AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/28 - 9/3 Part 2

AEW All Out 9/4/23

Bryan Danielsion vs Ricky Starks (Strap Match)

MD: Well, this was special, huh? Where to begin here? What's my "in?" It has to be just how thoroughly this was thought out. In some ways, it felt like the exact opposite of the Okada match. There, Danielson, arm broken, had to adapt in-ring against an opponent he'd never faced, with a language barrier, in the main event of one of the biggest matches of the year. Here? Here, according to Danielson, they had run every single beat of this not just in front of an agent or Khan but in front of the AEW doctor. Like I said last week, we don't know what we don't know as it pertains to how he calls or plans matches generally, but we do know about these two matches, and I can't speak for anyone else, but for me it's the most impressive sort of range in the world. Think about it. How is it not an amazing testament to Danielson that he was able to work two completely different sorts of matches with such limitations and such stakes and that he completely nailed both.

Watch the thing back. He doesn't utilize his arm for anything. He doesn't lift anything heavier than the strap the whole match. There are one or two moments where he bumps onto the arm (his own corner dropkick and when Starks cuts him off with the clothesline out of the corner, which was such an important moment in the match). There isn't a single "move" out of Danielson or Starks in this one. Everything is a strike, using the strap, or using a part of the ring as a weapon, and even then, for those latter bits it's mostly jamming a head against something (stairs, post).

And yet somehow this coexisted on a show which had two other violent maulings in Mox vs Cassidy and the Darby match but also a super-maximalist encounter between Omega and Takeshita. And while some might disagree, to me, this eclipsed them all. It was the combination of brutality and character, the paradoxical weight of repetitive blows and the basking in moments between them. Starks created so much of the motion here, did so much of the physical lift, but just about anyone on the roster could have done that. What just about anyone could not do was to match Danielson in the moments in-between.

He started the match by running, stalling, checking his pulse, slapping a hand. During the ambush, he blew a kiss to the crowd. After opening Danielson up with the weight belt shot, he ran over to kiss a woman's hand (thus obfuscating the blading). As the match went on, he'd scream in agony or ecstasy depending on his point of advantage in the match. He'd gloat that it was his house or recoil in defiant disbelief as Danielson shrugged off blows and promised retribution. While he didn't wear his crimson mask as well as Danielson, years of emotion, of struggle and disappointment and perseverance bled out of the chip on his shoulder, all building to that moment at the end when the camera focused directly on face as his windpipe proved to be less formidable than his willpower and consciousness left his eyes. 

This was planned to a perfection, key emotional moments balanced carefully with the wild excess of leather striking flesh again and again and again, wild and reckless and measured and precise. It was the perfect combination of far too much and barely anything at all, the bridge between them blood and emotion and violence, that ultimate alchemy of what pro wrestling can be at its very best and most primal, not the reality of war, but the ultimate illusion of it.