2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Dustin vs. Claudio

 

37. Dustin Rhodes vs. Claudio Castagnoli AEW Rampage 8/24 (Aired 8/26/22)

ER: Matt already wrote this gem up at length when it originally aired, but I wanted to add a few perfunctory thoughts years later just to officially add it to our MOTY List. I have such fond memories of that brilliant but brief era in WWE where Cesaro and Goldust were among several of my favorite guys producing great weekly tag matches. I think of that window so fondly that it's hard to believe that was a full decade ago now. Cesaro and Goldust matched up a lot over a 6 month stretch from late 2013 to early 2014 and the matches were always given ample time to deliver. Most of them did. But were weren't getting Goldust singles matches during that era, just letting the best hot tag-slash-best face in peril in the world play to his strengths in perhaps the last best era of WWE tag team wrestling. 

So now, nearly a decade later, we finally get one of the singles matches that would have slotted perfectly into that era and excites me just as much today. Dustin is older and doesn't have that same gas tank, but the pairing is no less intriguing. I love a Veteran Who Has Lost a Step match story, and Dustin is great at playing that story. The way he misses his high crossbody and blogrolls all the way to the floor or hits his head on the bottom rope taking a shoulderblock, these are spots that mean more when done by Old Dustin than Young Spry Dustin. Falls are more serious to us old people. Claudio is the perfect guy to take advantage of Dustin's slower step, and Dustin is great at firing people up by regularly seeming he was about to go on a tear before Claudio could shut it down again as quickly as it began. 

Regal says on commentary that Claudio is the only person he's known who can throw an uppercut as hard as Dave Taylor, which is the coolest kind of compliment Regal can give someone. But more than that, Claudio is capable of working spots on Dustin that nobody else could do, while catching Dustin spots that nobody else could catch. He's arguably the perfect modern Dustin opponent. He catches the cannonball safer than anyone while making it looks like catching a 240 pound medicine ball, and I can't imagine Dustin trusts anyone on the roster enough to leap off the top rope with his rana. Claudio's giant swing is one of the great wrestling spots, but perhaps never better than performed on Dustin. Claudio is the guy who is actually capable of swinging the big man, and it looks so great because nobody has legs longer than Dustin's. AEW's top down angle of that swing and how much of the ring surface area they were covering was perfection. All of Claudio's displays of strength only imply that his crossface grip has the power of a trash compactor, like it's shifting Dustin's teeth in his gums. 

I really couldn't care less about the "Is this Dustin Rhodes' last attempt to win a World Championship?" story they kept trying to push on commentary, and seemingly only on commentary. Dustin's approach in this match, to me, didn't feel any different than it has in any other high profile singles matches. What does the ROH World Championship actually mean to anyone in 2022? This is a belt Matt Taven held for half a year, what is it really supposed to mean for Dustin Rhodes to hold this specific title? Would it really have been any different than giving him a nice Lifetime Achievement watch? I guess one difference is that the watch would actually mean something to Dustin. Dustin potentially winning the World Title of a company he never worked for in a company that is financing the company he never worked for doesn't really carry a lot of emotional weight for me. Of course Regal has to tell me that the ROH World Title is a Title that is "coveted by every single wrestler in the world"; they need to say those things, but none of it sounds convincing in any way. 

What I did buy into was Dustin's fatigue down the stretch: his red face swelling in Claudio's crossface, the way he almost bailed on a piledriver, tossing Claudio off to the side rather than sit back on it, the way it felt like he couldn't totally hold Claudio down on pinfalls. It led perfectly to the finish of an out of breath Dustin unable to duck Claudio's leapfrog, running face first into Claudio's balls, but also being tired enough to be incapable of capitalizing. Claudio momentarily compartmentalizes his ball pain and uppercuts Dustin's body out of the air, a final shot to the hull of an old ship. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST