AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/9 - 10/15

AEW Dynamite 10/10/23

Bryan Danielson vs Swerve Strickland

MD: Bryan Danielson likes to lie. He's also on his last real run (unless he's lying about that; we don't think he is). He's also had a relatively fragile year and a half. His arm injury in the Okada match is something he's referred to as his worst injury in a single match ever. It makes every match we do have with him, especially on a week to week basis, all the more special.

The evolution of emotional investment in wrestling is a fascinating thing. Forty years ago, fans were invested in seeing the babyface get revenge on the heel. Twenty years ago, a lot of our circle was interested in seeing their favorites actually pushed and be put over. In the last few years, people seem invested on the match hitting correctly and "star"-worthy and being able to say that you witnessed a great or canonical match as it happened.

When we're watching Danielson right now, our emotional investment is helplessly tied to the fear of him getting hurt. That isn't about his athleticism or his professional; it's about us being human and seeing it multiple times over the last few years (and not just with him but with people up and down the roster) and knowing that this is the last chance we have of getting to watch him so frequently.

And Danielson, pro that he is, can use that. People argued that he used it in the Okada match (teasing a head injury to help cover for his actual arm injury) inappropriately. You can make a case one way or another about that; I downplayed it given the circumstances in my review. Here though, it was something more benign but that still gave the crowd a sinking feeling in their stomachs, one that brought them down so that he could build them up once again, which is really what heat in wrestling is all about, and something that's hard if you're just chasing immortality and glory for your match.

A lot of words to say that for a while there, I pretty much bought into the rib injury. He landed one way and sold another, back to front. It was just haphazard enough and he was doing such a good job at going back to it in between moves and to slow himself down that for a little while there, he had me and while it was a very meta sort of engagement, one that wasn't about a babyface being healthy enough to beat a heel, I was still engaged. I was still leaning a little closer towards the screen.

When Danielson hit the turnbuckle, ready to charge back in for another shot, and subsequently collapsed, I was relieved instead of disheartened, because that's the moment I was sure he was just selling. Imagine a car careening off the road, two hands clenching the wheel tightly, going over bumps and almost tumbling over itself once or twice, only to meet up with the road once again. That's what happened here. After that, everything was smooth sailing, but synapses were popping and senses were attuned. The match was back on the road but you, the watcher, were coming off that emotional high and everything heading towards that finishing stretch was more exciting and vivid than it might have been otherwise. You valued it all the more because of your sense of relief. That's what I experienced here. I hadn't been entirely on board at the start (and a lot of that was on Swerve's sideways approach to everything, which slowed down the early matwork past the point of enjoyability for me) but once the ribs came into play, the match caught me and never let go. Chalk it up to top notch selling from a man who loves to lie, even to a crowd that legitimately cares about his well-being. It also makes for very interesting contrast with the Christian match, which didn't have that additional metatextual layer at all, but more on that after a brief check-in on how Eddie is doing.

ROH 10/12/23

Eddie Kingston vs Serpentico

MD: There was an Eddie Kingston vs Minoru Suzuki match on Tuesday, but I really don't have a lot to add. You can picture basically the whole match without seeing it. I liked that they more or less sold impact more and more as the match went on. The early chops were shrugged off in a way that the later ones weren't, which is logical and makes sense. There was just a little more of "Eddie Kingston, Ace" in here even in just how he was able to finish of Suzuki in the end and I was glad to see that.

I haven't touched on anything on ROH TV for a while either. If I had time, I would have written about Athena vs Hirsch from last week; they matched up well size-wise and Hirsch seemed like a unique opponent in letting Athena stretch her considerable athleticism as much as possible. Frankly, Athena should probably be the fifth Finger because of her exceptional combination of intensity, execution, and being in the moment in her reactions all the time, but I'd just have to say those last few words over and over again every week and there's not much there. Her squashes are great; I love seeing how she works the Magic Forearm into her matches, and she deserves exposure, but there's not a lot for me to write about on a weekly basis that isn't simply apparent.

