La Zona Muerta

You gotta laugh, you know? The news will get’cha right down.

If I told you that AEW Revolution was a newsworthy show because

1. The greatest luchadore of modern times signed with the company, well, that sounds pretty good
2. If a good for nothing Fed expatriate who is only in AEW because the Fed wouldn’t pay the exorbitant rate to keep him returned, well, that sounds pretty crummy
3. If both the greatest champion and the greatest wrestlers in company history returned, well that sounds good (even if one of them had the absolute worst little playlet video thing this side of TNA)
4. If I told you the wrestler who is so in demand that he holds three (!) contracts in three different companies lost… again when he desperately needed the win… that sounds pretty bad
5. If I told you the supposed main character of the company gave up his ability to challenge for the main title of the company ever again for no real reason, somehow got to determine what match stipulation he wanted in spite of that and lost in a boring spotfest that more or less amounted to “what gross thing can I do to you next,” that might sound like kind of a bummer
6. And finally, if I told you that, far more importantly than all of those things I just listed, that the company may or may not have signed a conspiracy minded TERF, which cast a shadow of pallor over all the proceedings to follow, well, then I guess you’d have to say the news was a fucking NET NEGATIVE, wouldn’t you?

We are, what, about a quarter of the way through probably the most wretched year I can personally recall? So far, you could probably sum up the story of AEW in Two Thousand and Twenty Six with one word: momentum. AEW has FINALLY clawed it’s way free from (most of) the damage of CM Punk and his flame out, the terrible damage inflicted by Maxwell Jacob Friedman’s first disastrous title reign, the pattycake played with pricing and venue scaling and so forth. We’re back to mostly hot crowds, venue sellouts and increased demand. Ratings are impossible to TRULY comprehend but AEW and WBD seem to be fairly happy. Things are looking better.

So why would you have booked the one two punch of Hangman Adam Page losing the ridiculous stipulation no one wanted and he himself offered unnecessarily and then apparently bring in a person in the form of Ronda Rousey that is anathema to at least a fair amount of the online audience (obviously EVERYONE is ONLINE; I mean the audience likely to read words like these)? The goodwill, the VIBES were finally VIBING. Why jeopardize that?

The Hangman shit is one thing. It’s dumb, and bad and most importantly, UNNECESSARY. For all of you keyboard warriors rushing to defend it with your TERRIBLE fantasy booking and coping mechanisms, moaning about his eventual heel turn and redemption arc (!), dying to tell me “the Death Riders were good actually so let it play out,” I will not so gently remind you- THE DEATH RIDERS SUCKED FOR LIKE TWO THIRDS OF A YEAR. MAYBE MORE. And now that their BIG STORY is done, the next big DR story isn’t really coalescing. What is it? Where is it? HAVE THEY KICKED OUT JON MOXLEY, YET? STILL WAITING FOR THAT RIVETING STORY.

Yes, Hangman needed to triumph over a dastardly heel. But they had to kill babyfaces, tank pay per view main events and LOTS of TV time to get there to that point where the dastardly heel was vanquished. And the fall out has largely been a shrug. For all the cheering the “booking” in AEW has been getting lately… I dunno. Is it as good as some would have you believe? I’m not sure. Konosuke Takeshita is DYING on the vine, and it certainly feels TO ME like Kazuchika Okada is moving past him to new double contract employee of the month, Mistico (not that I don’t want to see Okada and Mistico).

“All Elite Scooby Doo. Is THAT what I’m supposed to call you?” At least the amigos para siempre are together under the same corporate umbrella again

Top heel (?) Swerve Strickland doesn’t appear to be pointed towards MJF and his title… it looks like he has Kenny Omega in his sights. Is Brody King better off than he was a couple of months ago? Bandido? Kyle Fletcher? Even Kevin Knight? I’m not sure. I don’t think the answer is YES for any of those guys. MAYBE King, but… it doesn’t really feel like it. Everyone is still basically where they were, still treading water. In January, three or four people had their sights set on Max, and he felt like he was ENDANGERED. Now…? It feels like he has no real challengers, and no real INTEREST. I’m not sure I CARE who is next on his dance card.

