Death Riders

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 22 – Live from NY

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

Wrestling – Live posting AEW Redemption

The following paragraphs were written live while watching AEW Redemption

I’m writing this live. I think opening with the ladder match for a shot at the International Title is a good choice. Speedball Mike Bailey has to be winning this, right, considering he’s Canadian? That was a pretty fun ladder, but a standard AEW ladder match. That sounds so entitled, like it was just another good AEW ladder match, boo hoo, but it makes it harder to write about, to be honest.

The Young Bucks’ tag match is up next. I’ve made my opinions on this Ospreay/Moxley story very clear, but I know when it comes to wrestling, this is going to show out. I am curious who is going to win if the Bucks are going to face Cope and Christian at All In, and Ospreay is going to face Omega, perhaps Moxley should take the pin. Jon Moxley pinning anyone in this match if he doesn’t have a match yet at All In would just be weird. Perhaps this match will end with a returning Swerve involvement? I’m not sure. The match started off a little slow, but it’s really starting to pick up the speed of what I tend to expect from a Bucks match. The story of the match seems to center around Nick Jackson taking a lot of abuse, being out of it, and Will Ospreay being unsure how far he’s willing to go. Personally, I’ve said my opinion on tweeners and Opsreay leaning that way is no different. The ending of the match was exactly what I wanted. Moxley took the pin, and less waffling about whether Moxley is heel or not. The seeds of descent between Ospreay and Mox are what this has needed the whole time. Young Bucks save Jon Moxley’s stories once again.

I know Bandido and Kyle Fletcher is going to be incredible, but do we really need Bandido losing again? I like the way Bandido and Fletcher’s gear sort of feels counter to each other. This match is starting off a lot slower than I expected, but my friend is distracting with bad Bandido puns. I might need my own hydration break soon. Bandido’s dead lift suplex is a thing of beauty. I could see Bandido versus Kyle Fletcher being a future AEW World Championship match within the next two years. They seem to have good chemistry. I thought the power bomb to the outside was intense until Bandido did a frog splash on him from the top rope to the Kyle below. A lot of people predicted these two would steal the show, and so far, they’re not wrong. Owwww, Bandido just slammed Kyle’s face into the mat. This match has done a great job of convincing me that Bandido could really win this, and that is when wrestling is at its best to me. One of those matches where I go this is it for a pinfall and then someone kicks out. The crowd is with Bandido, and I know this won’t be their last match together. I just love saying Michinoku Driver. I knew Kyle would, but I still feel slightly deflated. Bandido has lost again. Fantastic match though. This should be Bandido’s last loss on an AEW PPV for a while.

Bang Bang Gang vs. The Dogs? Hydration break time. I don’t think Jay’s cowboy boots go well with his pants. I say that observation causes this match isn’t really doing anything for me, even with the chain. Someone mentioned two chains on commentary, and this is how I found out 2Chainz left Def Jam. Clark Connors and Juice Robinson have done more for me in this match than David Finlay and Jay White. It looked like Finlay dropped Jay White right on his neck at one point. I really am trying to feel something for this match but damn this might be really bad. Wait, nevermind, Wheeler, Yuta, and Daniel Garcia are here to get beaten up by the Gunns and let Marina hand Finlay the Shillelagh, wow. If this cements the Death Riders as more heels than tweeners, I’m happy with that, but what the fuck was this chain match? What was Jay White wearing? It felt like Clark and Juice cared more about this match than their partners.

Will Ospreay referencing a winning bonus, hell yeah, love it. See, this is another reason why what Mox is doing isn’t working for me. He gets on the mic and says this championship doesn’t matter, or this match doesn’t matter, then why should I, the viewer, watch anything Mox does?

Since Shida’s return, she has felt significantly slower and less graceful. I was pretty disappointed by the Queen Aminata match, so I have low expectations for this Maya World match. Maya World has improved with every match I’ve seen her in, and I hope she’ll get to bring something out of Shida and win the TBS title. Shida has had exceptionally bad-looking gear for a while now, but this most recent one is a much-needed improvement. To me, selling a hurt body part during a match would be one of the more difficult aspects of wrestling, so Maya selling her injured leg that Shida is targeting is working for me. This match has been better than my expectations, with Shida getting overconfident and trying to bully Maya, only for it to be her downfall. The right result in the end.

