Mikey: Another week, another wrestling. That’s the way the saying goes, right? No? Well, it is now. After the shockers heard round the world of last week’s AEW Dynamite and GCW Homecoming Night 1, plus Jay White in the Impact Zone! I’m… really not sure where this week is going to go, but I can’t help but be excited. How’s everyone else doing?
Charlie: To quote a Tik ToK. ITS TOO MANY SLICES. Or maybe it’s just the right amount. I’m unsure. Sure is a lot of stuff happening though.
Forrest: Dominos… slices… I’m connecting the dots here.
Saturday: GCW Homecoming Night 2 + This Week in The Wrestling Biz
Charlie: I didn’t watch GCW Homecoming night one, but I did edit the wonderful coverage that Forrest did last week. I can’t remember the last time that an indie show outside of PWG got as much buzz as Gage and Cardona did. I couldn’t catch the second night, but hopefully Forrest can catch us up again.
Forrest: The second night of Homecoming didn’t have anything as electric as Cardona and Gage’s match from the night before, but it was fun regardless and honed in on one thing I think GCW in particular is good at: centering themselves.
It didn’t end with Cardona coming out to soak it in with the “GCW Universe,” it ended with Nick Gage (MDK) and Rickey Shane Page (44OH!) seconded respectively by all of the GCW main event regulars announcing a WarGames match to finally settle the score at their September event “The Art of War”. A keen sense of striking while the iron is hot and a bit of serendipitous capitalizing on AEW’s All Out — Gage and Mox have issues to resolve after all — being there the same weekend is the kind of stuff that keeps GCW feeling nimble, fresh, and decidedly punk in the face of larger corporate wrestling hand wringing. I’m fully bought in.
Charlie: In other news that we only really just dipped our toes into last week, CM Punk seems all but an appearance away from being All Elite. This is so wild I cannot even really begin to wrap my brain around it. Anyone wanna take a stab?
Forrest: Hey, where there’s smoke there’s usually fire and after weeks of a lot of smoke, Darby Allin delivering a promo that explicitly mentions “The Best in the World” while the Dynamite cameras cut to a packed crowd chanting “CM Punk” sure seems like fire. AEW either has something in place or, if you’ll excuse me stretching a metaphor too far, is shouting “fire” in a crowded theater and I just don’t think they’re that stupid. I hope the merch is cool.
Mikey: Not just Darby, Forrest! For anyone who didn’t watch Dynamite on Wednesday, MJF’s promo after the main event was also an explicit callback to Punk’s infamous ‘Pipe Bomb’ promo.
Also adding to the smoke as you put it: Tony Khan’s big announcement is that the AEW Rampage in 3 weeks will now take place at the biggest venue in Chicago, the home of the Chicago Bulls, the United Center. Charlie and I sat in the presale queue, which beckoned us to “become a part of history,” and which was 99% sold out within 10 minutes. You don’t do that without having major plans.
On the more bummer scale of things… just an hour or so before I’m writing this, we learned that WWE released Bray Wyatt, citing budget cut reasons.
Charlie: What a horrifying place that’s become. Arguably it was always horrifying, but to let Bray Wyatt gift you with all his wonderful, creative ideas and just throw them in the trash…man.
Mikey: Regardless of whether or not Bray Wyatt was your personal cup of tea, it can’t be denied that on some level at some point, WWE saw value in him. You don’t create and sell a $429 The Fiend replica belt, a $250 The Fiend Returns replica mask, or (CW body horror) a $100 replica of Bray’s severed head lantern if you don’t think that character and wrestler is at the very least a merch draw… and that’s not even considering that Bray Wyatt paid money from his own pocket for horror special effects genius Tom Savini to design and create the mask for The Fiend.
I didn’t even realize until listening to Fightful’s Youtube response to the news that Bray Wyatt is (was) a WWE original. There was no Bray Wyatt, or Windham Rotunda, before WWE developmental. And now he’s gone. That more than anything says to me that the WWE of the past is gone, and whatever gargoyle arises, there’s a new and worse paradigm than maybe ever before.
