Happy Casual Friday! I have some coffee, the house is still asleep, and it’s time to knock out my favorite blog of the week. On a personal note, I was motivated to try and pitch an article idea to one of those top ten list sites. They rejected the pitch, but I really liked it so I went ahead and wrote most of the Top Ten Women in AEW Who Deserve Better. Remember, “sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something!” Thanks to Jake the dog from Adventure Time for that inspiring quote.
Speaking of inspiring dogs, here’s Mudge, aka Curmudgeon, aka CM Pug, to kick off the blog!
SUCH A GOOD GIRL!
What a week it’s been for our favorite predetermined sport! The theme seems to be DEVASTATING INJURIES, and how both WWE and AEW are trying to book around them. It’s time for…
Some Stuff Worth Talking About for the week of 6/3-10
The Judgment Day swapped Edge for Finn Balor, and I love it! I’ve heard they are going to lean in a more supernatural direction, and Finn is perfect for that leading role. The last time we saw his Demon persona, Finn fell off a turnbuckle and the mystique of that whole character went down with him. Hopefully, a feud with Edge and maybe some interference from equally spooky Ripley and Priest will bring the Demon back in a big way.
CM Punk went down with a broken foot that required surgery. If you’ve been reading my stuff for any length of time (and thank you for that) you know I’m a big supporter of the Voice of the Voiceless. Seeing his last few matches, maybe he has lost a step. So he’s only, what, better than ninety percent of all wrestlers instead of ninety-nine. Still a fine performer, and it’s his work on the microphone that has made him a legend anyway.
The more pressing matter is the question of what AEW does with a vacant championship. After this week’s Dynamite, it appears they have a pretty straightforward patch to putting the interim championship on Jon Moxley. I don’t know that I would have bought anyone in that Battle Royale as a serious contender to Mox, even if they weren’t booked to fight him on that same show. Don’t get me wrong, I think Kyle O’Reilly and Moxley put on a hell of a match. I just don’t know that Tanahashi vs O’Reilly is a Forbidden Door level matchup.
I also question the whole interim championship thing. I accept it for a second tier belt, like the TNT. But if they want a lineage for their three year old title, maybe the move is to ask Punk to leave the belt in the ring and have a tournament around it. Let Punk challenge for the title he never lost once he’s healed up - or maybe when he’s ready to compete we already have some compelling stories and it’s more of a wait to see when it makes sense organically to insert Punk into the championship scene again.
I don’t feel like Forbidden Door is the kind of show that needs titles on the line. It’s more of a really cool exhibition, and fans of New Japan Pro Wrestling are going to enjoy seeing their favorites compete against some of the top talent in All Elite Wrestling. Forcing the championships to be defended for a glorified exhibition does a disservice to organic storytelling and to a great idea for a one-off or annual show like Forbidden Door.
Cody Rhodes played the part of the decimated hero and I don’t love it. It’s hard to judge this decision, and this match, if you’re not in his shoes. Plenty of us have gone into work sick, or hurt, because we needed the money or ran out of sick days or had a project that needed to be finished. Plenty more of us felt pressured by an insensitive manager or a pushy boss who tried to guilt us into doing our job at our own expense. For Rhodes to have decided to work through that gruesome injury was, as he told us several times over the weekend, his decision. I respect that, but does the show really need to go on that badly?
The rumors of Cody’s injury popped up during the week, and when WWE acknowledged those rumors by stating that Rhodes was, in fact, injured, I’m sure all of our internal bookers went to work. Would Rollins just decimate Cody to quickly get him off TV for a while? Was the injury not as serious as they’re implying? Is Rhodes putting his body and his career at risk by going out there?
The moment that coat came off, everyone in the Allstate Arena gasped. It was a moment nobody is going to forget, and it was followed by one of the gutsiest performances ever, full stop. The fact that the match was amazing is only amplified by the visual of Cody’s shoulder looking like something out of a horror film. The way Rollins and Rhodes crafted their performance around it was nothing short of miraculous.
So it was obviously a success in hindsight, but I think it’s a tough call. Cody has the kind of personality that demands he be the guy to make the big sacrifice, to work through the pain for the good of the show. He did that, and it worked out in the short term. I just worry that his decision is going to affect the rest of the locker room in a negative way, and pro wrestling has come such a long way from the “take a painkiller, wash it down with Jack, and get out there” mentality of the 80s and 90s that the last thing the industry needs is higher ups instilling that mentality in young talent.
What I’m saying is, don’t work if you’re hurt. I worked through a shoulder issue for years, and now I’m trying to get a writing career started at the age of 42 because my shoulder is now made of rancid crab meat and gravel.
AEW added another championship and another tournament to award it! It’s the All Atlantic Championship and it’s really nice looking.
