2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

9. Darby Allin vs. Jeff Hardy AEW Dynamite 5/11

ER: I love these guys. This was so good. The best kind of sicko wrestling, where two guys in face paint try to see who can break their skeleton faster. Time leaves Hardy as the safer bet to do so, but Darby has a fearlessness that makes me buy fully into his character, so this match is even money. Darby has done a couple hundred crazy good tope suicidas but his dive into Hardy was one of the fastest full contact dives I've ever seen. That was one of the fastest full contact topes of any kind I've seen from anyone. It's a No DQ match, and his cannonball of a tope annihilated Hardy so fully that it made sense for Darby to set up an elaborate folding chair death trap, and the match continued on as a great story of both guys choosing smart moments to set up complicated spots, so nothing ever felt like it had to be paused. Ring steps, chairs, and a damn tall ladder all added to the presentation and the build to their involvement felt natural. 

When the ring steps came in, it's Darby going teeth first into them because he took too long setting up the chairs. Hardy flew off the ring steps with a clothesline that he wanted to connect with good, and Darby flew into that clothesline neck first and really got hooked by it. My cousin Mikey broke both his arms when he was a kid, leaping off their doghouse in an attempt to fly. Because he jumped without noticing the clothesline in front of him, his flight went a bit longer than expected. That boy got flipped. 

This match wasn't just painful crashes though, it was little moments that built to those crashes. I liked when they were fighting over that big tall ladder in a tug of war, and how when they both yanked it out of the other's hands they just kind of ran at each other with no plan. They had an exchange that ended in a Darby Code Red, but it's easy to picture a lot of matches going right to a cleaner Code Red instead of two guys running toward each other on instinct with no sequence to run straight into.  

Hardy's seated jawbreaker couldn't have felt good on those steps-loosened teeth, and his corner dropkick was right into the side of Darby's neck. It's all a perfect mix of an old legend tightening up all the signature offense that he's looked so bored doing for the last 5 years. Hardy was capable of putting in occasional surprising effort during his last few years in WWF (see his 1/4/21 Raw match vs. Randy Orton), but maaaaan has he had some real dogs the last decade. I don't accuse guys of going through the motions that often, but brother brother brother. I just love seeing the man motivated and doing this thing that's wrecking him, all while wearing the worst face paint a first time Burning Man attendee every wore. 

Hardy draws a ton of sympathy from me, doing his body breaking stunts. I'm a guy who cried during Jackass Forever, seeing these broken down men and their mangled dicks, and the feeling with Hardy isn't dissimilar. Jimmy Snuka was still on indy shows doing the Superfly Splash when he was 10 years older than Hardy and he wasn't pulling a single part of it. He was splashing people's guts out and telling them to puff up their chests for it. He was in no way taking any part of that in return. Hardy takes receipts gladly, but I guess that's probably not the only reason he's more sympathetic than Jimmy Snuka.  

That ladder was too high. Way too damn high. That could have been a man's death. Hardy hung in there and did his best to catch that Darby's death drop but he probably did his body a lot worse for it, as Darby came crashing through Hardy's arm and shoulder and sandwiched it hard into the chairs. I have no idea how either man walked away from that with nothing broken, but I'm assuming they just know something that I don't. I can only assume - I have to assume - they know something I don't, or that they have Wolverine's bones, because Darby's missed Coffin Drop on the apron and Hardy's missed swanton on the ring steps looked like two men flaunting their Adamantium skeletons. Jeff took all of Darby's in-ring Coffin Drop, too, and it's good to see that the guy who is no longer going to land on his tailbone to ease off the swanton, is also going to let you land as hard as you want on his torso. I usually hate that roll up pin after a guy takes a big finish, but fuck, Hardy took every finisher in this match. He's a guy I fully buy being able to take a finisher and then pull a high cradle. He takes it all. He just made it even better by pulling a cradle so high it actually looked like Darby couldn't kick out. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST