La Zona Muerta

Well, All Out has come and gone. A mostly good show, drug down at times by a crowd who was really into ENTRANCES AND MOMENTS. There were other factors dragging the show down as well, some self inflicted.

You know what ultimately ruined wrestling? It’s not superkicks or the DDT not being a finish or whatever your local Cornette type grouses about. It’s not five hour shows. It’s not the slow dissolution of kayfabe as heels and faces attend a wedding together.

What ruined wrestling is “wouldn’t it be funny if” or “you know what would be funny…?” or any number of permutations of same.

That’s not to say comedy has NO place in wrestling… I’m not here to get into the “many flavors of ice cream” debate or to tell you that YOU’RE BAD if you enjoy the silliness. I mean, there was something that happened in the back end of this weekend’s All Out that made me laugh so hard my sides hurt (we’ll get there). I generally think the Young Bucks’ schtick is pretty funny. I spent Sunday morning watching Evil Uno’s Mystery Wrestling, and most of that silly stuff landed for me. I think the problem is more when you have something that’s relatively serious and then you go “wouldn’t it be funny if…” and then you do a bunch of stupid things, thereby ruining immersion. Everyone has a different threshold on this, of course. Last month’s Forbidden Door had a wee dram of comedy that broke immersion for some (the Young Bucks harangued a technician into bringing foreign objects into the ring, oops, it turned out to be a bag of gummy bears, instead). They used them and moved on; that was cute, not overbearing, to me, anyway, an example of comedy being inserted, but not being a focus.

Here, at the beginning of All Out, we had Edge and Christian, locked in a BLOOD FEUD with FTR, the men who tried to take Edge out of wrestling… but we have time to do a wacky comedy sketch prior to the match, just really HAMMERING THE HUMOR HOME like it was 2002 WWE, do the match, do JOHN CENA TRIBUTE SPOTS (believe me, I have a seperate rant about that in the chamber) and then do WACKY HUMOR when BETH PHOENIX comes to take Stokely Hathaway, making his own silly faces, out of the match. Hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if AEW hired THE GREAT KHALI to come out with Beth, too? THEN THEY COULD RECREATE THEIR FUNNY KISS SPOTS FROM 2010 WWE! WOULDN’T IT BE FUNNY? And the most galling thing is watching the crowd react, or people on line react. “YAY, IT’S A THING I REMEMBER!”

I become more and more convinced that nostalgia is an evil, putrid thing that should be ignored, when it comes to the squared circle, TV, movies, books, whatever. I’m not saying I’m immune… my home in a lot of ways is a TRIBUTE to nostalgia, books and DVDs and toys of my past arrayed everywhere, as far as the eye can see. I tend to seek comfort and solace in things of the past. But in wrestling…? Nostalgia feels more like an anchor around the neck. Wouldn’t it be funny if Edge is a wacky, happy guy and Christian is a dour asshole? Wouldn’t it be funny if they kept reminding you of that, over and over during this VERY SERIOUS match? Seriously? We’re suffering from nostalgia-itis for the WWE product from fifteen to twenty years ago? That’s the product that nearly SEVERED MY TIES with wrestling.

Realistically, I probably wasn’t going to like this match no matter WHAT they did, but nothing, NOTHING would have prepared me for it being a near thirty minute tribute to the other guys. Wouldn’t it be funny, on a day where the competition bullied AEW out of their typical timeslot, if they did a bunch of unsubtle, unfunny WWE comedy to kick off the serious match, summoned yet another WWE nostalgia act from the past to join in the “fun” and then did specific spots referencing the overrated cretin who is in the throes of his retirement tour later on in the day? We’re lucky Edge didn’t F5 somebody. We’re lucky he didn’t come out with a shirt that said “I heart WWE.” Edge, of course, got to kick out of everything under the sun, but won with a mere spear. WHAT A GIVING PERFORMER.

It’s been said many times that the history of AEW is the history of professional wrestling, but if I hadn’t PAID to VIEW this show, I would have turned it off after this WWE lovefest. I turned off the CMLL Aniversario the night previous for less (“Now here’s a lady with a cool, unique name”). I DON’T WATCH AEW BECAUSE IT’S BETTER WWE. I WATCH AEW BECAUSE IT’S AN UNIQUE PRODUCT OF ITS OWN. Edge is such an anachronistic sore thumb sticking out in this product. He can’t possibly retire soon enough.

