#AsForDynamite: The View from the Cheap Seats

My daughter Emma and I went to last night’s AEW Dynamite in Worcester, MA. The show was awesome. And now, since I’ve wanted to pitch a series of articles called “The View from the Cheap Seats” to AEW President Tony Khan for quite some time now, I’m gonna go ahead and shoot my shot.

To say the very least, I was *quite* surprised when AEW announced a show in Worcester. My daughter Emma is a freshman at Clark, located just two miles away from the DCU Center, and while she likes the university, we both agree that the town itself is kind of a dump.

With Emma during the Bucks' entrance

Let's Talk About Worcester

Worcester is home to some 200,000 people, making it a largish version of the small Northeastern pre-1970s boom cities that all but died once the steel mills and assorted manufacturing plants went overseas. Worcester got lucky, though. Firstly, because it’s located maybe an hour outside of Boston, making it a sort of bedroom community for the hardcore commuting class. Secondly, because Worcester serves as home to some 11 colleges, including Patriot League member Holy Cross, Worcester Polytech, Worcester State, and Emma’s own Clark University. Those colleges at least give the city an economic base outside of Boston commuter traffic and/or the local municipal industrial complex.

Even so, I found it honestly astonishing to learn that Worcester not only has an event venue, it has a venue that ostensibly seats some fourteen thousand people. For better or worse, the truth on the ground proved to be a good bit different than that. In reality, the DCU Center is home to a minor league hockey team, the Worcester Railers. Based on the number of jerseys we saw out and about downtown, I’m gonna say that the Railers have a devoted fanbase. But still. The DCU Center itself can only be described as a long-past-its-prime hole that looks as if it hasn’t seen more than five thousand people at any point in the last ten years. The upper half of the 200-section and all of the venue’s 300-section had long since been permanently curtained off ages before AEW got into town this week. Moreover, I’d bet that the maybe 3500 people that last night’s event drew was the biggest crowd that place has seen in the last calendar year.

I myself live in Coastal Connecticut, some two hours southwest of Worcester and just two miles from the beach. Thus, we’d been of two minds about going to the show since hearing about it. Emma and I like AEW and have now been to three AEW shows, and we’ve always enjoyed them. However, driving two hours to a pro-wrestling show -- on a school night, no less! -- proved quite a tough sell. In the end, my wife encouraged me to go as a way to spend time with my daughter, and even now on a sleepy Thursday morning, I’m glad that I went.

We hear from all kinds of online “AEW Truthers” and assorted attendance merchants that the company can’t draw in-person and that AEW is therefore “in the mud”. Having now been to three shows, I can assure you that this is purest bullshit, perpetrated by grifters and cynics for reasons that I don’t honestly understand.

Friends, the Northeast saw an actual Nor’easter yesterday. We got between 2” and 3” of rain alongside heavy winds and freaking sideways sleet starting right as people began lining up outside for yesterday’s show. Not only did people come out; they came out in the worst weather imaginable. As Emma and I headed over towards the doors, we saw literally dozens of people standing at the box office for walk-up tickets. In driving sleet!

Osprey! Osprey!

As you can imagine, the drive up to the event yesterday sucked a high hard one. Thankfully, the current “Beat Navy Mobile” is a gray, black, and gold 2024 Subaru Crosstrek Sport with all-wheel drive and brand new tires. As my wife said, they literally made it for exactly this weather. I still second-guessed the decision to attend the show for the full two hours it took me to get to Worcester yesterday afternoon. It was that bad.

Friends, the drive up yesterday proved scary enough. 

The drive back… *shudders*.

I got into town, got Emma, and got parked by about 4:45 yesterday afternoon. Having spent the first half of this piece running down both the weather and Worcester generally, here’s where I admit that the area around the arena proved way nicer than I expected. The rain let up to a cold drizzle as we parked, light enough that we felt comfortable walking over to get something to eat. Downtown Worcester has a bunch of really nice looking sports bars and an actual Ruth Chris Steakhouse. We settled on the Mercantile, an upscale sports bar that surely caters to the downtown legal establishment. The Mercantile sits a block from the venue, and as it happens, we got lucky that we got there early. They could seat us but only until 6:30 pm. After that, we’d have needed a reservation.

