6/28/26 Owen Hart Foundation 2026 Men's Tournament Final: Will Ospreay vs. Swerve Strickland 35:06
ML: All three of their AEW matches have been way too long, and they are trending in the wrong direction length wise, as well as in every other way, going from 27 to 30 minutes now up to a neverending slog of 35 minutes. This was beyond methodical. It was snail's pace throughout, and generally lifeless. If they started fast, but slowed it down incrementally due to the excessive blood loss that sort of grind to the finish would have been a lot more defensible than what they did, which was just make it dumber and more outrageous. Nothing in this match felt spontaneous or organic or logically thought through. Everything was painfully deliberate. This was trying to be super dramatic, but in such an obvious manner that it had the precise opposite effect of feeling totally manufactured and completely unconvincing. There was no connective tissue here. They just did some move that might be a finisher under different circumstances, watched each other do some cringy bad acting, eventually did some other finisher, wash, rinse, repeat. They weren't building anticipation. We were only waiting because they insisted on doing an overlong match, and thus including many excessive moves and 20 minutes of idling around them. Once in awhile they teased a big move, but even the payoff was meaningless, and that was basically the be all and end off what was going on here. They kept trying to achieve these iconic cinematic moments, but it feels like they think the acting was the reason The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was great rather than a director with a great eye who understood which shot to use, how to piece them together, what music to put them to, and how to pace the sequences. This epic melodrama never felt like a fight, or like something so well done that you didn't care. They incorporated every nonsensical trope we've seen from 00's NOAH to 10's NJPW to 20's AEW, as if either trying to rack up 29 stars for including everything that has ever worked at some time without any thought to how it actually fit in the context of their own match that was taking place tonight, or were actively trying to be a parody of everything people hate about wrestling since kayfabe was broken and they stopped trying portray a sporting fight. It wasn't the Z grade homage we get from the bum Kingston, they actually performed all the spots really well because they are great athletes who can maneuever their body however they need to, but in many senses this was the worst of box checking because we've seen from their first AEW match on 6/30/24 that they are capable of doing something that's sometimes awe inspiring, but also holds enough interest in between the highlights to remain worthwhile. Tonight, they did impressive things, eventually, but people were surely falling asleep waiting for it, and they seemed to be amplifying every bad tendency and forcing everything. The style just felt so empty because the match was nothing more or less than doing moves that had no meaning in this context, and then not doing anything at all for ridiculous amounts of time. There were 2 actual sequences, and the rest of the time they just eventually got around to walking over to the opponent and starting to pose them or jumping at them with no setup or deception. There was no real strategy, progression of holds, or good old fashioned beating the opponent when he's down so he can't see what you're eventually going to do coming from a mile away and make you pay for being so nonsensically slow and deliberate. Sure, the moves were always impressive in a sense because not everyone could or would do them properly, but they never seemed do or die the way they do with Darby Allin, and were rarely set up to build any anticipation. There was never a point where the match was really even working within it's own constructs. There's enough highlights that there's surely a good 15-minute match of them killing themselves with dangerous moves here somewhere, especially if they added substance around this outline, but instead it was just buried within the other 20 minutes of standing around staring at each other and making the cringiest faces imaginable. The match never felt like it was going less than half an hour, and never felt like it had any real stakes. Sure, they did dangerous things they wouldn't do on Collision, but from start to finish there was never a moment of urgency, and that just made it feel like no one really cared about winning, even though this was for a shot to main event the biggest show of the year, and if victorious there, leave with the title. It's not hyperbole to say that any UFC Flyweight who wasn't actively looking to grapple would have thrown 25 strikes in the time these two took between each and every move. This could have been a situation where more was more since it was a PPV main event, a tournament final, one of the promotion's biggest matches of the year, but they didn't do any more moves than they might do in a TV sprint, they just did things that were a lot more dangerous, spread them out a whole lot more, with literal air in between instead of creating some sort of context for their insanity. There's absolutely some impressive career shortening stunts, not that we should aspire to that obviously, but especially when they largely feel less important than a good old fashioned babyface dropkick after a hot tag. For the most part, my feelings to spots I should have jumped out of my chair for were just indifference. The best wrestlers can make even boring spots interesting by giving them context, effort, and strategy, why you are doing something can be more important than what you are doing when it's serious and cohesive, but this was neither. These guys made even their great spots mundane. There was just no intensity to this slog, and it always felt like a theatrical performance of the worst sort. In addition to the holds feeling meaningless despite being impressive in and of themselves, both also tried to exceed Hiroshi Hase in the bucket