I'm back, baby!

I was traveling for work and leisure the past week and a half, so I gifted myself a little reprieve from writing about wrestling since my schedule was all over the place.

But I'm ready to go again just as the horrible country in which I live is being run into the ground and turned into Nazi Germany by complete fucking morons and sociopaths. God Bless America!

Fuck everyone who allowed this to happen and everyone who is putting into action all of the awful things that will undoubtedly cripple this country so that it can be more readily gobbled up by old racists and oligarchs, though that classification is a bit redundant.

Trans rights are human rights. Fix your hearts or die.

Everybody can survive the Best Wrestler Alive

Making Max Caster a complete buffoon is an inspired choice and also the correct choice. With The Acclaimed split being official, Caster stepped into his full dipshit heel persona and his character work bumped up a few notches.

It feels like a mistake to keep Anthony Bowens aligned with Billy Gunn. For me, it's clinging too much onto the past and not allowing Bowens to move on and establish his own identity. Caster is getting that chance and so far he's succeeding.

After The Beast Mortos destroyed Adam Priest, Caster came out to make the first match in the "Who Can Survive The Best Wrestler Alive?" open challenge official.

Max was answered by the returning RUSH, in excellent new entrance gear, and completely dismantled. Caster got zero offense in and was instead put to bed by RUSH in a matter of moments.

This will only make Caster stronger in his delusions while it also establishes the return of RUSH and Dralistico – not to mention sowing some possible dissension between Mortos and his LFI brethren.

I can't wait to see who kills Max Caster next!

AEW: Character Work Welcome

Not everybody in AEW always has some sensational bit of character work going on, but right now we're operating at a pretty high capacity in terms of character work and character development.

Tonight we saw another small chapter in Swerve Strickland vs Ricochet. Ricochet's transformation into a scissor-toting psychopath wearing serial killer glasses with a truly off-the-charts prescription has been so incredibly well done.

His initial run in AEW was underwhelming despite all of the exciting things he's able to do in the ring. Was that expected and all part of the plan? Or did they need to pivot once it became clear that crowds simply weren't buying the act?

Swerve has been doing amazing work forever in AEW, but creating another enemy-for-life out of Ricochet by pushing his buttons a little too much was a fun ride itself. Swerve fully admitting and accepting that he's a villain and a monster but gets cheered because the crowd respects him more than they respect Ricochet is a nice acknowledgement of the way the crowd just can't ever hate Swerve.

In the Swerve realm, but not on the show tonight, we've also seen Hangman Page appear to turn over a new leaf. After Christopher Daniels confronted him post-match, in a neck brace and apologizing for pushing Page too aggressively, Hangman looked stunned and conflicted. Then, he barged into Swerve's locker room for a yet unknown reason - but it certainly didn't appear to be combative.

Hangman seems to be on the reverse Ricochet trajectory which is going to be a fun ride.

Finally, "Timeless" Toni Storm officially revealed herself on last week's Collision and tonight delivered a promo explaining the ruse to us all – including the bombshell that it was actually her playing the role of rookie Toni Storm all those weeks. Acting!

Toni continues to be one of the best character actors in wrestling history and her work continues to elevate everything she touches.

More TNT Title, Less Undisputed Kingdom

Daniel Garcia, Lee Moriarty, and Kyle O'Reilly had an exceptional three way dance for the TNT Title. We didn't get the standard "knock a guy out so two guys can wrestle a bit, then knock another guy out and repeat" that happens with a lot of three way dances.

Instead, all three guys were pretty much active the entire time and gave us some fun and unique situations. It's always a pleasure to see any of these guys wrestle so slapping them all together in one match was a delight.

I don't want Garcia to lose the TNT Title already, but I did get a little excited when Lee slapped on the Border City Stretch while Kyle was preoccupied with Shane Taylor on the floor. Garcia twisted out of the hold, though, and eked out a win with what has become his signature pinfall: the jackknife.

Post-match, we got a showdown between STP and Garcia, O'Reilly, and 2.0. This was nice! So, of course, we had to ruin things by involving Adam Cole.

I'm still not ready to care about anything Adam Cole does but if he just stuck in the trios lane and didn't exist around a singles title I'd be happier. It seemed a couple weeks ago that the Undisputed Kingdom were setting themselves up as a trio team and I hope that remains the case. A three-way trios match has been set for next week with STP vs Undisputed Kingdom vs Garcia & 2.0.

My hope is that whatever the outcome, Cole and company continue to establish themselves as a trio so Garcia can get out of the Cole orbit. I swear to god, if Adam Cole wins the TNT Title off of Daniel Garcia...

Wrapping Up

While I did watch the shows during my travels, I didn't get them all on the Best Matches list. I'll work on slotting those in as we go; I may want to revisit some of them to be sure their placement feels correct.

Bandido is back! Again! And he's doing zero dropkicks! A wise move for Bandido, but bad luck for Bryan Keith who looked like he got thrown through a table head-first. Is it a rule that someone, anyone, in a Bandido return segment needs to suffer head trauma? And do we know yet if Bandido gave himself a concussion on purpose to avoid having to do an ROH storyline?

Megan Bayne is the coolest. I was just grumbling that she hadn't been on since her Dynamite debut in the Casino Gauntlet match, but now it seems she's ready to be heated up and I'm fully on board.

Lio Rush & Action Andretti are a delight. Lio as the mouthpiece and Andretti as Scrappy Doo behind him is such a good combo. I wish they were getting more time to cut promos and have cool matches on TV, but every time they appear in a pre-tape promo they shine.

The main event of FTR vs Death Riders was going so well until Claudio came out to interfere. We simply don't need interference in every single fucking Death Riders match. It's one thing to have Marina Shafir interfere since she acts as more of a manager (and doesn't wrestle, for whatever stupid reason) but the multi-man interference and post-match beatdowns have got to end.

Other than that, the match was a hell of a lot of fun with the expected outcome of Yuta eating the fall. This is one of the best Moxley matches I can remember seeing in a while. His singles stuff doesn't always grab me and much this Death Riders run has been marred by constant interference which has hurt his overall match quality for me.

We got the official announcement that Mox will defend the World Title against Adam Copeland at Revolution in March so we have another month of this stuff to get through. Yawn.