I wasn’t surprised to hear that new WWE broadcast partner, ESPN, were not happy with the company’s first Wrestlepalooza event last month.  Watching as a fan, I wasn’t happy with it either.  Like many that weekend, I began my Saturday of squared-circle fun with AEW’s long-planned All Out pay-per-view.  WWE, continuing with their “counter-programming” strategy of trying to divide audiences by running concurrent shows, had intentionally booked their debut ESPN show to compete, but AEW have never wanted to be the “winners” of a wrestling “war”.  Always positioning themselves as a “challenger brand” rather than a “rival”, the company simply moved their show a few hours earlier, allowing true wrestling fans who want both companies to succeed to watch both events.  Or at least watch most of both events (the main event of All Out continued into the opening hour of WrestlePalooza).

Luckily for international viewers like me, it was all a moot point anyway.  I watched All Out live until my eyes grew weary about 11pm and then went to bed, finishing the PPV in the morning.  After a break to do some life stuff, we were back on the couch and watching Wrestlepalooza later that same afternoon.

Frankly, I wished we’d gone to the cinema instead.

While All Out was a killer show from fast-paced start to edge-of-the-seat main event finish, the WWE show began so slowly that I thought they might have been intentionally dragging their feet to allow AEW fans to get to the conclusion of the Hangman/Protostar match before flipping over.  A plodding and self-congratulatory ESPN video served only to remind us that the idea this was some new partnership was a fabrication.  It also showed in near-real-time the descent of a supposed sports network into farce.  Did ESPN carrying WWE give wrestling the perceived legitimacy of being a “real” sport, or did ESPN carrying WWE mark the final nail in the coffin of taking ESPN seriously anymore?  While I agreed with the (poorly mixed) Triple H voiceover saying that “sport has always been entertainment”, the line misses the point that sport sacrificed for the sake of entertainment, can be an arguably diminished product.  In fact one of the things I love most about AEW is how it tries to present itself as legitimate sporting competition more than the cartoonish WWE.

Seriously though, it felt like it took forever to get through the back-slapping promo video about the ESPN deal, the trite ad spot for Hulk Hogan beer (presented as if the pushed commercial product were some sort of moving tribute to the Hulkster instead of the cynical cash ploy it clearly was), and the lengthy self-congratulatory return of Pat McAfee to commentary (for, it transpired, only a handful of matches; McAfee bailed from the commentary desk midway through the show) before the first match of the night finally began.  Why anyone would turn over from the Kyle Fletcher match at All Out for this time-filler was beyond me?  But why they would want to see the opening match either was also a mystery?  The retiring John Cena had only ever beaten the man named in a Federal lawsuit against Vince McMahon, Brock Lesnar, once before in his prime.  Whoever thought the much older, part-time, version of Cena might have a chance against the modern incarnation of Lesnar (who looks like he has eaten a previous Brock Lesnar and converted all of it into muscle) was probably the same non-genius who thought it was a good idea to bring back the dubious “Beast” in the first place, given the alleged scandal he remains mired in.  (And that’s before we even mention the whole WWE/Saudi Arabia thing.  Both the upcoming Crown Jewel show, and the shocking news that the country will be a future WrestleMania host in 2027.  But maybe that’s another column for another time…)  

It was an uncomfortable watch morally, and intellectually, and it also turned out to be an uncomfortable watch simply as a wrestling fan, becoming very quickly a one-sided squash match that served only to disappoint rather than shock once Lesnar got the win.  It was around this time I found myself scrolling through the cinema listings on my phone and thinking two hours spent watching young men get brutally shot to death in the new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk might be a preferable entertainment experience to this woeful misery.  Hell, even watching the worst moment from AEW All Out – Eddie Kingston’s botched finish against Big Bill – on a loop would be better than this subpar rehash of SummerSlam 2014.

