La Zona Muerta

You know, I was commiserating with a pal for most of the week about two major things I was not looking forward to on this week’s Dynamite (you know who you are) and both of those things ended up… well, if not FINE, then at least interesting. “May you live in interesting time,” as the likely apocryphal, probably not actually Chinese idiom says. We’ll discuss those two things, of course, but first I suppose I should pay some lip service to the events of Grand Slam Australia, which I ultimately didn’t bother writing about, both due to a mixture of my own laziness as well as the fact that there wasn’t a lot for me to hook into, writing-wise. Not that the show was bad or anything; it was very solid, but there just wasn’t a lot to WRITE about and I refuse to be “move list guy” on a show where there was really just matches and blow offs.

Hair today, gone tomorrow, amirite

I have to reach down deep and… grrrr… pay Jon Moxley a compliment. Secretly, that’s not as hard as I’m pretending; I’ve actually been fairly onboard with Mox since dropping the title. Now I’m not saying I suddenly LOVE Mox or anything (cue withering looks from the readership and ANOTHER person who knows who they are); I still have PTSD from Moxley’s AWFUL IWGP championship run and from September 2024 thru roughly February 2025, and I’m still irritated that he won the goddamned Continental Classic, but… Even with some probably booking related collar tugs here and there, he’s been extremely giving, extremely unselfish, and I’m not sure that’s something I could have said with a straight face a year ago. He and Konosuke Takeshita went to a time limit draw (don’t get me started on that; the draw is a crutch AEW relies on far too often to get out of certain matches) and, sensing that wasn’t what the crowd wanted, Mox surreptitiously got word to Takeshita to nail him with the Raging Fire, post match, which did indeed mollify the crowd. Mox’ wrestling IQ is high, really high, and I have come to… *choke* appreciate what he does. That doesn’t excuse the weird will they won’t they liminal space the Death Riders currently occupy, of course. STILL WAITING FOR THAT TURN. I don’t love the guy… but I’ve come to… almost… like? him. Dammit.

There was also a fun bit of business where young Wheeler YUTA refused to get his head shaved… but disappointed daddy Mox made YUTA TAKE HIS MEDICINE. Thought that was cute.

Then, of course, to wrap up the evening, Hangman Adam Page defeated Andrade El Idolo to become the new number one contender to the men’s heavyweight championship. I groaned, not because the match was bad or because I wanted to see Andrade win (I didn’t, believe me, and it seems they have CMLL related plans for Andrade, anyway) but more because… we’ve had a LOT of Page and Maxwell Jacob Friedman already. Like a LOT. My knee-jerk reaction was that the outcome meant that they were looking to do another snooze of a four way, honestly… and led to several days of my pal and I lamenting the sameness of seeing MJF and Hangman battle for the severalth time. Casino? Ca-seen it, when it was called Goodfellas.

I guess I should break here to relate a story to you. Picture an incredibly self important wrestler, more so than the typical wrestler (so imagine how pompous that must make him), who was REALLY sensitive to criticism about his famous wrestling father. A self important, highly father-conscious wrestler who had delusions of adequacy as a booker. Someone with tissue thin skin who couldn’t stand being accused of booking himself into the title picture… so he took the nuclear option and removed himself from it permanently… and didn’t have the guts to do the ONE THING the audience would have actually wanted from him as he desperately clawed for acceptance every week.

We call this mess of neuroses… the CODY STIPULATION.

So as my pal and I were DMing back and forth, sniggering about MJF calling people “white trash” and rolling our eyes due to the predictable repetition, lamenting the sameness of everything… babyface Adam Page suddenly, for no real reason (we’ll expand on that in a second) demanded that MJF select a stipulation for their upcoming match. MJF said no, thanks, and that’s when suddenly, Adam Page, STUPID BABYFACE, invoked THE CODY STIPULATION.

Let that sink in for a second. Adam Page, who was already guaranteed the title shot, offered, no DEMANDED that he never be given the opportunity to fight for the title again if he loses, WITHOUT GAINING ANYTHING FROM IT. He didn’t get MJF to sign off on his signature match, the Texas Deathmatch, he didn’t get him to sign off on ANYTHING, but he committed to this, ANYWAY. I must reiterate; he didn’t offer never being able to challenge MJF again for the title… he did EXACTLY what Cody did those many moons ago and offered to remove himself from the title picture completely, again, without a tangible benefit to himself. MJF agreed to THINK about a stip. That’s it.

And hey, who knows. Maybe in real life, Max Friedman the human being, not the character, has a movie coming up or something and has to go away for awhile, forcing a pivot back to Hangman. Maybe Hangman gets that belt back and everything is right with the world for awhile (until weirdos get in their feelings about Will Ospreay again, that is).