You want my review of the BIG MATCH last night?

I stick up for MJF a LOT as far as in ring goes, and obviously Hanger is a great hand in the ring, asolid, stiff as heck worker. He’s made magic before and even if we’ve seen it an AWFUL LOT, MJF and Hanger know what they are doing. The match, TO ME, I STRESS, felt slow, plodding, LOOOOOOONNNNNG, and just felt like each guy triggering a cool trap they had set up a couple minutes previous. “I do this gross thing to you and then you do this gross thing to me,” for roughly forty five minutes. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sure they did callbacks… REAL GLASS (CRY ME AN ETC.), the syringe, the dog collars, the dope-y explosions… Semi-addled brain trauma recipient Bryan Danielson said on commentary, “I think AEW should call for a moratorium on Texas Death matches” at one point during the proceedings and I was like I AGREE, DRAGON. YOU STILL GOT IT CLAP CLAP CLAPCLAPCLAP. Just didn’t really catch on with me. Your mileage will and probably DOES vary… but I didn’t think the match was great. The ending where Hangman was, well, hung just made me laugh. I said that to a friend actually when we were temperature checking each other towards the end of the show… I laughed. The stip was dumb. Hangman looks dumb. Sure, MJF gets that scalp. So what? Everyone is trying to play junior booker to figure out HOW TO GET OUT OF IT, and BOY, if it needs to be GOTTEN OUT OF, why was it done? You need to GET OUT of something that’s bad. If I need to plot out three years of twisted logic to make it all make sense… I’m not certain that AEW… or pro wrestling as an ouvere in GENERAL is the canvas to tell those intricate tales upon. I’m sorry, but I simply don’t have the faith in this company to tell whatever story they have in mind here. That’s not a crash out, that’s not Hangman being my special little guy (he isn’t and believe me, if anything I’m more upset about my ACTUAL special little guy ALSO losing, but we’ll get there) or whatever other dumb appellation you would like to hang on it… it’s bitter experience from AEW never rising to the occasion / striking while the iron is hot / peaking when they should. I don’t think the booking, whatever that means, is very good, that’s all. Too much repetition, too many repeats. Too many sequels when other things I want to see remain on the table. It’s finally happened; I can’t enjoy the shows like I ought to because the outcomes taint the otherwise amazing in ring action, the connective tissue doesn’t string up correctly for me. It’s a death of a thousand cuts, no one big thing but a zillion tiny ones.

I’m seeing people say stuff like “let it play out” or “I’m willing to give it a chance,” and fine, great. How do you register your UNWILLINGNESS to give it a chance? Why, you’d have to turn the show off. I don’t know that I’m upset enough to stop WATCHING AEW, to turn the show off but I’m certainly annoyed enough to stop CARING as much, to stop INVESTING in the show, so much.

How I wish there was a THIRD western pro wrestling show that actually provided an alternative, a viable one. No, not shitty TNA or money laundering scheme MLW or bloated rock ego crutch NWA, but a REAL, TRUE alternative. I think I need to reevaluate the finances and see about getting back into CMLL. You can’t write off AEW entirely because they could field Okada versus Mistico (or any other crazy match you’d care to name) any second now. They have the best collection of wrestlers since WCW 1997 (and I don’t say that lightly) and they aren’t afraid to use them… but here we are. I feel rather whittled down.

The opposite of love isn’t HATE. It’s APATHY.

(Also, anti shout out to those of you who feel obligated to find people who agree with you to say why you liked this. As always, as I often say ’til I’m blue in the face, my intention isn’t to YUCK your YUM, but to say what I think of something. If you liked it, great! But acting like you’re FIGHTING AGAINST THE TIDE by finding everyone that liked it or SAID that they liked it and then saying “See, this person gets it”… that says something about you. I don’t know what. IT’S GOOD ACTUALLY AND HERE’S WHY I LIKED IT AND YOU SHOULD, TOO is lame, but we’ve been here before.)

