La Zona Muerta

Look, I like Tomasso Ciampa well enough. Well, I did, anyway. Like ten years ago.

“It’s not the years; it’s the mileage.” – Indiana Jones

Hell, even five years ago, if Ciampa wanted into AEW, I would have been hooting and hollering. Probably, anyway. The succession of bigger and grander matches between him and Johnny Gargano in NXT went WELL past the point of diminishing returns, practically into the realm of parody, and lowered my interest in him significantly, but I likely still would have been into Ciampa coming in.

Now…?

I think long time readers of this space will know what a hard time I gave Ricochet when he came in, and in fairness to me, Ricochet’s first couple of months were not any great shakes. Yes, he’s good, even great NOW, but it took him awhile to find his groove in AEW.

Not every one is gonna be as good at that integration as Ricochet was. See: Miro. Malakai Black. Edge. Bobby Lashley. MVP. The first two or even three years of FTR’s run.

There’s no need, trust me, to ROHsplain or PWGsplain to me about Ciampa’s past. I’ve seen a lot of that work, too. Yes, he has a history with a lot of folks in AEW. Great. AEW itself wasted no time leveraging that fact and immediately posted an ROH match between Ciampa and Mark Briscoe from 2013 or so (why draw attention to the time disparity, but whatever). But I want people going to AEW because they want to build AEW, not because WWE had no ideas for them. That’s when you get someone like Edge, who even this very week did everything but say that he wishes he was still in WWE, pointing out how much coming back at the Royal Rumble (PS, he came back at the Royal Rumble six years ago because WWE freaked out that he was going to AEW and overpaid him to prevent same) meant to him and so on. You’ll have to excuse me for worrying that Ciampa has spent the last ten years of his career marinating under the watchful eye of Chef Hunter Hearst Helmsley. As always, if you’re into it, good for you. That’s fine. But I’m not really thrilled to welcome yet another body into AEW when there are a lot, a LOT of dudes in the back who could, who SHOULD run with an opportunity. There are a dozen men under forty, Hell, several under THIRTY who could be getting a title shot with Briscoe, some who could use the exposure, the reps. Tony Khan has almost been manic with his expansion lately, and I assume there’s a reason for that beyond sheer, bloody minded hoarding, but Ciampa is not someone I would have led the charge with.

It’s funny; AEW, when it first started, beat NXT SO BADLY that a particular three initialed wrestler was DEMOTED and removed from power… but with the exception of Johnny Gargano, Khan has made sure to open the coffers for almost every stalwart of the Black and Gold era, the era his company derailed, when their names have come available in free agency. Adam Cole. Samoa Joe. Roderick Strong. Kyle O’Reilly. Malakai Black (for a time, and we know how that worked out). Keith Lee. Even Andrade, I suppose. The soldiers AEW crushed, welcomed into the fold.

And now Ciampa. With a neck so bad after so much wear and tear that he needed surgery and even, if memory serves, after that surgery, said he was wrestling on “borrowed time” with only a couple of years left… and this was back in 2018 or 19. I wonder if he got that magic surgery Kurt Angle did, the effects of which that were soon undone with one errant chair shot? Actually, I remember being annoyed about THAT, as well, not the idea that a man suffering got healed, but the fact that NXT ran a PACKAGE about it (Tommaso Ciampa, family man going under the knife) while Ciampa was supposed to be this massive heel.

I know, I know. I sound like GLADE YELLER over here. But I would be saying the exact same thing if Kevin Steen or El Generico were suddenly free, and I think WAY more of them than Ciampa. Too much mileage, bodies too beat up and minds subsisting too long under a system that is headed by someone I have more or less despised (for a number of reasons) for over twenty-five years.

As for Ciampa himself… look. He did a fantastic job reinventing himself from the rather generic “Psycho Killer” he was in ROH. I still have difficulty remembering what “Project Ciampa” was, outside of knowing it was the name.of his finish (wasn’t it basically Roderick Strong’s End of Heartache? I think it was definitely a double knee back breaker variation), and I think he was usually just the third or fourth guy in one of ROH’s never ending crowd of stables. Obviously, he’s levelled up way past that. The work with Gargano. The two of them becoming DIY, a team very much not meant to get over, but managing by the will of the crowd and their own hard work, the (very) slow burn heel turn… I loved that stuff. I loved when he came out as a heel with his beloved title belt and refused to have merch or a theme song (obviously the WWE machine couldn’t really support that for too long). But again, that was a long time ago. Ciampa and his surgically repaired neck are All Elite. I hope that works out for him and more importantly, for us, but I have my significant number of doubts.

I’m not feeling super up to snuff today, so my Dynamite thoughts will be a bit truncated. I’m glad Kenny Omega is looking good, presumably feeling good, as well. Convoluted explanations of number one contendership aside, I am oh so happy he’s been brought back into the fold after seemingly existing outside of it for a good couple of years. Kenny and Swerve Strickland getting into a program is by far more interesting to me than Kenny restarting his abandoned (by necessity) program with Andrade, but everyone is so hopped up on the sheer intensity of Latin pheromones that no one seems to see why Andrade coming right back into AEW where he left off (arguably higher) and going over the likes of Swerve might chafe. NOT LIKE WE HAVEN’T SEEN WWE EXPATS SHOOT TO THE TOP BEFORE, I GUESS. I’m enjoying the idea that Maxwell Jacob Friedman is a marked man and had a LOT of cats nipping at his heels (whether he wants to do business with any of them remains to be seen).

I love Konosuke Takeshita bulling up to Jon Moxley but I worry that they won’t be pulling the trigger on the right outcome, there. After derailing the Takeshita / Kazuchika Okada story presumably due to interpromotional politics, I’m hopeful we can get back where we were, but my enthusiasm is markedly dampened. Don Callis refusing to listen to Kyle Fletcher obviously paves the way for Kyle’s eventual redemption, but even that seems too early; Kyle should be set up to dethrone a returning conquering hero in the shape of Will Ospreay, in my not so humble opinion. Maybe we’ll get there; I dunno. Hey, have the Death Riders turned on Moxley yet? *cough*

My heart goes out to Jake Doyle. A very bad time to come down with the injury bug. I guess it wouldn’t be AEW if someone getting a push didn’t immediately get derailed (see Wardlow, Mark Davis, Kommander, Hologram, Bandido, etc.).

They’ve made a change / clarification to the Title Eliminator rules that is good, makes sense and probably sets up a match outcome next week; if the person challenging in the Eliminator can take the champion to s time limit draw (a trope used more often than you might think in AEW), that’s as good as a victory. I suspect Brody King will be taking MJF to the limit next week, just in time for the Australia tour.

I don’t know if I love that AEW advertised three big title matches and not one title changed hands. I think k any of the titles would have been fine with a change, particularly the Women’s World title, where Thekla failed to overcome Kris Statlander. Stat… I like Stat, but I find her fairly … let’s be nice and say “inconsistent” in ring and her Mic skills sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Thekla, on the other hand, seemingly improves on the Mic every week, is brimming with charisma and is a hard hitting worker. Perfect opportunity for a title change! Oh, well.

I largely thought Dynamite was good. I wasn’t thrilled with Andrade beating Swerve (and with a trite, clichéd low blow distraction deal), but even I have to admit that the match was really good up until there. AEW seems to have a number of things cooking; I just hope that some of it is to my liking. We could go either way on a number of the directions that seem to be coming into light.