AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/8 - 7/14

AEW Dynamite 7/10/24 

Bryan Danielson vs Adam Page

MD: There are so many bad faith criticisms of AEW: bots, grifters, tribalists, just kids who are getting their kicks off of it like kids have always done since the start of the internet. It makes it hard to parse through what's real and what isn't, what's meaningful and what's not. For instance, the notion that AEW doesn't tell stories is patently ridiculous. Sometimes something on Rampage slips through, but in general, every match is there to further a rivalry, to heat someone up for something else, to set up a post-match, to reinforce a theme. Where I think that throws some people who are acting in good faith, is that story is not necessarily plot, and many of them have been conditioned to look for plot. This is an issue with serialized storytelling across a bunch of different genres, mediums, and properties. There's the idea that if there's not some sort of worldshattering permanent change then nothing worthwhile happened, even if characters were developed and explored in meaningful, heartfelt ways. It's an immature way of consuming fiction, one maybe a bit too focused on canon and lore. Look at Danielson vs Kingston from earlier in the year. It was full of story, full of emotional, character stakes. Bryan Danielson wouldn't see the change in Eddie, the value in him, the merit. Kingston just wanted the proof of a handshake from someone held to such high standard, that held him to such high standards. They played it out in the ring and Eddie got his handshake and Danielson found peace in himself. It's wonderful. It's brilliant. It's maybe some of the best character development that can happen through wrestling. Danielson moved on to other things. Kingston lost the Continental Championship soon thereafter. So maybe for all the great story, it didn't have canon-shaking plot. Plot is having the fate of the company at stake in a ladder match. It's who's going to join the NWO next week? (It's Who's the Devil? by the way). Story should be enough because story takes you on a journey but fans have been conditioned otherwise and as much as I hate to say it, sometimes plot does hit just right.

What made this match so special is that it was bursting with plot that was underpinned by story, by character motivations. The stakes couldn't be higher. This was the finals of the Owen Hart tournament. The winner gets to main event at the biggest show of the year and go for the title. (That's the plot; here's the story). Last year, it was about friendship. That was well and good and fits AEW well. This year though? For Page, it's about justice, about hatred, about the gratification of tearing something down that should not stand. It's about punishing the fans for rewarding (or at least forgiving or ignoring) evil deeds. It's about being the hero of your own story when the entire world is more then villain every day. It's about reclaiming what was lost and putting reality back on track. It's about crossing a line and knowing you crossed a line and knowing further that the only way you can justify it, that you can make it right, is to win. Only then can you put things right by taking that title and setting the company right; otherwise, you did all of it for nothing and you're left a villain. Page needed to win. But then, so did Danielson. For him, it's about the end of the road, the final countdown, a retirement for the sake of family. Page would tear down the world for his family; Danielson would build one up instead. He needs closure. He needs to show the world that this is on his terms, that he is the best, that he would be the best, that he will always be the best, that this isn't him running away from wrestling, but this is him running towards love in the name of a promise with nothing else to prove. This is him showing the world that now because he has reached the absolute pinnacle of pro wrestling, he can climb the mountain of being the best dad imaginable. It's about leaving no regrets so that he can look ever forward towards his daughter and not back towards his grappling past. And all the while, the end is snatching at his heels (or in this case, his neck), threatening to take every decision out of his hands. For Jarrett, it's all about the past, it's about the decades when he didn't look back, when he didn't properly grieve, when he let the demons consume him instead, about the peace he's subsequently found and about doing one last good thing in wrestling in the name of his friend and his friend's family. Jarrett has nothing left to prove; all of his wrongs have been righted and all of his rights have been wronged. He still has agency though. Blood still flows through him. In the name of his friend, he can still change the course of history one last time, a last ride of the Last Outlaw. It's not his story anymore; he knows that. He can do his part to make sure that the story ends how it should though. So you have these three characters, three worldviews, forced into a pressure cooker where each has to reach their destiny but not all can.

Then it's just the simple matter of turning all of that into a wrestling match, right? Bots, bad faith grifters, good faith kids, they all get to say that something is all good or all bad, something's the best or the worst. Unfortunately, I'm too old to have that luxury. This stuff is complicated, and I have a complicated relationship with Adam Page's wrestling. He's put up on a pedestal by a lot of well-meaning people who have bought into the many qualities he has to offer. I like the idea of him. I like a lot of about his act, plenty about his presence. I just struggle with how he structures so many of his matches. To me, wrestling should be about build and payoff, about gratification delayed. He sure likes to gratify people and people, in turn, like to be gratified. Too much, too soon, (and I know how this is going to sound) too cool. There's something to be said about making art that you and your friends would like; it's an art student's mentality and it often drives the form forward. There are drawbacks though and a time to be disciplined as well. He does so many individual things well. He emotes so well. He wears his heart on his sleeve in the ring in a way that creates deep engagement. And now, finally, as a heel, he's slowing down and creating a different sort of mood, imposing, stifling, unrelenting, but also methodological. He's sharing his pain with the world, rubbing his knuckle into the wound of life, and it's a slow, measured twist of the knife. This Adam Page is creating atmosphere instead of just shooting off fireworks. (And, as an aside, I still think one of the biggest attainable money matches in wrestling is Page, worn down to raw, bitter fury by the weight of the world vs a carefully built-up Mad Dog Connelly, the mysteries of soulful eternity trapped behind his eyes; this is attainable for 2025. This is attainable! It can happen!). 

So here we had this match, at the intersection of plot and character, with every stake imaginable, not just hints but entire swaths of the real underpinning the fiction, an uncertain outcome, with wrestlers ready to bring everything they had to make it work. Everything played out to its logical conclusion, from Page walking out the babyface tunnel, Jarrett looking the other way, and the subsequent spit, all the way to Danielson pulling out one last miracle roll-up to survive and push forward to Wembley. Along the way, Page, seething, took every advantage, and Danielson, bleeding, pulled out every stop. He was the whimsical master early with the Lance Storm rolling half crab in Calgary, but when his back was against the wall later on, he whipped out his ROH flip dive that he hadn't done in years and years. And it all built to Jarrett standing tall between them, refusing to sink to Page's level, forcing the match to end in dignity. Page, in his current state, perhaps couldn't triumph in a situation held up by dignity and honor. He was the hero in his own mind, but one has to be true and pure (as Eddie had been) to slay the dragon on his final ascent towards the heavens. There are people who will refuse to see the value in this match; for those who choose such a thing, I have nothing but pity. For the others, who can't yet see the glory within, I have envy instead. Someday they'll find it and see it as if for the first time. They'll get there in time and this will warm their hearts and rouse their spirit, just like it did for all of us that were living and breathing it last week.