La Zona Muerta

I have very mixed feelings about the Darby Allin AEW title reign. On the one hand, you are getting fun World Championship matches on TV every week (and sometimes more than once a week). On the other hand, those matches are INCREDIBLY formulaic; Darby absorbs egregious, over the top (and sometimes, scary in real life) punishment, valiantly survives, and then spams his finisher until either he’s victorious or he hits a fluke pin.

Soupytwist.

Wash, rinse and repeat.

I tried VERY hard not to be pre-annoyed that my special, little guy Konosuke Takeshita* was going to lose to Darby. As I say, friends, I tried. I LIKE Darby! I just don’t think the two guys are exactly in the same league, that’s all. Of course, as per usual, Takeshita can’t buy a win (and no one ever seems to consider that the guy who always gets to the end but never gets the big win gets DAMAGED by being perceived as a choke artist). He beat the bricks off of Darby (including an incredible Blue Thunder Bomb delivered by Take to Darby from the apron to the floor, and an absolutely INSANE avalanche German suplex where Takeshita didn’t actually release Darby, thereby rendering Darby unable to control how he took the suplex bump) until a critical decision point was reached. The dastardly Don Callis wanted Takeshita to cheat 2 win with the Dynamite Diamond Ring, on loan from hair transplant enthusiast Maxwell Jacob Friedman. Takeshita, officially now a babyface in Japan, but having yet to fully activate THE BIG TURN OF ’26 here in Americaland, was faced with a crucial decision; whether to use the screwdriver ring or not**.

Twenty seconds later, after his crisis of conscience was resolved, he was preparing to break Darby’s spine on the outside with the steel ring steps.

If you are keeping score at home, as far as the use of international foreign objecs go, ring, no good. Steel steps, a-okay. AEW desperately needs someone to THINK when it comes to spots like that. What do agents DO, anyway? Takeshita had a change of heart when it came to cheating, but had ZERO compunction in using steel steps on the outside to jeopardize a man’s career?

Anyway, Darby managed to avoid career death on the steps and reversed Takeshita’s move into a Scorpion Death Drop. From there, he hit a series of submission attempts, and when those didn’t work, since Darby’s leverage based leg submissions don’t make a ton of sense on someone twice his size, he fished out his PlayStation controller and hit R2 plus the X button over and over again until he won.

The valiant, undersized champion wrestling until the wheels fall off is a valid story, a reasonable, worthwhile wrestling story. But they have sort of gazumped the weekly defenses with the idea that Allin already has MJF at the pay per view. Doesn’t the fact that Darby has MJF at the big show sort of undercut the weekly defenses? Then you have the issue of the similarity of the defenses themselves, all involving Darby taking critical damage above and beyond the norm but somehow, SOMEHOW eking out enough fighting spirit or adrenaline or whatever goddamned thing that allows him to not only survive but THRIVE.

I dunno. It’s getting harder to suspend my disbelief in regards to Darby title retention, let’s say. They should probably subvert expectations and have Darby somehow beat MJF, but I doubt MJF the performer is any more keen to be shaved bald than MJF the character is. Of course, if Darby were to somehow beat MJF, using his pluck and can-do spirit, you run afoul of the problems I mentioned last week, potentially leading to Darby looking bad if he were to lose to a babyface or risking Darby getting little brothered if he lost it in a multi-man match.

I really don’t know what the out is. And if MJF regains the title, I’d be pretty surprised if he were to lose it prior to All In. AEW, where the tired, one-note villains best wrestle.

Kevin Knight had an open challenge for his TNT Championship, and that’s cool. He faced the returning Brian Cage, who looked like he had swallowed the previous Brian Cage. If you thought the dude was jacked before, he’s now swole, cut, jacked, ripped and BOLO***. It was like two smaller Brian Cages did the Fusion Dance and merged together.

Look, I don’t generally bag on PED use here (unless I’m referring to human Petri dish Billy Gunn), and it’s not just the red flag dudes like Cage who are on body transforming amounts of chemicals. It’s likely a LOT of your favorites use SOMETHING at least. Blog favorite K*nn* *m*g*’s tum tum trouble isn’t merely because he eats too much meat (did you think his l’il distended gut-ski was solely because of his diverticulitis? Bless your naive heart). But Cage is on such a ridiculous stack that, if you enjoy him and his work… you should be worried. Think about the original body over substance wrestler (no pun intended), Superstar Billy Graham for a second.

