I Don’t Even Know What I’m Talking About Number 14. Maybe He Just Likes Cheese??

Hello and welcome to another… one of these.. If you’re new to this then this is a sanctuary I have away from the regular stuff that I do where I talk about a bunch of other stuff and get sidetracked in some way no doubt.. As I’m writing this I don’t have a subtitle or photo right now in this article but you will be able to see one so you’ll already have a better idea than me at this stage as to where my mind wandered to while doing this.

I’m going to talk about a bunch of things again in this. There’s a new Clubland album coming out and it’s annoyed me. I watched my first wrestling PPV in full for about a decade and my first ever non WWE PPV event as well and I’ll give you my opinion and then a bunch of other rubbish that’s happened as well.

The event in question was AEW Full Gear back at the start of November (that’s how long I’ve taken to write this!) It’s the first time I’ve watched an event from AEW (All Elite Wrestling) and probably my last given that how tricky it is to get hold of their events to watch, I watched this on YouTube before it got taken down on a 460p video upload.

I won’t go through the card match by match in too much detail because there’s no real point but there were 2 matches that got my attention and features the only 3 wrestlers on their roster that I’ve heard of.

The first was their title match. Cody Rhodes vs Chris Jericho. Cody I knew because of his dad (gold dust in the WWF days) and they are a very proud wrestling family. Slightly less high profile than the Heart family but then compared to them they all are. Chris Jericho I knew also from the WWF back when he was a star in that promotion. Wrestling fans will recall his Y2J gimmick when he debuted in 1999.

This was the best match of the night from AEW’s 2 biggest stars and was very well worked given that this is a promotion with a budget. Cody ramped up the hype on this by saying that if he lost he would “never challenge for the AEW championship ever again” which made the clean win for Jericho a surprise given that stipulation. I was expecting a Cody Rhodes win or at least some kind of DQ to keep the Cody dream and hype going but it is what it is.

The match that I wanted to see was the lights out match between Moxley and Omega. Kenny Omega was a name I knew of given that he’s.. Let’s say.. been around a bit would be a polite way to put it. John Moxley, no idea if I’m being honest but the AEW promos were building him up as the most dangerous man in the promotion.

For those who don’t know a lights out match is something that goes back to the early territory days and were often brutal and borderline barbaric. The event has officially finished. The lights are turned off in the arena and then brought back up again. The promotion isn’t responsible from this point on wards and neither is the local governing authority. Of course this being wrestling we know that neither of those statements is true but the whole “we’re not responsible” thing adds to the tension and the drama of the occasion. This was also the first time I’ve ever seen a lights out match. The WWF never really had them, even in the attitude era which was a surprise given the nature of that era.

Now I will be sharing some shots from the match. Just be warned they may not be for everyones taste and some disgression is advised here. But I’m doing this to show just what kind of match this was.

It was a pretty ridiculous match if I’m being honest some of the weapons were a bit.. weird to say the least. Lets take this back a bit. Jon Moxley does come across as real somewhat but Omega doesn’t. Looking at their promos at least. But they instantly take the fight into the crowd and they have security keeping the fans back. The cameras couldn’t get a proper shot half the time. It was Combat Zone Wrestling with a budget. What really got me was that normally there’s 2 characters in a wrestling match. The baby-face, that’s to say the good guy, and the heel, the bad guy. But watching this for the first time I didn’t know which was which because as the match went on I didn’t know which was which. The fan reaction to both of them was exactly the same.

They bring out a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire and do fake shots with it combined with bits with real barbed wire. They cut Omega’s back up a bit with it but really other than that I’m wondering what the point was with this. They did worked spots over and over with it.

The next thing was the broom wrapped in barbed wire. Oh yeah Omega was known as the cleaner in Japan.. cue the eye roll emoji.. and the people were cringing. Because it was REAL barbed wire but ignoring the fact that this is a wrestling match and therefore a FAKE fight.

The bit that gets me here is that we don’t even know what bits caused all the blood. And another thing. They spent more time looking under the ring for objects than any other match I’ve ever seen in my life. But the issue I have with this is. Objects under the ring are meant to be realistic. I totally get that idea. Yeah folding chairs are OK you might need spares. Wires are also acceptable. I’m OK with that. But when a board covered with mouse traps was produced I’m just left thinking “what the hell” The mouse traps were armed with cheese as well. I don’t know the point of this to be honest. My theory is that either Moxley or Omega really like cheese. I don’t know. Maybe Wallace in disguise or something. Go to the moon if you want cheese and take this BS match with you while you’re at it.

But this moment was just wrong when Moxley gets hanged by a chain over the top rope. I’m actually holding my hands over my head in shame when I think about stuff like this. It was good in the smokey mountain territory days but here when you have 2 people that don’t know what they are supposed to be doing it just looks terrible and awkward and it just was.

The next spot that was terrible in a match of terrible spots was when Omega pulls out a bag.. Of supposedly broken glass. He only took one piece out to show what it is tried to rip Moxley over the face with it but because it’s sugar glass it doesn’t work very well. Now, hang on a minute, we start with REAL barbed wire so everyone gets blood and cut up early now we go to FAKE broken glass?? If I was writing this match that would surely be the other way round. I’m not saying I’d want to write something like this but if I was.. That’s how I’d do it. Anyway for those who don’t know sugar glass is essentially what they use in movie special effects. The Matrix was full of it for example. And you can tell it’s that because when Omega stamps on the bag then empties the contents onto the ring mat the contents have been reduced to mostly powder. Again, teach people how to work with props AEW!!!

Oh and Omega puts some of the fake glass in Moxley’s mouth. I’m guessing Moxley wasn’t terribly comfortable after that, sugar glass is pretty dry.

