AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/14 - 7/20 + Bonus All In

MD: On the run this week so I'll have to double back for Shibata vs Rush later.

AEW Dynamite 7/16/25

Kyle Fletcher vs Mascara Dorada

MD: Pretty much everything I want out of a TV match here, given hierarchy, styles, moment in time, purpose. This is the sort of match you drop hours before the show to get everyone talking. It was a rebound for Fletcher after All In. It was a spotlight for Dorada (because while we know how great he is, it's good to give less familiar fans contrast between him and Komander or the CMLL guys). It kicked off the show after Hangman's promo and set the tone for the night. 

They set the tone for the match immediately, with Fletcher rushing in with a big boot and stomping away to a wonderful round of boos. The lack of a feeling out period to start was important because the next few minutes would be all Dorada, all shine, all Fletcher basing. It was a showcase with him hitting some spectacular stuff and Fletcher stooging and stumbling around the ring as he took it. When he tried to get one up on Dorada, he'd end up stumbling through the ropes instead. Selfless stuff. 

Fletcher was going to take the middle, was going to take the win, and had that initial flurry in the corner, so it gave him space to let Dorada soar here (and during his equally spectacular comeback. You had Tony and Taz on the call noting they may have never seen the unique springboard Dorada did early or the twisting 'rana he did off the top during his comeback.

What really made it sing was the heat though. The shine ended as Fletcher, bigger, stronger, resilient, caught him off a dive and hit a twisting slam. He then slowed things down to his own pace, slamming, grinding, denying. The fans had gotten a taste of just what Dorada could do. Frankly, they know what Fletcher can do as well, not just in basing. But he was going to sit there and stare out at them, would draw their chant, would play to it when it came. He built up the pressure by controlling the pace, and that, far more than rapid fire action, is what wrestling can do like nothing else.

It meant when Dorada came back, the fans were wild for it. And it meant that when they went into the stretch hitting the counters that the crowd had wanted all match, each and every one resonated and mattered. They made them matter too, pausing after each one, letting the action sink in. They twisted and contorted and played with expectations but after the fact, they reacted and showed how it mattered. When Fletcher finally put Dorada down, he came off as skilled and underhanded, as if he accomplished something meaningful himself, but also tremendously lucky. Dorada looked better in defeat. Fletcher looked vulnerable in victory. But he won nonetheless and he'll take that momentum into whatever he does next. Just good, quality TV wrestling. 

Jon Moxley, Hangman Page, and the Miracle in Arlington

It's hard to even document the number of things the match had going against it. A stadium show in 2025. A crowd that had sat through 7 hours of wrestling including some of the most amazing spots one could imagine. A match full of blood and guts and interference. Two huge anticipated returns. Catharsis and redemption. 

I've watched these crowds for four years now. I witnessed Ospreay vs Danielson where a crowd all but overdosed on its own elation, ignoring each and every plot point in the name of mindless chanting. 

This was the culmination of nine months of story, of a belt and a company and main event scene held hostage, of over two years of story, of a hero who lost his way, of two tales that came together to become greater than the sum of the whole.

And the fans were invested. They wanted this. They needed this. Maybe this wasn't where the story had first seemed headed but it was where they wanted it to end.

It's a testament to the wrestlers and the creative force behind them that the fans were invested in the destination, that they cared about the outcome.

That's not what made this a miracle though.

The miracle is that despite all the factors the match had against it, the fans were there for every moment of the journey.

In a situation like this, that's incredibly rare. This was a crowd that you'd expect to chant for themselves, to chant for the match, to chant for the moment, chant for the company. This is a crowd that you'd expect to shout "This is Awesome" or "AEW" before the match, at the first sign of blood, as Danielson hit the knee, as Darby rappelled down from the ceiling, at glass and nails and barbed wire. 

I don't remember hearing the chant once. 

This is a crowd that should have been staring to the back the whole way, like an Attitude Era crowd, like a crowd in a modern story driven WWE match where all that matters is the destination. 

They knew interference was coming. They knew that the mid-match Death Rider onto a chair probably wasn't going to end it. They knew that they were going to eat well, be rife with sensation. 

Yet they were there for every second. Right at the start of the match, Hangman had Mox down in the corner and stomped away and they were there cheering. Later on, Mox gained an advantage and stood on the second rope to survey his kingdom and they were there booing. 

When everything is awesome, nothing can be truly awesome. Here, because nothing was awesome, everything somehow became so. 

The crowd cared about every punch and stomp, every weapon, every interloper.

Some of that was the patience of sticking with the story. Some of that was the infamy of how Moxley started it all in murder and betrayal. Some of it was Hangman being the heart and soul of AEW.

So much was the layout of the match itself, the way things breathed and mattered, Hangman's performance, struggling to his feet and swinging for the fences, Moxley reveling in his own violent urges, roiling with fury each and every time he was foiled.

It was how all of the interference was set up to be taken out by the calvary of babyfaces. Perfect symmetry. It was how they arrived without music or fanfare (save for one video from the top of the world). It was how everything came back to Mox and Page at the end. 

And yeah, it was on this crowd that let pro wrestling, real, true pro wrestling, into its heart on this night, that let themselves be part of a miracle.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/7 - 7/13

AEW All In 7/12/25

Dustin Rhodes vs Sammy Guevara vs Kyle Fletcher vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Look, at the end of the day, we don't know what we don't know. I'd love to get into the booking here. I'd love to try to make sense of this situation and I will to a degree, but there's a lot we don't know, some of which may become more apparent over the next few weeks as they decide what to do next with the TNT title. Here's what we do know.

Adam Cole is beloved...

Not a hard one here. He comes off like the nicest guy in the world. His peers drop the masks (sometimes literal) and speak incredibly highly of him. I have my opinions of how that has and hasn't connected into his ringwork and if you're reading this, you probably know what they are, but even those have never come from a point of wanting anything other than for the guy to succeed. He's been through some really tough injuries and made a couple of valiant comebacks and I hope he gets to come back and prove me wrong about my criticisms. Nothing would make me happier. 

