McGuire’s Monthlies: Kudos to Kelani Jordan and Kendal Grey, the dawn of a New Day, and love for Will Ospreay

The most antiquated thing you can do in pro wrestling media in 2026 is write about pro wrestling once a month. The landscape changes by the tweet (or … um … X post). Everyone and their best friend’s best friend’s aunt’s nephew has a podcast ready to dissect the latest rumor, angle, program, television show and passive aggressive social media post that just happened 30 seconds from now. Offering something up at the beginning of each month is an exercise in idiocy, a lesson in pointlessness, and an assurance that your *thoughts* will quickly be forgotten.

So, all right. Let’s write about pro wrestling once a month.

And not the WWE show that is slated to happen in December.

Instead, Sunday, indeed, felt like an actual Wrestlepalooza. In fact, it was such a palooza that the only thing missing was a set from Jane’s Addiction. AAA, NXT, and AEW had shows that spanned almost the entirety of the morning and afternoon, depending on your time zone. And while I’ve complained about these types of things in the past …

… This really worked for me, guys.

The thing was, I had stuff to do, things to work on, deadlines to meet. So, as a courtesy, I threw on the All In pre-show when it began, and just sort of left it there. I was curious to see if they’d save the New Level reveal for the main show (which they smartly, if not frustratingly, did), but I knew the proceedings would have only a percentage of my attention. Because of everything I had going on, I knew I wasn’t going to order All In – why waste that money if you aren’t fully invested? – but the pre-show, I figured, would be harmless (and, this time, in a rare case, even newsworthy as Britt Baker returned to the company’s airwaves after being exiled for two years).

When the pre-show ended, I went about my business and kept one eye on YouTube for the AAA show, another eye on all the Professional Wrestling Websites (mostly this one because I still contend that Dot Net has the best live coverage in the game), and the rest of my focus on the other tasks I had. Through it all, the wrestling in the background served as a soundtrack that I didn’t know I needed.

The day took a turn when NXT’s Heatwave began, and I was a little more freed up to pay attention. By this point, there were so many clips of what had already happened at All In circulating that it felt like I had actually seen a third of the show, and meanwhile, Heatwave kicked off with the Zaria match (including Wren Sinclair, whose work I adore), and the Vanity Project winning NXT tag gold (those young fellas can work). So many hours into the day, I was sure I wouldn’t go the distance on any of this stuff, right? My intention was never to even engage with this Wrestlepalooza – petty WWE doing petty WWE things by running these shows in the first place, and AEW, with its inability to utilize moderation, made this a certainty.

But then Kelani Jordan wrestled Kendal Grey for the NXT Women’s Championship, and I threw up my hands in surrender. I wasn’t moving off that couch until all the wrestling had subsided.

Those ladies had one of the best matches I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s a shame that there is a less than zero percent chance that any headline coming out of the weekend will revolve around them or that match. Which, of course, leads me to the point of writing all this (sorry it took this long to get here): How much good does it actually do WWE to try and take the piss out of everything AEW does?

This isn’t a new question, and it’s not even a debate that doesn’t continue to happen each time the announcements are made. Actually, I don’t even know that there’s a debate. We all just roll our eyes anymore. OK, OK. We get it. WWE is going to do its bullshit and snicker as it books shows on the days of AEW’s biggest events. They have to know it doesn’t discernibly change a lot in the outcome – at this point, if you love AEW, you’re going to watch AEW, and if you love WWE, you’ll watch whatever WWE product they throw at you, so running shows at the same time feels like an exercise in nothingness. But, as I said. WWE is going to do its bullshit.

It’s just a shame that it ends up hurting the wrestlers more than it does anyone or anything else. As I was watching Grey and Jordan, I couldn’t help but think back to the Black and Gold days (which I wrote about last month), and the amount of momentum Sasha Banks and Bayley created with their excellent Takeover match a million years ago. That happened not just because it was a great match, but also because no other great matches were happening during or around it. It had the space to grab the wrestling world for more than a half an hour, and it furthered the launch of the wrestlers’ careers in the mainstream and was another step towards WWE giving women’s wrestling a serious platform.

Those things aren’t going to happen with Grey and Jordan these days, at least in part, because WWE wants to play silly games. With the market being oversaturated with professional wrestling anyway, it takes more than it has in a long time to stand out, but Kelani Jordan and Kendal Grey put in the work to try and do just that. They were betrayed by their own company, however, in that their own company can’t get out of its own way when it comes to understanding that perhaps the tunnel vision through which they view their business isn’t always the kindest approach to its own employees.

As such, I just wanted to use this space to congratulate Jordan and Grey on a fantastic outing and urge anyone who didn’t catch it on Sunday to seek it out sometime this month. It felt gritty at times. It somehow succeeded in getting me invested despite multiple commercial breaks. It was Sunday’s sleeper match, and it deserves its flowers for exceeding all expectations this viewer had going into it. And they did it all despite the WWE machine working against them.

So, yes. Sunday turned out to be a true Wrestlepalooza – and those women were the best band nobody’s ever heard performing on a stage set somewhere to the side.

I think I’m in the minority, but I’m not entirely sold on “New Level” as a name for Kofi and Creed (and Swerve maybe?). The callback to their work in the other company feels … needless? Reductive? A little too on the nose? Pick any of those, and I don’t think you’d be wrong.

The truth is, WWE had brushed Kofi and Creed to the side for the last bunch of years they were there. The New Day had become an afterthought. Neither a heel turn nor a Grayson Waller could help kickstart the duo out of midcard purgatory. They might be the greatest tag team to ever exist in WWE, but they were definitely not being treated as such (and perhaps maybe not viewed as such by those who make the decisions?).

Plus, the New Day included someone else – Big E. And we all know the Big E story. Linking anything new (no pun intended) to that entire gimmick feels a little like … eh? It’s fine, I guess. And I’m sure if it was even a consideration, Big E seems like a classy dude, so there might be a solid chance those three fellas talked about it, and there is no ill will anywhere on any level.

But as far as names go? Meh. It could be just a little bit better and a lot more forward-thinking.

I’ve been loud about my love for one, Mr. Will Ospreay, and I will not stop now. Sure, his AEW World Championship win at All In felt inevitable, but sometimes the inevitable is the best thing to do. There is no shame in predictability, especially in pro wrestling. And man, I know he’s a quirky guy, he might not be everybody’s cup of tea on a personality level (let’s not even get into the polarity of his in-ring work), and he can veer a little too much into bro (or bruv) territory for my taste sometimes.

But I dunno. I like him.

And I loved – I mean, loved – his entrance for All In’s main event. Loved it all. Loved the pretentiousness of it, and I loved the cheesiness of it. It fit him and the moment perfectly. Kudos to AEW for that presentation and kudos to Will Ospreay for getting his moment of triumph.

There were lots of predictions last month and lots of wrong ones at that (a 6-6 record for SummerSlam is just unacceptable). In all, we finished August 10-8 to bring the overall record to 36-31. Not bad, but not great. Let’s see if September will be any different.

– For Sunday Night’s Main Event, let’s go with Randy Orton, Oba Femi, Lil Yachty lasting five minutes, and, as a result, Trick Williams over Baron Corbin, plus Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, and Tatum Paxley.

– For AAA Triplemania, let’s go with Omos, El Grande Americano, Rey Fenix, La Catalina, and Psycho Clown.

– Roman Reigns will beat Penta in Mexico City.

– At least one title will change hands at Worlds Collide.

– No titles will change hands at AEW All Out.