AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/15 - 1/21

MD: A lot to say this week, so I'll probably keep these relatively short. I could have just as easily written up Strong vs Sydal or Garcia vs Matthews or even Copeland vs Martin. Interesting selling all around. 

AEW Dynamite 1/17/24 

Samoa Joe vs HOOK

MD: If selling is the story of the week, then the second story is likely one of intent. Yes, pro wrestling is and always has to be about winning a simulated athletic competition. And yes, most of the time it should be about money. Why? Because that takes from professional sports and is always relatable. But having compelling characters with interesting motivations always helps. Let's take a look at Samoa Joe. Here was a guy who had been written off by his industry and by a huge chunk of the fanbase, but had never been written off by himself. Here's someone who had been misused, undervalued, not provided the opportunities that he would have rightfully deserved in a more meritocratic business. So he made his own opportunity. He's seen others come and go around him, wild and chaotic and undisciplined, and he is the calm center of gravity holding things together. 

Here, in his first defense, with two challengers chomping at his heels and a Wardlow (a man who he has quite a bit of history with) waiting in the wings, he wanted to bring understanding to a new generation. He wished to make HOOK see how the world worked, wished to bestow upon him all the harsh lessons that life had taught him, all of the lessons that HOOK's own father, blinded by pride and boundless, uncharacteristic optimism, refused to teach him. HOOK took the fight to Joe as if he could define his own destiny through skill and determination and bravery. Joe shut him down and beat him around the ring, around the ringside area, crushed him to dust. HOOK rose back up with youthful defiance, trying to snatch a second grasp at victory by denying the truth before him. Joe choked him out. Almost certainly, the lesson wasn't absorbed. It was, however, transferred. It took Joe an entire career to become the man that he is now, no matter how formidable or fearsome the man he was twenty years ago had been. One can extrapolate forward another twenty years and think of the lessons HOOK will want to bestow upon others in 2044. It might well look a lot like this.

Christian Cage vs Dustin Rhodes

MD: I am obligated to write about this match. There are, presumably, only so many Dustin matches left to write about. There are, presumably, only so many Christian Cage matches. I'm just not sure what needs to be said that isn't entirely evident, what comparative advantage I have here. Let me say this then. Everything here worked exactly how it was supposed to. We take so much of this for granted. We do not give the basic tenets of pro wrestling enough credit. It's because we've seen so much of it and we've seen it done so ineffectually. We anticipate. If you're reading this blog, I can almost assure you that if you watch a wrestler hit the ropes in context of a match, you almost certainly know what the end result of the spot will be. Our brains all work differently and we're all different people, but most of you are a half move ahead of what you're watching, sometimes more. Even if you aren't sure exactly how it'll go, you've got three or four possibilities mapped out ahead of time and it's just a matter of which path on the flow chart they decide to take. 

Generally that's ok. There's so much wrestling and a lot of it is all built similarly. The tiny nuances stand out. The massive spots and bumps stand out. The deviations stand out. A lot of times, for good or ill, the actual skeleton of the match is just there to provide us a means of delivery for the details. A match is rarely rewarded for the wrestlers doing the right things at the right times for the right reasons with the right results. It's more likely a match will get rewarded for coloring outside the lines, even if the coloring makes no sense. People flock towards innovation and sensation when there's still so much beauty to be found in the standard architecture of direct storytelling. Not here though. Here, it all worked. Here, the foundation was so strong that it moved in parallel with the details and was worth letting go and immersing yourself in. The babyface was cheered. The heel was booed. Everyone played their part. Dustin achieved multiple symbolic victories but Christian escaped with the victory and his belt once again. AEW is a big tent promotion. There will always be room for good, well executed, straightforward pro wrestling. It provides a baseline to be pressed against. There are very few 21st century wrestlers who can do it as well as these two.

AEW Collision 1/20/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs Eddie Kingston/Ortiz

MD: Building off what I just said about Christian vs Dustin, part of the issue is that the crowd no longer wants to play its traditional role, but it wants to have more pivotal a role than ever. In a world of "Both These Guys" and "Fight Forever" chants, and in a company that (probably rightfully) embraces them, it takes someone really special to make pro wrestling in that environment special. It takes someone who can adapt to what is before him, who can lead the crowd despite the incentive of the day being to follow them, who can pause the script and lean into the moment. Enter Danielson and Kingston. The first minute or two of this was absolutely compelling. Danielson tried to get under Eddie's skin, tried to stall, tried to get the crowd to cheer for him. And he did. Eddie, on the other side of the Continental Classic and a win over Danielson, was annoyed that Bryan wouldn't just lock up with him, but confident enough to meet the moment. He looked to his imaginary watch (my current favorite pro wrestling object), and showed Danielson that it was literally impossible to get under his skin in a world where the crowd would go up for him just as much if not more. If selling is ultimately just reacting in order to give meaning to the physical actions within the ring, there is a sort of emotional selling which is reacting to both physical and non-physical stimulus. Here Danielson and Kingston are exceptional. You could spend the whole match just watching their facial reactions and it'd be more engrossing than 90% of the company's breathtaking highspots. I'm so glad that they've moved back into one another's orbit for at least one last go around.

AEW Rampage 1/19/24

Darby Allin vs Jeff Hardy

MD: This was the rare case where I don't think the commercial break helped the match. Darby is the exception that proves the rule. He's so good at generating impact and fabricating consequence that he could ground a trainwreck and make it into a narrative. Hardy was, in many ways, the Darby of two decades prior. This match was best in the early going when it was like two ships firing their cannons at one another, calibrating and recalibrating with each perilous shot. Except the cannonballs were human cannonballs. One wrestler would crash and burn on a near miss and the other would line up his next shot and fire away. I wouldn't want it every day for the wrestlers' sake and the sake of my own sanity, but once every year or two, it's nice to see these two ships pass in the night, guns blaring.