Fun place. We sat around and caught up for an hour or so. I really enjoyed the fish tacos. Emma ordered a very nice looking burger -- topped with a fried egg! -- and they had Fiddlehead IPA on draft. 

That’ll work.

The Righteous in tag team action before the show

#AsForDynamite

Last night’s event offered a doubleheader. We saw Dynamite live, followed by AEW Collision, which they taped for a late night Saturday showing this weekend. Adam Copeland, the Rated-R Superstar fka “Edge”, opened the show with an impassioned promo defending AEW from the very “truthers” and cynics we talked about up above in this very article. Copeland seemed agitated, and Dax Harwood later cut another impassioned promo on the same topic. Copeland has great delivery, too, and I absolutely understand not wanting folks to constantly attack your professional life. But if I worked for AEW, I personally would ignore all that noise. Fucking losers, every one of them.

We actually sat next to a couple of those same cynics -- the whole place was going crazy for the show, and these two losers were chanting “CM Punk!” at Tony Khan -- but notably, they popped like girls when Copeland hit the stage, sang along to his and everyone else’s music, and then filmed everything. They wanted to act like they were too cool to pop for Will Osprey, but you’ll not convince me that yesterday wasn’t the highlight of their month, and when I got on my feet and started screaming for Osprey, y’know what? They did, too. 

Phoney shitbags.

Honestly, I’ve got just one thing to say to people like that:

Lay off the fucking cheeseburgers.

I mean, my man took up every bit of a seat-and-a-half. I literally got squished. I wanted to be polite in a public place, but dude…

I very nearly said something. For better or worse, though, I could see no way for it to end in anything other than a confrontation, and there I was, in a public place with my daughter. Still, those guys annoyed me to no end.

In all sincerity, friends, cynicism will ruin your life. You think you’re being cool and edgy, but you wake up one day and realize that you haven’t honestly enjoyed anything at all in the last six months. 

At that point, the joke is on you. You’ve become your own punchline.

An impassioned promo

Anyway. We actually decided to go see last night’s show after AEW announced Will Osprey vs. Will Hobbs. Osprey is Osprey, and Hobbs is without a doubt my favorite AEW wrestler who doesn’t necessarily get a lot of TV time. Their match absolutely ruled, too. Osprey live literally looks like a man with springs in his legs. I very much wanted to see Hobbs kill Don Callis afterwards. Without a doubt, this was my favorite thing aside from just spending time with my daughter yesterday. 

We also really enjoyed the tag match between Best Friends and the Young Bucks, and when they went for the post-match hug, I screamed, “Beat his ass, Trent!”

And he did!

That ruled. Maybe my favorite moment from the entire show.

The Collision tag match between FTR and Top Flight was also really good. No surprise there. I commented to Emma that FTR sometimes starts their matches slow -- and they did last night, too -- but they always get there. Those guys are amazing.

As noted, we’ve now seen AEW three times. We saw Cody wrestle Shaq live, we saw MJF’s original CM Punk “quarters” babyface promo in Bridgeport, CT, live, and now we’ve seen Osprey live. 

All of that is pretty cool.

Final Thoughts

We ended up leaving a little before eleven. I hated to do it, but as noted, I had a nightmare two-hour drive home -- in the fucking sleet! -- after the show, and I now have to absolutely run electric load flows all freaking day in my capacity as a Senior Engineer. 

What can you do? I needed at least a little sleep.

As a final note, we’ve also now seen Tony Khan in person three times, and for whatever it’s worth, last night was -- by far -- the most polished and professional that I’ve ever seen him in both his personal delivery and presentation. A lot of times he seems like a happy-go-lucky wrestling fan who’s just living his dream. Last night, though, he very much seemed like a billionaire boss who’s had it up to fucking here with all of this bullshit, and now he wants to see his business perform.

Maybe that change has always been inevitable. I don’t know. However, in all sincerity, I really do hope that TK can find his zen again soon.

That’s all, friends. Thanks.ks, and have a nice day.