AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/5 - 10/11

AEW Dynamite 10/7/26

Darby Allin vs Kyle Fletcher

MD: Darby Allin is an attraction. In all the history of modern televised wrestling, he's one of the only attractions I can think of that wrestled every week. You can argue that peak Goldberg or Rock would be up there. Which is not to say he's an attraction on the magnitude of either. Maybe you could argue Sabu as the closest comparison point. Maybe peak Jeff Hardy as well. Hell, maybe Mistico at either of his peaks too. He's something to see. He's going to do something spectacular. You're going to regret missing it. Wrestling is a three-ring circus and he's in at least two of the rings and the sideshow to boot: the death-defying stuntman riding a motorcycle through fire, the acrobat up on the tightrope, the skeletal geek who can survive incredible amounts of pain.

There's been some pretty tedious discourse the last few weeks about how well he's been protected this year too. Yes, Darby wins a lot. Yes, he survives a lot. But the attention to detail is almost there. We'll get to that at the end of this one. Wrestling is more than just stats on a spreadsheet. It's more than wins and losses. Wins and losses matter, but they only matter in so much as the journey matters too. With Darby, the whole point is HOW he wins, HOW he survives, HOW he overcomes the odds. That's what makes wrestling worth watching. He's protected so that the emotional tether is there when he somehow survives. He's protected so when someone actually figures out a way to put him down, it matters more. 

Some fans today seem to want fairness and parity. But there have to be stars and the stars have to be protected. It's not what someone deserves. It's about what moves hearts and minds, and if you're not letting yourself go along with a story because you're more worried about some wrestler getting what they deserve, you're doing both the wrestlers (including that wrestler) and yourself a disservice. The effort has to be there. The level of detail has to be there. But at some point you have to open yourself to go on the journey they're trying to take you on. Maybe you'll like the ride, maybe you won't, but if you constantly want to be on another ride instead, then you're never going to enjoy yourself unless you get exactly what you want, and trust me, that gets real old real quick.

So the question then becomes How. How does Darby Allin overcome? And what makes it interesting is the variance in opponents, a variance made all the more interesting by Darby's specific skills and his specific weaknesses. His deficits. And how some of his strengths end up being deficits as well. 

Styles make fights, sure, but so do body types and disparities between wrestlers. You put Darby up against a Mark Davis or Jake Doyle or Wardlow or Brody King and he has different challenges and different opportunities than if you put him up against a Kevin Knight or Myron Reed. The former may be explosive at times, but they are bigger, stronger, quick but not nearly as quick as Darby. The latter can't leverage a huge strength advantage against him but Darby can't outquick them either.

Kyle Fletcher presents a unique threat for Darby though, and that's what made this interesting. Kyle is strong, yes, muscular as can be, but he's also relatively lean compared to the mentioned monsters. He's quicker than them, not as quick a Darby but quick enough to recover a split second sooner, to be ready to counter. The strength and size advantage isn't as much as the monsters, but it's enough. It gives him an answer to some of the questions that Darby forces upon both the monsters and the flyers and allows him to force plenty of his own upon Darby himself. And those questions are what make pro wrestling interesting (if you allow yourself to engage with them, that is).

Here, Darby came right at Fletcher but Fletcher could push him back. Darby shot himself towards Fletcher instead, but Fletcher was ready to catch him and toss him. It was an ebb and flow, one where Darby had to push himself more and more earlier in the match in order to do damage. he put them both through a table very early on because nothing else was working. He continued to take the risks like he so often does, but Fletcher was better suited to catch him and back body drop him from one announce table to the next. 

Darby is, of course, a cockroach, and with every moment he survives, he finds opportunities to strike. It could be as simple as a line of blood running down Fletcher's back (from that first table break) and Darby running his nails down the spine to counter a top rope move. But again, Fletcher is a uniquely dangerous opponent for him, constantly grasping and straining himself. In this case, as he was getting pulled over, he snatched at the top turnbuckle pad and yanked it off. 

It built to a point of escalation. Darby threw his best shots at Fletcher, hitting him with multiple Code Reds, but when that didn't work and Darby had to escalate further he missed a Coffin Drop on the apron. Fletcher capitalized and hit a Brainbuster, but it wasn't enough. He went up to the top and crushed Darby with the Avalanche Brainbuster onto the exposed turnbuckle. That was, perhaps overkill. The effort not only sent Darby out of the ring to the floor (where he could not be pinned for the title) but hurt Fletcher's leg instead. By the time that Fletcher was able to get the bloody husk of Darby Allin back into the ring, it was too late. Darby had recovered just enough to kick out. Attention to detail. It's everything. Yes, Darby survived Fletcher's very well protected finisher but there were any number of mitigating circumstances. This matters. If this doesn't matter, nothing matters, and if nothing matters, then there's no point anyway. Then you're just looking at the spreadsheet and there's no soul to what you're watching. You might as well not watch at all.

Fletcher went for a power bomb. Darby escaped and redirected him face first into the exposed turnbuckle. He honed in on the legs with the Deathlock. Fletcher survived but was vulnerable for two Coffin Drops. People say we've seen the sudden Coffin Drops too much as well, but they almost never work the same way twice. Or they work in multiple different ways appropriate for the moment. That variance matters. Those details matter. I'd argue they're only the same if you list them out on paper. In the moment, in the match, they feel as organic and opportunistic as can be.

Look, you can have favorites. You can hope someone gets pushed. You can even get frustrated that someone you don't want to see pushed is getting pushed (and yeah, I get that Darby has some historical personal issues but most of the arguments I am countering are not people talking about that, but instead about ANY wrestler being protected as a bad thing, a desire for parity, and his finishing sequence). That's all valid to a degree. But it's also something completely outside of your control. We've had one Yes Movement in twenty six years of wrestling this decade. 

You should not just eat what they're feeding you. You should be critical. You should question things. You should look for patterns. You can disagree with me. You can disagree with the company. You're not obliged to watch every match. You can pick and choose. It's better if you pick and choose. Trust me. But you should also question yourself and try to figure out why you feel the way that you feel. 

Yes, outcomes should matter. Yes, they shouldn't always be predictable, but pro wrestling has (almost) always been best when there is hierarchy and there are people clearly pushed. Outcomes matter, but the journey matters as much as the destination, maybe even more so because the destination is pre-decided. 

It's the How (... and the Who and the Why and even the Where and the When) that makes pro wrestling interesting, far more so than the What. And the questions around How for Darby Allin continue to be fascinating for me week in and week out. 

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Death Riders vs Don Callis Family Monster Army (AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/28 - 10/4 Part 2)

AEW Dynamite 9/30/26

Death Riders (Claudio Castagnoli/Gabe Kidd/Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia/Bryan Danielson) vs Don Callis Family Monster Army (Josh Alexander/Wardlow/Jake Doyle/Lance Archer/Mark Davis)

MD: This speaks for itself. I'm not sure if I really can add anything to it. You saw it, right? You felt it. It was the capstone on a tribute to PAC, an incredibly emotional show. 

It'd be easy to write about Kingston vs TRENT instead, a perfectly solid TV match that went time and had some great selling from Eddie and Trent being a jerk, even if it felt a little like 1998 Big Bubba up against Vincent on Saturday Night. 

I could write about Collision, all of it, a show very much made for me week in and week out (Thanks Tony); write a Workrate Report, one where basically everything worked. 

But Bryan wrestled. 

While we have all learned over the last few years that Bryan Danielson loves to lie, he's not the only data point on this one. We've heard from TK and others. I honestly believe that the wear and tear is what the reports say it is. I believe that it's hard for him to fly. I believe that he will never step in the ring again lightly, maybe never at all, that maybe he never should again. Look, Phil posted on Twitter the other week that Bryan was pumped after DEAN 2 and wanted to get in there against Mad Dog Connelly. I know Phil. He wouldn't have posted it if there was any chance that it would possibly happen. I want nothing but a healthy, happy ending with his family for Bryan, even if it means I never see him wrestle another match.

So there's every possibility this will be Bryan Danielson's last match ever. And I should write about that.

And even if it wasn't, there IS something to say about this match. 

Maybe I don't have to write about the cathartic power of pro wrestling, something that has been helping people, in-ring and out, for over a century. Maybe I don't have to talk in general about how it can help us work out our personal issues, our societal issues, our aggression, our pain. Maybe I don't have to go on about how it can be a morality play where right can triumph through heart (yes, and visceral violence as well) no matter how unfair and complicated our red-tape laden world is. 

And I don't have to talk about my last few weeks. I don't have to talk about how this match actually landed on my birthday, how it came a few days after my nine year old's birthday, how my parents who are pushing 80 real hard and I see twice a year came this last weekend, how the cat likely has pancreatitis or how we're trying to get a new boss up to speed at work. I don't have to go into detail about how I've been online for over two decades talking about pro wrestling with people and how we've carried each other through the losses of the 2000s and how everyone came together here over the last few weeks as well. And how balancing those two worlds threw me at times over this period, or how, yeah, I cried once or twice. You guys have all been living it too.

But I can talk about this match and what will stick with me from watching it.

I love this version of the Don Callis family. Maybe I'd have wanted Brian Cage in there instead of Alexander, but Alexander is probably taller and he's got the head gear and the tattooed arms and he looked like he fit in with all the other monsters. It's a Monster Army in a world of wrestling where that's far less of a thing than it once was. I'm watching 1990 NJPW where Bam Bam Bigelow is teaming with Big Van Vader and Dr. Death Steve Williams and this feels similar. Larger than life, with Wardlow returning to bring up the rear. 

The Death Riders huddled around PAC's chair. Marina lingered with it though the camera cut, so we didn't see how. We did see Danny go out of his way to get a kid's attention and then Marina linger with the kid as well. That matters. All of this does. Mox came to the desk, and while I had likened Eddie Kingston to Columbo recently, Mox was leaning into it hard here. It was cute, yeah, cute, endearing. "Oh it's live wrestling. Let's just let it play out." Something like that. "Just one more thing."

The Death Rider sting hit. Bryan's music hit. And people smiled. You just saw flashes of faces in the crowd. It was easier to see the hands go up and down for the Yes! chants, but you clearly could see the smiles too. Even on this night, people lit up. Tony and Excalibur were laughing heartily. It was wonderful. The power of one person, one song, one movement. A burst of sun through the darkness, dragonfire lighting the sky.

They got right to it, brawling around ringside, big, broad, over the top wrestling. Larger than life. A lot of the above, I didn't notice on a first watch. I was just living it. 

