The Classic Commences| AEWeekly #146

Welcome to the #AEWeekly review discussion where PWM contributors reflect on the highlights of the last week in AEW. The eligibility week always includes the most recent episode of Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision, plus any social-media exclusives up until publication.

This week’s contributors are Tim [@TimmayMan]  covering both Match and Moment of the week, Sergei [@SergeiAlderman] covering Best Interview, Greyson [@GreysonNation] exploring a key Story Beat, and Peter [@PeterEdge7] giving us the MVP of the week.

 A page of links to prior installments may be found here: #AEWeekly

Komander vs Hechicero

"Que descanse en paz Rampage, Viva Lucha Libre!..."

by Tim.

Looking at this week’s slate of matches, I would have thought the match of the week would have come out of the opening round of the Continental Classic. There were plenty of bangers in the tournament, building towards future rounds and delivering on the action. Yet the match that was my favorite this week came off of a special Lucha edition of (the not long for this world) Rampage. I’ve long been enamored with Lucha Libre, although I can’t pinpoint an exact starting point of my fandom. Maybe it’s just growing up being a big comic book fan: the athleticism, showmanship, and attire are the closest thing to real-life superheroes.

The matchup of Komander and Hechicero is a good one, as Komander fits the "plucky babyface" role so well, and Hechicero is just that much bigger physically that he looks like Bane in this pairing. The action is fast and furious with Komander’s agility being countered by Hechicero’s power. Komander goes for a head scissors, Hechicero powers him down into a slam. Hechicero also has a bag full of submissions to pull from which he does liberally. Komander is able to escape these submissions via rope breaks and pin attempts, but it always feels like it’s by the skin of his teeth. Komander displays his trademark quick top rope footwork, but Hechicero has some quickness of his own. Hechicero’s physique is a good defense, as he’s built like a barrel. It makes attempted pins a believable challenge. Komander goes up top for a moonsault but Hechicero’s legs might as well have been a mouse trap, as Komander ends up in an armbar. Only by reversing the hold into a pin attempt is Komander able to escape. There’s a certain looseness to Lucha moves, which I don’t see as a fault. It adds an element of struggle which counteracts the more heavily choreographed moves. For example, Hechichero needs two attempts to lock Komander into a spinning Mad Scientist Bomb. Makes sense since Komander is trying to not get hit by the move. But get hit he does, followed by a heavy knee to the corner and then a Guillotine Leg drop that Hechicero hits so perfectly. It always looks like absolute death and it sounds great as both bodies impact on the mat. Hechicero wins.

In talking with the other writers here at ProWrestling Musings we were spitballing who we wanted to see entered into the Continental Classic this year. Hechicero’s name came up, but Komander would have been a good entrant as well. It’s very telling how deep AEW’s roster is that we get a whole tournament full of top level competitors, and two guys not involved can still have a stand-out match on AEW programming. I’m hoping that Hechicero’s win is a precursor to the Super Show in Tokyo in January as CMLL is being advertised as participating. He’s a special talent that can have stand-out matches with virtually anyone. 

Brody King

"Regrets of a violent man..."

by Sergei.

The Continental Classic is rightly acclaimed for fantastic in-ring action. But one of my favorite aspects of last year's C2 were the documentary-style post-match interviews. Continental participants monopolized the Interview of the Week for four weeks straight last year. On one hand, those were Danielson and Kingston, two of the greatest on the mic ever. On the other hand many of the others in the tournament were just edged out by those two, and had really amazing interviews that would've been Best any week without SUCH strong competition. One of whom was Brody King who is back in the C2 this year, and with Dragon and Eddie both out long-term, he doesn't have that level of competition on the mic as last year!

As Tim mentions in Moment below, Brody stands up to Death Rider Claudio's attempt to take advantage of his fallen rival in the closing moments of Dynamite Wednesday night. While this undoubtedly hints at his rivalry with Darby evolving into mutual respect, and Brody taking on more of a fan-favorite role in the story, AEW storytellers love to leave a little ambiguity there: based on what we saw on TV, you could theorize that blocking Castagnoli was less about defending Darby and more about physically intimidating the man he's scheduled to meet in his second C2 match tonight. But that's the nice thing about words: saying it out loud can clarify any possible ambiguity or alternate interpretation, and that's exactly what Brody does.

Brody makes it clear that he has grown to respect Darby over the MANY years they have battled, and that he regrets the necessity of the level of violence it took to beat him down to the point it takes to finish him when Darby was far less than 100% from a "car accident" (aka, from being an absolutely insane kamikaze). This leads naturally into talk of how much he won't regret the level of violence against Claudio tonight. His words are brief and to-the-point, but Brody has that natural intimidation factor in both his physicality and his voice (much like Samoa Joe) that can make a simple, brief interview surprisingly impactful.

With two of the biggest stars in Gold League already down one, and Darby focused on being the spoiler for Claudio, the matchup between Brody and Claudio could have massive implications for the rest of the Continental tournament. But it also has implications for the overarching Death Rider story and the possibility of House of Black feuding with the faction running roughshod over the whole promotion. And without going into a lot of spoiler-y detail, King's words teased all of that nicely, getting me (at least) nicely hyped for tonight's showdown between the two — and that's the job!

