AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/19 - 12/25

AEW Dark Elevation 12/19

MD: Got some sickness in the house (yeah, that sort) right now, and right at XMas too. I had initially thought about doing the whole show as it had a lot of things to like (Shafir hitting people at weird angles; Athena being Athena, the best act in AEW right now; Workhorsemen vs BCC; Emi and Bunny doing their thing) but that's out. There was a Kingston/Ortiz tag, but I don't have a ton to say about it. If I was going to do a Shinno match from this week I'd do the Omega one from Dark that I didn't like one bit, but no one wants to hear me talk about that, so instead, let's go with our honorary Finger Slim...

Ethan Page/Matt Hardy/Isiah Kassidy/Top Flight/Konosuke Takeshita vs. Trustbusters (Sonny Kiss/Slim J/Jeeves Kay)/Wingmen (Peter Avalon/Cesar Bononi/Ryan Nemeth)

MD: The AEW webshows reward and punish those that watch them all. I've seen some griping about the Hardy Party/Ethan Page story popping up here and there and it's a shame as I think Page has done a great job with it. I get people being frustrated by the idea of yet another contract storyline (Khan writes what he knows), but the backstage stuff has been a lot of fun. Page is walking this obtuse line between being malicious and so egotistical (naturally) that he actually gets into the moment at times. He really leans hard into the fabricated enthusiasm that you get the sense that the character is sort of losing himself to the moment at times, but in a way that somehow makes the humiliation worse and not better for Hardy and Private Party. I'm not sure it's entirely coherent, but it's actually pretty compelling.

Here, he burst through the pair as their music hit and did the big hardy gun hang signal only to cut the music when he didn't get a big pop. He had a mic and it was a fun little gimmick but I don't think he leaned into it enough. Past one moment where he freaked out that Takeshita was ending the dive train, he only said anything when it was a plot beat. He should have been commenting on a lot more, like the Trustbusters triple combo sliced bread. That was my big gripe there. It seemed a little too in your face because of it, even if his facial reactions and faux babyface cheering on was actually pretty engaging throughout.

You watch a big twelve man match like this looking for a few things: the rapid fire spots, interesting match-ups of opponents, and interaction between guys who wouldn't normally interact. I don't think we really got that last one. It was nice to see Page pat Darius on the shoulder pre-match as an extension of the above gimmick, but in general the Trustbusters (still working out their act) and the Wingmen kept to themselves and didn't work together much. We did get some fresh match-ups though. Kassidy and Kiss come to mind, and as Darius been on the shelf for so long, even the Wingmen and Top Flight working against one another seemed pretty fresh. So in that regard, this was a hit for me. They especially used Takeshita well here, as a big clean-up hitter. I would have liked Bononi teased a bit more (or even get to lean on Kassidy a bit) before the big showdown with Takeshita though. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing one of these on Elevation with various guys on the massive roster once a month.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/31 - 11/6

AEW Dark Elevation 10/31

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Breaux Keller/Myles Hawkins

MD: Not a ton to say here. Eddie was super intense in how he charged right in. Ortiz has a way of almost constantly be in motion that makes him stand out a bit. The STO/Russian Leg Sweep combo looked especially good. Eddie goes way too far and the fans just chant for him all the more, so I'm not sure what the endgame will be here. Good news is that this upcoming week we should have the Slim J/JVSK tag and the Ethan Page tournament match so some of what they've been building will get to start paying off.

