AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/14 - 8/20

AEW Collision 8/19/23

Darby Allin vs. Christian

MD: I can think of very few matches that I want to see more in AEW than this. The thing is, I want to see it four or five times. That's when Christian's skillset really comes into play. You saw a chunk of it here, of course, because they had a lot of time to fill. I prefer him as a babyface to a heel, but with the right babyface, with the right stuff, you get the same sort of effect. He's an absolute savant at spot placement, one of the best TV workers ever when it comes to that. As a heel, a lot of his arsenal is left on the table and it becomes more of a matter of collaboratively working his opponent's stuff in, but that worked well enough here considering Darby's signature spots are perfectly suited to working from underneath.

I scrapped a paragraph here about chemical changes in wrestling (incentives for wrestlers and spots as ends as opposed to means). No one wants to read me go on about all of that again. Focusing on the match itself however, I thought this struck a great balance between spots and the connective tissue. A twelve minute match can still have time to breathe if it's worked a certain way. A lot of times, barring the commercial breaks, AEW matches are distinctly not worked that way. This had twice the time and really leaned into it. That meant that Christian really leaned on Darby, really doubled down on little character bits and personality highlights, be it hiding behind Luchasaurus to cut off a moment of hope or the bit with luring Darby in towards the belt. Past that, I don't actually have a lot to say here. This was just what I wanted it to be. I just need more of it, not within the match itself, but within a series of matches. There are still places for this to go. Darby is a guy who makes everyone's offense look great and Christian is someone whose offense I really do want to look as good as possible. I wanted Darby to use the Last Supper against Cage last week, but now that he's won with a couple of different roll ups, I'm fine with him continuing to press in that direction. He's on a parallel path to Cassidy now, both of them up against the world and surviving by the skin of their teeth. People say that Page or Kingston are the main character of AEW, but this year it's been Darby and OC. And yes, I want to see Christian vs. Cassidy just as bad, and then six more matches between them. Maybe we get them before it's all said and done.