La Zona Muerta

Forbidden Door season remains an awful time for wrestling discourse; everyone up in arms over who is working, who is not, who is xenophobic (!), who has a visa, who has a potential deal on the table and most importantly, who is actually gonna BE on the Forbidden Door show itself.

Meanwhile, AEW seems anxious to ignore the discourse entirely, fielding a main event with ZERO FORBIDDEN DOOR CONTENT WHATSOEVER. I had guessed here last week that there would be some token CMLL and NJPW representatives in that giant six on six Survivor Series cage match, captained by Mark Briscoe and Maxwell Jacob Friedman.

Nope.

Sorry about that.

As I write this, there are exactly TWO actual “Forbidden Door” matches. Now, to be fair, they will likely add some more throughout the week to come, up and down the card, and the two actual confirmed matches we do have are biggies… but that’s all we have, ten days out.

Thekla takes on STARDOM’s best, Starlight Kid.

Kenny Omega takes on the best technical wrestler in the world, Zack Sabre Junior.

And that, friends, is IT.

I’ve said this six dozen times and I’d imagine I’ll say it another six dozen before it finally happens: It’s high time they end the Forbidden Door concept. People just get disappointed that AEW doesn’t deliver and you can see NJPW, CMLL and STARDOM wrestlers at any pretty much any time on AEW programming, anyway.

The Forbidden Door is now the Frowned Upon Cat Flap, and it only serves to fuel bad takes, tired fans and diminishing returns.

I could stop right there, but that would indicate I didn’t like Dynamite, and that’s not the case; it was a strong episode. I just don’t really care for Forbidden Door all that much, at least Forbidden Door as it stands. If it were called something else, it would be FINE. AEW WrestleTime or whatever. I don’t really care what they call the shows… but Forbidden Door has this concept attached, this connotation. Imagine the surely on it’s last legs this time for real Total Nonstop Action fielding an iteration of their all cage match “Lockdown” pay per view, but that TNA only bothered to put two of the eight matches in a cage!

Actually, that sounds like something TNA has probably done. Swerve ’em!

Who knows. Maybe visas (or a lack thereof) messed up all the plans (tho’ isn’t there a G1 show here in Chicago in a month or so?). Injuries (what, again?). Maybe New Japan didn’t have any money in the coffers to pay the talent (wouldn’t be the first time. Anyone ever get Tanga Loa to clarify his comments after the MSG disaster?). Maybe pretending that outsiders aren’t in AEW pretty much constantly is silly. I dunno.

I recall World Championship Wrestling running their biggest show of the year, StarrCade (never mind that the actual biggest show was generally SuperBrawl; StarrCade was the real granddaddy of them all) in 1995 and infusing it with some last minute, mild Japanophobia, having heel announcer Bobby Heenan sell part of WCW (!) to real life Japanese heel Sonny Onoo, thereby setting up some WCW versus NJPW matches. Meanwhile, the Great Muta and Jushin Thunder Liger basically cut their teeth in WCW on their excursions, Liger himself still making sporadic appearances for the company as recently as the first episode of Monday Nitro and then an episode of Main Event a few weeks later for Eddy Guerrero’s first match as an official part of the roster, Kensuke Sasaki was the actual United States champion at the time of this PPV and the very first WCW Cruiserweight champion in about two months’ time would soon be Shinjiro Otani. A few months after this, Yuji Nagata would go on excursion in WCW, replacing Manabu Nakanishi (uh, don’t ask me about Nakanishi’s awful, racist WCW gimmick, plase). You could catch Masahiro Chono in WCW from time to time. I recall Tatsumi Fujinami and Young Lion Takayuki Iizuka (!) getting the absolute SHIT kicked out of them on PPV by the highly volatile Steiner Brothers. ANTONIO BY GOD INOKI FOUGHT STEVEN REGAL ON A CLASH OF THE CHAMPIONS TV SPECIAL IN 1994. My point being, WCW had to “set up” a contrived reason for New Japan involvement, but you could see NJPW wrestlers there fairly often.

