AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/29 - 10/5

AEW Collision 10/4/25

LFI (RUSH/Sammy Guevara vs Cha Cha Charlie/Shayne Stetson
Eddie Kingston vs Dralistico

MD: It's a bit odd to have both Eddie and Darby back to be honest. I was used to leaning hard on that "And Friends" parenthetical to make these run, and that meant getting to pick and choose as opposed to take what's thrown my way. There's a lot of value in the latter approach because wresting is innately interesting to write about, even when the angle of entry can be trickier. Of course Dustin is down, but that's still a two-to-one difference and probably with more frequent TV matches. Anyway, this was great, because it was two segments with my guys back to back one bleeding right into the next. 

The tag was a rout obviously. I do have a prevailing thought about Sammy. He's very comfortable in the moment now, very good at walking on water. By that I mean that in this pairing, he's less prone to doing one linked spot after the next. Instead he's just sort of living the experience that is teaming with Rush. I don't agree with every single creative decision he makes in these moments (like Charlie dancing here), but I am acutely aware that he's living in them far more than in any previous point of his career. His matches feel more alive. Maybe they feel a little weird as he works out the act with Rush, but it's some of the most interesting work I've ever seen him do, just finding his footing in a world that's so different from late 2010 indies. IF, and this is a big if, this has time to develop, Sammy could come out of this someone to watch.

Eddie's always worth watching but he's especially so in this run. It's very clear after this match what I suspected after the Bill match. He's working a Japanese hurt comeback. Again, I didn't agree with every single creative decision on how he chose to show it, but it was much more overt here. I just wish the announcers would pick up on it. Eddie would do a bit where he'd take a chop and fire back and then take another and just collapse as he tried to fire back the second time. Obviously Eddie would have never wrestled like that usually. So he's really trying to express that he's not well yet, that he's not ok yet, that he's still climbing.

And for the most part, the fans got it... sort of. I'm not sure they knew why Eddie was having so much trouble, but they were willing to stick behind him as he continued to fight and crawl and climb. They clapped him up in the corner, for instance. Of course, then Dralistico committed a cardinal sin and took the claps over for himself without being nearly heelish enough for it.

Still, Eddie kept going, kept mixing gnashing defiance with pained collapse, again and again. And once again he won on a fluke uraken. There's something here and I really do think it's just a matter of better cluing the fans in on it. 

AEW Dynamite 10/1/25

Darby Allin/Kris Statlander vs Wheeler Yuta/Marina Shafir

MD: Not that long ago, we had good reason to rewatch the Brisco Brothers vs Road Warriors Tornado Tag match from 83. While it felt organic and chaotic, both good things, it didn't feel nearly as compelling as we would have liked. Look, I'm the biggest proponent in the world of wrestling that feels alive and gripping in the moment, and most of the time, that means a balance between what's planned and what's natural and plays off the crowd (even if it's played off by calling spots that are memorized and honed through repetition). But in an environment like this, maybe you need a slightly different balance to maximize the potential.

There were a lot of moving parts here. Statlander had just had her big DDP moment, refusing the Death Riders and escaping through the crowd. Frankly, she's in a weird place overall and I can't tell you exactly what they're trying to do with her. That felt like a huge moment and they followed it up here. She obviously has the title, but instead of continuing to brush up against the Death Riders, she's moving towards Toni for the PPV. Kris vs Toni is a huge singles match for the division, but it feels a little like DDP turning down the NWO and immediately feuding with Sting instead of them. 

If that's the case, then it means this was the only chance to blow off the Yuta stuff, and I have to admit, he felt like a big deal here. There was a moment relatively early on after the immediate ambush-driven shine (where Statlander did a great job basing for Shafir climbing all over her by the way) where Darby shifted the tides of fate by crashing into a chair. More on that later, but here it let Yuta really dominate him through the break. We've seen Yuta's skin the cat (slip the cat?) sneak back in after getting tossed with the immediate go-behind into a German but here was the fist time I remember it being used by him as a heel (it's usually a babyface spot!) so effectively as a cutoff for a hope spot. 

The comeback was another one of those twist of fate moments, where Statlander first reversed a suplex out on the announcer table and then a similar one with Yuta, avoiding the thumbtacks he laid out and laying him out onto the sea of chairs they'd tossed into the ring. Look, Darby was here so this was chaotic with a bunch of huge bumps, but it was very controlled chaos, almost ritualistic. As a Tornado Tag they couldn't avoid men and women getting at it like they're usually fairly careful about but even in the sea of violence, it was kept in pocket as an escalation to set up a big moment in the finishing stretch. In that regard, I thought they got the balance just right between discipline and wildness. 

My only regret is that they're not staying with this a bit longer. Marina vs Kris would have been a sufficiently big match for WrestleDream (though with Joe vs Hangman, which will be great but maybe isn't a huge selling point), Toni vs Kris could actually main even the thing. If they needed that, fine, they can always go back to this. But as is, I'm not at all sure that Kris truly finished her redemption story and there's probably still some meat on that bone.