My morale suffered another blow as Eddie Kingston returned and had a completely ROTTEN match with… sigh… Big Bill. I saw some more charitable souls say that only the finish was messed up in this match but the truth is that this was a bad match up, executed poorly. I’d probably agree with those who said Eddie’s return would have been better as a surprise, but we’re past that debate… we have the match here, and listen. I love Eddie. I love how he makes wrestling matches look like struggles as opposed to a crisply choreographed back and forth. The sloppy stuff he does sometimes is a FEATURE, not a BUG… but the reality is that, while he’s very good, he’s not good enough to elevate those who are a HUGE drag factor, and man… Big Bill is a HUGE drag factor. He’s the American Jake Lee, fated to get chance after chance merely because he’s tall. He doesn’t have good matches, he has passable squashes, I guess. He’s the big guy, the hot tag guy. HE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN THAT AND EDDIE WASN’T ABLE TO OVERCOME THAT. I guarantee you Eddie was upset with this match in the back because it wasn’t a good re-debut. I DO like the idea of him and HOOK becoming New York pals as HOOK desperately needs that tough guy charisma Eddie has pouring off of him in Newport scented waves. The less said of this match the better, but at this point, I turned and said to the wife “you need to stop me from buying these shows sometimes.”

Here’s something I was expecting to write… I owe Maxwell Jacob Freidman… if not an apology… at the very least, I owe him some props. Now, I never take ANYTHING away from the guy in ring. He almost ALWAYS delivers there when it counts… it’s his stale persona and repetitive edgy boy rote promos that I have a problem with… and between his feuds with Mistico, Mark Briscoe and Hangman Adam Page, as the feuds weaved together, intersected and flowed back apart, that edgy boy nonsense built and built to the point of complete insufferability. And yet, homeboy DELIVERED, both in his instant classic match with Mistico in Arena Mexico on Friday and then this match, what? 12 hours later? with Briscoe. Most surprisingly, he and Briscoe took something that sounded AWFUL to me, “Tables ‘n’ Tacks,” and made it work. We assumed the “table” stip was there simply for MJF to avoid a pinfall loss… but this match, with it’s ill defined rules ended up not being a tables match (meaning whomever goes through a table first loses) but simply a match where the use of tacks and tables was allowed. And, miracle of miracles, MJF laid down in the middle of the ring after being crushed by the Froggy ‘Bo and the JAY DRILLER.

I remember a Bryan and Vinny review of a TNA pay per view from long ago, presumably involving Abyss, masked master of all things pointy and sharp, where they chuckled about how even when TNA used a ton of tacks, it still paled in comparison to whenever WWE would use tacks, with WWE’s superior budget and production values. Here, AEW used probably the single greatest quantity of tacks I’ve ever seen in a wrestling match, and that covers a lot of dumb tack deathmatch covered ground. Mark Briscoe set the stage and poured out the equivalent of one whole metal pail full of tacks, spreading them out the way I’d imagine he spreads out chicken feed. This was a COUNTLESS number of tacks, enough that I was more concerned about the wrestlers’ footing than I was about them being punctured. There was a social media post from Bryce Remsburg later, focused on a pair of boots (I don’t know if they were his, Briscoe’s or MJF’s) with a trypophobia-inducing number of tacks embedded in the soles. Brrrrr. At any rate, the props I have to give MJF for would be both him laying down for Mistico the night before (still lame he didn’t put up his hair, but Hollywood beckons, I guess) and also for laying down here after mentioning Mark Briscoe’s late brother over and over and over again, threatening to light Mark on fire, etc. Mark Briscoe NEEDED to win this match to retain credibility going forward and hey, who knows. Maybe AEW might give some thought to actually PUSHING Briscoe!

MVP ate a pin from Ricochet and THE DEMAND to keep peace in the back. Moving on.

Mercedes Moné and Riho… they wrestled, IMO, a pretty rote match that really just felt like spot, rest, reset, spot, rest, repeat, ad nauseum. People REALLY want to rate Mercedes high. People, at least long time AEW people, REALLY want Riho to be good. They always joke about her being the “NXT Killer,” because some of her segments did better than NXT when the two shows were head to head… but Riho… I think out of the non STARDOM affiliated joshi… she’s the one I have the most difficulty buying the offense of. If you are tiny, you can still deliver lighting fast, pinpoint offense, like a Yuka Sakazaki does. Yuka is great. Riho’s stuff doesn’t look that fast or that crisp; it’s just there. It’s ALWAYS been difficult for me to buy. AEW just brought her back like two weeks ago and no one thought she had a CHANCE to beat Mercedes… and why should she? This match was poorly built and not executed especially well. AEW has moved on past the relative skill level of a Riho. Mercedes isn’t quite the magician some of her fans would have you believe she is. This match wasn’t a patch on the women’s four way that would follow later in the afternoon.

