AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 3/14-3/20

AEW Dynamite 3/16

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor/Wheeler Yuta)

MD: I saw some criticism that this was a little bit long and maybe there was a little bit of that; maybe just a bit too much wrestling for the sake of wrestling, and a general house style sense of how long an AEW TV match has to be, or a technical need to encapsulate the commercial break. But when you look at what this match was trying to do, you can't say they didn't nail it. This was about Danielson and Moxley completely dismantling their opponents with Regal commentating over them, about Taylor looking resilient despite the fact that both Cassidy and Trent were down with injuries, and to get Yuta over. That meant Danielson and Moxley took 90% of this, including a double heat. It meant that while Taylor was able to have a moment after a hot tag, it was Yuta who got that last hot tag and got to look strong against guys way above his paygrade. We talk about how Kingston is the guy who understand the emotional weight behind the old AJPW style, but this nailed how hierarchy could be used to get someone over. Yuta's defiance at the end when Danielson was kicking him and how the crowd started to chant his name felt like when a lion would step up to Tenryu only to get crushed for his affrontry. Speaking of those kicks, I kind of loved how Yuta took them, throwing his hand back in order to steady himself. It gave him a place to go as he started to lean into them more and more before finally drawing Danielson in. So far in this arrangement, I wondered about exactly how well Moxley fit, as he had come back as a huge babyface with a meaningful story, but you're seeing him revel in the violence more and more every week. You really were able to see that here as they cut off the ring and just bore down upon Taylor and Yuta. 

ER: I am not a Chuck Taylor guy, and I am not a Yuta guy. The latter encompasses a lot of the things I hate about modern wrestling house style, the style where every guy with a year under their belt gets the same "this guy is going to be the best in the world in just a couple years" hype and all I can see is someone who can't set up offense and whose bumps almost always look disconnected from the moves they're bumping for. And I liked how Danielson acted exactly as he should, the old head scoffing at the new hype, and then punishing him for it. I thought Yuta and especially Taylor looked pretty bad in this, but Taylor kind of has an excuse to look bad because, well, people know he wrestles like Chuck Taylor. So I reveled in the extended aggressive beating that Danielson and Moxley dished out to Yuta, while Regal's honeyed tones described the savagery. Regal was as much of an MVP in this match as Danielson, fleshing out the story of the match being told, and Danielson had another one of those runs where I instinctively want to write that it was "one of the best performances of the year for Danielson" despite knowing that I've written that probably a dozen times already. Yuta gets full credit for standing up to a beating that wasn't going to stop, and I really liked Matt's comparison to the AJPW hierarchy, and found it apt. Those fans knew when young KENTA was landing more kicks than normal on a main eventer, just as they knew when Misawa was suddenly getting deeper into matches against Jumbo. Yuta's got a long way to go before that, but he knew exactly what role he was playing in this tag, and that's more important than a moveset. 

 

AEW Rampage 3/18 (Taped 3/16)

Darby Allin vs. The Butcher

MD: Phil covered this one on the Ringer and his review is more poetic. Go read it. Here's mine: Great chemistry here. So much of what made this work was Darby's confidence in how over he was and in his own offense. He knows the fans are behind him not because he dominates matches but because he never quits, because he takes a beating, because he can come back at any moment believably, because he wields his own body like a weapon like maybe no other wrestler in history, and because he layers upon that speed and explosiveness and technical savvy. It means he can give the Butcher most of a match, can lean into his ever shot, can take offense that's visually dramatic like the cloverleaf powerbomb and the swings, both within the ring and into the steps, and come back at the last second and have it all work. Moreover, the advantage of having someone so dependent on risks or very specific openings (like manipulating the fingers) in order to stay in control is that it creates narrative possibilities. Darby has to throw his body at Butcher. That leaves him open for Butcher to catch him. It's as simple as that. Disparities, if capitalized on correctly, create drama. Butcher was great here as a looming, crashing, clashing, violence presence. The announcers played up that he'd been injured against Darby previous and was taking a pound of flesh in revenge. Whether that was what was going on in Butcher's head or not, you could read that into his ringwork and it gave Darby a very tall mountain to climb.