AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/17 - 6/23

AEW Dynamite 6/19/24

MJF vs Rush

MD: I believe, in my heart of hearts, that MJF is trying to accomplish a specific something, and quite frankly, I need him to succeed. When I look back at his 2023, I see an attempt to channel Dusty. And when I say Dusty, I mean over the top Dusty, the Dusty that would do the chicken dance in the middle of a tag match to goad Cornette into fighting Baby Doll. I mean folk hero Dusty, the Dusty that would be imaginative and symbolic, that leaned not on athleticism but on manipulation, that was able to pull amazing bits of emotional resonance out of the smallest or strangest or most unlikely things, the one that couldn't necessarily have a great match with a broomstick but that could instead transform a broomstick into a living, breathing, theatrical part of Americana. If everyone else is pushing the limits of athleticism, do something else, push something else, be something else.

On some level, it worked. The kangaroo kick was over. The double clothesline was over. Fans popped for the act. Fans chanted for it. I think there might even be some evidence that fans tuned in to it. Would it have worked longterm? I don't know. It gave the audience something to be a part of, a sense of ritual to look forward to, a promise fulfilled. It played upon entirely different parts of the brain (and heart and gut) than tricked out spots or reversals or dives or even just "action." It pulled from an older tradition that's increasingly lost, something that was undervalued by the tastemakers in its time, seen as the enemy and discarded to create the new, modern balance of pro wrestling that we deal with most of the time today. There's no room for it in a six star world.

Except for that MJF seems to feel otherwise. So what happened? Life happened. Injuries happened. We never got to see if he could really take it over the top and merge it with something genuine, marry it to actual emotional beats. There's every indication that Adam Cole was prepared to be an straight heel instead of a cool one. Could MJF have been Dusty against Cole's Tully? Hogan against his Orndorff? Bruiser or Crusher against his... well, let's not go overboard there. What if he had Bennett and Taven to feed for him? What if he had Wardlow to overcome? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe he could have connected the dots, inserted the manipulative theatricality, the idea that any single repeated action can come to have symbolic meaning in front of the crowd if it is treated with consistent importance over time.

But then, yeah, the other problem was Max himself. It's a leap of faith in a double moonsault world. You have to trust yourself to be charismatic enough. You have to trust the fans to go along with it, to let themselves give in and not hide behind the pernicious fallacy that all action/all spot wrestling is somehow more valid and valuable (somehow less socially embarrassing), behind the heresy that the march to the sixth star was one that represented progress, as opposed to turning one's back on wonder and imagination. No, instead, you have to trust in pro wrestling. It takes a brave wrestler even to try, to gamble everything on the notion that there's still value in the old ways, that the fans wouldn't turn upon you. I don't think Max ever committed fully. Deep down, he had to prove to the naysayers that he could hang. And he could, but it came at a cost. At times, he chose to simply hang instead of to fly.

Why do I need him to succeed? Because I think wrestling can be so much more than it is by tapping back into so much that it once was. We're in a post-Punk AEW. Danielson's winding down. We're in a time of starflation. We've seen the future, and it sounds like Bruv. Dustin and Jarrett really are the last of their kind. The chance to course correct is running out. A middle ground can be found, but if you look at the balance right now, it's something like 90/10. It takes someone presented on the level of MJF to rebalance the scales.

Which brings us to 2024, a fresh start, a new path. The door closed on Dusty, but I don't get the sense he's given up. At some point we're headed towards MJF vs Ospreay and I fear that means MJF showing that he can hang again. But maybe, just maybe, it could mean something else; it could mean getting real heat by denying the fans what feel they are oh so entitled to receive. If we ever get to that point, I'll have more to say there. For now, instead, Rush.

If you had told the me of ten years ago that Rush was going to be used to heat things up for a PPV match for Hechicero, I would have been baffled, not necessarily in a bad way, but baffled nonetheless. They're two very different but absolutely wonderful flavors of lucha taken to its logical extremes. Rush jumps off the screen. He all the idea of Brody with only some of the drawbacks. He is Abdullah. He is the Sheik. He is Hansen in his own way. He pushes the margins, presses the air out of the room, creates implicit storytelling, forces you to be your best! But then he is also a showman. He squeezes the life out of his enemies so as to seize it for himself, so as to live it to the fullest, and to experience it before a cheering, jeering crowd that can't look away for a moment.

There are certainly matches between Dusty and the Sheik (and Hansen, and Brody, and Abdullah), and they probably had more blood and less chicken dances, but that's not what we received here. It's a new year, a new direction, and here instead, I'm wonder if MJF isn't channeling this lost spirit of wrestling from a different direction. Roddy Piper is built into his mythos through the William Regal branch. Piper's been a revelation over the last ten years or so. New footage came down the pipeline presenting him in a new light, or at least expanding upon already existing solitary rays. Now we have all the more examples of him as an incredible heatseeker heel and a punch drunk marvel of a babyface working from underneath. In his own way, along his own lines, Roddy channeled that old magic just as well as Dusty, a dissident and rebel and ne'er-do-well as opposed to the stalwart trickster who made fools of his foes.

So MJF dug deep and came up dirty, strutting instead of engaging, building and building the crowd for a chop only to poke the eye. It only got him so far, for Rush was quick to use the referee as cover for a headbutt, and basically never looked back from there. He was unrelenting, only pausing to remind the crowd the gravity of what they were witnessing. MJF picked his spots and took advantage of opportunities, diving upon Rush as he basked with the tranquilo pose, desperately moving out of the way of the Horns dropkick in the corner, and then charging forth to cut off a late match attempt at it. It wasn't a Hulk Up, but it was the next best thing. This ended not with a convoluted finishing stretch but with a single opportunity capitalized on and a babyface (maybe a de facto one) controlling the narrative on the road to triumph.

Against a unique opponent, albeit one that fit a certain traditional pro wrestling archetype, MJF wrestled yet another match steeped more in the old than the new and made me just a little hopeful that the moment hadn't fully passed, dragged down by the parallel forces of criticism and self-doubt. I still feel like this is an experiment worth seeing to its conclusion, even if certain tweaks need to be made along the way.

One last thought: Hechicero. I worry that once again, the need to hang will supersede all else. Hechicero got over to the AEW crowd because Bryan Danielson of all people simply couldn't hang again him in the moment. If he can't, neither should MJF. I don't want to see llave counters out of Max. Basics, however? That side headlock? And every dirty, underhanded, over-the-top stereotypical (in the best way) pro wrestling trick in the book? Fighting a matwork magician with the pure power of the most fantastical (and least "real") elements of pro wrestling? If he could weave together that tapestry, I'd love to see it. Time will tell, but I'll keep my hopes up; frankly, that's the point. Deep down, I may want to bet on Max. He may have earned it. But either way, I have to. I'm all in. I don't have any other choice.