At this point, I was BEGGING for my guy, Konosuke Takeshita to save the show. He cracked his knuckles, bit his mask and pointed at the screen. THE MAN HAD ARRIVED. Mascara Dorada came out, and while I enjoy Dorada, he’s not been exposed a ton to AEW audiences (I think he’s been on Dynamite a handful of times). Kazuchika Okada came out to his new, total buzzkill of a theme, and I started to worry.

I needn’t have. These three cats tore the house down, and by the end of it, even the WWE-esque Toronto crowd was won over by Dorada’s offense. You’ve heard pundits say it a million times; nothing grabs casual audiences the way high level lucha libre does. My thirty plus years of wrestling fandom is testament to that.

People FAR closer to the inside than I, SMART people have been talking all year about how Takeshita will likely end up “soft jumping” to New Japan Pro Wrestling, shifting his focus to primarily wrestling there, presumably as their new ace, their new champion. That seemed like a pretty good bet as AEW sort of drug their feet on utilizing Takeshita to his fullest. And then, of course, New Japan ended up pretty well sliding off of a cliff this year, and appear to be pinning their comeback hopes entirely on some untested Olympic judoka, hoping he will become a crossover star. I don’t think Takeshita is “jumping” anywhere but chances are good that, in a month’s time, he may well be the IWGP Heavyweight champion. Will their fans reject him? Two months ago, I would have said “of course not.” Now…? I’m not so sure. And if he’s champ and the NJPW faithful reject him… what does that leave Takeshita?

AEW, of course. The literal best wrestler in the world in the place where THE BEST WRESTLE. I don’t know how Takeshita’s feud with Okada will pay off. My rudimentary, unoriginal booking? Okada and Takeshita square off in the finals of the Continental Classic. Takeshita delivers a Rainmaker and beats Okada, 1, 2, 3. What if that’s not the end game? What if there’s a higher calling for this rivalry? Time will tell, but these two have SO MUCH left in the chamber. They merely scraped the surface here, and while I wasn’t wild about this match being a three way dance, Dorada got himself over to the crowd, and this served to whet the palette for the eventual Okada / Takeshita singles match. The anticipation is delicious.

Darby Allin and Jon Moxley did their wild coffin match and it did not disappoint… I don’t know what else to say. Whatever you picture in your head when you hear “Darby and Mox coffin match” was pretty much what you got. If my biggest problem was that both guys had their own, branded caskets… that’s a pretty mild nitpick. You know it must be good when my wife, who claims to not like Darby or Mox, put down her tablet to watch. While she confesses to not liking Darby, she wants to see what dumb thing he’ll do next, and you can’t deny that sort of Jackass appeal to the guy. This was a wild, violent affair. Moxley has looked so good since losing his title, and you knew he was THIRSTING to give Darby a lot here… and the truth about Darby is that he DOESN’T NEED TO WIN matches like this. Darby gets his heat, his crowd connection, not from winning matches but from his indomitable spirit. Moxley gets his heat from being a big, fat hypocrite, sending all of his cronies away but then resorting to using the returning PAC to turn the tide. Mix together, cut a lime, twist and serve.

Another plus; they did not keep us waiting for six months to find out what secret Bryan Danielson bestowed upon Darby. Danielson brought a PLASTIC BAG for Darby to SUFFOCATE Mox with. IT’S LIKE POETRY, IT RHYMES. Good stuff. We may as well get into the post match angle while I’m here, and the source of my wheezing, side hurting mirth… Moxley sent away the Death Riders to have a heart to heart with the encoffinated Darby. Darby burst free of the coffin, put Moxley in a body bag and SET THE BODY BAG ON FIRE, leading to a technician INSTANTLY putting out the flames. Darby screamed “DON’T PUT HIM OUT” as security hauled him off and even took a swing at the fire extinguisher guy to stop him. I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

