2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson & Mox Chop Fight Top Flight

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Top Flight (Dante & Darius Martin) AEW Rampage 1/6/23

ER: I am not really a "Top Flight" guy. They are the style of wrestler of which AEW already has Too Many. There are 50-70 guys on the AEW who wrestle exactly like this. The timing changes, the moves change, the backflips differ, but the beats are all the same. Any indy show I go to has a half a dozen Top Flights - at minimum. There are good versions of them and bad versions of them, but it is now the most commonplace style of wrestling for every young athletic man foolish enough to get into pro wrestling. I have never been moved by a Top Flight performance, while acknowledging that both brothers are creative and capable of doing athletic things and clever combos that probably puts them above their similarly complicatedly styled peers. But Top Flight vs. Top Flight Doppelgängers isn't a match that excites me, because odds are I have already seen two other Top Flight vs. Top Flight matches on whatever card I'm watching anyway. 

It turns out, the way to get maximum enjoyment out of Top Flight, is to pair them with a couple of dudes who have doing this for longer than any wrestler could sensibly hope to wrestle, who have gone through the dark tunnels of addiction or career ending injury and come through the other side with new zeal, ready to hit smooth athletes like Top Flight as hard as humanly possible. And Top Flight gets to successfully play the role of All Japan young boys who are being playing above slot, lasting longer than they were supposed to last, making it more of a match than the men with freshly washed balls expected it to be. Dante Martin makes the same teeth clenched fist-balled expressions in every match of his I've seen, but after watching him absorb kick after kick from Danielson I finally bought into his determination as if finally seeing it earned for the first time. Athletic wrestlers like Dante Martin act like they've been through A War in every match, and here that acting finally felt like it wasn't An Act. 

This also felt like the greatest Darius Martin performance. Dante is the younger, more consistent bother, and the one who has been tabbed as the breakout star of the two. Here he is actually given the chance to respond as the first born, sticking up for his brother after a major beating. Dante has some inspired moments of putting one over on the vets: taking out Moxley with a a blindside top con hilo over the ringpost during Moxley's entrance, flipping onto his own feet to stop a rana after Danielson had literally just been standing on the top rope potatoing him in the head, but a lot of this was Dante being punished. Stiff kicks, stiff chops, stiff punches, a Mox piledriver that stands him on the top of his head, a Mox clothesline that flips him inside out to a degree that his hang time lands him on top of Mox. It is a beating to be withstood, and it leads to a tremendous hot tag moment from his older and less acclaimed brother. 

I'm not sure I've ever loved a Top Flight moment more than when Danielson and Moxley kick each other in the shins because Dante collapses, and then Darius tags in to stand up for his little bro. The way Darius goads Danielson - who should know better - into kicking him harder and harder, catching the challenge kick and throwing by far the hardest elbows and chops I have ever seen him throw, that's fucking pro wrestling. I've seen hundreds of shitty moments in these matches where two guys challenge each other to hit harder, and it almost always feels rote and out of place, a moment you create because at a certain point it became expected to have this moment in half the matches on a card, but this was a rare example of this spot feeling right. I believe that Darius actually wanted to know how hard Danielson could kick. I believe that he wanted to know that he could take Danielson's hardest and survive, take his worst and learn more about himself in the process. It doesn't lead to a win, and nothing the brothers do ever makes it feel like a win was going to happen, but everyone hit their moments so perfectly that every part of this felt like a win. 

I loved a late match use of a save, something too under-utilized in wrestling, and one important thing that made this feel like a big Kings Road tag rather than the kind of AEW match where a few guys kick out of a few other guys poison ranas. Danielson's Busaiku knee to Darius face was the most match-finishing moment of this match, flipping him on top of his head and down hard on his face, and Dante's expert timing with the pinfall save extended the match without diminishing the impact of that vicious knee one bit. Dante is thrown from the ring, Danielson is clearly going to finish Darius, and Moxley is prompted to hit a completely unnecessary and fully passionate plancha to take Dante out on the floor for good, when he easily could have just watched the ropes to prevent another save. Danielson and Moxley were not ever in a real position of danger, and yet they were pushed beyond a point they expected to be pushed into, goaded into foolishness they shouldn't have been goaded into, two clear winners forced to show how Gotten To they were. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST