La Zona Muerta

“Who the fuck is that guy?” – Prince Devitt asking incredulously about the mascot-like Captain New Japan

“Fuck your dreams, fuck your life” – from AJ Styles’ New Japan entrance theme, Styles Clash

“Well, if it isn’t the Three Star General!” – Kenny Omega on one certain second generation wrestler seemingly incapable of breeching that three star barrier

“Say something! Say something!” – a distraught Switchblade Jay White taunts a pandemic-era Osaka crowd, disallowed from cheering

“The world needs a rebel!” The Bloody Hand, Gedo, on the charisma-free David Finlay, too many times to count

You may or may not know that my favorite wrestling company of the last ten or so years was New Japan Pro Wrestling. Was being the operative term; I find it a tough slog these days, but once, certainly. A lot of what drove me away was an overemphasis on what I perceived to be as mediocre foreign talent (read as white guys lousing up the joint), coupled with an inability to push domestic talent consistently. Just an awful lot of missing the peak, constant and consistent failures to strike while the iron was hot, an aversion to logical follow ups and most damningly of all, water treading, serving audiences the same thing over and over, a slow death of well over a thousand cuts, continuing to cut to this day.

You can attribute a LOT of that general feeling, or at least the genesis of it, to the foreign heel faction Bullet Club*.

I opined semi-recently at one of my wrestling haunts that WCW and the New World Order did FAR more long lasting damage to wrestling than they ever did to BETTER it; the cool, invading heels clad in their black t-shirts, running roughshod, telling you the wrestling company they were “invading” was bad, rarely getting comeuppance is STILL having effects on wrestling today. I was shouted down by one guy in particular and told my wrestling opinions were “bad,” for what I thought was a fairly reasonable, mild take (this was also at a point where you had two competing Bullet Club factions in New Japan, a Team 2000 branch in Pro Wrestling NOAH** and who knows how many other black t-shirt bad guy factions the world over). I’m sorry, but to me, the black t-shirt too cool for school bad guy phenomenon was ultimately a bad thing, and I don’t think that is some sort of crazy, outlier opinion.

One of my examples of this pervasive black t-shirt rot was the never ending, never dying Bullet Club; a complete NWO tribute act that has loomed large in NJPW for over a decade, injecting Western-style interference and, for lack of a better term, “sports entertainment” antics into the generally fairly staid and conservative world of New Japan.

Bullet Club started primarily as a vehicle for the talented Prince Devitt, an Irish junior heavyweight who was fairly popular as a good guy, but was something special as a bad guy. It expanded from there to basically become a clearinghouse for foreign heels and a certain type of Western-style wrestling; the disrespectful ugly foreigners who throw up middle fingers and cheat unabashedly but who ultimately can back up their actions for the most part. Karl Anderson? Bullet Club. The Young Bucks? Bullet Club. Bad Luck Fale. The Guerillas of Destiny. Kenny Omega. AJ Styles. Adam Cole (bay bay). Juice Robinson. Cody (ugh). Jay White. Nearly the entire first class of the New Japan LA Dojo. David Finlay. All these men and many more would join the ranks throughout the years, interference often being the rule of the day, sometimes (or even often) to the point of frustration. Unlike their NWO forebears, Bullet Club did occasionally lose, but they still exist today in the form of House of Torture***, one of the most divisive and outright irritating acts in New Japan history, an exercise in frustration nearly every time they are in the ring. Bullet Club itself finally, FINALLY is basically gone, unless you count offshoots like the aforementioned HoT and, in AEW, the Bang Bang Gang (aka Bullet Club Gold), it’s remnants absorbed into the remnants of my beloved Los Ingobernables de Japon, to form *checks notes* the ill conceived Unbound Company.

Except.

Apparently now we have Bullet Club spin off number six or seven… the War Dogs, fresh from a confusing dissolution (of sorts) in New Japan.

Sigh.

It would be wrong of me to hang my disinterest in modern New Japan solely on Bullet Club or it’s branching descendants… but they definitely own a LARGE part of that bandwidth. I’m well past the point of “disinterest” in yet another faction of mildly edgy cheating heels, resplendent in their mediocrity, riding on the fumes of something some perceived to be cool ten fucking years ago.

Of course, Gabe “Watashi wa Shin Nihon-desu” Kidd, he of the unearned face turn, he of the shouty, unstable whatnot, has been nosing around AEW and the Death Riders for the better part of a year. We knew he was coming in but whatever. He’ll learn soon enough that “crazy guy” isn’t enough to make up for no personality.

He has been joined by fellow Bullet Club compatriot Clark Connors, probably my favorite of the LA Dojo guys, who struggled for awhile with a persona before finally clicking with Bullet Club (even if a lot of his tenure involved that ugly foreigner shit I absolutely hate)… and who has a LOT more charisma and presence than Kidd. He reminds me of Juice Robinson if you turned down the incredibly obnoxious behavior. He’ll be fine.

And then you have David Finlay. A guy so basic, so one note, that he threw his hat into the ring of free agency… and didn’t hear back from anybody. Mild disinterest from WWE and, I guarantee if they weren’t trying to do some kind of vague War Dogs invasion angle, his phone wouldn’t have rang with that Jacksonville area code, either. No personality. No charisma. No Gedo to cut the promos for him. No hokey gatling gun. The world needs a rebel? No, the world needs a break from yet another black t-shirt squad. If I was Jay White, I’d be pissed; Finlay was VERY MUCH cast in the White mold after White split from NJPW, and there is not ONE SINGLE THING Finlay does better than White. White at his worst is a better all rounder and at his best…? It’s not even a contest. You HAVE Jay White; why settle for the Temu version?

And now here they are in All Elite Wrestling.

