MD: So we're down a few fingers right now. While I won't necessarily cover all of their matches, since I'm driving this thing, I am at least temporarily elevating Christian, Rush, and Athena from "friends" to fingers to bridge us to Eddie coming back at least.
AEW Dynamite 10/16/24
Christian Cage vs. Jay White
MD: Overall I liked this, though it had one big issue that touches upon something people are well aware of but that I'll still cover in a bit. Before that, let's hit the elephant in the room, the botched interference from Kip (which then led to Hangman having to sit on the floor forever). I didn't mind it. I actually kind of liked it. Sometimes you need an exception that proves the rule. There's a moment in the first SNME match between Demolition and the Brainbusters where Arn holds Smash's leg down so Tully can hit a double axe-handle to his chest in a prone position and that one move justifies every transition that comes from the "flying nothing" of a double axe-handle that's being done just to get a foot up. Likewise, Flair winning the NWA title vs Race with a flying body press justifies every subsequent time he gets tossed off the top, which is basically every time he tries it as a heel.
Same thing here. If there's seven hours of AEW/ROH TV a week you'll probably see a couple of successful interference finishes every week and a reversed/backfiring one every few weeks. They're almost all perfectly timed and perfectly executed. When you think about it, both Kip and Hangman were out there to cause trouble. It sort of make sense that Kip would just be irritating and get involved whenever he could, not just at the single point where it would have the biggest impact and open things up for the finish. Likewise, Hangman was waiting for a moment of opportunity and Kip gave him that. That it didn't work out for either of them the first time made everything feel weirdly more organic (Christian's understandable yelling maybe notwithstanding, but I only caught that when it was pointed out to me). Basically, stuff should not work out perfectly more often because it makes it more believable when it does.
So what was the problem then? Jay White is not over as a babyface. Some of that is just Jay White, right? He's a sleazy, slimy sort of guy, in his look, in his character, in his wrestling. People CAN get behind that, but you have to really work at it. The BBG have been tweeners or just entities, up against whoever gets in their way and maybe that works too, but not if you need him to be over as a face because you've got a roster imbalance and he's got the star power to help fill it. People were pretty frustrated by the lack of an actual face turn for Statlander. On some level, at least White got a moment, but the moment was coming back with his theme and making a save for his best friend, who is also an erratic tweener at best. That's not really a face turn. Then the subsequent promo was kind of all over the place. Christian is absolutely over as a heel. People get enjoyment out of specific things he does because they're legitimately funny and so over the top, but they don't hesitate to boo him. They don't fall to This Is Awesome chants (which are not always a good thing to be lauded! I'm not going to go into detail on this today but it's something to stop and think about). But for this to work, I think they needed to be more behind White. For him to get to the next level as babyface, if that's what he's going to be for a while, he has to do something that's not just in his own self-interest that happens to be against a heel. He needs to do something worth cheering.
So there needed to be just a bit of extra wind behind the sails of this one. Part of that is the nature of the two combatants. Christian controlled during the break, but overall, these are counter punchers. Christian is one of the best ever at coming up with interesting and believable ways to work people's stuff into matches and then to have counters that don't feel choreographed and contrived but like the exact thing that might happened. White's in-ring gimmick is that he's a defensive wrestler, an opportunist, someone who creates traps and then springs them, and while that takes an extra level of thought and work, it makes him stand out as unique. That meant that this match in specific was always going to be a bit back and forth; again, fine, if the fans were more into it. That said, I'd love to see these two as rivals over the next few years. I'm not sure there's much AEW could put together in-ring right now that would be more compelling mechanically and structurally (at least moment-to-moment) than a best of 5 or 7 between these two. I liked what I saw. I want to see more. I didn't have an issue with the interference. I just wish that White had a bit more of a babyface push driving him forward to make it all resonate a bit more.
Ring of Honor 10/17/24
Athena vs. Lady Frost
MD: I know exactly who Athena is. She lives and breathes it with every thing she does, every look on her face, her entire body language. I've noted before that I never really had a great sense of who Ember Moon was. The entrance didn't seem to sync perfectly with the ringwork and she never had enough in the way of stories and profiles to really hammer home the connection. Zero problem with her now. Lady Frost is another story. She's from Imperial Iceland. She has the fur and the blue themed gear. Her moves have icy names. She primarily has a gymnastic background in ring. She's tough, confident both in ring and out. You get little moments like her blowing her hair out of her face early on or her fighting through the pain of the crossface to make one last attempt to escape on the finish. She has an interesting real life story, coming from a wrestling family but starting relatively late in life. But I don't get how it all connects. She'd either be better off committing and doubling down or drawing back and dumping a lot of the gimmick for something more real. I'm sure having an Elsa on the roster could be marketable, but that's not what she is. She's talented and driven as a wrestler, but the gimmick is just window dressing and extraneous to that.
None of that is to say this wasn't good. It was. Athena was totally on, like always, as this existed in the backdrop of a number of things, both Abadon hunting her and the ongoing stockholm syndrome relationship between her and Lexy (and how it's all impacting Billie). They worked the security blanket chain into it as the first big transition to heel offense as Lexy used it to clothesline (literally) Frost. They had Athena constantly look to the crowd and to her credit, she made it seem like she was doing it to gloat and heelishly get cheers, not to constantly be searching for Abadon's presence. I'm not saying it's rocket science, but within the confines of pro wrestling, it's kind of next level to be balancing so many balls at once. All the while, she was working her normal intensity and merciless drive up against Frost's athleticism and gymnastic counters and offense. None of Frost's comebacks were rote; they were all interesting and based on her own personal strengths. Part of the appeal of Athena's matches are that she's able to adapt her act to not just every opponent, but to every moment, always reacting to what's going on around her and channeling the Funk-ian deranged mania. That worked here from the second she stepped out of the curtain to the second she retreated back through it as Abadon's music played.
AEW Collision 10/19/24
LFI (RUSH/The Beast Mortos) vs. Outrunners
MD: I also covered the BCC six man here. The Jake pre-match voiceover deal is a good idea and should be used as much as possible, as I get the sense he might not always be on the road. Plus, while I like the pairing, when he stands next to them, they (especially Mortos) look pretty small. No one's fault. Just how it is.
This was one of those cases where neither team should probably be losing but where one team really did need to win. That's ok. They went out of their way to protect the Outrunners here. Mortos showed quite a bit of versatility early with the comedy charges with Truth. He's not just a lucha base which is important given that he has a lot of broad marketability moving forward. Overall this was fun. There were bits of Morton/Gibson styled rope running to get over early and then more Roadies strength stuff. Slugging it out with Rush is always fun to watch because Rush has a follow through which swings for the fences. Dralistico was all over the place here as a nuisance to the point where maybe some of the heat ended up on the ref it was so over the top. In some ways, that felt a bit like a Savage/Dibiase/Shawn match with Sherri on the outside or another over the top 80s heel manager, so I didn't hate it, but it was a bit jarring.
I'm hesitant to even write this because I do like the Outrunners and I'm glad they're getting this opportunity, but I see the crowd getting behind a lot of what they're doing in the moment, a lot of the old tricks, and I worry a little people will see it all as pure, limiting parody and not even try to figure out how to extrapolate what they're doing into a more modern setting now when that is needed the most. I'd ask instead that people see this as a proof of concept. If it can work here, with these silly guys, and still get people behind them, then figure out how to distill that and tap into it with serious, main event storylines as well. Because it can work and it will work, and look at this as a way of proving it, not as a way of seeing it just as something silly that only works in a throwback pastiche like this.
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