I want to save the Rousey stuff for the end but as I said earlier, it very much cast a shadow over the show and made everything less enjoyable for me. Hard not to rant THIS SECOND as I type, but I want to thread back to Takeshita and Moxley first.

What the absolute FUCK are they doing with Takeshita?

Takeshita is just such a goober in AEW AND New Japan Pro Wrestling (I realize that he’s a supposed champion there, but it’s one of their lesser titles that has no prestige or value and just calls on Takeshita to be a good little worker and give the El Phantasmos of the world a good little ten minute match every couple of months). If DDT didn’t pay in rice gruel and candy store vouchers, I would say he should stay there and lick his wounds. HE CAN NEVER GET THE BIG ONE IN AEW, it seems and it wouldn’t have hurt Jon Moxley ONE SINGLE IOTA to lose, here. It seems like Take winning the Continental title, challenging Okada for the International title and reuniting that goofy Unified title would be the most simple through line… but it seems they have other plans. The returning Will Ospreay coming out afterward really makes it seem like little brother Cinnabon Takeshita man can’t get the job done and only big brother BILLY GOAT, BRUV can slay the dragon. Just another weird self own that actively hurts Takeshita, does nothing for Mox and even slots Ospreay with an immediate, mid card ceiling. Don’t know if I like that.

I had guessed privately with a friend that Hangman would lose and Ospreay was going to come out to mollify the crowd afterward (much like Swerve returned after Hangman’s loss to Samoa Joe to make everyone happy), but obviously that bullet was already used halfway through the show. Don’t really get it. Obviously Ospreay looking for revenge against Mox makes sense but… I don’t know. Odd.

The match itself was very good and saw Takeshita using RAW MEMPHIS BABYFACE FIRE to power out of move after move, before simply succumbing to a choke.

*cough*

Just seemed… you have this guy powering through all sorts of stuff (I’m very “out” on the curb stomp as a move; just doesn’t look good to my eye and as someone who may or may not have laid boots to others *checks statute of limitations*, it just seems like it takes an overall synergy that not everyone possesses) and then he gets choked out. The end. What are we doing with the Death Riders? Same old, same old. Pac, et al. are gatekeepers. Sometimes the mid boss is Claudio, some times he’s the final gate to get to Mox. Mox is a (nominal) babyface who now is about respect. Okay…? What’s next? Where are we going? Ospreay, obviously will have to face YUTA and Pac and poor, lost Danny Garcia and Claudio and then he gets Mox. Okay, that’s a month or two worth of stuff. Then what? Shake it up; it’s STALE. Will it be good in ring? Sure. Will it be good anywhere else…?

I thought Ospreay looked thick upon his return, others said that I was wrong and that he was no bigger than usual so I will go with the consensus (he did have a bunch of new tats and it’s kind of like… whoopie). They ran this nonsensical package before he appeared where a guy was looking at an x-ray and throwing a switch, leading to Ospreay going “RARRRAGGGH” and making his return so I guess Ospreay is PCO, now? IF ONLY DESTRO HAD BEEN THERE. It was goofy and I didn’t care for it, especially given how serious and cool his comeback vignettes have been up until this point.