When the news was first announced, I noted that I wanted them to just do a forfeit; yes, even on a stadium show, because that would have gotten so, so much heat for Fletcher and because enough babyfaces were probably winning at the top of the card (I had thought Omega might be going over Okada at that point but half figured Mercedes was going to beat Toni so it was a wash). I get the sense TK really doesn't ever want to underdeliver on something he promoted but sometimes there's more longterm value in trying to get the heat on the heel and not the booker (and Callis is better than that at most) and it would have set up a Fletcher reign perfectly. You still could have done the Cole theme (which is what the fans wanted the most here) and the speech. Which leads to this:

It was Fletcher's moment...

It's no big surprise that I'm incredibly high on Fletcher. You always saw little sparks during commercial breaks but at some point he went from being Ospreay's young boy clone to the most surprising heel in wrestling. For me, it was right at the start of the C2 and the Benjamin match where he rode the wave of the crowd and helped get Shelton over as a mega-face on that night. You can go back to the Komander match that slightly preceded it though. 

Regardless, he's showing amazing instincts in getting underneath the crowd's skin, in taking his time, in living in the moment, and in adapting on the fly. If wrestling is a form of interactive theater, and if we've gotten into a world with far too many pre-planned spots, sequences, and counters, he's the panacea to that illness, the future of pro wrestling, because he is so able to (whether he knows it or not) pull from the heatseeking tradition of the past.

If the TNT title is a de facto TV title, with open challenges and defended on TV, he's perfect to run out the time limit and survive by the skin of his teeth week after week. No one thought Cole was winning. This was one of the only singles matches on the whole show that wasn't a main event and it was because it was Fletcher's time, his mid-card title coronation. 

But when you make a substitution, you put a babyface over.

Is that a Paul Boesch rule? I think it might be. Regardless, it's generally a pretty good one. It's an even better one in a world where you didn't want to burn a town. From what I hear, the biggest problem with All In for those there was the length of the show (lengthened to assault SNME in retribution or not) and maybe that's something to tackle somehow next year.

As it was, if you were going to do the speech, then yes, it did make some sense to put Dustin over. I do think the fans were down during the match, bummed out by the severity of Cole's words. The concussion rumors came out later but it sounded even more dire than that in the moment. It's a little hard to tell given how the stadium was mic'd though. Given the build of Garcia's ten count punches, for instance, I refuse to believe the fans weren't counting along even if we couldn't hear it on PPV. 

And we love Dustin. Of course I'm glad Dustin went over. I have no idea how banged up he might be. Excalibur mentioned his shoulder and knees (a couple of times). He wrestled three times in two days and the Infantry match was pretty good. They do really deserve the ROH belts sometime soon for how far they've come but I get not doing it in Texas. I will say that the pre-show match was a little rough in general and leave it at that.

But yes, I'm glad Dustin went over and got his moment. I'm glad he's got a new contract. I'm glad that he can still go at such a high level, even if I do think he shies away a bit from his comparative advantage (strikes, selling) in a moment where heels exactly like Fletcher need babyfaces who know how to maximize their value. At one point before Bandido beat Jericho I had wanted him to win the ROH title here so he'd finally have that World Title, but in some ways, him finally getting the TNT title was a better journey. And that leads us to..

The Match Itself

They were still announcing Cole vs Fletcher until the night of the show (and my initial want for THAT was Fletcher to stall, Cole to finally get his hands on him, to go for the Sunrise too soon, and for Fletcher to pull his head up to crotch him and get a quick roll up and run to the back with the belt; sometimes you want to make people feel things). Plus Dustin, even the pro that he is, and Sammy had two other matches in a 24 hour period. 

With that in mind, this came together quite well really. Some of that was having Garcia and Fletcher as your anchors. Garcia brings so much to the table in a situation like this. He can fit into technical matches, spotfests, brawls, sprints. He can go full-on babyface or have an aggressive chip on his shoulder. He's been around AEW so long that he has history with almost everyone. In this case, it was with Sammy, who had given him the long leather pants at one point and was involved with the genesis of the dance. So they got to have a few moments in there working together before they came to blows.

And Fletcher was the straw that stirred the drink, the catalyst who everyone would work against, who would take opportunistic advantages, who would pull Garcia out of the ring when he had the Dragontamer on, who got to eat big crow by having all three of his opponents hit him with the Unnatural Kick in the most crowd pleasing spot of the match.

It was a spot that got him out of the way for a while as well. They did a pretty good job of that, including with a Sammy dive or two. The only spot that came off as entirely contrived to me was the dual figure-fours. Again, the last thing I want to see in a four-way match is a "waterfall" spot of people doing things they wouldn't normally do (it's ok if they do things that they WOULD do). Which is unfortunate because it's in almost every one. Garcia is a guy will use multiple submissions, and Fletcher got to make a scene over it, so ultimately it was plausible and it led to a great payoff after it got reversed. Fletcher seemed to want to reach for Garcia's hand and they almost had a moment before coming to their senses and pummeling each other. So here the cost, not too high in the first place, was worth the moment I suppose. I think Garcia's superplexes spot is a big mistake on multiple levels and that he'd accomplish more standing out with something like a heart punch that could be made to be over with the crowd despite not being nearly as flashy/damaging, but that's not something to litigate now.

I'm not going to say Sammy isn't a useful guy in these things in bringing action, movement, and sensation. I think in some ways he's gotten lapped by, let's say, Kevin Knight who was taking all sorts of gnarly bumps in the tag match that followed this. He hits clean and does what he's supposed to when he's supposed to do it, but I never quite find the soul in what he's hitting. You bought the animosity between him and Dustin towards the end after the miscommunication superkick, but just because you buy something doesn't mean it's entirely compelling (plausibility is a starting point, not the end point). 

All in all, though, it was an accomplishment that this was as solid as it was. Maybe it felt more like it belonged on Collision than in a stadium but it was more or less a cold match that came after a chilling speech. They got the crowd back a match or two later and this was there to stop the bleeding, make sure no one felt let down by something they were expecting, and to give Dustin the big homestate celebratory moment. 