Sadly, the show failed to up its game in the following match too.  The Usos reunion was not exactly the heart-warming nostalgia someone in the booking committee seemed to think it was and I felt like more hours of my life were lost to endless inane “yeeting” as a stand-in for the Usos and the Brons’ lack of compelling in-ring wrestling.  It was certainly a far cry from the wild All Out ladder match for the AEW tag titles witnessed earlier.  Once again I found my eyes drifting to my phone.  Could a take-away make this event more enjoyable?

Finally though, as I was about to tap out on the whole damn thing, Iyo Sky and Stephanie Vaquer put on a damned clinic and I was back in.  This match was fantastic, and continued to confirm that the only hole in AEW’s game right now is that their women’s division is just not as good as WWE’s.  That said, they are improving their female offering all the time.  At All Out the tailgate brawl was fun and chaotic, we got the in-ring debut of Beth Copeland, Mercedes Moné versus the first AEW women’s champ, Riho, and a brilliant four-way between “Timeless” Toni Storm, Kris Statlander, Jamie Hayter and Thekla for the title.  And in the last week of September the company finally announced the introduction of women’s tag titles too.  I have faith that they will get there eventually, but Sky and Vaquer tore it up, reminding me how frustrating it was that Vaquer had that Forbidden Door match in AEW against Moné, and a few other matches there here and there, but the company couldn’t get the deal done with her to make her “All Elite” before WWE swooped in.

OK…after the brilliant women’s title match we had two more brilliant women and, frankly, the main reason I was watching the event: the return of AJ Lee, tagging with husband CM Punk against Seth Rollins and his wife, Becky Lynch.  

I was always a fan of AJ back in the day and was so excited at the prospect of her returning.  WWE wrote the comeback well, making it both obvious and exciting all at the same time.  We all knew it was going to happen, but most importantly we wanted it to.  We wanted to see Becky Lynch get what she deserved.

But this match, although it eventually gave us what we wanted, took too many liberties with our time and attention.  I get that it’s a great gimmick to delay the gratification and deny the audience what it wants by making it take an age for AJ to get her first tag in, but this match took the piss.  You could see the moving parts too much.  Instead of feeling natural, it felt like we were being teased, and not in a good way.  More con job than drama, it was a relief when the tag finally happened, and great to see AJ back in action (she continued to shine in the subsequent weeks on Raw), but after a dull show was finally won back by Iyo Sky and Stephanie Vaquer, it was a dumb move to bring the energy back down into the negative vibes again just for a cheap hot tag pop we were all too tired to cheer for by the time it finally arrived.

By the time the so-called “main event” creaked its way onto the screen (and note to WWE – the international Netflix feed’s three and a half minute stagnant pauses of “we’ll be back soon” music you can’t fast-forward through is a turn off that will ensure I never watch a WWE premium live event live) I was well and truly feeling like I’d wasted a large chunk of my weekend and that not even the pizza we’d ordered could make up for it.  We should have quit when we were ahead, with the end of All Out after that glorious men’s world title match.  We should have gone to the cinema – even the Downton Abbey movie would have been more exciting than Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre lumbering through a match more fitting for a rogue episode of Smackdown than the end of a much-trumpeted new pay-per-view.  

All in all it made me think that WWE counter-programming might be the best thing going for AEW right now.  If WWE can throw all it has at trying to take viewers’ eyes off the AEW product, and yet people like me who watch both shows still end the weekend thinking only of the number of thumb tacks there must be still stuck in MJF’s broken body and just how good Máscara Dorada is, then Tony Khan has nothing to worry about.  At the end of the day, as the old Cody Rhodes theme song used to say, it’s “only smoke and mirrors” over at WWE.  They can promote the hell out of an event, but when it gets to the ring, between the ropes, the product just cannot hold a candle to the excellence AEW puts on PPV after PPV, Dynamite after Dynamite, and Collision after Collision.  At the end of the day, AEW truly is where “the best wrestle”, and you can’t counter-program comparable talent even if you can counter-program the timeslot. 

Until next time…

DaN McKee

www.everythingdanmckee.com

My book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, is available from Earth Island Books and wherever you get your reading material.

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