AEW Dynamite 11/2

Darby Allin vs Jay Lethal

MD: Hey, it's Jay Lethal working more or less how everyone would want him to work all the time. He was super aggressive, pulled out all sorts of tricked out offense that Darby made look like a million bucks, and was hyperfocused on bodyparts as mean as could be. He met a charging Darby down the ramp and immediately started on him into the ringside table, barrier, stairs, utilizing Satnam as a human shield to cut off Darby's fiery fighting back (and then later on as Darby completely wiped out by diving into the one in a billion brick wall). Darby unlocks so many different spots and possibilities for a wrestler and Lethal is a guy who can galaxy brain his way into utilizing at least a large number of these (like the figure four under the rail!). That said, he can't always work this way. There has to be hierarchy on a card and not everyone should be everything at all times. Theoretically, someone like Lethal understands that as well. This was the second match in a series, after an injury angle to heat things up, starting the show and building to the Jarrett reveal. It doesn't necessarily serve the overall show for Lethal to come out exactly like this next time he's putting over Penta or Ricky Starks in a match that's just meant to be a solid fifteen minutes to give a babyface a good win to set them up for something else. This was a moment and he capitalized on it, and maybe it'll lead to more moments for him. Maybe it won't. At the least it should lead to some sort of gaga-laden blowoff with Jarrett and Sting involved. Last note: unsurprisingly, Darby was great here, the early fire, taking all of Lethal's stuff (some of which were fairly obtuse), the big counters off of the elbow drop and the Lethal Injection, an amazing looking coffin drop off the top and the all-time-highlight clip crash into Satnam, plus selling two different bodyparts at once. I have a feeling the blowoff will be less heated and not more, but again, sometimes that just serves greater needs (just like making the Cole Karter reveal as underwhelming as possible, down to the camera barely catching him using the bat; that brought down expectations to build to the Jarrett surprise... or maybe he just framed his big moment poorly? I tend to err on the side of competence over happenstance, as you likely know by now).

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/24 - 10/30

AEW Dark Elevation 10/24

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Jollyville Fuck-Its (Russ Meyers/T-Money)

MD: Great use of the time they had here by Nasty Russ and T-Money. The airplane spin/punch combo was instantly memorable and popped Ian and Menard. They were able to hit one or two more things on Ortiz too, and he was good enough to sell it even after he somehow hefted T-Money up for the fisherman's buster for the finish. Otherwise, they got to do the thing that we saw them do so well last time they had an Elevation appearance, feed, Russ flipping for Ortiz's comeback lariat and T-Money running into all of Eddie's shots and being a great giant canvas for the corner chops. But yeah, another ten minutes in some indy would have been nice.

AEW Dynamite 10/26

Bryan Danielson vs Sammy Guevara

MD: There was a moment in January or February where one of my absolute top Danielson AEW matches was Guevara, heel Danielson and face Guevara that was, driven by Guevara's athleticism giving Danielson the ability to push and push and push and the animosity that came from Danielson's sheer disdain for Guevara's claim to fame, the vlog, fueling the violence. I think my perfect wrestling world at that point had Danielson taking the TNT title and facing all sort of oddball challengers on a near weekly basis. No one could have predicted how 2022 turned out though.

This got a long, fairly complete fifteen minutes and had its share of Guevara pushing Danielson in the way he likes to get pushed, but plenty of character and crowd interaction as well. The commercial break fell a little later than usual maybe, allowing for Guevara to dive in right at the start with an immediate attack. The story here, as much as anything else, is that Sammy wouldn't know when to quit, when not to stay on something (be it forearms, or kicks) or would go for that extra flourish and pay for it (his tricked out back flip after a leapfrog or the missed moonsault, into a second, into a standing shooting star press), but then able to get back into things through his athleticism alone. Add in a bit of abuse from Tay and Danielson's comebacks being driven by grit and fury and absorption of blows and this was fairly enjoyable all around. There's a PPV match with no commercial break that these two could have that would really give Danielson his adrenaline-laden dream, and this wasn't that, but it leaned well into the hierarchy and Danielson's cruel mastery of pro wrestling while still highlighting all of those things that make Sammy special and tapering down all of the excesses that sometimes that people out of his matches.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends): Week of 7/11 - 7/17