Given the circumstances (and again, I bet I only know half of them, but what I do know is still daunting), it's a credit to the wrestlers involved that it came together as well as it did. I know that sometimes plans change and they never quite course correct. I still think that Fletcher could be an amazing TV champ, and I think that he could have a generational rivalry (think Cena vs Orton) against Garcia, but time will tell where everything falls now. On this night, given the situation they were facing, one that no one would have wanted them to face, I think they did the very best they could.

ROH Supercard of Honor 7/11/25

Athena vs Thunder Rosa

MD: Here's another one where it's best to just focus on the text. There was an intellectual challenge here. I remember watching Athena beat Mercedes Martinez for the title in Texas a couple of years ago. She had just started the heel run and she was gaining a ton of traction and momentum with Martinez presented as the babyface as the situation but the match itself was a bit of a muddle because the local fans really wanted to root for Athena.

So even though Rosa was a clear babyface coming into this one, they knew they'd have a problem and I think they set up the match accordingly. In this case, it was by having dueling bodypart work. Athena (who has plenty of varied and interesting offense) went after the back early, and Rosa sold for much of the match helping to create openings for Athena. Athena eventually ended up with a bum arm and that served as an equalizer. The sum of these two allowed for momentum shifts that weren't necessarily based on heel/face dynamics so the crowd was allowed to chant for both of them.

Then, late match, things took a pivot with Athena trying to escape up the ramp and Billie getting involved (though she got tossed into the stairs and she, herself, was able to sell her abdomen, even into the post match interview). So in order to land the plane they had Athena hit the big bomb through a table on the ramp onto Rosa and lean full heel. After that point, they got out of it pretty quickly, with Athena doing a great job listing to one side as she (still impressively) hefted Rosa up for the top rope bomb. 

I think if they had tried a more conventional heel vs face match for 10+ minutes, the crowd would have been much more of a problem. By leaning on the bodypart selling and introducing the notion of alignment only at the end, they still allowed for a satisfying finishing stretch but without the match collapsing in on itself before that and with Athena not losing any momentum heading into All In itself. 

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/19 - 8/25 Part 4

AEW All In 8/25/24

Darby Allin vs Jack Perry (Coffin Match)

MD: I've noted this before but one thing I like about Darby being part of the 5 is that he ends up in more matches which, on paper, I don't necessarily want to see and that I almost certainly don't want to write about. This broadens my horizons a bit. It forces me out of my comfort zone. It's good for me. On top of that, he's a miracle worker, right? I've written about almost 70 Darby matches as part of this project and they've almost all been very good, and a number of them probably shouldn't have been (on paper).

This one should have had a fighting chance. I was never a fan of babyface tag team Perry. I imagine we have very different views on what makes for good tag team wrestling, most acutely when it comes how early in the match things should break down and the value of structure over well... cool stuff that pops the crowd. We haven't had a ton of chances to see heel Perry, but I will say that I think he did well enough against Hook in their two matches last year, including the All In one. I think there's something to him getting heat by just laying around with a shit eating grin during the TNT title ladder match too.

Sometimes his stuff seems uniquely orchestrated in a way that should take you out of the match, a bit too focused on "clever moments," maybe. Here it was during the glass pouring exactly as they went to a wide cut and it did take me a little out of the moment, but then he has the cover of egotism and the Elite angle. You believe that Jack Perry the character, knowing he'd set up the glass under the ring in a bag and planned to pour it, would tell the producers that when he had a chance to use it, they should do certain things with the camera. If anything, they should lean into that more overtly, make it clear that he's using his power like that. Here, it backfired on him. He was the one who went into the glass and maybe him caring so much about the moment getting caught on camera could have been part of that. It's okay for a heel to be full of himself and self-centered and desperately crave attention. He's a heel! In this case maybe we aren't supposed to think "Oh yeah, he has a point," but instead think he's full of shit and ideally people will want to see him get his head kicked in. If they try to play it with shades of grey though, it'll probably end up the worst of both worlds.

So the balance maybe felt a little bit off when it came to the big moments and how they were milked on this, but even then, Darby, in and of himself, in an environment where he could come in with tacks glued to his face, where he could crash in burn against the coffin, where he could get his hands tied up and still fight from underneath like that, well... it still should have worked. Watching it the first time it seemed almost too maximalist (everything was big, absolutely nothing was small) and too minimalist (there wasn't enough overall, including enough reactions; they moved from one giant thing to the next without anything getting to resonate), even at the same time.

There are always things that we can't know as viewers (reviewers/critics/fans/consumers, whatever you want to call it). We primarily engage with the text as it is presented to us, especially when it comes to current wrestling. Sometimes with older matches, you can carry a bunch of known context with you as well and that gives you different entry points into the matches. I'm pretty sure it was the Observer (Radio) that reported due to the firm ending time for the show, Darby vs Perry got rushed and could only go around ten minutes. No idea if this is accurate or how many more minutes they would have gotten if things had gone as planned. It does, however, offer a very feasible explanation for the weird feel of the match and why it didn't work relative to almost every other Darby match and every other Darby Coffin match. There is only so much improvisation one can do in a match with so many moving parts (tacks, chairs, the coffin, glass, the tape, the belt, and, you know, Sting). Certainly, a match with three more minutes of Darby trying to fight from underneath with his hands tied would have been far more interesting. Do I think if it was Darby in there with Christian things might have gone better? Maybe. But the match also more or less served its purpose, to give the crowd a few big memorable moments before the emotional roller coaster of the main event, to keep heat on Perry especially if he was to challenge for the world title at All Out, to provide the thrill of Sting saving the day.

None of that means I'm going to give the match a pass. As a match, it's not magically better because of mitigating factors. But it does mean I might give the wrestlers a bit of a pass. I'm not necessarily going to hold this against Perry too much (he has another chance against Danielson in a week). I'm not going to see Darby as any less of a miracle worker overall. And I'm certainly not going to write any differently moving forward. There are always going to be things I can't know. That doesn't mean I can't joust with the text as provided and put down my thoughts to the best of my ability. It doesn't make it a less worthwhile endeavor to try to make sense of it all. If new information comes to light, I'll readjust my opinions accordingly. Save for many the most dogmatic and driven of the listmakers, most of us aren't searching for some sort of objective truth. Our hands will always be a little tied as we're sitting on the outside looking in and discussing an artform veiled in secrecy and impossible, incomplete knowledge, but with the right mix of confidence and humility, we can make those leaps of faith just as well as Darby.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/19 - 8/25 Part 3

MD: I don't have a lot to say about the Coffin Match. In some ways it was weirdly minimalist in not a lot happened but everything that did happen was monumental, but ultimately a bit too much DID happen overall for me to say that. Also not a lot to say about the Dustin 10-man. It was really just a finishing stretch with a bit of prelude. I did want to double back to some other things however.