It’s Cope and Christian time which means it’s look at my phone or play video games time. I love The Bastard PAC, and like Claudio, but it’s not enough.

The Painmaker is so funny to me. I thought Ciampa vs. Jericho at Beach Break was actually good and Jericho’s best match since returning but this probably could have ended with Ciampa just getting the win and Jericho facing someone else in Canada. Jericho always needing to get his win back has always been a detriment to him trying to get people over. He’s already getting some points, though, for pocket sand. The plunder in this match has really heightened how much it rules. As my friend said in the group chat, as this was going on, I do love it when a wrestler does a move on a plushie. The sandpaper to the face had me cringing in phantom pain at the spot. Oh my god, Jericho has a tac in his head. This mirror spot Jericho is setting up as I type this is rad as hell. I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying a Chris Jericho match in 2026. ANOTHER MIRROR? A PAINMAKER MIRROR? MIST? A Judas Effect with Ciampa’s own weapon and Ciampa kicked out, WHAT? A drill to the head submission for the ending? Wow, what a match.

I got distracted and missed some of this Andrade v. Mark Davis match. It seems hard-hitting now that I’m focused on it again. I did really dig what I think is new music for Andrade with the how you know? worked into it. I was having trouble getting into this match at first, but Mark Davis and Andrade are just too good to ignore. Andrade’s spinning back fist cannot be matched. It rules. I hope Andrade takes the belt to other promotions like CMLL and NJPW, too, as it was originally envisioned.

I’m excited for Willow vs. Thekla. Thekla’s entrance jacket looked more like nacho cheese than fire to me. Thekla’s hair looks strange without the part, but I love her red and white gear. Willow’s pink and gold gear is magnificent, though. Canada is on Willow’s side, and who I expect to win. Whoops, spoke to soon, the Thekla fans in the crowd have since let their voices be known. Oh shit, she’s biting the injured ear on Willow, hell yeah. Thekla had a lot of doubters when she won the world championship, but I think she has done an excellent job with no Mercedes Mone and no Toni Storm to either heighten her run or take some of her spotlight. She has one hundred percent earned her spot, but I’m ready for Willow to take her place as the top women’s babyface (and possible top babyface in the company) with the World Championship. This match is hard-hitting, and I’m loving it so far. Willow is so great at getting the crowd behind her; she is so easy to root for. I would have preferred Willow win with her finisher, but that was an excellent reversal into the pin. I’m so looking forward to Willow vs. Mercedes III. Willow Nightingale has deserved this for quite sometime and I am glad they finally crowned her here.

Main event time. Kevin Knight, how dare you interrupt Kenny’s entrance! Kenny Omega silencing the crowd and yelling at Kevin has been fun for me. I love it when Kenny is a nice guy outside of the matches, but then turns on the Best Bout Machine button when he wrestles. It’s the kind of intensity and in-match storytelling that has always fired me up when watching him wrestle. Kenny has earned being cocky in the ring, even if he is the babyface. Kenny catching Kevin with a dropkick on the outside was awesome. I was hooting and hollering at the sunset flip from the top rope from Kenny, followed by the V-Trigger, what a move. I’m disappointed Kevin Knight got out of the top rope Snap Dragon Suplex. I really wanted to see it. The switcheroo with the two belts by Knight was nicely done. One Winged Angel for the win. That match was incredible. This is why I love Kenny Omega and, oftentimes, All Elite Wrestling.

…and then Jon Moxley and the Death Riders have to come out, of course. This sucks. Is this a Will Ospreay story or a Jon Moxley story? Is this a Kenny Omega v. Ospreay story or a Kenny Omega v. Moxley story? Enough. Ospreay is not a great storyteller, to be honest, but I’m glad he made some kind of choice there (but I still think Kenny should retain at All In.) Just as I type this, though, oh my god, Kenny, thank you so much. I laughed maniacally when Kenny Omega One-Winged-Angeled Ospreay, he deserved it.

