AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/5 - 9/11

AEW Dynamite 9/7

Bryan Danielson vs Adam Page

MD: I am not a big fan of Adam Page. Let's just lay that out there. I think his execution is fine. I think his selling is quite good. I have absolutely no problem with the longform storytelling he tries to do and the anxious millennial cowboy character and the way he works that into his actual matches. That's not all my issue with him. You can't fault his intensity. Nothing but positive things to say about all of that. I'm such a structure/layout guy though, and the lack of escalation in his matches because he starts at a 9 and more or less gets to a ten as things progress, is just such a killer. He comes out the gate with the fall away slam/springboard clothesline/dive, brings things up to the death valley driver, and then starts teasing the Buckshot and Deadeye. Left to his own devices, his entire match would be one long finishing stretch. It's Daffy Duck blowing himself up on stage: a good trick if you do it once but devastating over time and just blows a massive hole in any attempt of making individual moves and sequences resonate as important up and down the card. I'm not going to throw my hat into the CM Punk issue when it comes to interpersonal or professional things, but in ring, Punk spent the last twelve months trying to reclaim the struggle and impact of things like superplexes so that they could matter and that matches had another level to escalate to and Page shows no sign of understanding any of that nuance, even for all the good things he does.

When you have so many positive qualities, however, a really great wrestler can shape them into a really great match. I think that was true with the Punk match and it was true here with Danielson. Relatively early on Danielson started to dismantle the arm. Adam Page may not have a first or second gear on offense, but when you pepper his bombs through a match as hope spots that get immediately cut off due to the damaged arm and when he's not allowed to chain them together in the first five minutes of a match, everything ends up working out so much better. Danielson basically controlled all the way to the start of the second commercial break and it meant that when they moved into an actual finishing stretch, there was space to inhabit. 

AEW Rampage 9/9

Darby Allin vs Sammy Guevara

MD: Punk's gone for a week and all of the work he did trying to make superplexes matter again over the last year is completely destroyed. I guess it came early enough in the match before too much cumulative damage was done that it wasn't as bad as it could have been? It was still pretty bad. Before that they were almost working a title match version of Sammy vs Darby, which made sense given the stakes and was a cute way to start this one. It escalated how you'd expect with the big spots and counters and Sammy walking tightropes. The Tay/Sammy act is still fairly fresh between AEW's roster being so big that we haven't had a ton of Sammy singles matches in the last few months and the fact they were away for the wedding. They're constantly thinking of new ideas and trying new things like the wedding ring bit here. Interference of people on top of Tay is going to get old quick though, but I get that they were in a bit of a pinch due to the injuries and the suspensions. Darby really does need a big win one of these days. Regardless, I'm looking forward to the contrast inherent in Sammy vs Moxley.