I didn’t really have any expectations for Toni Storm, Thekla, Kris Statlander and Jamie Hayter’s four way match. Toni’s stuff is LONG played out to me and I really feel like Stat has turned and unturned so many times that people no longer care about her… but something interesting happened. In a relatively fast paced, hard hitting match, Stat won outta nowhere with the Seatbelt pin (on Toni, no less; and to be fair to her, this doesn’t hurt Toni in the least)… and what seemed to have gone over the heads of a lot of people… Wheeler YUTA came and whispered something to a chagrined Stat, with a ‘leave me alone’ scowl on her face, prior to the match commencing. Of course, the Seatbelt pin is the move YUTA’s mentor, Orange Cassidy taught him… and Statlander made use of it to win. That leaves open a NUMBER of interesting possibilities and this was a rare time where a shock pin in wrestling worked. VERY interested to see where they go from here on this.

There was a ladder match. There were eight talented people in it. They all worked very hard and put themselves at risk. But since it was a ladder match… it wasn’t remotely as good as a simple tag team match between any two of the involved parties would have been and, worst of all, Brody King and Bandido retained, thereby rendering every single thing they did in that match POINTLESS. Those cats will all be sore for DAYS and not ONE SINGLE THING from this match will be remembered. In fact, the most memorable thing was the post match angle, with newly minted KNIFE PERVERT JACK PERRY reunited with Luchasaurus. “Wouldn’t it be funny if Jack Perry used chemicals to resurrect Luchasaurus?” At least it’s AEW BASED nostalgia. I guess.

Ladder matches are not worth the risk. They are played out. They are pointlessly dangerous. Everyone stands around as people fail to climb the ladder. End of safety lecture.

Before I get to the final match, I want to point out something, something nitpicky but something I’ve certainly complained about before here and elsewhere… if someone is going to do a spot where he German suplexes multiple opponents? Maybe make sure that two other someones aren’t also doing that spot on the same show. Jesus God.

So it was finally time for Kyle Fletcher and Hangman Adam Page to face off, no interference promised and, thankfully, delivered upon. And guess what? Hangman Page is one of the very best wrestlers in the world, facing off with a kid who WILL BE one of the very best wrestlers in the world when he hits his peak. Hell, he’s already there, now. I’ve said it a couple weeks running now but you can feel Kyle’s HUNGER to be an AEW main eventer pouring off of the TV in waves, and guess what? This match SUCCEEDED in making Kyle a main eventer. He can now be credibly built into a main event slot at ANY TIME, due to both his own talent and the selflessness of Page, giving the younger man a ton. This, THIS is what veteran talent should do; elevate their opponents, even when they are winning. Kyle, for his part, is all but SCREAMING at you that he belongs in the main event scene. There was a point where the crowd chanted “you’re not ready” at Fletcher and this appeared to piss Taz on commentary off FOR REAL as he shouted that obviously Kyle was ready or he wouldn’t BE in the man event. What a gift; they can make a package down the line with the crowd chants when Kyle becomes champion.

This was a wild match, at times a dangerous one. We yelled every time the Deadeye (the reverse piledriver) was delivered, particularly off of the second rope, but also a DISGUSTING looking one through a table. Speaking of tables, I saw / heard some complaints about the use of a table in this match, especially after I complained about the multi man Germans elsewhere on the show… but Kenny Omega was written out with a table spot delivered by Kyle and Hangman was introduced to a table on Wednesday by Kyle as well, so I’m willing to overlook it’s (over)use here. There was a point where, in deference to the fallen Kenny, Hangman did a V-Trigger and went for the One Winged Angel… which Kyle struggled out of, before finally hitting Swerve Strickland’s BIG PRESSURE. I was SCREAMING at the TV at that point, just ready to tear off my shirt and run through a wall. Hangman Page has an unique quality… through his words and actions, he can make you FEEL something, and that, THAT is what wrestling should be all about, not “wouldn’t it be funny if…?” I am not a star rater by nature… but let’s just say when I am asked to talk about my favorite matches of the year, this match will feature amongst them.

A show that featured the tables ‘n’ tacks match, the women’s four way, the three way with Okada, Takeshita and Dorada, even the coffin match… and that main, wow that main… a match like that has my highest Chef Recommends recommendation… it could never be considered a bad show. Was this an excellent show, can’t miss, top to bottom? No. But it was a very solid show overall, worth the time and money, despite my issues. We bought the MAX version and, other than a few glitches here and there, it looked and sounded great… but really no better or worse than the Amazon Prime version. Obviously, if you already have MAX, you should just purchase there from now on to save yourself ten bucks.