2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero vs. Komander

 

13. Hechicero vs. Komander AEW Rampage 11/30/24

ER: With DEAN~! 2 in the rear view, I wanted to write about a guy who was almost a part of DEAN~! 2, but plans wildly changed. Hechicero was someone we tried to get from CMLL...and instead somehow wound up with Blue Panther, Virus, Valiente, and a host of others who all worked insanely hard to give us the greatest lucha Cibernetico of the last 20 years. I am not sure what would have changed had CMLL sent Hechicero, Mascara Dorada, and Barbara Cavernario instead of Averno, Virus, Euphoria, and Neon, but I'm sure it would have been great in an entirely different way. So we didn't get Hechicero, but Hechicero gets to show up in AEW every couple months and get a fun 10 minute match against a great opponent who he's never faced before. It's one of those gifts from Tony Khan, a match that exists simply because he wanted to see what it looked like. Hechicero vs. Danielson was an outstanding example of that, but I'm just as excited that we got to see Hechicero vs. Orange Cassidy. Collision is on in the background as I type this, and Hechicero is main eventing against Dorada, two DEAN~! Guys who never were.  

When the Hechicero/Komander match aired I wasn't sure if it was the last we'd see of Hechicero in AEW. It played as a fitting swan song if that's what it became, not just as a Hechicero AEW swan song, but also  to a Rampage era that I already greatly miss. Rampage was a show I really loved, with the hour format and shorter match layouts allowing a different feel from Dynamite and Collision. Hechicero/Komander was a great example of what made Rampage great, to me: A 13 minute classic main event, the perfect length for TV and perfect length for Rampage, the spiritual successor of guys getting to show out on Velocity or Superstars or WWECW. It got right back to the basics of the great Danielson match by letting Hechicero go full freak and break out all the tricked out work he wanted, with an opponent that would qualify this as a Dream Match. Is this the secret to Hechicero? Just let him go out there and control and break out Hechicero Things? Seems easy enough. 

His blue gear is gorgeous, with lighter offset blue boots to juxtapose the deep royal velvet of his tights. It's the perfect ensemble for him to go Hechicero Unleashed! When he starts rolling around with Komander's ankle for a tricked out stretch muffler only for Komander to do a full sit up until he was scaling the side of Hechicero's body, trying for a headscissors but landing in a Hechicero pin from guard, later getting pancaked after several revolutions on another headscissors attempt, I knew we were there. Hechicero moves like his own man in that ring. The way he leans out of a superkick, letting it scrape by his chin, before hitting a leaping Kawada style gamengiri to Komander's mouth was just one great example (of many) of his Big Spot attention to the small details. The gamengiri feels even better when we all know how close that superkick came to fully connecting. 

Hechicero and Komander are highlight reels who connect the highlights with snug submissions and effective highspot teases. Komander and Hechicero make it all matter. Komander has a missile dropkick (bouncing off multiple sides of the ropes) that hits like something that would bump not just Hechicero but anyone in AEW. Hechicero's powerslam is on the level of Dustin; Every clothesline is a headhunter. One of my favorite spots in wrestling was Bill Dundee's clothesline sleeperhold. It always looked like a lethal snare, a crazy way to follow through a lariat. Hechicero has to be the first person I've seen do the Dundee clothesline while also leaping over the ropes to the apron. Of all the ways I was expecting Hechicero to counter, I was not expecting him to wind up so suddenly on the apron pulling Komander's head over with him. 

Hechicero hangs in for the high catch on a crazy Komander moonsault to the floor, and catches a Komander moonsault into the ring in a trapped scissored armbar, rolling around with it into another one of his leveraged cradles, almost getting pinned underneath in the melee. Defense to offense to pin to escape, and they both recognize the value in not showing any kind of light on a small package cradle nearfall. The finish run is Hechicero at his most punishing. The Mad Scientist Bomb is a finisher worthy backbreaker but he uses it to set up the best running knee in wrestling. Hechicero runs up the buckles so fast, size and speed and impact, slashing and driving with that left knee, spinning around Komander with a decapitating guillotine. Of course this is a Dream Match. Foolish to suggest otherwise. It's Hechicero showing out in the main event of a sadly defunct Good Wrestling Program, and Komander never has to be asked twice to show out. 