That brings us to Serpentico. I love Serpentico. Talk about a guy who is completely comfortable in his own skin, probably with the best perspective in the entire company. He knows exactly who and what he is and exactly who and what he should be. Within those confines, he tries to be as creative as possible, but never in a way that harms the overall match or what he's there to accomplish. Part of being great at wrestling is knowing what not to do and when not to do it and he's able to walk the line between over the top antics and the match's ultimate goal extremely well. This was to facilitate a future match between Angelico and Kingston, which sounds great. It was a Proving Ground match (Eliminator but with a 10 minute time limit and challenger's advantage in case of a draw). The basic story was one of hierarchy. Serpentico was quick, daring, and crafty. If Eddie caught him, it wasn't going to be good. He went so far as to hit him with the chops in the corner, but eventually Eddie did catch him and while he survived a shot or two and was able to kick out, he really put over the Stretch Plum as nasty and soon found himself tapping. What I liked was that all of Serpentico's offense was in the front couple of minutes. This wasn't a case of him getting caught but then having a big comeback. Instead, when Eddie put him down, he really put him down, which is one of those things you want to see out of an ace. Definitely looking forward to Eddie working the mat with Angelico when they run that.

AEW Collision 10/14/23

Bryan Danielson vs Christian Cage

MD: It's very easy to take Collision for granted. For all that it was supposed to be or might have been, what it has consistently allowed for is long (two commercial breaks long) main event segments on a week to week basis that don't exist elsewhere in wrestling. These can be big 8-man. They can be long tags. They can be for a title or not. They can be a singles match like this.

I'm chosing my words carefully here. There was nothing particular clever or innovative about this match. That's not to say it wasn't smart. It was extremely smart. Things were earned. Things were built to. They let almost every moment resonate. Christian is so good at linking bits of offense with interactions with the crowd and a sort of seething, methodological purpose. I've said it before, but it doesn't feel like the same sort of "spots" almost everyone else in the company are doing, but just an organic, wrathful attempt to hurt his opponent. And Danielson, as we've seen him do so much so recently, reacted to the moment.

Yet nothing in this match couldn't have existed twenty years ago, maybe even thirty. Yet it got as much reaction, thorough, earnest, heated, as anything I've seen in AEW this year. They were a few chants for Christian early, but they didn't linger. He made sure of that. There was one "This is Awesome", after a dive that was earned and a pause in the action that followed. There were no Fight Forevers. Nothing like that. Instead they milked a simple countout attempt where fans in the front row helped Danielson up and the crowd completely ate it up. They went hard. There were some big bumps. They leveraged the hurt arm and Christian was doggedly focused upon it. But they didn't go over the top like you'd see in so many matches that tried to run up a score past five stars.

So, it wasn't necessarily clever or innovative or any single thing we hadn't seen before. Yet, believe me when I say this: it was unique and it was special. Some of that was just in how thoroughly and unabashedly it leaned into those traditional elements; patiently, consistently trusting in the eternal and the primal over the ephemeral, running an experiment it working beyond all expectations. But it was also this: Up until this year, I'm not sure this match could have ever existed in this exact form. In decades' past, even a main event match wouldn't get this sort of time on TV. If it did, there would have to be something over the top to justify it. It would have to be more thoroughly obscured under the veil of sports entertainment trappings. On the indies, it would have been impossible; the sheer length and scope would have led to excess, whether through greed or insecurity.

It took these wrestlers, in this moment, in this setting, on a show that neither made but both saw the potential in, in a company that neither made but that allows for the utmost in creative freedom, to let all of their years of experience and all of their trust in one another, in the crowd, in the manipulative art of pro wrestling, for something so simple, straightforward, and serene to come into being. This felt like where Pro Wrestling should have always been headed, back to the beginning and forward to the future.