La Zona Muerta

Oh, I kid. The three hours were mostly FINE. Didn’t love EVERYTHING, but as far as AEW go home shows go… I think this one was fairly good. I think there were only a couple of matches that had me HOOTING AND HOLLERING, but that’s not an indictment… and sometimes I have to stop to remind myself that Dynamite sometimes gives us crazy stuff on free TV, like Monday Night Nitro did but only moreso.

As always… the bugbears. You, and I can never escape the SAVAGE NITPICKS. Young Bucks / Kenny Omega / the Don Callis Men… The Elite will they / won’t they reunite stuff… I’m pretty much had my fill, there. Just reunite with Ken… reclaim the EVP titles… GET THAT MONEY… or don’t. Heel Bucks are preferable, obviously, but the sad sack, po faced “we aren’t sure if we want to fight Kenny” expressions are beginning to grate. Also? I have not had a problem with the inflated purse money matches for the most part… but the fact that we are headed into a million dollar purse on Saturday… that really kinda needs to be the end of the gimmick. We’ve gone from Dralistico thinking he won a SHOOT fifty grand to an utterly wacky MILLION DOLLAR PURSE. Maybe whomever wins can now afford a fancy new AVOCADO MATTRESS (TM). Regardless of the outcome, I have suspect that Kenny and the Bucks will be raising each other’s hands to the soaring strains of Kansas come Saturday. Should be good, and I suspect this must be what the guys want… but let’s just GET THERE, PLEASE.

Speaking of beautiful Don Callis… obviously he’s REALLY good, right? I don’t mean alignment-wise; he’s a scummer, through and through. No, I mean good as in “he’s really good at his job.” Dude is running around, miming the EVP trigger repeatedly, fleeing at the first sign of resistance, and most importantly, when he’s on commentary, even when he calls the good guys scumbags and stooges… he PUTS THE GOOD GUYS OVER. Like he talks about how he hates Mark Briscoe, but he can’t WAIT to have Briscoe in his Family. just to name one of a million examples. “I will make your family POOR,” he thundered at a prone Briscoe, laid out by enthusiastic Family members. He tells the commentary team that the Young Bucks are great; their only flaw is that they have had their minds POISONED by Kenny Omega. When told by Excalibur that he used to say the exact opposite (that Omega had his mind POISONED by the Bucks) he shouts, “What’re you, a STOOGE?” Callis gets the job; if he buries the good guys too much, it doesn’t MEAN anything when his guys go over and it’s even WORSE if his guys lose. He constantly points out that if the good guys were to lose some scruples, that he’d love to expand the grasp of his Family, and the like. The best kind of heel commentary; blind to his own flaws, grudgingly accepting that the the babyfaces have merits.

Contrast this with MVP, who, during a match between Shelton Benjamin and Speedball Mike Bailey, said MULTIPLE TIMES that, since Bailey wasn’t doing a jiu jitsu hold quite right, that it wasn’t any kind of threat. Straight from the Gorilla Monsoon school of commentary is MVP. Someone must have said something in the ol’ earpiece to tell him to ease up on poor Speedball, already the underdog, because at one point he randomly said that Speedball was indeed good, but he was in there WITH THE STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE or whatever, but the needle and the damage was, in fact, done. SPEEDBALL IS A GEEK BECAUSE THE GREAT MVP HAS SPOKEN. Just the wrong instincts and someone who has been in the business MORE THAN long enough to know better. Look, we all get it, he doesn’t LIKE Speedball (AKA he’s too small to sell for, let alone do the job to) or whatever the deal is but YOUR JOB IS TO PRETEND THAT SHELTON COULD POTENTIALLY BE IN TROUBLE. You can shine up Shelton AND put over his opponent instead of ACTIVELY DETRACTING FROM THE MATCH! MVP puts in more time putting HIMSELF over on comms (did you know he does jits? DID YOU?) than he does the opposition.

And they apparently reupped MVP recently? Good heavens. A total stinker and a bust, but by all means, chant along for the theme song. SUH SUH SUH SOMEBODY’S GONNA DIE, most likely my attention span whenever his lame crew shows up.

At least Ricochet buried MVP on the mic for being old and possibly having dementia. Happy roughly a year since Ricochet went from possibly Fed-brained to truly being ALL ELITE, but please, lord, please MIGHTY GOTCH ABOVE, someone save him from feuding with the Goddamned Hurt Syndicate. You’d have to think that Ricochet would be a favorite to be this new National champion but who knows. Maybe it’s the Bobby Lashley placation title.