Hangman Adam Page

"Hangman wants his title, but is he ready for it?..."

by Greyson.

After the end of the main event of Full Gear where Jon Moxley retained against Orange Cassidy, I was happy to see Hangman Adam Page come out to help defend Cassidy against the Death Riders’ post-match beat down by taking on Wheeler Yuta, but then he quickly shifted towards primarily assisting Christian Cage, who holds a contract for the next AEW World Championship match opportunity upon request. Given that Cage holds said contract, I initially viewed Hangman's pivot toward him as a logical and strategic move to help protect AEW: Cage would be the quickest, most viable approach to remove Moxley from his reign of terror as champion. However, it now seems that his motivations here were likely not primarily altruistic, in contrast to the defeated Cassidy. Instead this was apparently part of a deal with Cage wherein Page would assist him and in return receive the first match for the World Championship during Cage’s reign. 

Given how he took away Killswitch fka Luchasaurus’ TNT title, it should have been expected that Christian Cage would not ultimately come through for Hangman. Still Hangman voiced his anger and disappointment on the Thanksgiving Eve Dynamite, just a week and a day removed from “National Cowboy Shit Day,” which he declared in 2021 to commemorate his world title win. “I kept up my end of the deal and Christian, if you had been able to keep up your end of the deal, then I’d be back home tomorrow for lunch going to town on a bowl of stuffing with the World Championship around your waist, but you failed,” asserted Page. He clarifies that his “intention is and has always been to be the AEW Men’s World Champion.” He continues, stating “it should have never been Swerve,” but then interestingly says it also shouldn’t have been Bryan Danielson, then continuing to Moxley, and it “won’t be Christian’s.” “That championship is and always has been mine,” he concludes. 

Page has long been the “main character of AEW” and consistently centered the true meaning behind the AEW World Championship, as a mantle of leadership and seating the champion as the main ambassador of AEW and what it stands for, not a mere athletic accomplishment, an idea Cassidy echoed in his promo ahead of the match at Full Gear. This was a major part of the initial impetus of his feud with Swerve Strickland. However, since then, Hangman has devolved into a deranged version of himself seeking vengeance against Strickland and even as that feud was supposed to come to an end after the extremely intense death match at All Out, fans have watched as he continues to take his anger out on anyone and everyone he perceived as getting in his way. As AEW has fallen into disarray with Jon Moxley and his Death Riders taking control of AEW, and now Orange Cassidy failing to dethrone Moxley, arguably there would not be a better time for the original ambassador and defender of the AEW movement’s values to rise up. But is he still the kind of man who can live up to those values? 

On Collision, AEW EVP Christopher Daniels, whom Page attacked at the end of Full Gear and threatened on Dynamite, chose to see the best in the man he has known for over 15 years and partially echoed this sentiment as he voiced what many of us have surely been thinking as we’ve seen this shift in Hangman’s demeanor persist as long as it has. “This thirst for vengeance you’ve got, it’s not fueling you, it’s poisoning you. It’s taking you away from your goals,” asserted Daniels. This persistent and troubling change towards vengeance in Hangman post-Swerve reminds me of how Orange Cassidy recently stated that he didn’t like the way his battles with Moxley changed him as a person and at that time refrained from assisting the AEW locker room in confronting Moxley until after Chuck Taylor was attacked by the Death Riders. Cassidy managed to maintain his unique character and put up a strong (though unsuccessful) challenge against Moxley by limiting his involvement until now, but Hangman took the opposite approach, intentionally or not, of redefining himself almost entirely after Swerve. As I mentioned in a prior AEWeekly discussing Orange Cassidy’s abstention, Hangman himself said that as he and The Elite changed the world, “it feels like the world changed us…it changed me,” back in 2021 ahead of his championship win. It is quite clear here that his encounters with Swerve have changed him and just as he said in 2021 about his state after a string of seeking the title, he has most certainly lost himself again, more so than before. Based on his promo on Dynamite, where he throws a legend in Danielson under the bus, lumping him in with Strickland and Moxley as unworthy, neglects to mention the tribulations his colleagues have faced under Moxley, and fails to show any intentions of bettering AEW as champion, it seems Hangman has now gone far astray from the ideas he implored Strickland to adopt in favor of a stance strikingly similar to that of his foe: a single-minded focus on the World Championship as his deserved “spot” (as Swerve would say). 

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.” - Octavia Butler

Though Page harshly refused Daniels’ advice (using words that suggest he could have been reminded of some traumatic memories of his), Daniels in calling on him to “let… go” of “this stuff that happened in the past,” actually echoed one Page’s own ideas that led to him successfully achieving the title after the years of drinking and tumult our Anxious Millennial Cowboy faced. As part of the aforementioned 2021 promo where he asserted his readiness to take on then-champion Kenny Omega, Page included “learning to let the past live in the past and accept new friends into my life” as part of his definition of “Cowboy Shit.” 

