The Man in Blak

I don't know that Moxley will make my ballot unless I recalibrate my rankings to include promos -- which are actually Moxley's strongest suit as a performer by about a hundred miles -- but the "bored <wrestler x> clearly mails it in" criticism of any wrestler really leaves me cold. I don't think he's been doing GCW shots for the money and he's turned a number of chicken shit situations in AEW into chicken salad, including -- just as a recent example -- a "plan C" main event with freaking Tanahashi at Forbidden Door that Moxley did everything short of setting himself on fire to try and get over. The guy just got out of rehab, so you can call it Hanlon's Razor's Edge: never attribute something in wrestling to laziness that can be adequately explained by addiction, depression, or WWE creative. I wouldn't consider Moxley one of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever, but I don't know if AEW thrives as long as it has without him, so he's got my respect.

Makes sense. I just remembered the “phoenix” pronunciation being used before in AEW and I never caught the change until now. (It’s probably been that way for months, but that’s what I get for actually watching Dynamite unmuted for once.)

Rey “Feh-nix”?

Heel Christian is the right move and a perfect transition program for Jungle Boy out of tags. Good ending to a show that was really dire at times…but who the hell knows for the PPV. A month lead up is bad enough; with Omega, Danielson and Punk all on the shelf, they’re basically on plan D through F right now and it shows.

Not only that, but a jumping piledriver! For a clean win over Britt Must Pose!

Ospreay/Dax was one of the best TV matches that AEW has had all year, so it's only natural that everything else that’s happened tonight has ranged from cringe to cursed. AEW in 2022 just feels snakebit.

The injury is a stroke of good luck for Cody because now he won’t be at risk of getting ruined by WWE booking over the next few months. (lol) And yet…this can also be true. Maybe it turns out that WWE giving the performers some modicum of power over their character and presentation can actually be a good thing!

It’s pretty rare in wrestling to find a chance to approach the mythological nowadays, so I’m not surprised that Cody would jump at the opportunity. The ethics surrounding performers working injured is already beyond fucked in wrestling, sure, but I can also follow the idea that the injury couldn’t possibly get worse if it was a complete tear, so they could work the match at minimal risk. Rollins gets a ton of credit in my book for generously working (honestly, carrying) this match with Cody being in this condition. And yeah, the booking is silly — Rollins losing this match is absurd — and I’m sure Cornette jumped into a nearby grave so that he could spin in it, but it’s WWE: everything is made up and the points don’t matter. This may be the one case where wins and losses effectively not mattering in WWE becomes a feature, rather than a bug. Cody will ideally make a molten hot return at the Rumble, Seth continues being a giant dweeb in the meantime, and the world continues to turn.

I'll be in the minority on this: I thought MJF's promo was great, if only because he looked like he might literally burst into flames in the ring while he was delivering it. Worked shoots generally leave me cold, but the delivery -- which definitely drew some parallels to me with the Flair rant on Bischoff and immediately distinguished it from virtually anything that Russo and co. spewed in WCW -- carried this over the finish line. The camera work, the commentators completely laying out and the mic cut to a hard commercial break -- no picture-in-picture trickery -- all set up things perfectly from a production standpoint. To me, it was a hell of a highwire act - MJF had to build an anti-authority storyline, which always treads into babyface territory, while also remaining a smarmy and narcissistic heel, and I thought he took the crowd on the rollercoaster ride between both ends of the spectrum very effectively. It certainly helps that MJF has been toeing the worked shoot line with things for a while, mostly notably with his feud with Punk. The bigger question for me, of course, is where they take it from here. Punk, Pillman, and Flair/Bischoff have come up, but the other thing that jumped to mind for me (specifically with the comments about New Japan and not having to do flippy shit to get a pop) was Cactus Jack's heel turn in ECW, where he waged a war against the identity and the philosophy of the promotion itself. He can immediately transition into a build against somebody from New Japan for Forbidden Door -- I actually think Tanahashi would have been better for MJF than Punk, but that's beside the point -- without having to shake up anything that he said here. Where do they go after that, though?

I wouldn't say that everything falls off a cliff after the turnbuckle spot, but they certainly have a hard time finding their way after the botched crossbody. The ending, in particular, is a trainwreck. (How many enziguiris on the apron does it take to set up a countout win?) I do like this early glimpse at Grumpy Jumbo, though, and Tenryu's stoic determination is a perfect counterpoint.

Ethan Page should channel the angry pro wrestler from Ren & Stimpy more often. Also, it speaks volumes that he got the most reaction out of everybody in that dueling promo segment. They need to bury this feud - preferably with PVZ mangling both Sammy and Tay - and move on fast.

It *might* have made fourth on my list if I had to rank them, but that’s beside the point - the consensus is what it is. And I will certainly concede that Rhodes seemed motivated on Saturday, which is really the best-case scenario for WWE: maybe Cody had mentally checked out for his final months in AEW and now we get to see him at his best.

