La Zona Muerta

Seemed like last nite’s episode of Dynamite was largely about consequences… matches to determine the MAN ADVANTAGE in Blood and Guts… announcers menaced for chicanery… talent pressured to join factions… the direct results of messing with FAMILIA… not a complaint, just an observation. TL,DR: a fairly enjoyable show and some good hooks (ho ho) for Saturday and next Wednesday.

I suppose we should address the ten pounds of elephant gold in the room; in the midst of crowning new tag team champions, themselves a new type of belt to the AEW brand, it apparently came out on Twitter (ugh) yesterday right before the show that AEW was adding yet another belt to the title line up; the AEW National title… and although I don’t think the idea was especially well articulated on the actual TV show, I guess the idea of the new title is similar (or indeed, the same) to what the old AEW All Atlantic title was supposed to be; a belt to sort of showcase the idea that AEW has partnerships and that can be defended anywhere by the title holder, including in other promotions. Of course the All Atlantic title vanished in a flash of lightning (with the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, the speed of Mercury and two TERRIBLE movies plus an ancillary terrible movie) and became the International Title (since the ‘All Atlantic’ moniker made no sense with a JAPANESE FLAG EMBLAZONED UPON THE BELT ITSELF) and that itself vanished into what Kazuchika Okada calls the Unified Title.

Confused yet?

And then, of course, the online battle began; the AEW can do no wrong types pointing out the other guys have a stupefying number of belts (totally true; they do to the point of comedy) so what does one more matter… DON’T QUESTION IT; the AEW can do no right types immediately burying the idea of a new title as another lazy idea from a booker out of ideas (no, not Gedo). And where on the spectrum (no pithy comments, please; that’s MY job) does that leave your humble scribe?

I dunno. I like the IDEA of titles if there is a reason to differentiate them… maybe some sort of gimmick. I’m someone who believes the TBS and TNT titles should be contested under the old WCW / NWA TV title rules; fifteen minutes EVERY WEEK on their respective channels; twenty minutes on pay per view. Showcase a worker who can produce every week (like Darby Allin or Orange Cassidy did with the TNT belt). Never the actual stated intention of the belt, of course; unspoken but there. I mean, IT HAS A PICTURE OF TECHWOOD STUDIOS ON THE PLATE. I believe the Trios titles should be the car crash, high speed WCW Nitro / party titles, defended every week in a dumb, fun spotfest. Then the HEAT would be putting the belts around some slow / power move based bad guys (dare I say the Hurt Men or similar, if they were willing to lose, that is) and your favorite babyface flippy dos have to REGAIN them. See? Easy.

I love the idea of the ROH Pure title; a belt contested under a totally separate rule set. I understand the value of having a secondary title. It’s when you get to a tertiary title, a quaternary one (yes, that’s actually a WORD. Appearances to the contrary, I have been paid in the past to write professionally, thank you) that I start to shake my head.

Let’s look at the title lineup right now:

Men’s Heavyweight Championship

Women’s Heavyweight Championship

TNT Title (men’s secondary title; should function as a TV title)

TBS title (women’s secondary title; should function as a TV title)

Unified title (the former Continental and International titles; Tony Khan has given conflicting answers about whether these two belts are permanently unified or not. Presumably the gimmick is that the belt is only contested under Continental Classic rules (no interference, 20 minute time limit, but I think that was in question during Okada’s match with Kenny Omega)

Men’s tag titles

Women’s tag titles (new, unassigned as of yet, of course)

Men’s Trios titles (criminally under utilized; should really be the ‘party match’ titles and should be seen every week)

The Owen Hart Cup titles (men’s and women’s) are sometimes defended, sometimes surrendered (see Hangman Adam Page surrendering his immediately but current champ Mercedes Moné apparently defends this or at least has it as part of her dragon’s hoard)

Then, of course, you have the various ROH belts. Defenses of partner titles (when AAA was still in the mix, the Mega Championship and the tag titles and the mixed tag titles). Various New Japan titles. Various CMLL titles. Etc. , etc. , ad nauseum.

Not deflecting to “but the other guys” for a minute… we’re talking about AEW right now, not Uncle Paul’s wrestling fantasy camp; that’s a lot of titles up for grabs. Mrs. Convoy, angry and opinionated creature that she is, snarled “if everyone has a belt, none of them feel special. It’s like people in the back want titles to feel validated.” I don’t know if I agree with that entirely (she was probably not so subtly burying Moné when she said that, but I think there’s more than one person you could aim that accusation at) but I definitely agree that if there are too many belts, without different reasons to differentiate them, they are rather pointless. This is a fourth (!) singles title for the guys, assuming the Unified title stays unified. I get that, as a booker, you want a midcard title, maybe even an ambassador title (strapping this belt to a cat like Hechicero, for instance, would make a lot of sense) but… I just hope they have a good plan for it.

