AEW Five Fingers of Death: 10/3 - 10/9

AEW Dynamite 10/5

Darby Allin vs Jay Lethal

MD:  I don't think we've written a word about Lethal in four years. I guess we were ahead of the curve in thinking he was pretty good except for the finisher ruining everything? That's about the least interesting thing you can say about him now, but solid 2018 commentary right there. Anyway, Darby's inclusion in the Fingers is an endless bounty of me writing about stuff I might not write about otherwise. It's good for me, I suppose. There's a lot of griping on the internet around Lethal lately. The simple fact of the matter is that he's relatively credible given his past accolades including just the sheer length of his career, and his ability to competently work a competitive match, not to mention the fact he's got a literal giant for a heater and a pencil-wielding maniac as a manager. Yet, almost every time he's out there, he loses. AEW needs heels that can lose. No amount of losses will take away the above. If you need the Jungle Boys and Darby Allins and Ricky Starks of the world to win a solid 10-15 minute match on TV, he's a good choice. The roster isn't full of heels who can afford to lose and still remain credible, ones that you're not looking to push long-term. You don't want Hobbs losing too much. You don't want Brody King losing too much. As much as I'm a fan of Serpentico or Peter Avalon's act, they're just not credible in the same way. JD Drake is, and maybe preferable, but there aren't too many other people on the roster (People would complain even more about QT!) that can serve in the specific role Lethal does. One thing that AEW does sometimes, and that they should probably do more, is have a heel tag team wrestle as a singles act for a night which helps to give a guy like Isiah Kassidy (Darby went over Quen in March) or Anthony Bowens (last year at least) some attention and means you don't have to rely too much on the few Lethals they have. Butcher and Blade are right there after all. 

So this was a good ten-fifteen minute match. That's the point. It may not be the match people wanted to see. It may not be structured the way people wanted to see it. But it was a good match, that was over with the crowd, that let Darby look good and more than that, get over an aspect of his character, and may lead to future stories. Like a lot of Darby matches that don't start with an ambush of some sort, they led with the wrestling, and escalated to a mistake/banana peel/capitalization, in this case, Lethal taking out the leg. Darby's basically 2022 Ricky Morton (just crossed with Jeff Hardy) in multiple ways and one of those ways is how well he utilizes roll-ups as hope spots. He's not always going to punch up and out of something or fight out of a corner, but he can draw you in and almost score a quick win before getting beaten on some more. Lethal's had years to learn how to effectively work over a leg and it got the fans clapping up, popping for the figure four, and believing that this would keep Darby on the ropes. They dealt with the albatross that is the Lethal Injection in a fairly clever way. The finish was fairly story heavy but settled back to the pin exchanges. Like the hope spots, Darby benefits from being the only guy on the roster with a flash pin as one of his real finishers and I liked the fight for it here. Usually the Last Supper looks slick and inevitable and here it seemed like Lethal was doing all he could to stop it. He just couldn't do enough. This was good. The fans were into it. It served one, if not more than one purpose. I'm not going to sit here and pretend it wasn't because people are bored with the idea of Lethal. If you want to go find Darby vs JD Drake instead, it's happened at least. 

Bryan Danielson/Daniel Garcia vs Chris Jericho/Sammy Guevara

MD: This was to heat up Danielson vs Jericho next week, a surprisingly tall task considering that it'd be for the ROH title in Canada and with Jericho a theoretically vulnerable champion and Danielson having the edge based on the previous two matches and the fact Garcia's gone over to his side, but they've run it twice very recently (including once with Jericho working the same Liontamer gimmick) and it needed some heating up. The appeal here then was fresh matchups: Sammy vs both Garcia and Danielson and Jericho vs Garcia. They went right to the latter, with Garcia clowning Jericho on the mat after a quick handshake. That was important as I imagine at least half the crowd came in expecting a Horsemen style beatdown. To make that sort of thing work, you have to keep Garcia on the apron and not have him scrap with Jericho. Therefore, by leading off with that exchange, they managed the crowd's expectations. 

Given everything that had happened backstage earlier in the day (and in the weeks leading up to this) Sammy had nuclear heat, and he capitalized on that here by inserting himself at almost every moment, starting from tripping Garcia early to stop the initial exchange and really never looking back from there. Sometimes it was breaking up a Garcia advantage. Sometimes it was trying to leap into the fray between Garcia and Jericho (only to get nailed by Garcia for his troubles). You got the sense that Danielson was eager to work with him and he took multiple Spanish Flys and caught a huge dive (but also cut off another one with a forearm). While Sammy stooged plenty, he also stood tall against both Danielson and Jericho. I'd argue that Jericho and Guevara worked better together for the first half but that Danielson and Garcia began to gel more (like resonating with like) as the match went on, all leading to the tandem submissions and hammer-and-anvil forearms. The finish was all about Jericho cementing the split with Garcia and ensuring Sammy went over at the height of his ire with the crowd, heating things up more for the match with Danielson next week. Instead of any prolonged heat with this one, it was more the stuttering annoyance of Sammy and Jericho's antics and both of them getting pushed back repeatedly by Danielson and Garcia. Really, it was more of a tease for the new matchups that could come out of it than anything else.