A Tale of Two Casuals

From: Elmo Machete

Hey Scott, just some Monday morning thoughts on attending the PPV last night.

I wasn’t planning on going to Forbidden Door. If I had the means to watch AEW I would, but I don’t so I can’t. I went to a Dynamite/Rampage taping (this was before Collision) a few years ago and while I enjoyed myself infinitely more than I ever have at a WWE TV taping I didn’t leave with the “rah-rah AEW” attitude so many people had at the time. I wanted them to succeed, but I tend to get behind individual performers rather than whatever company they’re working for. Money is tight, I didn’t want to take off from work but when I described the NJPW/CMLL aspect in passing to my oldest friend/original tag partner Shasta (“storylines don’t really matter, especially at this show”) he snapped up two tickets with a promo code that came to $53 each. If I’d gone alone like I’d considered I probably would’ve ended up paying more than that for nosebleeds. Shasta is now the most casual of casual fans, he was supposed to come with me to Dynamite 3 years ago but since he’s a Real Adult he had to wait for a contractor to install his front door that day and I took my then 9 year old niece (we left early). He’d never seen any AEW at all, he doesn’t have cable either but we’d go to Ring of Honor shows back in their glory days (the only time I’ve ever really been behind a promotion as a whole) and he watches the Rumble & Mania every year (sometimes Summerslam) so he was familiar with a decent chunk of the roster.

He parked at the LIRR that goes straight to UBS and I saved some money right away because they hadn’t taken my return ticket after I went to the Museum of the Moving Image last week, which if you have the opportunity you should absolutely check out – free on Thursdays! If you cannot mine even the slightest bit of joy from seeing screen-used Muppets live in person, I don’t know if we can be friends.

We walked in during the House of Black trios tag, unaware that we’d missed an unannounced first pre-show match. Our seats were good but not great, somewhere in the 200s facing the entryway. The big box of screens hanging above the ring blocked the big screen above the entrance portals, and wasn’t showing the PPV feed until somewhere in the middle of the show… which would have been a problem if after checking out merch and snacks we hadn’t snuck down to two open seats in the 100s facing the hard cam. During the Saraya/Mariah match I tried my best to explain Toni Storm and Company to Shasta, and the world’s biggest Luther fan in the row ahead of us corrected me when I described him as “her butler, he’s nobody.” I was careful with what I said and how loudly after that.

The Lucha Bros. are still awesome, although I could have done without a Mexican/Plainviewvian Destroyer in back-to-back matches. I’m guessing MJF and Penta didn’t talk beforehand, Max doesn’t seem like he knows Spanish. It was fun booing the Young Bucks, who unlike Chris Jericho the crowd seemed to be playing along with. I’ve never been a fan but to each their own. Bryan/Shingo was somewhat disappointing. I still love the guy, he’s an all-time favorite but I believe it was Sonic Reducer that said we’ve seen this same Bryan match 100 times and I agree. Technically fine, cool seeing Shingo again and this is almost certainly the last time I’ll see Bryan wrestle live so that was nice but it wasn’t the caliber match they’d shell out the cash for “Final Countdown,” y’know?

Loved Toni’s entrance, the match was a lot of fun too. It was around this time I realized nobody was coming to claim our ill-gotten seats, we were on the aisle and I kept expecting to have to move but everybody who made us get up was going to a seat further down. I settled in comfortably for OC/ZSJ, Orange is one of the guys Shasta was passingly familiar with and the moment the Pixies started playing he said “okay, I get it. I’m in.” This was my personal match of the night, OC is one of the guys who made me want to be a fan of AEW in the first place.

Jericho trios and the ladder match were… there. I kinda checked out of the ladder match when they immediately brought four ladders into the ring as offensive weapons that they obviously weren’t going to climb and just focused on Mark Briscoe. Glad he’s still around. Stephanie Vaquer was super impressive, when I saw her ring gear I thought “oh, that’s why Tony’s a fan.” Sasha is still Sasha. To avoid another Luther situation, when Shasta questioned the placement of the TBS title above the Women’s World I whispered “they’re paying her a lot more money than Toni Storm.” Probably didn’t need to whisper, I didn’t expect the crowd to turn on Mercedes like THAT. I don’t watch real sports so I forget how much we hate Boston here (which even without sports, agreed, all of New England sucks).

Moxley/Naito next and I was TIRED. It didn’t help that the match wasn’t very good to begin with, but it felt like the crowd was saving their energy for Swerve/Ospreay. I couldn’t get into it because looking at the time and knowing how long two title matches were likely to run, I knew we were going to have to leave right as the main event was starting. If I had been by myself and not at the whim of my ride home I would have wanted to leave early, your main event should not be starting at 11:30. I certainly didn’t want to spend an hour on a platform waiting for a later train with a ton of wrestling fans of varying levels of intoxication. We caught the entrances, Shasta was overjoyed to see Prince Nana still at it (even before RoH, we’d see him at my Grandma’s bingo hall), but Will hit his first plancha and we dipped.

Overall a great experience, Shasta left with a glowing endorsement of AEW and the convenience of UBS relative to our neck of the woods. He’d not only never seen AEW but he’s never been to a live PPV so he had a blast. Nothing was outright bad, Jericho even got full rotation on the Lionsault, and it’s definitely the best experience attending a PPV I can remember (first one I’ll be able to remember fully). But Tony, your shows are too goddamn long. I wanted to stay for the main event and see what everyone raves about with Will Ospreay but staying longer would have detracted from the overall experience. I’m old now, I’d run the risk of dozing off in my (admittedly fraudulent) seat which has happened before at my local indie and that building has a 10 o’clock curfew! Plus, and this is important, even if Shasta and I had split up and I got home from the train on my own (I didn’t have work this morning) I would have been stuck on a train platform with hundreds of “WELL, ACTUALLY’s” waiting to happen. Which is not to say these people are wrong about anything, they’re certainly more knowledgeable than I on all these international wrestlers. But drunk wrestling fans at 1 AM are not my idea of a good time.

Oh, and this morning outside the grocery store I found $40 cash blowing through the parking lot. That hoodie stings a lot less now.