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Briscoe vs. Bad Apple

 

13. Mark Briscoe vs. Bryan Keith AEW Rampage 9/20/24

ER: I can't imagine what it's like being Mark Briscoe. I haven't gone through the pain that he's gone through. I've never had a brother, never lost a brother. Not just a brother, but a tag team partner. Most of you with brothers never would have spent anywhere near as much time on the road trapped in a car with your brother. How many other people have ever lived a life like that with your brother, for over 20 years? I hate that right now I don't get to see Jay Briscoe unleashed as the Jon Moxley style maniac that Jon Moxley could never be. We don't get to see Jay Briscoe as the top guy - which would have happened - but Mark Briscoe doesn't get to see it either. I hate it, but I love that he's wrestling. This match felt important, because it really felt like a guy refining himself as Singles Match Mark Briscoe. I'm sure in the last couple years he's had plenty of Meltzer 4 star + singles matches, and I've seen enough of those, but the ones I did all felt like AEW Style Great 14 Minute Match Formula. This match might not have been his most ambitious singles match over this 2 year stretch, but it felt focused and impactful and tight in a way that I associated more with Jay singles matches. This wasn't him going on Crazy Mark Briscoe autopilot in a six man, this was a guy who looked like a singles champ. 

His Redneck Kung Fu is used as comedy in those six mans tags, here it's the perfect mix of goofball delivery and stiff finish. His baseball slide was thrown with joshi speed and heavyweight impact, and his Cactus Jack elbow off the apron was one of the best elbowdrops of the year. He landed with impact on everything; on his bumps, on his follow through, on his chops that got more intense the longer we went. His clotheslines hit like a champion's. The J-Driller should be the most protected finish in AEW. I can't wait to watch the rest of his 2024 singles match run, because this suddenly feels very different. 

I've said that I don't fully buy into the Hangman Page character, but Bounty Hunter was a character I didn't buy into even a little. I don't buy Bryan Keith as a Bad News Brown. I think he looked so good in his spaghetti western Entrance Pancho that a lot of people bought in on sight. But he wrestles like a 2024 Scoot Andrews update and wears his pants at 75 year old luchador height. He makes a lot more sense as Already in the Ring Bad Apple Bryan Keith, so he worked great as Singles Star Mark Briscoe's opponent he was 100% going to beat. I don't like matches he works as a back and forth, and think he benefits from a match where he has a few minutes of control in the middle and a couple spots down the stretch. It tightens his 3-4 minutes and it all looks better when stacked. He has a great kneedrop and I am always going to rate a guy who uses a kneedrop in 2024, and not one of those safe ones to the chest, an honestly worked kneedrop to the temple that would have played in a Nick Bockwinkel match. He leaned into chops and clotheslines and he doesn't just have a good kneedrop, he has a good kneelift.  

There's a real sweet spot in hitting a nicely built 12 minute match. AEW should pepper way more 8-12 TV classics into their cards than ringing the 20 minute Great Match bell so often. 

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Best Friends vs. Sabian/Butcher

 

15. Orange Cassidy/Trent Beretta vs. Kip Sabian/The Butcher AEW Rampage 3/8/24

ER: I wrote about this before I knew the Best Friends suddenly broke up. The concept of a team called Best Friends makes me think about a kind of indy wrestling I've set out to avoid since Chikara, but it turns out I didn't need to soften my stance on that wrestling, because the few who weren't canceled just got better. I didn't know when watching this match I was watching the near end of a great TV match era. Orange and Trent were a team I really loved, and two wrestlers who have turned into must see AEW for me. I'm going to miss the Jefferson Starship TV era. Pixies Cassidy doesn't quite hit the same for me. Anyway. 

