La Zona Muerta

If I liked Toni Storm better, that would have been a pretty killer title. Oh, how I LAUGHED when young Billie Starkz gave the Timeless one a gentle TAPPY TAP with the title belt in order for her mistress, ROH Forever champion Athena to get heat. Just the most GENTLE of belt shots.

Athena keeps calling Toni “Tonti” and that caused confusion on my timeline. WHAT IS SHE SAYING.

Anyway, week two, episode 3 of the (seemingly) 100 day Chicago residency took place last night. Crowd was into everything and still looks good on TV, so no real worries, there. The highs on this show were HIGH… everything with Hangman Adam Page is COOKING, even if I don’t love him immediately going back to fighting Jon Moxley. The wrestling on this show was GREAT. Everything else…?

The show kicked off with Hangman thundering to the ring, only stopped by his two greatest enemies, Renee Paquette and Maxwell Jacob Friedman. Renee asked one of her ultra lame “What’s next for wrestler x Hangman?” type questions and Hangman was FIRED UP because, on Collision, there was a TERRIFIC angle where Colt Cabana was KILLED TO DEATH by the Death Riders, going so far as to HANG HIM WITH A CHAIN UNTIL HE TAPPED OUT. Hangman swore to PUNISH Wheeler YUTA for his elders’ transgressions, a statement which probably set a number of people alight in various ways. MJF interjected and talked about cashing in (sigh, we’ll get to it) his Money in the Banl Casino Gauntlet Number One Contender’s contract, but Hangman SHUT HIM DOWN COMPLETELY. “I’m not giving you a title shot because you’re a coward. You need to execute your contract or earn a shot in ring.” And then Hangman simply left. This was the beginning of MJF eats shit night, and it felt CATHARTIC. As much as I dislike MJF and the dumb shit he’s doing right now, everything he’s done with ol’ Hanger has been GREAT.

So anyway, Hanger ate up YUTA in around five minutes. I saw a couple people say Page shouldn’t sell for a lower card dude like YUTA but… I don’t agree. YUTA has been an active difference maker in the DRs and the little bit of offense he got in was fine. It wasn’t much. YUTA also gets great heat merely from being a turncoat and eventually, will be a great babyface again. Imagine if he joined with Don Callis? The heat would be BLISTERING. Hanger obviously annihilated YUTA with a clothesline to win. YUTA ended the match bloody and spent. Hangman went to fulfill the promise of his name, wrapping a chain around YUTA’s neck… and as YUTA begged NOT TO BE HUNG, Hangman yelled at him that “they’re NOT coming to save you.” And he was right; no nut shot from Marina Shafir, no sneak uppercut from Claudio Castagnoli. YUTA was HUNG (see what I did there) out to dry. Hangman showed MERCY and let YUTA go after he let him think about it for a minute. THIS IS GOOD STUFF and Hangman is easily one of my favorite characters in wrestling right now. I was very afraid he was going to go back to being the humble, anxious and unsure guy he was before the trials and tribulations he suffered through with Swerve Strickland, but the man portraying the character is FAR too smart for that and knows THIS incarnation of Hangman needs to keep that violent edge.

So, here was something I didn’t love, something I expect was talked about on podcasts and clickbait articles this morning. Will Ospreay came out to give a tremulous promo about how his C4 and C6 vertebrae were messed up and he was going away for awhile, the crowd booing and sad. “Don’t worry, boys… with treatment and the excellent medical resources we have here at AEW… I should be back… hopefully by Forbidden Door.”

FORBIDDEN DOOR IS LITERALLY IN A MONTH. They have this guy out here doing a bye bye speech, they FLEW HIM OUT FROM THE UK and they were merely writing him off for a month. Especially after the REAL LIFE speech Adam Cole had to give two weeks ago… I wouldn’t have done this. The DR attack on Ospreay was perfectly adequate for excusing his absence and instead people are gonna be like WILL OSPREAY WAS WORKING ON A BAD NECK AND HAS TO MISS TIME I HOPE HE’S OKAY. I wouldn’t say it was in bad taste or anything… I just didn’t care for it.

FTR and Jet Speed had a TERRIFIC match. Now… FTR… I have alternately ranted about them here and raved about them there. It’s VERY lucky that I wasn’t writing this blog thingiemadoo whilst FTR Bald had his fucking execrable podcast with a former BOARD~! malefactor who I won’t name here. That show LEGITIMATELY cost Bald friendships in the business and the respect of his peers. I’m STUNNED he wasn’t asked to pack it in sooner. But here’s the thing… now that FTR are their kind of perfected selves… THEY’RE WRESTLING BETTER. THIS is the FTR that had three all time matches with the Briscoe brothers. The FTR that fought American Alpha in the other place. You can see it in their work… just so loose, as if a great burden had been lifted off of their shoulders. THEY ARE HAVING THE TIMES OF THEIR LIVES, AND WE, THE AUDIENCE, BENEFIT.

