An Exercise in Wasting time
- Remembering the Master and Ruler of the World - August 28, 2024
- An Exercise in Wasting time - July 19, 2024
- 2001: Tournament Arc - June 17, 2024
Will Ospreay vs. MJF – AEW International Championship
(AEW Dynamite #250) [Jun. 17 2024]
Kicking your audience in the dick is a choice.
For some bookers, it’s a valuable tool that they use to sew the fabric of a satisfying payoff at a major occasion later down the line. For others, it’s a crutch that they become too used too, overexposing their audience to the point of apathy in the process. And then for a destined few, they’ll swerve so much that their metaphorical vehicle of a company completely wipes out. At the end of the day, no matter how successful the choice, it is a choice nonetheless. One in which success is primarily determined by a fine balance of timing, conditioning, and expectation – as well as the actual players involved, and their own ability. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t; even the best laid plans can go awry. But, at the end of the day it is a choice.
Kicking your audience in the dick at 59:58 of an hour long match? Now that is a statement. Deliberate and precise, there’s such a slim margin of error that it makes one even question the reasoning behind the choice to begin with. What could have possibly made one think that doing so was worth the investment of time and effort? What payoff down the line could possibly justify this level of dick-kickery? Just why?
Nevertheless, on a stage that one could potentially justify as worthwhile for such a momentous trolling of the audience – the 250th edition of their weekly tv show Dynamite. On a night where they had one of their newest hot commodities in Continental Champion, Kazuchika Okada, taking on their blossoming babyface World Champion, Swerve Strickland, in a Champion vs. Champion main event. AEW chose to do just that.
Just not there.
Or with either of the aforementioned parties.
Which brings me to perhaps the biggest dick kick of all of this. They chose to do this with Will Ospreay and Maxwell Jacob Friedman. In the opening match of the evening, on a card that was already announced to only have 3 matches to begin with.
Some way to celebrate your 250th episode, huh?
I will preface the rest of this review with the fact that I was fully aware of the result and run-time of this match going into it. Why I still chose to review this even knowing this information is beyond me, I guess curiosity killed the dweeb as well as the cat. An hour of either of these guys sounds like my personal idea of hell. But, nonetheless, I persisted.
Self-indulgent is a term I commonly apply to both participants’ work, but after watching this match I find myself yearning for a term that goes beyond typical self-indulgence. It feels hedonistic, like both said to Tony “we’re the best in the world, we deserve more time than that” when presented with a first draft run-sheet, and then repeated that sentiment until TK threw his hands up and conceded to a full hour of them to open the show. The sad part is I honestly believe in my heart the call for them to go an hour was made by Tony himself. This feeling is backed up by the fact that this match feels like 20 minutes of material was stretched out across the entire one hour block.
MJF starts us out classily by motioning jerking off to the crowd before his entrance is even complete, a trick he would return to in the closing third of the match in a desperate attempt to recover any form of reaction. It definitely feels foreboding knowing the length of this match going in. As does the instant bail to the outside to go and get heat in the crowd, reminiscent of his moments of time-wasting in his Iron Man match against Bryan Danielson at Revolution last year.
It’s within this pedestrian, very house show feeling, opening where Ospreay actually manages to impress me with a sequence of the rare, elusive successful drop-down that he swiftly progresses into a Hidden Blade attempt. A reminder that he has moments of potential, even if he still hasn’t put it all together in a way that satisfies me consistently, and likely never will.
In all honesty, until the final 10 minutes or so I would actually say this may be one of Will’s less egregious performances. It’s far from being without misgivings of course. There’s a minute or 2 of leg selling via falling like he’s 45 deep in a Broadway from an Irish Whip that is short lived as he starts springboarding around the ring relatively instantly on the bad leg. However, the shoulder injury that results from one of these OsCutter attempts missing on the apron is sold pretty consistently through the bulk of the match. Even if he does have a few lapses here and there, it’s in the higher end of Ospreay sell-jobs.
Also within this opening, Ospreay randomly decides to provide escalation via the introduction of the trainers table as a Chekhov’s gun of sorts. Although the match quickly returns to its designated pathway as soon as both wrestlers return to the ring before either bother to interact with the new threat at all. Much like most of this match, its inclusion feels disjointed and exclusively there in service of getting a brief pop from the audience. The result instead is a crowd that gets restless and chants “we want tables” whenever either participant bails to the east side of the ringside area.