Now the question remains if this conflict with Christian Cage will be what gets us Adam Page versus Christian Cage in a steel cage on Rampage, as some fans have joked about. As for the AEW World Championship, he clearly is not yet ready, and engaging Moxley as things stand now could only lead to a further escalation of Page’s already exceedingly angry and aggressive state. It will likely take quite some time, but I do believe the opportunity will come back his way, and Adam Page is better than perhaps anyone in wrestling at telling a long-term story of redemption, so this journey will likely be just as intriguing as the one to his first title. In due time, I believe he will come around and live up to his own ideal of Cowboy Shit, the standards he set for an AEW World Champion, and use his still very much intact tenacity and athleticism to once again earn that title. Or another, albeit very unlikely, possibility is that he may earn the title using his current extreme level of aggressiveness, as the only one willing and able to go far enough with Moxley (as he has done so in the past, namely at Revolution 2023), fighting fire with fire so to speak, and “grow back into” the role of being a leader and ambassador of AEW’s values while being champion, similar to MJF’s record-breaking reign. But who would be his Adam Cole, who would be the friend who helps him become himself again? 

Brody King

"Honor among combatants..."

by Tim.

The Death Riders are the dominant faction in AEW at the moment (they’re #1 on my faction power rankings for a reason!). Eventually they’re going to affect every member on the AEW roster in one way or another. Which makes the post match angle at the end of Dynamite all the more intriguing. Brody King beat a bandaged and bruised Darby Allin (who was in a car accident only a few days prior) and he wasn’t thrilled about it. Later, in post match comments, we learned that Brody felt bad about beating up a clearly not 100% competitor. Go back even further (to WrestleDream) and after Darby beat King there, the two shook hands out of mutual respect. So when Claudio starts to make his way to the ring to further brutalize Darby, it is King who re-enters the ring to ward off the Death Rider heavy.

This is noticeable in that King isn’t doing this out of self-preservation, or even to defend his fellow House of Black members. He’s stepping up to protect someone he respects as a fellow wrestler, a fellow fighter. It shows that the reign of terror that the Death Riders are currently on is branching out and enveloping everyone in AEW. They didn’t target King, but they certainly got his attention.

When I think about the future of AEW with the Death Riders, a quote from George Orwell regarding fascism comes to mind. One of the most memorable lines from his prescient novel 1984: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever”. That’s what the Death Riders are bringing. Lose a match, you get beat down by Claudio. Challenge Moxley, you get jumped by PAC. Put a plastic bag over your mentor and pledge loyalty to the group? First, your name is Wheeler Yuta, secondly you get left out to a crazed Hangman while your stablemates watch from the cheap seats.

Brody King is a purveyor of violence, he’s said so himself. “Life’s hard. Be harder.” is a quote from him during last year’s C2. It’s going to be hard to go up against the Death Riders, Orange Cassidy showed that a solo brave soul isn’t enough to defeat them. It’s going to take a unified front. Maybe the staredown between Claudio and King to close Dynamite is just to set up next week’s tournament match. My hope is that this is another chapter in AEW vs. Death Riders. One in which the unlikely hero of Brody King steps up and becomes the violent defender of the promotion, alongside Darby Allin. If nothing else, Death Riders vs. House of Black at World’s End is the easiest booking decision of the year.

Daniel Garcia

"The 12th Man..."

by Peter.

When it comes to tough openers in the C2, it can be said that Daniel Garcia got the the short straw with his contest against Okada in this past Collision. Whether the eventual draw that came after going 20 minutes with the Rainmaker is more one point gained or two points dropped will be evaluated when the final positions are locked in Christmas week but in what is is my Moment of the Week, it could have been zero had it not been for the connection that Danny has built between himself and the fans.

Okada has made offence outside the ring one of the primary weapons of his offensive arsenal and in this particular match it seemed on the brink of success, as Garcia was struggling to get into the ring before the count of 10 but with a pair of ringside fans a human wingspan apart cheering him on, the motivation overwhelmed his body, blocking the pain that was attempting to drag him to defeat, and Daniel somehow broke the count keeping him in the match.

Unless those fans turn out to have literal superpowers that connected with Garcia (which would make this the Moment of the Year and would make mainstream news in a way that overlapped anything from the Costco Guy) this particular moment was a moment of will over body.

While talk of "the feeling" from Daniel might be as overplayed as the song "Love it When You Call" (from a UK band with the same name as that favourite saying of Danny's,) but it has helped create a connection between Garcia and the AEW fanbase. It's a connection that sees a different Garcia than the one this time last year.

Last year's Danny probably loses in 10 minutes to a man who is a contender to be on wrestling's Rushmore but this year's Danny Garcia didn't actually survive against Kazuchika Okada but he thrived against him and ran out of time in actual fact and a significant percentage of credit goes down to the connection Daniel has developed with the audience.

Quite literally in one particular Moment, and that Moment makes him my MVP of the Week.