AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/18 - 11/24 (Part 1?)

ROH TV 11/21/24

Athena vs Leila Grey (Proving Ground)

MD: Athena makes a tricky finger of death because there are some diminishing returns in my writing about her. I'm not necessarily interested in structural issues (like where she places the magic forearm in her matches; I'm not sure this match even had it) or in narrative ones (like how in this match Grey, due to the hierarchy, was mainly able to get opportunities by using her athleticism to help enable banana peel slip moments of Athena missing shots). I'm interested in Athena's full immersion, the way she's always on, always reacting. 

I'm interested in taking a match and watching her facial expressions and body language the whole way through, taking for granted that the match will make sense and be narratively compelling and sound, that the execution of moves and her bumping will be very good, just focusing entirely on how she reacts to everything that happens. Buddy Rose was always on, but from what I understand, he wasn't able to explain it. It was instinct, natural; it just happened. With Terry Funk, I always get the impression that his brain just worked more quickly than everyone else's, that he saw opportunities in the moment and was able to choose which one would create the biggest ripple. Maybe I'm wrong. 

I wonder a little which it is with Athena. Grey here did a very god job of reacting. At times you could see exhaustion or desperation or hope in her face. There was often a momentary gap, just a blip, and it's nothing to hold against her. It's human. I'd argue that the majority of wrestlers have that gap of making a conscious choice of how to react, how to sell, how to be, and because most wrestlers do it, there's no reason to even notice it. Athena doesn't have it though. With her, it's seamless. In some ways, you watch her matches to see just what the reaction will be, but sometimes you watch them to see what's not there, to revel in the absence of that gap and the extra semblance of immersive reality that she can create that almost no one else in wrestling in 2024 can. I'm just not sure how interesting it is to people for me to keep writing about it.

AEW Dynamite 11/20/24

Darby Allin vs Claudio Castagnoli

MD: Sometimes when someone's not going to be on the PPV they get a feature match in the week around it. That seems to be what we have here. Even though he lost, this was maybe the first time that Darby really looked like "the guy" to me. There was something about how he carried himself, a certain confidence. It's not that he was ever lacking it (no one as fearless as he is could possibly be lacking it), but it's always been a sort of of outsider edge and now it felt more mainstream, more central. He didn't feel like a pillar. He felt like a main eventer and it felt like he knew it. I'm curious if he can carry that forward in the weeks and months to come.  

Some of that was Claudio putting him over. You may ask how he put him over; it was by treating him like a legitimate threat right from the get go. Yes, there was a size and strength advantage. Yes, it played into the match, but Claudio treated him as dangerous nonetheless. The first couple of times, when he retreated to the floor (and he retreated to the floor in the first place), he quickly got out of Darby's line of fire. Then, instead of trying to aggressively overpower Darby, he took over by luring him in and catching him. If you've ever read anything I wrote, you know that I feel like details can matter. All of this can matter. Claudio choosing to take over in the way that he did, especially given the strength differential, meant that Darby was someone worth being wary of. That matters.

Of course, Darby, being who he is and the size he is, enabled Claudio, who could do almost anything to anyone anyway, to do amazing things. The endless gutbusters, the walk up the stairs, the swing into the guardrail, the press slam that all but ended things. There's some question of whether Claudio doing such impressive, crowd-pleasing spots is counter productive in some way. Some of it comes down to execution. A lot of it is on his opponent. They care about Darby. Darby makes them care. That matters. It makes the difference. If you have an over babyface, it can work. If you don't, then Claudio will just get himself over. Here, it worked, and Darby made it work, constantly fighting from underneath, biting, scraping, and even almost picking Claudio up, something that made Darby look just as unreal in his own way, as all of Claudio's big power moves. Again it's because they made things like the differential matter. They kept it consistent, they leaned into it, they reacted and sold what was happening, not just the physical toil but the emotional weight behind it all. That turns Darby lifting Claudio in a fireman's carry out of a hold as a hope spot from just another spot, a checked box, to something with massive emotional resonance that will get the crowd chanting not for the match or for the company or for each other or for action for the sake of action, but for Darby Allin to overcome.