Monday: Being the Elite, Monday Night Raw
Mikey: Okay, I’m just gonna start with it. The way Nick led this week’s BTE off was both yet another amazing callback, but also a stroke of genius.
Charlie: BTE has been what I’ve needed it to be for MONTHS the last three weeks. Premium Nick content, premium Elite content and even sprinkled in with long term storytelling and some Dark Order bits and we got ourselves a show! Honestly, I laughed so hard at several parts this week and the bucks know a frankly disturbing amount about what their fan base wants to see from them. Keep it up boys. I’ll take a 30 mins video of Matt brushing his hair please.
Mikey: Frankly incredible. Also, I’m like 90% sure this week’s Hollywood Hunk cinematic inspiration was Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, which is just a wild deep surrealism cut (regardless of the director’s dubious legacy)/
Charlie: Oh and Raw… continues to be Raw with or without live crowds.
Forrest: I’ve kind of been avoiding the reflex to complain about how bad Raw’s writing has been recently because I do genuinely enjoy a lot of the talent there… but I just have to say that advertising months of the “Summer of Cena” in the leadup to SummerSlam and then having John work a dark (non-televised) match on your worst show — whatever’s left of 205 notwithstanding — no more than two weeks after his explosive return is not only confusing, but condemning. They need to cut the third hour and rework this from top to bottom.
Tuesday: NXT
Charlie: I’m not gonna lie. NXT has kinda felt flat for me since they threw Kross on the pyre of the main roster. His loss to Jeff Hardy was embarrassing to him, sure, but it said far more about how the higher ups in WWE actually feel about NXT than anything else. Combine that with suddenly Charlotte’s NXT belt wins not counting in her total championship wins and… I don’t know, things seem kinda weird.
The things that have been great on the show continue to be great. Cameron Grimes on the golf course was amazing because apparently all golf segments in wrestling are just a net GOOD. The Way being thrown for a loop with Austin leaving and Dexter wanting into the family is GREAT. And Adam Cole is always a treat to watch wrestle even if his feud with Kyle isn’t…what we’d call very good. That perplexes me, but I don’t really know what to say about it that I haven’t said yet. I don’t think Kyle turning heel or whatever happened after the main event is the answer though. Also, Dakota finally turned on Raquel and I am excited to see what they do going forward.
Forrest: Dakota ? deserves ? it ?
Mikey: Dakota’s storyline with Raquel finally paying off was frankly a great moment. Hit Row had another very fun segment… god, they’re all so good at this gimmick it’s just a delight to watch. I like the Samoa Joe stuff, but I can’t help but find myself wishing I wish he was acting as a foil to L I T E R A L L Y anyone but Kross. I also find myself wishing we got to see more of Io Shirai and Zoey Starks. I love the whole concept of ‘we’re stuck in this tag team now,’ it’s legitimately one of my favorite tropes, but I feel like we only got to see the smallest snippet of it.
We also got Johnny being somewhat-coerced into agreeing to a LOVE HER OR LOSE HER match stipulation with Dexter Lumis. Even if the match doesn’t deliver (which I think it will, because Johnny is great) it’s worth it for the name alone.
BUT. If you watch just one thing from this week’s NXT though, please make it this incredible segment from Cameron Grimes and LA Knight. As Charlie says, these golfing bits are just too good.
Wednesday: AEW Dynamite
Charlie: Man… what an episode. Just… what an episode of professional wrestling television.
I could and WILL gush about the opening elimination tag match between the Dark Order and The Elite because it was damn good.
Mikey: SPACE. JAM. I’ve had the music stuck in my head for a week, and I couldn’t be happier.
Charlie: I know there are some people salty about Hangman and friends losing, but there is so much more meat on the bones of this story. Hangman and Kenny haven’t been in the same vicinity for almost a year after losing the tag belts and no matter if incoming stars changed plans or if this was the plan all along, I don’t mind the decision to elongate this. Then again, there is still a month left and a lot of things could change. The entrances for this match alone were literally enough to satisfy me, but layer on top a fun, chaotic and emotional tag match with maybe the best people EVER at w multi man? Man oh man. On a rewatch I picked up so much I missed for first time and I beg you to go back and rewatch this masterpiece again.
