It's the most wonderful time of the year: the Continental Classic!

Last year, the C2 was the best part of the year in AEW for me. Week-to-week great matches with tournament stories and the fun of playing with points to see who comes out on top of each bracket. I'll always have a fondness for round robin tournaments as the Best of the Super Juniors was largely responsible for reigniting my love of professional wrestling when it was at its lowest several years back.

As for my picks – we'll see if they're busted tonight. I went out on a limb with a couple, like picking Brody King to beat Will Ospreay. I think it's always important to have some upsets in the tournament to keep things fresh and setup future programs, and Brody getting a shock win over someone like Ospreay would absolutely rule.

Here are my Gold and Blue bracket points:

I've got the block finals as Darby/Ospreay and Okada/Garcia with Ospreay and Okada going to Worlds End, where I see Ospreay winning the whole shebang. Let's check back in on these picks in January and see just how poorly I've done!

Well, they changed the format! Now I don't know what the hell to expect for the block finals – I still have Okada with the most points in the Blue block, so maybe he faces tied-for-ten Darby and Ospreay faces Garcia? I'll continue to maintain that the finals of the whole thing are Okada/Ospreay with Ospreay coming out on top.

Kamille aborted her job with Mercedes Moné

I was excited when Kamille first showed up in AEW. I don't know why I had this idea that she was a good bruiser. I saw her a bit in the NWA and she seemed interesting and charismatic. Even her squashes in AEW were at least fine. But, when she finally had to have a longer, more competitive match she absolutely (brick) shit the bed.

She looked blown up and out of place, her mystique ruined at no one's hands but her own.

Was it this terrible match that seemed to mark the downturn in the Mercedes/Kamille team? Or was it that she was revealed through her own social media posts that she was a a pro-life CHUD?

The world may never know! But, Kamille quit tonight just as Mercedes was about to fire her. Will this be it for Kamille in AEW all together? Will Mercedes get someone cooler to act like her muscle – someone like Megan Bayne, for instance?

I don't really care what Kamille does going forward, but I am interested to see how this plays out for Mercedes and whatever (and whoever) is next for her TBS Title reign.

Chris Jericho, please go home

I love Tomohiro Ishii. And I love the idea of Chris Jericho. He was a formative figure in wrestling for me as a teenager; I first saw him in ECW and followed him ever since.

But man, these chop-fest/slap-fest matches are the worst of the worst for me. They're not interesting in the least. They don't tell a story I care about. It's just two guys slapping at each other for 10 minutes until someone hits a finish and wins.

I didn't enjoy this match the last time they did it, and despite them moving to slapping in the face instead of chopping on the chest I still couldn't find it anywhere within myself to give even half a shit.

I've seen rumblings that the reason Jericho won the ROH World Title is to better sell a Ring of Honor TV show. I hope that's true, and I hope it happens, and I hope it means that we get ROH titles off of AEW for good. There's no need to have this stuff eating up TV time on AEW shows.

A segment specifically for Bryan Alvarez

I read a lot online about people who somehow couldn't put two and two together to figure out why everyone who got involved in the post-match of the main event got involved. Despite not being a fan of how the ending felt as it somewhat dragged down the pace of the show, it all felt natural to me in terms of character motivations.

Tonight, though, Tony Schiavone asked Hangman Page point blank why he did what he did just so everyone still confused could finally get some sleep tonight.

Death Riders have now made clear-cut enemies of Hangman Page and Jay White, two guys who could easily slot in as title challengers for Jon Moxley. It makes more sense for that person to be Jay White first, since he's got two recent victories over Hangman.

With Worlds End on the horizon with the C2 Finals happening, and with Darby Allin being in the C2, we're buying some time for Moxley to get some additional defenses in before Darby eventually dethrones him. Revolution in March seems like as good a time as any, and the thematic name of the PPV would be a nice bonus.

Adam Cole, please go home also

I HATE THIS SHIT

WHY ISN'T KYLE O'REILLY IN THE C2

FUCK IT ALL

Hey, let's just put Queen Aminata in the match at Wrestle Dynasty anyway

Jamie Hayter and Queen Aminata had a fun match that, unfortunately, fell apart toward the end when it seemed like Hayter didn't kick out of a pin. It all happened in an inset shot while showing a replay so it's hard to say what happened, but it appeared that Jamie got rocked by Aminata's sliding kick.

This lost the crowd a bit as they started booing, and I don't think they ever fully recovered. The ending sequence was a bit clunky but may have felt better without the missed kickout a few moments earlier.

Still, though, the majority of the match was fun and relied on the old standby of "beat the piss out of one another".

Post-match we got another Julia Hart tease, this time in the form of spooky lighting and a spotlight rather than a full-on video package. If I had to put money on it, I'd bet she costs Jamie the finals of this mini-tournament against Willow Nightingale.

Aminata rocks so hard, though, so let's just put her in the match at Wrestle Dynasty too. Doesn't it just make sense to have Queen Aminata at Wrestle Kingdom weekend? Am I reaching too much?

Sowing the seeds early in the C2

Darby Allin vs Brody King was a chaotic mess and I loved every second of it. Somehow Brody wiping out the audio made it more enjoyable – just something about this unplanned catastrophe due to a huge dude throwing his body toward another dude tickled me.

While I didn't see Brody beating Darby, I'm not mad about it. I love Brody King and wish he'd get more of a singles run in AEW if he's not going to be in a permanent team with Malakai Black. I could easily slot him in as AEW World Champion somewhere down the road – the dude looks cool as hell, has awesome matches, and he's always over. There's no reason to not belt this guy up!

I loved the post-match of Claudio coming in to lay waste to Darby only to have Brody step in for the save. I've enjoyed the little beats over the years of Darby and Brody slowly earning the respect of one another, and Brody stepping up to Claudio a week ahead of their match in the C2 is just the kind of tournament storytelling that I thrive on. Not only do we now have a match that was going to be important in the grand scheme of the tournament, but Brody has thrown himself in the way of Death Riders.

Could this lead to House of Black vs Death Riders for the Trios Titles down the line? I'd love for them to remember that those belts exist and do literally anything with them for more than a few weeks at a time.

Wrapping Up

Well, my bracket isn't busted but it didn't start off great! And, if we're being honest, the C2 didn't start off with quite as much of a bang as I wish it had. I really enjoyed one out of three matches in the tournament, and I'm hopeful that number grows each week as the tournament continues on.

I only saw two people who Mark Briscoe could have picked up a win over in his bracket – Shelton Benjamin and The Beast Mortos. Tonight, Shelton picked up the win over Briscoe in the opening match of the C2 becoming the first person to pick up any points. My picks! My precious picks!

My enjoyment of Claudio/Ricochet was a bit hampered due to being on pet duty halfway through, but it all felt a bit uninspired for me. I find I sometimes feel this way with Claudio's matches. He's technically great and does some wild stuff, but it also sometimes feels a bit by-the-numbers? Maybe I've just watched him wrestle too much. I don't know! I thank him for delivering me 3 points in the bracket, though.

Collision being at 4pm this weekend may be a bridge too far for me to watch live. I may still throw up a post about it, but 4pm is right in the sweet spot of doing weekend stuff.