AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/30 - 10/6

MD: Brief note to start. For those who came to the blog through Twitter, yes, I got DMCA'd to oblivion by TV Asahi. I had a few strikes already from when I was first figuring things out, having initially not thought that 40 year old Inoki gifs were going to be an issue, but I had straightened up and was being more careful. What ultimately did me in was a handheld (a fancam, someone's personal recording from a show that has since been disseminated through fan circles) of a 1983 match, which does not seem like something that would be at all claimable. But here we are. I've an e-mail out to them. I am not expecting much. I'll make a call by Thursday on what I'm doing next. I've seen both kindness and indignation from people and both are pushing me towards dusting off and picking back up anew by the end of the week, but we'll see. The good news is that we have a blog and they can't shut me up here. For now, if anyone wants to let people know this week's AEW reviews are up, posting a link couldn't hurt! Thanks. - Matt

(UPDATE: I am over at https://x.com/mattd_sc/ now)

AEW Dynamite 10/2/24

Bryan Danielson vs Kazuchika Okada

MD: Believe it or not, I have been accused over the years of reading too much into pro wrestling. I've heard first-hand or second-hand that "they were just listening to the crowd" and no great thought was put into sequence a or match b. The great thing about art is that those things don’t have to matter. You can read into it any number of ways no matter the author's intent. You can dig at subconscious strands and universal themes. You can connect dots that were never meant to be connected. Sometimes that gets you deep into the seas of lore, annoying everyone around you. Sometimes it means your expectations go through the roof when they really shouldn't, ultimately doing yourself and the wrestlers both a disservice.

Some wrestlers are so good and have such a track record that you can walk on air so long as you don't look down. Bryan Danielson is one of those wrestlers. And you know what? I'm going to take a nice casual stroll off a ledge here. Why? Well, look, it's possible that Danielson finds some way to triumph over Jon Moxley and they blow things off in December or even later. It's possible that he's lying to us and he doesn't need surgery. It's possible that he does but he recovers quickly and gets to make a special appearance for a match at one of the big shows early next year. Lots of things are possible. All that's for certain right now is that we have next week's tag and the match vs Moxley. That's it. Even this match was a bonus that felt like it came out of nowhere and existed outside of the Mox vs Danielson storyline. So I'm going to have a little bit of fun with it and will ask for just a bit of your patience.

Let's break down Danielson's reasons for wanting this match. He could attack Moxley at the end of a match, sure. But Moxley isn't just a serial killer or movie monster. He's not just an underhanded jerk who wants money. There's some ideology behind it all. We're only starting to see it. Part of it, however, was to take autonomy away from Danielson, to define his reign as he means to define the fate of the belt henceforth. Danielson, here, decided to push back against that in the most decadent way possible, by naming an opponent here so close to the PPV and having a rubber match against Okada.

The match ended up under Continental rules for the first twenty minutes alone, a way to protect Okada to a degree (as he would smartly retain his title) and put over the different aspect of the belt. And for much of those twenty minutes (after an initial title match feeling out process), Okada wrestled cautiously, defensively. What was interesting to me is that Danielson didn't press nearly as hard as I would have expected him to. It was only in the last minute or so that he pushed, leading to the nice fakeout of him hitting the Knee only for Okada to roll out of the ring as time expired.

Let's play with that. Why didn't he push? Maybe he didn't push because he didn't actually want the Continental Championship. He demanded the match, had his reasons for it, but likely didn't control the stipulations. He knew about the Continental Championship. He had been one of the driving forces behind the creation of the C2 last year. He knew that if he won the Championship, no matter what happened with the World Title and Moxley, he would be obliged to defend it in the grueling tournament later this year. It was never his intention to win the title. He respected the tournament, revered it even, and he wouldn't want to let the fans and the company down, but he also didn't necessarily want the weight of it hanging over him. That would take away his freedom to call his own shots and finish on his own terms. It's a little counter-intuitive and certainly nothing that the announcers picked up upon, but if you watch how he wrestled and how he didn't press, if you squint, you can kind of see it.

If he didn't want the Continental Title, what did he want? He wanted to draw Okada out. He didn't want the underhanded cheater, the coasting heel. He wanted a warrior. He wanted the person who faced him twice so far, not the version of Okada (entertaining as he might be) that we've seen in AEW so far. Okada simply wasn't giving him that for the first twenty minutes of the match; he was too focused on retaining his belt, through hook or crook. At the same time, Danielson couldn't let Okada overly goad him because Bryan DID want to keep his title, because retaining the World Title was the path to fighting Moxley. Therefore, he had to endure Okada's defensive strategy, take the damage that went along with it, and wait things out until he could have the battle he actually wanted. It was only in the last minute of the initial period that he got caught up in the moment and almost accidentally won the Continental Title.