Billy and a fan. If you work out mainly during the commercial breaks of Monday Night RAW, you too can be like Billy

Graham used and abused various PEDs SO MUCH that it made his bones brittle. His joints, obviously, suffered from degenerative effects. His liver packed up. His kidneys. His heart. His ankles were shot. He had to have multiple hip surgeries. And that’s saying NOTHING of the mental trauma, the depression of chasing the perfect body, the crippling effects of addiction, the scalding emptiness of withdrawal. The weariness caused by chronic pain, chipping away at you like a tide splashing against a rock face, eroding it away, bit by bit. You may think “Who cares, it’s their choice,” and sure, ultimately it is, but if you’re a fan of these guys… why would you want them burning the candle at both ends just so you can ogle an especially jacked bod five minutes a week? I’m often surprised (more fool I) at the seeming callousness of wrestling fans who pine for the steroid-enhanced bodies of old.

Brian Cage, of course, has had tons of injuries. Any wrestler has. But his most significant injuries have been a biceps tear in 2020 (apparently the first time he actually needed surgery for an injury) and then a quadriceps tear, last year, necessitating a number of surgeries.

And yet he comes back now, carrying even MORE weight, MORE mass than he did when he went down either of those times. That strikes me as counterintuitive at BEST.

Sure, you or I can suffer a muscle tear, it DOES happen. A good friend of mine who never touched a performance enhancing drug in his life fucked up his bicep simply by OPENING THE BLINDS ONE DAY and had to have surgery. The surgeon described one of his torn muscle fibers as “rolling up like a tape measure.” But boy, it’s awful weird how wrestlers CONSTANTLY tear muscles, huh? At a completely disproportionate rate to you and me. Almost like their muscles are already stretched to beyond their normal capacity for some reason.

Steroids, testosterone, growth hormone… none of it is magic. You don’t take a pill and then suddenly look like Rick Rude. PEDs of that type allow you to work harder than you are normally supposed to in the gym and recover from that overwork faster than you are normally supposed to… and even then, you have to be genetically predisposed to PEDs really working for you. Not everyone becomes a hulking monster on Dyanabol or Anavar; they don’t effect every person the same way.

I’m not saying that Brian Cage doesn’t work incredibly hard or anything like that. Pro Wrestling on television is a difficult business, a cosmetic business. Folks are DESPERATE to stand out from their peers, because their peers are, in actuality, their competition. What I’m saying is, Cage is so alarmingly huge, that I worry about his quality of life going forward, after his wrestling career comes to an end. He looks like a Masters of the Universe action figure, and I don’t necessarily mean that as a compliment.

The match he and Knight had was okay, I suppose. It was a bit awkward in places. I know people who LIKE that kind of awkwardness, who think that some missed spots or some difficulty makes the match look like a real life struggle, less like a cooperative dance and sure… I think that there CAN be some truth to that line of thinking. However, to me here, it just mostly looked like two dudes who weren’t quite on the same page, and it’s hard to think that’s the fault of the ultra smooth Knight. Cage certainly doesn’t appear to be muscle bound, at least in the series of movements he utilizes in his signature moves, and it wasn’t like he was a botch machine or anything like that. It just seemed like you had a huge guy who was even bigger than the last time we saw him and he could only have an okay match with one of the hot, new guys. Your mileage may vary.

The only other match that really had any in ring resonance for me was the return of Will Ospreay to action, taking on Ace Austin, he of the INCREDIBLY thick thighs. I’ve followed Austin’s career since he was featured on a weekly Oregon based wrestling show that Brian Zane was doing commentary on probably almost ten years ago. Back then, he had a little more stage magician in his gimmick (I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense; I mean he had a top hat and a collapsible wand), but I made note of the guy. He’s made it to AEW and that’s good; he’s an exciting wrestler, I believe still under the age of thirty.

He’s also… god, I’m gonna sound like Bry*n *lv*r*z, here.

He shouldn’t be giving Will Ospreay a difficult time at this point in their respective career journeys.

I realize I had a slightly different opinion when Ospreay came back and wrestled Blake Christian, but Christian had already been in contention for the ROH title at that point and Ospreay was coming back from a long lay off. Here, Ospreay’s bad neck was fixed by MAGIC HANDS (trust me, I’m not complaining about that; I’m going to create a shrine to Marina Shafir and pray to it. Maybe it can fix my bad back, knee, wrist, etc.) and then he had a competitive match with Ace Austin, who is very good, but is also the pin eater in Bullet Club Gold the Bang Bang Gang.

Will Ospreay is gonna be the world champion in three and a half months.

It’s wonderful that he is a giant puppy dog of a man (if you need proof, watch him staring blankly at Jon Moxley as Moxley was reading Chuck Palahniuk to him or whatever during this week’s Death Rider segment) and that he’s such a generous performer in ring, that he’s so giving and doesn’t want to squash an up and coming guy… but Will, baby. There’s a REASON it’s called enhancement work. Winning a quick match in a spectacular, even brutal fashion is likely more memorable than a match where Austin got in a ton of offense (this is where my old man mentality kicks in and I get dismissed as an “old head,” because I’ve actually watched countless hours of wrestling, for my sins) but I think Ospreay might actually be a bit TOO generous as a performer. In a vacuum, as it’s own unit of entertainment, this was a good match. As part of the story of Will’s inexorable march to Wembley? I don’t know. Him going fifty fifty with Samoa Joe next week is fine; Joe is a two time AEW world champion. Fifty fifty with a guy so much lower on the card…?

One would assume Will goes all the way in the coming Owen Hart Cup; presumably to face his real life friend, Swerve Strickland in the finals(also, shout out to the aforementioned Blake Christian who will likely become ROH champion tomorrow when Swerve finds a way to destroy Bandido. I love it when a plan comes together).

The more interesting part of all this now becomes what the training with the Death Riders (and the free, uh… indoctrination?) ends up costing Ospreay. Jon Moxley isn’t repairing Will and making him into a “bird of prey” just for the love of the game. I was a little bit out on this storyline last week, but I’m back to being sucked in. Also, about out to Danny Garcia calling Ospreay a young boy, since Ospreay presumably has to wash the backs of his senpais in the DRs and do their laundry.

I’m still not especially feeling the pay per view. They seem to think throwing the Elite randomly into an Anarchy in the Arena match (or is it a Stadium Stampede? Or a falls count anywhere on the Gulf Coast match?) is a selling point, and yeah, it increases my interest SOME, sure but those matches are always difficult to follow, a wacky spot fest for the sake of wacky spots. It’s gonna have the Elite, yes. But it’s also gonna have Chris Jericho, the Hurt Business and the DOGS in it, three of my least favorite acts in AEW. Frankly, the Elite’s inclusion feels like an afterthought. Why is Kenny Omega in this, wasting one of his presumably limited dates? I still have no interest in Cage ‘n’ Cope versus FTR, no matter how many spears Edge does (and bad superkicks he throws). And, if you snuck me a glance at Tony Khan’s carefully hand ruled graph in his ledger, and it said that Kazuchika Okada was somehow going to beat Konosuke Takeshita, I’d probably just roll my eyes and chuckle ruefully. Then, in the main event, Darby / MJF is suddenly not about the eternal resilience of Darby Allin, or even about MJF’s pride and ego; its now all about “LOL BALD,” which seems like a stupid way to sell what is potentially a serious stip, and yet another reason why apuestas matches will never mean anything here as compared to what the mean in Mexico.

Maybe I’m just cranky. Old guy needs a nap.

*the fucking state of the alleged Internet Wrestling Community, whatever THAT is, where liking a particular wrestler better than the others is somehow verboten and warrants dismissive, passive-aggressive criticism by telling you that you suck for liking one character better than another

**to say nothing of the fact that this is the EXACT SAME DILEMMA Will Ospreay was faced with when HE was with Don Callis. Repeatedly. Can we please ban the pensive wrestler staring at the foreign object as he performs his internal calculus?

***”Swole, cut, jacked, ripped and BOLO” ™ Joel Gertner