Listen, I don’t feel like throwing up a banner on short notice, so you’re getting a picture of this here dog. Good enough for me, dammit.
So a buddy of mine forwarded this Grand Slam Collision show my way via DVD-R recording… along with a couple other things that he thought I might like. This was the Grand Slam show from Australia that took place on Valentine’s Day. Out of courtesy, I gave it a watch and…
I liked it just fine.
It opened with a Moxley/Takeshita match for Mox’s Continental title or something like that that ended in a time limit draw, which deflated a rather hot crowd, but Takeshita hit Mox with his elbow thing to keep the crowd happy for the rest of the show. I’d imagine they’re going to do this match against at the next AEW PPV (Revolution, I think?) and if that’s the case, then go for it. They had good chemistry, the crowd was into it, and hopefully, a PPV match with a 60-minute time limit might let these guys go all out… oh wait, wrong PPV.
Women’s Tag Champs Willow and Harley defeated Penelope Ford & Megan Bayne to retain the titles… and then some other girl I’m not familiar with comes out and attacks the champs afterwards. Willow is also TBS champion… as of this writing. I haven’t watched last night’s Dynamite and I have checked the results. I probably should have done that before writing this post, but then again, this post is being written Wednesday morning and I’m probably going to forget about it the next day. Anyway, the match was fine. Nothing special, but it got the champs over, I guess. That’s the whole point of this match, right? To give these tag champs a nice big win or something?
Hangman Page defeated Andrade to earn himself a World title shot against MJF at the Revolution PPV. So I guess I should be thrilled that AEW didn’t pivot and give the shot to the former WWE guy who used to be in AEW and then went back to WWE and then got let go and here he is again… or whatever that whole deal was. I mean, look, the match was fine and all… but this was a case where I wasn’t feeling either option. On the one hand, there’s the feeling of “been there, done that” with Hangman getting another World title shot and possibly not winning. On the other hand, as much as people seem to like Andrade now all of a sudden, he’s still the same guy that left no impression with me back in his previous stints. Either way, I’m generally meh on this PPV so far.
Orange Cassidy and Timeless Toni Storm defeated Wheeler Yuta and Marina Shafir, with Yuta eating the pin. As per stipulations, he has to cut his hair. Yuta tries weaseling out, but Mox comes out and tells that sumbitch to take it like a man. And so we get the comedic hair cutting where Yuta is left with an embarrassing haircut that I’m sure will be cut off by the next show… I did enjoy Orange going “I’m sorry” to which Yuta goes “No, you’re not” to which Orange admits “You’re right. I’m not.” That’s funny.
TNT Champion Kyle Fletcher defeated Mark Briscoe in a ladder match to retain his pink-strapped title. I feel like these guys have been fighting each other forever, but everyone has long forgotten about the video game, so hopefully, these guys can move on to other things. Fun ladder match for what it is with some crazy spots in there.
AEW World Champion MJF defeated Brody King to retain the title. Nice little match with Brody King being the badass hoss and MJF being the smart chickenshit who eventually gets one over King to escape this one. Honestly, despite whatever momentum Brody got over some political stuff as of late, there was no way in hell he was winning the title here, so you might as well go for an entertaining match that at least teases that possibility.
You know what? This was a fairly entertaining enough show. A nice little batch of wrestling to watch on the side… but not enough for me to want to follow the product on a regular basis… at least, not yet.
dtm666 