All Elite Wrestling returned to TBS on Saturday May 9 for a special one-hour (and change) broadcast dubbed ‘Fairway to Hell.’ The event took place at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida which is an indoor golf venue.
Events like this are why this writer loves wrestling.
Fairway to Hell was a fast-moving show that featured two terrific matches, advanced multiple storylines and was set in a wildly unique venue that AEW leveraged throughout the entire show. It’s this type of outside the box thinking that only works with pro wrestling like WCW at Club La Vela, cinematic wrestling matches at The Hardy Compound, and WWF Shotgun Saturday Night at Penn Station.
Tangent warning! One of this writer’s biggest issues with wrestling, even when I was a little kid, was that every venue looked the same. WWF Superstars, my gateway drug into wrestling, looked the same every single week. The show could’ve been in Pittsburgh or Vancouver, and you couldn’t tell the difference. The same could be said about Monday Night RAW, Smackdown!, Nitro, Thunde
This is why Fairway to Hell worked so well.
AEW was able to present a wholly unique show. The entrances were so different, and they employed unique camera work to make entrances more impressive (the super low angle of Divine Dominion was an inspired touch). The camera crew were dressed like they were playing golf – subtle nod to the event. And, just the pure scope of the venue, which felt like a battle arena in Oz, was something you’d see on a grainy tape of FMW or W*ING doing some sort of weird (read: awesome) death match. Now if only AEW could run a death match tournament at Yokohama Stadium.
The main event of PAC and Darby Allin for the AEW World Title was one of the best TV matches the company has ever done. This was due to both men going all out and using the venue’s unique atmosphere and design to their advantage. Darby Allin bailing from the ring and challenging PAC to fight him on the expansive green got the audience off their feet and screaming in rabid anticipation. This type of move makes you want to paraphrase Moneyball: “How can you not be romantic about pro wrestling?” Darby and PAC taking bumps in the sand trap, and on the green was a sight to be seen. Then of course there was the New Jack spot where PAC and Darby fought on the balcony. PAC hucking the world champ off the balcony through a set of multiple tables was Tony Khan in his ECW bag. Then, just as important, PAC running down flights of stairs to make the pin allowed the superhuman Darby Allin time to (somehow) recover and kick out. It all makes sense (well, it doesn’t to some extent, but that’s pro wrestling).
Darby Allin retaining the title here was just another feather in the cap of what will be a short run. It’s likely he’ll drop the title to MJF at Double or Nothing, so giving him big wins, and wild ones at that, have bolstered his position in the company and will make MJF’s win that much bigger when it happens.
Elsewhere on the card…
- Speedball Mike Bailey got a quick win over Kiran Grey in a standby match. This was a nice showcase for Speedball. The post-match promo by Kevin Knight about them both going to the top only furthers my thoughts that Knight’s heel turn is coming.
- The Divine Dominion 5-Minute Challenge is nice added touch to this dominant tag team. This showcases the team, and we’ll get some nice matches where a few teams come close. The payoff for one of them to go the full-five and then earn a title match will get a solid reaction from the crowd. Also, let’s put over how good Megan Bayne and Lena Kross have been as a team in the little time they’ve been together.
- Mark Davis winning the AEW National Title is not something Tony Khan would have done even a year ago. Long title runs were the trend, and he had issues pulling the trigger on people with titles. This is a really good, forward-thinking move as it catapults Mark Davis up the ranks.