AEW Collision 8/24/24

Big Bill vs. Hook

MD: Part of the joy of pro wrestling is that that it is interactive. It's live television, sure, but it's live television in front of a crowd, where the crowd can be conditioned, can be manipulated, but cannot be completely controlled. Nine times out of ten, when the crowd loses control, it's to the detriment of the match. In those situations, it's also usually due to some miscalculation in the match itself. But wrestling, at its best, is at least partially improvisational, and an out of control crowd is a possibility to live in the moment and create something special.

Hook's rarely, if ever been in a situation like this, but Bill's pushing 40 and is a fifteen year vet. There was a miscalculation here. I won't go too deep into the angle itself, but it's problematic at best and everyone knows it. Leaning into the fact it's problematic only partially mitigates the problem. In some ways, it makes it worse. This match was set up to protect Bill and to make Hook work from underneath to overcome a much larger opponent and look all the better in victory. It was meant to chip away at him on the heels of a big return so that the angle could be heated up and both he and Jericho could claim momentum coming into All In.

A couple of problems. One, the crowd wanted to cheer for Bill anyway. He's larger than life, charismatic; people have fond memories of him. Two, the match was set up for Hook to charge in early and maybe get a shot or two in from underneath or to have Keith attack him when the ref was distracted so that the odds were against him and you could explain away him not firing back more. It was all to build first for him to hit a suplex on Bill (and on Keith to take him out) and then for the Redrum to finish it. Basically, Bill was taking not a majority of this, but 95% of it. It's almost impossible to get behind a babyface who isn't constantly fighting back, even if he's cut off. Against the right opponent and in front of the right crowd, that's fine. This was neither. And the fact of the matter is that it's not all that novel to see Hook suplex Bill. We've seen it before, not just here but in previous feuds and it's not like Hook has even had that many feuds. So it went from 50-50 support for Bill and Hook to 60-40, to 70-30, to an overwhelming tidal wive as the match went on.

So Bill had this incredible crowd to deal with, one that was going to cheer whatever he did, and he went all the way with it. He yelled at them that they couldn't support him now when they never had before. He gave every hand motion imaginable to every corner of the ring. He crossed his arms to look as dorky as goofy as possible and stomped around. He leaned hard into his offense in the meanest and most unfair and conniving ways. Nothing worked, but he justified all of it with the effort. He had posed and preened and bounced a bit at the start, just a bit of cool heel trappings, but when he realized the damage that caused, he went as far from it as possible. None of it did Hook any favors, but thanks to Bill making it seem like the adulation was the absolute worst thing in the world, it probably didn't do him any longterm harm. And then he worked it all into the finish by playing to them and turning around between chops while Hook was on the top rope so he could get caught in the Redrum. People may look at this as a failure, but I see it as Bill masterfully averting disaster. All of this now going to be there, potential energy to be tapped into when the time is right. The time just wasn't last week.

Jeff Jarrett vs. Ariya Daivari

MD: And sometimes everything goes exactly how it's supposed to. This was the same exact crowd, only one segment later, and it went perfectly. It was such simple stuff, Daivari posing in the corner to boos, Jarrett to cheers. It was Daivari doing the strut repeatedly as he got the better of Jarrett only for Jarrett to clock him, then Jarrett teasing it but unable to do it until the final comeback. It was Jarrett counting along with Aubrey and the crowd while Daivari stalled and stooged outside the ring. It was Daivari menacing Karen to distract Jarrett so he could take over and then later Jarrett getting cut off because he checked on her. It was Jarrett working from underneath in a sleeper so the crowd could get behind him and throwing punches that the fans could chant along to. And all the while, there were the tiny bits of connective tissue to ensure everything made sense and was timed and placed perfectly. The crowd just wanted to be involved. They wanted something to get behind. They wanted to feel like they were part of it all. The Hook match wasn't set up to give them that. The Jarrett match absolutely was. Pro wrestling can be fascinating when it goes wrong, but man is it ever beautiful when it goes right. 

AEW All In 8/25/24

MJF vs. Will Ospreay

MD: I'm not disappointed in Ospreay.

I'm not even disappointed in Max, not really. Maybe a little.

Mostly? Mostly I'm just disappointed in myself.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/19 - 8/25 Part 2

All In 8/25/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Swerve Strickland

MD: I cried a little, maybe. It's important I lead with that because the next sentence is going make it seem like I'm less engaged than I should be. Look, here's the deal... one reason that I get these reviews out so quickly is because the brain doesn't shut off. It never shuts off. It's just who I am, right? I watch a match and I'm thinking, thinking, thinking. I'm thinking all sorts of things, but one thing I'm thinking about is what I'm going to say, if I'm going to say something at all. I don't watch a Bryan Danielson match without that in my head. What's the hook? What's the entry point? What's the unifying element that will get me into a review. Once I get in, I'm good. And maybe you might feel like that's a terrible way to consume any form of entertainment, art, whatever, but I'm not just consuming. I'm constantly engaging. It's built into my DNA. I can't fix it. It doesn't mean I'm less tapped in; it means I'm more tapped in, or at least that's how I feel. Here's the point, as I'm watching this thing, I'm thinking to myself: how am I ever going to write about this? I posted the master list recently. I had written up something like 90 Danielson matches from the last few years. What is there that I can possibly say about this that is additive or useful or meaningful or something you don't already know?

Maybe I don't go timeless. Maybe I go topical (and find something timeless by doing so). Let's try that, because I'm struggling a bit here. This is way bigger than me. Here goes. There was some talk last week about storytelling, whether it existed around and before a match or whether it exists in a match itself. I'm going to quote my pal Charles here. "I really disagree with the idea of wrestling and storytelling somehow being at odds with each other. It's about the overall viewing experience, and it all should work together and be cohesive. There are some skewed ideas now of what storytelling is." And my god, isn't this the perfect example of that?