What I did notice on the first watch? The spin. I noticed the giant spin. And I noticed super babyface Marina Shafir spinning along with it at ringside (and selling the dizziness). 

Marina interjected herself a few times in this one, once putting Archer in a dangling armbar in the ropes, once joining in during the team corner charges, and once giving Danny permission or at least a stamp of approval to do his dance. The dance? That served as a lure to set up the corner charges. 

Every time Marina got involved, everything felt so alive. The intensity was through the roof. I know I say this phrase too much and now that I write this, you'll see it whenever I use it again, but I don't care, because it's true. The living, beating, endlessly dynamic lifeblood of pro wrestling was pulsing through her. She was doing all of these bombastic things, but she was still herself, still as intense and driven and in the moment as ever and it all felt so alive. 

And the other Death Riders did such a good job of distracting the ref and covering for her. Things could have broken down, fallen apart, and no one would have cared. Everyone would have just looked the other way or forgiven it, but they care enough about their craft and in turn in crafting an immersive reality that we can delve into that they put the attention to detail in. That is everything, even on this night (especially on this night given what we know about PAC), and I appreciate it so much.

Wardlow got to assert himself cutting off Yuta, hitting him with a fireman's carry Michinoku Driver (I call that the Amityville Horror because of Chris Chetti, but I can't imagine most other people do). Then Yuta played face in peril and the fans got behind him. (I need to fit this in here somewhere but I love the way Doyle makes a bit more space to his his forearms). I don't want to talk about the future or consequences, not really, because this wasn't about that, any of that, because very little could have mattered more than this match on this night. I will say this, however. They came back out on Collision and Yuta was enough of a heel against Austin Gunn that while he maybe couldn't fully get the crowd to boo him so soon after this, he could help them cheer the Bang Bang Gang instead and that is no small thing.

Just as it was no small thing that the crowd was so behind him here. Again, everything felt so alive. The Death Riders went to the floor and slapped the mat and got the crowd going and Yuta survived through the commercial break and got the hot tag to Bryan.

Yes, Bryan had a shirt, but it was a PAC shirt. Yes, he stumbled on the back flip. But he back flipped! Mox mentioned muscle memory. People train for a comeback. He had some gear made for him that day and just went out there. He'd been gardening and helping his kids with homework and who knows what else, and here he was, Bryan Danielson, lightning in a bottle, magic from a lamp, the American Dragon. When he was on the apron and Yuta was struggling, you could see the sweat down his face just from the opening brawling, but it didn't matter. He came in and it was all the more special because it was all the less perfect, because it wasn't effortless, because it was hard and because he was doing it nonetheless.

He had a complete exchange with Alexander, a first time encounter, eating German Suplexes, put in the ankle lock, putting Alexander  over as a threat. He didn't have to do any of that (but of course, he did). He could have been the centerpiece of the match, but instead he made another hot tag to Danny who would get his dance spot and ultimately get the pin.

Things cycled through. Bryan ended up standing next to Yuta. They were going to do the Yes Chant, were going to hit tandem knees. There's a little moment there where Yuta looked to him to get the timing right on the hands and that was as emotional as anything else in the match.

The Death Riders swarmed in the corner. Gabe hit PAC's endless run lariat. Danny got in the Sharpshooter. Claudio hit the stomp. The Death Riders hugged. Mox, while leaving the booth, quietly told a fallen Wardlow that he did a good job even in defeat, one last bit of Columbo on the way out. Danny hugged Yuta from behind and that will stick with me too. 

And I should tie it all back together, right? The emotional power of pro wrestling, how the realness and the genuine emotion is what fuels the engine and how special this all was. How this helped us and how I hope it helped them. But if you made it this far, through this match, through these words, through life up until this point and the last few weeks, I know you know, and I know you can make it the rest of the way too. 

I will say this on the way out though. Pro wrestling can be amazing. When the wrestlers care and when the fans let themselves care, it can do absolutely amazing things. And in a world often full of darkness and uncertainty, we need every amazing thing we can get.

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Moxley vs Cassidy (AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 9/28 - 10/4 Part 1)

AEW Dynamite 9/30/26

Jon Moxley vs Orange Cassidy

MD: Wrestling is art and art is in the eye of the beholder. Authorial intent matters to a degree, but only to the degree you, as the observer, want it to matter, and only as it affects the ultimate execution. 

Which brings us immediately to the character of Jon Moxley.

Look, there's definitely one way you can view Mox's last few years. It's a way that I felt was important given consequence and weight to actions, important given the world we live in. Jon Moxley, the bandit king, the emperor with no clothes, a man who says one thing and does another and the, after the fact, says a third, a man who claims to want to save to the world when he really wants to loot it and hoard all of its wealth. 

You can see him as someone for which might makes right, because there's no other right he can claim; a wolf with his back against the wall, who desperately snatched success out of the maw of defeat in the C2 and saved himself for at least another day. A roiling, seething, lost man, a fallen hero upon a throne of lies. All that. 

The joy of stories is that you can look at them multiple ways. We're all too caught up in canon and lore and fictional truth. There are story points and it's up to us as viewers to connect them in ways that resonate.

So here's another way to look at the character of Jon Moxley. Maybe everything he said was true. Maybe he meant it all. He formed the BCC with Danielson because the next generation was moving in a direction that wasn't focused or driven enough for him. He turned on Danielson because he saw his friend breaking down, saw him reach the pinnacle but be unable to carry the load, and he had to send him home the only way that would keep. Maybe even more than that, he knew Bryan, with his good heart, wouldn't be able to take the steps necessary, so he took the choice out of his hands.

He transformed the BCC into the Death Riders to send a shock through the system. He didn't give praise or acknowledge Private Party when they won the world titles because they WON THE WORLD TITLES. That was enough. They didn't need a headpat from him. They needed to rise to their mantle like men. He became the villain doing horrific things because that was the only way to inspire heroes.

And he inspired Hangman Page to push past his own darkness and find his own light.

Then, his mission complete, he wandered lost for a few months. He gave Darby another mountain to climb, inspired O'Reilly to be something more. Then, he found his place, off to the side, a monolith for wrestlers to challenge themselves against when he won the Continental Championship. And when Will Ospreay came back, he was there to guide him towards greatness.

Maybe that was the story all along. 

And maybe it's that Jon Moxley that stood across the ring from Orange Cassidy to do homage to a fallen warrior, rival, compatriot. 

Maybe Jon Moxley is one of the only wrestlers to be able to push Orange Cassidy to be as much as he could possibly be, and more than he would want to be. Maybe he does that with everyone, a modern day Stan Hansen, a grindstone to sharpen all steel.

Cassidy might have won a match against Moxley by becoming more like him, tougher, meaner, angrier, harder. But he never truly defeated Jon Moxley that way. I think here, on the other side of so many encounters, he finally understands that. He can only defeat Jon Moxley by being as true to himself as possible.

That's how he approached this match. Moxley tried for a hammerlock early and Cassidy almost playfully refused to try to counter back and kept lunging for the ropes instead. He was then fluid, like water, redirecting Mox this way and that. 

Mox, of course, wasn't going to stand for that for long. He bludgeoned Cassidy, battered him on the floor, held him up for a long, extended pile driver. He leaned into his man-of-the-people persona with a ten count, but Cassidy returned favor slamming Moxley's head into the turnbuckle over and over. 

Moxley dropkicked him to the floor and Cassidy? Well, he decided it was time to unleash his true weapon. The mind games. 

What followed was a beautiful example of Orange Cassidy as the trickster archetype, rolling away from Mox again and again, casually, aggravatingly, staying out of reach. It all built to the moment of payoff, when Mox, disoriented and frustrated marched around the ring to get an advantage and found himself vulnerable to Cassidy's dive. 

I think something clicked in Mox there, that he realized, finally, that Cassidy had his own well of power, his own strength, his own talent, that he could achieve his own way, so long as he was entirely committed to it, so long as he put everything that he had into it. He didn't have to do things Moxley's way. 

And that let Mox be playful with him, rolling as well. It meant when he threw big forearms and Cassidy returned fire with his playful, listless kicks, Mox could play along. I think in that moment, maybe he saw Orange Cassidy not for who he wanted him to be, but for who Orange Cassidy really, truly was, and he saw his worth. 

Though not enough that he was going to put his hands in his pockets, of course.

They fought towards a finish. When Moxley put on the Brutalizer, it was with PAC in his heart (as it had been when he hit PAC's lariat), yes, but it was also a good move for the moment, capitalizing on a vulnerability. 

When Cassidy reversed it and positioned Moxley around, it was a mistake. He could have locked in the seatbelt or mousetrap at that point and might have even won, but he let sentiment get the better of him.

Of course he did. That's the secret of the character of Orange Cassidy. It's not that his antics are all mind games. Anyone who tries even a little to look past their own biases can see that. 

It's that despite all appearances, the character of Orange Cassidy cares. He cares so much. He cares more than anyone. He cares every moment of every day. Every match. Every exchange. Every triumph. Every defeat. It's all he can do to shove that down and hide it behind the sunglasses, because otherwise it'd burst out and drown the world. 

Here, he cared too much and he made a mistake. 

Mox? Mox cares too, but he cares about doing his job, even his job truly is to save pro wrestling. Here, he did his job, refocusing, reframing, hitting the Death Rider, winning.

But Cassidy, just like Moxley, stayed true to himself, and maybe, in losing as himself, in losing by caring too much, he won an even greater victory, one that he could share with Jon Moxley, and share with us all.

------------------------

And that's the text. 

There are so many different ways to engage with it, to put the pieces together, to find meaning and messages in pro wrestling, ones that can help us through our days and help us find clarity, that can entertain us and make us think and make us feel all sorts of things.

You could watch this match and get a completely different conclusion from it, and that's part of what makes all of this so beautiful.

It's their job to create. It's our job to engage. It's our job to keep an open mind and to open our hearts to what they're presenting. It's our job to figure out how it makes us feel and either hold that close inside or to let it out to tell the world. That means we can agree with it and disagree with it and hold it to standards and occasionally even give it a pass.

There's no right answer except for caring. That's their job. That's our job. That's their privilege and that's our pleasure. 

And as heartbreaking as it can sometimes be because of the costs that come along with it, it is a hell of a thing, and we're lucky to have it, to have them, and to have each other. 