The other thing that struck me as slightly hinky about the new title… was when Tony Schiavone finally got to talk about it (more on that in a bit), MVP immediately came out and more or less attached it to the lineage of the NWA National title… not the @billy version (yuck), but rather the Georgia Championship Wrestling / Jim Crockett Promotions version. I guess the somewhat tenuous link there is that the original National title was defended on TBS…? Even so, if it is meant to represent the lineage of THAT title, the NWA / JCP National title was folded into the US title and then, depending on how you feel about title lineages, what became of THAT belt was it either being defunct or being defended on someone else’s TV for some time, now (although I’d be hard pressed to tell you who has it or if it’s still in use). I mean, maybe if David Crockett shows up and awards the belt to the first winner…? I dunno. I get the idea of wanting to reclaim wrestling history from the jaws of who owns the lion’s share of it but… I dunno. Strikes me as odd. This is NOT the belt Dusty Rhodes had, that Paul Orndorff had, that Wahoo McDaniel bled for, etc. Again, I guess I’m fence sitting a bit… but if they are introducing a FOURTH SINGLES TITLE FOR THE GUYS… great Gotch above, please actually DO SOMETHING WITH IT.

So, anyway. Enough belt blather. Let’s get to the CONSEQUENCES.

Of course, not willing to let last week’s PERFIDY slide, the show started when Samoa Joe came out to KILL Tony Schiavone… perhaps rightfully so, really. What reason did Schiavone have to help Hangman perpetuate a ruse? I think the “rule of cool” ended up sort of paving over the holes, there; a lot of us were sort of willing to overlook the seeming plot hole of Tony’s motivations because a babyface was smart for a change. It’s pretty delicate tissue there and doesn’t bear the weight of scrutiny particularly well… but Tony didn’t have to answer for his actions… this week anyway… as security and eventually Hangman Adam Page came out to save Tony’s backside. I mean, if this leads to the OPPS killing NIGEL MCGUINNESS in Tony’s defense somehow, that’d be pretty cool… obviously Tony can’t / shouldn’t take any bumps but maybe Nigel as a proxy? I dunno. Revenge deferred isn’t exactly revenge denied.

More CONSEQUENCES: some bright bulb had the actually really canny and clever idea of making some of Dynamite’s (and if necessary, Collision’s) matches this week count towards the MAN ADVANTAGE in next week’s Blood and Guts match. The term MAN ADVANTAGE was thrown around so much that I felt like I needed to email hsmeltzer@juno.com with a subject line saying MAN ADVANTAGE?! My problem here wasn’t the matches (definitely not the matches; Claudio Castagnoli and Orange Cassidy in particular had an EXCELLENT match and it’s going to lead to Roderick Strong vs. Jon Moxley on Saturday)… it was more Excalibur, desperate to avoid vitriol from the Bry*n *v*r*zs of the world, laboriously trying to detail why the MAN ADVANTAGE was so important, explaining, over explaining and eventually perhaps OBFUSCATING the rules. Then later, he tried to tie the MAN ADVANTAGE into the main event trios bout (CONSEQUENCES from the OPPS attack on Tony S. led to Hangman, HOOK and Eddie Kingston fighting the OPPS in the main event and led to a match declared for next week; Powerhouse Hobbs and Adam Page, which should be a corker) which further confused the issue. WHOMEVER THE THIRD PARTICIPANT IS IN EACH CAGE MATCH, THAT TEAM HAS THE NUMERIC ADVANTAGE. There; succinctly and accurately stated. Sheesh.

My favorite bout of CONSEQUENCES on Dynamite this week; FTR came out to mess with ABUELA DE BANDIDO and, to a lesser extent, hermano de Bandido (the sorta okay luchador Gravity). Where were Bandido and his pal, big Brody King during all this ABUELA ABUSE?

how it started

how it’s going

You can only keep a good big man down for so long. What a fun segment this was; Stokely Hathaway… seriously, whatever he’s paid, it ain’t enough. A delight every time and his cheesy grin, barricading Bandido and Brody, his gulping horror when Brody PUNCHED THRU THE DOOR; beautiful. No notes. FTR are doing the kind of heel work I enjoy; being crass, gross Americans and denigrating an innocent abuela, but not in a shitty, “Mexico bad, you’re bad” way.

The other intriguing thread on the show; the temptation of the Young Bucks as Don Callis (and longtime real life and screen pal Kazuchika Okada) try to woo them over to the FAMILY (FAMILIA, some might say), and even more intriguingly; granting Mark Briscoe ONE MORE shot at Kyle Fletcher and his TNT title… with the caveat that if Mark loses, he, too has to join the DCF. Honestly… I don’t know what I want to happen there, and that’s a case of CONSEQUENCES really boosting my anticipation of the match; obviously we know it will deliver in ring… but now there are some intriguing STAKES involved, as well. Half of me wants Mark to be forced to join DCF and to become serious; he’s leaned into goofball for too long, in my opinion. On the other hand, Rey Mysterio being forced to join the (sigh) Latino World Order (the first time, not the ersatz second time) was VISUAL DEATH EVERY WEEK on WCW TV, so…

Despite the nitpicking about belts and plot holes, this was a fairly tightly plotted show, with great wrestling top to bottom, advanced the Blood and Guts feud(s), the Joe / Hangman situation, set up some intrigue with HOOK (he tapped out like a weenie two weeks in a row now; what do they have in mind for him?), an upset in the women’s tag tournament (what is it about three letters that makes ROH women’s champion Athena a killer in ROH but the second she steps onto an AEW stage, it’s like she’s exposed to pin eating Kryptonite), more fuel on the FTR / Bandido and Brody fire, more Don Callis intrigue.

Overall, a solid (more than solid), creative show. More, plz.