AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/30 - 2/5

AEW Dynamite 2/1

Bryan Danielson vs. Timothy Thatcher

MD: This was exactly what you thought it'd be but it was still very nice to see it play out. If I had to point to something, it'd be 1) Danielson's early use of space, the way he kept trying to control the distance between himself and Thatcher 2) Thatcher's expressions in general: elation when he was prying off a body part and grinding on a hold or a sort of toothless but genuine shock when something didn't go his way, very much in the moment of all time, and 3) Danielson's selling overall. We saw it in the Cage match, but it was all the more present here: his movements were ginger; he was putting over the danger he was in at each point; you could feel the desperation and the middle ground between heart, technical prowess, and ability to channel the crowd as he was throwing fists into Thatcher's side on the top rope. 

Otherwise, like I said, it was two masters pressing down on each other, one going for blood and the other playing defense masterfully. I'm writing this on Sunday and I haven't talked to Phil about what match on Dynamite he'd be covering, but I think I'd be most interested to hear what he had to say about this one, because while it was the most predictable of the three (the two I'm covering and Mox/Page III), it also feels like the hardest to say anything meaningful about.

Darby Allin vs. Samoa Joe

MD: Bryce Remsburg referred all three of the Joe/Darby matches and he posted recently that Darby wanted the matches to feel as chaotic as the Necro/Joe match from 2005. This was pretty damn chaotic. With the no holds barred stip, they started with something additive, the thumbtack hairshirt, and ended it by tearing apart the ring pretty efficiently (though not efficiently enough for Darby's kayfabe hopes and dreams of winning the match) and one last ghastly bump to be the spine-compressing cherry on top of a match full of them. Despite props, plenty of replays, and the fact that the only breather to be had was when Joe was putting the squeeze on Darby during the PiP, everything felt brutally organic. The physics of Darby crashing knee first into the ringsteps and somehow going heels over head onto his feet on the other side of the rail should have been impossible, but Darby's a wizard of execution (albeit usually the person getting executed is himself) and somehow it worked. It's a testament to both wrestlers really: two table spots, a couple of gnarly chair spots, a bump over the handrail on the arena stairs, a yeet right over the ropes to the floor. Nothing looked clean or pretty, but it all looked believably painful. Joe's blood helped, not even in putting over the damage to Joe necessarily, but in making you feel like he was angry enough to show this level of malice and disregard. It was one of those Sabu-ian instances where something like Darby not being able to get the hairshirt back on correctly only made the carnage more immersive. 

(After the fact edit: Just read Phil's column and he did in fact go with Darby vs Joe and ended it with the Bryce factoid, which was my entry point into the write-up. Great minds and all that...)