates Sammy for whatever reason, so that’s probably an ixnay.

There was some tremendous backstage stuff with the Young Bucks, now hated pariahs. No more limos; they have a rental car like everyone else. No one wants to say hi to them, no one wants to dress with them. NO FRIENDS IN WRESTLING. The hated Don Callis (so loathed that even the Bucks hate him, and they’re heels) appeared and pointed out that, now that Kenny Omega was dead (!), that there was no more bad blood between he and the Bucks. Matt said that “we will NEVER join your family,” but conceded that they could use a friend right now, and Callis is that friend. Callis gave them both the most awkward hug.

The big PWG style party match was next and the Bucks came out to their standard entrance and theme. Just when I was about to complain, the music shut off and “MatT and Nick” appeared on the screen… IN COMIC SANS; THE CRUELEST CUT OF ALL, laid over footage of their loss at All In and then footage of them forlornly getting out of their rental car from just a few minutes ago. TREMENDOUS. The Bucks teamed with Hechicero (YES!) and Josh Alexander against Mike Bailey, Kevin Knight, Brody King and Bandido… and if you think that sounds like a fun match, it certainly was. Hechicero is starting a feud with Bandido over the ROH Heavyweight title and, bless his alchemist’s heart, he got the win here; launching Bandido into the air to eat superkicks from the Bucks, catching Bandido and choking him out, all in one fluid motion. IT WOULD HAVE BROUGHT A TEAR TO A GLASS EYE.

Edge talked a lot. *snore*

One thing that was not a home run for me was Okada showing up… don’t get me wrong, that was great. He had a new, black robe and (not really) a new presentation, complete with… sigh… a new theme. Fortunately it was NOT produced by friend of the blog Mikey Rukus, so I can bury it with impunity. It starts off with the familiar coin sound… but then launched into some garbage nu metal sounding pastiche. With RAP.

This is not my beautiful Rainmaker.

Reactions were immediately mixed. One pal suggested that we needed to bully Tony Khan right away to change it back since that worked in the case of Mina Shirakawa, a sentiment I can fully get behind. Rukus did pop up to tell everyone that the band behind the new theme was a Japanese band called One OK Rock (according to Wikipedia, heavily influenced by Linkin Park, Foo Fighters and Good Charlotte, so that explains that) and of course, SINCE IT’S THE INTERNET, I saw a dozen “Oh, I LOVE One OK Rock” responses. MAN, SOME WORLDLY MUSIC FANS OUT THERE, HUH?

Anyway.

Of course it’s jarring when someone has theme music that everyone loves and it gets changed. GO LOOK AT THE OTHER GUYS AND THEIR DEF REBEL GARBAGE. We’ve even been there before with Okada and his shitty remixed theme during his shitty “Balloon Man” period (Balloon Man TM Robyn Hitchcock)! This was just… well, not very good and kinda unwelcome. I saw someone say something like (paraphrased) “this is AEW Okada, not NJPW Okada; get used to it!” and it’s like… wow, okay. Let’s ignore that they used “NJPW Okada” to build a feud since January that just climaxed (possibly) on Saturday. Someone else said something along the lines of “how can Okada’s character grow if his presentation doesn’t change” and again, it was like WOW.

Dunno who needs to hear it but theme song ≠ characterization. The theme should hopefully MIRROR the characterization, not be the driving force behind it.

Whatever. New theme sucks. Hopefully they change it back but I suspect Okada himself picked it or likes it. I guess we were lucky NJPW let AEW use the theme at all since the split with Okada was supposedly slightly acrimonious.

The more important thing is that he called out Swerve for screwing over his friends the Young Bucks. I suspect, in a VERY talky episode of Dynamite (We had Hanger, the backstage business with the Bucks and Callis, a pretape with MJF, Toni Storm and Athena, a pretape with the group I can only hope is now called the MATRIARCHY and Edge with Stokely all chatting the chat) someone (I’m looking at you, Edge or Toni) went long, so Swerve came out and instead of getting into a long promo battle… he simply replied “Whose house?” which was a bit of a… maybe not a bummer but I wanted more, I suppose. Still, a fued with them should be great.

And then there was the main event. Hanger, Powerhouse Hobbs and Mark Briscoe against Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli and Wheeler YUTA.

It was fine. Nothing much to write home, or even this blog about. Probably contributed to my overall “eh” feeling of the show. THe show ended with a spotlight on Darby Allin up in the balcony and Mox being freaked out so hopefully we are getting away from Hanger / Mox and moving to Darby / Mox… but of course they still have War Games Blood and Guts on the horizon. Let’s hope we can get through it without any Steve Regal references this year.

I’m glad they are making the PWG-style “party” matches a continuing thing. Without that this week, I might have put my thumb down for this show.