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Utter Madness | AEWeekly #214
- PWMusings Collaboration
- 5 days ago
- 10 min read
Welcome to the #AEWeekly review discussion where PWM contributors reflect on the highlights of the last week in AEW. The eligibility week always includes the most recent episode of Dynamite and Collision, plus any social-media exclusives up until publication.
This week’s contributors are Emiliana [sayakakurara.tumblr] lovingly hand-crafting the gifs, Abel [@loza3.bsky.social] covering the week's MVP, Lauren [@sithwitch.bsky.social] exploring a key Story Beat, Larissa [@actual-swamp-hag.bsky.social] expanding on the Moment of the Week, and Sergei [@sergeialderman.bsky.social] talking about the Match of the Week and the Best Interview, as well as editing and organizing it all.
A page of links to prior installments may be found here: #AEWeekly
We'd love for this and any and all of our content to be the beginning of a conversation with our readers. To interact with any and all of our contributors please accept our invitation to join the Pro Wrestling Musings Community Discord. Then follow this link to the #AEWeekly Discord Thread.
Death Riders vs. Shane Taylor Promotions
"One Battle After Another..."
by Sergei.
I believe that one of the most important aspects to making a match truly great is storytelling coherence. And there are two big parts to that: 1) that what happens in the match is coherent in the context of what was said and done leading up to the match, and in the context of who it's been established that these characters are, but 2) even more importantly, that what happens in the match leaves space for the performers to build new stories on top of that, coherent with all that's gone before. In my view, the 5-on-5 intergender Cincinnati Street Fight between Shane Taylor Promotions and the Death Riders was a perfect example of that, and I'll tell you why... But not today!
You see, this latest installment in the struggle of wills and philosophies that stretches back half a decade between Moxley and Taylor has a lot going for it: a genuine bone of contention, compelling speeches, thrilling violence. But it's always been missing one thing that is generally needed to really make a factional war in pro wrestling engage one's attention: a sense of parity. No matter how convincingly Shane Taylor would make his case that we should take him seriously as a threat to Moxley, he would lose every time.
So I went into this match without especially high expectations. Maybe this would be the night that STP finally turn things around. But probably not, and if not, I couldn't see a ceiling for this match any higher than "fun while it lasted, but ultimately a disappointment." It's not much of a spoiler that Taylor and crew did NOT break that losing streak on Saturday. But I was wrong about the ceiling of this match: this faction fight is not just Match of the Week for me. I think it's one of the best things I've seen since… I don't know, I don't want to finish that sentence due to possible recency bias. Suffice to say, I was blown away.
And so I asked Abel if he would be down with letting me cover MOTW for him this week, and he graciously agreed. But as I furiously typed out my many and sundry thoughts on what made this street fight extraordinary, I realized that the word count was… going beyond what fits in an #AEWeekly and that this should be spun off into its own article. So watch this space – soon, likely on Saturday, you'll see something pretty cool talking about this match and the whole feud between Shane Taylor and Jon Moxley leading up to it. If you haven't watched the match – I understand Collision isn't everybody's idea of must see – I highly recommend checking it out. The match is definitely better appreciated with as few spoilers as possible, and my article will be full of them! But the match didn't only have great storytelling going for it, it was also absolute madness, so I had to include at the head of this piece one amazingly insane moment from the match (in the form of a gif lovingly crafted by our Emiliana) as a teaser.
We start in close up of Jon Moxley's blood-soaked face and then dramatically zoom out to a wide shot of the chaos Mox is observing everywhere – from between Claudio's legs! I have absolutely no idea why or how such a great camera shot happened, but it did and it's awesome. Look forward to that full article here at PWM soon!
Thekla
"I'm the best thing that ever happened to you..."
by Lauren.
With Forbidden Door approaching, Thekla's past is playing a bigger and bigger part of her story in AEW. She was, as she put it, “fired from Japan” after attacking Stardom president Taro Okada. Since being hired by AEW, she has only spoken of her time in Stardom with disdain.