Darby finally came back by combining his bite hope spot with Claudio's luring tactic earlier in the match, getting him out to the floor and biting a face instead of a finger. They went into the sort of finishing stretch you'd expect all building to the huge spot off the table. Darby valiantly crawled back into the ring to beat the count only for Claudio to wipe him out for a sort of surprise pin. All in all, Darby wasn't hurt by it and it was a win Claudio probably needed relative to his current role. I will say that the climb back in, even after such a huge spot, wasn't as impactful as it could have been. I think of early-mid 80s NJPW where they occasionally did huge countouts. While it was incredibly unsatisfying when one or both wrestlers went over the rail for the DQ, the countouts still had oomph. Some of that was the fighting spirit element of it, but a lot of it was because they actually happened. People loosely understand the symbolic idea of a countout now, the notion that someone who makes it back to the ring is heroic and deserving of praise, but the element of risk of Darby NOT beating the count wasn't actually there. It never happens. If it did, then people would care more when someone beats the count. The baseline isn't someone not making it. The baseline is someone making it, always, even if they just barely make it. You can't push against something that never actually happens and expect for it to hit as well as it might have. In this case, I actually wonder if Darby might have been more over for even getting up and crawling towards the ring and almost making it and NOT beating the count. That wouldn't have been about the spirit being unwilling but just the body holding him back. Just something to think about right?

-----

BONUS: On Hangman Page, my most improved wrestler of 2024 (with every bit of implication that statement carries).

This should be a pretty safe one right? A positive message. Adam Page is my most improved wrestler of the year. I think he's taken extremely well to the maligned heel act.

Except for one little thing. He's not my best wrestler of the year. He's my most improved wrestler of the year, and to be improved, well, you had to start from some sort of deficit.

And yeah, did he ever have a deficit in my mind. When I started watching AEW in fall 2021, I had never seen Adam Page before. On paper, there seemd a lot to like. Hard hitting cowboy. An undeniable expressiveness that went hand-in-hand with the whole depressed millenial sensitive guy deal. A fairly solid person behind the character with a good social media presence.

So I gave him a shot. Believe it or not, that's what I do. I saw him win the title, saw him on his first few defenses. And deeper into 2022. I come from a school of thought that tosses conventional wisdom out the window. Other people can help guide you places, but once you get there, you delve in yourself and make your own judgments. And judge I did, and I found him wanting.

When it comes to conventional workrate metrics, he was aces, right? Worked hard. Hit hard. Had big spots (big enough at least: the fall away slam, the death valley driver, the moonsault, the springboard clothesline).

It was just how he used them and how big spots seemed to be all that he had. He was lacking simple things: punches, kicks, a standard clothesline, a corner clothesline, a bodyslam, any of the stuff that you'd normally expect early into a match. And lacking that early and mid-level offense, he started dropping the bombs too early.

It worked well enough when someone huge (like a Lance Archer) controlled the match. Then he could hit a fall away slam or even a death valley driver as a hope spot or a big comeback spot. He was a dominant presence though, a lead babyface, and he went too big too quick, and then there was nowhere for his matches to go. He was consistently hitting something like a death valley driver in the first few minutes and it meant multiple finisher attempts and finishers later on when he should have been hitting some of those bombs that he might have theoretically saved instead of used earlier in the match.

The thing was, it worked for him. Maybe not with me, but it worked with the crowd. Some of that was buoyed by his personality and his connection with them, but a lot of it was because he was giving them gratification and plenty of it. A lot of sensation. A lot of reason to pop. That it ultimately wasn't as memorable as it could have been, that it wasn't sustainable over time, that it didn't always build to emotional beats, well, it was beside the point, because he was rewarded.

Page has an art nerd background. I get the sense he's a creative guy, that he often tried to pop himself and his friends, do the things that he thought would be cool in a match. And it meant he was rewarded repeatedly for things that didn't necessarily hold up narratively, things that might have worked over the span of months or if he was used as an attraction, or if he had an opponent who could bring the right sort of structure to the table but that faltered against certain opponents. My least favorite match of 2022 was the Takeshita match, because Takeshita is very similar. He was new to me too and I didn't know the criticism of him from DDT, but both of them rushed to as much cool stuff as possible without building it in a way that feels earned or paid off. 

So yes, it works, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it could potentially work. It leaves things on the table. However good you might feel he is, he could have been so much better. This year, he has been.

A heel turn alone isn't a magic fix. I'd argue that Takeshita still stumbles with a lot of the same pitfalls. Action without substance. Payoff without build. Athleticism without meaningful escalation.

Page, however, has leaned into it far more thoroughly. He's captured a mood. He moves with purpose. He's found that mid-level offense. He leans on opponents, takes the air out of them, out of the room, oppresses them, an imposing presence that now wrestles from the incensed, hateful, look in his eyes outwards. He's channels a methodological presence in the best of ways. Now when he hits one of his bombs, it resonates with narrative force. I've gone from dreading how he might structure his matches to looking forward to it.

People felt things in certain of his older matches. So much of that was due to the set up outside the match. Now he's the one creating the mood and tugging on hearts with his actual wrestling. And he deserves all the credit in the world for it.