Post-PPV Thoughts: Ospreay got what he deserved at the end of the main event. He may have hesitated to take out Kenny but he thought about doing and Kenny knew it. I don’t think that was a heel turn, but more teaching Ospreay a lesson for trusting the Death Riders and listening to Mox in the first place. As many others have said about the situation, and other wrestlers have said to his face, he’s thirty-three and shouldn’t be surprised the ruthless guys are ruthless. The booking has done no favors to persuade me to root for Ospreay to win at Wembley, and that is kind of a shame. If Ospreay shows up to Dynamite saying he can’t trust Kenny, well Will maybe it was you who broke that trust first.

Books – Decision Paralysis

I don’t really have an update as far as reading is concerned. I’m kind of having decision paralysis on what I want to read next, but I’m still read The Thrice-Bound Fool and Jade City. What I’m really reading is my email waiting for Lit Escalates to ship my The First Law New Edition Hardcovers that I contributed to Kickstarter for. Not that they’re late, they’re actively shipping them with 4000 orders already on their way, but when is it gonna be my turn? I’ve already seen they made the shipping label recently so fingers crossed my editions ship soon.

Games – Backloggd My Personal 100 and Bomberman 64

I believe it was either Dan Ryckert or Mike Minotti of Giant Bomb who discussed creating their own list of the one hundred greatest games of all time, so as an active Backlogged user I decided to do the same.

It’s an interesting task to do. At 41 years old, the top five are likely cemented with a little wiggle room, and that wiggle room grows as the list goes from 6-10, then 11-25. 26 – 100 is a lot more maleable. The difference between whether Batman: Arkham Asylum is above Spider-Man (2018) is sometimes down to how recently I’ve played it. It’s become a fun thought experiment for me about recency bias. For example, I haven’t played The Witcher 3 or Yakuza 0 since 2018, so they’ve fallen to around the fifties on my list. However, I wonder if I play them again, whether they’d stay in their positions. When I think about The Witcher 3, I worry that I won’t like it as much as I did when it first came out, because my taste in games has expanded. On the other hand, it might remind me of all the fond memories I had playing it originally, which may raise its ranking on the list.

This brings it around to what I’ve been playing on my Retroid Pocket 4, Bomberman 64, which I now have as ninety-seven on my list. I was surprised how much I still love the Adventure mode after all these years, finding all the different customization parts, unlocking gold cards, making bomb staircases to get to secret areas, and pumping up bombs to hit bosses on the head with. I kinda wish Bomberman had stayed on this track for future games or go back to it, because both the story and the gameplay in single player are so much fun to me. The only downside is I know what framerate is now, and this game chugs when you have too many bombs on screen, but I have a lot of fond memories of bringing my custom Bomberman to a friends hosue via the N64 control pack and playing multiplayer for hours. If whoever owns the rights to Bomberman released a remastered collection of the N64 Bomberman games, I’d cop that instantly. I still have the commercial for this song ingrained into my memory more than the actual Spider-Man theme it’s based on.

A month ago, this game wasn’t on my list at all, a beloved childhood game, so what else am I forgetting? There is a lot of the PSX, PS2, and PS3 staples that I completely missed being a former Nintendo fanboy and Xbox 360 owner. I do find myself having difficulty going to older games on my Retroid that are new to me, probably as an ADHD side effect, where I’ll lose focus and retreat to a game I know better. It feels like now is the time to play old games, though, because Autumn is loaded with new games that might end up on this list in the future. My biggest curiosity is whether the Ocarina of Time remake could possibly enter in the top ten or even rise above the original, which sits at number seven on my list. That’s all from me, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 21 – The Way It’s Meant To Be

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I like books. I like wrestling. I like video games. I like writing about those things. Let’s just get into it.

Wrestling – Hangman’s Back, Moxley’s There, Redemption Soon

It was announced late that Hangman Page was going to return on AEW Collision, much to the excitement of multiple group chats I’m in. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he returned or what he’d say, but I thought he did a great job of setting up his character arc for the foreseeable future. He made it clear that the stipulation he’d never challenge for the World Title was an oath he swore on a handshake deal only, meaning that the only person holding him to it right now is himself. He makes an impassioned speech about his journey, continuing to go after the other singles championships. All that sounds tantalizing for match-ups, but we’re all in agreement he’s a big fat liar who is big fat lying to himself. I don’t know which of these belts he’s going to win, if any, but the Hangman is going to find it unsatisfying. The question is what it will take for him to break the promise, when it will happen, and whether it’ll be as a face or a heel. I think people who assumed it was going to be a heel turn weren’t paying attention to the audience when he said he wouldn’t break the stipulation; they were not happy. Hangman’s character has always had a connection to the crowds, so will Hangman finally snap on a babyface and break the stipulation, or will a threat of a heel world champion on the rampage convince Hangman that breaking his word will be for the greater good? It’s going to be fun to see.

I’m going to try to keep this short because it’s easy to be negative, and it’s easy to nitpick wrestling storytelling, but I am so tired of Jon Moxley and the Death Rider’s storytelling. Let me be clear, Jon Moxley has been one of my favorite wrestlers for most of AEW’s history and a lot of times as Dean Ambrose in WWE, but this shit sucks. It’s nonsense, and it’s boring, and it has made me uninterested in Will Ospreay as a world champion. If Jon Moxley is just going to win every match, there has to be a good story to go with it. Jon Moxley used to give promos straight to the point that he was the toughest motherfucker in the room, and it was going to take everything you had to beat him. Now, he cuts promos like he’s second billing in Léon: The Professional when he’s actually coming off as second billing to Gerard Butler in Gamer. It doesn’t help that ninety percent of tweeners in wrestling have 1. not worked, 2. sucked, and 3. never helped anyone involved get over. Every time the Death Riders come out during a Will Ospreay segment, I find myself groaning. Dynamite was the worst of it because they had just come out to jump Cope and Christian (babyfaces), and now they’ve come out to fend off the Don Callis Family (heels) for Kenny Omega and Ospreay. You can deep dive into what you think Moxley is doing beyond the bounds of babyface and heel with the Death Riders, but that doesn’t make it interesting.

I’ve seen some people who are fans defend the Death Riders in 2026, and it feels like what they’re describing and what is on screen do not match up. How exactly has the Death Riders formation helped any of the members since their formation, and what does Jon Moxley beating everyone and offering a handshake do for his opponents? The most exciting the Death Riders have ever been was the lead-up to Moxley’s match against babyface Hangman Adam Page at All In. The group was spinning their wheels with the AEW World Championship before then, and then had a disappointing feud with Darby Allin that did not help Darby get over at all. Now, since the C2 Jon Moxley as a tweener has found a way to not get anyone over. Not the Death Riders, not his opponents, and not Will Ospreay leading up to what is supposed to be his biggest moment after a severe neck injury. Now here come the Elite, specifically the Young Bucks, to inject some life into this storyline once again, just as they did after Dynasty 2025. Pick a lane, Jon, so the Young Bucks don’t have to keep saving your storylines for you, and kill the Josh Barnett groundwork, Jon, this isn’t MMA, and you’re not Bryan Danielson.

Phew, got that off my chest. That being said, the card for AEW Redemption actually looks sick as hell. I would have preferred a big defense for Kenny Omega at Redemption, considering all signs showed that was originally going to be the MJF match, which was moved up for whatever reason, but Kevin Knight versus Kenny Omega is going to be awesome, and it’s going to be something to look back on when Knight reaches the top guy level sooner rather than later. I’ve loved Thekla as AEW Women’s World Champion despite beating one of my favorites, Kris Statlander, but it’s Willow’s time now, and I’m hoping for her to go all the way, beating both Thekla and Mercedes at All In to crown her as the top babyface of the women’s division. Kyle Fletcher vs. Bandido might steal the show, but I’m not looking forward to Bandido losing on pay-per-view again (see also: complaints about Jon Moxley’s current run). I thought Ciampa vs. Jericho on Beach Break was Jericho’s best match since his return, and the two of them seem to have great chemistry, so I can’t believe it, but I actually might be looking forward to Painmaker Jericho vs. Ciampa’s No Holds Barred match. I do remain a little skeptical that they can do better and may, in fact, do too much. Young Bucks on PPV are going to Young Bucks on PPV despite my misgivings about Mox and Ospreay’s story. Mark Davis vs. Andrade will be good. Claudio, Christian, and PAC will do their best to make Copeland look good. I hope Maya World beats Hikaru Shida for the TBS title because, unfortunately, Shida has gotten really slow and messy in her matches, which makes me sad as she used to be the highlight of the women’s division.

Books – Hodgepodge

This section is going to be rather short because I’m just like, unfocused, in my reading right now. I’m all over the place. I started reading Gareth Hanrahan’s The Dungeon Book, which seems like just the right kind of fun fantasy book I could use right now. Reading those special edition hardcovers of the Green Bone Saga for the podcast has me wanting to reread The Bloodsworn Saga by John Gwynne, which I bought some fancy hardcover for that series as well. A.K Larkwood’s The Serpent Gates duology is also calling to me, as it’s world buidling is not weird but unusual enough that it feels refreshing.

Games – The Mermaid Mask, Control, Vampire Crawlers.

I think it was February 2021 before most people, including me, got the vaccine, and because of the pandemic, the release of new games was, to put it lightly, in fucking chaos. I asked on Twitter if anyone had any game recommendations because my backlog was so much smaller back then, and a fellow Josh in the GeeklyInc community recommended Tangle Tower to me on the Nintendo Switch.

I fell in love with it almost instantly. Grimoire and Sally have a fun dynamic as a duo that balances each other out between being funny and effective detectives. The art style is tremendous, with stand-out character design and animation that make the cast’s personalities clear to the player. Except for one or two, the puzzles are fairly easy. The mystery itself is so intriguing, with an ending that left me just slightly deflated, but overall, I loved Tangle Tower.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1696770/The_Mermaid_Mask (You should buy it.)

I’ve been following The Mermaid Mask closely since it was announced, waiting and waiting and waiting for more information, and now, finally, it has been released. I devoured this game with all the free time I could muster. Everything I loved about Tangle Tower feels leveled up in The Mermaid Mask, with an ending that had me glued to my Steam Deck. This cast of characters is all in this cramped submarine with a murdered captain and an open cauldron that had previously never been opened before. Everything that was in Tangle Tower is here, but the animation and voice cast have been especially upgraded. I generally read much faster than most voice actors read the lines, and sometimes I can be impatient, skipping over dialogue before the voiceover is finished, but not with The Mermaid Mask. I would listen closely to each character describing who they are, why they are on the submarine, the murder, and their thoughts on the clues Grimoire and Sally discover closely, and watch the animation of the characters, so beautifully done. I struggled with some of the puzzles, in a good way, that I generally didn’t with Tangle Tower. From what I’ve gathered from social media, this game wasn’t easy to make but I would generally buy one of these Grimoire games every year, and as long as SFB Games keeps making them, I will buy them for the rest of my life.

With Control Resonant coming out, I reinstalled Control because I never finished. Last time I played it was in 2021, when it fried my coolant system for my CPU and killed my computer for like a month before I had a friend come over and help me install a new cooling system and redo the thermal paste because I did a terrible job. So I never played it after that on that computer out of a suspicious fear it would do it again. Now my latest computer laughs at the requirement for Control, so I decided to restart it from the beginning, only to encounter a game-breaking glitch in the year 2026 for a seven-year-old game that kept me from progressing. Luckily, Control has Mission Select, so I can technically go back to where I left off in 2021, but that isn’t what I wanted to do. I’m going to try to restart it again to see if I can get the mission I need to work on, and if not, I might just put Control away once again.

Speaking of that old computer, I’ve been using it as a home for a lot of smaller, less graphic powerhouse games that I connect to via Steam Link on my Retroid Pocket 4 when I’m outside or away from home, and the game I’ve invested the most time into that way is this year’s Vampire Crawlers. That game is just fun as hell, and it’s so satisfying following the combo patterns of picking the 0 mana card, then 1, then 2, and so on. I’ve been using my Retroid Pocket 4 a lot more since I came up with this idea, and I preordered the Retroid Pocket Nova, which comes out fairly soon. That’s all for now, until next time.

Books, Games Wrestling Vol. 12 – Henceforth, I Claim Them As My Own!

