La Zona Muerta

You pay your money, you takes your chances.

Some scattershot thoughts about the show last night:

I was already a bit on edge (no, not THAT Edge) when Double or Nothing, technically the seventh anniversary show for AEW, started. At least when Mick Foley name dropped a WWE lifer within SECONDS of his speaking debut, the New York crowd had the decency to boo him.

I know many, probably most of you reading this LOVE Mick Foley.

Mick Foley is a fake ally who pretends to care about women.

You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not excited about him joining AEW. You can give all the money in the world you want to RAINN, whatever it takes to assuage your conscience, but you make a fool of that organization and yourself when you pretend that VINCE MCMAHON wasn’t a serial rapist, that he deserves the slightest consideration. Even taking Foley’s advocacy for McMahon (the father figure who will never love Mick as much as Mick loves him back) and setting it aside, putting aside his weird and mildly inappropriate fan fiction about one of his female co-workers that was ACTUALLY PUBLISHED IN ONE OF HIS BOOKS, the fan fic that actually became the basis for an angle later, even then I’ve never really been a fan, even going back to his Cactus Jack days. Was he an eloquent, captivating promo? To some, absolutely. I can’t dispute that, but I’m not disputing it. I’m saying, for ME, those so called classic promos never really connected, never really rang true. His work… look. Obviously he’s a tough man, more than tough, and willing to sacrifice himself above and beyond for a business that is cruel and unkind. I respect that, respect the sacrifice but… this is a man who was, at his core, always desperate for approval, both the character(s) he played, and the man himself. I recall, many years back, Dave Meltzer MILDLY put down one of Foley’s famous promos, either a promo for the then new WWE version of ECW or from a couple of years later, when he cast his bread on the water of Total Nonstop Action, and Foley went ballistic about it, trying to convince Dave why Dave was wrong to not like the promo (!) until Dave had him on Observer Radio…and Foley, who had been all blood and thunder in his own defense… was suddenly a KITTEN. In the face of his detractor… he clammed up.

His time in WCW, his years and years in WWF, then showing up from time to time in WWE, his tenure in TNA… a tenure, by the way, where he was looking old, bad and on his last legs over FIFTEEN YEARS AGO… I absolutely fail to see what Foley adds to AEW in 2026. Foley can’t have a magical end of career rehabilitation the way Sting did. I’m pretty sure NO ONE could. The magic, the lightning in a bottle that was captured with the end of Sting’s career likely will never, EVER be duplicated. I saw people advocating for a Foley / MJF program after they verbally sparred to end the pre show.

Gotch wept.

Foley was absolutely instrumental in cementing guys like HHH and Randy Orton as main event talents. My disdain for his act, my meager words certainly could never take that from him. But there is less than no juice left for AEW to squeeze from Foley in that sense. Darby Allin won’t get the rub from him, even with his “pep talk,” telling Derby to “do it for the weirdos!” (Spoiler: Darby was NOT, in fact, able to do it for the weirdos.) Maxwell Jacob Friedman doesn’t need the rub from him. What are we doing here? The era of the McMahon apologist using AEW for a retirement payday should have ended with the likes of Steven Regal, Miro and Tom End, but all I see is praise and cheers. If Vince came calling, Mick would be back there with bells on. His master’s voice.

I’m not into it. There’s not going to be a circumstance where I am into it. And once again, another year in, AEW moves that little bit further away from what I was hoping it would be in 2019.

Now that the Foley unpleasantness is out of the way (for now)… I mean, if you thought I was insufferable in my Foley rant, you probably won’t like what I have to say about FTR versus Cope and Christian, either; the match that masqueraded as a love letter to 2007 WWE. Or is that the other way around?