You don’t need a dope-y, contrived reason for these violent men to do battle. These people are supposed to be prize fighters, yeah? THAT is the reason. JUST HAVE THE BEST WRESTLERS IN THE WORLD WRESTLE.

Sounds vaguely familiar, huh?

Anyway.

May as well talk about the twelve man while we’re here; the show started with MJF selecting his men from the Callis Family tree; Kevin Knight, Jake Doyle, Kyle Fletcher, Kazuchika Okada and Andrade il Idolo. He did so in a VERY MJF fashion; burying the men as he selected them. Don, all the while, screaming at Andrade in particular to think of “el dinero.” I get money is usually the motivating factor in wrestling, I WANT it to be but there were three guys in that line up, maybe four depending on how surly Okada is, who actively dislike MJF, and he was telling at least two of them to their faces that they sucked. I realize if, Kevin Knight, let’s say, were to snap, it would trigger something that would become something else… we probably aren’t QUITE ready for Don Callis Family Civil War, not yet… but I’m sitting there screaming at the TV “why don’t they beat the shit out of MJF?”

Later, HOT ISHII SUMMER was put to a stop as PROTOKADA stood over the prone body of one Tomohiro Ishii in the ever dangerous venue hallway, preventing him from being on Mark Briscoe’s team. I cackled as Ishii didn’t really sell his off camera beatdown much until Okada started saying unpleasant things to him in Japanese, which finally got a rise out of the man. Then, for the main event. Mark Briscoe took the wheel and announced his team; the rest of the Conglomeration, Konosuke Takeshita and Darby Allin. No surprises, no outside involvement. It’s FINE, but it’s just fine. Briscoe pointed out that if anyone was disqualified, they would NOT be going on to Forbidden Door, so I saw some hope for shenanigans… but there was nothing. They had a perfectly fine twelve man tag with no nonsense. And then they’ll run it back in a steel cage in a week and a half.

Yay?

I joked during during the match when everyone was brawling on the floor, that all twelve of them would be disqualified and then AEW would be forced to field a REAL main event, but such was not to be. The show ended with the bad guys squabbling amongst each other but ultimately triumphant.

I can’t say it was a damp squib when you had guys like Okada and Roddy Strong and Takeshita and Fletcher and Knight in there… but there was really nothing here to make you go “I can’t wait to see this exact same match but in a cage this time in a week.”

It’s all just a shrug. The build is logical, but not compelling. Make sense? If anything, the fallout of the cage match is more interesting than the match itself.

Meanwhile, Will Ospreay and Swerve Strickland had a face to face, and, well… there’s a couple of things to say about it.

Before I get into it, here’s a quick story about me and locker room talk. I’ve never been comfortable with it, never one to brag to my male friends about that sort of thing. I wouldn’t say I NEVER discussed sex and sexual encounters with my closest friends, but I can definitely say it was a rare thing. It made me / makes me a tiny bit uncomfortable. Your mileage may vary.

I used to be friends with the guy who ran what would come to be my local comic book shop. He eventually pulled up stakes and moved to China, of all places in the mid 2010s. Hard to blame him, really. But before then, the missus and I befriended him to some extent, even had him over a time or two. He (almost) always made sure to go out of his way for my missus, presumably because females in his store were probably as rare as hen’s teeth.

The reason he would go out of his way for my missus is because… well, therein lies the story. One day, while I was there browsing, he was loudly bragging about his sexual prowess to two sycophants playing Magic the Gathering in a scene so stereotypical that it was right out of Big Bang Theory central casting. It was a rare time I was at the comic store by myself; my then girlfriend wasn’t there with me, so I guess IT WAS LAD TIME, as he bragged about having sex with a hooker, and, of course, the sex was SO GOOD, SO SKILLED was he at sex that he didn’t end up having to pay.

Uh huh. And that stripper you met at that bachelor party REALLY likes you for YOU.

