AEW (And Friends) Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/16 - 5/22

Only one AEW match this week but Eddie Kingston's been barnstorming, and since Phil has to watch them all for the Ringer, we're on top of all of it.

AEW Dynamite 5/18

Blackpool Combat Club (Moxley/Danielson) vs. Peace, Love, and Pro Wrestling (Matt Sydal/Dante Martin)

MD: I am heartened, but not hardly surprised, by Phil picking this match over the Hangman Page one for AEW's match over at the Ringer, and go over and read his review there. I'd put Woods vs Yuta up there as well for the week and even Bear Country vs Workhorsemen, but I'm happy to write about this one. This is the first time in a short while that we've seen the BCC up against babyfaces instead of heels, interesting given that they are in a program now against the JAS. The match was structured accordingly, with an immediate rudo ambush and no shine. It meant that both Sydal (paired primarily with Mox) and Dante (hitting everyone but especially paired with Danielson) got to be the recipients of hot tags and got to be houses afire. It did mean that we missed out on some early feeling out or a quick exchange with Sydal or Martin and Danielson. There's a twelve minute Danielson that's going to be very exciting some day but for now it was just a taste on the comeback and then Martin getting stomped out and surviving up until the point he didn't in the stretch. Regal and Jericho did a great job getting over the discrepancies between the two groups as the match was going and you know Jericho's going to design a "Money, Merch, and Sports Entertainment" shirt out of the exchange, whereas Regal was great at indicating that he knows everyone's weaknesses and that he was the one who had been there for Hager from the start, not Jericho. We missed out on a shine but two comebacks of Sydal and Dante doing their thing surrounded by Mox and Danielson beating people to a pulp works pretty well too. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Isaiah Broner AIW 5/21/22

MD: The match is on IWTV, and Phil wrote it up on the Ringer. It was a war. There are explicit narratives and implicit ones in wrestling. Explicit ones are more along the lines of long limbwork or big vs small or a southern tag where there's a lot of cheating with hope spots and cut offs or even shine-heat-comeback. To me, an implicit narrative is more about making everything take effort and struggle and filling in gaps, by making the match absolutely airtight. This match was airtight. Everything was worked for. Nothing was given. Eddie wasn't going to get a single throw without battering Broner first. Broner could heft Kingston up but he'd have to put him back down and smack him around a bit before tossing him too. Eddie chipped at the arm, not to actively dominate the story for five minutes, but to passively make it so Broner's killshots weren't quite enough to kill him. That's the other half of the equation. If a match is airtight and violent but nothing's registering, if nothing has impact, it's just going to be noise. Here they hit hard and then sold the impact of what happened. They recoiled. They staggered. They sold. So everything took effort, but once it hit, it was worth the effort. That was from the first chops and Broner's killer forearm all the way to the finishing stretch where he could show his toughness, where he could get up in the face of Eddie's best stuff, but once he did, he was helpless to do anything but to take the next shot. Nothing was glaring. Nothing was telegraphed. Nothing was over the top. Yet it was all violent and it all earned and it all meant something and it all mattered. When a match can pull all of that off, it's a hell of a thing.

Eddie Kingston vs. Davey Richards Glory Pro 5/22/22

MD: I haven't seen a Davey Richards match since chain suplexes in and out of the ring were involved. It's been a decade probably. That said, he's an interesting and unique Kingston opponent, not to mention older and maybe wiser. I'll say this: you watch a Davey Richards match and you're going to get commitment. This is a guy who is always on, who is always feeling it, who is always in the moment. I may not have always liked or agreed with those moments during his career but you never doubt his belief in himself and what he's trying to portray. You may end up disbelieving what he's trying to portray, but you end up believing that he believes it, and in this day and age, that is a special quality and it's worth something. That gels with the notion that with Kingston, what you see is what you get.

It meant that that the early wristlock feeling out process was full of struggle and grit. They covered a bit of the match with work on Eddie's leg, and he was the guy, out of the two, you'd want selling, so that was a good thought. Eddie, maybe inspired by his opponent, hulked up after a bunch of insulting Kawada-style kicks and you can't say it didn't fit the match, and then the finish had Richards full on motion charging in only to run into a freight train. I'm not sure I need to see them run it back, but as a thought experiment and a clash of two very different styles but similar levels of commitment, it was fun and never wore out its welcome.