There were so many elements set up in the build, so much rich narrative and character to draw from. With Danielson, it was a culmination of a lifetime of wrestling, of so many failed attempts at winning the AEW title, of the tension between family and passion and accomplishment, of going out on your own terms given the trauma of the first retirement, of finding drive and pushing yourself over the finish line when you're so close to peace and serenity and your final reward. For Swerve, it was about knowing just how far you climbed to get to the top, all the things you did that you had to live with, all the doubters you had to prove wrong, balancing the adulation of the crowd with the knowledge that in order to justify it all, you'd do anything, absolutely anything to keep it. It was about carrying the company only to realize that this night wasn't even about you, that your opponent was looking past you, not towards glory or victory but towards peace and finality, something you couldn't even imagine given the fire burning in your heart, and trying to find some way to bring that all together to become a force that could the change the fate of one night and define history for all time.

That was all before the bell rang! And then when it did, these forces began to crash and clash against one another. Early feeling out faded quickly as Swerve, mutable like water in his movements, tried for an early float around suplex. Danielson, however, had trained for all of Swerve's moves, and more than that, for his unique way of moving, and jammed it with a knee shot so that he could follow up by dismantling Swerve's shoulder. Swerve, champion that he is, was able to fight forward, to endure the first set of attacks, both grounded and daring, only for Danielson to lock in a headscissors in the ropes and target the shoulder again. Realizing that he wasn't going to beat him on these terms, he took advantage of a distracted ref and Nana's assistance and crushed Danielson's head onto the ring bell. Everything in the last paragraph, everything that these two are and were and might ever be led into everything in this paragraph. You can draw direct lines, direct correlation. It's a snake eating itself, backstory feeding action drawing on character and creating reaction. When wrestling hits like this, when it is allowed to draw upon decades of history and lifetimes of desires, there's nothing else in the world like it.

Things progressed along these lines. Danielson, bloodied yet resilient, came back (maybe using the iron in his arm on clotheslines? Maybe not; there are so many elements in here that you can tap into that it's hard to know where to stop). Certainly he showed his versatility and relentlessness by turning a Cattle Mutilation attempt into a pair of brutal Tiger Suplexes. Swerve, in response, put him down with the Vertebreaker. Again, so much was at play, not just Danielson's history of head and neck injuries, including his current vulnerability for which he says he needs surgery, but the fact that the Vertebreaker is such a dangerous, forbidden, rare move (not unlike the Tiger Suplexes that preceded it, actually; parallels are great too. Excess isn't usually a good thing but the time to unleash it is on the biggest match at the biggest stage; you hold it back in other matches exactly for this moment).

As Swerve drove the doctors away, the match shifted into a gripping third act. All throughout, Bryan Danielson's family presented themselves as a character in this play, with a splotch of pink standing out among this massive sea of humanity: Birdie's hat. You found yourself looking in their direction whenever the camera allowed us to see their reaction, to see their connection with the action in the ring. When Swerve took his first major advantage using the ring bell, he pulled a bloodied Bryan out to stomp his face in front of them and proclaim himself as Birdie's hero since he'd be the one to send Bryan back to her once and for all. Now, after the Vertebreaker, as Swerve hit Danielson with House Call after House Call, Bryan's hand extended to them and he mouthed an apology that somehow felt so much more sincere and heartfelt (empowered perhaps by a certain level of human ambiguity as opposed to something more contrived) than the one Bryan's own trainer made at Wrestlemania XXVI. He refused to stay down. More than that, he stood. An apology gave way to a declaration of love as he absorbed blow after blow and then turned to face Swerve as the crowd took a collective breath, and threw forth a resounding slap, one of the truly great comeback moments of this century.

From there it was a finishing stretch deserving of what came before, with both wrestlers surviving each other's best shots and one last bit of dangling plot, Swerve's own past coming home to roost as Hangman Page rode his way past security to disrupt Swerve's final defiantly indomitable moment. Just that last bit of narrative protection for a champion that earned it, for a man that will be here day in and day out in the years to come. Swerve would do everything to win, but there was a cost and some of those costs you pay for the rest of your life. With that cost paid once more (not for the last time), the smoke cleared and Danielson stood in the ring with his family as the fireworks went off and the show came to a close.

Here's another disclosure. I didn't see this live. I didn't get to see this until a few hours later, actually. I was able to see parts of the show live but not all of it. Why, you may ask? I took two (2) nature walks with my six year old daughter yesterday (2 is a lot for one day). We saw three foxes, two turtles and a blue heron. She caught multiple bugs in her net including a couple of end band net-wing beetles. That was on top of assisting her with Super Monkey Ball, reading a Franny K. Stein book to her, and overall helping prep her and her sister to be ready for the first day of school today. So maybe you weren't looking for that splotch of pink every moment of the match, but I was, and maybe your eyes were dry at the end, but mine weren't. It's funny. If she told me tomorrow that I should give up something I love to hang out with her more, I'd probably hedge. She's not the most rational entity I've ever dealt with. She's the sort that'll refuse to budge for ten minutes because she's still hunting a moth. She's six. She's also the third kid. I've seen a couple of other six year olds go down the path first. That said, if you stacked up all the most valuable and worthwhile times in my life, those couple of years during COVID when I was working from home every day and here, home, watching these kids grow up every moment that I could... well, that would top the list, I think. So maybe I wouldn't make exactly the call that Bryan is making here, but I can certainly understand it, and I'm certainly going to make something akin to it each and every time I can, even if that means I don't get to have the shared experience of watching this match with the rest of you live. It was still there for me when I was able to catch up. And that ring will be there for Bryan when he's ready for it again. For now, though, the Countdown keeps ticking down, and we'll be there for every moment (even if I might be a little late for some because of a more pressing engagement with a six year old).

