AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 6/13 - 6/19

AEW Rampage 6/17

Darby Allin vs. Bobby Fish

MD: I'm pretty sure that, having not been super familiar with either of them, I've got more time for singles Fish than for singles O'Reilly. It probably comes down to styles. Fish is more apt to just tear you apart in a corner or toss you around outside while O'Reilly is going to do more stuff. It's not even bad stuff, but it's kind of refreshing to see a guy who will just try to dismantle you instead. It's hard not to appreciate the dragon screws into the guardrails, for instance, as something that'll hurt an opponent three ways at once, even if it's something that probably won't make it into a highlight package. He also had a great bit in the picture in picture where he verbally and tauntingly directed a camera to get in closer to see him punishing Darby. That's the kind of thing you'll see Negro Casas do now and again and not much of anyone else. Darby, meanwhile, and we know this, is unique in the company as someone who takes and takes and takes, has hope spots that are big, devastating, mutually destructive bombs, and then will mount a comeback or sneak a win at any moment. No one else in the company is doing that and it's a company which probably has slightly more sameness than differentiation. That he's able to make it work with huge bumps, visceral selling, and picture perfect precision on his comeback spots makes him a transcendental talent when if any of those things were lacking just a little, he'd end up a guy that was trying too hard. Here it works. Fish took the brunt of the match, survived Darby's big moments of comeback, had some great continuations of one move into the next when the first didn't work, and ultimately got outslicked on a banana peel due to Darby's resilience and technique. Both guys came out of this looking good (though I didn't love O'Reilly's hamming in the post-match).