About three quarters of the way through the match, I was telling a friend that soon, Mrs. Edge would come out and we would all have to pretend that she was a pioneer in wonen’s wrestling. Pretty much right after I hit “send,” magically, it came to pass. I AM NOSTRADAMUS. BEHOLD MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND ROLL YOUR EYES. Whenever they trot out Beth Phoenix, it’s a good way to see who wants AEW, where the best wrestle, and who wants WWE nostalgia, who’s content with the least and pretending it’s the most.

You could pretty much copy and paste whatever my reaction was from the last time they did this shit, but whatever. At least the match went on first. It’s my problem, obviously, especially as it was mentioned repeatedly on the pre show, but I legitimately forgot the match was an “I Quit” affair, and I looked confused at my wife when Edge attacked FTR Bald with barbed wire, and he sputtered “no… fuck… no…” into the mic. “I almost asked you why was he talking into the microphone,” I said weakly as she laughed at me. Okay, I’M THE IDIOT. Of course, the scariness of barbed wire is a touch mitigated in NYC, for some strange reason.* There was a funny part that did have me chuckling; I think it was Christian who produced a pair of pliers and tugged on Dax’ mustache. Another reminder that your least favorite wrestlers are tougher, MUCH tougher than normal mortals… if I’m grooming and I yank ONE NOSE HAIR, I’m basically inconsolable.

FTR Bald eventually had to give up when confronted with the very Canadian trio of the Sharpshooter, the Crippler Crossface (!) and that fucking dumb plank with the nails in it that Edge SWEARS is over to the audience. YAY WE WANT TABLES AND WE CAN SING ALONG AGAIN WITH ALTERBRIDGE. Yuck to this whole thing. I’m sure that if this sorta deal is your jam, they delivered on your expectations. Unfortunately for me, they definitely met mine.

Fortunately, there’s nothing bad I could say about the match Konosuke Takeshita FINALLY got to have with Kazuchika Okada. Well, that’s not true, it’s me. There was something bad about it; the five months of pouring water on the angle meant that the once hottest program in AEW was now relegated to being the second match on a random PPV card. Sure the match delivered, sure we FINALLY got the GREAT TURN OF ’25 ’26. Everything was great, and the match stole the show, but imagine how great this would have been if it was evil Okada reigning at the top of the card with the unified International / Continental title (hell, in a perfect world, maybe the WORLD title) and IWGP champion Konosuke Takeshita (no, not the dopey TV title, but that’s the other place’s fault) finally completed his babyface turn and triumphed, with the full promotional might of the company (both companies) behind him?

Such was not to be.

Despite that, despite the promotional malfeasance, the match itself was basically perfect. Oh, sure, I think Takeshita might have lost Okada slightly one time when he hurked him up for some move or other. Maybe one or two of the Rainmakers Okada threw didn’t have the bite that they could have had. I’m not talking about that; I don’t care about that. I mean, in the pure sense of the old gunslinger who hates the young kids coming up to him to prove their worth… and the young buck being able to finally put the old gunslinger down… this match was perfect.

The only thing that would have made it more perfect, I opined, would have been if Kyle Fletcher, Takeshita’s work husband, were there to see it. Then, as Takeshita demanded his props from Don Calls and his titular family, as it became clear that Don had indeed chosen Okada over Takeshita and Takeshita realized that he was in danger… Fletcher made his return. And appeared to pick Takeshita over the Family. As we were hooting and hollering our approval… picturing Kyle and Big Take against the world… Fletcher, of course, clobbered Takeshita anyway. A heartbreaker, but thinking about it on balance, Kyle is better as a heel. Takeshita hopefully dismantling the Family to get to Fletcher should make for great TV.

I just think it could have been even bigger, the match could have meant even more. That’s all.

This sacred space is rarely a MOVEZ blog, but I HAVE to shout out something I’ve never seen before, or at least if I have, I simply don’t remember it… Takeshita uses a variety of German Suplexes; we know this. He has a dead lift wheelbarrow variation that never fails to stun me. Here, instead of using that precise version, he… this is sort of difficult to describe… he sort of pushed Okada aloft with his hands on the inside of Okada’s thighs… and then turned that launching point as he held Okada in the air in this unique manner into a German. I don’t think there was anything in the way of help from Okada in this move at all. Incredible. THE LITERAL BEST WRESTLERS IN THE WORLD, PERFORMING WHERE THE BEST WRESTLE.