I mentioned this in my Dynamite review, since that’s where they announced the title and the tourney, but they are up to seven AEW championship titles: the AEW Championship, the Women’s Championship, the TNT and TBS Championships, the Tag Team Championships, the FTW Championship, and the All Atlantic Championship. That’s not including a Trios Championship that’s almost certainly incoming, as well as the Ring of Honor and other guest titles they defend on AEW programming.
By comparison, right now WWE is working with two Women’s Championships, one unified Tag Team Championship, one unified WWE Championship, the Intercontinental Championship, and the United States championship. That’s six, not counting the vacant women’s tag titles. We also haven’t seen a WWE Championship defended since Roman unified the titles at Wrestlemania.
Does AEW rely too heavily on shiny belts to prop up their stories? It’s a reasonable question at this point. The Ring of Honor Women’s championship is regularly defended on Dark and Elevation, and neither of those shows is even televised. The company does have storylines outside of the championship picture, but they only have three hours of TV a week to cram all this talent in. Raw does that in one night!
I trust AEW because I don’t have a reason not to, but it’s starting to feel like they need to start using their TV time a little better or expand the time they have, if that’s a possibility. The aggressive expansion of the roster has given them the “problem” of having too much amazing talent and not enough time to showcase all of it.
Hell in a Cell was a decent pay per premium live event! We’ve covered it already, a lot, but it’s worth mentioning again. For a “filler” show, Hell in a Cell delivered! The women’s triple threat and the main event were some of the best matches WWE has put out all year, and I’m impressed that Bianca, Asuka, Becky, Cody, and Seth all decided to blow audiences away with a couple amazing reasons to stay invested in WWE programming.
The build to Forbidden Door has begun and I am going to need to do some research on it! I have seen a handful of New Japan Pro Wrestling, but knowing of a product is a far cry from knowing a product. I know how big a deal it was to see Will Ospreay on an American wrestling program, and I’m happy for the fans that lost their minds when it happened. I love the look of a lot of the guys we’ve seen doing run-ins over the last couple weeks, and I’m gonna have to start hunting some matches down so I’m more well versed in the NJPW product when Forbidden Door rolls around.
You know what’s awesome? Professional wrestling. As always, we had a lot of choices for our sports entertainment viewing - here’s the best matches I watched this week, listed chronologically.
On last week’s Rampage, the Young Bucks and Lucha Bros put on an amazing match. They are clearly two of the best teams working today, and they have faced each other enough to have a great history to draw from and reference in their battles. Rey Fenix is probably at the peak of his talents right now, and it’s great to see him healthy and back to doing what he does best - in this case, jumping off Penta’s shoulders and seamlessly flowing from a splash into a destroyer. Amazing stuff!
At the Hell in a Cell show, Bianca Belair vs. Asuka vs. Becky Lynch for the WWE Women’s Championship was amazing. There’s a formula to most of the triple threat matches we see from WWE and these women showed that it’s not the only way to put a match like that on. Becky’s craftiness and desperation was highlighted, but not in a way that ever made Bianca or Asuka look dumb or weaker when they were taken advantage of. It was just an expertly crafted performance from three of the best in the industry.
Closing out that same Hell in a Cell show, Cody Rhodes vs Seth Rollins is a Match of the Year contender, as well as my MATCH OF THE WEEK. Seth’s reveal of the Dusty Rhodes inspired polka dot gear. Cody silencing an entire area by simply shrugging off his ring jacket. The match itself, peppered with references to Triple H and Dusty Rhodes. The brutality and the showmanship of both men taking advantage of a concerned crowd. This was the kind of match you can watch more than once and catch something new each time. A masterpiece.
Jon Moxley vs. Kyle O’Reilly on Dynamite wrapped up our week with a straight up brawl. Pairing the clubbering style of Mox with O’Reilly’s MMA inspired moveset was a great choice, and it led to some fantastic reversals and counters interspersed with a ton of brutal strikes and kicks. A great, fun match to close the show and get us closer to the Forbidden Door.
And that’s it! We don’t have any pay per premium live events this weekend, but I’ll post that top ten list I mentioned earlier. That will be up Saturday or Sunday, I’ll shoot out a tweet when it’s up. Beyond that I’m gonna enjoy the nice Colorado weather and get my backyard ready for my wife’s annual birthday cookout slash water balloon fight. It’s gonna be a blast!
I appreciate you stopping by, and would love it if you drop your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also follow me on Twitter @ElOsoPequeno, where I try to remember to post whenever I update the blog. I write a Raw Recap on Tuesdays, Dynamite Details on Thursdays, and the Rampage report with a Side of SmackDown highlights on Saturdays. I also plan to write about any other wrestling that I happen to watch. There’s also a weekly wrap up on Fridays, and I’ll do predictions before any big AEW or WWE pay per premium live events.
Have a good weekend!
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