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

There is a strong possibility that I will skip writing one of these next week and be back with the next one with some of my favorite books, games, and wrestling matches of the year, but I have a lot of work to do in other parts of my life, so one week off will have to do. AEW’s Full Gear is tomorrow, and I wrote down my predictions for the show, which takes up the bulk of this week’s entry.

Books – Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

I don’t know how I feel about the current book I’m reading. Is it possible for sections of a book to both bore you and fascinate you at the same time? I’m forty percent in, and the intensity of the situation is just starting to rise. Jamie and Serena make a decision that feels like it’s going to have a ripple effect on the rest of the book, but I’ve grown used to seeking out fantasy books with more snappy beginnings. The best parts of the book so far is the backstory of Jamie’s parents, Serena and May, how they met, how they decided to have Jamie, the rough patch of their relationship, and how they came to a resolution to mend it. The parts that bore me and fascinate me at the same time are the parts too familiar to my own former academic life when I was writing a thesis.

The book Jamie’s paper is on has passages that appear in this one, where you can see, upon reading, what Jamie is seeing as it relates to her thesis. The academic life of Jamie made me think of working on my own thesis both the good and the bad but the problem for me is that style of the fictional book Jamie is writing her paper on is the kind that I was bored to tears of in College so while it is interesting to see what Jamie sees my eyes also glaze over imagining sitting in the library trying doing a close reading of this and finding other sources. I can sense a growing tension between Jamie and her wife, Ro, as Jamie and Serena grow closer as it relates to witchcraft and magic, but I need the book to begin pushing that snowball down the hill instead of packing it tightly at the top, trying to make the perfect snowball to keep me hooked on Lessons in Magic and Disaster.

Addendum: Ten minutes after writing this, I’ve reached an inflection point in the story that really has me turning pages, but I wish we had gotten here a bit sooner. Sometimes that is just how books roll.

Games – Chrono Trigger on Steam / Steam Deck

In 2018, when Chrono Trigger was announced, it was coming to Steam. I had no computer to play it on when it came out. I just would have to wait, but it was something I’d have to look forward to. Upon release, it was like looking into the window of people opening a Christmas present we all wanted and finding out their parents had bought a knock-off version instead. Of all the versions they chose to port to Steam, the publisher’s choice to port the mobile version with some weird upscaled resolution was one of the worst options they could have chosen. By the time I got to play it, though, Square had done everything they were going to do to fix the Steam version of Chrono Trigger to make fans happy, but the damage was done, and the fixes shouldn’t have been needed on the first play. They had an easy golden opportunity to not fuck up, and they royally fucked up. It’s still not the best way to play Chrono Trigger today. The fact that there haven’t been any ports of it since then is strange as well, when it could have easily been put on the Nintendo Switch like many past Square games before.

Now, years later, I am playing this version of the game with the classic resolution on my Steam Deck. I know I don’t have to play it this way. There are many other ways to play Chrono Trigger, even on Steam Deck, but I decided to see this version of Chrono Trigger to the end. It’s still Chrono Trigger, one of my favorite games and one of the greatest games of all time. Now, this may just be my perception, but Square Enix’s reputation for getting it right is much improved since February of 2018, even if some people didn’t like everything about Final Fantasy Rebirth or Final Fantasy 16. If, after the positive reception of Octopath Traveller 1 and 2, Live A Live remake, and the remakes of Dragon Quest I-III is a green flag at Square to release an HD-2D remake of Chrono Trigger, I hope they’ve learned their lessons from Chrono Trigger for Steam and pull off the once again golden opportunity for Chrono Trigger HD-2D on multiple platforms.

Wrestling – Full Gear Predictions

Full Gear is coming up, and I’m feeling more excited for the card than WrestleDream, though the Venn diagram of my brain has a larger circle for books and video games right now, and wrestling, plus the looming holidays just over my shoulder. Still, here are my predictions for the main card of the show. On the subject of the Death Riders, I think Pac is going to get a surprise upset over Darby Allin that’ll play into another surprise upset, which is Kyle O’Reilly defeating Jon Moxley in a No Holds Barred match. A stipulation is often used to soften the blow for a loss of one top talent while elevating another, but that’s not the main point. The main point is that Pac will have done something Jon was unable to do recently, and Kyle will have Moxley tapping out once again, ultimately leading to an angle with the Death Riders turning on Jon Moxley. I am unsure if this heel Jon Moxley has completely run its course, but turning him babyface once again isn’t a terrible idea. Who will lead the Death Riders in his absence? I am not 100% sold on Claudio leading the group, but the betrayal definitely feels like it’s coming.