Look, maybe there’s a plan. Maybe Jay White comes back and is like “hey, these are the assholes who kicked me out of Bullet Club” and there’s a built in storyline. Or maybe the (sigh) Bang Bang Gang**** and the “Dogs” combine forces and have black t-shirt fun and fight the babyface Death Riders in some sort of protracted GANG WARZ (TM). Or maybe AEW has added yet another body to the ranks that will get a push for a month and then go back to trading water for the next three years. There’s no value in David Finlay save for the fact that he’s from a faction from another company, the least successful “leader” during said faction’s death rattle*****. To say I’m underwhelmed is an understatement; this is the kind of thing I’m actively trying to ESCAPE from.

So with all that in mind, it’s probably not hard to guess that I didn’t love Dynamite last night. My buddy said that every couple of months, AEW fields a show specifically predicated to annoy him and yeah, I was right there with that opinion. There were two or three really good wrestling matches on the show (even if at least one of those matches had a questionable outcome) but overall, this was a Dynamite that combined AEW’s worst tendencies with a crowd that couldn’t tell it’s ass from a hole in the ground and that sort of WCW Monday Night Nitro frenetic pace (Frenetic Pace TM Human Giant), ultimately falling prey to “the pay per view is two weeks out” syndrome.

That first hour of Dyna was ROUGH, there’s no other way for me to say it. We had the debut of David Finlay (sigh, again), the goddamned Iinspiration (an act I was told over and over would only appear on Collision. No, I don’t care that they were killed in two minutes; you can get LOCAL TALENT for that, but don’t worry, AEW fans will take them to heart and protect them from big, bad curmudgeons like me who detest them) and a fucking REF BUMP in the first match because Maxwell Jacob Friedman can’t simply BEAT Kevin Knight. I GET IT, please don’t wrestlesplain to me; that was to PROTECT Knight, who they obviously see value in, To me, that sort of thing doesn’t protect Knight; it makes me HATE MJF matches because instead of being invested in the outcome, I have to sit there, waiting to see how they get out of the match, instead. DON’T GET ME STARTED on the fucking crowd who BOOED Knight and CHEERED MJF (fair play to Max, he actually tried to mitigate this stupid ass reaction, but people still ultimately CHEERED him cheating to win). Then, while I was happy the match was announced, you also had a dumb wrestling trope I don’t care for; apparently Dynamite had no main event (even though the Women’s World Title was presumably the main) because Don Callis made an impromptu match between his Family and “Jet Speed Rodeo,” a reference probably lost on 90% of the audience, for the AEW trios titles. Totally logical and playing off of something the good guys said on Collision (the fact that they would defend their titles any time and any place), but I hate the idea that, if this were a real sport, that a match could be added in that fashion. “Ooops, my boxing card had no main event until Bob walked in and said he deserved a title shot!” Oh, and later, Tomasso “Whoop, whoop, that’s the sound of the police” Ciampa came out to tease tension with longtime rivals FTR because REMEMBER NXT FROM TEN YEARS AGO? BECAUSE REMEMBER IT? I swear to MIGHTY GOTCH ABOVE, if that was a tease for stupid Johnny Gargano coming in… AEW already houses MORE than enough NXT expatriates. The last thing I want is a DIY / FTR rehash. ONE LAST, LAST, LAST HEARTBEAT, AMIRITE.

Despite my antipathy for the way the match was announced, the Don Callis Family consisting of Kazuchika Okada. Kyle Fletcher and MARK FUCKING DAVIS, my dude, defeating Jet Set Rodeo (sigh), even with MJFerence, was great, assures that the titles might get defended on TV once in awhile and, most importantly, gives Davis some GOLD. I’m thrilled for him; it would have been so easy for AEW to let this guy DIE ON THE VINE but they have done right by him, bless his burly heart. A tremendous match full of action, Hangman Adam Page whipping ass, Okada continuing to be a shitheel, Davis himself ACTUALLY SCORING THE PINFALL (hell yeah) and just tons of fun business, ALMOST enough to wash the sour taste of the show out of my mouth.

I almost took the coward’s way out and was going to just run some art or whatever this week as I don’t like being so negative (despite appearances to the contrary), but a pal pointed out that my honest feelings are more important than any perceived negativity. The show wasn’t to my taste last night, and I wrote about it, so *shrug*. Hopefully AEW sticks the landing next week because last night was mostly a misfire.

*But they sell t-shirts, I hear cried in the ether. Get bent

**If you don’t know, Team 2000 is basically what the NJPW branch of the NWO became. Masahiro Chono still somehow has the rights to sell NWO merchandise through his clothing store / lifestyle brand ARISTRIST to this day. NOAH was “clever” in creating yet another black t-shirt faction in “homage” to it after the death of their PRIOR black t-shirt faction, the conceptually bankrupt Good Lookin’ Guys (no, I’m not kidding)

***Yes, I know House of Torture technically was “kicked out” of Bullet Club and isn’t really the foreign heel stable anymore, but they are still an offshoot and still exemplify the black t-shirt bad guy faction slow rot phenomenon

****No relation to American Flagg’s Go Gang (Go Gang 10:34 and counting)

*****Post column being finished, pre column being posted addendum: and now, I see that NEW JAPAN’S STRONGEST SOLDIERS are intimating that Finlay was POACHED from New Japan. How is it that you are conscious enough to watch Japanese wrestling but are so BONE FUCKING IGNORANT as to not know how CONTRACTS WORK? FINLAY LEFT NEW JAPAN BECAUSE HE BECAME A FREE AGENT. HE WANTED TO GO TO WWE BUT THEY WEREN’T INTERESTED OTHER THAN MAKING HIM AN NXT COACH. Would THAT have been “poaching?” Do us all a favor and log off forever. Imagine dying on that hill for a cipherous NOTHING like Finlay