AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 9/1 - 9/7

AEW Collision 9/6/25

Jon Moxley vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Jon Moxley saw something wrong with the world. Bryan Danielson came to him in 2022 with a vision. Wrestling was broken, but they could redirect its fate, could band together and bring up the next generation how they saw best. They could reforge the youth through iron clashing with iron and force hammering down, tempering steel. And yes, they took Wheeler Yuta under their wing, his path forged in blood. But then the things went astray. They ended up feuding with the Jericho Appreciation Society, with the Elite. They bounced without purpose all over the card, sometimes beloved by the fans, sometimes reviled. They lost their way. 

So Mox took matters into his own hands. Deciding that Danielson wasn't up to the task, he put a knife in his back and a bag over his head and called it love and mercy. He took the title for himself, locked it in a briefcase, and went about to create the future.

Except for that's not what he did at all. After Private Party bounced off of the Deathriders, they found their nerve and became champions. He didn't say a word. On the same show that Mox won the title, Daniel Garcia became TNT champion. He didn't say a word.

Because maybe it wasn't about the future. Maybe it was about the present. Maybe Jon Moxley was just an animal deep down, a beast that needed to sit as king of the mountain and do anything at all to make sure he didn't fall, even if it meant keeping anyone else from rising and destroying or ignoring them when they did.

And Daniel Garcia? He became TNT champion, literally carried the flag of AEW, vowed to restore the feeling, encapsulated an earnestness of babyfaces of old, and then spent six months trudging through mud. He meant to be the front line against the Deathriders, but Moxley wasn't actually interested in that fight. Instead, Garcia fought through the C2, defended his title against figures as beloved as he was if not more so in Briscoe, Shibata, Adam Cole, when he should have been facing all the villains of the world. It was hard to maintain his purity of vision in the face such blurred lines and eventually he came up lacking. 

He needed iron to brush up against, needed the hammer coming down upon him so he could press back, fire back, prove himself. 

But the iron was nowhere to be found and the hammer was busy elsewhere protecting its own kingdom. 

Eventually, that kingdom came together in revolt and toppled the king. Mox was left wounded and vulnerable, a beast with his back against the wall. Garcia had been left aimless, frustrated, barely hanging on to the feeling he meant to restore. 

But now on the other side of All In, with no rankings to get in the way, no title defenses to distract either man, the path was clear. Garcia could now do what he had wanted to do back in Fall and throw himself at Moxley, to test his mettle, to show the world that Mox was a hypocrite, that his words had always been empty, that he was a false leader selling a false bill of goods.

The 2300 was the perfect venue, stifling, closed in with nowhere to run, blood soaked into the floor, intimate. And on Dynamite, Garcia pushed Moxley to the limit. You could see it down the stretch. Moxley had him beat on the floor, was content with a countout win, wounded beast that he was. But Garcia literally grasped the hands of the fans, and with them behind him, pulled himself up and beat the count as Mox fumed and raged. Moxley doesn't just defeat people. He beats them. He drops them on their heads or chokes the life out of them. But in order to best Garcia, he had to rely upon a roll up. He didn't beat Garcia in that first encounter; he survived him. 

It made sense that after the fact, and then again before Garcia's next match, that Mox tried to get in Dany's head. He was paranoid. Darby Allin was haunting his steps. He couldn't face a war on two fronts; he was already bleeding out after the title loss. Losing now to someone beneath him in his own mind like Garcia might have opened the door to Darby doing more than just beating him. It might have ended him for good.

But Garcia had chased this for almost a year, had lost so much along the way in part because he didn't get it, didn't get the attention of Mox, the recognition, the respect to even just fight him. He'd been underlooked, overlooked, and he knew just how close he had come. 

He was going to challenge Mox again.

And challenge him he did. 

Garcia started by wrestling, by dragging Mox down into the STF. Moxley responded by goading him in. Garcia was happy to comply, throwing shots into Mox's face, but that put him into Moxley's world, and there, Moxley still reigned, belt or no. Once it became a fight, Moxley took over. That trend continued. Garcia caught a leg in the corner, hit a dragon screw and stared to work it over. But when he took it to the floor, Moxley regained control. 

But even in control, he couldn't put Garcia away. He'd kick out again and again, fight back again and again. He survived a pile driver, endured the cross arm breaker. He continued to find his courage and, strengthened by the support of the fans, he refused to back down. He reversed Mox on the apron and hit a pile driver of his own. He turned the bulldog choke into a belly to back. Garcia pressed on with a twisting neckbreaker into the superplex (a better and more logical combo than the triple superplexes or a superplex into the twisting neckbreaker).

They inverted roles from the the first match as Mox tried to add insult to injury with a scorpion deathlock and Garcia rolled him up for a nearfall (the same way Mox won the Dynamite match). Garcia went for Mox's Bulldog Choke and got absolutely planted by a DDT for his hubris. But Garcia not only survived that, he was able to capitalize on the escape by locking in the Dragon Slayer. Moxley tried to grasp the head as Garcia leaned back but to no avail. Instead, Jon Moxley, the great mat scrapper, had to get to the ropes, a wounded animal looking for a way out.

Pushed against the wall like he was, both by life and fate in general, and by Daniel Garcia in specific, something awoke in Moxley, something that we haven't seen for the better part of a year. Just for a minute there, we saw the Jon Moxley of old, all but begging Garcia to throw his very best at him, meeting him head-on, the two firing off on one another inside the ring and out. This was the Jon Moxley that backed up what he said, that stood for something, that would face down anything in the world that came his way, and just as he had brought out something special in Daniel Garcia, Daniel Garcia brought something back in him. 

He blinked first, catching Garcia with an elbow off the ropes. Garcia tried one last flourish in response, channeling both Moxley and his recent partner Nigel McGuinness with a comebacker clothesline. Moxley ducked it, went for the rear naked. Garcia was ready and turned it into a roll up, only to get rolled back and pinned. Once again Moxley had to escape with the banana peel, opportunistic win instead of planting Garcia on his head definitively or choking him out. Once again he scrambled away, leaving Marina Shafir to clap for the dejected Garcia. Post-match, Garcia cut a heartfelt, real, unpolished promo about how all the good and all the fighting just wasn't enough.

I don't know where they go from here. A week ago, I was sure that this was going to lead to a Garcia heel turn, one that almost felt like a mercy killing and a necessary shame given that he's such a great babyface. After this, the lines all feel so blurred. Maybe Garcia's hit bottom, but the fans are more behind him than they've been in almost a year. Maybe that means he can turn from a place of strength and not weakness. Even then, it makes it all the more important to ensure that the reasoning and the explanation and the moment itself are all ironclad with no holes.

What stands out the most however is how real and human this story feels. This isn't a pro wrestling story, not someone pointing at a sign or wanting to best some sort of imaginary record. It's not about main eventing a big show or making moments for a universe. A path back into the light and a possible descent down into darkness. There's pathos here. A fallen king. A tarnished hero. Hypocrisy and truth. All the frustrations of life. This speaks to the human condition. And it's not just the story behind it, not just promos and angles. So much of it is in how the matches themselves play out. It's all integrated, all organic, exactly as pro wrestling once was and exactly as pro wrestling should be. 

I'm not sure where it's going to go next, but I can't wait to find out.