What do you’re taking with you right into a cage combat? You solely get one backpack. Do you carry thumb tacks? A bomb? A snack? One other wrestler scrunched up actual small? A Nintendo Leisure System? How about…the entire above? That’s what one crew did final night time at Forbidden Door, All Elite Wrestling’s newest PPV occasion, throughout a 12-man metal cage match between two groups of six guys every, each of which consisted of a number of completely different smaller groups smashed collectively in numerous alliances of comfort. To know what occurred, all you really want to know is that Kyle Fletcher, Kazuchika Okada, and Kevin Knight are on one crew, and Kyle O’Reilly (sorry, yeah, it’s two Kyles), Mark Briscoe, and Orange Cassidy are on the opposite crew. Orange Cassidy (my private favourite wrestler) is thought for, amongst different issues, lugging a Jansport backpack round with him, by which he tends to retailer any championship belts he’s just lately gained. Often, he places different issues in it. For this match, he seems to have satisfied his complete crew to carry Jansport backpacks loaded up with helpful gadgets for the combat. Orange, for instance, let his buddy Willow pack his bag, and he or she offered a Ziploc filled with orange slices as a snack for the crew. Mark Briscoe introduced thumb tacks: helpful. And Kyle O’Reilly had a Nintendo Leisure System full with controllers and a “recreation.” This complete sequence is nice. O’Reilly seems delighted to have discovered the basic console. He passes one controller (like a great buddy) to Briscoe, and proceeds to wallop Okada with a second controller whereas Briscoe goes for Knight within the again nook. Over on commentary, Tony Schiavone remarks that it is perhaps value some huge cash (most likely not, and definitely not within the state it’s about to be in), whereas the villainous Don Callis (additionally on commentary) coolly calls O’Reilly a nerd. Briscoe and O’Reilly then regroup within the center, which supplies Fletcher the chance to get in a couple of kicks, nevertheless it doesn’t final lengthy. The 2 teammates stretch a controller cable between them and use it to clothesline Fletcher straight onto the NES on the ground (giving Callis a possibility to name the NES a “piece of rubbish”…shut up Don Callis!!). O’Reilly produces a cartridge for the NES—it’s unclear what recreation it actually is (Professional Wrestling?) nevertheless it appears to only be labeled “AEW”—and hundreds it in. Sadly, he blows on it first, which suggests to me that somebody wants to tug all these males apart for a dialog about caring for retro tech. Then, after pondering it respectfully for a second, he smacks Fletcher upside the pinnacle with it. Improbable! The presence of an NES within the ring isn’t actually a standard factor, nevertheless it additionally doesn’t shock me. Many wrestlers are large nerds, and I’ve virtually little question that the NES was the delighted thought of a type of gents concerned in that altercation. O’Reilly and Briscoe appear genuinely gleeful concerning the violent nostalgia journey, although I do assume they might have executed extra harm to Fletcher if they’d introduced a GameCube as an alternative. Heck, I received into AEW initially as a result of I stored seeing footage of unimaginable video game-themed indicators held up at occasions, a strong custom that continues at AEW to today together with at yesterday’s PPV: Man, I really like wrestling.
