What's life without taking a year and change break from doing a thing you generally enjoy but gets its time eaten up by other little hobbies you also enjoy because you can't seem to spread yourself across all of them at once? Do I even still know how to write about wrestling? Who knows! Let's find out together.

I'm sitting here on my couch with a cup of coffee the day before AEW's All In. I'm doing laundry which is a real chore today because the laundry room is upstairs and my glutes are aching from a lower body workout yesterday. I smell like sawdust and can't decide if it's hot enough to turn on the air conditioning or if it's nicer to have the windows open with air blowing in from the fan.

But let's put all of that aside and watch some good ole pro-wrestling. I'll be upfront: I'm not super familiar with EVE on a show-by-show basis. I know EVE, I've watched it before, I've loosely followed it over the years, and it's always appealed to me both aesthetically and from a wrestling standpoint. We even had tickets to it when we did our big UK trip a couple years back but it was like the day after we got in and the jet lag fucked us up way more than we expected so we didn't end up going.

Unfortunately, it's also another thing that asks you to pay for it monthly in a sea of things that ask you to pay for them monthly and at a certain point you've got to figure out when and where to cut things off (like only subscribing to AMC+ when Interview with the Vampire or Dragula are airing).

I happened upon EVE's YouTube page, though, and saw that they offered a free month so I'm going to give it a shot and see if I keep up with watching enough to justify the monthly $10 cost.

I'm going in dark other than seeing some clips of Skye Blue going full sicko mode as she likes to do, so let's get into it.

Starting off hot

If I caught commentary correctly, it sounds like the basis for this show is that the matches are unannounced so basically everything is an open challenge? And being a big PPV weekend for AEW, I'm guessing we'll get a lot of outsiders on the show. So, maybe not the best show to start with if I'm trying to give EVE a good look since it may not be the core roster but I'm expecting it to be a good show nonetheless.

In the opener, Kris Statlander took the EVE Women's Title off of Session Moth Martina in about ten minutes. I like that there's a time limit counter on the screen at all times! I think I prefer the announcer making the calls every five/ten minutes or whatever like you get in New Japan, but this solves the problem you run into with AEW where they only make the announcements when it's going to play into the finish.

Onto the match – Martina's rope-trap headscissors is such a fun thing that I don't think I've seen before. I don't know if it's a regular part of her arsenal or not but if it is, I'm surprised we haven't seen someone on TV steal it.

Kris Statlander comes off way more dynamic and comfortable working as a heel. I loved her whole deal with Stokely in AEW and was bummed when they just suddenly dropped it with a quick backstage promo. I know there was a whole redemption arc (which I did enjoy) of Statlander winning back the trust of Willow Nightingale, but I'd love it if Stat got to work the style she worked here against Martina in AEW.

Whether that means a full-on heel turn again or just being a cocky jerk, I think it'd help make her character far more interesting. We've already seen that she can be a funny weirdo in promos before when (presumably) she's being more natural and not trying to lean into a character too heavily.

A great way to kick off the show with two wrestlers the crowd absolutely went bananas for ending with a big title change setting the tone for the entire night.

A tribute to the natural titty babe

The second match, The First Class Dolls vs Amira Blair and Kingsley, got derailed by the annual EVE's Got Talent competition. Amira gave us a fitting tribute to Dolly Parton (RIP) by playing "Jolene" with (from?) her nose while Kingsley performed her own original song; the opposition did a lil dance routine. Amira & Kingsley came out on top, prompting the Dolls to jump them from behind to officially start the match.

I don't know what happens in Australia. Billie Kay, Cassie Lee, Harley Cameron, Kingsley – they're all hilarious weirdos in their own special ways unlike anyone else around them. I first saw Kingsley on the recent Mystery Wrestling Infinite Rumble show and she really stood out.

Amira Blair is someone I've only seen as Michael Oku's manager, so it kind of blew me away to see this version of her. She's so dynamic as a character and has so much personality that you don't get to see when she's just working as a manager, so this was a delight.

There wasn't much to the match itself; it wasn't bad, but was pretty short and mostly served as a vehicle for Amira's whole deal with Abi post-match.

Fuckin' bullseye, man

I love deathmatch wrestling when deathmatch wrestling is done well, and Lucy Deathmatch/Emersyn Jayne/Skye Blue was deathmatch wrestling done well.

This match introduced the brand new Spirit of EVE Championship, which essentially sounds like a deathmatch championship. Over the past decade, deathmatch wrestling has been on a fairly steady rise in popularity with some real sicko shit not uncommonly happening on American television.

They brought out all of the hits in this one. Skewers! Tacks! Tables! And a new twist I'd not yet seen before: fucking darts. Skye Blue jammed a couple of darts into the cheeks of Emersyn Jayne, the darts dangling from her mouth like walrus tusks for several minutes while she took and delivered moves while wobbling around the ring in a daze.

As she does, Skye bled like a fucking maniac which was such a shame because it ruined her bright white gear. What bad luck!

All three women bled in this one but Skye seems intent on being the new marker for bloodletting in professional wrestling, replacing the vaunted Muta Scale.

Lucy Deathmatch won here with a splash on Skye through a table, after Skye (and Jayne [and Deathmatch]) had skewers jammed into her head. Worth the price of admission on its own.

Wrapping Up

The AAAW Tag Title match with Nightshade & Nyla Rose/NyteSkye was a bit disappointing if I'm being honest. As a longtime AEW watcher, it annoys me that Nyla is basically nonexistent on AEW programming so I was excited to see a Nyla Rose match again.

Sadly, Nyla played babyface in peril for the majority of the match which moved slowly and didn't grab me the way everything else on the show did. This was my first time seeing NyteSkye and I'd like to see them again to get a better sense of what they can do.

Similarly, I always wish we got to see more of Marina Shafir wrestling on AEW shows. She's improved a ton since she first got signed there and her matches are a different flavor than any others on the show. I really enjoyed her match here with Chantal Jordan and it woke me up after what was a snoozer of a tag match.

What can you say about the main event? It fucking rocked. I don't have a whole dissertation on the match itself, but I think you'll be in trouble if you're looking for a better women's match this weekend than Miyu Yamashita vs Kay Lee Ray. The ending was a little flat just due to the big kick catching Kay Lee more on the back than the head, but that's a small quibble.

They fought for 26 minutes and it felt realistic that any single strike could have finished the match by that point.

In the post-match, Kris Statlander came out to bump past Kay Lee and go nose-to-nose with Yamashita. Kay Lee and Stat got into a scuffle and in the confusion, Marina Shafir appeared behind Yamashita and put her to sleep with a choke. This sets up a couple of matches I'll be super interested to see.

All in all, a great show and a fun afternoon of wrestling for me! We'll see how long I can keep up with EVE on a weekly basis. Time is not generally cooperative with shows being a couple of hours long at least, plus the requirement of paying for another monthly streaming service. Time and modern-day streaming are dickheads.