Here’s another AEW eccentricity… they absolutely can not, will not PROMOTE THINGS. Oh, they’ll promote things that are seven months out to the detriment of the events coming up in a month or less (see ANY All In build)… they’ll randomly announce Blood and Guts without, y’know, CONFIRMING WHO WILL BE IN IT… and wait a month and a half to finally tell you… with a week and a half before the air date to go… but their idea of promotion and mine differ WILDLY. What leads me to this conclusion? They mentioned at some point, entirely off hand, that THE CONTINENTAL CLASSIC BEGINS NEXT WEEK. The Continental Classic (never the “Connie,” MAYBE the “CC” if you’re nasty) has traditionally been a TV ratings driver… but it’s just a complete afterthought, here. The actual booking of the tourney… Tony Khan has earned the benefit of the doubt on that, and I’m not one of the weirdos who were FURIOUS last year that the Bracketology special was delayed until after the PPV (and I assume we will randomly have a similar situation next Tuesday when a special announcing the brackets stealth crops up at 9pm Eastern)… but for the Classic to just be randomly mentioned as starting next week AS A COMPLETE THROWAWAY… that’s promotional malpractice. My problems with AEW are rarely booking based (mostly)… it’s the weird flaws like THIS, in my opinion, that truly keep AEW from reaching another level (whatever THAT means).

Some other random thoughts…

Kazuchika Okada is such a DELIGHTFUL scumbag and anyone MAD that he was chosen to be the final opponent of Hiroshi Tanahashi is out to lunch. His temptation of the Bucks AND trying to woo Kyle Fletcher away from the heaving bosom of Konosuke Takeshita… his apparent attempts to MURDER Mascara Dorada last night (there were two times where I thought Dorada was genuinely hurt, and frankly, I’m not yet convinced that he wasn’t)… just a beautiful, preening douchebag. As good as he ever was and maybe BETTER now that he has this scumbag persona… another arrow in his almighty quiver. It’s too soon to turn Kyle… but I am seriously starting to wonder if that is in the cards and Kyle picks his work husband over the loving arms of the FAMILY.

The Death Riders stuff… I’m more invested now in the idea that the team will turn on Jon Moxley (Gotch help me, Mox is gonna drag me, kicking and screaming into being a fan) but besides Danny Garcia’s look of disbelief / disappointment last week, they are STILL not really laying seeds for this, and AEW, if it’s good at anything, is usually VERY good at hints and Easter Eggs. Starting to think, if a split DOES happen, that Claudio Castagnoli, Marina Shafir and Mox go one way, and the glorious bastard PAC takes Wheeler YUTA and the aforementioned Garcia and goes the other. That brings us to Kyle O’Reilly suddenly getting credibility in repeating beating (or near beating) Mox… laughing off stomps and kick as he wrenched Mox’ ankle… which filled me with delight… except for one thing.

KOR HASN’T BEEN REHABBED ENOUGH FOR ME TO BUY HIM IN THIS ROLE. Just a couple of weeks ago, he was still DAD JOKE GOOFBALL. I think they MAY have pulled back enough on the comedy with Roderick Strong to have him benefit from this sudden push of seriousness… but KOR…? I dunno. Probably on an island, there, but that’s okay; I like coconuts and sand. I get the feeling that the “Paragon” is not long for this world… but I don’t know what shape that will take.

Also, an anti-shout out to the idea of a “No Holds Barred” match. What holds, prey tell, are currently BARRED in ALL ELITE WRESTLING? I’ll wait.

Samoa Joe remains one of the most well rounded, compelling, versatile wrestlers in the world. There were points last night when he was on commentary that I thought he was gonna start a feud with fellow commentator Bryan Danielson. Be still my heart. What a man, what a feud with Hangman Adam Page.

Then we come to Mercedes Moné and her match with Red Velvet. Actually, not so much… the match was fine and had a really good, nasty finish (this kind of avalanche lungblower thingie) even if the outcome was never in doubt to any reasonable mind. No, the issue was putting current women’s champion Kris Statlander on commentary for the match. Not only did she have nothing to say… there were parts during the match where where the commentary team tried to give her the office to talk and she SNAPPED at them instead of pontificating. TV TIME IS PRECIOUS. Look, not everyone is gonna be good at off the cuff comms, speaking is not everyone’s strong suit, but Stat has been doing this for a long time and should have a better idea of how to build to a match other than droning on about scouting.

Overall, a pretty good three hours and the hour prior to Full Gear will feature Takeshita, Okada and Hechicero vs. EL SKY TEAM (yes, I am reliably informed, it really IS “El” Sky Team) in the kind of thing that should hopefully remind us, one and all, how lucky we are that some dork who used to religiously play Extreme Warfare Revenge books a weekly television show JUST FOR THE SICKOS. They had to rush into Full Gear a bit (a self inflicted wound), but it looks fairly good on paper and I think, now that the Classic is looming and there are a couple of good stories percolating, that AEW is on pace to have a VERY strong ending to 2025.