2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Dark Order vs. Blackpool Combat Club

 

6. Stu Grayson/Evil Uno/Hangman Page vs. Jon Moxley/Claudio Castagnoli/Wheeler Yuta AEW Dynamite 3/15

ER: AEW is often at its best when it hits the level of a 4th match of the night trios from the middle of a 2003 NOAH show, and that's what this felt like to me. Everything hummed and flowed like the best NOAH trios, and almost everyone hit like they were wrestling in a NOAH trios. Evil Uno works like an old fat All Japan undercarder who's having a big night anyway, so it only makes this even better. He's like old ass Mighty Inoue or Mitsuo Momota breaking out of old man comedy and coming alive and showing everyone that he's still the guy they might have seen on a 1979 IWE show. But the big story of this very cool match is Stu Grayson. 

Stu Grayson is a guy who I haven't had an active thought about at any point of my pro wrestling fandom. It's a name I relearn every time I see a Stu Grayson match and then it just as quickly drifts away, just out of reach. Like a night's dream you're trying to recollect, the more you attempt to recall the name Stu Grayson, the farther away you feel from catching it. Except Stu Grayson exists beyond that plane of waking life, as you never once get the urge to actually recall your memory of That Time You Watched A Stu Grayson Match Because You Were Home On A Wednesday. How many Stu Grayson matches could I have actually watched. Half a dozen? A full dozen? I am no longer a religious weekly watcher of TV wrestling, while also being a person who constantly watches wrestling, including a lot of AEW and WWE. I am a pro wrestling Hardcore Viewer while simultaneously being the elusive Casual Fan that has been lusted after demographically for literal decades. And that is the reason why I have probably seen eight Stu Grayson matches. Without remembering any Stu Grayson matches. Maybe those matches were all actually John Silver or Raymond Row matches. 

But in this match, this Stu Grayson Match, I found his excellent babyface energy captivating. He really started connecting with me when he took a cool fast bump through the ropes to the floor, and the BCC did a sick group piledriver on the floor as The Thing to kick off their big heat on him. I thought the Combat Club were awesome at making quick tags so that every member could inflict their own personal constant damage, tagging in to suplex and hit and kick and uppercut Grayson. The heat was all really well done and the action was seamless, giving Grayson time to credibly sell while also believably not leaving him spaces for a comeback. When he did make a one move comeback - with a huge running knee straight into Moxley's mouth - it was a huge hot tag moment. A well built and well timed hot tag is always a thing to be celebrated, but I loved how they used the hot tag as the means to build up to another run towards the finish, not as the actual run to the finish itself. Uno had a big senton atomico and all of the quick hit car crash action perfectly cleared the ring for Moxley and Page...which was just a way to quickly settle things down into the run towards the real finish, as Yuta took out Hangman with the ring bell. 

Despite being an early-AEW supporter of Evil Uno - one of the guys who consistently made the What Worked side of that first year or so of AEW Workrate Reports - I wouldn't ever call myself a Dark Order Guy. And yet here I was, completely losing it thinking that Uno and Grayson could plausibly pin Jon Moxley. Their entire finish run, from Grayson's flip dive over the ringpost, to all of their chained together offense and double teams, all made me actually think - and be excited for -  Uno and Grayson were actually taking out Jon Moxley. The Fatality nearfall was huge, and Yuta's best moments of the match were him saving Mox from that finish and then running over to pull Uno off the apron to stop the tag and ice the momentum. Stu Grayson makes the great looking finish look like an even greater finish. It's cool seeing him hit 450s and big ranas and dives with real distance, but I love how he Athletically Eats Shit taking Claudio's pop up uppercut. This was NOAH trios perfection, and if I manage to forget about Stu Grayson again in a couple days, it is likely merely the signs of my advanced brain rot and not anything that is the fault of Stu Grayson's ability.  

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST