AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 3

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Darby Allin vs Brody King

Consequence is everything. That's why selling matters. Selling isn't checking a box and doing something because you're supposed to. Selling is the means to show consequence of action. Without it, pro wrestling is meaningless. It's pure sensation without substance. Imagine watching a movie where no one registers any of the events, reading a book where none of the characters seem to care about anything that happens. Wrestling is a physical medium. The events that take place are primarily physical. The impact of them must be registered and cared about, must be shown to be consistent over time and between matches. Otherwise, what's the point of any of this? Without that, what's makes wrestling stand out from any other sort of physically impressive athletic exhibition. All of the storytelling in wrestling is found here. Things have to have consequences.

Darby Allin is the human embodiment of consequence. He is transcendent. Nothing he does in the ring is for the sake of it. Nothing he does in the ring is simply to impress. If he is creating action, then that action is with the simulated intention of hurting his opponent. Given his size, the best weapon he has to do so is his own body. There are wrestlers who will do a series of three dives one after the other, and it's obvious that they are meant to thrill, to pop the crowd, to show off. When Darby does a series of multiple dives, a few elements are at play. First, he HAS to do this. He has no other way to hurt his opponent. He has no choice. The impact has to look like it's doing real damage and not just pushing his opponent backwards. He has to be a primed cannonball, not just a wrestler hitting a spot. Second, things could go horribly wrong with any dive. This isn't some inputted video game move where once the first dive hits, the second two will automatically follow. This is not a looped gif. At any point, something can, and so often will, go horribly wrong for Darby. Yet he presses on because he has absolutely no choice. There is a heavy sort of pressure that weighs down upon the viewer as they watch Darby wrestle. Nothing is light and fluffy. Even the things that involve some level of set up do not feel prearranged. Each moment is a hinge point, Schrodinger's spot, where everything could go right for him (at great cost nonetheless) or everything can go so, so wrong.

And Brody King is in many ways the perfect partner for this. Brody, like few others in wrestling today, lives and breathes that Hansen-ian mentality, always driving forward with the violence of the moment. It feels at any point that he surveys the scene like some unholy, bestial terminator and calculates in a heartbeat what would be the most impactful, the most hurtful, the most violent act. Then he does it. If Darby embodies consequence, Brody is more than happy to cause it. He's the beautiful and horrible butterfly flapping its wings. He's the grubby, wart-covered thumb that causes the first domino to fall. Together, they're a two man demolition crew, demolishing the ring, each other, and the feeling of safety and security that we call normalcy.

Therefore, the drama in any Darby match isn't about how many counters he can skillfully pull off. It's about survival. What is going to break first, his body (for his spirit will never break) or his opponent's? How much devastation can he take vs how much can he cause, knowing full well that every bit that he causes also hurts himself. Does his opponent have enough to push Darby over the limit, to leave him in such shambles that he can't get a shoulder up, that he can't twist and contort his body to escape just one more time, that he can no longer pick himself up and throw himself like a blunt object into the face of his enemy? When your body is your only weapon, everything matters. When there's a chance that you are going to crash and burn at any and every moment, everything matters. Darby is the human embodiment of consequence and a king of anticipation. The fans believe in him, believe in his resilience, believe that even though he registers every bit of pain, there's always a chance he can fight back, that he can persevere. They believe in him all the more because he registers everything that happens and it matters so, so much more when he does overcome and even when he doesn't.

And what mattered here? What mattered here was that this was a war, and not a war of posturing and preening. This was a war with casualties, bruised skin, battered bones, blood between the teeth. When the smoke cleared Darby was victorious, but there was no shame in Brody's loss; there was glory in he even making it back into the ring to beat the count after the coffin drop onto the stairs. There was a handshake that actually mattered. There was even a tiny taste of hope for what Darby and Brody might be able to do together given the darkness falling upon AEW. Sometimes you have to fight darkness with darkness. And none of this exists, none of it matters, none of it catches in your throat and pumps your heart without consequence.