AEW's Five Fingers of Death Week of 10/25-10/31

A couple of years ago we did weekly posts when the WWE was running cool weekly TV matches with Oney Lorcan, Drew Gulak, Jack Gallagher, and Brian Kendrick. Those guys got buried deep, cancelled, or retired, but we're bringing it back! With AEW running plenty of killer weekly TV matches featuring all-timers Darby Allin, Bryan Danielson, Eddie Kingston, CM Punk, and Dustin Rhodes. We're running it back with a twist!

AEW Dark 10/26 (Taped 10/24)

Eddie Kingston vs. Jack Evans - FUN

PAS: Crazy that these two guys had never had a singles match before considering how long both guys were on the indies. Evans is best known for flips, but he is a world class guy at getting beaten up and he is at Chris Frazier level here, with Kingston caving his chest in with hard chops and twisting him like taffy with the stretch muffler. Evans gets in some spin kicks, and Eddie does some nice nerve selling before putting him away. I think this would have been better in a different time with less of a hierarchy difference, but it was definitely an enjoyable TV match.

MD: Unsurprisingly, this was really good. Good on Jack for being irritating enough to get heat after coming in so flippy and entertaining. To be fair, it's pretty evident that you don't get anything like a normal tourist crowd with these studio shows, which is probably a shame. Still, it went from the studio wrestling comedy with Bryce and Jack's new look to Eddie leaning hard into Jack's kicks very abruptly. Then Evans not just leaned into the chops but ran into them (but in a way that made total sense for his character and the match). Evans bumped himself on his own Michinoku Driver which is on brand. Both of these guys made what their opponent did look amazing throughout. Took two tries for the Saito suplex because that's the house style; everything either takes effort and fails the first time or hits the first time and gets countered the second. It makes sense to have Eddie win with the Stretch Plum since to help (re)-establish it as a weapon for the Danielson match; it let Excalibur point out during that match that he won with it here.

Bryan Danielson vs. Aaron Solo

PAS: Danielson is going to work a long match with pretty much anyone, and throw enough fun stuff in it to make it worth a watch. Solo has a very power plant offensive resume, I liked his double stomp, but otherwise it was very Evan Corageousish. I dug how Danielson interacted with Factory outside the ring, getting clocked by a nice QT Marshall right hand, and taking out Comoroto with a tope. I dig WCW Pro American Dragon, but there are a lot more interesting opponents for him in the enhancement pool.

MD: One good thing about enhancement or JTTS matches is that it lets people actually hit moves that will get countered almost every other bigger match. Most of the time Danielson goes for his corner flurry that ends with the top rope 'rana, some aspect of it gets countered. Here it worked. Basic Flair hitting moves off the top rope occasionally logic. Unfortunately, Solo was intrinsically less interesting than Comoroto or QT as an opponent. The deal with AEW Danielson is he's going to push you to your point of desperation and Solo's point of desperation was pretty mild. The most interesting things here were when QT was getting involved and how Danielson leaned into those late 80s WWF narrative opportunities. Honestly, given it was his first studio match in forever, I'm a little surprised Danielson didn't do anything more experimental here. I suppose that he's saving that for hooded nonsense?

AEW Dynamite 10/27

19. CM Punk vs. Bobby Fish

MD: I'm starting to see some patterns with Punk's matches. Structurally, the first acts are pretty complete, to the point where I could have seen things legitimately ending after the tope and being a nice, little TV match. Instead, that's the predecessor to the heat. The Garcia and Sydal matches had similar moments where they just broke open. In general, Punk looks as smooth and physically sound as I may have ever seen him. I'm guessing it's either due to the time off or all the training he did for MMA and just changing his body and his way of moving. The early knees in the corner looked great. The switch around neckbreaker looked so smooth. The way he's able to adapt to working on one limb while making some of his stuff, like the elbow drop, look as good as ever, is pretty impressive. And that's just the half of it. Punk was getting fans to pop huge for bodyslams. In 2021. Three times. There's so much value to that and so much skill and so much daring and fearlessness to just lean into something simple and trust that the fans will go along with you for the ride. They did, 100%. 

