AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/19 - 8/25 Part 1

MD: No PR this week due to some power issues on the island. Good stuff coming though so stay tuned. Thought I'd get a jump on some AEW since there's a lot coming this weekend.

ROH TV 8/22/24

Dustin Rhodes/Marshall Von Erich/Ross Von Erich/Sammy Guevara vs Matt Bennett/Mike Taven/John Silver/Alex Reynolds

MD: If I was in the live crowd, this one would have baffled me a bit. This was taped before the tag title change on Collision so it followed most immediately from the high heat end to the last ROH show. It was a fun, quick-moving, high spirited celebratory match, anchored by a frenetic finishing stretch and from Dustin making the most (as he always does) of being face-in-peril. But in chronological filming order, it had to seem a little offputting to be just so over the top. The crowd had no way of knowing that the emotional beat in the middle would be the action (and interference) packed title change after all.

Watching it on TV, on the other hand, it worked very well for what it was trying to do. That meant the claws came early. It meant Sammy got to take someone's phone and film himself during the shine. It meant Bennett and Silver stooging all over the ring for Dustin. It meant some heel miscommunication before they settled in on the heat. I've said it before but pro wrestling isn't math. Except for sometimes the southern tag formula kind of is. You don't want a heel-in-peril scenario where the shine is way too long. You don't want everything to break down too early so people are rushing in and out for the last half of the match without any structure or trappings. The one thing that can rectify either problem and most other problems, is if you have a really dynamic heat section, even if short. A lot of times that's on the heel team; The Midnight Express could make so much out of just a few minutes, but having a great face-in-peril working from underneath works too and Dustin's the best in the world right now.

So when things did break down, it was ok. Having Silver/Reynolds in there to help direct traffic like the savants they are didn't hurt. Some of the Kingdom's stuff worked right into their wombo combo stuff and it just felt right. And then it all built to a really huge claw/over the shoulder powerslam move by Marshall that we don't actually see that often but that is very impressive. While the tag title match was really how the residency ended, this is our last look at it, and in both cases it ended up on an up note.

AEW Dynamite 8/21/24

Darby Allin/FTR vs The Young Bucks/Jack Perry

MD: I scooted through this quickly the first time and I wasn't going to go back for it; perfect excuse with all the wrestling going on. Hell, I could write about Jarrett vs Daivari or that Big Bill vs Hook match that sounds fascinating instead if I needed another match for a Part 1, right? I might still. But then ol' Joseph rated it 4 stars and I had to admit that I moved through it pretty quickly the first time and... well, let's give it another look.

I really enjoyed the way it stemmed from the Okada vs Claudio match. As I noted in my thoughts on the company the other day, Dynamite does have a tendency to move too quickly from one thing to the other and not let moments resonate. Excalibur is a master of "And now"-ing and "But whatabout"-ing. When it happens organically like this, in that old ECW way, it adds an air of both excitement and connectiveness. There are some tricky bits with that. What does FTR feel about Claudio, for instance? While I understand both the presence that allows for it and the utility of it, the BCC being so mutable is overall problematic. Yuta can't be a shitheel rat boy one day and working from underneath against Swerve sympathetically the next. He just can't. You end up, over time, with 60% gain that you'd otherwise get on both. 60% of Claudio is a lot still, but it's not 100% of Claudio and the company needs 100% of everything they can get. Last note: everyone got the message that if you're going to use time announcements, you have to do it more frequently both within a match and overall, right? No need to reiterate that, I hope. Consistency is everything in pro wrestling.

Ok, on to the actual match; enough stalling. Back to southern tags. This had a very short shine, but one with Darby flying out of the ring twice, heavy brawling, and the double Sharpshooter tease, followed by a great transition with the Doomsday Device kick. Then the heat was on Darby, where if Dustin's #1, Darby might be #2, so that helps. We haven't seen a ton of straight up tags with the Bucks and Perry (it felt like they established the Okada/Bucks combo better) so this felt fresh and dynamic, with a great hot tag and good rousing comeback by FTR.

After that, things broke down a little too early for my liking maybe, but this is a teaser for the weekend and they didn't have a few more minutes to loop into, let's say, a second heat segment on Dax. So it got the job done. Sometimes the job isn't to have the best match possible. Having the Elite try to pack their bags and go got over the bigger picture story better than leaning hard into pure quality for the sake of quality so good on them. Cash's dive was a hell of a thing. I like Dax, the way he thinks about wrestling, how hard he works. But as I think about the necessary moneyball replacement scenario for Bryan Danielson facing AEW in the future (and TK can do moneyball so long as he thinks about it that way), Cash is a guy that almost feels like the middle ground between Mox and Danielson in a way that even at 37 still seems untapped. The last thing he seems to want to do is wrestle singles matches, but in a post Danielson world, maybe people have to be made to stretch (they need to tap into the untapped). Anyway, I always love the Powerplex combined with whatever their partner has, and the Coffin Drop is a great choice there. So yes, this was effective, absolutely got the job done, and hit a lot of positive marks along the way.