Psyko’s Saturday wrestling recap (WOW, AEW Grand Slam, AAA)

While I barely watch wrestling live anymore, I do watch a lot of wrestling. This morning, I watched a few shows that aired on Saturday, including — for the first time in over a year — AEW Collision. So I wanted to do a small recap of everything I saw today.

WOW

Let’s start with Women of Wrestling, which is by far the easiest and most fun show to watch out of everything. For those who aren’t following the product (and I’m sure most fans aren’t), they are still in the middle of the shows they taped on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. I have to say that it does help the product, as it feels bigger than it did when they were taping in Los Angeles.

What I love about this product is that it gives women wrestlers who couldn’t get contracts with one of the bigger companies a chance to gain exposure, even if that means being put in cheesy gimmicks.

Two matches that I liked on this week’s episode were Drucilla Blade vs. Scout Parker and the trio title match between Top Tier and Monsters & Mayhem.

The Scout Parker vs. Drucilla Blade match was good, considering Drucilla is a rookie who’s still learning and was mostly using martial arts as her main offense. The way it was booked was really strong, with Scout constantly at a disadvantage since Drucilla was accompanied by her partner Genesis, who kept trying to interfere. It felt like an old-school babyface-in-peril type of match, and that’s what I liked about it.

The main event was a trio championship match between Top Tier and Monsters & Mayhem. These two teams have been feuding over the titles for a few months now, which made the match feel even more important.

Just to catch you up, Monsters & Mayhem won a few singles matches against Top Tier a few months ago, which led to a title match where they did a Dusty finish, making us think Monsters & Mayhem had won the belts when the match was actually ruled a no contest. For a few months, they continued trying to get a rematch against the champions, and they were finally able to get it this week. It was a really good and lengthy match, which is unusual for this show since most matches are less than five minutes. The ending was a DQ finish — the challengers won the match but not the titles — which is a very old-school finish. They then challenged the champions to a Full Metal Mayhem match, which I could see happening within the next few weeks.

Personally, I feel like this product is worth watching if you’re a fan of women’s wrestling. They have a lot of really good performers on the roster, and while the characters are very cheesy, it’s still a fun watch. At one hour in length, it goes by really quickly.

AAA

Now let’s talk about this week’s AAA show. First, I have to say that while I’m not a big lucha fan, I still enjoy the style. However, it was hard to follow since it didn’t have much exposure on television or streaming platforms. I just didn’t follow the product that closely. Ever since WWE bought AAA and gave them a spot to air their show on their YouTube channel, though, I’ve become a big fan of the product.

Right off the bat, I have to say that the commentary team of Corey Graves and JBL does a great job hyping the product. Adding Rey Mysterio to the broadcast team to translate the in-ring promos made the show even better.

This week’s episode was once again pretty good and advanced several ongoing storylines. Many have been critical of Vikingo’s heel turn, but personally, I love everything about it. It gives him another dimension to his character. The vignette recapping his beatdown of Mini Vikingo, followed by another vignette of Mini Vikingo in the hospital, was pure gold.

The in-ring action was really good, especially the main event, which was a triple-threat tag team match won by The War Raiders. It showed that tag team wrestling can feel important if proper effort is put into promoting it. Both The War Raiders and Los Americanos felt like major stars in that match.

Finally, I loved the video promo from the original El Grande Americano. His explanation for attacking the fake El Grande was simple and made total sense for what the character is supposed to represent in Mexico. It made me even more interested in seeing where this story goes. Overall, I really enjoy the product, and the fact that it’s easily accessible definitely helps.

AEW Collision: Grand Slam Australia

This week, I decided to give AEW another try. It had been over a year since I last watched the product, but with this being a big show for them, I figured I’d give it a chance. Quite frankly, while the wrestling was really good, I had a hard time getting through the show, and that was mostly because of the commentary team.

Nothing against Excalibur and Tony Schiavone, but they were really annoying throughout the show. The fact that both were trying to handle play-by-play duties made it even harder to get into the broadcast.

First, I have to mention that I didn’t get to watch the entire show. It wasn’t aired in full on the USA Network here in Canada because they were airing a NASCAR race that ran long. Instead of showing the entire episode afterward, they joined the broadcast already in progress, so I missed the first 10 minutes of the Moxley vs. Takeshita match, which seemed pretty good from what I saw.

I also skipped the ladder match because I’m not a fan of those types of matches, and by that point, the show was becoming harder for me to enjoy. So I moved ahead to the main event.

That said, aside from the production style and the commentary, I thought the show itself was strong. I loved the women’s tag title match and the mixed tag match, as both were very entertaining and got me invested. Adam Page vs. Andrade was good, but that’s where I started to lose interest and found myself not paying as much attention as I should have. MJF vs. Brody King was really strong and pulled me back in. While I knew MJF wasn’t going to lose the belt, the match made me believe King had a real shot, which is what matters.

In the end, did this show make me want to watch more AEW? Not really. I wasn’t a fan of the WCW-style production, and the commentary team made me want to turn the volume down, which isn’t a good sign when you’re trying to attract new viewers. That said, I might give them another chance at some point if I have nothing else to watch on a Saturday.

WWF Superstars – February 13, 1993

After watching all that modern wrestling, I saw that WWE had uploaded a new episode of Superstars on their WWE Vault account. I needed a trip down memory lane, so I decided to watch it. I have to say, it was really fun going back in time to watch a wrestling show that wasn’t focused on delivering five-star matches but instead used squash matches to build up the company’s stars.

The opening match was Tatanka vs. Shawn Michaels in a non-title match, which was really good and helped build their WrestleMania match after the original plans of Michaels vs. Jannetty fell through.

I also have to say that it made me miss Vince as a play-by-play announcer. While he’s not well-liked right now because of everything that has come out over the past few years, I have to admit that as a commentator and interviewer, he was very good and knew how to sell his product. His sit-down interview with Brutus Beefcake made you feel how tragic the situation was that Brutus was going through at that time.

The rest of the show consisted of squash matches featuring The Steiner Brothers, Lex Luger, Crush, and Giant Gonzalez, which was just fun to watch after sitting through hours of modern wrestling.

Conclusion

I watched over five hours of wrestling this morning, and aside from AEW — which didn’t fully grab my interest — I had a lot of fun. Will I go back to AEW? Probably, if the right wrestlers are featured. But I’ll likely turn the volume down, as their play-by-play team is the weakest part of the show. Instead of enhancing the experience, it takes you out of it.