So do I think that was the intent. Nope. Could you read it from the text as presented and the characters as we know them in their current storylines? Absolutely. Is it primarily due to the richness of Bryan Danielson's work that we can do so? Yes. Yes (Yes), it is. Am I going to leave this write up at that? Mostly, I'm around 900 words already, not that anyone's counting, and unlike the service you get from other writers/critics, I don't rate or rank anything. No stars. I'm not even ranking this vs the other two Danielson vs Okada matches. I get to leave it as is... except, I guess I have one more (Columbo-esque) question that I unfortunately can’t leave unasked.

Is what we were actually presented as good as the story that I laid out in the paragraphs above through gluing together some unlikely (but plausible!) and disparate (but existing) dots? Is the match still as good if what I just said wasn't true and if the more likely, more straightforward possibilities/intentions were instead the truth? No. Sorry. That urgency just wasn't there. Danielson didn't get goaded into mistakes made because he was urgent. Okada was wrestling one match. Danielson was wrestling another. It didn't come together in the way it should have.

Unless you squint. If you squint, well then it was a hell of a thing. If we have only two more full-time Danielson matches after this, well, just this once, I'm going to squint and it's okay if you do too.

ROH TV 10/3/24

Dustin Rhodes/Marshall Von Erich/Ross Von Erich vs Tony Nese/Ariya Daivari/Mark Sterling

MD: I wrote a few days ago (and then reposted it here) about how some of the old ways need to come back, and I meant it, and this match was reminiscent of Heenan teaming with his family in 83 AWA for very entertaining matches. And this, I think, was an entertaining match that was worked well. The problem is that Sterling just isn't credible. It's not his fault. He works hard, tries a number of different things, is sufficiently irritating and punchable. He even goes the extra mile with some very well crafted, clever social media videos. But those are only for people that seek them out, basically. 

The bigger issue is that his guys don't win, not even on ROH. On Dark, they won. Nese didn't get big wins over big wrestlers, but he came off as dangerous enough with the shot in the corner and the pumphandle pile driver. He's absolutely selfless in the ring, willing to be one of the rawest, truest heels in the company. Completely unlikable. Theoretically valuable because there's only a handful of people who are willing to stooge. (That's why I'm ok with Saraya sticking around - super solid stooging, even if maybe they should stop using her husband's theme song and think of the optics of everything a bit more. AEW doesn't have as many comparative advantages vs 2024 WWE as it did vs 2019 WWE as the latter was a trash fire, but one that remains is to be more moral and progressive). As noted, Sterling did just about everything right here, but it wasn't getting the reactions it should. The fans only woke up when Dustin worked the corner with big slaps on the turnbuckles. They use the Premier Athletes almost every week. There should really be some way to fix this, even if it's just making Woods seem like more of a protected threat within each match and the other guys be the ones who lose the offense. Like Gordy with the Freebirds maybe? I'm glad they gave Sterling an opportunity in his homestate but for a guy doing everything right in there, this all should have been more heated.

AEW Collision 10/5/24

Darby Allin vs Johnny TV

MD: This was one of Johnny's best matches in his run. I do get the sense that he probably needs the right dance partner. Having seen him in Lucha Underground and given the lack of heels on top, I was confused when WWE brought him back in as Miz's second banana, but I guess neither of us were entirely right there. His issue is more the dissolution of QTV than anything else. They spun it a bit on the idea that he and Taya are "TV-Ready" and maybe they could lean into that a bit more with the new TV deal. Taya's off with her burgeoning faction here and without the stable and without Taya, I'm not entirely sure what Johnny even is right now. 

The backstage Darby/Evil Uno interaction really set up their match and I didn't quite get that here. There were some mitigating factors. Darby was potentially just a little more cautious after being goaded into losing his title opportunity. That explained the early feeling out process and them starting with a test of strength maybe. Darby usually throws himself right at his opponent to start in the best of times. As the match went on, however, they starting showing some of the aggression (or maybe we should call it counter-aggression) that he should be inspiring in everyone he faces right now in the arms war against Moxley and his ideology. 

Things got pretty wild. The Russian Legsweep off the apron was not something you see every day. Likewise Johnny's spinning Splash Mountain Full Nelson Slam or whatever the heck that thing was. Just by his nature Darby opens up opportunities. And the Coffin Drop at the end was to a standing opponent (a Coffin Drop Press) which you never see end a match like this. So it got there, and you can argue away why it didn't start there. This was clearly put together for the challenge at the end though. And while that's ok, story after the fact isn't as good as story before, during, AND after the fact.