La Zona Muerta

Another week where I can’t tell you Dynamite was bad but it didn’t really do a lot for me, either. Another week where it feels like Colision might be the thing I’m looking for, instead. I dunno. Just not really feeling the residency, I guess; I’m about ready for the thing to end. And the thing I was hyped up the most about… the reunion between Kenny Omega and Hangman Adam Page, appeared (and I do stress APPEARED) to come to an end as Kenny was AGAIN carted out due to seemingly overwhelming post match damage.

A small nitpick, if I may? THIS IS EXACTLY HOW THEY JUST BUILT THE OKADA MATCH. WE JUST SAW THIS, remember? Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay are out in real life… so we get Kenny back… and then in two weeks, he’s gone again? Now, next week, Hangman could power walk to the ring and be like “Kenny is fine and we challenge the Young Bucks at All Out;” it’s WRESTLING. But again SEEMINGLY writing out Kenny IN THE SAME WAY for whatever length of time… bit of a wet blanket, innit?

Meh.

At least AEW finally found a good way to use Gabe Kidd… dragging him by his ankles through the grotty streets of Philadelphia. So long. Seriously, they send Kidd out at the beginning of the show to no reaction, growling, grousing and calling out Darby Allin… and it’s like… why should the audience react? AEW has done almost NEXT TO NOTHING to establish who Gabe Kidd IS. He’s just auxiliary Death Riders guy, as far as I can tell! He’s had, what ONE promo? Two, at best? Hell, I don’t even know who he is besides “ugly Western foreigner who swears” In New Japan, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Just a complete cipher, the generic create a wrestler you default to when you can’t be bothered to put any effort in the wrestling game of your choice. BALD, WHITE GUY WITH BEARD AND ATTITUDE. Who cares? Anyway, Darby happened to have a truck with a bodybag and a chain for DRAGGIN’, BY HECK, all gassed up and ready to go, got the better of Kidd, zipped him up and… bye bye, Kidd. You want ECW homages? They should have put Ian Riccaboni in a helicopter to follow Darby dragging Kidd through the honeycombed streets of the City of Brotherly Love.

There was another moment during the Darby / Gabe thing that I think was supposed to get a big pop… the lights went out and HOOK appeared… to no fanfare at all. The people don’t know the new HOOK theme music (seems divisive but I like it). The lights out thing, IN THE ECW ARENA is keying them up for some dumb ECW thing and they get HOOK and sit on their hands. Now, I like the story they’re developing with his ex-group, the Opps… they sorta replaced him immediately when he got hurt and immediately picked up trios gold, so he has a legit beef… but the crowd doesn’t seem to be too enthused. I dunno. Go back to having HOOK just savagely suplex dudes to build him back up, I guess? I like the kid and I hope the audience gives him a chance to develop.

The Edge / Christian / FTR segment (another time the crowd didn’t react… but at least this time it’s funny because Edge sucks, so he didn’t get to milk his entrance) was completely unnoteworthy except that indy wrestler Adam Priest got a TON of shine out of it and then was even in a backstage seg with FTR later, where they challenged Priest to a match. I assume he’s under some kind of deal already… and it’s clear by the way the spotlighted him in a segment that had NOTHING to do with him that they see something there. He’s small (very small, sorry to say), but he’s very much in that Jamie Knoble / Chris Benoit type mold… especially Knoble, just a good ol’ Southern boy ready to snap, ready to brawl, to technically wrestle. Priest is GREAT and I was tickled he got a unique spotlight on this episode. FTR obviously love the guy and I hope he takes this opportunity and just crushes it.

I already talked about the main event aftermath but I do have to mention how GREAT the ME match itself was, saving a show that for me, didn’t really land. Kyle Fletcher… man. The HUNGER just RADIATES off this guy. This is a man who wants to be the world heavyweight champion, in character AND real life and I think he can do it. It’s a little bit early, yes… but when they pull the trigger, it will be glorious. It REALLY felt like they were building towards Kenny and Hanger against the Bucks for the PPV, but now…? I don’t know. Kenny was basically beaten down by the entire Don Callis Family and brutally put through a table by Fletcher (so enthusiastically so that I and a couple of pals thought Fletcher hurt himself) and stretchered off with a NECK BRACE post show. Again, it just sort of left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but the match itself was probably a low key Match of the Year contender. You have any combination of the Elite in the ring and, surprise, surprise, it FEELS like AEW. Not opposed to the heel win, just not digging the possible Kenny write off.

I don’t have much else to say about the show. Oh, there is one thing… last Saturday, AEW started showing tweets reacting to the show on screen. I don’t really like that; it smacks of WWE.