Mikey: Kenny put the whole Space Jam entrance up on his IGTV, so if you have an instagram account… you should watch it. Or rewatch it. (Also, Nick totally made that Indytaker dunk in my heart.)
This was another banger episode of Dynamite where I was fucking fed. There was a weird dig at trombones during Ricky Starks’ celebration, followed on Twitter by this totally-unrelated Xavier Woods tweet…
And we haven’t even mentioned maybe the most shocking part of the episode, which is saying a lot when you lead with a surprise Space Jam… TANA. FREAKING. HASHI. ON. DYNAMITE. Hiroshi Tanahashi challenging Lance Archer for the IWGP US title. God, I’m so pumped for that match. I’d wondered what would happen to Mox just out of idle curiosity now that his storyline with the Elite has mostly tapered off, and that he lost the title. But it seems he isn’t done with Lance, or the IWGP US title, quite yet.
And then there was the match that should not have worked so well, but it absolutely did: MDK. All FREAKIN’ day.
Forrest: NICK FUCKIN’ GAGE. AEW’s willingness to put the kind of work devoted deathmatch wrestlers do, pizza cutters included, onto their televised show earns a lot of points with me even if it reportedly doesn’t with advertisers like Dominos. More on that next week as we wait to find out if WWE planted that story, though (wrestling is back, baby!)
Thursday: Impact! Wrestling
Charlie: I like to think of Impact as a clip show. Basically, because I watch the clips I like and that’s all that’s required of me. I actually sat down and tried to watch Impact from start to finish this week but I just couldn’t. Even Kenny’s segments have started to feel the same despite him and Don trying their best. The one thing I did love from the show is Jay White and Chris Bey. Chris basically signed a deal with the devil when he agreed to join the Bullet Club and I wanna see how that plays out!
Mikey: It’s important to note that, as Jay pointed out, he’s not a member of Bullet Club yet. It in fact takes more than putting on a t-shirt to join the world’s most nefarious pro-wrestling faction… so Jay blackmailed Chris into attacking FinnJuice backstage. That was by far and away the standout of the night… Charlie and I tried to watch some of the matches in action, but Impact’s production is just so bad.
What’s worse is I started to really see the seams this week. When Kenny stated his intentions in his segment, commentary summarize what happened and rephrase Kenny’s words that WE LITERALLY JUST HEARD, and then we heard them summarize again five seconds later when the match graphic went up… oof.
Who is watching Impact weekly product that needs to have angles explained like this? Does Impact really think they have a casual audience that they need to summarize each individual thing every 5 seconds? It’s tiresome and bordering-intolerable when WWE does it, but at the very least they have production values going for them. When Impact does it, it’s just painful. I want to like them so much–they have an incredibly strong womens’ division and intergender matches–but the actual product is just so piss-poor and doesn’t respect me as a viewer. Not only that, but the storylines lack all but the thinnest of cohesive structures.
For illustrative purposes: Matt Cardona and Chelsea Green were involved in some kind of… weird sex casino? Where the major point was someone fucking multiple women? This is the current angle they were involved in going into the Homecoming PPV. Meanwhile, in GCW where Cardona has complete creative freedom, he’s part of arguably the hottest feuds in indie wrestling right now if not all of wrestling. How do you square that Matt Cardona and Impact! Matt Cardona? The answer is you just don’t, when the difference is the Impact! product. Sure they don’t have Nick Gage and Brett Lauderdale at Impact! but the difference is so stark and the seams are so glaringly obvious that I don’t know that I have the patience to even keep up with Impact! clips for the time being, unless something truly inspired goes down.
Friday: SmackDown
Charlie: Sighs.
Forrest: Finn getting scorned by Cena, who signed his name over Balor’s to secure a match with Roman Reigns at August’s SummerSlam is a marginally better story than Kross losing to Hardy on debut. Marginally.
