AEW Five Fingers of Death: 10/10 - 10/16

AEW Dynamite 10/12

Chris Jericho (c) vs Bryan Danielson

MD: There was a period between when this was first announced and when I first caught it that I was envisioning going through the AEW roster and writing why I wanted to see Danielson wrestle people more than Jericho/Danielson 3. A paragraph about Angelico. A paragraph about Cutler. A paragraph about Nese. Etc. This is probably worth writing about though. They leaned into the Lionheart gimmick in a new way. They had to! He was Lionheart at the PPV. The story there was that the technical submission-based style Jericho had used to get the better of Moxley was completely ineffectual against Danielson and he had to resort to the low blow to win. Here, however, they were in Canada, and while I'd seen some doubt online beforehand, the wrestlers knew what they were walking into. 

This wasn't just Lionheart Chris Jericho (something that goes well into 99 after all) but babyface-coded Lionheart Chris Jericho. In Canada, that meant the fans singing along to Judas all on their own. It meant Y2J chants. It meant a 9 count punch in the corner right into the top rope frankensteiner. It meant dropkicks and topes. For Danielson it meant leaning into heel aggression, refusing the handshake upfront, less corner kicks, no flipping dropkicks in the corner, targeting the back and the abdomen, especially during the commercial break, doing the Liger pose just for the hell of it. Jericho got to play dress up, cupping his ears like Hogan, escaping the hammer and anvil elbows with a FU/AA of all things. I liked the high speed duck of the Judas Effect as they rushed towards the Judas effect. This wasn't a matchup I needed again but I appreciated how they twisted it given the setting. It's definitely one I don't need again after this, even given the finish, though they could probably wring one more out with a Painmaker Cage Match if they had to.