There's value in having matches paced like this on an AEW card to help (re)train the fans. Once this got going, I liked how Fish varied his offense, which made things a little different than the Punk/Garcia match. The hurt leg was often a means to his other shots, which themselves were a means to let him target the leg again. It was a good 65/35 balance between leg shots and cutoffs and other bits of offensive striking. That was obvious and overt. Less obvious was the early transition where he picked Punk up in a fireman's carry and in my head, that was to goad punk into going for the GTS too early. A leap? Maybe but these guys earned plenty of good will here. As for that kickout right on 3 on the GTS? It was the guy's birthday and more importantly it was earned and set up by Punk's inability to get over there quickly and the fact he couldn't cover Fish how he would have wanted. The move was still protected. Fish was protected. No problems there.

PAS: Fish is a guy who had Shawn Michaels NXT and Davey Richards era ROH stink on him for me, but man did I dig him here. He seemed to cut any superfluous nonsense out of his work and focused instead on vicious looking leg kicks and Thai knees. I am going to be into a guy who basically works like Mitsuya Nagai and he was a fun foil for Punk. Fish was really obliterating his leg with those heavy kicks, nearly knocking him over with every shot, and it allowed Punk to do some fun selling with the one legged elbow drop and the delay on the GTS. Punk does look physically great (working once a week will do that for you) and his stuff has way more impact than I remembered. Great match, wasn't really expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. 

ER: Bobby Fish is one of those wrestling weirdos with terrible life opinions who came up in systems entirely surrounded by people with terrible wrestling visions, who also somehow keeps getting better as a wrestler the older he gets. Punk has been out of wrestling the entire time Fish was turning into an old cool limb twister, and somehow Punk has turned into an actual execution guy. Hitting your 40s and suddenly hitting your offense better than you ever have before is a great trick and I sincerely don't think we've seen Punk look this crisp...ever. His strikes look better, and Matt pointed out how the MMA training likely helped that along, but everything he does looks better than it did a decade ago. His attention to detail is different and it makes things like those corner knees more potent, but just the way he works his way through a bit of offense looks so much better. My favorite bit was the final GTS sequence, with Punk fighting Fish up onto his shoulders only to have Fish reverse into a nasty dragon screw that I actually thought would lead to the finish, and I love how Punk fought to get Fish back up into the GTS and struggled through hitting it clean. 

But the match building to that great stretch was filled with cool moments that felt totally different than any CM Punk match I've seen. Fish was mean about targeting Punk's leg, and I flipped out when he hit an inside leg kick that sent Punk's leg shooting off to the side and wide open for a Fish follow up. Fish kicking out at the 3 could have easily felt egregious depending on how it was handled in the immediate aftermath, and it's a tough (and fairly unnecessary) needle to thread. If the timing is even slightly off then the finish looks blown and the entire great match is remembered for that busted finish. But the timing of the entire finish worked really well, with Punk nailing the GTS and then collapsing, making it over to Fish just in time to secure the pin. Great match. 

AEW Rampage 10/29 (Taped 10/27)

1. Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Danielson - EPIC

PAS: Danielson has been so great working within the match styles of his opponents in AEW, working the world's best Omega match, the best possible Suzuki match, and a great Dustin match just last week. I was interested to see what type of Eddie match he would work, as Eddie can do a bunch of different things.  This was slugfest Kingston, and I love slugfest Kingston. Eddie is willing to deliver a huge beating, and absorb a huge beating, but what really makes him a master at those kind of matches is his selling. So many great little moments of Kingston here: the dazed look after the head kick, the hulking up on the strikes while still feeling every shot, his reaction to arm numbness, just a masterclass of the little things. The big things in this match ruled too: Danielson gets every blood vessel in his chest opened up, and was throwing his kicks just as hard. They named dropped All Japan a bunch on the commentary, but this was more Tenryu than Kawada, just a pair of tough guys standing in the pocket and trying to knock each other out. Loved the escalation here, with the big DDT nearfall being spectacular, and the triangle choke being one of the better finishes of the year. 

MD: What a match. I'd gone back and watched the 2010 match between these two, which was Danielson's first match back on the indies after the Nexus tie incident in WWE and it was striking how forward-driving and aggressive Danielson had been working then, very similar to how he is now. In that match, Kingston just ate all of Danielson's stuff, got beaten around the ring, and threw suplexes as hope spots as the fans got what they wanted on that night.