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Eddie vs PAC

AEW Dynamite New Years Smash 1/13/21

Eddie Kingston vs PAC  

MD: A few years back, Eddie Kingston got to live out a lot of his pro wrestling dreams, getting to participate in the G1, facing off against some of his Japanese heroes and sitting down to talk with others. I wonder though, back in early 2021, when he stepped into the ring with PAC to finish off this mini-feud, if he saw endless opportunity before him. I wonder if he saw an opponent who had the rugged, unrelenting toughness of Dynamite Kid, the ingenuity, innovation, and dynamism of Liger, and the adaptability of Fuchi, who could go from a comedy spot to a technical title match to brutality at the blink of an eye. Who PAC evoked the most to me along those lines was probably Kuniaki Kobayashi, who always seemed primed to explode with seething intensity. But of course, in the end, PAC was unique, blazing his own trail and creating his own pro wrestling alchemy.

Likewise, I wonder what PAC saw in Eddie that night. Eddie wears his inspiration on his sleeve, sure, but he comes from a place of genuine, real caring. In a world of irony, he might be big and broad and over the top at times, but that chip in his shoulder drives right through the heart of you. 

This was still months away from the spark lighting and Eddie truly connecting to a returning crowd. At this point, he was positioned in that heatseeking, big talking 1984 Roddy Piper player/coach role. He'd gathered together the Butcher, Blade, and Bunny, and the Lucha Bros. Well and good until PAC came back after 8 months being forced away by the pandemic. The Lucha Bros chose PAC and Eddie took it out on them, keeping them backstage in the most violent way possible so they couldn't support Fenix in his title match against Omega.

There was still something just a little cartoonish about this Eddie, but he was committed to the role and leaned into it. In fact, for the first third of this match, he leaned into absolutely everything, a perfect canvas for the artist of violence, the human weapon that was PAC. 

PAC exploded into the ring with a missile dropkick. Eddie threw himself backwards into the turnbuckles and tumbled out of the ring to show the world just how explosive a missile it was. PAC followed it up with a dive, getting right in the camera after, punctuating the athleticism with that unmistakable seething energy.

He followed it up with four pump kicks in the corner. He was varying his offense, modulating it, taking his time, accentuating his point. This was a man who wanted to savor this. This was a man who wanted his opponent to suffer. You bought into the story being told. Eddie deserved to suffer. He had to. Why else would such a force of brutal justice rain down upon him like this? Eddie was the ideal human sponge to absorb the incessant vengeance of PAC.

Eddie is so good at little gestures. They're a bit overdone in pro wrestling now, that last middle finger before a killshot, but Eddie can pepper them throughout a match. Here he was on his knees selling and he shot a chop to the leg. Ineffectual in the grand scheme of things, but Eddie was alive and Eddie wouldn't quit and it was going to take more to put Eddie down. He showed it to PAC and he showed it to the world. 

PAC kept pressing, endless forward motion, but he overshot. Eddie was able to get one elbow out of the corner, one foot up, was able to drop a knee off the turnbuckles onto PAC's skull. Then he tossed him out so his minions could do damage. He was playing a role, playing it well. After Bunny raked PAC's eyes, Eddie was right there to hit him with an Exploder on the floor. 

Now it was Eddie's turn to take his time and lay it in. He targeted PAC's damaged neck (a neck he had damaged himself with a DDT a few weeks prior). More than that, though, he added insult to injury, pulling at PAC's beard, jamming his face into the bottom rope. In return, PAC seethed once again, the picture of fury waiting to be unleashed.

And unleashed he was. PAC fired back then sidestepped a charging Eddie to hit a German off the ropes. That took them into an extended final third of the match. Both threw bombs. Both caught one another with cutoff shots. Eddie hit a backfist and enziguri. PAC then got him when he was on the top rope with one of his own (Eddie did make an over the top face at that, leaning into his nefarious role maybe harder than he had to; like I said, it'd all click a few months later. And anyway, it was satisfying to see; Eddie deserved it). 

Then came the superplex, both men selling it like the huge move that it should be. Eddie tried another DDT hoping to break that neck he had previously injured, but PAC held on to the rope and hit one last dropkick. Eddie, again doing that sort of immersive selling that he's so good at, reached at PAC, reached and reached, unable to do anything else, reached far later than anyone else would have, even right before the impact as PAC sailed off the top onto him with the Black Arrow to secure the win. 

PAC was a force here. Eddie was stubborn and underhanded and unrelenting. Both of them came in with chips on their shoulder in this one, and it was how those chips scraped up against one another that made this engaging and unique. I don’t know what they were thinking that night, but I know how I felt watching the match. For all the people that they may evoke or may be inspired by, there's only one Eddie Kingston and there was only one PAC, and we only got to see them face off in a singles match one time, but at least we got to see it.

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Kazuchika Okada vs Tommaso Ciampa (AEW Five Fingers and Friends 9/21-9/27)

AEW All Out 2026 9/26/26

Kazuchika Okada vs Tommaso Ciampa

MD: Hey everyone. I'm writing this very early Monday morning. I thought about just... not. Not writing. I've done this pretty close to every Monday for almost five years now. There was a match I wanted to cover. I thought maybe it'd help. Help me. Maybe (hopefully) help you by reading. Take your mind somewhere else. You've been living in the same timelines I have. Heartbroken wrestlers. Heartbroken fans. People we care about directly and indirectly. I thought about writing about PAC vs Andrade but that's like staring at the sun. 

I do want to say something quickly about PAC though. Maybe more later. If I was fifteen years younger fifteen years ago, he'd have been my favorite wrestler. Exactly what I wanted out of pro wrestling when I was younger. Innovation. Energy. Daring. Persistence. (Even his size would have appealed. I was a small kid). I wasn't though. I was older and at a crossroads and trying to figure all of this out. And for me, the balance was still off. I was moving in a totally different direction as a viewer and as someone who thought about pro wrestling. 

But then we got to his late 2014/early 2015 and Neville was simply undeniable. He worked subtle heel against Sami Zayn while still threading the needle and being as dynamic and spectacular as ever. He managed to hit all of the impressive, over the top offense against Kevin Owens, but accomplished it in a way that was full of animosity and intensity and real, true impact. It blew my mind. It made me stop, forced me to see things as less black and white, and however I was developing as a viewer, it broadened it. I'm not saying he's the only reason that I didn't stumble into that all too familiar reactionary closed-mindedness completely, but I think he was a big part of it. And he was just as undeniable as his career went on. He owned the road between being innovative, impressive, impactful, intense, and most importantly, immersive. When I hold wrestlers to standards along those lines, it's because I've seen it. PAC did it. And yes, not everyone can be PAC, but everyone can shoot for the moon because at least one wrestler proved that he could reach it, gravity be damned.

One of my favorite PAC matches of the last few years, and maybe one of my favorite AEW matches of the last few years in general, was the Dynasty 2024 match vs Okada. Okada was still fairly new to the company and the crowd wanted to cheer for him so badly, but the two of them, through skill and persistence and commitment, turned the crowd, and that is one of the most impressive, exciting things that pro wrestlers can ever do, especially in modern times. 

Fast forward to Saturday and here's Okada in a similar spot, with a similar, equally difficult task, maybe one that's even more so. The Chicago crowd was deflated. Of course they were. The Darby/Borden vs Fletcher/Knight match ended in ref stoppage after a spot went bad. That almost never happens in wrestling, certainly not on a PPV, and that it happened to someone as sympathetic as Steven in one of his first big matches. It put a chill through the crowd. Dani Luna and Persephone came out afterwards and they put on a valiant effort but there was so much working against them and while they moved the needle through their work (and some Britt Baker heatseeking), it wasn't enough.

It was up to Okada and Ciampa to bring the crowd back to life then.

And they built a match that did just that, a hell of a thing, an impressive edifice that was a combination of discipline, action, and one very secret weapon wearing a birthday hat.

I don't think it was at all a sure thing. Ciampa is a tricky presence in 2026. He straddles the line between face and heel, more of an entity than anything else, one driven by very human whims, desires, and needs.  Relatable but unstable. You can't have a roster like that but maybe you can have just one wrestler. On this night, even before that secret weapon showed up, he was the babyface. He had called out Okada, had invoked the idea of a dream match, had claimed to want the Rainmaker, Okada at his best, and then had attacked him backstage instead of putting up with his crap. Okada, International Belt back around his waist, was not about to meet him halfway. Okada didn't meet anyone anywhere. It's all beneath him.

They could have looked at the crowd, looked at the situation, and panicked. They could have rushed straight into action and never looked back. They didn't. The start of the match was perfectly measured. Patient, disciplined. It was allowed to build. 

Okada broke clean on the first lock up, patronizing Ciampa with the hand pat. Ciampa followed suit. That annoyed Okada who threw a cheapshot kick. He pulled Ciampa's beard on a headlock. Ciampa pulled Okada's hair on the headlock. Okada was offended again. He teased a handshake, which Ciampa would have accepted, but went for the middle finger instead. Ciampa swatted it away and they laid into each other. Okada went for an early Rainmaker. Ciampa ducked it and went for his running knee. A story of the match. One weapon against another. Okada scooted out and came back in, trying for another cheapshot kick. Ciampa turned it around, knocked him to the apron and hit a knee to send him to the floor. 

It was a great start to the match, establishing character, tone, foreshadowing where things might escalate down the stretch. We came out of this knowing exactly who Okada was, exactly who Ciampa was on this night, how they related to one another. It put over the big weapons as dangerous, as things worth hitting, worth avoiding, worth anticipating for the fans. 

On the floor, Callis called Ciampa classless. Maybe on another night, that wouldn't throw him, but on this night, with his family at ringside, he was trying to be something more. That distraction allowed Okada to hit a flapjack and take over. Okada leaned in, dismantling Ciampa in the corner, hitting some moves, taking his time. Ciampa fought back on the apron, but Okada cut him off with a big boot. Okada followed that up by going for the top rope elbow drop. Ciampa rushed up and bit him in the forehead, going for the Project Ciampa Air Raid Crash off the top. More on all of those puzzle pieces later. Okada was able to redirect him eye-first into the post, causing that to be an extended hope spot and cut off.

That's when the match took a turn. Okada brought Ciampa to the floor, out by where his family were sitting. His daughter was there in the front row. It's her eighth birthday. She's wearing a birthday hat. Her mother is next to her. Okada hit a draping DDT on the apron right in front of them and gave the biggest smile.