But the FAR more likely outcome is that Hangman, as a character, is going to look FUCKING STUPID AS SHIT, when he ends up somehow convincing MJF to do Texas Death, losing his signature match AND the ability to challenge for the title ever again. Oh, maybe AEW will have the guts to do with Hangman what Cody couldn’t / wouldn’t do and turn heel to break the stip, sure. But that’s fantasy booking, and, you’ll forgive the term, COPING. If you held a gun to my head right now and ordered me to explain what the hell is going on, my honest, blubbering with fear reaction would be that Tony Khan is sick of the people who hold Hangman a bit too closely to their hearts, letting a wrestling character infect their real life personality, and is removing him from the picture so he doesn’t have to deal with the parasociality any longer. *shrug*

I was saying to my pal, someone I consider insightful about wrestling matters, when we were talking about this in real time that the MJF / Hangman segment wasn’t so bad… but then suddenly THE CODY STIP reared it’s ugly head and we were BAFFLED. Then, we laughed.

They better have one HELLUVA plan, here. This isn’t the kind of shit you can paper over with a surprise debut of AJ Styles or whomever. This is a crazy, random stip, thrown out for no real reason in order to give a match you’ve seen a bunch of times some actual stakes, which sort of makes sense ON PAPER… but it ultimately feels like a crazy flex thrown out by a desperate character who has no real reason to be desperate. They have roughly a month to make it make sense… we’ll see.

The other major thing I wasn’t looking forward to… obviously Swerve Strickland versus Kenny Omega isn’t just a big match, it’s a big, money drawing match you could headline any pay per view with. So I was fretting all week about how AEW was gonna get out of it, to the point of not looking forward to the match. I saw people saying “time limit draw” and I was ENRAGED, especially since AEW LITERALLY JUST DID THAT ON SATURDAY. I try not to get mad about fantasy booking, so I failed in that regard, obviously, but as I was commiserating with my pal, I confessed that I didn’t really even know what the right outcome would be, anyway. Swerve, for his bluster, is used as a gatekeeper and loses an awful lot, believe it or not. Kenny needed the win but is likely off doing Japan gaming things around the time of the PPV. What do you do?

Well, Swerve has been telling us over and over, since his return. He has specifically said he’s only here to get title gold, by any means. On Dynamite, he moaned “I need this,” over and over. It should have been obvious.

He turned heel, first, appearing to have some wiggle room, some ambiguity about the whole thing, then after the match, leaving no doubt about it. That’s GREAT, and it was well executed. It appeared that he may have “accidentally” pulled ref Aubrey Edwards in to be struck by an errant V-Trigger from Big Ken (and I said out loud to Mrs. Convoy “wow, they NEVER bump Aubrey!” She replied “AEW doesn’t do a lot of ref bumps in general,” which is true) and then the match escalated from there. He could have pretended that he wasn’t a heel just yet.. until post match when they wrote off Kenny with a TERRIFYING Vertebreaker through the announce table. It was well executed, and Swerve back as a heel makes a LOT of sense, balances the top of the card a bit.

BUT, here’s the nitpick… this is what, like the third time in the last six months that they have written off Kenny with an injury angle? He comes back, rip snorting and fired up, tells us he’s back and BAM! Kazuchika Okada injures his TUM TUM and writes him off. He comes back, rip snorting and fired up, tells us he’s back, and BAM! Josh Alexander and the Don Callis family do a Horsemen beat down and write him off. He comes back, rip snorting and fired up, tells us he’s back, FOR REALZ THIS TIME, and he falters against stupid Andrade, setting up this Swerve side quest… that should be on a BIG SHOW… and BAM! Swerve injures, I dunno, his noggin, I guess and writes him off. They can totally run back the match; they left stuff on the table… but the injury angle? Again? Felt like a damper on what should have been a home run.

A lot has been made, recently of how “good” the booking in AEW has been of late. I would say that the booking has largely been sufficient, logical, certainly… but there’s a lot of balls in the air that I’m worried about them sticking the landing with. There’s a lot of repeat matches, a lot of repetition. The PPV looks to have rematches of Mox and Takeshita, FTR and the Young Bucks (good lord, how many times have we seen that, even if at least this is the BEST version of FTR against the clear cut babyface Bucks, so that’s SOMETHING, I suppose), a supposition on my part but probably Thekla and Kris Statlander, and then this insane MJF / Hangman deal with crazy, unearned stakes. The good booking feels more like MAINTENANCE booking to me, getting us set on the road to All In as some of the acts we enjoy probably begin to sunset out of the promotion. Water tread-y, as I told a friend. THe matches will probably be good, even great, but I feel like there needs to be a bit of a shake up, perhaps. Hopefully Will Ospreay returning supplies that. I hope he isn’t also side quested to six months’ worth of dream match horseshit with a certain short Southern man.

AEW is sort of finally climbing back up in perception, ratings-wise, ticket sales, fan feelings in general, but I feel like a couple of missteps might knock down the work they have done to claw their way back. I really, really hope that the powers that be are smart enough to avoid those pitfalls, but despite the comeback, my faith is dangerously low.