AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/10 - 2/16

AEW Dynamite 2/12/25

MJF vs Dustin Rhodes

MJF entered the ring to boos. He knelt before his giant banner and soaked it in. He jawed with the fans and soaked it in even more. Dustin Rhodes received a hero's welcome, entering second, the star position. Once the bell rang, Dustin drew a line in the sand with his foot. MJF charged in and immediately ate Dustin's signature snap power slam. Later in the match, during a ten punch sequence in the corner, MJF, in control, added insult to injury with the Goldust taunt. Dustin dropped down, hit a power bomb and MJF, embracing his comeuppance, sold as if he was a Stooge, rotating around the ring on his side three times.

Before the match began, MJF and Adam Page had a heated exchange. The match ended full of heat, with MJF hitting Dustin's own finisher and then turning him into the Salt of the Earth (and then a crossface) when he kicked out. Post-match, he had an incredibly heated brawl with Adam Page which stopped once only to start back up again.

Look at the contrast there. That's no small thing. They brought things way over the top only to drag them back down into grit and fury all in the span of twenty five minutes or so. They showed the breadth of pro wrestling, from the serene to the silly to the substantial.

There were certain luxuries at play that they could maximize. Dustin and MJF are both fully established, were very over in front of this crowd, Dustin's hometown crowd. They had a couple of strong promos leading up to this. The match was structured around MJF targeting the arm from almost the get go. Dustin overreached early on and Max was able to drape the arm over the top rope. It gave MJF a wedge to regain offense and capitalize on mistakes as the match went on and obviously played into the finish. It gave Dustin, one of the best in the world at working from underneath, a way to gain sympathy despite his moral (and height) advantage.

Every match has luxuries at play. Every match has things working against it. It's up to the wrestlers to understand these factors, to focus on their goals, and to present a vision, and then to commit to it fully. That's what they did here. Dustin was the standing tall local legend, there to punish MJF for every transgression. MJF went full Flair, an imported villain dropping in to spit upon everything this crowd believed in, to espouse his superiority at every point, to use every dirty trick in the book, and to face righteous justice again and again until, through pluck and daring and a slippery residue of scum, he was able to somehow overcome.

If at any one point, either of them looked down, the entire house of cards would have collapsed. This is a different sort of heeling than what we've been seeing out of Kyle Fletcher, a different sort of being riled by the crowd than what we've been seeing from Ricochet. It was more theatrical, more melodramatic. There was always room for that though. Look at 1985 JCP and the differences between Flair, Arn, Tully, and Ole. They all presented themselves differently in the ring. They all stooged differently. They all fed differently. They all justified their actions in a slightly different way. Different lanes for different wrestlers in different moments with different skills to call into play. All with the same commitment, all playing upon the same traditions, all with the same purpose, to draw heat and get the crowd invested. All never looking down.

And there was such skill at play too. Dustin is the master of at almost lost art of working from underneath and getting the crowd behind him. At one point forty years ago there were dozens of babyface on any single night working their way up out of holds with the fans clapping along. Now there's Dustin. And Max? He has a tendency to directly show that he can hang in his matches (to overshow his hand), one that sometimes obscures the lines of who he is and what he's trying to do. He forces people to see it instead of trusting that they will appreciate him for what they might just catch out of the corner of their eye instead. Here, however, despite playing broad and to the back row, he was so much more subtle, using his athleticism, technique, and body control in indirect ways instead:

He deftly stepped over after a sunset flip attempt to drop down with an arm wrench. He later on did a similar sort of stepover to set up a pile driver. His big top rope move was a snap stomp to the arm in midair, something that required precise timing and aim to look as good as it did but that wouldn't necessarily stand out except for as part of a greater whole. Then, late in the match, after he had set up the chair around Dustin's arm so he might break it off the top, he let the ref distract him and Dustin knock him off and he fell perfectly into Shattered Dreams positions. None of these will make a highly reel. None of them will be made into gifs, but each and every one required a sort of skill that wasn't showy, that didn't serve social media but that absolutely served the match. They're the sort of things that Max won't get end of the year award credit for, thankless things, but ones that accomplish so much more for him in the moment, in front of a crowd, than the things that actually would, and damn it if I'm not going to give him credit for them here.

Just as I'll give them both (and Page) credit, for only a few minutes after MJF was circling the ring like Moe to laughs, he was selling, through unbridled violence and intensity, one of the most exciting feuds the company has suggested in years with Hangman. The word for it is brave. MJF trusted this crowd, trusted Dustin, trusted himself enough to know that so long as he went all in on what he was presenting, so long as he believed it fully and got the fans to believe in it, so long as he showed no cracks, no hesitation, no doubt, the fans would bridge their investment from one extreme to the other. At the end of the day, all that mattered is that they cared without irony, that they were laughing at MJF as he faced his comeuppance but they weren't laughing at the idea of wrestling itself; they were buying into it. That meant he was able to transition from stooging vulnerability to a high heat post-match, just like his predecessors of generations past, and while watching it, you can't help but marvel at just how amazing it all can be when skilled, talented wrestlers take a leap of faith and trust in the magic that's always been there, a fire that only ever needed to be rekindled to warm us all once again.