AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/30 - 1/5

Stardom New Year Dream 1/3/25

Athena/Thekla vs Mina Shirakawa/Tay Melo

MD: Pretty fun attraction tag here with a lot of moving parts. You had Athena debuting in Japan, her first time teaming with Thekla, her first time facing Mina, Tay's first match back in forever. Lots of interesting stuff. Athena was absolutely herself here. There was a moment relatively early on when Thelka was taking it to Tay on the outside where Athena seemed to be just soaking it all in and Thelka yelled at her to go after Mina, but other than that, the full Athena experience. She didn't adapt her act, but then she didn't have to. The stuff early on where she was able to react to Mina in her natural element was excellent (and I get the idea that Mina is thought to be underutilized relatively in Stardom, but she also felt entirely natural and confident here; more on that in a second). Since not that many people saw this, they can easily play this back in the states to high effect. The bit where Mina had Athena trapped and forced her to clap to We Want Mina was a great bit I'm not sure I'd seen out of her before and of course Athena's facial expressions during it were gold.

I really liked Thelka here too, incredibly vocal, always talking to Athena, to her opponent, to the ref, to the crowd. I'm not entirely sure it worked but I think a lot of that wasn't necessarily her fault. Just match card placement and lack of familiarity maybe. Tay looked good coming off such a long break. I don't think they nearly tapped into what they could have with her as an over the top heel, but she has a natural likability that mixes well with the MMA stylings. She'll be a fresh opponent for Athena if they wanted to go that route, but one great thing about Athena is that she came out of this with natural, organic animosity towards everyone anyway, even her own partner.

WrestleDynasty 1/5/25

Athena vs Momo Watanabe vs Willow Nightingale vs Persephone 

MD: Honestly, this was one of the most enjoyable four-ways I've seen in forever. Usually they're a doomed sort of match because of contrived spots, nothing resonating, people acting completely out of character to make things work, and wrestling physics getting thrashed, plus lots and lots of people laying outside the ring. This had some of that but not much at all.

What made it work was that everyone stayed true to both who and what they were. There was a sort of different styles feel to this at times and there were mini stories within and then individual moments that both played on them and happened around them. Persephone worked well with Willow as a base but she also seemed absolutely intent to run gutsy strength spots against her and she managed around three throughout the match each one hitting better than the next. While I don't think Momo was the biggest presence here, she had a strong heel vs heel standoff with Athena. 

Then you had the moments. Athena, Willow, and Persephone reacted so well to everything that happened around them (with Momo not quite getting the same opportunity to do so that I saw). Athena would nail Willow with a forearm in the corner, the biggest most natural and organic smile and turn right into a shot from someone else. Likewise after Willow snuck in to make a pin or Persephone realized she had and opening. They were feeling the moment and riding the high of it all. Nothing (not even the dives) felt overly contrived. The finish was not just clever but played off the previous tag and was gripping visually. It looked like Watanabe took Athena's head off. Definitely one of the best 4-ways I've seen in ages. It just worked (and that is no small thing).

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs Sho/Kanemaru

MD: This is a fun bonus to 2025 that you would not have predicted, maybe ... well, ever. Just a fun pre-show match where Sammy really got to shine. That meant the big moonsault early, a nice face-in-peril performance including absolutely sailing across the ring on a back body drop. I was kind of sort of wondering how many more chances he'd get but maybe he deserves one more to reframe himself as a big-bumping upper mid-card heel (a la 1989-90 Mr. Perfect) who can make the up and coming babyfaces look great. Down the stretch you got Kanemaru/Dustin shtick which is really what you wanted in the first place and wouldn't mind seeing again. I liked the bit during the heat when Sho stepped on the belt too. You don't see that specific jerk move often. This hit the right marks.

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I don't repost every twitter notepad essay here (so if you want to see them all, give me a follow: https://x.com/MattD_SC) but I think this one maybe deserves it.  

The Emperor and his Clothes: Will Ospreay Coming off of World's End

Kyle Fletcher had an amazing Continental Classic. Coming off of Full Gear, he was that rarest of beasts in 2024, the heel who actually had heat. On that first night against Shelton Benjamin, the fans let him know it. Both he and Shelton leaned hard into the opportunity and they had maybe the clearest, sharpest heel vs face matchup AEW offered in ages. He went on to have similarly remarkable matches against Okada and Briscoe before ending the round robin section against Garcia in a match that felt like a prelude to a bountiful, vibrant future before us.

It all led to the semi-final (re)match against Will Ospreay. If you had asked me a week and a half ago, I would have told you without hesitation, without doubt, that AEW had to strap up Will Ospreay as soon as possible. He had to be the guy to lead the company, the hot hand. The Death Riders experiment stumbled because of a lack of commitment by the company to let it be a true central focus. Now with the soft reboot onto MAX, they should run with a hot babyface and push him hard. I like Ospreay as a personality even if he's not my favorite wrestler. He's earnest and warm and amiable. He can obviously make a splash with his physical prowess.

And they had assembled a sort of Ospreay-verse of suitable opponents over the last year: Fletcher, Ricochet, Takeshita, Okada, guys who had that extra gear to keep up with him. Even better, all four of them were starting to stooge and stall and play to the crowd differently, so not only did they have that extra high gear, but the low gears they needed to serve as contrast and get under the skin of the fans so that it wasn't all fireworks all the time, so that the fans weren't just glad to be there and witness Greatness but that they also wanted to see Ospreay triumph and the heels fail. It seemed like a pretty solid engine for success, even despite my own misgivings.

After World's End, I have second thoughts. As spectacular as he is, I just don't think Ospreay has the wherewithal to be the sort of breakthrough ace they need. He can make a splash, but to diminishing returns. It's all because he leaves so many narrative opportunities on the table in his matches. He takes up the air in the room so nothing can breathe. It's fine with an attraction. It's fine with the International Champion there to have matches like this; it's not fine on the guy you want to build the company around. Not as he is now.

The Fletcher match started out well. Ospreay shined early and Fletcher, scoundrel that he was, retreated from the ring and stalled to force it to breathe a little,  to give it weight and contrast. This built to Fletcher catching Ospreay on the floor and lawn darting him into the barricade, opening him up. From there, it was lovely pro wrestling, Fletcher working the wound meticulously, wretchedly. Eventually, he savored it too much giving Ospreay a hope spot, which Fletcher cut off with another lawn dart into the turnbuckles.

All of this was to set up the big counter spot to send them into the finishing stretch, a third lawn dart attempt turned into a poisonrana. All well and good. The problem is that in between the cut off and the comeback, Ospreay had an extended 50-50 segment with strike exchanges and escalating counters. By the end they weren't booing Fletcher (unlike every other Fletcher C2 match despite him being more vile than ever) but instead cheering the match.

Likewise, in the Okada match, Ospreay, coming in damaged, survived a first round of heat only to get caught up in the ropes and hurt his leg. Okada started on it but it was just a tease as they went into 50-50 for the entire second half of the match.

There isn't one right match structure. There isn't one right way to tell a story. But if you're going to run with a babyface ace, there may be a best way. There are human impulses that manifest in most fiction. You build up emotional pressure. You pay it off. For some reason, Ospreay seems mostly disconnected from this notion.

Vs Fletcher, it would have worked so much better if Ospreay, despite brief moments of hope, didn't get to come back and stand tall until after that third lawn dart attempt. The pressure would have built far more and they could have done strike exchanges and everything else down the stretch to greater effect. Vs Okada, they wanted to mimic the NJPW tournament final style, but they could have still done so much of that after Okada worked a second round of heat. He was losing and he would have more protected him more after gutting through two heat segments.

I'm not telling you you're wrong for loving these matches. They are spectacular and exciting, but these great things can be even better if he stayed focused on letting them build without throwing in a bunch of counter sequences mid match. He jumps to sensation too soon and leaves emotion on the table. Without realizing that (or having someone that understands the ebb and flow of wrestling matches help him with it, be it a coach, someone like Jake Roberts who has spoken about it at length and in the most wonderfully vulgar ways, or TK himself who I know gets it), I don't see how he can possibly be the babyface ace they need.