Eventually we got to my other favorite match of the evening; Will Ospreay and Samoa Joe. Everyone is going to talk about how great Ospreay was, and don’t get me wrong, he WAS, indeed, great, but I want to talk about Joe for a second.

This may be my favorite version of Joe. No, he is not capable of what 2005 Joe was, when he had two of the greatest matches I have ever or probably will ever see**. Yes, he has distilled some of his stuff into formula (if you watched Joe in 2005, that was the case then, too, so I don’t know why some use that distillation against him). Yes, his body can’t give what it once did.

So fucking what?

Joe is BETTER, right now, at being his character than he has ever been… and it’s not like this dude has ever hurt for characterization. Okay, maybe a bit in his UPW days. Remember him on Monster Garage? No? I won’t remind you (and a hearty LZM anti-shout out to Big Schwag). His aura, his believability… I’m not certain there’s anyone that matches him for that instant physical credibility other than save your most grizzled Japanese vets. Everything he does; the slap rush, the big boy senton, the walk away while the opponent flails, the power slam (still either the best power slam in the business or a 1A with R*ndy *rt*n, assuming his musclebound frame is still capable of the move)… it all looks devastating. Joe still does the Shinjiro Otani boot scrape and I still wonder how he does it without killing his foe. I have a fairly good idea of how the sausage is made in a lot of these instances and the magician STILL hasn’t shown me his cards on that move in twenty-five years. He unloaded some Toshiaki Kawada-style kicks (amazing that flippy floppy boy Ospreay, who once sold every move by screaming like a woman is now the strongest soldier of keeping the KING’S ROAD style alive) into Ospreay’s face that made me wince for real. He and Ospreay were both cognizant that a twenty plus minute match probably wasn’t the proper vehicle here, so they kept the action to a fairly tight twelve or thirteen minutes, and I think that was a good move. This match wasn’t a sprint, not exactly, but it was all action, little filler and worked in what I believe to be a fairly realistic manner. Okay, maybe Ospreay hitting the Styles Clash on Joe wasn’t THE MOST realistic thing I’ve ever seen, but I’ll live.

This is not to take away from Bandido / Swerve Strickland which was also very good; I just don’t feel like I have much to say about it. I WILL say that Bandido has sort of solved the issue with the 21 Plex by introducing a new variation where he scoops his opponent off of the ground as opposed to having them waiting for him in the goofy 619 Area Code kick position while he sets up the clip. Bandido’s not just for show, pound for pound strength rivals Claudio Castagnoli, and I don’t make that comparison lightly. The end of this match had one of the best finishes I’ve seen in a LONG time; Bandido went for the traditional 21 Plex; Swerve sort of rolled off of Bandido’s back and converted the hold into a Vertebreaker, an absolutely GROSS Vertebreaker where the missus and I (the remorseless woman who couldn’t care if most wrestlers live or die) SCREAMED OUT LOUD and then Swerve absolutely BLASTED Bandido with a House call to win VERY definitively. I’ll be thinking about that finish, if not the match, for some time to come.

I suppose we have to talk about the Stadium Stampede.

I don’t really WANT to talk about the Stadium Stampede.

I get that some people really dug this, they like the silliness. I’m not totally against the silliness. I thought the Anarchy in the Arena mach from last year was a LOT of fun.

This mostly just felt like a drag.