AEW Five Fingers of Death Master List

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 2

All In 8/26

CM Punk vs Samoa Joe

MD: Even almost a week later, we don't know what we don't know. The Observer hit this morning, etc. Look, we tend to look at the text itself here at Segunda Caida, at least with modern matches, but you can't separate this match from what led up to it in the minutes prior. I won't focus much on what we don't, won't, or can't know, but this match goes down differently on a rewatch when you have some sense of what came before. Punk's Punk, a shit-eating grin on his face as he goes through the curtain, absolute satisfaction with his little shitheel chop and dodge away from Joe to start the match, mirthful elation as he hangs on to a headlock through a suplex. You'll almost never see a man quite so alive as Punk as he shifts from Cena to Hogan and basks in the boos and he carried his weight for the other half of this, bleeding, stooging, and outright begging off for Joe's Hulk Up. 

I said almost no one was more alive though, and the reason I said almost is because for as much as Punk was living in this moment and channeling every internal and external bit of stimuli to feed into his performance, Joe was simply more. From all accounts, Joe manifested this moment through sheer determination, presence (physical and otherwise), and force of will. You can read this as the culmination of a redemption story for Joe. We've all seen the pictures of him in the poncho during the Mania pre-show in Tampa, and while some of those have him smiling, it wasn't a proper last chapter for him. Neither was the bizarre start and stop of his final NXT moments. This though? Standing in Wembley with tens of thousands of people chanting his name, with them oohing and ahhing every move he chained together, with enough of them singing for him or going up for his pointed response to Punk's heatseeking channeling of Hogan... he basked in each and every second of it. The energy of the crowd radiated off of his body and fueled his every movement. He wrestled this match like someone who knew how far he had once been from the possibility of it and how close he had been to losing it at the last second. I could write about how they cleverly leaned into their own familiarity with one another, how they leveraged that early to build anticipation for certain spots later in the match, how balanced letting things breathe with keeping things moving. I could even give JR some flowers; over the last few years he has a mortifying tendency of calling the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. Here though, even as the match didn't feel like it was quite ready to be over, he noted how both wrestlers were going for that one big move, the perfect set up for Punk hitting the plunge. In a hundred other matches, he'd have mistimed that sort of a call completely. Here, it covered up the lack of a more developed finishing stretch perfectly.

Past those last 100 words to smooth past the finish, I think I'd rather just let the above sit as the review though. This one wasn't about structure or tricks. It was one old pro, as strung out as someone straightedge could possibly be, channeling a moment despite it all, and one old lion with legendary strength, clenching his fist hard enough to prevent the sands of time and opportunity from slipping out of his grasp. Maybe someone has the words to do that justice, but it's sure not me. The match stands on its own. The match speaks for itself.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 11/8-11/14

AEW Dark 11/9 (Taped 11/5)

Darby Allin vs. QT Marshall

MD: This was about getting a crowd that was owed stars a look at Darby. The pre-match promo by QT saying he'd do a favor to a friend and soften Darby up for MJF was just a way to try to put a little more heat on a throwaway webshow match. I have a lot of thoughts about QT actually. He's apparently Khan's Bruce or Fink (probably somewhere in the middle), the guy he'll call to talk booking plans at 4 am and that conveys a lot of the messages forward. Wrestling in AEW wasn't actually a given for him; it just sort of happened. He's also an experienced journeyman wrestler, has fairly decent size, can hit stuff. I saw him vs Danielson in 2010 in Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago. AEW has an unbalanced, large amount of undercard heels though, and while it's possible, maybe, if all the stars align, that he gets some sort of DDP run that gets over, he'd have so much more value to the promotion if he started to work more like a manager. There are a bunch of managers and seconds on the roster, but they're all older and shouldn't be bumping or more non-wrestling looking guys like Andrade's assistant. I get why QT wants to go out and be more of a player/coach than just a coach of the Factory though. I just don't think he has as much value as he might leaning hard, at 36, into being what Paul Jones and JJ Dillon were five years later in 83.

Ok, the match: Early on, I liked how all the motion was about getting over Darby; Marshall would use his strength to redirect Allin or force him up, but it was all about Darby smoothly recovering and keeping the motion going. Darby countering the suplex in midair with a kick is the third time in a week I saw that sort of spot. Have I just not been paying attention or is it a new zeitgeist spot thing? I like it, but not if it's overdone. Anyway, it's not that Marshall's belly to belly and top rope headbutt didn't look good, but he probably would have stood out more on the show with a chinlock with his feet on the ropes and a Memphis headlock hiding a punch. I liked the comeback and the suddenness of the coffin drop, where instead of just sitting around, you could buy that Marshall had no idea where he was or what was about to happen. Ok showcase match for Darby for the crowd but I still think it would be good for Marshall to see the hole in the promotion and gravitate towards it.

AEW Dynamite 11/10

Bryan Danielson vs. Rocky Romero

ER: I've heard recently of the Rocky Romero Renaissance, but I'm still a skeptic. If Danielson is going to have matches that I've already seen him have 15+ years ago in CA, then I am still more excited for the upcoming matches against Larry Blackwell, Scott Lost, and Jardi Frantz. Still, this is the same kind of very good TV match that Danielson has been having for a long time now, and those will always be satisfying. I liked how Danielson took Romero's offense, like catching a rana off the ring steps or taking a hard back bump off a tope, and I liked Romero trying to spam the cross-armbreaker (as if anyone in attendance thought Danielson was going to tap to a Rocky Romero submission). I wish Romero did some more interesting things to set up the armbars, as other than a cool knee to Danielson's shoulder it was pretty much him doing Rocky Romero Offense and then just trying for the same cross-armbreaker from the same position. They sold throughout like they had already each worked a match, and that was kind of odd, and it felt like there were missing steps in this, as if those glue moments happened somewhere else and nobody will ever get to see that full match footage. But this was a fun Danielson TV match, and it's his own fault for consistently crafting matches better than this one that a match like this can come off Less Than. 

PAS: I am coming off watching Romero kill it with Negro Casas live, so I am at a high point in my Romero fandom. I was into this, it is fun to watch Danielson work as a skilled counter mat wrestler. Romero isn't Drew Gulak, but this match had some of that same energy. I especially loved the last couple of minutes, which were all about trying to grab something and twist. The finish with Romero flattening out to stop the LeBell lock, only for Danielson to switch to the Tequila Sunrise was sick stuff. Danielson is a guy who can come out of nowhere to get you and this was great example of that. 

