I’m not really a big fan of AC Mack’s matches. I’m not saying that to dunk on the guy in his big moment, but rather to highlight how impressed I was by this match. It’s pretty much a testament to the power of a crazy good atmosphere and a straightforward in ring narrative. Everyone in the building wanted the AC Mack victory, and that does a lot to boost the things going on in the ring. You throw in things like the classic trope of the locker room emptying out, the visual of all the AC Mack signs in a very compact room, and the feeling that something major is going to shift, and you have a match that has all the ingredients to feel large and great.
While I do think the atmosphere is doing most of the heavy lifting here, that’s not to say there were no in-ring qualities. Shelley is as great as ever, this time leaning into the bully role. He comes in with a sound strategy of taking out Mack’s arm to neutralize his ability to hit the Mack 10 and it works perfectly. Mack returns to that well constantly but can never get it in right, meaning Shelley plenty of opportunities to cut him off.
Mack does well to sell the arm in this. It’s nothing revolutionary but the frustration he has never being able to hit the Mack 10 definitely comes through the whole time. Maybe a little more urgency and fire could have been called upon for such a big occasion, but everything in the presentation came together well enough to get me rooting for him in the end.
It’s a great thing to see in the moment, it feels momentous. Although I personally would have preferred to see more of this Alex Shelley run with the belt, ACTION and Mack just created too strong an emotional atmosphere to really deny the result, at least on this night. It was a huge thing for the people in the building, and that certainly came through on the feed.
I suspect it might lose a little something upon further examination separated from all the emotion. With time, I expect it to go the way of the Mania 37 N2 main event, just with a little more heart poured into it. Until then though, it’s a fun thing to have experienced as it happened.
