AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/6 - 2/13

AEW Dynamite 2/8

Bryan Danielson vs. RUSH

MD:  A lot of ground to cover here. I started writing on SC in April 2014. That's a sweet spot period where Wrestlemania 30 had just happened and we were in between the Shocker and Negro Casas RUSH hair matches. So these are two wrestlers I associate with my own writing on this site to some degree. It's pretty safe to say that this is a match between the most exciting wrestler of 2013 and of 2014, both of whom remain exciting in 2023. I'm always happy to see Danielson up against a new opponent. I've written before about how current day Danielson, like a Hansen, pushes his opponent up to their physical limits. I'd argue that Moxley pushes his opponent up to their emotional limits, for what it's worth. That said, if I'm happy to see Danielson up against the Bandidos and Cages of the world, I'm actively excited to see RUSH up against new opponents. In both cases, it's a bit of a borrowed time sort of thing. Danielson's stated repeatedly that this is his last full-time contract. He's also older and has a unique history of injuries. RUSH on the other hand, has a pretty unique history of burning bridges in bloody fits of chaos. At the same time, if it wasn't for Danielson's style or RUSH's absolute intensity, neither would nearly be as transcendent. 

This had its shares of bells and whistles. There was the bounty, the damaged shoulder, the angle up front where Danielson was barricaded in his locker room, MJF on commentary (the last of which worked a little better than it should have if only because he had Taz to riff off of). All of that ultimately became background noise at worst and mild positive accentuation at best because the light of RUSH and Danielson throwing themselves fully into this war was going to drown out everything else. It gave RUSH an early advantage, catching Danielson as he rushed into the ring in order to beat the ten count, and that informed the structure for a lot of the match: RUSH would beat Danielson down like only he could. Danielson would fire back with strikes, riding the wave of the hot crowd and his own desire for competition and thirst to push himself. RUSH would cut him off with a big move. The first was a German following a go behind and push off against the ropes. The most iconic was the belly to belly off the apron where Danielson's blood splattered across the camera. And in between, RUSH, who is going to make his stuff look as intense and brutal as anyone in wrestling, just laid in shot after shot after shot, forearms, tosses into the barricade, insulting kicks. 

When Danielson was able to get the space to use speed or savvy - the tope in the corner, the super-slick roll into the LeBell Lock - he actually moved the needle, but when it came down to strikes, it was his technique up against RUSH's bullheadedness, literally so with the headbutts he threw. I'm the low voter on strike exchanges more often than not, especially modern ones, but here everything came together. There was the brutality of the match leading up to it. There was the stubbornness and desperation of both parties. The crowd was into each shot. There was weight behind everything. There was impact and result to it. They weren't going as fast or as hard as they could without consequence. Most of all, it wasn't about showing toughness and fighting spirit for the sake of it, it wasn't about running cold: It was channeling the passion of the crowd and the moment into the wrestlers and their actions. It was about running hot and that's so much easier to immerse yourself in. It's not a matter of suspending your disbelief so much as it's about suspending your analytical eye. It stopped being about another "strike exchange" and became something you didn't want to take your eyes off of or let your mind linger too long upon. 

Yet at the same time, the match itself never stopped being smart. Danielson survived the straightjacket pile driver due to a lackluster cover (and it also wasn't RUSH's double underhook piledriver which was his super finisher in Mexico). RUSH survived the first Busaiku Knee because Danielson was too hurt and because RUSH was still too fresh, but it made a great call by a panicked MJF. And then the finish was RUSH going again for the German off the ropes that opened the match up for him in the first place and Danielson landing on his feet. RUSH went back to the well only to find that Danielson's own well was nigh bottomless, a mixed metaphor, but one that that sets up the ironman match vs MJF perfectly. Maybe RUSH has figured it all out and AEW will be built around him for years. Maybe Danielson will never really lose the wrestling bug and we have hundreds of matches with him yet to watch. It's equally possible, if not more so however, that we're on borrowed time for both wrestlers and were just lucky that their paths crossed on this night, as part of this story, in front of this crowd.