Tuesday, July 31, 2018

The Card Building of All In

Feníx is in one of the most exciting matches to be announced for All In
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
When Kazuchika Okada vs. Marty Scurll was announced as the Rainmaker's match for All In, many, myself included, scratched their heads. You have one of the most mythical figures in wrestling today working your mostly wrestler-driven (although not totally wrestler-funded, thanks ROH) show with a whole bunch of dudes working it that are out of the normal purview of Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling, and you stick him with a guy who might be wrestling him a year if he doesn't sign with WWE? Couple that with the Cody Rhodes vs. Nick Aldis match for the National Wrestling Alliance World Championship, and All In seems to have an underwhelming top two matches. Now, the argument is this show is not necessarily for me, the cynical, hardened-with-age wrestling fan who doesn't find excitement in same-seeming matches or guys who haven't been hot in years holding the Ten Pounds of Gold. It's for the Being the Elite crowd, which outnumbers guys like me ten-to-one, if I had to estimate.

Sometimes though, the best matches aren't exactly the main events. For example, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant sold WrestleMania 3 to the throbbing masses, but the 1987 counterparts to fans like me had Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage. Sometimes, you go into a show looking for a match to steal it for you. The latest two matches announced have stoked some of those fires. The first one set Hangman Page, who is just coming into his own as a feature member of Bullet Club/The Golden Elite and who has been an interesting prospect in ROH for at least five years, against perhaps the hottest name in American indie wrestling who wasn't a member of the Quebecers in the '90s, Joey Janela. On paper, it's just a filler match, almost a token match against one of the lesser core guys selling the show for the freakshow dude who got over by wrestling and promoting fringe New Generation/Attitude Era guys while putting on the craziest show Mania weekend. But really, it's the kind of match that could upstage everyone else. Page is hungry and ambitious, the kind of guy who would use the kind of buzz from this kind of match and demand higher-profile matches. Janela has several screws loose and knows the kind of magnitude this event has could raise his profile.

Another notable event where the much-hyped main event matches brought the crowds in but an undercard bout stole the show was Extreme Championship Wrestling's first pay-per-view event, Barely Legal. The main matches going in did have considerable buzz. Taz vs. Sabu and the ECW World Championship effective mini-tournament that Terry Funk ultimately won had a lot of intrigue going into them, and yet the match most people talk about over 20 years later is the Michinoku Pro tag match that pitted Great Sasuke, Gran Hamada, and Masato Yakushiji against TAKA Michinoku, Men's Teioh, and Dick Togo. It was an insane six-man tag featuring some of the most innovative wrestlers in the world at that point in time. Yesterday, a match with a similar vibe was confirmed on Being the Elite. Rey Mysterio, Jr., Rey Feníx, and Bandido will team up to battle the Golden Elite's kings of crazy, the Young Bucks and Kota Ibushi.

Of course, part of the reason why that Michinoku Pro match was so special was because it featured six mostly unknown quantities to the ECW crowd. This match is stocked with experience. Everyone knows Mysterio, and the All In Crowd obviously knows Ibushi, the Brothers Jackson, and possibly Feníx, with Bandido being the only real wild card. That being said, it still provides the car-crash excitement level, the kind of thrill-a-second affair that appeals to everyone except the stodgiest old-timers who think any move that is fancier than a moonsault is a gymnastics routine no matter how it ends. However, those guys aren't paying attention to this show. Current fans by and large enjoy a good spotfest, especially when the caliber of worker in the match is at this level.

So what do those first two undercard matches say about All In, or about the people putting it together? Obviously, they are putting it together for the greater fanbase cultivated by their work in New Japan and on Being the Elite. One really wouldn't expect them to do otherwise, but at the same time, they are showing a little creativity in the matches, to give the show a little more critical heft. Putting Janela against Page isn't exactly a safe choice, mainly because you could easily have hidden Page in a multiwrestler match, or put Janela against another one of his crew coming in, someone he's already wrestled a bunch of times. The six-man match isn't a safe booking, mainly because the temptation to have Ibushi wrestle Kenny Omega again, or to redo the Golden Lovers vs. the Young Bucks with less story and more flips would've also been something to pop the crowd at large. These matches particularly seem like they were booked outside of the normal box, a place to gather even more fans who are disillusioned with WWE but also not really fans of the Elite arm of New Japan.

The real news is going to be when Omega's opponent drops. Many people think that it'll be Penta El Zero M, which feels like a no-brainer given how Okada, Rhodes, Feníx, and Ibushi are distributed around the card. Omega and Penta are the two last dominoes to fall, and much like Okada would have been a perfect opponent for the current Lucha Underground Champion because of his scarcity against non-NJPW opponents, Omega presents a similar opportunity. Outside of a blockbuster like getting CM Punk to come out of retirement to work him, Omega/Penta feels like it's another match that scratches both the base fan and critically open-minded approach itches. Still, they could have surprises up their sleeves.

Either way though, it's interesting to see how the All In card has shaken out, both with matches that everyone came to expect and others that were fired from parts unknown. The thing is, they didn't have to get wild at all with the show selling out based on no announced matches whatsoever. The fact that they went through with having some interesting matches on the show should give them credit for not just playing towards easy money. Of coruse, being bold does pay dividends in the bank account, but if you have a high-drawing event that no one remembers as being good, then what's the point?