bleeding department. You couldn't help but notice how much especially Strickland was bleeding basically at all times for the rest of the match, but this wasn't any kind of a grudge match, or any sort of a brawl. Sure, blood will always have some effect, but the logic was only that blading will get me an extra star, which did make it consistent with everything else they included. Ospreay bled buckets from getting lifted 2 inches into the exposed steel that attaches the lowest turnbuckle to the ring post. This was about the least impressive spot of the entire match. Swerve's bleeding coming when he stopped the Styles clash on the floor, but Ospreay swung him into the stairs was more convincing. After teasing some moves on the steps, Ospreay succeeded with the Styles clash off the steps onto the table. There wasn't really much flying here like in their first match, it was more fancy high impact moves. Half the match was just Swerve strolling around at a quarter mile an hour though, while Ospreay lay around unresponsive. Sometimes Ospreay countered because Swerve took forever to actually follow up, but realistically no move should work when the wrestler takes a minute to get around to it, and there was no real fire to Ospreay's comebacks to bring the crowd to their feet. The blood loss, and being on the wrong end of the majority of the offense until the excessive lengthy finishing sequence did give Ospreay some excuse for being unable to press his advantage, but Swerve was wrestling like he had a lot of money on a prop bet of being able to win this match while taking less than a thousand steps. Ospreay showed some life when he countered an avalanche powerbomb with a Frankensteiner, threw a couple kicks, and followed with Robinson Special, but this was one of the only examples of anything being even somewhat chained together. Swerve then countered the Oscutter with the deadeye, but it's not really the right setup, so Excalibur tried to cover for them by saying Will was actually going for the Canadian destroyer. Ospreay finally picked it up a little when it got back in the ring after the table spot. He put Swerve down stomach first with a couple of powerful elbows, but when he reverse mounted and started to throw ground elbows, the ref broke it up not to stop the fight, but to give Swerve time to recover from the knockout so he could get concussed a few more times. Swerve couldn't actually beat the 10 count that easily took 30 seconds, but he pushed the ref to stop it, and Ospreay hit the hidden blade so the ref allowed the match to continue since Strickland kicked out. Tony Schiavone described this as "nothing but amazing, stunning competition", but competition is the last word I would think of when it came to this sluggish Kabuki theater. Swerve was leaving a puddle of blood everywhere he went. After a double knockdown spot culminated the second sequence of the match, I was ready for a "please f'n end this" chant. Instead, they stood motionless on opposite ends of the promotion's logo and stared at each other for a minute then took their wraps off and prepared for the final joust like a couple of demented Knights of the Ground Round Table. Eventually, they made their way to opposite corners in what was the very antithesis of Max Holloway vs. Justin Gaethje. Ospreay won the duel with the hidden blade, then hit his stormbreaker, but of course Swerve still kicked out. After Swerve got a few more near falls on Will, the entire Death Riders unit came out to motivate Ospreay. You might think that seeing all these unfriendly faces at ringside would give Swerve some more urgency to actually finish this before they ganged up on him, but you would be wrong. Ospreay Hulked up after a house call, which apparently paralyzed Swerve, as he just stood there until Will finally put him down with another hidden blade. Even a buckshot hidden blade still wasn't enough though. Ospreay then borrowed a couple of Moxley's finishers and finally won with the Tiger driver '91. This was a good match if the standard is simply did you pull off a bunch of dangerous things without dying. There was no tension, and I basically only cared who won before they actually started the match. The match is very polarizing because people thinking it's great make other people say it's terrible, and vice versa, but realistically, most of the problems are with what's passing for wrestling as a whole these days and what's getting big phony propaganistic star ratings in exchange for access. You might have to sub some dangerous moves for some strikes or whatever, but this sort of match isn't really that much different than what a lot of other wrestlers have been doing in the same spot, it just amplifies it all to the nth degree because these are actually two very capable wrestlers doing it. **

6/28/26 AEW: Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr. 26:25
ML: Forbidden Door ceased truly being a thing when Tony Khan started signing everyone from the promotions he's supposed to be friends with. At this point, there's more former wrestlers from the rival promotions appearing on the show then ones that have stayed put. The only actual dream match on the PPV was the Best Bout Machine against the best technical wrestler in the world. True, it has been done twice before, but their 3/8/13 4FW was only seen by hundreds, and their 8/1/18 NJPW match was a 15 minute G1 Climax league match. Giving Omega won both of those matches, you would think Zack had to finally win this, except that Tony isn't giving NJPW anything, Takagi & Titan and ZSJ got to lose just so Shota Umino could get a win over PAC, who probably wouldn't have been on the PPV otherwise. The commentary was pushing Kenny's upcoming world title bid, and you know things are bad when the current opponent feels compelled to do the I'm not a stepping stone bit. If you went to your local armory, and you got a match of this quality you would be thrilled, but given to these guys are, it's difficult not to be completely underwhelmed. I don't think you can look at this as just any old match. It's Kenny Omega. It's Zack