Charlie: Sasha Banks returned, and that should be what the show left us thinking about, but I can’t stop thing about how Cena conned his way into the Summerslam main event.
Saturday & Sunday: Impact! Homecoming, GCW fallout
Mikey: All I have to say here is that apparently they’re calling Chris Bey & Jay White vs The Good Brothers the “Bullet Club Civil War” on the YouTube clip and I’m marginally offended.
Sighs indeed.
I want to leave you with a good note though, so please have this image of Matt Cardona continuing to be a nuclear heat generator in the best way.
Charlie: I wonder if anyone can get Justin back to the present…
Into The Nitro-Verse #6
(July 15th, 1996)
Week 2 at the Disney MGM Studios brings more Bash at the Beach aftermath and probably the most solid top-to-bottom episode to date as we RE-ENTER THE NITRO-VERSE, your NetScape powered window into days of wrestling past.
As always I am your Rock N’ Roll Temporal Express and I am mostly okay.
This episode being largely pretty good helps that. As does the thousand or so churros I’ve mainlined during my exile in time. But enough about my obviously self-destructive theme park eatin’ habits! We got wrestling to discuss!
So as I said above, we are still in the warm, open air of the Disney MGM Studios. We are a few weeks out from Bash at the Beach ‘96 (or BatTheeBea nineteen and ought six) and just one week removed from our first guest spot at the fourth happiest place on earth.
In the time between, thankfully, park managers and Nitro production designers have actually made a SET this time. Complete with the iconic, pole-based entree ramp and the equally “badass” raised steel W. C. and W peppered atop the main entrance pavilion (replacing the M. G. and M). Instead of just letting the wrestlers wander out from what looked like a triage tent and amble to the ring.
But even better still, the in-ring work and the promos are still operating ultra reactive to the debut of the New World Order. Though we get a few major developments in the still heating up Cruiserweight and Tag TEEEEAMMMM divisions, everybody still has something to say about Hogan. Each performer in turn taking the time to give a live reaction to the “un-manly” acts of Hollywood. Acts he will supposedly answer before this week’s telecast is done.
Obviously, he doesn’t do that, but again, his presence off TV is far more effective than it is with him on it. Heels and faces alike all weigh in, using the absence of much of the major players of this angle being “given the week off” to take up the room and spotlight left in their absence.
Cannily even, this new turn allows a lot of WCW history to be slightly retconned. Events that were once played in support of a “hero” are now framed as the actions of a craven, attention-greedy despot. Because…they always kinda were in the first place. The ticker tape parade given to him, after signing with WCW and held at these very “studios” is now talked about like the celebration of a visiting tyrant.
The jibe about how “Billionaire Ted” promised him movies and larger profiles but didn’t deliver is hilariously undercut by Tony Shaveonme revealing that “tonight” is the basic cable premier of Mr. Nanny. Calling to light what the NWO really was. The last attempt at relevancy for a waining household name.
Hell, even “Mean Gene” Kevin Greene is back! Reminding us all that the first New World Order, that is the post-Crisis 4 Horsemen, are still walking around un-stomped. It just seems like a whole lot of Valiantly competent attempts at serialization, executed by all your dad’s hunting buddies.
I know it’s not gonna last, but I’m enjoying it while I can. I think y’all would do, if you had the uniquely horrifying point of view I have now. Speaking of points of view, Not-Aerostar got me one of the first King’s Quest games so I’m gonna do a bunch of 90s poppers and scream at a computer screen until I go hoarse.
Be seeing you, Nitro-cateers.
Just Trying His Best,
JPIII
Charlie Davis is the world’s premier Shatterstarologist, writer and co-host of The Match Club.
Mikey is a writer, graphic artist, and tabletop roleplaying designer based out of Columbus, Ohio. In his free time, he watches wrestling and indulges in horror media. Find him on Twitter @quantumdotdot.
Forrest is an experimental AI that writes and podcasts about comic books and wrestling coming to your area soon.
