La Zona Muerta

Man, I was all fired up to tell you what a good Dynamite this was, already mentally composing what I was going to say, tallying up highlights and it WAS good, don’t get me wrong… but then suddenly, five minutes before the show ended, the SPIRIT OF JEFF JARRETT apparently seized the means of production and generated the most overbooked horseshit I’ve seen since the heyday of Monday Night Nitro. No, even worse, the most overbooked horseshit since Raven fought Jeff Jarrett in the bowels of the TNA Asylum and EVERY SINGLE ECW WRESTLER WHO WASN’T THEN CONTRACTED TO WWE ran in, way back in 2004. What a distinction; not the most overbooked match in thirty years, merely the most overbooked match in over TWENTY YEARS. Mazel tov.

Just what on Earth am I talking about? Well, Will Ospreay and Mark Davis were absolutely killing each other, just DESTROYING each other in a possible match of the year candidate… a terrific, emotional match with pitch perfect ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys and then, just when we hit the climax of the match, there was a goddamned REF BUMP. I groaned audibly. No ref meant it was time for CRAZY SHENANIGANS, and boy, crazy shenanigans we got… in spades. No less and possibly more than eleven people ran out to interfere, one after another, like some kind of demon-possessed Play Doh factory spewing out endless ropes of allegedly non toxic goo. This was interminable, just an endless parade of people, endless intra-faction GANG WARZ, a never ending schmozola, all while the match was still going. What fresh hell was this? This absolute Looney Tunes parade of geeks didn’t help Will Ospreay, didn’t help Mark Davis and worst of all, actively DETRACTED from the match. Person after person came out, brawled, fought, grappled and leapt off of things. Then, when all was said and done, not unlike an “and we’re back” card after a commercial break, the match resumed with more visual pinfalls, false finishes and finally a new ref before Ospreay eked out the win.

Then to top it off, the second it was all done, LIKE THE VERY SECOND, you immediately had TRUE AEW SICKOS, Tony Khan’s STRONGEST WRESTLESPLAINERS, insisting that YOU not listen to people like ME tell you that bullshit was OVERBOOKED NONSENSE. IT’S ABOUT FUN, AND THOSE OLD HEADS DON’T KNOW FUN.

Fuck.

Offffffffffffffff.

Excalibur closed out the show saying “this is All Elite Wrestling!” and I turned to my wife, AS IF I WERE POSSESSED BY A VOICE FROM ON HIGH, and I instantly deadpanned “It sure is.”

Sigh.

The thing that kills me? If they wanted to do the overbooked Monday Nitro ending? They could have finished the match, with NO stupid ref bump, and THEN done all of that extracurricular stuff. It would have been the same, would have got the same message across, except you wouldn’t have ruined the end of the Davis / Ospreay match, and then you wouldn’t have some old asshole like me BITCHING. If this was their idea to protect Davis, it was a LUDICROUS one.

It’s another causality of the tight, controlled rules for the Continental Classic, another blow to simple logic. In THAT tournament, no one can interfere, on pain of BEING FIRED, but in THIS tournament, eleven (or more) fucking people can roll out in the middle of the thing, brawl, hit the ref, interfere, all sorts.

Why is one tournament completely sacrosanct and the other tournament bent over with its knickers about its ankles?

This match was SO good prior to this nonsense. Mark Davis has quietly become the best big man in pro wrestling* and Ospreay really knows how to work with that kind of “big guys giving him a right thumping” type dynamic. I wouldn’t be upset about this kind of thing if I didn’t CARE, if the match hadn’t been so terrific, so SPECIAL prior to this codswallop. This was the best match on a night that had three truly excellent matches, and dammit, good matches MEAN SOMETHING TO ME. It was pointed out to me a couple of times that the crowd was into this, and fine, great. The crowd there, indeed, loved it. The crowd of two watching in my living room were, let’s say less than enthused by the spectacle.

I think the slightly less reactionary, more normal reaction from people who weren’t immediately falling into STAND UP FOR AEW TERRITORY was that the run ins helped them believe Ospreay might actually lose, and while I don’t particularly agree, I guess I can see that point, to an extent. From my side of the ledger, I think you should be able to buy Ospreay not winning simply from Davis’ incredible work, his offense that looks as snug, as real as 90s All Japan work did.

Anyway.

I have to get off of this subject or I am going to be insufferable for the rest of the day.

Well. More insufferable than usual, that is.

This really WAS a good Dynamite, despite my antipathy for the last five minutes of the show (and boy, what a difference five minutes can make). The show kicked off with a wild and at some points brutal match with RUSH and Maxwell Jacob Friedman. There were elements about it that I didn’t love (specifically Andrade Il Idolo having to be the heir apparent Latino to avenge the other Latino, but I have to accept that Andrade is higher on the pecking order in AEW than RUSH is, even if the crowd was REALLY SOLIDLY behind him) but overall you can’t say both guys didn’t leave it all in the ring. The announcers said RUSH dislocated his shoulder mid match, which I believe has happened to RUSH before. I’m not certain if that’s true or if they were simply playing off of that legitimate history, but regardless, it sort of gave RUSH an out to be the one who lost, especially after he pledged to DIE in the ring if need be. I think Max may have actually jacked up his knee a bit (Editor Convoy here; he was removed from an indy booking he had lined up out of precaution as I edit this)… and RUSH bled a TON in this very dramatic match. RUSH is the absolute master of playing to a crowd and getting them into a match. The rudo contra rudo dynamic here was a lot of fun; the heels fighting over which man would succumb to an exposed turnbuckle (answer, eventually both), intense brawling on the outside… this was a tremendous start to the show. My only other nitpick… post match, MJF went to attack RUSH with the title belt… and Mark Briscoe came to stop him (obviously Briscoe is the next guy up in the batting rotation, especially since he holds a victory over Max). That was fine… but RUSH apparently died on his way back to his home planet as he VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE. Dumb. Like RUSH would stand for someone trying to attack him post match? I’ll spare everyone my thoughts on Briscoe’s match with Lio Rush, but after that affair, Briscoe gave a very impassioned, long, SERIOUS promo about the death of Jay Briscoe, and his hatred of Max. Serious Mark is SO compelling and a hundred times better than the goofball who runs around backstage with wacky vocabulary malaprops every week. THIS is the Mark Briscoe I want to see. I don’t mind that the Conglomeration is a sort of landing spot for various good guys to align; I mind that it makes them ALL too silly. They can be fun loving, they can be kind, they can be FRIENDS… but I HATE that this group makes dudes like Briscoe and Roddy Strong and TOMOHIRO ISHII into unserious goofballs. Lecture over.

