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| It's not so nice when it's done to you now, is it? Screenshot from AEW YouTube |
Don't Turn Your Back on the Wolfpack - Jon Moxley is not in The Elite, and neither is Darby Allin. Even though there was MASS CHAOS last week between the Inner Circle and The Elite, it felt like Mox and Allin were the two focal points. As it turns out, the audience was supposed to focus on the brawl before the main event, as on Saturday, AEW announced the Inner Circle would be taking on The Elite in
No matter what, the true animus in the match probably won't be between the Circle and the Elite, even though the founders and vice presidents will have big receipts to give to Chris Jericho and his goons. The growing tension between Hangman Page and Matt Jackson probably will boil over inside the SOLID STEEL CAGE. Last week, Page made the save for Jackson and flipped him off afterwards. Their relationship had been deteriorating for awhile, one of the best stories going in the company. That animus may have been created when Matt and Nick both lorded their influence getting Page his spot over him. True or not, I'm not sure it's something you bring up without expecting resentment. Page's hurt feelings spilled over when it came time to choose his partner for his main event tag match last night. It's strange that he rejected Matt outright and gave feelers to Nick, but again, it was Matt he spit at during their match at Revolution. Matt has always been the testier Buck, even going back to their feud with the Golden Lovers in New Japan.
The end-of-show brawl showed that Matt could be the bigger man. In a slight repeat of last week's brawl, where everyone came out in staggered intervals to get wiped out by the Inner Circle until Page turned the tide, several wrestlers who weren't supposed to be there because they accompanied Nick to the hospital after the IC dropped a garage door on him filed out from the back to get mowed down. This time, the Circle was about to Shield Bomb Page off the stage like they did Mox last week, Matt came out to save the day, all while returning the middle-fingered favor to Page from last week. You might think that one good turn deserves another and that they're cool now. They cared enough about each other to make the save for each other. I don't think the other shoe has dropped yet. I don't think the Civil War will affect the entire group. Omega, Cody, and Dustin Rhodes don't seem to be caught up in the fighting. Omega is trying to please two masters right now, sure, but he's for peace. There seems like there will be casualties here, and the first strike will be inside the cage.
As for the matches, the opener between Cody and Ortiz was, in a word, hilarious, but not like a good Kikutaro or Orange Cassidy match. Selling a body part is not a mandatory part of a good wrestling match, but when you commit to the bit and then abandon it when you make your comeback. Cody's come a long way in the ring since his dire initial run on the indies, but a misplaced worship of his father's work with Will Ospreay's understanding of how long-term selling works feels like a bad combination. Ortiz's outsized personality saved the match. Also, Jake Roberts' client was revealed as Lance Archer during this match, and I thought though muted in actual introduction, the groundwork was laid well. Archer is in his 40s, so getting as much out of him as you can right off the bat is a good move, and putting him with Roberts combines the former's raw sadistic strength with the latter's devious cunning.
The main event was much better, which is what happens when you have four guys in the ring who are, y'know, good. A lot of people have Page pegged as AEW's Roman Reigns with Mox as the Steve Austin, but the more I think about it, Page is more Austin than anything, while Mox is just, well, Mox, or the promise of Dean Ambrose's potential when he came out of Florida Championship Wrestling. Page is cantankerous, loves to drink beer, and is in better position to smash authority than Mox, who's just fighting the top heel. Page going rogue against The Elite would be more analogous to fighting the people in charge anyway. I'm not sure that's the route they go, but it's certainly tantalizing.
Starting to Think Kenny Doesn't Know What He's Doing - The women's division has been an Achilles heel for AEW since its beginning, and there's only so much of it you can blame on Kylie Rae's departure from the company. Case in point, the tag match pitting Kris Statlander and Hikaru Shida against Nyla Rose and Bea Priestley. Shida is the number one contender, and to wit, she has a boss Tron where she looks like someone out of a Daft Punk video and carries a sword to the ring. I don't really know anything about her character though. What does she do other than wrestle? Where's the hook? She doesn't even get to talk or at least have a second to talk for her. And even worse, she ate the pin in the match, which at worst is antithetical to why you have contenders facing off against their champions in a tag match and at best showing you don't know what the fuck your ranking system is for. Ideally, Priestley, who's rarely ever around and really doesn't have a whole lot of juice in the company, would've taken the pin. Statlander would've been good too if you really wanted to put Rose over since her star was dimmed after Revolution.
Having Rose pin Shida clean in a non-title match though throws into question what kind of vision Omega has for the division. From putting the title on Riho when she wasn't going to be around and didn't even have the cache of other part-time titleholders in other companies, his decision-making has been questionable overall at best. Why do the men have good stories to lean on and women are just sideshows that feel tacked on for equity points? If you can't at least try to outdo what WWE does with its women's division, you're defeating your own purpose for existence. Of course, after the match, Priestley, who I imagine has protection because she's a big deal in STARDOM, laid out Rose. It all feels so "I have to be the coolest and smartest person in the room" the way Ospreay is booked at all times, and it doesn't feel natural. But then again...
The Dark Order Sucks - AEW was going to reveal the Exalted One next week before the show was postponed, and if I wasn't so sure that they threw a bunch of money at Matt Hardy, the Christopher Daniels would be a prime candidate for the swerve under a "methinks he doth protest too much" corollary. So what if he beat up a bunch of goons at Revolution? The Exalted One doesn't seem like a person who wouldn't lay hands on his subordinates to keep them in line. That being said, I guess the audience will have to wait until COVID-19 blows over to find out the identity. Daniels feels like he'd be Vince McMahon-as-the-Higher Power levels of disappointing anyway, and I doubt Hardy's no-compete is up so soon. I wonder if Brodie Lee is the leader of the Dark Order...
MJF the Coward - MJF is one of the best heels going today, but not for the reasons people think he is. His promos, while delivered well, all kinda suck given that he can't stop mining cheap heat or replying to people line-by-line like he's an e-fedder. The evidence why he's so effective can be found in his matches. Take for example the trios match with him and Butcher and the Blade going up against the Jurassic Express. Things like his facial expressions, how he corners guys like Jungle Boy and Marko Stunt, and the way he begs off Luchasaurus show that he's probably more ahead in-ring on how to get heat than he is where people praise him. The match overall was solid but none of the hot tags were all that hot. Honestly, only Hangman Page and Joey Janela have had good fire behind their tag-in comebacks, and for a company that is behind pushing the tag team division, they should probably fix that. They've already had the Rock n Roll Express on the show. Let them run a seminar.
MY HUSBAND DRIVES A DODGE STRATUS - Honestly, I didn't expect Big Swole to make Cedric Alexander an accidental Wife Guy, but AEW is always full of surprises. The Britt Baker, Sarcastic Dentist experiment drew out Swole after Baker ran down everything but Rudy Gobert becoming the NBA's coronavirus Patient Zero. I'm sure if that news broke before her segment, she would have. However many heels use cheap heat on the roster is too much. Maybe I'm just jaded because MJF absolutely doesn't have to when he does. I don't know. Still, Baker's rapport with Tony Schiavone is becoming one of the best parts of the show, probably because he's so hapless in their encounters yet he doesn't stoop to the level of simping for her. Either way, I am skeptical that the payoff match between the two will be good because nothing Baker has touched in the ring has been good yet, and I'm also not entirely sure making the feud a proxy Adam Cole vs. Cedric Alexander one in another company is a good idea either. That being said, watching Swole tee off on Baker on the mic was a spectacle, and I do love me a good spectacle.
Death Triangle Stranding - The trios match between the Death Triangle and the makeshift team of Janela and Private Party was, as one might expect, a good time. It had everything: Rey Feníx doing Rey Feníx things, Janela going nuts on hot tags, the visually impressive double team moves of Private Party, PAC being a miserable bastard, Pentagón being himself. The match highlights AEW's roster building problem. They signed Janela off the fame of him being a gonzo entrepreneurial type, and his reward was a milquetoast feud with Shawn Spears and a short spat with his ex-girlfriend's companion. Private Party beat the Young Bucks and went nowhere, which honestly calls into question what a win over the Bucks really means. It's true AEW only has two hours a week to get shit moving, and I'm not sure putting Death Triangle against the Librarians and Brandon Cutler would have the same effect. That being said, you go to great lengths to have these guys on your roster, right? Why not have a deeper midcard jobber-to-the-stars bench? You gotta have that to move forward so you don't waste the star power of your talented roster. Maybe the brass only sees those three wrestlers in that role, which would then call into question their talent evaluation acumen.