So of course we have to fuck it up by pitting them against the Hurt Syndicate. And if you want a REAL peek behind the curtain… FTR are heels right now for a number of reasons… wanting to work Edge (and Christian) I’m sure being paramount among them… but behind the scenes, one of the reasons they went heel is they didn’t want to be EATEN ALIVE BY THE HURT MEN. TRUST ME ON THIS. And here they are anyway. The whole thing was stupid… Stokely (this wasn’t the stupid part; he’s a TREMENDOUS performer) was speared by Edge last week and therefore on a crutch (a crutch he helped FTR win with. God, I love heel tag team managers). Stokely, reasonably, got a restraining order against Edge. So Edge looked around in the locker room, presumably saw some dudes he recognized from WWE, HIRED them like they were the fucking Acolyte Protection Agency to get past the alleged restraining order, and sicced them on FTR, the dastardly heels. And then, after having a tough match with Jet Speed, a match their manager had to help them cheat to win… FTR BRAVELY DECIDED TO FIGHT THE HURT SYNDICATE. Seriously, that’s not me making a joke or creatively misinterpreting something that happened for humor’s sake. They were into it and fought back like valiant babyfaces.

So, you have this tortuous WWE act LITERALLY transplanted into AEW and no selling and eating opponents alive, completely geeking everyone out… and now you’re going to have this cancerous act RUIN the one great comeback story in AEW? An act so good it has nearly redeemed three years of mostly mediocre shit?

To EXTRA sell the WWE-ness of this whole thing, Dynamite went to a break and then did a MOMENTS AGO recap of the angle when it returned. I’d SWEAR it was intentional if it weren’t so fucking stupid.

I may have forgot the order in which this happened, but let’s stick with the Hurt dudes. I actually didn’t mind this bit too much. MJF yelled at them backstage, asking how come they didn’t have his back against Hangman. Bobby Lashley gave MJF the patented CHRISTINE JARRETT FACEGRIP and then summarily kicked him out of the Syndicate. Max was left trembling and punching lockers. Actually not bad but LORD do I hate this act. In a shittier world, this sets up Max and Lashley to have a program, but I don’t think that will be happening here. I mean, Max’ program against Mistico still hasn’t led to that mask versus hair apuestas match I was assured Max was too big of a wrestling dork to not do. I know Max is gonna beat Averno for some meaningless belt and… you know what? Never mind. Let’s get to the other Max bit.

Max came out to run down Mark Briscoe. Again. Mark Briscoe came out to talk about Max’ “kosher pickle.” Again.

The word of the day is ANNOYANCE (thanks to friend of the blog Jen for that line).

And then, in a TOTALLY STUNNING TWIST, Max ran down Jay Briscoe. Again.

ENOUGH OF THIS. IT’S BORING. It’s making me DISLIKE Mark Briscoe. It’s a never ending Mobius strip of dumb, low hanging fruit. QUIT EVOKING JAY BRISCOE’S NAME.

Swerve and newly double signed (and word is he may not be the only one… does SOMEONE read this blog and my recommendations three months ago to double sign all the big names? Answer: no) HECHICERO (cornered by the MIGHTY Don Callis, who displayed CUNNING LINGUISTIC SKILLS) fought to a disqualification when the Callis Family interfered. Good match, and could have gotten to great, but I didn’t love that finish (don’t book matches if someone can’t lose). Overall, this was largely done to set up a low blow to l’il Swerve delivered by a roundly booed Kazuchika Okada. I assume the crowd was booing Okada because they heard that awful new theme song from last week. ‘Twas fine.

Oh, I forgot to rant about cash ins both last week and while I was talking about Max. Let’s shoehorn it in here.

Both Max AND Athena flat out declared that their respective title shot contracts are INDEED cash in style. Athena beat the tar out of Toni Storm after a so so match with the aforementioned Billie Starkz and threatened to cash in… but Alex Windsor sort of saved the day or at least prevented Athena from “executing the contract.” When asked if the contracts were again these dopey Money in the Bank style things, Tony Khan, during the All In media scrum, said that he needed to sit down with the contract holders and that it would all be worked out on television. I guess how it “worked out” is that they just sign and “execute the contract.” They used the term “execute the contract” on TV at least a half dozen times. BLEAAARRRRRRGGGHHHHHH. I think one of the ONLY good cash ins, EVER was, ironically, the first one when Edge, of all people, cashed in on John Cena at whatever WWE show that was. People didn’t know what the cash in really was and the real life despicable Vince McMahon was literally yelling at the audience to stick around after the main event, so they wouldn’t miss the title switch.

Despite Mark Briscoe verbally underwhelming me whenever he’s not serious, he still delivers in ring and actually managed to pick up the victory in a VERY hard fought match in the main event over the usually job adverse Claudio Castagnoli. They’ve actually beat Claudio a couple of times in a row, now. Hmmmmmmm. This led to Hangman Adam Page RETURNING (and Wheeler YUTA wearing a John Cleese Fawlty Towers style bandage) and challenging Moxley NEXT WEEK ON DYNAMITE to a title match, solely to shut Moxley up. One has to assume there will be some bullshit in that match to get us to a Blood and Guts situation but we will see. I’d rather this be a blowoff, to be honest, but maybe Mox REALLY wants to make it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hangman is THE GUY. I guess we’ll see.

Pretend I drew young YOOTS, here, instead

Overall, this was a good show. The WRESTLING was almost universally great. The angles… the teasing of cash ins… the Hurt stuff… teasing a Will Ospreay injury…? Not so good, Al.