The most memorable spot (Mark Davis being killed, perhaps literally, via vehicular manslaughter. If he were leaving the promotion and you told me this is how they were writing him out, I’d believe you) was probably the dumbest. I remember almost nothing about the match as the problem with following fourteen (!!) dudes around the arena… it doesn’t serve ANY of them well. I DO remember that Toa Liona had a couple of incredible strong guy spots (a spot where he had three men stacked like cord wood on his back before hitting them with a fallaway slam, and then later when he used a shopping cart like a club. Yes, I too could pick up a shopping cart. But I don’t think I could hold it casually aloft for minutes as a weapon), so that’s something. I realize what I’m about to say is very much a “this food is awful… and SUCH SMALL PORTIONS” old man rant, but I don’t really care about that. For some reason, you like my writing, my feelings, my insight and my histrionics enough to follow these screeds, so I owe you my true thoughts. The way they shoot these things is terrible. I realize it’s probably not easy, and they did TRY to do stuff like give us four way camera coverage, but I saw more of Bobby Lashley slapping hands with the crowd after Kenny Omega hit a One Winged Angel on Andrade il Idolo (hey, they remembered Kenny and Andrade had an issue! Bless) than I saw of Kenny doing pretty much ANYTHING during the match. The ending was pretty much Feel Good City as everyone ganged up on Ricochet, and I guess Chris Jericho got a sort of measure of revenge. Actually, thinking critically, I think Bishop Kuan ended up taking the bullet for Ricochet. Whatever to that, but can I just say, whomever’s idea it was to give Ricochet the Gates of Agony as partners / heaters… it was a stroke of genius and has done a TON for those guys insofar as giving them much needed personality.

If this match was your thing, mazel tov. For ME, it was, in my estimation, overly long and tried too hard to be “fun,” without really having much in the way of fun spots. A miss for me, and a big one, but again, I didn’t think the match was going to be any good. The Elite were a complete afterthought here, just utterly pointless. Oh, and another old man rant, because why not, typically I suppose what sets a “Stadium Stampede” apart from an “Anarchy in the Arena” (sigh) is the use of pretapes, of blending live and taped footage. They didn’t do that here, so much, but both groups of seven had extensive, pre taped entrance movie things. The bad guys showed up in a variety of penis extensions vehicles, including the ugly hydraulic nightmare of a truck that I’ve ever seen (not counting the stark grimness of the CyberTruck, obviously). The good guys had this sort of Reservoir Dogs / Snatch kind of deal where each guy was highlighted looking cool with a color hold graphic and their name. The last man revealed, of course, was Big KENNY OMEGA, who looked like the biggest badass in the world, smoking a cigar.

Until he choked on it and everyone looked at him like he was a dork.

Look, Kenny is a dweeb. I LOVE THAT ABOUT HIM. But this is also the guy who you want to build back (I presume) into a BIG DEAL leading into All In. I don’t want the dork choking on a cigar, I want the LEADER OF MEN, THE KILLER striding into a match that he knows he’s gonna win because he’s the best. Instead, he’s taking a back seat to Chris Jericho and just hanging out until it’s time for him to hit his spot. Very Glade Yeller of me, I know, but it just didn’t sit right with me.

I guess that gets us to the main event.

Am I here to bury Darby? Praise him? I don’t know for sure. I think this month was, on balance, pretty good, even if the formula of plucky Darby surmounting insurmountable odds over and over was starting to wear a bit thin by the end. I’m not even going to flip out about Max getting the title back; I certainly didn’t expect him to lose… but now he’s definitely going to retain at LEAST through Forbidden Door, and probably until the new, secret July PPV. That doesn’t exactly light my soul on fire. I’m just kind of like “how do we get the belt on Kenny or whatever.”

I’m not sure that’s the response they are looking for.

Meanwhile, you have fans fawning all over Max because he went on a podcast and buried Mal Black. So what? Max also said one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen, pointing out how the other guys (WWE) have made it so a hair stipulation in North America is a joke. I don’t disagree with that premise, but then I stop and think about how AEW devoted FIVE MINUTES to making bald jokes at Max’ expense two weeks ago. The whole thing has been played for comedy! The TEMERITY to call out ANYONE for making a hair stip a joke when the build was PREDICATED around people going “hoop doop hair plug, hoop doop bald.” MICK “let me write RAINN another check and how IS Melina doing by the way” FOLEY made hair plug jokes at the beginning of the night! GEt off it. Some true do as I say, not do as I do shit, there.