This week on Collision, while addressing – and masterfully controlling – the crowd, she let some more emotions drip through: anger, scorn, and even a hint of abandonment. As she spoke, I realized that her tone sounded familiar: that of someone post-break up.
Like everything in wrestling, the relationships are heightened reality. People who have barely talked to each other become willing to die for each other within a month of being a tag team, and when relationships fall apart, they tend to do so spectacularly. What makes Thekla different is that this relationship isn't with a single person. Discussing previous employment is not exactly a taboo in professional wrestling, but it tends to be done in roundabout ways, talking about “the other place” and making snide references for those in the know. Thekla, however, has been vocal about being fired from Stardom from her very first day in AEW.
In the year since Thekla's arrival, she has established herself as a superhuman force to be reckoned with, winning the AEW Women's Championship in February of 2026. She has teamed up with Julia Hart and Skye Blue as part of the Triangle of Madness, declaring them as her sisters. She has rebuilt herself into someone magnificent, capable of commanding a crowd of thousands and beyond.
But, as anyone who has been part of a failed relationship knows, some things can send you right back to where and who you were when you left. And the urge to shove your growth in their face can be really, really strong. Thekla did just that, climbing a ladder to spit on the Stardom logo on Dynamite and declaring that she had done Stardom a favor by making people talk about them on Collision.
How dare Stardom move on from her? And how dare they act like their current stars hold a candle to her? She wants to punish Stardom for failing her, for abandoning her, and for replacing her. She'll fight all of her replacements, like a reverse Scott Pilgrim. She was hurt, and she wants to make Stardom hurt, too.
Taro Okada is as close to a personification of Stardom that she can get, so she continues to antagonize him and remind him of her attack. Thekla may have been fired from Japan, but she has made it her mission to make them regret it. She called herself a monster that they created. Their abandonment made her worse, made her harder, made her the personification of Christina Aguilera's song “Fighter.”
Thekla tried to change Stardom, only to be rejected. It doesn't matter that it was a toxic relationship with expectation mismatches; what matters to her is how it made her feel. This Forbidden Door season, she is going to live out her revenge fantasy and make it everyone's problem.
Orange Cassidy
"Orange Cassidy pulls an in-jean-ious maneuver"
by Larissa.
If you asked me to list my top 5 AEW wrestlers, Orange Cassidy probably wouldn’t make the list. It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that I’m not emotionally invested in him the way I am with some of the other folks in the company (come back soon, Willow!) But more often than not, when I get to show someone AEW for the first time, I’m putting on a match with Orange in it. His gimmick is legible enough for anyone to immediately get it, he’s funny, and he’s a fantastic wrestler. I don’t think OC’s gimmick would work nearly as well if he wasn’t also phenomenal in the ring. But the Moment of the Week this week is pure silliness from Cassidy. His opponent was Andrade El Idolo, someone else who perfectly balances a goofy gimmick with in-ring ability. As the crowd went wild, Andrade stripped to his tiny gold trunks - pretty standard for the hard-hitting himbo. But it was Orange Cassidy’s response that provided the funniest moment of the night. Cassidy ripped off his jeans to reveal a second, identical pair of jeans underneath. It was a deeply ridiculous moment in the middle of a great match, a perfect snippet of how great wrestling can be when it’s allowed to be silly.
"The REST of the Story..."
by Sergei.
So, just this once I've decided to put the cart before the horse, Paul Harvey style, and reveal the awardee of Interview of the Week at the end of the piece, rather than the beginning. (Hey! Eyes up here!) And that's because there's someone who has been just SO compelling and magnetic in their interview segments that they've been reminding me of some of the best to ever do it.