There are probably better AEW matches that I've watched and will not be adding to the MOTY List for reasons like "it went on longer than I thought it should" or the more accurate "I recognize it was good but not good enough to move me to want to write about it". A match like this feels like more of an accomplishment than a 20 minute ****3/4 match. They're both going to be forgotten about the next week, so I think a great Kip Sabian performance is more memorable. When I think back to the start of AEW, I think about how awful Kip Sabian was and how much TV time he was consistently getting over...well, almost everyone. I think at one point he was the most consistently featured TV worker. Those were the dark days, with guaranteed Kip Sabian and Private Party and Orange Cassidy matches every week. I couldn't stand Orange Cassidy matches for years. Now it's 5 years later, here's a show with Kip Sabian, Orange Cassidy, and Private Party, and it's the same but everything has changed. Cassidy is now one of the guys that make me watch these shows and Kip Sabian is one of the most improved wrestlers on the roster. I guess not everything has changed, as Private Party are still essentially doing the exact same thing in the exact same spot with the same spots done slower. The main event of this episode was the weakest go nowhere match on Rampage. 

I never foresaw loving Orange Cassidy, and I certainly did not anticipate Kip Sabian ever being a wrestler worth watching. But he now is, that. It happened, and it's cool. Cassidy came into the match with his back and ribs wrecked from his title loss to Roderick Strong, and Sabian and Butcher went after those ribs with backbreakers. There were two very cool physical momentum reversals, where Cassidy was slowed and couldn't pull off his round the world DDT, and Sabian and Butcher each stopped his momentum mid-move in ways that felt like both were really fighting to stop it. Butcher had wobbling legs as he powered OC up for a powerslam, then lifted him up by the front waistband of his joggers high enough to drop him over his knee. Sabian always looked like he was fighting OC's momentum, even on roll-ups. 

When they weren't working over his back, I thought Sabian was great at working around Cassidy's selling and his shtick. I liked the spot where Cassidy was fighting to tag out with his hands in pockets, as Sabian expertly crashed around him and into Butcher, credibly fucking up repeatedly against an armless man. All parts of Sabian's game have been tightened. Five years ago I couldn't imagine Sabian as a guy with good elbow smashes, but now he has them. He was always someone who could bump, but now his bumps seem more directed towards the match he is having than an empty athleticism. His bumps are an essential part of Trent's hot tag, he's great at being in position for the finish sprint, and he does it all while taking in-character bumps. The way he kicked his legs in panic while getting tossed with a backdrop, or getting yanked into a Saito suplex and knowing just how to get where he needed to be to lean into a knee, he does it like him. 

Cassidy's Superman punch to set up the finish looked its best and came in with force, like he wanted to get it in quicker than the one earlier that had been caught by Butcher and ended with his back being punished by a half nelson backbreaker. Instead of flying right at Butcher he came at an angle, blindsiding him into a Beretta Strong Zero. Cassidy is impossible to keep down but stayed with it in ways that didn't make Sabian and Butcher's back work feel stupid, it just made him seem tough. It's been five years, the surprise of my Orange love has finally faded, and now I'm spending my time writing glowing things about Kip Sabian. I'm convertible. Who will be the next to convert me?  

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Premier Athletes vs. Kings of the Black Throne

 

10. Tony Nese/Ariya Daivari vs. Brody King/Malakai Black AEW Rampage 7/12/24

ER: Kings of the Black Throne? House of Black was fine, but it wasn't enough so now I have to type out something truly stupid to refer to a monster finally wrestling like a monster and a jaundice-thighed Dutch kickboxer. What's happening with the AEW jaundice tan? We established orange as the ridiculous tan color for two decades and suddenly the Big Yellow 5 feels emboldened by a lax FDA to start branching out into other areas, away from sodas with a high school reputation for shrinking dicks. I don't know what's happening with Black's legs and midsection but something needs to stop and we need to contain this. This isn't normal. You would be called Piss Boy every year of high school if you showed up with yellow legs from some kind of chemical burn accident, so there's no way we should be letting 40 year old Dutch kickers and skinny fat bunny hopping piledrivers get away with it. 

Maybe Brody King worked big in this match due to the fatigued state of his friend, finally throwing aside the middling forearm exchanges and fake big man work for stiff clotheslines and aggressive size. His Throne Buddy's brain is slowly being eaten away as the yellow spreads outward through his tissue, but it's making King hit hard and miss with a toppling big man intensity. His work with Premier Athletes associations was a real plus for the match, taking a great out-of-control-big-man bump to the floor on a low bridge, and aiming a crossbody at Daivari through Mark Sterling. It was a good way for him to stay occupied and make this more of a match. 