Yes, he had a great match with an all-time great worker (his own brother) in an extraordinary circumstance. His match with Rollins last night almost undid all of his momentum coming into WWE (though Rollins certainly bears some of the blame for that as well). Is it unreasonable to say that it’s not his strong suit and that they need to be careful with how they feature him, since his potential heat as an “outsider” from AEW isn’t going to last forever?

To me, Cody’s the home run hitter that strikes out every third at-bat — for every spectacular promo he had in AEW, he’d have a delusional ramble that was completely counter-productive to the feud he was in. His fallback tendency is always to indulge in meta crap, which is a double-edged sword: he basically drowned his last few months in AEW in cryptic bullshit but, as the plucky underdog leading the plucky underdog promotion during his first few months in AEW, he was the best promo the company had. The best situation for Cody is that the WWE writing team lets him handle his own promos, but not his own storylines. And, ideally, keep him out of the ring as much as possible.

I think Jade has been great as the TBS champion, but I think it would have been a huge boost to Britt's reign -- and the women's division as a whole -- if she had been chasing Britt's title, especially if they could have gotten her in the ring with Deeb as a "gatekeeper" to build her up. Then again, I'm not even convinced that the TNT title has been a net positive other than Miro's reign and Cody's initial run with the belt, so maybe I'm just down on the secondary belts in general.

For me, I would probably even narrow it down to the main and Shibata's return. I found Hiromu/Desperado to be really disappointing, though I think I'm generally lower on Hiromu in general than most folks. The Day 2 card looks more promising, though, and I'm excited to start going through the VOD this morning.

My main complaint with the draw is actually that they led off the show with it, which immediately called back to how they led off Grand Slam with the Omega/Danielson draw. Tipped their hand a bit.

The thing about Cody's Capital Neoliberal persona is that I'm not even sure it can draw the desired heat by working a simple red-vs-blue divide. There's a tendency to see this as a 1997 Bret Hart "divisive" crowd dynamic because that's the most immediate precedent for this sort of nationalism, but I actually think he's treading on go-away heat for both conservatives and progressives. He's tiresome in a way that doesn't really offer a lot of catharsis for hating him, at least not without Cody actually leaning into more deliberately irritating elements of his persona. He's not working on the same wavelength as 1997 Bret or even Dutch Mantel Zeb Colter and the Real Americans - he's basically a paladin for American exceptionalism. Frankly, there's probably a case to be made that Cody has been meandering toward go-away heat ever since Eddie Kingston completely torched him on the mic in his AEW debut -- another match/feud that Cody should have lost, I would point out -- but the differences between 2019 AEW Cody and 2020 AEW Cody are probably better suited for a separate discussion.

Flair's trending nationally on Twitter right now as people are reacting to this, so I think making a comparison to the other DSOTR storyline actually undersells it, if anything. Fans who have been entrenched in the industry for years know about Flair's reputation, but this could end up being the most publicized incident of this stripe in Flair's entire career, period. On top of that, Flair would be coming in to manage a character in Andrade that really hasn't connected with the AEW fanbase yet (though, in all fairness, a lot of that has to do with his booking) and appeared to be making an almost-face turn (or at least an "honorable heel" turn), so there's a real risk of torpedoing Andrade if they move forward with Flair as his second. The smart play is to go in another direction and, if Andrade balks at that, then I'd say show him the door as well.

Andrade/Pac was decent, but that finish and post-match angle were an absolute mess. Wherever they were trying to go, I don’t think they got there.

I think it's almost impossible to have a bad TV match with Rey, so I don't know how much those will land for me with respect to Andrade's specific contributions, but I will definitely check these out - thank you for the recommendations. Fingers crossed.

Am I alone in feeling like his post-NXT career has almost been disastrously bad? His big Triplemania match with Omega this year was a disjointed mess and, arguably, the most notable moment of his WWE run is getting tagged with a wellness violation. What hidden gems am I missing?

I can definitely understand the Bret comparisons with Punk, if only because Punk and Darby lifted three or four signature moments from the Bret/1-2-3 Raw match, almost note for note. And yeah, I wouldn't say it was a great match, though that is definitely an impression colored by their decision to have Darby put over Punk clean as a sheet. Having said that, I also don't think there's anything I saw in that match that would make me want to write off Punk any time soon. In a way, there was no perfect opponent for Punk because the expectations were astronomical; they got a "holy shit" chant before the bell even rang when Punk sat down in the middle of the ring. We're not going to get seven years back in one night.

I think both iterations on the Wyatt character had potential, but neither one had a chance in the world of succeeding with 50/50 booking and (especially in the case of The Fiend) no restraint whatsoever. I feel like he could still be effective in AEW, if only because they’ve shown they can be patient - good booking can go a long way towards turning things around.

Okay, if they were really obsessed with doing a shitty WM9 finish somewhere on this card, why not have Lashley win by injury, kill Goldberg’s kid and have Big E come down for the save and the cash-in to win?