Sabre Jr. Both have been the best worker in NJPW, as well as their champion. These are very clearly two of the best wrestlers of this century. Their match was largely on autopilot though. It truly felt like there were no stakes because they didn't pounce on their opportunities or try to beat the opponent to literally anything. It was not only lacking intensity, but pretty low energy in general. Both wrestlers did what you've come to expect from them, and not much more. Neither felt particularly dangerous or animated tonight. Their styles are very different, and I don't think they had much chemistry or were pushing themselves that hard to develop their match together. This was definitely closer to the worst match they could have than the best. It's getting by on individual talent a lot more than crafting a memorable match together. They didn't embarrass themselves like IYO SKY laying around and having her seizures against Mayu Iwatani, but it was a lot of the same problem where instead of feeling like a big intense interpromotional match, it was another wannabe epic where they didn't actually work together that much, and it never really caught fire. Kenny & Zack are two of the best active wrestlers at carrying a match, but in this case, perhaps that was to their detriment? They both showed too much respect and deference to each other early, and ultimately, they just kind of did the moves you'd expect from them, but Kenny did most of them, and they didn't put much effort into incorporating them, or playing off one another. This is a style clash at heart, but Zack had to learn how to get past style clashes long ago, given the old Gorilla Monsoon saying that "most of his opponents don't know a wristlock from a wrist watch." We needed more of Zack countering Omega's strikes or power moves into submissions. Zack just didn't really feel that competitive, and we didn't need someone of his caliber to just stand there letting Omega run and jump at him over and over. It was seemingly 2/3 Omega offense even though he was winning, and he just couldn't push the pace like he used to over this amount of time. I think the match would have been much better if Zack pulling him into locks gave him his breaks, and it was a shorter match where Omega had less offense, but he was able to sprint whenever he got free. With what they chose to do, the match was too long because Kenny had so much offense that he didn't bring much energy to. His offense was competently performed, but just seemed kind of flat and lacking explosion or oomph. Zack needed to be more explosive as well in and out of holds, but it's not so much that he was being lethargic as that he just wasn't getting comebacks. Kenny needed bursts when he was running around, but we got very little of this, especially before the last few minutes. This was wrestled much like a big NJPW match from Omega's era. It was kind of methodical, and always felt like it was going to be a long match. Zack slowing things down and controlling would have been the logical and more effective story for this, as this felt slow, but lacked any particular kayfabe reason for giving that feeling. Having Kenny do a running something, and then being no hurry to do the next running something was just diminishing returns. I think the match would have been better with Kenny as the underdog, which would have made sense given he's the older man who was out with potentially career ending surgery while Zack finally won the G1 Climax and the World Title twice, but AEW doesn't care about any of that. What you wound up with was both guys doing their thing, but that's really two different matches. The early portion was supposed to be more exciting with some of Omega's flying and snap Dragon suplexes, leaving the middle portion for the technical wrestling. It was well executed, and compelling enough, but it had a hard time getting out of first gear. Some of what Omega thought was dramatic, for instance the struggle on the top rope with Zack getting the rear naked choke but Omega falling backwards into the ring, was just too leisurely to take seriously. Ultimately, this was definitely more Omega's match than Sabre's because Omega got most of the offense, and they never gave you the feeling that Zack was going to come up with something to win this. The back and forth just wasn't very explosive. Sabre didn't feel dangerous, not because he was mostly on the receiving end, but because he wasn't doing many of his usual counters into submissions or flash pin attempts. The announcers portrayed this as a match that Sabre needed to win with his Zack driver, but matching knockout bombs with Omega has rarely been a successful strategy for anyone, and it also wasn't here, if that's what Zack could be said to have done. ZSJ mostly targeted the arm, but it never felt like this was going to lead anywhere. Overall, this was a good Kenny match where the excitement was missing and Zack was mostly just playing second fiddle. Neither wrestler was off tonight, but I couldn't say that they were on either. Because it was so slow paced and had so much selling, this just wasn't that exciting for the most part. It wasn't until Sabre slipped out of the one-winged angel and had a flash pin attempt and the Zach driver that you felt like they were finally moving to a higher gear for the finishing sequence. The match was much more enjoyable from here, not because they did much better moves, but because they were finally doing them with the speed and energy they deserved. The finishing segment was alive, and if more of the match looked like this, the crowd would have been a lot more enthusiastic throughout. ZSJ countering the one-winged angel with a triangle was good. Omega powerbombed his way out, hit another knee, and finally won with the 3rd one-winged angel attempt. These are wily veterans who still managed to deliver a good match, somewhat in spite of themselves. It didn't feel anything like a dream match between two of the best wrestlers of the past decade plus though to the point it's probably more enjoyable if you come in with no expectations. ***