AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 4/28 - 5/4

AEW Dynamite 4/30/25

Hangman Adam Page vs The Protostar Kyle Fletcher

MD: Full disclosure: I was looking forward to this as much as anything else AEW has done this year. Also full disclosure: if you had told me that 18 months ago, I would have called you crazy. Let's put Fletcher aside for now. I was not an Adam Page guy (and everyone seems to be an Adam Page guy). There was plenty to like (how he emoted, how he hit clean, how he hit hard, the entire anxious millennial cowboy deal), but I likened him to a tree that grew big in all the wrong ways. His matches escalated too fast, too quickly. The crowd went up for them but they came off as empty to me, ephemeral. A lack of mid-level offense. A tendency to spend too long down the stretch and not long enough building to it. Those early match death valley drivers and springboard clotheslines didn't do him any favors. Ever since he started leaning heel, he slowed down his pace, creating a seething methodological mood in a way that very few wrestlers today are able to create mood, and to enable that, he took on a number of things (even if it's just violence as opposed to "moves") to bridge the gaps. He's carried a lot of that forward now that he's leaning back babyface.

And of course, Kyle Fletcher is the most exciting wrestler in AEW. After two generations of cool heels who refused to take things seriously, refused to show weakness, refused to let themselves care about anything, who had to be in on the joke and let everyone know they were in on the joke, Fletcher is relighting a torch long put out as a stooging, cowardly, unlikable, absolutely genuine heel. He's part of a movement that is the most refreshing and wonderful thing in pro wrestling (one that depending on the day can include MJF and Ricochet, and increasingly wrestlers like Blake Christian and Lee Johnson and Red Velvet, and even believe it or not, Okada). I look forward to see what new bit he'll work into his matches each and every week (I miss the pullaway pants already). But it's his reactions in the moment as he responds to his fellow wrestlers, the ref, and most especially the crowd, that really put him over the top. I loved the build of this the week prior where Hangman charged down to the ring while Fletcher had the Don Callis Family around him. He went from cocky to terrified as Hangman grabbed him back to confident as his team was beating Hangman down. Fletcher wrestles with his heart on his sleeve as a heel and heart is absolutely everything.

The good in the match was very, very good. I loved the first two thirds and thought the finish was very good as well. The opening feeling out chain wrestling (which made sense as this was a tournament match) had a nice wrinkle or two from Hangman. Fletcher hitting the floor, first in response to Hangman getting one over on him, and then to avoid the Buckshot was everything I want from him, especially when Hangman came out of nowhere to clothesline him over the barricade. The laceration on Fletcher's back added an flavor of grisly realism. I liked the throughline of Fletcher using a bit of distance/distraction to hit superkicks to stay in it. I don't think that was overdone. Fletcher's shots in the corner while in control, whether they're boots or the sweeping elbows he does, are a huge part of his act, just him reveling and basking in his shitheel dominance. That makes the comeuppance he receives all the better.

And he absolutely did receive comeuppance. Hangman's comeback after the first commercial break was great. Total standing tall hometown hero stuff. I loved all the different lariat variations he used to fill the space and punish Fletcher. That's so much of what I thought he was missing two years ago. He had the corner clothesline, the sliding one, the corner repeated shots. All of that meant that they could build to the death valley driver (after one attempt at it) instead of using the death valley driver to build to something else. Same with the fall away slam. 

They were set to go long, which meant things escalated to the apron brainbuster/Orihara moonsault off the rail/tombstone spot on the floor to set up the second commercial break. That's where I though the match got a bit off course. The second commercial break was a bit of selling (Hangman nominally selling the apron brainbuster well after the fact) and then 50-50 stuff, culminating with another superkick takeover by Fletcher, and ultimately building to Hangman's big escape from the corner brainbuster and the subsequent superplex. That heralded the return from the break and the beginning of the true finishing stretch. 

This section, to me, felt fairly formless, which might be understandable as it was during a second commercial break in the match, but there was no reason not to go back to that tried and tested strength of AEW: stack heat in the commercial breaks. Fletcher was losing. Hangman had the hometown crowd. They had a spectacular finish planned with the lowblow nearfall followed by the roll-through quasi-Buckshot off the top. I get that there is a certain 2010s NJPW Tournament style that they try to ape sometimes, but this wasn't the time, place, or set up for it, not given the combatants, the locale, and that second break.

Instead, I wished they would have just put a little more heat on Fletcher. It's what he's there for. Have him reverse that tombstone on the floor and hit it himself. Go to break. Have him get a second round of heat and ramp up the pressure more and more. That's what pro wrestling is all about. Build and payoff. If you have the right wrestlers in the right place in front of the right crowd, there's nothing better than double heat! Instead, the crowd chanted at Don Callis and waited for the finishing stretch to begin as Hangman and Fletcher went 50-50 for a minute or two. If they had went back to having Fletcher grind down on Hangman while being an ass, they could have still built to the exact same moment in the corner but the crowd (probably, hopefully, probably) would have gone up even higher for it. 

It would be win-win-win. Fletcher would have been protected just a little more in the loss, not that he really needs it with the way that he responds to everything. Hangman would have had to overcome just a little more to make his win resonate even more; he'd already had a very dominant comeback after all. There would have been a clearer narrative going into the tighter, more focused finishing stretch, with more contrast with it and what came before. The crowd would have been all the more ready to boil over with the superplex and everything that came after. More, more, more (by doing a little less, actually, but that's the art of pro wrestling for you).

If they wanted to capture that tournament feel, they've got Ospreay vs Hangman coming, face vs quasi-face, and I'm sure that'll tap into it for good and ill, even (and especially, I suppose) with as far as Hangman has come. Still, despite all that, I had been looking forward to match for a reason and in most of the ways that mattered, it lived up to my expectations. With Fletcher, in Hangman's home area, I just really wanted a little bit more and I think if they had doubled down on the heat, they could have given it to me (and to everyone else too, of course!). Maybe that was greedy of me, but he's the sort of wrestler who is exciting enough to inspire greed. And he deserves all the credit in the world for that.