What else…? The Young Bucks / FTR match was absolutely EXCELLENT. They finally had the classic match they hadn’t quite managed to have before… I’m guessing the (now) very clear cut alignments of the characters had something to do with that. The Bucks came out with the Young Bucklets (their kids and the children of the third Jackson brother) and were all part of a video package that would have brought a tear to a glass eye, unless you were my wife, who was FUMING that the Bucks came out in Lakers livery. The DELIGHTED SQUEAL she made when FTR came out as the Celtics was a joy to behold. I was a bit surprised that there was blood in this match (and a LOT of it). There was some in Mox / Takeshita, too, but I half think that was an accidental opening of the mouse under Takeshita’s eye, so let’s put it another way, there was INTENTIONAL blood in this match which was fine, totally warranted, totally worked… but since the main event was a forty five minute BLOOD FEAST, I might have said ixnay. Miracle of miracles, STOKELY HATHAWAY ROSE from his Ron Wright-ian wheelchair to help his men, but that was a lost cause. FTR triumphed here, and I was fine with that, but sad because anyone with a semi-functioning cerebral cortex knew that meant Adam Copeland Edge Cope Mr. Alterbridge was on his way. Say his name and he appears (sadly). Look, I’ve ranted about him, his selfishness and his complete lack of care for AEW more than enough. I hope he does all the John Cena homages AEW Sickos desperately crave.

There is something I want to point out here, and it became a running theme for the night, something that struck me as annoying that I haven’t seen a lot of talk about yet. There was an exchange during the match where I believe Nick Jackson (but please don’t yell at me if it was Matt; it’s been a long fifteen hours), took a move from Dax Harwood. Dax covered him for the pin, but Nick kicked out on one because he was pissed and worked up about his family so, as a defiant babyface, he channeled that energy and did the damn thing. I love that sort of defiance once in awhile; really adds drama to a match that the guy can, in kayfabe, put aside his fatigue and damage long enough to tell the other guy “is that the best you got?” Makes it bigger than life.

Then we saw this again in the match with Mox and Takeshita (the kickout on one as Takeshita rallied, a defiant babyface). And then in the Swerve Strickland / Brody King match (which was also a good match, of course, but honestly, I’m not sure it did much for King and probably didn’t need to be on the show. Could have been a rad Dynamite main) where King rallied and delivered a kickout on one, a defiant babyface.

This goes back to the point I was making about Dynamite having two of the same finishes and then another one that was quite similar last week… WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE AGENTS BACKSTAGE FOR?! Why are we seeing this once in awhile cool thing THREE TIMES ON THE SAME SHOW?

It’s lazy, it’s lame. I was talking about this with a pal and a random swooped in. “I’m going to take a page from WWE and say it’s all about moments. Congratulations for noticing and not having ADHD. The rest of us do and don’t give a shit,” I was told by a person who spectacularly missed the point. Just a PHENOMENALLY arrogant and fairly ignorant take, so thanks kind internet stranger, you got fifteen seconds of (non) fame from me. You’re right, I paid attention, so CONGRATS TO ME. Jackass.

The weird, reverse Blackjack Battle Royale I was completely confused by, and mistook for the CASINO Battle Royale, the OTHER card based Battle Royale AEW does. This one stunk; one of those deals where everyone starts outside the ring and then randomly slide in here and there. They gave RUSH (not to be confused with Lio Rush, sporting new contact lenses, no hair and apparently using all fours to ambulate) and Los Faccion Ingobernable a LOT here, so I was pleased to see that, but basically the main thrust of the match was having Jungle Jack Perry chase Ricochet around until they were finally the final two people left in the match. A little razzle dazzle, a cool move and Jack Perry is your new champ. Fine, I guess… but I’d argue that does JACK SQUAT (no pun intended) for Jack, as he only sort of vanquished his hated foe. Why not have them have a singles match, which, let’s face it, would be better, even if I don’t know it’s necessarily a pay per view attraction, and then have the dumb Battle Royale be for the number one contendership to the National title? Baffling. At any rate, I hope they don’t do the reverse Battle Royale again for a long time, if ever. Do the gauntlet thing or the one where people come out to the card suits.

So now, we come to the bit I didn’t particularly want to write. I was already annoyed about the Edge return, which obviously isn’t important; it’s just a wrestler I don’t like. Having Ronda Rousey show up on the show after the match between Toni Storm and Marina Shafir is a whole different kettle of fish and basically took me out of the show for the rest of the night. Since this was match three… that’s not so good, Al. (Yes, I know she was in ROH once. A fraction, a TINY FRACTION of the people that saw that saw this.)

