AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/22- 1/28

AEW Collision 1/27/24

Eddie Kingston vs Willie Mack

MD: Collision was excellent. It was a balm. It was almost everything I want AEW to be and almost nothing I don't. I especially loved the linked Kingston and Danielson matches of course. Writing about Eddie is like virtually nothing else. Even for me, someone who is so doggedly and annoyingly analytical that I'll write paragraphs complaining about how Adam Page tries too hard to make his matches exciting too soon, can just relax and let go and write about the text as if it's real. Eddie will never see this, but I think back over the last few years about any other wrestling where I can just let go and lean into the mythos of the text itself as opposed to tearing at the structure and the execution and everything else, and there's not much. Jumbo vs Tenryu is comes to mind, with Tenryu trying to force Jumbo to come to grips with his own assumed hypocrisy and with Jumbo, unable to admit that he had been infected by the virus of violence that Choshu had brought a few years earlier, demanding the crowd cheer for his brutality like he was some sort of Roman emperor. That stuff is so primal and larger and life that you can just let go and write about the text for the sake of the text. 

You can do that with almost everything Eddie does. Where I struggle the hardest, actually, is when he's paired with a Japanese wrestler, because Eddie subsumes himself a bit too much in those waters. He's best when he's straddling worlds, undeniable in any but unwelcome in all. 

This was a Proving Ground match. A deserved opportunity. Ten minutes with the champ and you get a title shot. You're not just getting a title shot for the ROH title anymore either but for the Continental Crown. Mack did his homework. He wasn't about to let Kingston control the center and dictate the pace. He's size and power and speed and rushes in with a kick followed by one offensive shot after the next. So long as he can keep things moving, he has Kingston backpeddling. The second things slow down, Eddie pries his way back onto offense. Mack working from underneath doesn't lose his attributes (strength, size, speed) though and he's able to get back in it. He just learned a hard lesson that if you give Kingston a second, it's a second too much, though, and he tries to turn on the afterburners. In doing so, he takes out his own leg. From there, it's a matter of time. He puts up a valiant effort, but all it takes is to give Eddie half a breath, to let him recover just long enough to get his knees up, and the Uraken gets unleashed and for all the proof that Mack mustered, he simply didn't gain enough ground. 

Bryan Danielson vs Yuji Nagata

MD: People have rightfully gone high and hard for the finish here, with Nagata kicking at the damaged arm and Danielson kicking at the damaged leg, Nagata blocking/jamming Danielson, and Danielson having to readjust and throw a couple of fakes before going for the skull twice to set up the knee and get the win. It was a great sequence, one that felt adaptive and organic. It was counter-based and collaborative but not in a way that forced either wrestler to do anything that they normally wouldn't or that somehow broke any laws of wrestling physics. It didn't break the suspension of disbelief; it actually enhanced it. I often find that Nick Bockwinkel matches are full of things like that, of moments that subtly subvert expectations in exceptionally logical ways. You watch and it comes off as so simple and elementary and common sense that you wonder why it's just so uncommon in wrestling. Why aren't more people able to strive for such low lifts that create high emotional impact. Likewise, I watched that sequence and was left wondering why two thirds of the roster push for bigger and bolder and flashier and more devastating when they're leaving little bursts of brilliance on the table. 

The match itself was so phenomenally sound. It felt like a match that could have existed twenty years ago, and one that almost felt like a sampler, like something that touched upon so many individual elemental elements of wrestling, matwork, striking, limbwork, fighting spirit, brashness and bravery, stubbornness and prowess. If there was the occasional space in the execution of crossfaces, there wasn't any space to be found in the wrestlers' intent. They wore their hearts on their sleeves, Nagata the old man who had accomplished so much but that found something new to accomplish through the limitations of aging and Danielson who sees a finish line only partially of his making ahead of him and for all of his discipline, finds himself a glutton for sensation and opportunity and for every possible chance still remaining for him. And riding such emotions, the fans stayed with them the whole way.