For example, this magnetic personality is the leader of a close-knit band of rogues who consistently and blatantly use numbers games to get an advantage over their rivals, a tactic that is normally a reliable source of heel heat. And the other faction members in fact get booed quite consistently. And yet the leader gets cheers and chants of their name despite participating in the exact same shenanigans – directing them, even – based only on their sheer animal magnetism.
And you'd be forgiven for guessing that I mean Jon Moxley, but nope!
And the person of whom I speak also steamrolls over corporate niceties and holds a nasty grudge toward a former employer and how their firing went down, to the thrill of everyone in the audience who's ever been in a hostile situation with an employer. Despite using tactics that are straight out of a villain's playbook, this competitor strikes an anti-authoritarian chord that turns any audience into a howling mob in the palm of their hand.
And if it weren't for the theme of the whole #AEWeekly thing being current AEW, you might even think I'm talking about the classic era of Stone Cold Steve Austin.
By now, you've probably guessed that the rest of the story is that I'm talking about the toxic spider, Thekla. If you missed the segment below where she interrupts Schiavone giving a very corporate-speak apology for her promo the previous week, check it out. It happened on Collision, but it's dynamite!
Thekla
Maya World
“This is the opportunity of my life, and with everything in my soul, I’m taking it.”
by Abel.
Maya World vs. Skye Blue in the Owen Hart Foundation Women's Tournament quarterfinals was a last-second rebooked match after we learned the original competitor, Saree, was not cleared for competition due to injury. Most people assumed Skye Blue would advance, since it seemed like the easy pivot. She's been consistently on television, and a win in the Owen Hart tournament would have felt like the logical conclusion. However, Tony Khan did not take the easy pivot and instead cut against the grain, picking Maya World to advance to the semifinals of the Owen Hart Foundation tournament.
I don't think 'catapulted' is the right word for what happened to Maya World. Strapped to a rocket? Launched into the sky? I don't know, but whatever it is, the world has been given an opportunity to see her. And I personally think she did a great job announcing herself. For those reasons, Maya World is our Pro Wrestling Musings’ MVP of the week.
The match on Dynamite was, at least to me, a complete shock. I 100% thought Skye Blue was going through to face Athena. However, in retrospect, the much more interesting storyline is mentor vs mentee. Maya was trained by Athena and is going to use everything she learned against her, as she mentioned on Collision. The match itself was a great showcase for World to prove what she can do in the ring as a solo performer, away from her comfort zone as a tag team. I thought – ESPECIALLY, for the short notice – it was a great performance and a coming-out party for her.
I think attaching Maya to Athena is genius. Regardless of whether she wins or not, World has now been forever attached to one of the greatest women’s champions, and if everything works out, why can this not be a rivalry that can be explored later down the line? Especially if World can turn this into a successful singles run. I think Athena wins; however, would it be a hell of a story to tell if Maya World beats her mentor to reach a title shot before the ROH Champion does? But not only that, Athena falls short for a third time, not being able to even make it to the finals. That would for sure be one of the best storylines going into Forbidden Door.
For such short notice, this has been a fantastic build to the semi-final match on Collision next Saturday. What makes it work is making it feel like the most important thing in the world. Kudos to Maya for being so open and vulnerable with AEW fans. She didn't need to let us know about her tragedy, but she dared to do so. This is something that will keep pushing her for the rest of her career. Less importantly, it also makes her more relatable to the rest of us.
After the match on Collision, World came out to check on Tiara James and immediately got jumped by Athena, building that tension for their match next week, but also most certainly a segment on Dynamite. It builds the clear lines as to who we are supposed to cheer for, so if Maya can pull this off, there will be a major pop on Saturday.
This isn't the first time World has taken an opportunity and run with it. World and her tag team partner, Hyan, were given the chance to be signed with the company after jumping and taking one of the teams after Nixon Newell and Miranda Alize decided they didn't want to take a backseat. World and Hyan were rewarded and were signed to AEW. Now, World might see that this opportunity leads to an AEW Women’s Championship run. Maya is sprinting with this opportunity and is our MVP.
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