But of course, for someone as despicable a troll as Okada, that's not enough. It's never enough. He rolled back out, teased a taunting high five, and then gave the birthday girl a middle finger, horrifying the crowd. Time seemed to stop as she looked to her mother, received a nod, and gave him double middle fingers back. Okada sold it as if he had been shot as the crowd popped huge. And Ciampa was right there to take over, full of fire. As comeback transitions went, it was one of the most unique and memorable of the year.

The rest of the match was meticulously put together. No move was just given. During the opening stretch, Ciampa had gone for the Angel's Wings and he hit it now. They kept going for the rainmaker and the knee whenever they could, but it was a series of opportunistic, locked and unlocked moves: Ciampa's backstabber powerbomb, Okada's over the shoulder neckbreaker, German suplexes, another attempt at Project Ciampa, and so on. They teased a false finish where Callis distracted the ref, Okada went to use the hidden screwdriver, and Ciampa caught him, finally hitting the knee. 

What made it work is that it wasn't spammed moves. It wasn't moves done over and over. It was set up and payoff for each move, through struggles and countering.  Multiple options on the table at each point. While it was a lot overall and it was an exciting stretch, there was also a sort of twisted discipline to it. Because they had started so patiently and meticulously, now the match had somewhere to go, and it got there in the most exciting, plausible, dramatic fashion possible.

Okada survived the knee. Ciampa was able to block the rainmaker multiple times until Okada finally got his twisting slam and hit it. This was a placeholder match, something on the road to bigger things for Okada, most likely, something to fill out the card, but it ended up having a much more important role in the show. They had stirred the crowd early with deeply character-driven moments that were allowed to resonate. They took the crowd over the top with the family interaction. Then they kept up the energy with a hot finishing stretch (and again, resonant due to the way every move was foreshadowed, fought for, and earned). The show felt alive again. Really a hell of an accomplishment.

In retrospect, because everything worked so well and because heartstrings were being pulled, it's almost a shame that they didn't give Ciampa, his family, and the crowd that big moment. But it's pro wrestling and it should almost always leave you wanting more. It's something they can go back to one way or another. For now, what's important, is that due to the layout, the performances, and the professionalism, the match overachieved under the hardest circumstances. 

I just went back to watch it again so that I could write about it, and it brightened my day when I needed any brightness I could get. So it's overaccomplished expectations twice now.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/14 - 9/20

AEW Collision 9/19/26

Darby Allin vs Myron Reed

MD: I don't think you understand how good Darby Allin really is.

Look, don't take offense at that. I don't think I'd fully grasped it and I've written up around a hundred of his matches. Through five years of doing this weekly, the tags with Sting, the TNT title runs, the World title run, the battles with Joe, and Mox, and Christian, and everyone else, I think I just didn't let myself see it all the way. 

I inherited Darby. Phil and Eric started this feature. I didn't come on until a couple of months later. I had been doing Found Footage Friday and French Catch Tuesday. I'd never really written about modern wrestling on Segunda Caida up until that point. They chose Eddie, Darby, Dustin, Bryan, Punk, as the 5 Fingers. I'm not sure I had ever even seen a Darby match before the Punk one. 

And there are truths I've brushed up against, sure, the idea that he can make people believe in a way that no one else in wrestling today can, that they believe in the pain he is going through, in how he pushes himself through it, that they believe in him. And yes, maybe it straddles a line in a post-kayfabe world, but if people believe everything else on the show is an act, they believe that he's really dying for them, and that if he does make it back (to hit his spot or mount his comeback) then he's really finding miraculous resolve to do so. 

I figured that part out a while ago. Some of it is a work, some of it less so, maybe, but it's held together by his selling. Even if he felt like he could jump up and run free after taking a big bump, he makes sure to milk every iota of sympathy, slowing down the match and leaning as hard as possible into consequence. This is accentuated by the fact that he is small, he does seem fragile, almost skeletal, and he's up there against wrestlers who are larger than life (even if life might not be as large as it once was), that are certainly larger than him. He uses his body as a weapon, a bludgeon, a pointy stick right into their eyes. If he's David fighting one Goliath after the next, his own body is the rock that he puts in the slingshot. Factor in his trainwreck bumps, his ability to be lawn darted across the ring (or out of the ring or off the apron or the guardrail or the stage), and it's a jarring combination of offense and offended that is like nothing else in the history of pro wrestling.

Hyperbole? Maybe. But that's where I've been lacking. Exactly where I've been lacking, and I'm someone who catches grief sometimes for overreaching with such praise. 

There are wrestlers today who can work an older, more measured style where mostly everything makes sense, is emotionally grounded, holds together, has consequence. There are wrestlers today who can do amazing things athletically, more amazing than anyone before them, hit amazing spots and dives and take amazing bumps, like nothing we've ever seen. And yes, there are a few scant wrestlers who are always on, that bring a level of intensity and commitment to character and performance, that they lose themselves in their wrestling, and in doing so they allow us to lose ourselves as well for a time. No strings.

Darby is, I think, just about the only one who is in the top, top category in all three of those things. I can't think of anyone else in that perfect Venn Diagram (maybe Athena, MAYBE, but as spectacular as she can occasionally be with her spots and athleticism, I'm not sure it's quite the same, and sometimes (sometimes) logic fails in the face of what she wants to do). 

More than that, no matter who he's facing, he forces them to follow these lines as well. He forces them to exist in a world where things make sense, where there is consequence to every action, where everything is more visceral and brutal and horrific and vivid. He covers up their tendency to put the means before the ends. He creates a world where viewers can lean hard into their suspension of disbelief, and any wrestler that goes up against him is now a denizen of that world. He makes whatever they bring to the table not just better, but realer, more vibrant, more wonderful, more magical. He's a skeleton key to a different world, not the world of the 1980s Crockett, not the world of Puerto Rico bloodbaths or 90s Japanese wars of pride and escalation, but something all his own, something that takes the excess of modern wrestling's endless firework shows and grounds it in a pulpy, gritty, stomach-clenching post-apocalyptic wasteland where you can't just think, can't just be above it all, can't just chant "This is Awesome", but instead have no choice but to feel. If you have a heart and you have a soul, then Darby Allin will crash right through them and make you live vicariously through him and make you feel alive.

He let Myron Reed be his best self here. Don't get me wrong. Reed is spectacular. Fireworks? He's got those. He checks so many boxes. But I've never seen a Myron Reed match that made me feel this way. I've never seen a Myron Reed performance that made me feel this way. 

They worked it like a title match to start, even if only for the first minute, feeling out, holds and counters (watch Darby's foot on the go behind or during the headlock; he has a wrestling background, but more than that, he can portray himself as someone with a wrestling background). It sped up almost immediately to quick pin attempts and Darby dropping right down into a headlock on a kip up attempt. Darby kept the advantage with a sky high step up armdrag, and then he rolled this way and that, teasing a dive, stretching his control of his own body, of the space between them, of the canvas of the wrestling ring in a way he only is able to do when facing an opponent closer to his size. Darby can dive across the ring to create space while having it not feel like a roll for a sake of a roll but instead meaningful, essential, laudable positioning. There's something about the fluidity, the physics, the way he takes an advantage that might have been harder otherwise that feels like a human game of chess.

He's won matches this year with quick Coffin Drops out of nowhere, and he went for that here, only to get knocked off the apron like only he can (a calculated risk gone wrong, a poor chess move but a chess move nonetheless). We've seen this a lot by now, but no two Darby bumps from the top off the apron to the floor are exactly the same. The control of his body even in the face of gravity seems impossible, but somehow he manages it. It's the perfect transition spot, the perfect spot to take the show to commercial. Here though, because of what Reed brought to the table, it was just the prelude. Darby maneuvered himself behind the ring post on the floor, normally a relatively safe spot, and Reed bounded right over the post taking him out, a good moment to take it to break made even better in the most spectacular way possible.

Reed controlled. Darby came back by using his own body as a back springboarded weapon, and took them back from break with a Superplex. From there, things were even, one big move (sold excruciatingly in the best way possible for a Saturday night TV match with a hierarchy difference) after the next. Reed hit his dangling Flatliner from the rail but missed the 450. Darby hit the Code Red and a torpedo of a suicide dive. Reed rolled out of the ring to avoid the Coffin Drop and when Darby went for another tope, Reed caught him with a cutter on the floor. This time Darby rolled to the apron, but that let Reed hit that huge, memorable cutter off the apron to the floor. Reed then set up a chair (and I'm not quite sure why because things went back towards the ring; there's almost always a method not just to Darby's madness in his matches, but to any other madness as well, but this felt a little dubious to me, even though the payoff was amazing). Regardless, we know how the chair ended, collapsed horrifically beneath Reed's flipping body as he tried for a dive and Darby moved. One of the craziest spots of the year to say the least. Darby rolled him in, hit the Coffin Drop and won. 

Let's call the chair here the exception that proves the rule. It felt a little opportunistic. Reed had used it to help himself up after the cutter. It took me out of the match a little, but just a little. Just a few extraneous words in a word problem, something you can sweep under the rug. You very often don't have to sweep anything anywhere while watching a Darby match, and certainly never for long (not long at all here), but Darby makes it easier to sweep something away than any other wrestler alive.

That's the point. Darby doesn't shy from the modern style. He embraces it. He embodies it. Always bigger. Always more. The sort of "Evolutionary" inevitability that some people invoke to when it comes to athleticism and action and fact-paced "workrate." Often slick or tricked out. But I'd argue (and even those that might disagree with me often would probably agree) that it's a different lane than the Ospreays and Omegas (both of which have their own separate lane really; so maybe it's more a different parallel highway going the same direction) of the world, maybe. Darby's is a path that is more focused on commitment, on a sort of brutal realism that doesn't wink, doesn't show strings, doesn't reveal the trick. It's more focused on consequence, on taking a beat after big spots before rushing to the next because the spots are so big and the trainwreck so disastrous that nothing else would even be plausible. He brute forces sense and sensibility into modern wrestling. 

And I honestly don't think there's a person alive, maybe myself included, that's done a good enough job giving him the credit he deserves for managing it. 

---------------------

ROH TV 9/17/26

Satnam Singh vs Matt Mako 

(1) Life isn't fair. No aspect of it, not even pro wrestling, is a meritocracy.

That said, life is full of opportunities and life is full of challenges. There are things you have control over and there are things you do not. Some people whine and complain over the things outside of their control. Some people face the challenges head on and make the most of every opportunity.

