July 18th, 2024: Crawling Out of My Cage (I've Been Doing Just Fine)

Match: Will Ospreay (c) vs. MJF (AEW, July 17, 2024)

AEW International Championship

Let's cut to the chase. I have actually reviewed this match already!

This review was on a nifty little German-run website called Cagematch, the "CHRIS BENOIT of WRESTLING WEBSITES", according to their old banner.

Here's what the review originally said:

    "There is no way a match with two of the most self-serving, egotistical workers was going to be good, and I was only proven right with tonight's performance. I don't try and go into things with the intention of hating them, but I have seen the work these two have put up separately, and I could not help but develop this impression. Like many others have mentioned, it was a 'checklist epic', going down the list of every single trope to make themselves look like the in-ring phenoms these two think they are. My personal dislike of the performers aside, I believe that this is absolutely the wrong direction for wrestling as a whole to pull towards. Synthetic, lab-grown spots designed and engineered to pop the crowd, always with one eye winking to the crowd as if to say 'Hey! We're doing this and you're GOING to like it because this is what you've ALWAYS liked!'. It is wrestling that insults the intelligence. Self-aware and 'meta' because they think they're smart."

This review got taken down.

Cagematch's mods appear to have been purging this match of all low ratings. My account, along with many others who have reviewed the match in the interest of fairness, has been banned from the website.

Look. I enjoy Cagematch as a resource. I enjoy mindlessly clicking through wrestler profiles, seeing what matches they've had. They are an indispensable tool for aggregated information, and have been extremely useful for tracking a wrestler's activities throughout their career.

What Cagematch does not need to be is Letterboxd's edgy little cousin.

The Cagematch community, and its moderator team, have cultivated an atmosphere of like-mindedness; any deviant review that is deemed to be without merit is purged without due diligence. It does not appear, for one moment, that we, as reviewers, or as part of a community, for that matter, have a right to have independent thought; for our tastes to deviate from the norm.

This issue has especially worsened during the tribalism stoked by AEW vs. WWE. Now, reviewers like me, and countless others who act in good faith, critiquing matches that may not necessarily be reflective of our tastes, that do so simply because we enjoy doing so, are caught in the crossfire, and are assumed to be trolls, tearing down a "perfectly good match" without merit.

Now, do you begin to see how incongruous the community is to the greater function of the website?

For all its merits, every single shortcoming of this website can be traced to the community and the attitude that its community has cultivated; symptoms of a problem that was allowed to fester for far too long.

I think it's emblematic that this was my final Cagematch review. It's emblematic that I got banned on my birthday. There was no better way for me to go out.

Verdict: Enough is enough, and it's time for a change.