AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/2 - 9/8 Part 1

AEW Collision 9/6/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Wheeler Yuta/Pac vs. Jack Perry/Kazuchika Okada/Matthew Jackson/Nicholas Jackson

MD: Wrestling seems to be the easiest thing in the world and the hardest thing. It's creating a primal connection with people that touches the core of their humanity, denial and gratification that stimulates the endorphins in the brain. It's building imaginary towers, bigger and bigger, creating more and more emotions. Yet if you try to overcomplicate it in the wrong ways or if you don't control for extraneous bits, you lose people along the way and only end up with a ghost of what you might have otherwise built. Worst case, the entire structure collapses in upon itself. The main thing you're trying to do is build up a credible, believable reality while at the same time creating as few disruptions that hinder suspension of disbelief as possible. Wrestling isn't math, but if there was an equation, you'd have that positive element and that negative element summing up to create as much immersion and emotion as possible.

I wrote about alignment the other day and I'll double down on it a little bit here. The build for Pac vs Ospreay has been all about Pac ambushing the likable chap. Cheapshots, denying the crowd the first Ricochet vs Ospreay interaction, walking around with a chip on his shoulder. Maybe Pac has a point but the way that he's going about it is not buying him any favor with the crowd. Yet due to opportunity or circumstance, he's one third of the trios champs, with a group that he had grievances with just last year after their last attempt to team up. And here he had to be a fiery babyface. Yes, characters can be three dimensional and don't need to follow clear heel/face alignment, but they do need to be presented in consistent ways. Moreover, I have no idea what Pac thinks about his partners or how he feels about working with them. I don't have a great sense how he feels about the Elite right now. Here, it felt like a chink in the armor of the match, something that raised questions that weren't going to get answered, that took people out of the proceedings.

There were both structural positives and negatives as well. I'll get to Perry and his antics in a paragraph or two. Top of the list of positives was the denial and payoff of certain elements: Danielson getting his hands on Perry (an alchemy of its own), and certainly the giant swing, which was teased early and then cut off only to come back for the finish, denial and gratification just like it should be. Also there was a very strong face-in-peril segment on Danielson and co. with the Elite hitting a lot of interesting, dynamic, mean, credible offense in rapid succession. On the other hand, you had the big frog splash on multiple members of the babyface side at once, which probably took too long, and had things like Okada hanging on to the much stronger and not all that damaged Claudio for ages while they set it up. Another crack in the foundation. You can kind of get away with something like that if the babyfaces are doing it to the heels as part of a comeuppance laden comeback because you're expecting the babyfaces to be stronger and the heels to try to (and be unable to) wriggle away, but it doesn't work nearly as well when it's the heels doing it to try to get more heat. It's stuff that looks good on paper, maybe, but that ends up being more of a negative in the equation than the positive.  

And then there was the timing of everything breaking down only to come back together and calm down for the first ten minutes or so of Rampage. A match like this was always going to break down once or twice and probably needed to cover a few extra minutes to keep people engaged for the transition to Rampage. I'll admit that I was kind of ready for everything to go home shortly after the teased Okada dive. If they were going to go a few more minutes, just beating Okada around without major attempts to try to pin him wasn't the most engaging thing in the world. Another round of heat on someone like Yuta leading to a second hot tag and the actual finish would have reset the tension enough to get them over the finish line. I get that they had to get through the first commercial break for Rampage but the crowd was low again after the chaos of everyone hitting big moves in rapid succession and beating on Okada didn't really give them a chance to build up dramatic tension again for the finish.

Speaking of tension, let's talk about stalling. I'm still not quite over the lack of it in MJF vs Ospreay at All In, but that doesn't mean I want him to do it against Garcia at All Out. The situation is different. Vs Ospreay he was the blowhard champ and there was a real opportunity to figure out what the crowd wanted (in this case to see Ospreay do his stuff in a stadium and amass rating stars) and deny it completely while showing a cowardice and hypocrisy relative to what he'd been saying. Against Garcia, Max has a hierarchical advantage and while Garcia wants revenge, it makes sense to go a different route with layout and exactly how to heel. Perry's an interesting case. He claims to have just wanted a chance to prove himself but was benched, to be his own man and not Jungle Boy, that he was a scapegoat when he's really just a standup guy, that it wasn't his fault. But then in ring, he's been taking shortcuts and avoiding confrontation wherever possible. He'll get in when it's easy and hit the floor when it's hard. 

I never wanted stalling for the sake of stalling (I never want anything for the sake of itself!). For MJF vs Ospreay, it would have been purposeful, and I think with Perry, maybe it is as well. The heart of any heel is cognitive dissonance. Just like how comedy works by creating a gap between expectation and reality, heeling does as well. Within that contradiction, animosity can be created within the hearts of the fans. Heels can say one thing and do another and then deny that there's any difference at all. There's heat to be found there.

I think Perry's doing a pretty good job at striking the right balance. The first time he came in, the fans were happy to chant along with his catch phrase. But after he escaped Danielson kicking his head in (and that never did get fully paid off in this one; that's for the PPV), and after he popped in and out for a few cheapshots, they seemed a lot less willing to sing along and more eager to see him take a beating. Good! There's a place for all sorts of things on the card, and if he wants to lay claim to that, and if he can find the slightly shifting balance that really fits his character in different situations against different opponents, there's a real chance that Perry can find that niche after all. But like I said, while it's pure and primal, a burr in the heel of the audience that will drive them to care, it's not always easy. But often times, it's the hardest things that are most worthwhile.