From the Now Arena in Chicago Illinois, AEW is doing a triple hitter out there. I will admit that this show ended up being a damper for me just because I was distracted by what was going on from TNA’s Daffney, who went on Instagram Live and was essentially threatening suicide. It was quite disturbing and I think she even had a gun, but so far no one has heard anything back, which makes me even more concerned given the 10+ hour period since she turned off the camera (or perhaps Instagram turned it off). If Instagram had been the one turning it off, I really hope they also took responsibility for tracking her down via an IP and relaying her messages to her local police to get her help because that situation was severe.
FTR Vs. Santana & Ortiz
Advertised as a “grudge return match,” this was much better than their previous encounter as Cash Wheeler was in better condition with his arm. Pretty high paced match with more heat going in especially when they stopped it from being an exhibition technical match and went into high gear. Oddly, Santana and Ortiz got the pin, even though Cash mentioned on Twitter that he was wondering if things were still worth it. Hopefully, this is not the end for FTR as they pretty much are the measuring stick for tag teams in AEW.
2.0/Daniel Garcia Backstage Segment
Basically, they told everyone that they were going to interrupt CM Punk and make people’s lives miserable. I will say that at least with these three, they’re getting fairly consistent air time, which is much better than most people on their roster. 2.0 is slightly goofy with Matt Lee being pretty exaggerated but at least his words are serious.
CM Punk Interview
The first run in of the night. At least in this case, the people involved were pretty direct about it. Sting/Darby made the save not surprisingly. Some of the comments I’ve seen about this segment with regards to 2.0 in particular is that they were fired from the WWE and being on NXT to getting to rub shoulders with CM Punk, Sting, Moxley, etc. And even if they are losing, they at least get featured into these people’s pictures.
The faces toss 2.0 and Garcia out while Sting comments that he’s intending to stay out of the match during All Out. But he does note that he never had the chance to cross paths with Sting so that in itself was a pretty big moment. I can see down the line, the three having a match against 2.0/Garcia since Punk has mentioned he “wanted to help out the young guys.” And AEW seems very high on 2.0 and Garcia.
The other comment here was getting a preview of Punk actually doing something physical in the ring, most notably his Go To Sleep (GTS) which Sting put over, as a warm up before the PPV. Normally, I hate segments in AEW like this but I can see the purpose so I wasn’t completely against it. But I am against the fact that AEW has no other way to do things beyond constant run-ins and interruptions every match or segment. That is something they need to correct fast.
MJF Interview
Tony did a small sit down with MJF. While MJF’s strong point might be his speaking ability, it drives me nuts that this guy doesn’t wrestle. The promo he gave here was good but he almost never wrestles anymore. Why? Shouldn’t a young guy like this be given more opportunities to shine in the ring to prove everything he says? So why should people buy him beyond the fact that he can talk?
Orange Cassidy Vs. Jack Evans
This was such a nothing match that Cassidy got the pin during the picture-in-picture break. I don’t think Jack Evans even got any entrance. The second half of this segment was just more run-ins. Not just one by Matt Hardy (who got kicked out), but Chuck Taylor/Wheeler Yuta, followed up by Hardy’s group and further followed up by Jurassic Express. Four fucking run-ins for this jobber. Since Jurassic Express got disarmed in general, they now are in a midcard feud with Hardy since at least he’d be willing to put someone else over compared to the Bucks. The only reason this nonsense happened is because Pac vs Andrade aren’t happening, so they needed to “justify” having a replacement match at All Out. Outside of Jungle Boy and Matt Hardy, no one really cares about the rest of these cretins. And I dare say as time passes by in AEW, the same can be said of Jungle Boy and Matt Hardy.
Eddie Kingston/Miro Promo Package
Honestly, AEW does better promo packages than live style interviews. Right now, I don’t think Eddie is going to win and that Lana makes her debut at All Out in costing Eddie the match. Lana even had on her Instagram that her 90 days is over as well as training with Miro. So at this stage, it’s just a matter of timing and where, in which All Out I think is where it happens.