Rousey is, or at the very, very least, has been a conspiracy minded Sandy Hook denier, probably owing at least partially to her extremely cloistered training and overbearing coach, amongst other things. “Oh, but she apologized,” some might say. Well, that’s true, she did apologize some ten plus years after she shared her putrid “very interesting video” that was “just asking questions” in regards to the Sandy Hook shooting. She said later that it (sharing the Alex Jones video) was her way of trying to process the tragedy, the greatest mistake of her life and she (apparently) understands if you can’t forgive her that. I mean, Jones ended up owing billions of dollars in damages he can never repay over that, but okay, people make mistakes and can change, right?

So why hasn’t she ever apologized for saying females competing against transwomen athletes are at a disadvantage? Was that just a “mistake,” as well? What tragedy was she trying to get over when she said that?

I know a LOT of people tried to make her a good guy when she finally came out against WWE (took awhile, tho’) and pointed out how bad her experiences as a woman were, there, which sucks. Obviously she was the most famous woman, probably one of the top two or three most famous PEOPLE there, period, and she still felt alienated and was treated poorly (don’t get me started on Drew Gulak apparently not being able to line up a handshake. Grab ’em by the drawstrings, amirite).

Doesn’t make her a good guy. Just means that WWE was so secure in its institutional arrogance that they could treat the most famous female combat sports star in the world like shit.

More to the point, putting her wretched, antiquated and cloddish views aside (and those are just the ones she’s made public), why would Tony Khan alienate a portion of his viewing audience by bringing her in? I don’t think she’s signed or anything, at least so far as I’m aware, and I have seen a lot of people intimate this was a one off (I don’t know if that’s true, either; obviously she is promoting her fight with Gina Carano in May), but I haven’t seen the scrum yet. I would assume Khan played off of the fact that Rousey is real life friends with Shafir (she “saved” Shafir, so to speak and the announcers speculated if she was now in the Death Riders) and so forth, which obviously is true… but they didn’t just have her randomly appear to get people talking; they want to squeeze whatever notoriety she has left and they hope the people it would attract outweighs the people it would repel. I get that; that’s ALL business to some degree. Again, my point is why make that choice AT ALL, when AEW is finally back in the good graces of a lot of fans?

Trans people exist.

Trans people are reading this column (I know that for a fact).

This isn’t me, as a cis male, chasing clout, I have friends and acquaintances and readers who are trans.

Why should they have to sacrifice their comfort potentially to watch the shitty wrestling show every week?

Is this (getting involved with Rousey) a DEATH KNELL for AEW? Of course not. But, much like I said earlier, it’s the death of a thousand cuts, and Rousey being on the show is definitely something that could lead to a trans pal or six or twelve or two hundred or two thousand shutting the show off for awhile. Why risk it? The returns seem negligible. Rousey is NOT one of life’s good guys. Why should I have to worry about if she will be showing up sometime in the next two months?

And where in the sweet hell, exactly, is Nyla Rose?

When I woke up this morning, with the defense force going in FULL FORCE, the people telling us why Hangman losing is “good, akshully,” why we shouldn’t be upset about Rousey, why we should let it ALL PLAY OUT or GIVE IT A CHANCE or “the Death Riders were good, so let’s see where it goes” or etc, I think this show was sitting like somewhere around a 9.1 on Cagematch, which is WILD to me. Obviously it had a LOT of great wrestling, and depending on how you felt about a couple of the key matches, you probably liked the show a LOT better than I did, which is fine… but at the end of the evening, if I feel worse about AEW coming out of it than I did going in, that’s not a successful show, to me. I’m not “crashing out” or whatever the kids say. I’m just learning that AEW doesn’t really fill my needs insofar as what I want from a wrestling show, that’s all.

Oh, and Kenny’s back. At least there’s that.