AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/11 - 12/17 Part 2

AEW Collision 12/16/23

Eddie Kingston vs Daniel Garcia

MD: In the Garcia vs Danielson match, I talked about how Garcia had to find the middle ground between Pro Wrestling and Sports Entertainment in order to beat Bryan Danielson upon his own terms. I do believe that. I do believe that there's a short to medium term story there with a resounding payoff. In the medium to long term however, I see something else for and in Garcia. There's something artificial and disingenuous about the sports entertainment thing. It's not Garcia's fault so much as it's just an unnatural fit (which gets heat through dissonance, sure, with a limited shelf life) and something that hasn't been fully fleshed out, developed, and defined. It was initially introduced a way to vilify the WWE, their ridiculous trappings and corporate speak, and Vince's insistence upon them. Then it was neutered almost instantly with Vince being removed from control. After that it became more about cheating and about Jericho as a symbolic figurehead tainting the ROH name but without actually doing much to taint it. 

But there's the dancing, right? And the dancing is over. We're not talking Greg Valentine with dyed black hair and a guitar here. Why is the dancing over? It's not over because of the idea of sports entertainment. I'd argue that it's not over in the same way that Nana's dance is over, actually. The dance an extension of a key aspect of Garcia's personality, the chip on his shoulder. You can practically see his aggression and irritation and impatience and insolence channel through his body and into his arms. It's an act of defiance against the crowd, against his opponent, against Menard and Danielson and Jericho, against the world. So for all of his technical skill and all of the things that make you wonder if he's not the heir to Bryan Danielson... you know who the dancing actually reminds me of in its own, unlikely way?

Eddie Kingston.

That's the longterm path for Garcia. It's not some sort of war between pro wrestling and sports entertainment within him. It's the fact that he's the heir to Bryan Danielson and the heir to Eddie Kingston at the same time. He's the guy who studies tape, who loves wrestling so much that it changed his life, that wanted it so badly that it got him out of Buffalo and provided him with purpose and determination after a car wreck that might have left him crippled. He's the only person in the company that can challenge Kingston when it comes to real or perceived grievances. You can see it on his face. You can see it in the way he moves. You can see it in the way he hits. He can tear apart a limb, can go to the mat, can demand every second of that five count, but he's also consumed with an roiling aggravation; he addresses his enemies in every match, and those enemies, well they're the whole damn world.

Which leads us to this match. Eddie came in having to win or else he'd lose everything. Garcia had nothing to lose but pride, which is all that he has left. Two elemental forces crashed into each other. Garcia met him head on. That worked until it didn't, so he started tearing at the leg. If he couldn't beat him by channeling Eddie Kingston, maybe he could by channeling Bryan Danielson. It worked. It worked so well that when it time for Kingston to show his mettle, to show his spirit, his heart was willing and strong, but his knee gave out. That gave Garcia just enough to stay in it despite the hierarchy, despite Kingston's desperation, but not enough to put him away, not yet, not on this night. 

Post match, Kingston said that Garcia had to be his own man, and he does, ultimately. But for now he stands on the shoulders of giants and only with open eyes and hard truths will he be able to look out upon the forest of his own conflicted spirit to find a path through into the light. When he finally does, the Daniel Garcia that emerges is going to be draped in the greatness of the past but like nothing we've ever seen before.

Bryan Danielson vs Brody King

MD: Quick thoughts for this one. It was laser focused and very disciplined. You can get away with that in a tournament like this when you're not competing for attention on a stage that is both bigger and more temporally limited like a PPV. Danielson came in more cautiously than a lot of King's previous opponents, kicks to the leg. King took over on the outside violently and started on the eye. Unyielding purpose inspired the creation of grisly visual stimulus, resonant in blood and pain and physical peril. There were no power moves for the sake of power moves, no suplex city that disrupts the currency of moves up and down the card. He ground Danielson down, buoyed in part, by the narrative advantages allowed by the commercial break. The power moves came after when it was time to try to win; when that didn't work, he went back to the well of violence on the outside, made a mistake, allowed Danielson to capitalize. Danielson went back to the leg, opening up the body, queuing up the Busaiku Knees. King had barely been damaged, and he's a giant and a beast and proven to be formidable through the early stages of the tournament: it only made sense that it would take multiple shots to finally quell his power. This match had a relatively low ceiling when it came to pure spectacle on a weekend full of it but an incredible high floor in its single-mindedness and logical focus.