Chris Jericho Interview
Jim Ross starts it off and he’s a bit choked up. This is his first AEW in ring interview so I’m guessing that part of the emotion is possibly the fans giving him a solid welcoming beforehand. Jericho gives a good promo here in saying he wants more. Personally, I think he should stay out of the limelight for a while, do the announcer booth thing and get back into ring shape before embarrassing himself some more if intends to have more matches. Maybe we won’t be tortured by that horrible song he has.
Cage Vs. Hobbs
I really don’t care for Brian Cage especially as a face. He’s just got no personality and he tries to wrestle like a luchadore for a big man. Hobbs though is super impressive. He did a freight train-like collision that made me pop big time. The right man went over here even though there was some outside interference. But at least nothing else happened afterwards besides some good old fashion humiliation of Brian Cage. Not sure what they’ll do for him but Hobbs has a bright career.
Malakai Black Segment
Good little promo for him. I guess he’s taking on Malakai Black on Rampage. Black effectively hinted at a longer style match against Lee Johnson (i.e. “I’m going to torture you”), which I presume means that he’s going to allow Lee Johnson to get more offense in and let the kid shine a bit. We all know Lee is going down but the office is high on the kid so he’ll have a moment. I haven’t seen any match advertised for Malakai Black yet for All Out, which is truly bizarre. I wouldn’t be surprised if Black rather than giving Lee Johnson a “long” match that he just does a prolonged beatdown to bring out Dustin Rhodes to set up one more match for All Out. If Cody comes out for All Out as the challenger, then it’s way too soon. A return match like that shouldn’t happen for at least 6 months to a year to continue building up Malakai Black because I assume that eventually Cody will get his win back. And if he does, then you need to space out the time between the initial match to make Black’s impact in AEW more memorable.
Paul Wight/QT Marshall Segment
QT calls out Paul Wight, Paul Wight clomps down to the ring, gets attack, shoves everyone off, misses a fucking chokeslam after Aaron Solow was waiting forever on the turnbuckles and the announcers are forced to say Solow got dusted off. Then the Gunn Club come out to backstab Wight inexplicably. It’s pretty obvious this is an insider gag on Wight where he’s the one that does all the turning. And it kinda makes sense for the Gunn Club to be the ones making the turn because they don’t do anything except rack up meaningless wins over nobodies on Dark/Elevation. But all of this was just stupid. But I guess we might eventually get that return match we’ve been looking for all these years between Billy Gunn and Paul Wight. Oh wait, did that even happen, like ever?
Britt Baker Backstage Segment
Ugh yet more talking. Britt had been teasing the signing of a major talent and reveals that it’s her. Whoopie. Jamie Hayter and Rebel are announced to have a match against Kris Statlander on Rampage because somehow Tony Khan gave Britt the ability to call her own matches. When has that ever happened in front of a camera? Meaning that the owner actually provided the power to an arbitrary talent who is NOT a GM to do something like that? It just makes Tony Khan look like a bigger goofball in front of a camera than he already is.
At any rate, she also places Jamie Hayter and Rebel into the women’s battle royal but Tony says that if either win they could have a chance against the title. Britt refutes that but we all know that Hayter is going to turn down the road. Rebel is worthless as a talent because she has none. But Hayter is being positioned into someone who is slowly seething against Britt.
Tay Conti Vs. Penelope Ford
Penelope Ford comes out with The Bunny and they look hot. But that’s their only talent and it doesn’t matter because both are married. Match is a wreck. Ford is less experienced than The Bunny and needs someone guiding her. Tay Conti just isn’t that person. Tay has improved in the ring but is far from good. Tay got the win after some mess up leading to yet another post-match beat down. Of course, she gets saved by a returning Anna Jay which got a pop possibly because of the stupid Job World Order theme playing. But Anna Jay barely was featured for a long time and she just sauntered towards the ring to clear it.