This is a leaner and somehow meaner Eddie though, and he proved to be the wall that could halt the previously unstoppable freight train that's been AEW Danielson. He stormed to the ring, hovered in the corner waiting for the bell, and came out unleashed. From the first unclean break, it was on, and Kingston felt like the protagonist of this story, first surviving Danielson's kicks to his leg, then surviving the armwork. Every moment here felt uncooperative and earned. I got the sense at one point that Danielson was drawing Kingston in to launch the machine-gun chops in the corner too early so that he could switch it and start on the kicks. The match was full of moments that made you wonder like that.

It really opened up once Eddie hit the belly to back on the floor and then the awesome slingshot belly to back using the turnbuckle. From there, it was unmitigated violence, with Danielson trying to open things back up with a well-timed block or shot, but Kingston just able to chop him down. Danielson had the welts on his chest to prove it and it was all capped with that amazing moment of defiance as he was crumpled in pain. If Suzuki was the first guy to really make Danielson lose his zen coolness, Kingston totally shattered it by forcing that middle finger from the corner. Eddie wasn't going to put him away with those though, which eventually led him to the top rope and the really epic battle that ensued, with Kingston punching up every time he got shrugged off and Danielson doing an amazing sell job, slumping all over the place.

I loved how it was a belly to back (avalanche) which turned the tide again. After that, as they went into the stretch, the amazing moments just flowed in one after the other. The kick to the head. The DDT. The attempt at the armbar. The backfist. Eddie collapsing and Danielson showing him absolutely no mercy by swarming him, and the crowd reacting huge to each and every one of these, despite having already sat through two hours of Dynamite. All of it led to the triangle (yet another finishing move) and that last paralleled moment of defiance by Kingston. Each of these moments was timed exactly as it should be. Just a beautifully balanced, perfectly paced, meaningful, uncooperative, character driven, resonant pro wrestling match.

ER: I loved this so much. I think it's the best Eddie Kingston match since he's been in AEW, and I think it's Bryan Danielson's best match since the best match of 2020, which was Bryan vs. Gulak at Elimination Chamber. The match felt like Tenryu vs. Fujiwara's Greatest Son, and since Tenryu/Fujiwara is a match we really only got to see once, that's a welcome match type. For two guys who wrestled full time at the exact same time for over 30 years, Tenryu and Fujiwara only matched up once in WAR (in 1997, and it ruled). Kingston and Danielson were in the all time great ROH/CZW Cage of Death, and then had a 2010 singles after Bryan's NXT debut but before his NEXUS debut. However, as much as I love both of these guys, I don't think this was a match they could have had in 2010.

Both men have injuries they didn't have a decade ago, Danielson has a family, Kingston is an uncle, both have a new decade of risks they didn't have in 2010, both have considered retirements more than once, and both have now wrestled in front of crowds the size they hadn't seen in 2010. Things are different now, and I don't think they could have done this at any other time. I loved everything about this, and the details have been covered well by Phil and Matt. Kingston turned Danielson's chest into meat and hit some of the greatest strikes of his career: his shotei to knock Danielson off the ropes was better than any palm strike I've ever seen Liger hit, his backfist looked like a murder (and Danielson sold it like he just took a bullet into an open grave), and he threw his suplexes with his whole body. Danielson is an execution guy known for his tight offense, and he worked an impossibly tight match here. The timing and pacing of everything was perfect, and Danielson was kicking Kingston as hard as he was getting chopped. Since Eddie Kingston is nuts, he was taking Danielson's kicks in the most painful way each time, getting kicked across the shins and thighs and then leaning head first into kicks while on his knees. 

The nearfalls down the stretch all felt like worthy finishes, and it's incredibly fun watching two masters peak and peak and peak their rollercoaster and still make each turn more thrilling than the last. Kingston refusing to die is one of my favorite things in pro wrestling history, and any time Danielson gets pushed by someone to that next level of aggression and violence, his finishing stretches are unparalleled. The nearfalls all work, and I really bit on that DDT of Eddie's. This was a great pro wrestling match that would be great in any year, but really only could have happened this year. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST