La Zona Muerta

Finally, FINALLY, Shane Taylor Promotions has made their way from the backwaters of unwatched, unloved Sinclair-style Ring of Honor to the weird, somewhat adrift Tony Khan iteration of ROH to the safe, almost pleasant shores of AEW. A Tony Khan booking trope; when he gets into an act, suddenly they’re all over the dang product, and STP has proven no exception. MAYBE THEY SHOULD GET SOME WINS, YES? That’s how we know that they’re a THREAT.

The current version of STP features Taylor himself, a huge, thick man with a powerlifter build (in other words, pretty much all bottom and no bass, if you catch my drift), ROH Pure Champion Lee Moriarty (an LZM special little guy if there ever was one), the Afro Punk Trish Adora (do they still bill her as that? I might be dating myself slightly; I’ve been watching Adora for years), the Infantry (comprised of Captain Shawn Dean and the marvelous Carly Bravo, who over maybe the last year or so has become just the most punchable little shit talker) and sometimes Anthony Ogogo (yes, the “hated” British boxer that patriotic Cody Rhodes just HAD to defeat because ‘MURICA) as their heater. There’s another gal, too, but she’s not even a tenth as interesting as Adora and doesn’t actually wrestle much, so sorry, lady. They have been a steady, consistent presence in modern ROH, and you can actually count on them to win there, at least sometimes. Moriarty is sort of in a VERY slow burn break up angle with the rest of the group and has a forever feud with former Pure champion Nigel McGuinness. Taylor occupies a space between wrestler and manager, usually supporting his men with dirty tactics, and is a very good promo. When you wind these cats up and let them go, they are a killer troupe and I couldn’t be more excited that they seem to finally be a regular AEW TV act.

I don’t normally toot my own horn here (toot toot) but I thought this was one of my better likenesses. When I showed this to the missus, she paused. “Oh, is that Shane Taylor? I almost didn’t recognize him without his bulging thighs.” So much for my pride

At any rate, STP lost to the Death Riders last Saturday on Collision, but beat young Wheeler YUTA up into Yamcha-style fetal position death backstage, so that set up Taylor himself versus Jon Moxley for Dynamite. I live on the West Coast and don’t watch “real” sports, so I don’t really understand concepts like “OHIO VERSUS EVERYONE” or why Cincinnati hates Cleveland or whatever, but the announcers, even Taylor and Moxley themselves, made sure we knew this. I mean, I’d probably hate everyone, too if I were forced to pretend Skyline Chili was actually good*. Moxley and Taylor were forced to leave their various henchlackeys behind since this was a match for Mox’ Continental Championship, so we didn’t get to see Trish Adora in her super rad Grace Jones T-shirt. Man, I thought Grace Jones was the coolest woman alive when I was a wee Convoy, and I was probably right. Anyway, Mox and Taylor basically beat the crap out of each other, as you might expect. Was it a GOOD match? I dunno. It was a solid TV match, I think, with some cool stuff, not exactly a MOTY contender or anything. Mox had appeared on Cincinnati morning TV as a good champ does and told the suffering host about plunging fingers into the eyeballs of an opponent, and he indeed tried to do exactly that, here. A fine EYE for detail, eh? Eh? Taylor got to hit an almost uranage type throw on Moxley through the timekeeper’s table, which was a tough looking bump.

The match had a fairly typical Moxley-type ending where Mox eventually got the choke, but then STP came out and got the heat back by choking Mox with a belt and beating up some Death Riders. Eventually, we would learn that this would set up a match on Collision, a five on five Cincinnati street fight or whatever. I’m begging whomever is listening… If you want STP to remain a presence on TV, a threat to any roaming set of good guys… LET THEM WIN THAT ONE.

Astute readers may notice that while this week’s column started with Moxley and Taylor, Dynamite itself did not. AEW has been slowly setting up Chris Jericho’s next feud, Tomasso “hey, are you in the John Birch Society? Me, too” Ciampa.** That’s fine; I don’t have to pay a great deal of attention, but Ciampa and Jericho promoing on each other to begin the show was DEATH, just absolute torture. Jericho is back to doing his bad Kevin Nealon Subliminal Man impression, and the only person watching old enough to get that is ME. I DON’T WANT THIS. If my wife had come home like maybe five minutes sooner than she did, I would have ceded control of the TV to her so she could watch her precious Knicks instead of this old guy throw down. START DYNAMITE WITH A BANG. Get it? Like an EXPLOSION? DYNAMITE? Needless to say, this was not a great start to the show and therefore, gets relegated.

Mark Briscoe was shown in the back, talking to Tony Khan. My antennae were up immediately as TK is rarely actually shown on TV (and even after all these years, even though I like TK more than some people online seem to, I still don’t care for it). So that peculiarity hung in the air as Briscoe took on the bastard PAC in a match that could have had easily another five or ten minutes in duration. Maybe they could have made use of that Ciampa / Jericho promo time! The by now antsy because the Knicks were trailing Mrs Convoy kept asking “why did they show Briscoe talking to TK?” I guessed it; the TK feint was entrapment for one Maxwell Jacob Friedman. After Briscoe won (sigh), he called out MJF. MJF did his absolutely most tired, most rote promo yet… Cincinnati is bad, friends are bad, money is everything. The “Lethal Twist” (Jay Lethal and the Swirl, consisting of Blake Christian and Shotty Lee Johnson) snuck into the ring and laid out Briscoe. So where were Briscoe’s supposed “friends” in the Conglomeration? It took them FOREVER AND A DAY to come save Briscoe, and Orange Cassidy, who had a match coming up with the steroid bloated Andrade, didn’t even BOTHER to help at all. FRIENDS, perhaps proving MJF’s point? So here was the denouement; Briscoe indeed talked to TK and set up a match for Forbidden Door; Briscoe and five people versus MJF and five people, in a steel cage, and if Briscoe’s team wins, Mark gets a title shot.