AEW All In 11/13

33. Darby Allin vs. MJF

MD: I get the build was about MJF winning with a side headlock takeover, and everyone lauded the Malenko/Guerrero opening bits, but they built this with MJF mocking Darby Allin's dead uncle, so maybe that wasn't the way to go? It worked out fine, as Darby would be stepping on MJF's throat on the apron a couple of minutes later and with the goading skateboard finish, but it was all a little too cutesy with mirrored body language and synchronized timing on lifting shoulders up and what not. I think there would have been a way to do this with MJF going for the side headlock over and over and Darby having to reverse and counter that would have been both more logical and story-driven as opposed to chain wrestling for the sake of it. Once the match actually got going and became about Darby's back and ultimately, after backbreaker after backbreaker, MJF's leg, it was very good. Darby's going to bump and sell around the ring as well as anyone on the roster and I liked the variations. If they felt gratuitous, it's because MJF is such a troll. Shame on the announcers for not being able to call the Billy Robinson backbreaker though. 

The leg was a way for Darby to believably stay in it without ever totally taking over the match. MJF's timing for Darby's tope and the camera angle for Darby running across the ring wasn't quite as good as the one with Sting and 2.0 but it was a close second. I liked how MJF used the Scorpion Deathlock and Darby used the figure-four which almost felt like the heel was using the face submission and the face the heel submission. MJF shouldn't have been able to turn it; the heel ought to get to the ropes in that situation instead. That's a nitpick though. The things that hit well, like the code red reversal into a power bomb, hit really well, and the match more specific spots that worked than didn't. I liked the finish. Maybe I would have liked it a little more if he had taken the ring bell because they were aping the Savage/Steamboat stuff as well. The deal with the Savage/Steamboat Mania match is that they'd already worked all of the hate-filled revenge matches around the loop so all that was left was wrestling and the title. This match tried to balance the two a little more and the ultimate result was impressive but maybe a bit uneven.

PAS: I thought this was really excellently worked, but had one too many ideas. I thought the opening of the match actually worked well. Darby was trying to answer MJF's taunts about his wrestling ability by hanging with him with counter wrestling. Darby has such incredible body control that it is really a pleasure to watch him do that stuff. I also liked MJF getting frustrated with being matched move for move and unloading with the cheap shot. The second part of the match, with Darby having the bad back from the missed apron coffin drop and MJF constantly crushing his own knee trying offense was neat too. That avalanche powerbomb counter of the code red, and the powerbomb on the knee were both incredible looking offensive moves. I didn't love going back to the Malenko vs. Guerrero roll ups, felt like that part of the match had passed, and MJF doing the spot with the skateboard and the ring felt like something this match didn't need. Almost like a TV show with too many plot lines, it felt like you could have saved some stuff for a future match.

ER: This was an incredible match yet I wish they had decided to drop a few of their ideas (as if they won't fight again and won't need something to use in that next match) and I wish it didn't have the first couple and last couple minutes. This match is something that excelled far past the headlock takeover and Malenko/Guerrero roll-ups and it's the bulk of the match that I loved so much. Once things moved past fast count roll-ups where shoulders aren't even touching the mat and moved into MJF working over Darby's back, they hit on something really special. I think MJF is an underrated in-ring guy and a vastly overrated promo guy, and this match was a testament to how far his in-ring has come. I loved the story of him destroying Darby's back at the expense of killing his own knees. Darby splats fantastically onto the ring apron on a missed Coffin Drop, one of those falls that would have me laid up for a week, and MJF wastes no time exploiting it. MJF's best in-ring attribute at this point might be that he's really great at being the "smart dumb guy", planning out a smart strategy but able to be lead away from that or continuing his strategy as it hurts him. This was a great match for that, and his work over Darby's back was really punishing. 

"Big move onto my own knee" offense almost always looks stupid, but MJF's powerbomb onto his own knee looked absolutely crushing, like Darby's spine should be completely misaligned. There's an incredible spot where Darby fights for a code red, and MJF fights it into a kind of cursed splash mountain. He drops Darby with backbreakers that look devastating, and his knee selling is so good that even as Darby is getting crushed you get the sense that he has ins. I am happy the crowd rose to their feet while they were both rolling around like goofs getting 2 counts for things that weren't even close to pins, but I hated that choice with a passion and thought it really distracted from everything they had done. The match had become something different and much better than they had initially started with, and it felt like a major regression - not a callback or joined loop - when we went back to that shit. The cheapshot leading to the side headlock takeover win was well done, and the bulk of the match is incredible, bookended by some things that a 22 minute match did not need. 


16. Bryan Danielson vs. Miro

MD: This one was all about Miro controlling the pace. Danielson would try to turn on his asylum-escapee-no-longer-straightjacketed adrenaline and Miro would just shut him down. It's interesting Danielson didn't target the neck earlier. He even went out and said that would be his gameplan when he was on commentary on Dynamite. The leg was bandaged but he didn't gain much ground there either. What's going to stand out, what we'll remember years from now about this one, was Miro taking three shots from Danielson just to hit one of his own. Miro, being one of the great vulnerable monsters in wrestling history, knew exactly how much to give and in doing so put over both the kicks and himself. The finish was sudden and ugly but in a good way given that you needed something out of the ordinary to explain Miro's collapse after a match where he was getting chipped away at but still seemed to have a lot of armor left.

PAS: Danielson has been such a force during his AEW run, it was really cool to watch him run into someone he couldn't just overwhelm. Miro's strength allowed him to shrug off Danielson's submission attempts like Kimo on Royce Gracie, and Miro has one punch KO power. Miro does really cool versions of my two least favorite current wrestling tropes: his religious fanatic cursing god is the best possible version of NXT shocked face, and the Bolo Yeung style offering of his ribs is the coolest strike exchange you can get.  I loved the finish, it looked really awkward in the best way, with Danielson just spiking Miro on his bad neck from the top in a way which almost looked like an accident. Breaking someone's neck is a great way to crack a brick wall.