Mercedes Moné made her return as the Owen Hart Cup wildcard, to the surprise of few, but probably much to the chagrin of a certain man in Bothell, Washington who had apparently been saying it wouldn’t be her and also much to the chagrin of my meager typing skills, as I now have to go back to making friends with Windows’ Character Map to find that goddamned “é” évery timé shé appéars. She had refreshed music and a costume with no less than FIFTY CHAINS all over it. Wrestling dork question… how is that okay? Every single one of those chains could be a foreign object. Same thing whenever people incorporate studded belts into their gear. I’ve watched wrestling for forty years; I’ve seen every permutation of belt, chain and accessory used as a weapon. Like, why is that allowed?

You can’t really bring back Moné and not have her win the whole damned tournament, right? Dunno how I feel about that. We didn’t really get to see her fall from grace ALL that much, the crash out as she relinquished most of those indy belts she had been hoarding, so I think that’s kind of a missed opportunity / character beat. Tons of people are happy she’s back, and I’m happy that YouTube thumbnail merchants who were POSITIVE something was “weird” about her being gone, even though this is AEW and EVERYONE is gone for awhile (except Jon Moxley) are sucking it yet again, so win win.

The other truly excellent match on this episode of Dynamite was the bout between former friends Speedball Mike Bailey and the Jet Kevin Knight. Knight has freshly joined the Don Callis Family. “Don Perignon,” the Jet proclaimed. BEE TEE DUB, apparently last week, Knight walked by and locked eyes with one SWERVE STRICKLAND… but apparently this was only seen ONLINE. That’s another old man gripe I’ll bear… SHOW SHIT LIKE THAT ON TV, PLEASE. Is Kevin Knight long for the DCF? Speedball himself told us how impatient Knight is… so perhaps there’s a longer game being played, here.

At any rate, Speedball and Knight had a barnburner of a match. Regular readers of this space will know I’m not a particular fan of Speedball… he’s FINE, but I think his work is awfully same-y. Here, though, it worked, REALLY worked, a litany of kicks turning into anti air defense or just simply brutal strikes. Speedball was WRONGED and he needed to take it out on his friend. The crowd chanted that Knight “sold out” as I shouted back at my TV “NO, HE BOUGHT IN!” To cement the usefulness of having Callis (and the absolutely most demented variation of wearing a necktie that I have ever seen, even more unhinged than Speedy’s FORMAL GI from last week; a tie knotted about his neck NOT HOLDING TOGETHER A SHIRT COLLAR) onside, Don helped Knight win the match by capturing Speedball’s foot during a rope ascent. Smart booking, protects Speedball and establishes Knight as someone who is happy to take shortcuts to get what he wants. As I say, I’m not generally a big fan of Speedball but his work here was easily more than half the reason why this match was so good.

Despite all the good wrestling, I’m still a bit concerned that Kenny Omega is still MIA, when he needs to start climbing that championship ziggurat. We still don’t really have a firm grip on what Moxley and the Death Riders are doing with Ospreay (although I have a theory that Ospreay may just be going along with the flow of Mox’ obnoxious cult like indoctrination and pretending to absorb the bizarre rhetoric; we shall see). Swerve is still in limbo. I guess the Young Bucks are moving into a program with the Dogs but… shrug. That’s not a DIRECTION, it’s a pit stop. My guess is that Forbidden Door will have some sort of wild Death Riders / Don Callis Family battle, and who knows, maybe to “Forbidden Dorr” it up, maybe we’ll get the United Empire, as well. Oh, speaking of the pay per view, there was one other ABSOLUTELY TREMENDOUS SEGMENT I simply HAVE to mention, and the only thing that actually lent some build to the upcoming Forbidden Door… Queen of the GODDAMNED UNIVERSE Thekla came out, proclaimed “Death to STARDOM!” and SPAT on the STARDOM logo that was prominently displayed on the TonyTron. This after last week when she threatened to beat up STARDOM booker / president Taro Okada. GIVE THIS WOMAN EVERY TITLE THERE IS. Thekla’s personality is simply TOO BIG for the TV screen to contain, but in this really appealing “go get ’em” way, and not the over the top, silly way Toni Storm cultivated for herself. The only Forbidden Door match I truly have interest in at the moment is Thekla beating the piss out of some spindly Japanese salaryman.

So, yeah. This would have been an A+ Dyna for me if not for the wretched ending to the Ospreay match. I hope that isn’t something we get a lot of; but AEW has certain tendencies; when Tony Khan gets fixated on something, he tends to REPEAT it. A LOT. I hope THIS isn’t one of THOSE.

*Davis does this incredible move where he grabs an upside down opponent about the waist, hurks them up a good foot into the air, snatches them back out of mid air and turns that captive person into a spike as he sits out for a piledriver. I am reliably informed that the move is called “Close your eyes and count to fuck” and it is both TERRIFYING and GLORIOUS