Speaking of both stipulations and Death Riders, I think the Sisters of Sin will get a surprise win in the four-way tag match against the Babes of Wrath, Time Love Bombs, and Megan Bayne/ Marina Shafir to determine their own stipulation in a match against Willlow and Harley that’ll lead to a Sisters of Sin vs. Timeless Love Bombs final. When Kyle Fletcher vs. Mark Briscoe was announced, I was so sure this was the moment Mark would get the win over Kyle and Kyle would enter the C2 to be part of the Takeshita vs. Okada drama, possibly leading to Takeshita vs. Fletcher semifinal. Since Kyle announced that beating Mark would beat the record for most TNT title defenses, I’m not so sure. I’m currently 55:45 on Mark winning, but if Kyle won, it would not surprise me, but it would seem strange to do all that work on the Conglomeration music and video package only to take out one of their core members a month or so later.

What I am sure of is that Mercedes is not winning the world title at Full Gear. She has touched that belt one too many times in the last couple of weeks to be winning it. I like the idea of not only Kris finally showing her growth after a year of uncertainty, after a weird face turn when she lost to Mercedes twice by beating Mercedes, but the women’s world championship being out of her reach from both Toni and the person who beat Toni. Hangman will have a great match against Samoa Joe in a steel cage match and ultimately defeat him. Will Samoa Joe learn his lesson from it? How violent will it get? Will Hangman delve into the darkness within from a year ago to avenge his family against Swerve Strickland? These are the questions I am asking myself leading up to this match. I imagine either MJF or Swerve will return at this match. I’m leaning more towards MJF, which I am not looking forward to. World’s End has been my last favorite AEW pay-per-view two years running, and MJF beating Hangman at it would really put the nail in the coffin for that show for me. I’m still not sure if that is the direction they’re going, but it is an anxiety I definitely have as someone who is not a fan of Maxwell.

You know what else gives me anxiety, and I am not a fan of, but I am more sure of? FTR beating Brodido for the AEW World Tag Team Championships. Two things can be true. I can say I am enjoying FTR as heels so much more than faces, but I also never wanted them to be tag team champions again. Their heel work with Stokely has been far more entertaining, but them at the top of the tag division fills me with dread after their last tag title run, which was one of the most boring tag title runs in AEW history, and don’t quote that match against Bullet Club Gold to me. I am one of the few who actively dislike that match, so them beating Brodido, who has given that tag belts life again after a terribly boring run on the Hurt Syndicate, is not something I’m looking forward to. Especially if it leads to a returning Christian and Copeland feud, which has those two winning the tag belts off FTR. It would be a nightmare for me personally to have them be tag team champions and MJF Men’s World Champion at the same time again.

The only thing I’d have to comfort me is whatever Elite drama is cooking in Kenny Omega and Jurassic Express versus the Young Bucks and Josh Alexander. After a humiliating summer and fall Don Callis has come calling to help Matt and Nick’s money troubles. All they have to do is join the Don Callis Family and beat their former friends Kenny Omega and Jack Perry with one million dollars on the line. Here’s the thing: the Bucks don’t seem thrilled about joining the DCF, nor do they find Don or Josh particularly entertaining, but with Okada trying to encourage them and Don Callis’s bolstering roster putting them in a situation where they might not have a choice, I am not so sure where this is going. Perhaps the Bucks choose to join but lose the match, but Kenny offers the money back to Don to get them out of the Don Callis Family contract. Maybe the Bucks decided Josh Alexcander and Don Callis have given them a bit too much of what the rest of the roster found annoying about the Bucks in their EVP phase, and just choose Kenny by superkicking their tag partner and walk away. I’m not sure where exactly this is going, but I am here for it.