AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/19 - 6/25 Part 1

AEW Collision 6/24

CM Punk/FTR/Ricky Starks vs Jay White/Juice Robinson/Gunns

MD: This is a pretty fascinating match and I, much like the crowd, am just going to focus on one thing primarily, Punk. The crowd was chanting for him and at him when he wasn't in there. I'm a big proponent that you wrestle to serve the match and that wrestlers that don't do that, who wrestle for themselves, guys like Michaels and Brody, are to be punished with a critcal eye for it. I'm also a believe that you lead the crowd instead of follow it.

That said, there are exceptions. Not every match is built equal, not every moment. Moreover, there are matches down the line. Stan Hansen's a guy who doesn't always have the most interesting match possible with every opponent, but he'll churn through three matches that aren't so interesting in order to keep himself protected to a certain level for the match where the payoff is necessary. While you couldn't look away from it, this match became structurally confusing and structurally confused because the face/heel balance switched to a good degree every time Punk tagged in or out. The finish required the crowd being up for Ricky Starks plowing through the nominal heels with spears before White finally got the best of him, but it also needed the crowd to go up for White catching Punk off the top... right before he caught Starks with the same move to set up the finish. Thankfully, it was a crowd that was going to be hot for everything, but just thinking that through from a narrative level is kind of maddening.

Here's where it absolutely worked, however. Jay White seemed important. Last week, it was all about the build to Punk vs Joe. This week, it was all about the build to Punk vs White. It automatically put him on the same level that Joe was presented at last week. They did a good job of keeping them apart, or only teasing it before paying it off during the long heat during the commercial (which, I guess wasn't heat, but heel-in-peril? Except for it was heat because half the crowd was for Punk... you get why this is tricky, huh?).

As for leading the crowd, Punk rode the wave. He started the match, all the way at the top of the ramp, thinking he'd have to go full heel, even as his partners would lead face and just be like a sports team who have the one controversial player that they have to support and put up with, but it was obvious that half the crowd was with him. He gave them something to celebrate and the detractors something to hate during the first commercial break with the Hogan Legdrop (placing it very carefully during the break). By the end of the match though, he'd cracked the code. At the end of the second commercial break, as he was making a comeback to a White bearhug, he put his arm out to fight when the fans were chanting CM Punk and then dropped it when they chanted Let's Go Switchblade. It was the logical evolution of 97 Bret and more overt than Cena's reactions to the Let's Go Cena/Cena Sucks chants. It also felt like something he was workshopping in the moment. There are probably other things that deserve mention here, like how well Juice and Austin Gunn mesh together as annoying loudmouths or Cash's dive, or how you can't unsee the fact that Dax absolutely refuses to interact with the legal man on the other side when everything breaks down, but this was rightfully all about Punk and partially about White and I'm just going to leave it at that. As for serving something bigger than the match, though? Yes, the moment, but even more than that would be if the finals of the Owen tournament are Punk vs Starks. We may look back at this one differently if that's the case.