In a fair world, in a just world, Matt Mako would be the #1 contender for the ROH Pure Rules Title. He has the background, the skill, the constant push to make himself better and better, Just in the last few months, he's defeated Tim Bosby, Cheeseburger (who pushed Lee Moriarty to his limits), Tim Thatcher. And yes, he's been on the other side of the ring of Moriarty once or twice. One time, Moriarty went so far as to hire the Hurt Syndicate to tag with him, some might say in order to dodge Mako.

Yet, here he is in the WJCT Studios in Jacksonville, no ring entrance, looking across the ring to one-in-a-billion, a giant billed at over 7 feet tall and over 400 pounds, Satnam Singh.

Satnam is not Khali or El Gigante. He is toned, agile. They've been hiding him here, an attraction that is not allowed to attract, a force slowly being built up week after week with no apparent purpose but destruction.

(2) And he continues to hone his trade, continues to get better, continues to add new moves to a repertoire that would be fine if it was as simple as could be. He stalks around the ring with a fluidity that his predecessor giants couldn't have hoped for and he racks up wins quietly, an obvious contender to anything he'd want to challenge for, a mountain to be overcome.

To Mako, this is a challenge. He meets it not with resentment, not with malaise, not with fatalistic resignation. He meets it as an opportunity. He himself is trained, honed, a warrior used to battling all sizes, all shapes. The larger the opponent, the more chance there is to make a name for one's self. Fell Goliath and be remembered forever. There is glory in that. There is pride in that. It is undeniable.

After shaking hands, Mako comes in with a strategy. If you take a giant's legs out, he becomes a man, and put Matt Mako up against any man alive and he has at least a fighting chance to win. He starts laying kicks into those legs. It's what Inoki would do. It's what he did do against Andre and Ali both. A few shots to the legs makes Satnam cautious but that opens his stomach up for a spinning kick. Go for the most-vulnerable spots. Go for the softest spots. Make life fair.

The problem is this: one shot from Satnam is worth ten from anyone else.

(3) And Satnam gets his shot. One headbutt. Mako staggers back. Satnam whips him off the ropes. What Mako needs is distance, to avoid shots, to have time to plan is next attack. He rolls under Satnam's swinging arm, hits a dropkick to the shoulder. He can't let up so he charges right in. A half second too late. For a man his size, with his reach, a giant, Satnam is just too quick (It's not fair). He gets a foot up and Mako wipes out.

That gives Satnam the advantage and he uses it to play with his food, chopping Mako in one corner than the next, whipping him in. But Satnam isn't used to this level of oppontent. He's been trained up, but he's been trained to give the crowd a show since he can so easily run over most opponents.

Mako uses that space to make a strategic retreat to the floor. Satnam is no normal giant and he gives chase. Mako is ready and lays in some shots to the stomach. It's not enough. Satnam tries to whip him into the post, but Mako snatches it on the way around and propels himself into the ring.

Now he has the high ground. Satnam realizes it too. There's a moment of exasperation on his giant face. This is not like most of his matches. Mako is not like most of his opponents.

What's next is inevitable. Mako catches him with a dropkick to the knee on the way in. He lays in the kicks and drops Satnam to one knee.

(4) Mako charges in, having made Satnam just a man. But Satnam IS not just a giant on his knees, but a full-sized man in that space. Mako couldn't train for that, not really. There's no live experience for it, and from that kneeling position, Satnam hits a normal sized clothesline.

A surprise, but Mako can deal with surprises. Satnam follows up with a choke slam attempt, ready to end this. Mako turns it into a Cross Arm Breaker (his specialty). Satnam lifts him immediately up, but Mako shifts around him for a choke. Satnam tosses him off, but Mako is quick to lay in gut punches again when Satnam goes to grab him. He shoots those kicks to each leg. He manages some knees as Satnam staggers. He's hitting him from every angle, doing so admirably but he's unable to hone in on any one thing. There's just too much of Satnam and one shot could end it all.

And it does. Mako ducks Satnam's desperate clothesline but he runs right into a press up cutter, the sort of move no one Satnam's size would ever be expected to do, the sort that even Mako couldn't prepare for.

Still, the look on Satnam's face is telling. It was three and a half minutes, but it was a three and a half minute war. He hadn't been pushed like that before on ROH. Life isn't fair. It's not fair to face a giant, not for anyone, but maybe it's more fair for someone like Matt Mako than most. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/7 - 9/13 Part 2

The House Always Wins 4/9/21

Darby Allin vs The Butcher

MD: Let's just look at the story at play here. Let's just jump right into it. So much of what Andy Williams brought to the table as the Butcher was being exactly what pro wrestling needed in the moment and sometimes that's just being in the right place at the right time with the right commitment to the right character, a dedication to serve the moment and to let himself be a formidable mountain to conquer.

AEW's first, and for quite a while only house show. Darby Allin is your TNT champion. He's got a match against Matt Hardy on the upcoming Dynamite. Hardy currently had the Hardy Family Office which included The Butcher, Blade, and Bunny. He was Big Money Matt. The show started with a battle royal in order to decide who was going to face off against Darby for the title in the main event. Classic house show stuff.

The Battle Royal was full of Dark Order members. It had Hobbs and Starks, Page and Scorpio, the Gunns, Archer, and others. Butcher's in it, but you don't see him as much. Occasionally he'll be clobbering or clobbering someone here or there. It's not actually the dominant battle royal performance you usually would get out of him, but it doesn't need to be. There's some tomfoolery around one of the sides of the ring being a ramp that ends up eliminating quite a few people. Butcher does get one great elimination with a gourdbuster to the floor on Stu Grayson where Grayson's head lands on the apron on the way down. 

It came  down to the four biggest men, 10, Archer, Hobbs, and Butcher. A pretty well put together battle royal all things considered. I loved the finish of the Butcher Battle Royal with Daniel Garcia finding the strength to overcome the odds, loved it. I loved some specific moments too whether it was Eddie beelining for Claudio or Darius Martin's swinging 'rana using the turnbuckle on the floor, or basically all the Beast Mortos stuff, but it was set up with people cycling in and out. 

This was just a mass of humanity. Probably harder to manage, but I appreciated the effect of it overall. Even just a few years later, you have less battle royals that feel like this. You end up with the four big guys and Butcher was able to (as the one exception to what I just said, which is what made it work!) lay out on the floor after eating a spinebuster and then capitalize to win it, with a little help from his stablemates. 

Post-match, Hardy is proud of his man, and provides everyone with a villain speech. Butcher will win. When he does, he will be well compensated to hand the belt over to Hardy on Dynamite. And if he didn't win? Well, that was fine by Matt too, because he'd break Darby so much in the process that he'd be easy pickings on Wednesday. Butcher? He was fine with all of this. He liked the sound of "well compensated." He and Blade, more than almost any other wrestlers of the decade, were presented as mercenaries. For the Hurt Syndicate, it's a business, right? For Butcher and Blade, it was a way of life. That's how they were presented and Butcher leaned fully into it, no matter who he might have been when he took the monocle off. Total immersion.

That set the stage. This was a house show but everything fit perfectly into what was happening. Darby vs Butcher, on paper, wasn't a main event in any arena in the world. It just wasn't. That doesn't meant it wasn't an appealing match. It doesn't mean that it wasn't going to be a good one, but by tying things to the battle royal and then by grounding everything in a bigger story, the match became bigger than it would have been otherwise. It felt important, like a hidden chapter that only these fans were going to get to see. 

we like Darby Allin around here. At this point in 2021, I was barely familiar with him even if the site overall was. He's younger. Five years for Darby is like dog years for most people. He's more grizzled now, more like the skeleton whose image he embodies. He was younger then, came off as more vulnerable in some ways. You could see the bruises on him even before the match. You just took them for granted in a way that looking back now maybe you don't. Butcher had mutton chops and a skullet, bald or mostly bald on top. 

He was, of course, a mass of humanity, a big dude. Like I said, we like Darby. I like Darby. He's very interesting against an opponent like Knight or Ospreay or MJF, maybe bigger or stronger, but not too much so. Then it becomes a game of chess, of pushing an opponent to keep up with Darby and seeing what happens when they try. You put him against someone like this, or Samoa Joe, or even Claudio or Mark Davis, and it's an entirely different story. It becomes David vs Goliath, except for David is a crash test dummy who uses his own body as the rock in his slingshot. It's absolutely primal stuff.

One of my favorite things about Darby is that he almost always comes in with a strategy. He defines the start of a match in a way that plausibly allows him to bridge gaps. Here, unsurprisingly but still shockingly, he threw himself feet first at Butcher. When Butcher stumbled to the floor, he followed with a head-first dive. There was a particular desperate viciousness to Darby as he slammed Butcher into the rail repeatedly. Then he used that self-same head to roll Butcher over for a pin. It was a great way to put over the size difference and how difficult everything was, but also how determined Darby was.

The transition came quickly and brutally as Matt Hardy asserted himself on the apron. Darby took him out but that left him open for Butcher to use HIS own body, launching Darby through the ropes and to the floor. He followed that up by getting some immediate revenge with the guardrails, and it was clear sailing from there. The Butcher was going to work.

There was a little twist to all of his offense. He didn't just hit a vertical suplex; he got Darby up there and tossed him. He didn't just hit a flapjack or gutbuster but instead combined the two. And he fell forward on the power bomb, driving Darby down. Meanwhile, he played with his food, pushing at Darby's head, chopping him in the ropes. This let Darby stay in the match, get some hope, start to fire back, only to get cut off by Butcher's alarming quickness and overwhelming power. 

At one point Darby got his feet up on a corner charge and created some distance, but Butcher was there with basically a sliding cross chop straight to the face. Another time, Darby went to the fingers to create an opening to throw strikes and hit shotgun dropkicks, but Butcher caught him, put him first in the Cloverleaf, and then, of course, power bombed him out of it. Butcher struck from odd angles with great ferocity and it created a hell of a mood.

The damage had been done though. Darby took every opportunity, snatching Butcher's hand and slamming it into the post on the outside. Butcher showed just enough vulnerability that Darby was able to turn that little wedge into a massive opportunity. Before, when Darby tried to use his speed, Butcher had been able to catch him and cut him off. Now, a half step slow, reeling from his ailing hand, Butcher couldn't keep up and Darby darted around him. Even when he did get his hands on Darby, Darby could go right back to the hand, like he did in cutting off a Superplex. There was a last attempt by the Hardy Family Office to interfere, but by that point the tide had turned, and Darby was able to string together a few big moves in order to put Butcher down. 