One such instance actually leads to my favourite moment of the match as a young girl clubs MJF in the gut unprompted when Ospreay has him leant over a stair railing. It was a very sweet moment that caught everyone by surprise judging by their reactions. Of course, DO NOT do this at shows. However, I did love it. This being my favourite moment of the entire match should be indicative of my level of investment, and subsequently enjoyment, of my hour spent watching this encounter.
It’s about halfway through when I truly became conscious of the lack of material that has been brought to this attempt at an epic, and when I started clock-watching as a result. The lack of urgency is another one of the many factors that had me bored stiffless when combined with this lack of content. Even the high impact offence felt placeholder in the moment. When Ospreay hits a Styles Clash on the apron, a solemn “oh” was all it could muster from me, accompanied by a brief, customary “Holy Shit” chant from the live, paying audience. Although one could easily be convinced that was cued up on a soundboard, such was it’s short-lived nature.
They continue the shoulder selling during the picture-in-picture following this, and a powerbomb in the ring, by having the ringside doctor come and perform a shoulder assessment on Will before popping it back into place. The cost is that the pace of the match grinds pretty much to a complete halt, because Max is also selling dead from the preceding combination. Being in PIP, you would think that this wouldn’t be too much of a loss, but even the commentators aren’t paying full attention as they completely miss a desperation Hidden Blade that Will hits for a near fall, and that I myself didn’t clock as one because Excalibur calls it as a regular Back Elbow. It gets so bad that they’re recycling remarks as much as Ospreay and MJF are recycling offense. Even PS2-era WWE games wouldn’t cycle through commentary lines as much as the AEW crew here hammered home their point about humidity being a factor, or how this is the “greatest Dynamite match ever”.
AEW
There’s moments here or there that make attempts at my attention, such as a Hidden Blade Suicida that was actually quite impressive and was accompanied with excellent camera work. But with a crowd mostly sitting on its collective hands, it feels meaningless. Leading into the final 10 minutes of this slog, it doesn’t feel like this match is saying anything at all. Because it’s not. It’s complete white noise, going through the motions until they hit the true final stretch with 5 minutes left on the clock. It’s around here I start pondering the complete lack of attempting the Salt of the Earth by MJF. One would think it would be a no brainer kill-shot, and it’s presence would provide some much needed dramatic tension. But it’s not even so much as teased in the match outside of the customary heat that he would normally employ to set-up for it being what he employs to target the shoulder. It’s all very baffling really.
As is something that I was waiting to happen for the entirety of the match, even if I was expecting it, anticipating it even. With 5 or so minutes of the match, Ospreay-ism sets in and all the shoulder selling is thrown out the window as he Supermans through the pain. The pace of the offense thankfully picking up as a result, it does provide the urgency I have so desperately been craving within this barren desert of a plodding match. It’s sadly at the cost of one of the more consistent selling performances of Will’s career. Though at this point, where I’m begging for anything to satisfy the neurons in my brain, it is a noble sacrifice.
In its place we are treated to the full NXT Black & Gold shebang, with MJF kicking out of a 3rd hidden blade before the return of AEW’s favourite morality play. I was cackling at Will’s egregiously terrible acting here. It’s genuinely up there with Seth selling The Fiend on Raw in 2019 as some of the worst acting I’ve seen in professional wrestling history. Funnier still is the contrast between the conviction he has when first doing the Tiger Driver appeal and then whatever emotion he was trying to present when conflicted. The hilarity further compounds when you remember the attempts that MJF as a character has gone to when provoking Ospreay, invoking family as well as committing a brutal attack on Daniel Garcia in recent memory. Even without that, knowing the level of shithead AEW presents MJF as, why would anyone have any form of hesitation at going “too far” against him. If anyone deserves it, it’s MJF.
But no, instead what we get is The Big Book of British Confusion followed by a fuck finish of MJF hitting Ospreay with the ring with 2 seconds left in the match to win the title. Neither the commentators, nor the crowd know how to react; or even what has just happened and not in the good pro-wrestling way either. It’s poetic really, because I don’t know why I wasted my time on this dull shitter of a match when I could have had a much more productive start to my Thursday morning.
This doesn’t even feel like a kick to the dick, rather an Orange Cassidy-esque kick to the shins. Limp, passionless, uncaring. I’ve often said that the worst thing a wrestling match can be to me is boring, and that’s exactly what this was throughout. Pure, unapologetic boredom. Meltzer gave this one 5.75 stars, I give it just as many z’s, and then a good factor of 10 more too.
Want to generate some revenue AEW? Peddle this as a cure for insomnia.