Now, here’s where I got super pissed. Tay was getting beaten down by The Bunny and Ford but doesn’t sell anything. Instead, she’s just looking at Anna Jay coming down the ramp really slowly. “Oh my friend is coming down.” And she can’t wait to hug her in front of the crowd. On top of that, The Bunny and Ford do absolutely nothing except scramble because the two friends need their moment. It just looked awful.
The reason I’m pissed though is that Tay should have been selling the whole time, lying on the mat, flat, barely conscious. Instead, she’s looking at her friend and having an internal orgasm. It made me believe after all that I read about her in NXT and her interviews that she isn’t that smart. Her in ring work has sharpened up in AEW but her matches still stink, there’s very few people who can lead her, many of her moves look sloppy and I’m convinced that NXT let her go, before the whole McMahon visit shenanigans happened, for a very good reason.
Thunder Rosa Segment
Alex Marvez, the absolute arm pit of announcing in the universe, is there with Rosa which means she has 2 seconds of freedom before being interrupted and Alex dissipates into thin air. Both Nyla Rose with Vickie Guerrero and Jade Cargill show up. Of course, Rosa fights and gets beaten up by the two, until Rose and Jade have a stand off where Jade’s manager comes in between to bring some order to lead to the Battle Royal.
They just can’t help themselves, can they? They can’t let someone have a basic interview without more dumb shit happening. The whole “well, we need to get all our people on TV” is so bad when it’s done like this. It’s just an embarrassment. I’d prefer having the talent get exposure in front of a crowd with shorter matches so that they stop injuring each other (like Tay busting Ford’s lip) because this company has no house shows to give them more experience.
The Elite Vs. Jurassic Express / Lucha Bros.
What a mess. I’m not sure if I want to say anything about this at all. I hate the Bucks because they’re the gnats that cling to dog feces you’d encounter while walking through some seedy areas on the way home from school. They’re just pulling nonsense stunts and there’s no flow to this match. It’s just people running around, flipping, having their spots, not letting anything breathe, not building any drama and making me not care.
There was a post match beat down that wasn’t reminiscent of the NWO beat downs because Kenny had a mic. The Elite wanted to be the A version of the NWO but they don’t have star power nor especially the size advantage of guys like Hogan, Nash, Hall, Paul Wight, etc. I tried to watch it on a reddit stream then gave up towards the end because there was no redemption. It just was the Elite making everyone to look like jobbers, even Christian.
My only hope is that Kenny Omega and the Bucks lose their belts and get off TV for a long time. The Bucks might lose but I think Kenny will win because hey Christian wants to help put the young guys over. EVEN WHEN THEY’RE PART OF THE OFFICE. With CM Punk arriving and Daniel Bryan hinted to be coming in soon (All Out), the real “big matches” that people perceive are going to be some variation of CM Punk vs Kenny or Daniel Bryan vs Kenny on the big stage for the title. Given that they both probably signed big deals, I wouldn’t be surprised if Christian’s deal looks relatively tiny and that any plans for him in the title picture outside of a match at a PPV were nixed in favor of the newest shiny object.
But I think that they need to move that title off of Kenny asap. Everything that he’s involved in is the shits. His matches haven’t been good, he’s awful on the mic, he doesn’t do a good heel, Don Callis is a goof, the people he’s surrounded himself with are awful and it just makes me not care. Like the moment Kenny shows up to talk or have a match, I either fast forward, skip or do something else. I haven’t seen a single match that has convinced me that he’s any good. The only thing I like about Kenny is his entrance theme.
At least with Christian, he can put over someone really well. Despite his age, Christian looks great, he puts on consistently good matches when it’s his turn, he knows how to structure a match, he knows how to lead and pace a match and when he’s not involved with some garbage person, he actually can make a match serious. I have no issue with him being the champion and think he’ll do far better than Kenny.
Kenny isn’t the guy that can carry, structure nor lead in matches. He just looks like he’s clowning around no matter how much he tries. He’s like Tay Conti in that I feel he’s not smart enough to really figure it all out and seems to have a maturity issue from the stuff I’ve heard or read that won’t allow him to progress.