Anyway, the story continued on (and on) while I thumbed through, I dunno, back issues of ROM or whatever, getting more and more yucked out. Finally, he had to rope me in, since I wasn’t listening to him hold court, or at least I wasn’t actively participating. He moved on to talking about oral sex techniques as I wondered what level of hell I was currently occupying, and pointed to me. “This guy knows what I’m talking about!” He went on to describe something about performing oral sex that he liked doing and that I must enjoy too (I’ll spare you the actual details), and I finally said “yes, I like (that thing) too, but I don’t fucking TALK about it in front of strangers.” I was blushing, legitimately blushing, and then the blush changed to probably something more akin to a flush of embarrassment or even anger. Later, when I was checking out, he kind of gave me a half assed apology, and I said “Would you have been telling that story if (Mrs. Convoy’s shoot name) was here?” and he blanched a bit. From then on, he was extra solicitous of her feelings, and I appreciated that.

The funny thing is, she probably wouldn’t have been offended in the least; the soon to be Mrs. Convoy probably would have laughed, derided his supposed sexual prowess and went back to finding issues of Marvel Team Up. I was offended, and I was offended on her BEHALF, but ultimately, I didn’t NEED to be.

Last night, Will Ospreay chose to say something a bit laddish, a bit gross about he and his new wife and what they got up to in lieu of a honeymoon. It was not to my taste. He’s also gone there before, but… yeah. Probably not something that I would share on national TV. Keep it in your pants and keep it to yourself.

But I draw the line at being offended FOR Alex Windsor. There’s a lot of righteous indignation out there on the woman’s behalf and I think at least SOME of that energy is misplaced.

Ospreay is an empty headed chav. He’s a bit laddish, a bit blokeish and he’s REALLY STOKED, BRUV that he just got married and then he overshared a bit. Like I say, it wasn’t to my taste, it was a bit gross. But I’m not going to sit here and tell you he’s a MISOGYNIST because of it. Those of you upset about what Will said are perfectly entitled to be; your thresholds for good taste might be similar to mine or even held to a higher standard. But everyone talking about how they are upset for Alex… I don’t think that’s fair or frankly, even appropriate. Every week on Bluesky, AEW fans say outrageous, horny things about their favorite wrestlers and what they want their favorite wrestlers to do to them or each other, and frankly, in the circles I run, a lot of it is no better or even worse than what Ospreay said. Hey, it’s not MY problem that a lot of you can’t seem to separate sexy time and wrestle time, but I have to see that stuff every week. Ospreay OVERSHARED. He’s not EVIL because of it. That doesn’t make him some sort of MONSTER and Windsor is NOT a damsel that needs RESCUING. If she was upset, she is a grown woman and I expect she has the ability and indeed the agency to FIGHT HER OWN BATTLES.

End of sermon.*

So yeah, anyway, Ospreay and Swerve were out there, explaining why they each had to win and beat the other in the Owen Hart Cup final, but for some reason, Ospreay did like 75% of the talking.

That’s a bold choice. While I think Ospreay has come a long, LONG way on the mic, he’s no Swerve Strickland, that’s for damn sure. Ospreay basically did that AEW thing that they do, and laid out his friendship with Swerve and his quest to beat Jon Moxley last year beat for beat, with Swerve and Hangman Adam Page’s help. Page was ultimately the man to get the job done, but Ospreay apparently was mad Swerve didn’t help Ospreay when he needed help and had his neck broken, which, yeah, fair enough. Swerve pointed out that Ospreay had changed since he started running with the Death Riders, and to cut to the chase, started to threaten Ospreay with a chain… but the Death Riders appeared to back up Ospreay.

Friends, I have never wanted ANYTHING so badly as I wanted Swerve to simply SHRUG at the numbers game and then unveil a new EMBASSY of his own, full of killers. You have a gang of dorks? Well, get a load of MINE. Sadly, that was not to be; Swerve decided discretion was the better part of valor and split. Hey, I know fantasy booking is gross but maybe that’s how we GET to a new Embassy.

It’s another situation where obviously the match will be at the bare minimum, GREAT but the route we took to get here… I dunno. Logical, certainly but not particularly exciting. I’m making this sound worse than it was… it was perhaps a bit meandering but we got there in the end.

Much like this column for this week. *bdm tss*

*PS; Christian said gross shit, too but some of you LOOOOOOVE him so I guess he gets a pass?