It was a sub-ten minute match, but very smart in how they worked it. Darby had his one burst at the start but then immediately got swept under. Butcher then stretched with his brutal, interesting offense, adding insult to injury between moves but also, in doing so, allowing Darby to get in little moments of hope. They worked in the damage to the hand as a wedge for Darby to push through to even footing and then had him overcome even Blade's interference to valiantly win the day. Post-match, they beat down upon Darby to build to the following match until the locker room emptied out to make the save.
  
So despite this being a house show, despite this not being televised, it gave the fans something unique that fit perfectly into at least one of the storylines happening on TV. It gave the illusion of progression while not leaving out anyone who couldn't see it which is exactly what you want from a house show and more than most house shows in history have been able to provide. 

And what made it work as much as anything else? Just how good Andy Williams was at committing completely into his role, at playing into his strengths, at making the most out of his moments on top and being open and willing and equally committed to being vulnerable when it was time for Darby to come back. He was able to help make eight minutes feel more satisfying than 15 and help send everyone home happy. Even despite his relative role on the card, he fit right into the broader story they were telling and served the moment, the match, and the company overall. You ask me, that's pretty great pro wrestling and this was a really enjoyable piece of business. While I wish it'd be a hundred more times instead, I'm glad that we got to see Williams ply his trade (and letting the Butcher ply his) at least one last time.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/7 - 9/13 Part 1

AEW Dynamite (Rebel Heart) 9/9/26

Darby Allin/Steven Borden vs Josh Alexander/Mark Davis

MD: Brief programming note to start. I thought I'd drop this on Monday regardless of what aired Saturday night and I'd just catch up on that later in the week if I needed to but then we were told that The House Always Wins was being released on Sunday and I sit here Sunday morning rushing this one out since I know I'll want to cover something off of that. I'm also only one match in to catching up on Collision (Mox vs Bailey: good! with some great moments. Probably went a minute or two too long and too cute with the counters at the end but I'd argue it was right for that night and that crowd regardless) and there's both a priest match and what sounds like an emotional Battle Royal, so I don't know. Plus we (we being Eric, Phil, and JR, and all of us watching it) have DEAN~!!! Summer School today. My gut says I'm dropping a review all at once so it may take a little bit, and I will have a special guest for that. Tuesdays With Daddy, 80s Joshi, and Found Footage Friday should all drop. We're working on getting back to 91 Puerto Rico as well but real life has gotten in the way. We'll get there. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Bear with me on this one. I'm rushing it out.

ANYWAY, I've been watching a lot of 1990 NJPW lately. ALL 1990 NJPW that we have actually. I know it's challenging to find but I would suggest it. In 1989, Inoki left for politics, Sakaguchi retired with him, the heir apparent Fujnami went down with a brutal injury. They were bolstered by the Soviets as an attraction and the rise of Hashimoto (and to a lesser degree Chono) and the creation of Liger, and Muto (and to a lesser degree Sasaki) would be returning. But they needed a great hope, and that great hope was Koji Kitao. He was an already controversial sumo figure, but like Wajima in AJPW a couple of years before, brought great attention with his arrival.

They had him train with Brad Rheingans and Masa Saito for basically a year (with just a handful of matches in AWA as preparation) and then debuted him big at a huge show, with Bigelow (who is excellent at this sort of thing) to carry the load. In the months that followed, he'd be close to the top teaming with Choshu and Saito against guys like Vader, Bigelow, Larry Cameron, and Punisher Dice Morgan (Undertaker). They dressed him in Hogan's colors. They gave him the legdrop. Often times, they let him take the brunt of the match, eating a beating and coming back big to try to get the crowd behind him. 

And it was a disaster. Showcased like he was, with strikes that really didn't hold up relative to his peers despite his size, the crowd turned on him. They started chanting for Vader and Bigelow in a way that hadn't happened at all over the last few years. Choshu or Saito would try to get the crowd back into it but it was a failed experiment which then got even worse (even as maybe he was starting to turn the corner a little) due to his terrible backstage attitude. He'd be gone by summer.

At the same time, on the first or second match of the card, Osamu Matsuda was toiling away, facing off against guys like Black Cat, Nogami, Hata, or Iizuka. He'd start to pick up wins as the year went on, getting better as he went. He had the luxury of a slow and gradual growth, followed by an excursion in UWA where he could develop the El Samurai character so that when he returned, he could make an impact. 

Two different paths. Two wildly different results. 

And here, in the middle, seems to be Steven Borden. Obvious he has the genes. He certainly has the look, evoking Brandon Lee in the Crow more than his father as the Crow, fitting in perfectly with Darby despite being his own thing. But he's come into wrestling very late in life. They've had him work dark matches and indies, so the preparation is there, but they're starting him on TV right in an upper mid-card tag. No Punisher Dice Morgan here though. Alexander and Davis are seasoned and know their jobs.

They also treated him like an attraction on the apron. He came in to start, working a couple of simple sequences against Davis and highlighting his vertical leap on a leapfrog. There was a moment early where, after a collision, he ran up and hit an armdrag and it seemed wonky. Most wrestlers don't do that in that way. People come to them for an armdrag. But it almost felt like playing chess against a layperson. If they're just figuring it out, they might do something out of the norm that you'd never expect and it'd caught you off guard. 

Then Darby came in and got chop blocked by behind by Alexander, crumbling legs under him in a way only he could. One senton later and they were right into a face-in-peril. As Davis and Alexander made quick tags as if they were competing on who could toss Darby through the mat the most, and as they decided to do it together by lawn darting him across the ring, Borden stood on the apron. I'll admit I only focused on him when the camera focused on him, but whenever the camera did, he was high energy, chomping at the bit to get in there. 

Alexander and Davis tried to take him out from the apron once or twice but he was resilient and made sure he was there for Darby when the tag came. Then something magical happened. His comeback was simple and straightforward. Basic moves done with high energy. The crowd, this special Athens Georgia crowd, channeled the spirit of Georgia crowds of old. You know all of that Omni footage that has been released the last few years, that absolute treasure trove from even the faltering days of Georgia Championship Wrestling? Every time a babyface made a punch or hit a move, there'd be this beauty burst of sound from the crowd. An "Oooooh." And without prompting, without warning, they were doing it here for Borden. The most advanced thing he did was running up the stairs on the outside to hit a jumping clothesline, but the fans were treating it all like something special. By being so straightforward and basic (and maybe by reminding them of his dad) he stood out in a sea of complex moves and counters.

They went into a back-and-forth finishing stretch. Darby tried a go behind on Alexander and to flip into a stunner, but he got caught and German Suplexed. When Alexander tried to catch Borden on a floatover, however, his long legs let him take over, trapping Alexander in Death Drop position for the tandem Coffin Drop finisher. 

As TV debuts went, this felt special. It was partially the time and the place, partially how Borden was protected and highlighted, and partially, quite frankly, because there;s something special about him. He's not going to be a Kitao. That's clear. He's also not going to have the slow and careful opportunities of a Matsuda, however. He's here on TV, learning as he goes, already in the deep end, maybe not on top, maybe not the great hope, but now it's up to the company to give him a lifeboat and it's up to him to paddle. 

I'm excited to see him try though (and I'll be all the more excited when we finally start to hear Sting's 1990 theme Turbo Charged while he's doing it).

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/31 - 9/6

AEW Dynamite 9/2/26

Darby Allin vs Mark Davis

MD: I was going to write about this anyway. The gimmick is that I write about all Darby Allin matches. I didn't come up with the gimmick. I inherited it. I don't always follow it. I thought Athena (second generation 5 Finger of Death) vs Isla Dawn was very good, with a unique dynamic given that Athena was a hometown hero, and I could write about that too, but I'm skipping that one. Maybe I could find something interesting to say about the New Level match (I'd really just want to talk about Nana's reactions to everything and how much they feed off one another). Maybe I could write about Priest vs Angels or the Mistico/Dorada tag from ROH (both were very good). Maybe I could write about Bucks vs Doyle/Cage (that wouldn't make anyone happy, trust me; I have thoughts there). 

But I was always going to write about this. Why? Because it was Darby vs a monster, because it had a really unique structure, covering two commercial breaks, because I skipped the Knight match to write about Mercedes vs Willow instead. Lots of reasons that I'll get to soon. 

But it also evoked two of my favorite Darby matches ever, the 2022 and 2024 Rampage matches against the Butcher. Darby's great against guys his size, against guys where he can push them instead of being pushed by them. He has one of the best Ospreay AEW matches. His title run earlier this year was full of interesting stuff. But obviously I want to see him against monsters.

And Butcher was a monster, no matter how much of a sweetheart he apparently (forget that; obviously, we've seen the receipts in the last day) was in real life. He was so good at portraying a brick wall, a mountain to be climbed, the guy you would not want to meet in a dark alley and that you definitely didn't want to meet in a light alley, because then you could actually see him. He looked the part. He acted the part. He defined the part. 

I covered the 22 match here and the 24 match here. The world is a less interesting and vibrant place with Andy Williams no longer in it.

So I was going to cover the match anyway, but I feel like I especially have to now, because it evoked those two matches for me, Darby up against a hulking behemoth, a heavyweight's heavyweight, just trying to survive.

No names named, as they'll never see it anyway, but a superheavyweight who was big on the indie scene in the 00s complained about the match's structure, about the finish (spoilers I suppose, but after taking so, so much punishment in the match, Darby hits one last dive from the top to the floor, they both beat the count, and Darby hits two opportunistic coffin drops to win). And on the one hand, it's endearing. There's this Sid shoot interview where he spends half of it complaining about doing jobs to Benoit and how small guys were great, sure, but they should never beat big guys, and it's endearing. I get it. You're a superheavyweight. You have to protect the natural order of the universe.

But it's not about order. It's not about logic. It's not about what would really happen. It's about what people are willing to believe in. And belief comes through repetition, through what they see with their own two eyes, and through careful execution of a plan.

This was a tough match. It had to carry two commercial breaks on a show coming off of All In, after the New Level's TV debut in a hot match, after you had all of the big iconic tag teams talking. Two commercial breaks in 2026 is never an easy thing. Davis is naturally impressive, a big dude with tons of intensity, and he had Callis with him to bring a little more heat, plus he had a surprise title win earlier in the year, but I don't think anyone thought the outcome was really in doubt. The post-match also had to set up Steven Borden's debut the following week. Lots of weight, lots of parts. 

