When you’re a pretentious as fuck art student that studied literature, you fancy when you first publish your travelogue about a sports event you’re covering it’s going to conjure up Hunter S. Thompson-like ribald revelry.

Of course it doesn’t end up that way.

Sean and I drove together at an abiding pace, weary of the 4 cop cars we saw. We listened to Tom Petty at a respectable volume. When Dr. Gonzo sped to Las Vegas in a corvette, hallucinating on ether that savage bats were attacking him, I had a little anxiety that I couldn’t find the toll fare ticket when we had to pay and my wallet was packed neatly in the backseat.

Whatever.

We had a nice 2 hour 45 minute drive, got to the hotel with plenty of time before the show, sipped watermelon seltzers, then munched on chicken wings that were actually just chicken tenders lathered in soy whiskey barbecue sauce because our waitress correctly assumed the buffalo sauce would be too spicy for me.

A horribly depraved trip this was not.

I’ve been to WrestleMania 23, Hell in Cell 2017, Raw in 2018 and the infamous Raw in Detroit where Shane McMahon returned. With the exception of WrestleMania, this was the best show I went to. Not the most star-studded, but certainly the one with most heat and the sensation that every performer was over. Maybe this is just AEW, but the fans were all hardcores that were audibly invested in all the wrestlers, with nobody besides the Dark jobbers getting silence. The Wolstein Center was arguably 60 to 70 percent to capacity, with the empty sections in the upper second deck on the side of the hard camera. I recall only seeing two gimmick stands for merch and the lines were too long for us to get shit, so certainly there’s an opportunity to make more money per head there. In terms of reactions, Wardlow had the biggest face pop as he was the hometown hero. And he got time with Tony Khan after the show went off-air to share his appreciation for the promotion, his fans, and his family in a feel-good segment. CM Punk, then Jon Moxley had the second and third biggest babyface support. In heel heat, MJF was the most over, and his promo ability live was genuinely something to behold. Cody Rhodes wrestled the ladder match as a heel and got the 2nd most heat, although, my perception was this crowd in Cleveland booed him because he wouldn’t turn heel, not for any of this meta/4th wall nonsense. Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. had the third most heel heat, as she did the ol’ cheap heat heap on the Browns schtick, which ended in a funny moment when she stole some fans Terrible Towel and ran off with it like a cape.

Overall, a solid if somewhat unspectacular show, but nothing was eye-rolling, boring, or offensive to a hardcore fan. The only thing offensive, of course, was that Tony Khan still hasn’t brought an AEW show to Detroit.

Here’s where we landed with the latest Dynamite and Rampage matches this past week. Curious how we rank matches? We’ve got a rubric for that.