Throughout my stewardship of the Twitch side of Wrestling Observer Live and the many years of recapping it for the website itself, I was staunchly anti phone call, largely because the phone calls were almost always bad. I asked the host one day why he accepted them and he said that the radio stations liked the proof of engagement. Maybe the tweet thing in AEW right now is something similar; maybe WBD likes the engagement, I don’t know. But I do know the guy who “runs” Twitter is legitimately evil. Yes, yes, there’s no safe haven under capitalism and all billionaires are bad, etc., etc. but he is actively an evil man and I don’t need the reminder of his presence. I would merely roll may eyes if it were Bluesky posts or whatever… as I say, it’s too WWE, but we honestly and genuinely DON’T need to be a part of Twitter in any way, shape or form.

While I have your ear (well, your eye), I may as well weigh in on the All Out time change thing.

In case you’re unaware (and why would you be), AEW presents their next pay per view spectacular, All Out, emanating from the Scotiabank Centre in Toronto on September 20th. Show was scheduled to start at a “normal” time of, umm… whatever works out to be 5pm Pacific for Canadians. I guess there’s a big college football game that night (it’s a Saturday night), too, which could potentially cut into the proceedings but… *shrug*. Whatever.

But then, about two weeks ago, WWE, in the middle of the seemingly disastrous roll out of the ESPN Plus app (or whatever it’s called) that their pay per views will now be exclusively available on going forward, decided “hey yo, let’s have our own show on the same day as AEW’s show. And let’s have our show feature the FINAL match between John Cena and Brock Lesnar.” I don’t think that’s a match that is going to compel MOST of the people who like AEW enough to buy it on PPV to watch the competition instead, but it will certainly sway some of the more casual fans. I keep being told elsewhere that this sort of competition between the two companies is “cool,” like the Monday Night Wars and… yeah, I dunno. I didn’t particularly think the Monday Night Wars were “cool,” especially when the side I preferred kept getting kicked in the teeth and, frankly, kept scoring a lot of own goals. I don’t want to watch history repeat itself. The difference between then and now, of course is, despite my nitpicks and problems, AEW is the most consistently excellent wrestling PPV producer in the history of the sport.

Anyway, this puts AEW into a bit of a tough spot, immediately putting them on the back foot. Continue forward with the show, eat a bit of shit and ignore WWE fucking with you? Or move to an earlier time in the day, as they did with All In (which WWE also tried to counter program, and ended up shooting themselves in the foot)? AEW opted to move the show to an earlier time in the day. Not an unreasonable move… but the kicker is AEW waited until SEPTEMBER THIRD to do it, just over two weeks out from All Out. The show has already sold some 11,000 tickets, it’s already a success but that’s a bit of a screw you to the people who bought tix and made plans ahead of time. It’s not a hypothetical, it’s not a strawman… I KNOW PEOPLE WHOSE PLANS WERE FUCKED UP BY THIS MOVE. Obviously, overall it’s a small percentage of people and hey, maybe AEW will do something to make this right for them… but I wouldn’t count on it.

That being said, I get why this is happening. This is probably the right move on paper… it could even increase the buys in the European theater. Trust me on this, AEW has people who examine these numbers and stats and trends. They may be seemingly deficient in other areas of infrastructure, but Tony Khan is a STATS GUY. That’s like, what he does when he isn’t running a billion dollar wrestling company. But what about the optics? Is AEW RUNNING AWAY from WWE?

Well, yeah. Unquestionably. But I don’t think that automatically makes AEW look bad. I was a small part of a large debate yesterday with people taking very little middle ground in how either this was a brilliant countertactic by AEW and WWE would screw the pooch again… or that AEW looked weak for running away from a head to head confrontation, that they had switched to a SUBOPTIMAL time.

Did they?

There’s no way for us to know until the buy rate rolls in. This IS a wrestling war, 100%, no doubt about it, but everyone seems too quick to try to talley points in said war. These are the people that follow the ratings EVERY WEEK (without having a true understanding of them), the ones that scrutinize everything the companies do. I saw someone say (again, not a strawman) that AEW’S ROSTER MORALE would be affected by this time change. Let’s be PERFECTLY clear, Tony Khan was in a complete damned if you do, damned if you don’t position here and a decision in either direction was going to earn SCORN.

What are we even doing here?

I’m not happy with the move in that it affects some ticket holders. Had AEW announced the time change even a week ago, I probably wouldn’t have even said anything! For ME, as a consumer, it’s better overall because I get to watch the show and then unwind with NON wrestling for the rest of the day and I think that’s ultimately where most people will come down. Some secret few might even be psyched they get to watch All Out and Cena / Lesnar in the same day (ugh)! I dunno, I’m not the PAY PER VIEW POLICE. The optics? I dunno, it looks to me like WWE are bullies (they are) and maybe, slowly, other people are starting to see that, too. Does AEW look weak? Your mileage may vary.

So, here’s to this week’s Collision delivering the sauce I didn’t get from Dyna this week. My guy Konosuke Takeshita and his comically large pants will tear it up with Mark Briscoe. I’m excited for the next chapter of Jon Moxley and Danny Garcia, and I can’t wait to see what FTR does with Adam Priest.