This is all well and good but, *takes deep breath*, WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH FORBIDDEN DOOR? And no, Tomohiro Ishii being on loan here from the festering corpse of New Japan most certainly does not count. This feels like filler to mark time until the next pay per view, the one were PRESUMABLY, a certain Canadian is going to reclaim his crown.

Forbidden Door has felt like a moribund concept for YEARS, now. On nearly any given AEW show, you stand a good chance of seeing New Japan wrestlers, CMLL wrestlers, STARDOM wrestlers. That’s good! But the “door” hasn’t been “forbidden” to those places for probably five years or so. The specialness of the show itself has largely worn off and there’s always a lot of gnashing of teeth over the LACK of participation from New Japan, which leads to the show being seemingly thrown together fairly last minute. We’ve gone from Jon Moxley battling Hiroshi Tanahashi to a twelve man cage match where there may be a token person or two from NJPW or CMLL, and those token people will likely be contracted to AEW, anyway. The only person who has any Forbidden Door energy this season, the only one CARRYING THE ENTIRE CONCEPT ON HER BACK, is Thekla.

Oh, and can we please talk about Thekla for a second?

Ever since she has come to AEW from STARDOM, her storyline, her CHARACTER is that she was fired “from Japan” for being too wild, too violent. Therefore, she hates STARDOM, her former employers. She did a brilliant promo about this last week, saying she hated the tiny little idol women she used to do battle with. She then went so far as to SPIT on a STARDOM logo to drive the point home. “If any of them show up here, it’s DEATH to STARDOM,” she snarled. If any of them show up here, during the season where Japanese wrestlers are coming in for a tournament and a special pay per view.

Thekla is terrific. She’s pretty much the most straight forward character in wrestling. Nearly unfiltered. Everyone, to her, is a “dumb bitch” who needs subjugating. HER CHARACTER IS VERY SIMPLE AND INCREDIBLY EASY TO UNDERSTAND. She hates Japanese women wrestlers because she was forced out of the top Japanese women’s wrestling promotion. There, done. NOW YOU UNDERSTAND HER, AS WELL.

And yet, my old pal, let’s call him “Barry Alvaroz,” who painstakingly broke this angle down for his readership, claimed he “didn’t get it.” Didn’t get what was the most simple, most lampshaded reasoning and angle. At least this week, it was explained AGAIN, in the form of a VIDEO PACKAGE. Good, I hear he LIKES those.

It’s OKAY when wrestling is nice and simple. Bless Thekla and her straightforward, no ambiguity, no pained “should I use this foreign object” dramatic faces. An asskicker who lives to kick ass.

So, just as I rant about Thekla being the ONLY PERSON to have any Forbidden Door energy this year, we did get a sent in promo from one Zack Sabre Junior calling out one Kenny Omega.

On the one hand, that’s AWESOME. ZSJ and Omega haven’t had a singles match for something like ten or eleven years. Both guys are completely different wrestlers now, and this will be worth buying the show for on it’s own.

On the other hand, what the actual fuck? ZSJ gets to call his shot, Kenny, according to the announcers, has already accepted prior to this and we hear NOTHING about it. Kenny is a cipherous presence on AEW TV, a visible ABSENCE occasionally mentioned and all but swept under the table. Apparently he will take on one of ZSJ’s cronies on Collision, so the tale of ZSJ and Kenny will start… BUT IT’S ALL BACKWARD. THE CHALLENGE WAS MADE AND ACCEPTED BEFORE THE CHALLENGE WAS MADE. Do that match first and then air the promo!

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH KENNY? WHY ISN’T HE ON EVERY WEEK, EVEN IF IT’S JUST A PRETAPE? Again, PRESUMABLY, he needs to be being built up to fight MJF, but MJF is in a feud with Mark Briscoe and sort of feuding with Andrade and sort of feuding with Kevin Knight. That’s all well and good, but KENNY IS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. I genuinely don’t understand, especially if he’s meant to be the next PPV challenger, and it’s starting to irritate me.

I guess the other notable thing on this show was Swerve Strickland punching his ticket into the finals of the Owen Hart Cup, defeating Brody King. I think for me, what was notable about THAT particular match was how I wasn’t really into it until the end… I think those guys have a better match in them, for sure. Something has felt off since Swerve’s return with Bandido; even though I liked that match. I don’t know if it’s lingering injury, the mass Swerve packed on, motivation or what but I just was kinda underwhelmed with Swerve, here. The closing sequence was hot, I’ll give them that and Swerve SOMEHOW got King up for a Cop Killa / Vertebreaker. THAT was gnarly. Obviously Will Ospreay and Swerve will have a terrific match, but Swerve feels like an afterthought right now, at least by my reckoning.

This was a pretty solid Dynamite. Kevin Knight is improving on the mic, and got bushwhacked by a returning Darby Allin. There’s tension in the Don Callis Family, with Andrade starting to get antsy about the attention Don gives him. Maya World, who has had a tough week with a death in her family, got to take Sareee’s place in the Owen Cup, and got to advance, which is nice (and boy, were there some weirdos pissed about this; a person who is under contract replacing a outside talent who wasn’t medically cleared). That being said, I don’t really love the Forbidden Door build. To be fair, that’s probably an evergreen statement. I probably have said that I don’t love the FD build EVERY year… but at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be grabbing me. CHANGE MY MIND, TK.

*oh, I KID

**don’t give me that look. I bet Ciampa and Jericho have a LOT in common in the realm of politics