This was another taped event from the James L. Knight Center in Miami, FL. The big match tonight was Andrade vs Pac so we’ll dive into that later.
Orange Cassidy vs Powerhouse Hobbs
This was a world title qualifying match. They never explained how people got matched up nor why this tournament exist except for the sake of existing and to setup an eventual title match. There is no theme behind this tournament and the brackets are pretty clear in terms of whom the winners and losers will be.
They mentioned at the start of the match how Orange squashed Hobbs one year before in less than 15 seconds. Pretty much that was when Hobbs was super green so this match was used to showcase how far Hobbs had come along. For the most part, Hobbs dominated and seemed more confident and had a response for Orange’s stuff.
Hobbs looked great and I think the point was that even though Hobbs lost here again to Orange Cassidy, he still will be a contender in the near future based on his improvement. Cassidy won in a surprising manner so Hobbs looked fantastic here. Didn’t really see any botched moves so I didn’t have much of a problem with this match except for the stupid ending where Hobbs got in the referee’s face, which distracted him from a roll up by Cassidy. I think a surprise roll up by Cassidy alone would have been enough since Orange is reasonably over and Hobbs still is inexperienced.
Penta El Zero Miedo and Alex Abrahantes Interview
Tony Schiavone starts the interview off in the ring and Penta manages to utter one word before some masked guys in the crowd get their attention. Penta gets ambushed by FTR while Alex gets punked by Tully Blanchard. Pac makes the save because he’s still associated with Death Triangle while FTR take the belts back. It just irks me to no end when they have these interviews that aren’t interviews.
Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. vs. Anna Jay
This was considered a “grudge” match. Meaning, give Anna Jay TV time and try to justify her being on TV. Anna Jay sucks. Her kicks are slow and she moves like she’s wrestling in molasses. There’s no energy behind what she does, her facials are about as blank as a brick wall and she looks lost a lot of the time out there. Chris Jericho had to cover up just how awful this match was in trying to put Anna Jay over the entire time.
Britt isn’t the one to carry Anna Jay neither. The only people capable of making Anna Jay better in front of a live crowd in AEW are Serena Deeb and Thunder Rosa. Either way, the match sucked the crowd dead so badly they needed an after birth again. So Tay Conti rushes to the ring and it’s hinted she’ll probably get a title shot next against Britt. That’s fine for me just because Britt needs to be fed wins at this stage before facing either Thunder Rosa or Ruby Soho for the title loss. That said, Tay vs Britt won’t be good because Tay is about one year better than Anna Jay, which isn’t saying much.
Andrade and Pac Main Event Interview
Oddly, no Mark Henry at all tonight. They need to avoid putting Andrade in front of a microphone at all cost. He’s just terrible at speaking. Pac is okay but I got bored and zoned out.
Pac vs. Andrade El Idolo
This was a re-match. This match went very long, probably too long because of how the ending happened. This match felt better paced than their first one because they slowed it down a little and the spots were organized slightly better. But they couldn’t help themselves in starting off with big moves within the first 30 seconds. It’s somewhat understandable given that this was another “grudge” match.
Both guys are insane in terms of the type of spots they worked. A lot of apron moves and outside moves like a rana on the outside, a strange DDT on the apron, a moonsault to the outside, etc. Andrade took a nasty bump on the apron and you could see red welts on his back.
The ending was stupid because for all the huge moves both men were pulling out on the outside, the pin fall result was from a roll up by Pac. Huh? That was so anti-climatic to everything they were doing in this match. And here’s where things broke down completely.
Almost immediately, the lights went out so you could not register the winner. Afterwards, Malakai Black showed up and assaulted Pac with his mist. They started a beat down on Pac with Malakai being the assailant, which was hinted by Andrade as “having friends from all over the world” earlier in that interview that I zoned out half way. Then Cody, of course, comes in to make the save for Pac. We’re supposed to get Cody vs Malakai tomorrow and probably Cody will win but with this assault against Pac, it seems that we might have either Pac or Andrade interfering to cost Malakai the match and thus protect him while giving Cody his redemption/win back. Is the writing this obvious?
But what I hated about this match was the fact that it was obvious they had to get all their shit in, causing the last moments of the match to come off abruptly and not letting the win for Pac to breathe even for a few seconds. The lights out part is just overdone and disjointed. I mean whoever plans this shit really needs to take a hard look at the formatting. It’s obvious they have a formula now of two men’s matches + one women’s match per week but when you get an awful match like Anna Jay vs Britt Baker, you just want to cut it out and leave it on a Dark Episode instead so that a match like this gets better time. Or at least cut down the awful match by half so that the angle you want to shoot has more time to breathe.
I suppose the exciting aspect of the ending of this match was getting three NXT stars together and basically acknowledging that AEW is effectively NXT 2.0 minus Hunter/HHH’s thought process. But here’s the thing for me. The matches that are being booked are great on paper and sometimes live up to their hype to a point. However, the way Tony Khan books things to get to that point and attempts to justify everything with these extracurricular activities is so nonsensical that I want to skip all the middle parts just to get to the meat of the subject.
Final Thoughts
At least, for now, the thing AEW has going for it are the matches and certain people they now have to elevate the show. If you got rid of the week-to-week booking, the wretched interviews with the unending interruptions, the shitty backstage promos and focused exclusively on the video packages (which are actually well done and put together in a meaningful manner) and the core matches with the right talent, then AEW is miles ahead of the WWE on the wrestling portion. But trying to make sense of everything in between for the most part because of the middle cruft is where AEW just blows hard. They need to work on that aspect big time.
Also, they need better women wrestlers. I’m sorry. As someone who is a big proponent of women’s wrestling, I do like women who are good. But Anna Jay, The Bunny, Penelope Ford, Big Swole, Rebel, Emi Sakura, etc. are pretty bad. This is where the WWE is miles ahead of AEW. Actually, light years ahead. There’s only four women who are S-tier in AEW with Serena Deeb, Britt Baker (mostly for her popularity and ability to execute a promo), Thunder Rosa and Ruby Soho. The rest need a tremendous amount of work either on the execution, the psychology of their matches and just the realism to make me feel anything. The experienced women in AEW outside of the four I’ve mentioned are pretty shameful. Hikaru Shida seems to get worse every week, Emi Sakura never was good in Japan compared to her contemporaries, the Bunny has a job because of her husband, Rebel has been awful since day one. Maybe the only two I respect not in that group are Leyla Hirsch since she has an actual background and Jamie Hayter. But that TBS title almost feels unjustified at this stage of AEW. I’d prefer a cruiserweight title since there’s an overabundance of small guys in AEW.
The big problem with the women’s division in AEW is that there’s really no one for them to go after these days. All the good veterans in Japan got signed up with the WWE or have retired. Mima Shimoda still wrestles but she’s in her 50’s. The only person AEW can get that would actually mean anything to bolster their women’s roster right now would be Charlotte Flair. Or even Bayley just because I’ve heard good things about her being a coach. But in terms of both meaning something huge and being a mentor, Charlotte is by far and large the best acquisition that AEW could make for an addition to their women’s roster.