AEW Five Fingers of Death (and friends) 12/18 - 12/24

AEW Collision 12/23/23

Daniel Garcia vs. Brody King

MD: I'm actually skipping out on the Kingston and Danielson matches this week. Very good stuff, exciting tournament action, matches with novelty, but I'm fighting the clock here and don't have a ton to say. I will note that the sheer level of familiarity and physical trust allowed for some very special individual spots between Danielson and Claudio though.

Instead, I want to focus on a couple of other matches from the last week, starting with Garcia vs King. It was practically perfect. Pro wrestling perfection. One of the real joys of pro wrestling is that everything counts. Hypothetically, every match that’s ever happened can be an input to every match that is yet to come. It's that you can tell stories bigger than an individual match. You can call back on decades of history. I've written about how Garcia's past year or two shaped his run in the tournament, but here that run, and the story of the tournament as a whole, led specifically to this match.

Brody King was built up as a final boss in the early stages of the tournament. He was a monster. Some of that was in how his opponents engaged him, but even in his losses later on, he was protected. He hit his head on the post allowing Andrade to defeat him; for Danielson, it took knee after knee after knee. Garcia, on the other hand, caught between one identity and another, came up short again and again. He's good enough to beat any opponent on any night, but when push comes to shove, he hasn't and he doesn't. Certainly in this tournament, he didn't.

Brody was fighting to advance but also to make a statement, like he always does. Garcia had nothing to lose but pride, the only thing he had left, so he was fighting for that. Pride is no small thing in wrestling, but when it's the very last thing a wrestler has to cling on to, it becomes all the more valuable and potent. Garcia teased just a little dancing on the way out, but shrugged it off. His hair was cut short. He was regressing to move forward into whatever his next form may be. And he got almost nothing in the first two-thirds of this. He chose to start with a slap, to make a statement of his own, the defiance of someone who (much like his last opponent in Kingston) would dare shout into the wind and awaken the wrath of an angry god just to prove to the world that he was still alive, that his voice mattered, that he was worth time, effort, attention.

And for his hubris, King destroyed him. It was relentless and unyielding. Occasionally, Garcia would show a flash of additional defiance, a choke over the ropes for instance, but it'd just lead to a further stamping out of the embers of life; in that case, it was in the form of Brody's noose-like dangling choke. The match built to such moments, not a shift in momentum but instead small meaningful victories fought for with all of Garcia's heart. After getting thrashed on the outside, he made it back into the ring at the last second. He was able to get his foot up in the corner a few times, creating distance, hope, opportunity, showing the universe he still had a pulse. It all built to three escalating moments. First, he stood tall, pride animating a body that should have crumpled limp, standing up to Brody's chops and throwing shots of his own. Then, he kept going back to the well for a belly to back suplex, an impossible physical feat, stubbornly trying again and again, enduring the consequences of failure, until he somehow, with great effort, hefted Brody over. Then, finally, after once more finding himself oppressed and punished by this god's wrath: a death valley driver, a lariat, a solo Dante's Inferno, he channeled all of that hope and determination into a snatch of King's legs, pushing forward as if he was reaching forth towards the entirety of any possible future worth loving, and taking King off balance for a jackknife roll up. This was anything but a back and forth affair. It was a one-sided mauling building to small moments of life, of defiance, of hope, of the underdog proving something to himself, his opponent, and the world itself. It was a match that took all of the potential energy created by Garcia's last year, by everything that had happened in the tournament so far, by King's run and Daniel's tortured crawling, and turned it into kinetic gold the only way pro wrestling can. From a star-rating perspective, there was probably a ceiling on this. As a story that can only exist in this medium, at this time, with these people, it was wonderful, emotional, and resonant.

 

AEW Rampage 12/22/23

El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Black Taurus

MD: I liked their ROH Final Battle match. I did. And I thought it was appropriate for the moment. You often want a big bombastic exciting sprint to cycle off of the pre-show and into the main show. It recalibrates the crowd and sets the tone for the rest of the night. Moreover, it's part of the appeal of new-era ROH, these crazy dream matches that show up out nowhere a couple of days before the show. You wanted it to be as "much" as it could possibly be. Right match with the right people at the right time where they did the right thing.

But... I personally liked this one more. An all out sprint between a base and a flyer, especially two of the top ones of their generation, have some inherent issues. I do think that these two know how to put together a match and especially know how to put together one of their matches, but it's a problem I have with both something like the ROH Final Battle match and some of Gringo Loco's stuff. They're are so good, and do so much, that it just screws up the relative balance with the rest of the card. It even screws it up within the match itself. For instance, both Taurus and Gringo Loco have moves that are so amazing, so breathtaking, so devastating, that they're not just bigger than anything else in the match (including the finish), and not just anything else on the card (including the finish of all the other matches), but almost anything else you've ever seen (including every finish you've ever seen). In a sprint/spotfest, because of the need to keep things moving, especially during a finishing stretch that has to live up to a match that hasn't stopped for a second the whole time through, there's little room for excuse on the kickout either. You can't ensure someone's by the ropes. You can't take extra time after the impact with both guys out. You just have to get through a clean and clear two count kickout in the middle of the ring and get to the next spot or the magic's going to get disrupted. So you have these clean kickouts (and the expectation of a clean kickout, since while these moves are groundbreaking and skullcrushing, they aren't necessarily framed as a potential finish and they almost never actually finish the match in an AEW showcase stage where the flyer almost always beats the base) after things that are bigger than anything you'd ever seen. If Vikingo was presented as a wrestler so full of heart that you can't keep him down (and Rey was like that to a degree, but he was also clever in his kickouts/escapes), it'd be one thing, but he's not presented that way; he's presented as a breathtaking offensive wrestler, not like an Eddie or even someone like Blake Christian who's billed as "All Heart."

So I do struggle with that as I watch. The Rampage match, however, while starting as big as the ROH match and ending as big as it, had a secret weapon in the middle, the all-powerful commercial break. Taurus, who I would remind you, is twice Vikingo's size, shut him down and leaned on him hard. And good! He should have! He is twice his size and more than half as agile and quick. That straight out math means that if given the chance, he could just grind Vikingo down even without big moves and headdrops. Small measures like a foot choke in the corner or more mid-level moves like a side slam are still devastating from this guy! More important, it brought the match down after the hot start so that it had a place to go down the stretch. The stretch was no longer competing with the rest of the match but could breathe more on its own strengths. And, perhaps most importantly, it rewarded the fans for hanging in there and being invested in the match. Taurus, by grinding things down, was taking away from the audience the single thing that they wanted the most in the moment, not Vikingo winning the match, but the chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime spotfest. He was denying them that by being so formidable, so imposing, by throwing around his weight without throwing around his body. When Vikingo was able to come back and hit the afterburners and force Taurus to come along for the ride, the endorphins popped in the crowd's collective mind as well. A reward withheld creates anticipation and anticipation makes the payoff all the sweeter. Is it the match that they would have chosen to have if the commercial break didn't exist? Probably not, but on a week in and week out basis, we barely know how good we have it that these matches have to go picture-in-picture. Thankfully, I'm reminded each and every week.