ER: You know it's a great match when you get a classic fired up Danielson performance where he's leaning  into the prospects of getting a potentially deadly concussion, and get to see an equally fired up career high performance from his opponent. For several years now Miro has felt like an absolute dead in the water guy, doomed to either not live up to or not get the chance to ever really show how far he can go. I had completely written Miro off, a guy whose big run feels much further in the rearview than its actual six years. Rusev Day was four years ago? Feels like a decade. When he joined AEW and immediately started goofing around with the worst act on the roster? I thought he was unrecoverable. Now, Danielson has been on a genuine tear in 2021, having high end matches all year with everyone, and it's really easy to credit Danielson and Eddie Kingston for Miro's big resurgence...but he is clearly a changed man. 

Lean mean crazed eyed murderous Miro looks like the star that Believers have been saying is there since before the Cena win. Danielson *could* have worked this great match with just about anyone on the AEW roster, but Miro helped this get to a higher level because Miro felt legitimate. Miro looked like a New Japan Red Army psycho here, hammering into every part of Danielson's body and responding to Danielson's kicks and elbows with more violence. Miro took all of Danielson's offense and made it look damaging, while making himself look properly unmanageable, and it's a really impressive window to hit this well. He threw Danielson so wildly overhead, and Danielson is a maniac who will take great throws on his head and shoulder, and that kind of give and take punishment made this feel like a FUTEN fight. Miro takes a DDT on the top of his head that made him look like the guy on the cautionary Check Pool For Water sign, and the KO stoppage from that looked great, like Kurisu shoot knocking a dude out but still locking in a submission. 

2. Eddie Kingston vs. CM Punk - EPIC

PAS: An absolute classic. The build on this match was tremendous and they went out and delivered everything in the ring. So many brawls these days are full of elaborate set-ups for stunt bumps or weapons shots, so it is great to see an old fashioned fist fight. I enjoy someone getting hit with a chair, I love it even more when it is a fist.  Kingston laying Punk out before the bell with a backfist and laughing maniacally was a great start, as was a dazed Punk flipping him off from the floor. We were off from there with great hard shots from both guys, Kingston delivering some of his epic selling (both GTS's felt like he got hit in the head with a shovel), and Punk leaning into his assholeness. I thought the Cena taunt was great (although I could have done without the Guerrero tribute, I get why he did it, but not this match), and Punk really looked deranged with blood flowing down his face. I loved near the end when both guys were slumped in the corner, and they rose up to maybe the only good looking Frye vs. Takayama exchange in wrestling history (non-Necro Butcher division). I am torn on the finish. I really am so invested in Eddie at this point that any time he loses it pisses me off, but hopefully they keep this going and its leads to Eddie's moment. There is so much meat left on the bone.

MD: Totally unique, unbridled match, with a lot to pull apart. Was it a case where the match got away from Punk in the most amazing ways or was it the plan all along? They definitely got the mood right here to start, with Punk skipping all of his usual pre-match antics and getting right to it, only to walk right into the backfist. That said, while it never really let up from there, it did take a somewhat bizarre turn. The blood came early, to the point where Punk worked most of the match with it and the back half of the match with it basically dried all over his face. I'm not sure I've ever been more disappointed with announcers than in this one. They left so many potential hooks on the table, and with Khan's post-match comments about the boos for Punk being like Rock's at Mania vs. Hogan, I can only imagine some of the way the match turned wasn't entirely the plan. Those boos came late in the match when Punk pounced on a mostly defenseless Kingston with the elbows and knees, though. They weren't facile boos. They weren't boos in a bubble. They weren't goofy Canadian nostalgia boos. The fans specifically disliked what Punk the wrestler chose to do in that moment. It was heat. And it had been something building in the match until then. 

Before that, Punk clearly disrespected Kingston by hitting the Cena spots. Even with the blood coming down his face, that's what he chose to do against this opponent, with this issue, in this setting. Then there was the moment that the crowd first went from dueling chants to chanting solely for Eddie, a real turning point in the match. How did Punk respond to it? By deciding it was time to do the Guerrero tribute (the third or fourth of the night at that). Whether or not it was genuine and heartfelt and whether or not it just happened to be the point in the match when it was originally planned, it came off as a complete jerk move, using Eddy's memory as a way to willfully (and pettily!) misunderstand and twist how the crowd had decided to solely get behind Kingston with their chants. In the end, even if the announcers didn't pick up on virtually any of it, even if Khan seemed to indicate it was something else in the media scrum, I'm pretty certain Punk knew what he was doing, and it all added to the animosity in the match and got the crowd more and more behind Kingston and his defiance. Ultimately, I had a sense that Punk, the character, was punishing Kingston for ruining his fun, and though it seemed like he was offering his respect with the handshake post-match, to me, there was something else going on entirely. Hopefully this isn't the end of it, because there are still places for this one to go.

ER: Not many matches can come off as both a feud blowoff and a feud starter that's merely laying the groundwork for the danger to come, but this managed to do that while being 25% shorter than the next shortest match on the PPV. I had no idea how the fans would react to this one and wasn't sure they would turn on either man (I was expecting far more Both These Guys type chants) and loved how Punk was able to draw those boos WHILE being busted and without resorting to any kind of actual cheating. Punk drew heat by just choosing the best moment to throw grounded punches at Eddie Kingston, a man who talks constantly about how much he loves punching and being punched. Punk and Kingston understand the moments and the context within their matches, and they understand how to use it to add even more depth and then pay that depth off. 

I'm with Phil, in that Kingston matches are some of the few in modern wrestling where I stop thinking about who will be booked to win, because I only want to see Eddie Kingston win. Eddie Kingston makes me root for his victory in the same way I root for the Giants to win (presumably) shoot baseball games. But he's so easy to connect to that I also root his stupid decisions, especially if they seem like its what he personally wanted. I didn't want to see Kingston get nailed with a GTS, but I cannot deny the man the joy of popping up before getting hit with one. Kingston took both GTS as effectively as any man can, and I love how Punk has shifted his delivery and selling of the delivery. The move doesn't look sloppy, as it used to, and now just looks difficult to hit, and like it takes more out of him TO hit it. Those are conscious changes to a small part of a wrestler's game, and seeing someone evolve their game like that always catches my attention. These two catch my attention, and I want to see them evolve this feud. 

Read more!