And they were very smart about it. It's a match that maybe went sixteen minutes, not counting the post match. They got right to it with the great visual of Davis knocking Darby off the skateboard on the way down. Then the first six minutes, through an early commercial break were all outside the ring before the bell even rang. It's a trick they can't get away with every week, but that they can do once in a while. You do it too much, it raises too many questions. Here, it worked. 

It worked, in part, because Davis made it work, creating a totally chaotic, but still engaged and interactive feel. He tossed Darby over the announce desk. he hit giant swings back and forth into the rail. He put a chair over him and stepped on it. That was the other side of it. He was posing. He was making faces. He was rushing towards the crowd. He wasn't just hitting spots but he was relishing in them and that gave the crowd not just the violence to bounce off of but the character too.
 
He went for a power bomb and Darby fought out of it. That was the other side of the equation. Darby takes so much damage, but he never gives up, never quits, always fights back. That's why the fans believe in him. He looks like skin and bones and sinew and just enough muscle, but he's tough as an overcooked steak. He's a walking skeleton and you just can't kill him with conventional means. As long as he's consistent, as long he keeps driving forward, the fans believe.

They came back from the first commercial break with him hitting a dive off a balcony, because of course they did, and then things finally moved towards the ring so the bell could sound. Davis would quickly take back over. All it took was one cutoff punch or lariat out of nowhere. Most believable thing in the world given his size and intensity. 

There was a great image of Darby using the tag rope to pull himself off that paid off with a hope spot later, as he was able to tie Davis' hand to it. Davis, once again, cut him off, however. That took them through a second commercial break, with Darby on the floor getting stomped by Callis, with hope spots and cutoffs and power moves. 

Back from break, they went into the stretch, picking up the pace. Darby ducked an enziguiri but got lawn darted into the sky as he went for his first attempt at the code red. He hit the second one and it was beautifully ugly, hitting from all the wrong angles. With both men down, they tried to hype the rest of the show and the upcoming Collision. That was a mistake for just as they were talking about the second match, Darby was throwing himself to the floor at Davis like a missile. That set up the finish, noted above, and from there stemmed the post-match angle with RPG Vice coming down and Borden making the save, losing his shirt, ending up on TikTok, and hitting a huge dropkick. 

And I get that wrestler's complaint, I do. But Darby is the exception. His gimmick is that he's a ragdoll skeleton guy who can take damage, who needs to be bounced around and bouncing around to feel alive. So long as he never stops fighting, so long as he always keeps crawling towards the light, consistency over time will bridge the gap between monster and man. The fans see him really, truly, honestly crash and burn again and again and again, and he still gets up and struggles through his signature moves. And if he's able to capitalize on a moment of opportunity and get a banana peel win on a giant (by hitting his finisher twice in a row! We believe in finishers too so long as they're protected and treated as important, no matter what they are), well, this crowd 100% bought into it. 

Pro wrestling is not about making things seem true for the sake of fooling people, not anymore, maybe not ever. It's about giving people enough rope so that they climb past their own suspension of disbelief so that they can let go and buy into what they're seeing as fiction worth believing in for a few minutes, putting their worries about life aside. Through his look and his work and his portrayed personality, the Butcher was great that. Mark Davis is too. And Darby's as good as anyone going. 

And if that's not the point in 2026, I don't know what is.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/24 - 8/30

All In 2026 8/30/26

Willow Nightingale vs Mercedes Mone

If you live by stories, you die by them too.

Willow Nightingale chose to live by them and she ended up dying by them in the end.

Mercedes Mone entered the ring preceded by a ballet performance, then attended to by those self-same ballerinas. The message was clear. She deserved art. She was heralded by art. Art respected her. Art served her. She was art. A transcendent pinnacle.

Willow, on the other hand, was preceded by a storybook narration, with images highlighting her unlikely ascent as a brave knight, her fantastic triumph, and how she would never, ever stop smiling.

Willow Nightingale lost to Mercedes Mone. That was not how the story was supposed to end. Yet as the match careened towards its finish, its unfortunate inevitability revealed itself. When? It was the moment where a line was crossed, the moment when the story ended even before the match did.

How did Willow Nightingale lose to Mercedes Mone?

Was it because Willow entered injured? That would be the most logical reason, no? Even though she bedazzled her cast, she came in at a disadvantage. That made it hard for her to do things as simple as whipping Mercedes across the ring or as difficult as climbing the ropes for a moonsault. It gave Mercedes a wedge to take back over at any point in the match and it let her drive a dagger through that wedge to split Willow asunder and tear apart both the cast and her hand late in the match. Yet Willow still had her strength, still had her resolve, still had her savvy and her bravery and she was able to fight through that pain and disadvantage again and again.

Was it because Mercedes Mone wanted it more? Because she was more dangerous? Because she was the better wrestler? Mercedes knew Willow’s moves, knew her tricks. Early on, Mercedes broke her nose and she spent the entire match with blood splattered across her visage (a visual that enhanced every single thing within this match turning even practiced sequences into gripping moments of unpredictable drama), but she obsessively fought on. She had answers for Willow’s biggest weapons, hand or no, strength or no. But then Willow knew Mercedes too, had defeated her before, was the defending champion, wanted it every bit as much, maybe even too much.

Was it because Mercedes was a dirty cheater? Towards the start of the match, the corner turnbuckle pad inadvertently came sailing off as Mercedes tried to block a strength move by Willow. Twice, Mercedes was able to get an edge by running Willow’s head into the corner, and once it even allowed her to hit her finisher. Later on, on the floor, Mercedes tried to wield the belt against Willow, but Willow is not one to back down and let bad people do bad things. She knew exactly who and what Mercedes was. She was able to wrest it from Mercedes and turn it back upon her. In that moment, it was justice. In that moment it was warranted. She met that moment with a smile.

Was it because Aubrey Edwards was knocked down? The referee was knocked prone. Willow hit the Babe With the Power Bomb. She had a visual pin closer to ten seconds than to three. She should have won. She hit her best shot. Mercedes survived. It wasn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. The trick then is to smile anyway, right? So long as she did that, she’d win in the end. So while this and everything that preceded it led to her loss, none of them caused it. Because up until this point, it was still her story.

It was none of those things.

It was what happened next in the face of all of them.

Mercedes had survived her best shot. Willow looked up, momentarily at a loss. She was not smiling. Her cast had been mangled. Her hand hurt. For just a moment. even her monumental spirit faltered; for brave knight or not, she’s human like the rest of us. If she wasn’t, we wouldn’t care nearly as much. We see ourselves in her, the best of us and the rest of us as well.

Looking around the ring, Willow tried to figure out what to do next. She pointed to the corner, to the exposed turnbuckle. She rose with resolve. She slammed Mercedes into it without mercy or hesitation. She doomed herself in the process.

Willow Nightingale lost because in a moment of doubt and confusing, she transgressed. Willow broke a rule. Willow faced the consequences, for in stories, everything has a price.

Yes, Mercedes had used the exposed turnbuckle on her twice, and to high effect. Yes, Willow had used the belt on Mercedes. But when she used the belt, it was after stopping Mercedes from attacking her with it. It was justice. Here? Now? This? Mercedes was helpless, prone. It wasn’t justice. It was desperation at worst and revenge at best. A wrestler can do that, even a babyface, but not a storybook knight. 

That was the moment this stopped being a story and became a match once again. Her armor, just like her cast, was torn asunder, but unlike the cast, this was her own doing. 

She tried to escalate matters, to hit another power bomb, this time from the top rope, but Mercedes was still all of those things that she had always been, the best at what she did. Now, with Willow no longer protected by fate, Mercedes took her over with an avalanche ‘rana and let that momentum carry her to a cruel, unyielding victory, all the way to adding insult to injury by pressing her foot into the damaged hand after the ref’s call. 

Willow Nightingale is a knight. Maybe even more than that, she is a superhero. And her superpower is perspective. She finds the positivity in life. She uses that positivity to carry her forward and to take all of us along with her. She makes us better. But she’s human like the rest of us. Just like Mercedes, if you break her nose, she will bleed. 

People aren’t going to like this, just as I don’t like writing it, but Willow Nightingale lost this match because just for a moment, she lost her smile. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. You can be mad at me for saying it. We’re not supposed to like it. 

But it is supposed to make us feel something. I felt something while watching this match. I feel something writing this now. I hope you feel something reading it. 

The thing is… I know something else too.

The joy and frustration of pro wrestling is that it is a story that never ends. And even if for all the reasons above, Willow faltered on this night, she has given us every reason to believe in her, not to believe that she is infallible, but to believe that given time, given a moment to shake of the dust, she will find her smile once again. She will cling to it, she will rise up, and she will take everyone she can with her. 

The story of her reign ended, but the story of Willow Nightingale has not. She may have not been able to write the ending at All In, but the next chapter is wide open and I know that you believe just as much as I do that we’ll all be smiling when she comes back to write it, all of us except for maybe Mercedes Mone.

----------------

Jon Moxley vs Nigel McGuinness 

(1) Jon Moxley understands the power of time and place. He lost last year to Adam Page in Texas, a cowboy bringing down the man with the black hat in front of another stadium crowd. This was England. This was Nigel McGuinness' dream.

Moxley has spent the better part of a year pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, most of all himself. He presents himself as the warrior prophet, the shepherd of violence and battle and righteous combat. If you look at his actions, however, you find someone who does not practice what he preaches. But he (a champion) wins, and so long as he wins, it doesn't matter in the end. What Moxley truly practices is that might equals right, the same damn thing he practiced at the height of his reign of terror.

Usually, he'll wrestle even to start, get down on the mat, make a show of it. It's only when it gets hard or inconvenient that he'll turn the screw and show his true colors.

Not here. Not against a Nigel McGuinness in this stadium, in front of this crowd, on this unlikely path, with this apparent destiny.

(2) Against Nigel, he didn't even pretend. At the first opportunity, the first chance to break in the ropes, he went in on the ankle.

Nigel had hurt it against Shibata utilizing an all-too-clever block of a Penalty Kick with his own leg. It helped win him the match but at high cost. How high? He had to drop out of his match against Moriarty at the ROH PPV. He almost didn't carry on in the Cup.

Nigel has seen it all and done it all as well. He's world weary. He's known great highs and even greater lows. He understands how the world works, just like Moxley does.

When Hechicero tried to attack his ankle, he went straight to the mask. He's an expert, a practitioner, a technician, a commentator, Staff, but if you cross a line, he'll cross it twice as quickly and twice as cruelly.

