AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/27 - 3/5

AEW Rampage 3/3

Keith Lee/Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland/Parker Boudreaux

MD: For reasons that would probably surprise no one, there were a few years towards the end of the 00s where I wasn't watching much wrestling. One of the things that got me back into it was 2009 WWECW. Not unlike Rampage, it was a brisk and enjoyable hour-long show. It featured Christian as babyface ace champion, Regal as the lead heel, and somewhere in the background, a two month feud between Goldust and the debuting Sheamus. Sheamus had anchored local promotions and worked FCW before this and was a lot farther along than Boudreaux, and was working guys like Noble, Regal, and even Steamboat on untelevised events at the time, but it helped to transition him to working TV and helped to get him over as a threat to the crowd. Basically, the AEW house shows can't come soon enough. Boudreaux has size. He's only 24. But his instincts and positioning just need so much work. If they only have a few months of Dustin left, he ought to be paired in a few last dream matches during that time. On the margins, though, there's no one who could better see if there's anything worth developing in Boudreaux.

Here they gave him time with both Lee and Dustin. During the heat, Swerve came in to cut Dustin off for the most part, while Boudreaux primarily did damage, the bits less concerned with timing. On the comeback, Lee got his hands on Swerve a few times, taking most of his shots and powering through with justified rage but it was only a tease for a blowoff to come. Boudreaux got hefted up to take the fall. It's probably fine not to protect him more at this point. He's a physical prospect but it's still too early to know if there's anything there and they can always build him back up when ready. Right now he needs ring time.

 

AEW Revolution 3/5

MJF vs. Bryan Danielson

MD:  When you watch a match like this, you're looking for the overall narrative, for the transitions, for the selling in the moment and deep in the stretch, for the false finishes and the real ones, for their ability to keep things interesting and fill time but also to make things meaningful and resonant so it's not obvious that they're filling time. You look to see if minute 13 somehow inevitably leads to minute 48. You're looking for Chekhov's collections of guns, the ones that fire off successfully, the ones that never go off, and the ones that strike without warning in build. In most cases, something fails and something falls because it's a long time to fill and humans are fallible. I thought this hit most of its marks pretty well, far better than most of the matches you'd compare it to.

A lot of what made it work was how self-aware and metatextual it was. Coming in, the match was presented as Danielson wanting to push MJF well past his limits and MJF being vulnerable and unable to hang. That's a little different than the athlete vs athlete nature of most ironman matches, where the gimmick is set up to present both as the very top of human endurance and achievement. That allowed for a bunch of narratives beats you wouldn't normally get, beats and counterbeats really. For instance, MJF opened up the shoulder work after stalling a few times, and even calling out how negatively stalling had been looked at by the sheets over the years (best not to let me get into that). He escaped the ring a few times and when it looked like he might again, he lured Danielson to yank the arm over the top. At times, the character of MJF was using the underlying metatext as a tool. At other times, he lost himself to it and wanted to prove himself. The first fall is a great example of the latter, where Danielson coaxed him into going along for the Malenko/Guerrero pin attempts and blew him up so he'd be open for the knee. 

What made this work was that, with one exception, it never seemed self-aware from human beings putting together a match. It was more than all of the players/characters (including Bryce) were aware of the history of these matches and the history of one another. That's what led to MJF hitting the low blow to get two falls while losing one, and more importantly, getting back into the match after Danielson's initial comeback. It's what led him to taking big chances (missing the moonsault which took his leg out for the rest of the match but hitting the elbow drop through the table). It led to Bryce spotting the ring and taking it off or for Danielson to dodge first before hitting the knee to score his third fall. 

The things that didn't work for me are primarily nitpicks. They went back to the water so many times. Taz covered well for it on the idea that maybe MJF couldn't hang with Danielson's cardio and he was making a mistake but it never cost him and never played into the match save for the one stalling heel moment early on with the fan. I would have liked that to have been a false finish where he tries to blow it at Danielson only to miss and then that set up the oxygen shot, just because they built it up so much, whether they meant to or not. I thought the selling was appropriate for most of the match (Danielson was maybe up too soon after the Storm Cradle Driver but sure, that could have been desperation). I don't think the visual of MJF crawling across the ring with blood in his mouth and making a fish face quite worked though. The overtime period with the tap out immediately thereafter didn't quite work either. That was the one part of that match that openly broke the facade and felt like a homage as opposed to characters being aware of the past. Finally, I would have rather MJF won it with the Regal Stretch but they refuse to even call it (and Tony gets it wrong anyway) so I get why they didn't do it.

I don't want this to be a four paragraph review which has one with nitpicks though, so let me reiterate in paragraph five that this hit far, far more than it missed and in a situation with a high level of difficulty. There was a ton of thought and care put into this and the execution landed. It really did feel like a script where they went over it again and again and again looking for holes. There's an old notion in wrestling that even more than their money, fans are giving the wrestlers and the promotion their precious, valuable time. Here it was sixty minutes worth spending.