AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 2

All In 8/26

CM Punk vs Samoa Joe

MD: Even almost a week later, we don't know what we don't know. The Observer hit this morning, etc. Look, we tend to look at the text itself here at Segunda Caida, at least with modern matches, but you can't separate this match from what led up to it in the minutes prior. I won't focus much on what we don't, won't, or can't know, but this match goes down differently on a rewatch when you have some sense of what came before. Punk's Punk, a shit-eating grin on his face as he goes through the curtain, absolute satisfaction with his little shitheel chop and dodge away from Joe to start the match, mirthful elation as he hangs on to a headlock through a suplex. You'll almost never see a man quite so alive as Punk as he shifts from Cena to Hogan and basks in the boos and he carried his weight for the other half of this, bleeding, stooging, and outright begging off for Joe's Hulk Up. 

I said almost no one was more alive though, and the reason I said almost is because for as much as Punk was living in this moment and channeling every internal and external bit of stimuli to feed into his performance, Joe was simply more. From all accounts, Joe manifested this moment through sheer determination, presence (physical and otherwise), and force of will. You can read this as the culmination of a redemption story for Joe. We've all seen the pictures of him in the poncho during the Mania pre-show in Tampa, and while some of those have him smiling, it wasn't a proper last chapter for him. Neither was the bizarre start and stop of his final NXT moments. This though? Standing in Wembley with tens of thousands of people chanting his name, with them oohing and ahhing every move he chained together, with enough of them singing for him or going up for his pointed response to Punk's heatseeking channeling of Hogan... he basked in each and every second of it. The energy of the crowd radiated off of his body and fueled his every movement. He wrestled this match like someone who knew how far he had once been from the possibility of it and how close he had been to losing it at the last second. I could write about how they cleverly leaned into their own familiarity with one another, how they leveraged that early to build anticipation for certain spots later in the match, how balanced letting things breathe with keeping things moving. I could even give JR some flowers; over the last few years he has a mortifying tendency of calling the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. Here though, even as the match didn't feel like it was quite ready to be over, he noted how both wrestlers were going for that one big move, the perfect set up for Punk hitting the plunge. In a hundred other matches, he'd have mistimed that sort of a call completely. Here, it covered up the lack of a more developed finishing stretch perfectly.

Past those last 100 words to smooth past the finish, I think I'd rather just let the above sit as the review though. This one wasn't about structure or tricks. It was one old pro, as strung out as someone straightedge could possibly be, channeling a moment despite it all, and one old lion with legendary strength, clenching his fist hard enough to prevent the sands of time and opportunity from slipping out of his grasp. Maybe someone has the words to do that justice, but it's sure not me. The match stands on its own. The match speaks for itself.