So against Mox, he did just that. He went after the nose, the face, the eyes. Every time that Moxley went for the ankle, he came back twice as vicious and desperate and mean. If Mox was going to fight dirty, he'd make him pay.

(3) That changed the tenor of the match. Mox, the leader of the Death Riders, a man constantly looking back over his shoulder, a man who can only look into the eyes of his own reflection for so long, was already paranoid of Nigel, paranoid of what his destiny might be. Instead of having a match wholly focused around working the ankle, they went other places instead, Mox too hesitant to unleash whatever create grown from years of desperation and despair might still lurk within McGuinness.

It became a game of counters then. Nigel tried for the London Dungeon but Mox was ready of it. Mox went for the charging corner clotheslines, but Nigel caught him and hoisted him up with an uppercut for the Tower of London. Nigel tried for the Les Kellett lariat, but Mox was ready for a cutter. Mox tried one of his own and Nigel was ready with a Lariat. Mox was lock in the LeBell Lock, but there Nigel was to reverse it into one of his own.

(4) Still, when the opportunity arose, when things got desperate, when he realized he couldn't win through conventional means, Mox, his true colors already revealed, had no choice but to roll the dice. He had been able to get the bulldog choke on, but Nigel escaped through pluck, determination, and an  understanding of human anatomy, driving his own chin into the nerve in Moxley's arm.

The ankle, then. Moxley stomped down on the ankle, went for ankle locks. Nigel fired back with everything he had, even locking in the London Dungeon, but at the end of the day, while both men were desperate, only one was healthy. Moxley had found bravery within his own cowardice as he honed in on the ankle.

Both men were not just desperate; they were also clever. Moxley realized that he was about to lose the lock, that Nigel was about to make it to the ropes, so he let go and spun him, keeping the advantage and setting him up for a stomp to the skull. From there, it was one last scissored ankle lock. Nigel stretched valiantly, but was forced to quit. This time, destiny was averted, and Moxley wrestled his way through it all yet again.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/17 - 8/23

ROH Death Before Dishonor 8/21/26

Daniel Garcia vs Adam Priest

MD: Throughout the history of pro wrestling criticism, there has always been a premium on what was done: what (hot) moves, what spots, what popped the crowd, hot finishing stretches with a lot of kickouts. And of course, the execution of those things. Did things hit clean? Were there botches? More often than not, it wasn’t about the impact those things had on the crowd, but instead a sort of “Russian Judge” approach like the reviewer was scoring Olympics Gymnastics. How much action did the match contain? How well did the wrestlers hit their floor routine? And maybe, just maybe, how much innovation/variation existed in that action? 

Rarely, if ever, was the actual narrative of the match discussed. How that action fit into an overall story was considered almost beyond the point and even sometimes something that got in the way. I’ve seen reviews that mentioned either the overarching story being told by the wrestlers or specific character beats and flourishes in their reactions as things that got in the way of the match, as opposed to being the heart of the match itself. In the eyes of these reviewers, they disrupted the possibilities for action within the match.

I’m not sure what drove this approach, whether it was a need to feel superior, a need to cope with inferiority complexes about wrestling, resentment towards wrestlers who leaned harder on story or character beats over action as if they were somehow lazier for doing so, or just personal preference, but it would be looking at a movie review and having them focus only on the special effects and stuntwork (or maybe just the cinematography if we’re being kind) instead of the writing, acting, or overall direction, let alone things like the art design or sound.

That is to say that you could watch this match and focus just on the action and big spots. In this match, it’d be Garcia shrugging Priest off the top when he went for a superplex, and Priest’s stalling superplex later. It would be the gimmicky figure-four leglock that went out of the ring and rolled up the ramp. It’d maybe be Priest’s pile driver. Or maybe you could hyper fixate on some of the technique, the scrambling early, some of the trading of holds down the stretch, some of the false finishes like the stretch where Garcia put his foot on Priest’s head or when Priest got the half crab on. And maybe you’d call it an ok match that couldn’t compare to the spotfests on the rest of the card.

But if you did this, you’d miss so much of what made this match stand out as special.

I care about that story. I care, maybe even more so, about the characters at play. Moves are great, but we’ve seen them all. Bumps. Spots. Sequences. Reversals. When something somehow manages to be innovative in 2026, it stands out because everything’s been done, but then it’s over and copied six times. It’s ephemeral. What’s timeless is the human aspect of pro wrestling. Who are these characters? What makes them interesting? How do we related to them? How does their character shape their actions and reactions? How do they interact with one another and the crowd?

Let’s map our way through this one a little. Work with me here a bit because I truly do believe this is a different way of tracking a pro wrestling match.

First, the setting. This is a ROH PPV, where they have time to breathe. No commercial breaks. No real time constraints. It’s in the midst of a very broad card with a tag team spotfest and a bomb-throwing title match, and two Pure Rules matches, and a Fight without Honor. It’s for an opportunity, an opportunity that neither man had, to enter the Continental Cup tournament in the Quarterfinals, face Claudio Castagnoli, and potentially go to Wembley. In both cases, it might be the only possible chance they’d have to get on the biggest card of the year. For Garcia, it’s a chance to prove himself against his fellow Death Riders, to show he belongs, to show he can hang, that he’s not just the most junior member. For Priest, it’s the best opportunity he’s had in his entire AEW/ROH TV run. Clear motivation driving both of them.

There is a way to watch wrestling where you focus on their creative emotional choices, their faces, their body language. Priest came down to the ring slapping hands. He shook Bryce’s hand. He shook Bobby Cruise’s hand. He moved with purpose, intensity, but played up the southern gentleman motif as well. Garcia was doing push ups with Marina, huddled with her, slunk down the ring with that chip on his shoulder, an undertone of mouthy petulance. The Code of Honor handshake is a wonderful way to immediately establish character and tone. Do they shake? Do they look their opponent in the eye? It sets the stage for the match. Here, the shake was clean, quick, brisk. It opened the door for the possibility of a clean Continental wrestling match, something which Mox always preached but never truly practiced. 

Of course, there is a third character at play in any wrestling match, the crowd. They began to chant for Priest. That’s something he’s still getting used to given that he menaces the indies, up and down, as one of the more hated men in America. On ROH TV, though, in front of this Philly crowd, he was the favorite, and he basked in it, hyping them up, maybe even pointing it out to Garcia. That poisoned already murky waters. They scrambled on the mat (the first lock up being another way to set the tone). Priest went for a snap suplex but couldn’t get it. Too close to the ropes. He maybe took a few seconds too long to break it and Garcia, boiling over already, maybe frustrated by the crowd, maybe frustrated by life itself and his lot in it, shoved Priest back angrily. 

Priest followed with a headlock. Garcia shrugged him off and ran through him, basking in the tiny triumph, the first in the match. They went running again and Garcia stopped before a Priest leapfrog and piefaced him with one hand. He continued to get in Priest’s face, shoving him back, taking up his air, asserting himself. So what did Priest do? He shrugged and kicked Garcia in the shin. Action. Reaction. Character.

The match was maybe two minutes in but the lines were clearly defined and compelling. Active, engaged characters acting with motivation and drive, reacting to one another and the crowd. This is what gives all of those spots and moves and innovation meaning and purpose. It underpins it all and makes it resonate. They were showing us exactly who they were and what made them interesting and worth caring about. They care so we care. 

From here, Garcia responded with aggravation, having an answer to every Priest shot. He overstretched though, wanting it too badly, already gotten to a bit, and found himself with his foot caught in the corner. That let Priest start to wear it down. The crowd went up for Priest again and that distracted him, allowing Garcia to fire back. Priest went low with a chop block to cut him off. 

Just like Priest was caught up with the crowd’s reaction, he was a bit ahead of himself overall. He went for the half crab too early then went for a superplex too early. Garcia shrugged him off to the mat, forcing his leg to jam on the way down. Now both men had damaged legs which would inform the rest of the match. Priest moved right in to reassert the advantage, but Garcia caught him in the ropes and dragon screwed the leg from the outside in. He then hopped to the floor to celebrate his small victory, jawing with the fans and getting right in their faces. Was it the smartest tactical move? No. Was it absolutely what Daniel Garcia would have done and part of what makes him so engaging? Absolutely. 

You can trace these trends through the rest of the match. Priest used the crowd to help him fire back up, refusing to quit or back down, Garcia resorting to a cheap throat shot to cut him off. Garcia got distracted mocking the crowd during his ten-count corner punch and Priest was able to take advantage of the space. Priest hit a series of nasty dragon screw leg whips which Garcia sold in a unique stalling way, but Adam got caught up as the crowd wanted just one more and that allowed Garcia to lock in a sleeper. Their mistakes are human mistakes. Their resilience is a very human resilience. The balance between the two is where the human interest in the match resides and the human interest is far better than any series of complex choreographed spots that exist for its own sake and to pop a crowd.

At one point, they found themselves at an impasse, each having grabbed the other’s leg, two men intertwined through fate and determination. That was even more true during that figure-four which rolled up the ramp. Part of it was spurred on by the shared legwork throughout the match, sure, but so much of it was sheer stubbornness, with neither wanting to be the first to find a way out, neither wanting to be the first to blink, to let the other see him blink, to let the crowd and the world see him blink.

Priest was infinitely resourceful. When Garcia (leaning hard into his Death Riders rearing) managed to beat him down, he always had one last trick to use. He’s not big to begin with. He’s used to fighting from underneath and he did so literally, tossing a knife-edged chop into Danny’s knee so he could hit the pile driver. Garcia survived it though, managed one last trip using a dropdown (the oldest trick in the book but one that almost never works, fitting that it did here), and locked in the Dragontamer for the win. Post-match, he limped through the crowd from whence he came, while Priest convalesced in pain and disappointment.

It was a hell of a match but it was a hell of a match as much (more so if you ask me, far moer so) for who they were and how they presented themselves as for any specific thing that they did. There’s not really been a critical tradition of us examining that in pro wrestling. If anything it’s been lumped into the category of “charisma,” but charisma, to me, is much more about a certain sort of over the top dynamism, and really, in a lot of ways, goes back to popping crowds instead of serving narratives. 

A narrative was served here, driven by character, by actions and reactions, and the prideful, tempestuous, driven, and all too human souls underneath. That’s what makes this one of the best AEW/ROH matches of the year and a quiet triumph. Interesting people doing interesting things in interesting ways to interesting effect. Motivation, character, consequence, where the action serves and is shaped by the narrative instead of forcing it, kicking and screaming, to drag breathlessly behind. That’s the ideal and they absolutely nailed it here. 

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