If Kenny were in the chase though where someone else leads him, he might do good. His problem is that he wrestled in Japan for too long but never understood American wrestling psychology. And Japanese wrestling psychology went out the door after 1997 once Misawa and gang decided to destroy their necks. Bringing the cool moves over from Japan and Mexico is one thing. Not integrating it into how American wrestling is done has been bad because it just looks terrible.
Final Thoughts
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to review this show after the incident with Daffney. It felt like the night started to go down hill fast once I learned what was going on with her. The show itself to me though had one recurring thought for me, “They just can’t help themselves.”
Same stupid shit with the endless run-ins, interruptions, spot monkeys, stupid comedy segments and inexperienced wrestlers who never seem to get any better. And now CM Punk’s segment got infected with his first interruption. In that case, I forgave it because I could see some purpose with 2.0/Garcia explaining their motivation and giving some foreshadowing as well as Punk/Darby doing a last minute build towards their PPV match. But if they were going to do a run-in/interruption, that should have been it.
When the multiple run-ins started happening during the Orange Cassidy segment (can’t call it a match even because they didn’t even really show the finish), I gave up. I kept thinking why not send the entire locker room down at that point? For a job guy? Also, how bad are these people if they can’t figure out to time their finish after the commercial break? Did some moron instruct them to do the finish as an experiment to try and force people to think the picture-in-picture moments are worth watching so that they could get more ad views in?
But that awful main event was as they say “the drizzling shits.” I had no idea what was going on. I couldn’t keep up and I didn’t want to keep up, knowing full well even before the last minute beat downs happened, what would happen. It doesn’t take a genius to see what they would lead to given AEW’s poor history of being unable to not have a segment with a run in.
And here’s the thing. That segment is when you’d want to send your entire locker room down. Could you imagine the pop if CM Punk made his way down with Sting and Darby Allin? The thing is that it didn’t happen because the EVPs basically buried everyone else right there. They knew if CM Punk, the one person who could generate a huge pop, especially after he came out the previous week during a post-show segment, showed up, Kenny etc would look like shit.
I was already feeling terrible after hearing about Daffney (btw, I just found out she passed away). This show left me in a worse mood and I honestly thought about quitting wrestling again. I might shit on shows like this because I believe the wrestling sucks but a lot of the reasons why I feel that way is because of the unnecessary stupidity of how things evolved.
Then I see something like Penelope Ford getting a busted lip, or was reminded of Cash Wheeler’s horrible injury. A lot of these things occur in my view because people are moving at 100 MPH, there’s no time to breathe, action-action-action. I read how Manami Toyota got shoulder surgery because of her career and she’s not that much older than me. But she was going at 100 MPH too but better trained. And I’ve seen so many people in person get hurt. It’s really disheartening.
Then when I see a show like this, I get pissed because I feel stupid things are so unnecessary. I had lost a lot of my passion because people were dying or not doing well after wrestling. It hurt me watching people I’ve cared about or looked up to dying, getting badly injured, etc. to the point where I just got sick of wrestling.
And when I watched that Instagram Live last night, it was haunting. I didn’t recognize Daffney since I haven’t seen her in years. She was only a few months younger than me. But she was a wreck. I read that her time in TNA was bad and she was put in a situation where she got injured and tried to sue because it effectively cost her livelihood. While they might have settled out of court, I don’t know how much of that factored into what we saw last night.
The point is that these kids are hurting themselves and having long term effects that they don’t understand will haunt them in the future. Some people might be able to have a second career if this doesn’t work out for them. Others might believe this is their only option in life. When I read how Ric Flair says he “wants to die in a ring”, I truly believe it. But maybe it might work out fine for him, I doubt any fan would want to see it. Think about the horror of those people seeing Misawa pass away in front of their very eyes from a medically declared decapitation had felt.
At any rate, it sucks hearing about what happened to Daffney. And at this stage I’m mostly at the curious point with Daniel Bryan, Ric Flair and Bray Wyatt making their entrance. After that, I don’t know how I feel unless there’s a drastic change in how AEW is presented.
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