AEW Dark Elevation 7/11

JD Drake vs. Dante Martin

MD: Once Phil realized I was watching AEW fairly regularly, he looped me in that we'd be doing the FFOD. I'm not sure if these would be the exact five I'd pick or not. The blog's always been high on Darby but he ends up in a lot of matches I only half want to see on paper, for instance. He always makes them good and it's good for me, but I'd probably have dropped a guy like Drake or Serpentico in there. Past catching Rampage Saturday morning like it's the Power Hour, the webshows are the most enjoyable AEW experience. There are no commercial breaks to drive the layout of the match (which helps as much as it hurts, but still...). Elevation has a generally hot crowd since they're the opening matches. Dark has a studio audience which hits a nostalgia sweet spot and allows for different interactions, and lets Taz and Excalibur goof off on commentary. We went decades without a lot of things, but one of those things was enhancement matches/squashes, which, for a lot of us, was such a part of our youth. There's nothing more limiting than to watch pro wrestling only by seeking out the very best stuff in the most conventional sense. If you're always chasing five star matches, you miss out on so much. Watching Emi Sakura drag and position a young wrestler around a ring or watching House of Black just maul some guys has its own level of enjoyment. 

And the same's true with mid-card matches where either guy could win, where the stakes are fairly low, where it's wrestling to cover TV time and build up rankings and to put something extra in front of the crowd and to keep reps going. It's the WCW Prime Moo Match of the week or a Worldwide Main Event or Lord Alfred and Sean Mooney talking us through a Prime Time match with Heenan and Monsoon bridging things through the commercial break. Yeah, it gets a little much to see endless permeations of the Wingmen or the Factory vs the Dark Order or Best Friends, but it's all good stuff and no one's making you watch it. Do it at your convenience. 

A match like this, with Dante and Drake just hits that sweet spot. Dante's endlessly talented, endlessly innovative, surprisingly good at selling and reacting for his age, and he'll always bring something interesting to an enhancement match. Put him in there against another flyer and you'll get something spectacular. Put him in there against one of the best bases in the company like Drake and you'll get something borderline great. The opening exchange had Drake shrug off Dante's attempts and Dante have to escalate, to go higher, faster, more offbeat to chip away at him. When he finally nailed the backflip off of Drake's shoulder to hit the springboard arm drag and get Drake down, it felt like a big earned moment. They would hit spots rapid fire but then do something to slow things down and let it sink in, like when Drake walked away to cut off the dive and draw boos. The big transition to Drake taking over wasn't just his big lift up whack to the apron, but a very clever duck as Dante was sliding out to put him out of position so he could capitalize. 

Drake is a guy who can do a ton of things contrary to his size and look but knows how to highlight his opponent by doing just as much as he should do but no more. Here, a lot of that was being in the right place at the right time for Dante, being able to turn it up when the match called for it, and being able to hit something impressive out of nowhere, like his lightning-fast dropkick cut off, to shut Dante down when he was picking up speed. Most of his heat segment was just him leaning on Dante with stomps and shots in the corner. He'd give Dante some quick shots back or a chance at rope running, but then would just crush him with a suplex or that aforementioned dropkick. Dante, to his credit, would go flying in response and then give the camera a great shot of him draped over the rope and on dream street. At times, things may have seemed just a little collaborative, like when they were working for the Superplex position in the corner, but it was really Dante setting things up so he could get in a counter. He wasn't helping; he was working for his next chance. Meanwhile, because of the size differential, he had to work three times harder to get an opening, low kicks, a flip from one side of the apron to the other, a kick up, a bounding leap off the ropes; Dante may have had to work three times harder but he's capable of working even two times harder than that. Primarily, he had to survive, had to keep moving, and had to draw Drake in for mistakes. All it took was one or two and Dante was able to soar high and capitalize. It was nice to see Drake and Henry get to go up against Mox and Danielson a few months ago as JTTS, but it's even better still to see him get ten minutes in a match like this against a talent like Dante where they can highlight each other even if it's on a much smaller stage. When you have a good flyer vs a good big man, often times both can stretch to do more complex and advanced things than they normally might be able to, while still having the underlying story and pacing to keep things ground and not making it feel like it's flown off into a world of excess.

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