Anyway, the match itself was pretty good. Darby took one of the nastiest spills I’ve ever seen him take (and think of the ground THAT covers) pretty much at the literal beginning of the match and while it obviously was a planned spot, it wasn’t a botch or anything… man. It just looked like DEATH, like Darby shouldn’t continue on. Towards the end, he did a jump, a Coffin Drop onto a prone Max (on a table) from probably a good fifteen feet in the air. If anything, it was a more controlled and safer version of the same spot he did with Mark Davis two weeks ago (where he came VERY close to overshooting the mark, no pun intended), but he still managed to slice open the back of his head, anyway on the landing. It was actually a bit gruesome but he and Max managed to sort of incorporate it into the finishing stretch of the match.

There was an unintentionally funny bit where Max pulled a camera guy into Darby’s flight path and Darby killed him, the camera falling over dramatically. Then, seven guys came out to help the beleaguered camera guy to the back (meanwhile Mark Davis presumably needed the JAWS OF LIFE and a SPATULA after being hit by a bus, but shrug). In their infinite wisdom, someone in the back decided to replay the death of the camera guy from a different angle where it showed he barely took any bump at all. WHY DO THEY DO THESE THINGS.

So yeah, anyway, Max is champ again. I’m not upset; I’m not much of anything, to be frank (let me be frank about Frank). Of more interest was after the match, when Darby was being hauled away by stretcher… when MJF looked like he was about to do something dastardly… Kevin Knight came out to make the save… and hit his amazing UFO splash on Darby instead. On purpose.

I’ve got mixed feelings about that; I don’t know that Knight is well established enough yet to turn. On the other hand, it’s intriguing. That’s a case where I’ll happily toe the “let’s see how it plays out” line.

So that was DoN. Of course, some people always need to validate the experience by saying the show was the best thing ever. It didn’t meet THAT lofty standard in MY home, anyway. Except for some obnoxious chants, the crowd was GREAT all night and the Louis Armstrong Arena ended up being even better than the Arthur Ashe, with a great look and what appeared to be really good sight lines. I also had a couple of pals who had a hard time getting OUT of the place, which is always a bit of a collar tug.

I was saying to a friend as we were commiserating a bit that, right now, as a general state of AEW thing, I’d be willing to overlook certain things if we had a bit more meat on the bone to chew on. Max as champ doesn’t thrill me. C&C having tag titles is a turn off. The looming spectre of Mick Foley and whatever other also rans await is a DEFINITE turn off. They don’t seem to have anything lined up for Thekla. Moxley has the Ospreay deal, but I don’t think that’s leading to a Moxley / Ospreay showdown, at least for now, and we just had one of those, recently. Takeshita got his glory, finally, but it’s a midcard story and not a crowning the next new GUY story. The Bucks are adrift until the New Day (sigh) arrive. Kenny? I have NO IDEA what they are doing with Kenny.

It feels like with just some SLIGHT tweaks, AEW could really be hitting on all cylinders for me, but right now, the engine is choking. There are glimpses of good, even great stuff, but they’re all sort of occluded by this sort of thick smog hanging over the proceedings.

We can’t escape the truth and the fact is we’re dashing ourselves against the rocks of a lifetime.

On that happy note, see you Thursday. Enquiring minds want to know; does RUSH still get his title shot?

*aka the commission won’t let ’em blade in New York City, a place where every human being probably has a pocket knife of some type

**Of course I am referring to the infamous ten minute slugfest with Necro Butcher that has to be seen to be believed, and then his instant classic with Kenta Kobashi. If you want to say Joe was the literal best wrestler in the world in 2005, I’d be hard pressed to disagree