AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/4 - 11/10

AEW Dynamite 11/6/24

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

MD: This was an extremely well put together tag match. I'd like to say more about Cassidy in general in a bit and then I'll follow it up with something I wrote about AEW storytelling in general, but let me start with layout of the tag itself.

Just to recap quickly, it started with Cassidy luring the Deathriders into Darby's dive off the set. From there, Darby fought Claudio on the floor and Cassidy fought PAC in the ring. Cassidy side stepped and Claudio hit an uppercut almost simultaneously. Yuta distracted Cassidy however, but he was able to push a resurgent PAC off the ropes and hit a jumping DDT. Claudio had been laying in wait and rushed in to break up the pin and hit three big power moves in a row to turn the tide and start the actual heat.

There's so much going on in there, so many wrinkles, so many little bits of character, so much specific highlighting of what makes each of these wrestlers unique. It was a great way to start a match. The shine wasn't long and it was fairly back and forth (as you have to keep your relatively new heel unit strong while making the defenders of the company stand out) but it was punctuated with big moments in Darby's dive and Cassidy's jumping DDT, then Claudio went way overboard in smashing him. Just a very effective opening.

That brings us to heat #1, on Cassidy, through the commercial break. It's so frustrating to see people who should know what they're talking about completely miss the boat on him. He'd already done multiple things extremely well in the match (the character-driven sidestep, getting distracted by Yuta) but he did exactly what he should have done as a face-in-peril. He was constantly fighting, constantly reaching, constantly showing the world just how tough it all was, constantly giving the fans something to latch on to. He has all of the substance of being a traditional babyface in traditional wrestling, and it's just the style and the trappings that work differently. The important stuff all hits. How can people who know so much about wrestling be blind about this? 

And the Deathriders, to their credit, kept it interesting. They had a multiple distraction spot just so Claudio (the illegal man) could hit a double stomp on the floor. Claudio is the bar, a wall, the perfect guy to cut people off and he had a great cutoff with the gutwrench over the shoulder backbreaker as Cassidy was starting to fire back after the commercial break. Then Cassidy capitalized on a banana peel slip as Claudio hit the corner and got the tag.

Darby came in hot, and things were elementary from there. He took everyone out, got caught by Claudio, gracefully avoided the catch once but not twice, got beat on a bit, and then slipped through the legs in the bumpiest, most Darby way possible for a second hot tag and to roll into the finishing stretch. Then as they were pinballing into the Deathriders and as Cassidy was hitting Orange Punch after Orange Punch, Shafir and Mox asserted themselves and we got a rare DQ. A perfectly fine DQ by the way given how good the match was and how it gave Darby and Cassidy something of a moral victory right up until Darby got lawn darted into the post (won the battle, lost the war; clearly were dominant, but the heels more than got their heat back). Matches without clean finishes happen so rarely that this gave everything a chaotic mood that kept things chugging along on the road to Full Gear. Not an every day occurrence but something they shouldn't be afraid to use when needed.

Which brings me to something I posted on Twitter yesterday (https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1855593937882247204)

The State of AEW Storytelling

The people who say there is no story in AEW are completely and blatantly wrong. Almost every match has some driving force and purpose. Every match on TV is either set up or is setting up something. There are criticisms to be made but that's not one of them. Instead, people should look at the style, the execution, the sometimes mechanical nature, the pacing, the lack of tangible change over time. While AEW succeeds sometimes in some of these things, they're apt to fail just as often.

There is a hierarchy to how AEW matches work. Wrestlers are built up on Rampage to build someone up on Collision so that they may be built up for someone on Dynamite. AR Fox will get a win vs Josh Woods on ROH TV (this well could have been Rampage) so that he can lose to Nick Wayne on Collision, very likely for Wayne to lose sometime in the near future to HOOK on Dynamite to set up a match with Christian on the PPV. Often all of those intermediary matches are further underpinned by story. Wayne wants to get back at AR Fox for Fox attacking him in his dad's school with Swerve last year. So things are both set up with lead-in matches and underpinned with story.

It's mechanically sound. It works on paper. Maybe the fact that Woods never gets a win (maybe in an enhancement match on ROH sometimes? His last was in August.) hurts things a little but hierarchy is hierarchy.

So what's the problem? Well, there are a few. For one, it's too mechanical. It's too obvious maybe. It'd work if you were scoring on a machine, if you were checking boxes on a video game. In real life, it's a logical engine but not necessarily a compelling one.  It's organized but it doesn't feel organic, doesn't feel alive. It's not vibrant. Everything feels like a means to an end.
Things are supposed to be means to ends, yes, but it's not always supposed to feel that way in the moment. Maybe some of that has to do with the fact that none of the results are ever in question. The lower-positioned wrestler is always going to lose to heat up the higher one. What would it mean to the story for the opposite to be true? It wouldn't make sense.

Maybe it shouldn't be so neat all the time? AEW is known for clean finishes but maybe there are other ways to get to Point C (that Dynamite match) where Point A and Point B (ROH/Rampage/Collision) can be a bit more in question. A few more DQs. A few more countouts. A few more double DQs or countouts. These are tools that were in the toolbox for all bookers for decades. They were used to cheat crowds out of finishes at times and that should be avoided but that doesn't mean they can't be used on the path to the match that actually matters in a way that still gets everything where it's going.

Then there's lack of follow up on midcarders after they've served their purpose. To continue with the current advantage, Woods isn't going to grow or change from his loss to Fox. Fox is going to come out of a potentially emotional substory with Wayne probably no different the next time we see him.

Things start and stop and are not always clearly communicated. Look at Top Flight. Andretti had been getting more impulsive and aggressive for weeks but it was more or less dropped so they could weave them in as early Deathriders opponents, spiking again when he needed to be bullheaded enough to fill a segment and get destroyed by PAC. They never clearly defined if Top Flight lost their new look due to the Deathriders pressing them or if it was just haphazard. There was nothing to connect Andretti's aggression in September with what was happening in late October. Likewise, there's nothing connecting Lio Rush getting pushed by the Deathriders to him potentially working with the Hurt Syndicate. Someone who watches all (and I mean ALL) of the TV can read between the lines, but the average viewer isn't at all led and it leaves the company open to criticism.

AEW's gotten better about recaps and trying to let things sink in as of late, but that's primarily served the A stories, not the B and C ones that lead to the A stories, and it's those B and C ones that fill TV time and where the criticisms tend to sit.

I know what people might say here, or what they should say. When has any company really managed what I'm talking about above? Consistently and over time especially? Maybe never. Maybe it's all an unfair expectation that I'm setting on Khan and AEW.

Here's the thing though. AEW is match-based promotion. There aren't long promos that carry the story. There aren't extended interview segments. I don't want that. Khan doesn't want that. The hardcores don't want that. The only people who seem to want those things are the bad faith grifters and the people who have only known wrestling in their lives to be one sort of thing.

So then how do you get around that? You use every tool in your disposal. You flesh out your characters as much as possible. You find ways to introduce stakes in the matches themselves, propelling the winners but also developing the losers along the way so that they either someday can be winners or that the idea of beating them time and time again becomes more important. You ensure that things, like Andretti's character development, 1) exist in the first place 2) are clear and flowing and not start and stop and haphazard, and 3) allow for meaningful change and aren't just jettisoned when no longer immediately useful. It's all a big ask but it's a big, frequent criticism and if it's to be countered, it should be in a way that furthers the company and rewards viewers not just those acting in bad faith.