Then some fake stabbing with a fake ice pick follows. Then the worst bit for me

It was a kind of barbed wire trampoline device it was a frame webbed with barbed wire. This was made specifically for this purpose. You cant bring this to the ring so this has to be used at this point at that area of the arena. This is the problem with this type of match. The weapons in hardcore matches when I used to watch them were mostly 2x4’s and folding chairs which you could find in any part of the arena which makes it believable. This is just beyond stupid for me. Let me write this again so it hits home. It’s a trampoline frame webbed in barbed wire. But here’s the thing. They both fell into this, device, they were caught up in the barbed wire they both had to be cut free. Yet they weren’t any more cut up than they were before. It’s almost like the barbed wire wasn’t real barbed wire or something. So they likely use fake barbed wire fake glass AFTER the real barbed wire. The match started with blood then the blood got less as we went through the match.

Next spot was when Moxley cuts the ring canvas off and exposes the wooden ring which by the way took an absolute ice age to achieve. Moxley kicks out of a DDT on the wood then a flip from the top by Omega gets missed. He lands on the hard wood ring. Moxley DDT’s Omega into the wood (that’s like a move where the guy’s head gets forced into the ground) and that was the finish of the match.

It was actually awful to watch but fascinating at the same time. Fascinating to see after a near 20 year absence from watching wrestling seeing how it’s changed and how (frankly) low it’s sunk in the subsequent time. But also to see just what AEW was charging $50 for. There was one worthwhile match on the card and that was the championship match which I genuinely enjoyed. The biggest audience pop of the night was very early on when the Rock and Roll Express made an appearance. The fact that there wasn’t a cheer as big for the AEW stars spells trouble for the promotion for me. And if this is the best AEW has to offer then I again fear for the promotion.

I have since seen clips on YouTube of CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling) and my goodness that is even worse. Their fascination with light tubes is just absurd for me if you can stomach it below is a video from CZW their “best” of 2018.. Viewer digression is advised again here.

Now I do realise this isn’t typical wrestling of the modern era and I’m semi aware of what the WWF now known as WWE is doing and it’s not like this but the more I see of things like this the more convinced I am that having to stop watching wrestling because I was finding too expensive to follow (pay per view events disappeared behind the Sky pay wall) is maybe not the worst thing in the world.

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Anyway enough of people doing a worked shoot for the entertainment of others it’s Christmas as I write this, Like I say I meant to publish this over a month ago but my other project took preference because it’s a more professional series and people actually want to read that over this but there is another thing to mention.

Dream dance 87 got released. I reviewed the excellent volume 86 and volume 87 is pretty good too. I won’t go too much in depth because this article has gone on for ages already and I’ve only properly listened to CD1 but I can go through some of the highlights from the first CD of the album.

There’s a few highlights but overall the first CD seems to have more bite to it than the first disk of volume 86. Both are good but for very different reasons and both do very different things. One track that will be of interest to many will be the Tiesto track Halfway there

Recognise it? You will if you watched the women’s World Cup on TV it’s THAT track and it really works for me. I’ve not been a fan of Tiesto’s recent work but for me this one really works so that was a big surprise.

Another surprise was Blasterjaxx and Children of Today

This has an actual euro vibe to it which is something I have always looked for in dance tracks since the start of the 2000’s

As with volume 86 things get much more trancy towards the back end of each disk. This is where I think Sony make a mistake. The start of each disk is pretty gentle and then has a pretty clubby trancy vibe in the second half of each disk. It’s the one criticism I have of Dream Dance 86. The second half of disks one and two should have made up disk two if you follow me. So you have the EDM house sound of Tiesto at the start of the first disk then at the end you have DJ Fait who has changed a bit since he first did nomensland which appeared on Tunnel Trance Force 34 in 2004. Here’s the Klubbingman remix of Looking Like That

Not the best track I’ve ever heard but still very nice to listen to and highlights the change in style between the various halves of the disks that is something typical it seems with current dream dance albums. It’s always been there in a way but now the difference seems to be more emphasised with the pop like slightly slower paced EDM coming across on the first half of the first disk and the slower elements of the more trancy sound on the first half of the second disk. I don’t think that’s the way to put an album together but that’s just my take on the whole thing.

In other news. A new clubland album has come out. Well I say NEW. It’s a trance anthems album with all the old tracks on it and it SUCKS again. Honestly this is really getting tedious and annoying now We had 4 albums like this last year and we’ve had at least 2 this year that I’m aware of. This album is so bad there isn’t even a high quality picture of it on google image search at the time of writing this. But this isn’t even the worst thing about this album. It had One by Swedish House Mafia on it. NOT trance. It has Levels by Aviici on it. NOT trance. Not quite as bad as We Found Love by Rihanna being on Future Trance 58 but it’s not far off. Eric Prydz is on the album. The same track that was on the Trance Nation collection in 2010. Seriously this is bad and the responses on social media were mixed to say the least. Those that were positive and yes there were some, loved it. But the many more negative comments really laid into the brand for this. Interesting that I can’t even blame AATW anymore as clubland got bought out y Universal several years ago. Universal who put Rihanna on Future Trance. You know. In hindsight this was on the cards wasn’t it? So there you are. Recycled trance classics plus Swedish House Mafia and Eric Prydz if you like the clubland brand then enjoy it. But it’s hardly a new addition of the brand to be proud of.

So that’s that. The first disk of Dream Dance 87 is great. Clubland was shocking and AEW was also shocking and both for the wrong reasons as it turns out. The F1 season reviews continue in January as we are into 1990 now.

but You’ve made it this far so I’ll leave you with a long video to play us out. This is the sort of thing that I think the internet needs more of. Geometry Dash being played perfectly. Thank you for reading and there will be more from me very soon.