Tony Nese is arguably the least cool AEW worker to champion but I like him. I didn't like him in Evolve but I grew to enjoy him in 205 Live when I was watching that a bunch for Drew Gulak, Jack Gallagher, and Oney Lorcan matches before those guys were retired or canceled or canceled into partial retirement. Nese isn't so different from 30-40 other good body speedy backflip guys in AEW but I think he's better than a lot of them. He's good at getting naturally into place for unnatural offense, falls in some ways you wouldn't expect, is good at pinballing between two guys, and is capable of fucking up in cool ways that feel like part of his character. He goes up for one of the highest backdrops in AEW history, has shockingly good worked arm strikes, and he repeatedly eats shit on his 450 splash no matter where Black sets up. People love holding the opinion that Great Sasuke slipping off the ropes only makes his Jushin Liger match more legendary, but nobody is quick to accept missed spots as part of a wrestler's charm, unless it's a JT Smith situation. Tony Nese does these missed spots that are almost surely unintentional but can read like expertly planned out Chris Hamrick or Juventud Guerrera misses, because they're never sold as something that connected and they often lead to his downfall. His meathead athlete Dave Portnoy energy makes the misses more charming, and his first overshoot barely got him a nearfall. His second was supposed to hit knees and instead his rotation is fucked up and he winds up connecting knees hard with Black and whipping his own head into the mat. Tony Nese has the tight physics on headscissors and backdrops like Billy Kidman with the same type of "I kind of want him to mess up this finisher though" charm. 

Nese and Daivari are both really good at getting in the way of Black's crescent kicks, and you know who has spent years gently flying under the radars of anyone offering a wrestling opinion? Ariya Daivari. Daivari is another guy I fell for during the glory days of 205 Live, but doesn't get talked about because his brand of professionalism can fade into the background. He has a consistently good floor, and a style that has always reminded me of Christian, but with less offense and less upside. He's great at using logic in matches the same as Christian, like the way he changed his pescado delivery here in an attempt to actually damage Brody King, getting a running leap that he doesn't otherwise do, just to throw more weight. He doesn't bump big like Christian but he has good selection in bumps. My favorite here was the way he fell off rigidly to the side after a running back elbow. The finish played great: Nese getting his face in the way of another kick while King hanged Daivari's motionless body off the apron in a sleeper in the camera foreground. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/28 - 11/3

AEW Rampage 11/1/24

RUSH/Dralistico/Mortos vs BEEF/JD Drake/Butcher

MD: Really enjoyed Rampage this week overall. Very "Fastest Hour of TV" vibes. They started in the ring for this one, cut to Stokely after, did the Vendetta squash, paid off the Stokely bit and did something out of normal format with Taya, then went straight into the three Top Flight matches, one after the other, all linked with the entrances, and with the undertone of Moxley-influenced aggression in the air more so than usual on AEW TV (that doesn't involve Moxley directly) right now. Very much a "Restore the Feeling" sort of show for me, but then my feeling and other people's feelings tend to be different. I'll miss it if and when it's gone just like I miss Dark and Elevation.

And obviously, this was a great way to start. Look, I like the Outrunners, but I do think there's a ceiling to them and that the act will only have legs for so long. I see a higher ceiling for BEEF. Yes, he's over the top, but he's over the top in a believable way. The Outrunners are characters. They're very fun characters who are enjoyable to watch, but BEEF comes off as more human. You might know a guy like BEEF. You might tell yourself and everyone else that you wished you didn't, but then so do JD Drake and Anthony Henry, right? Deep down, though, having someone so earnest and enthusiastic in your life just makes it better. Do I think he can be world champion? No, but I think he can be a challenger for the TNT or Continental Title that fans might really get behind on a chase.

The most interesting guy in this one was Drake though. Arn Anderson is on record that he thinks he (being Arn) was a terrible babyface, that he didn't have the "skills," which in this case more or less means deep armdrags and dropkicks. I'm not sure if he really believes that of if he's being self-effacing but in saying it, he shortchanges just how good a babyface he was and what makes a good babyface in the first place. It's not "skills", it's emotional connection. I imagine Drake might say the same thing Arn did, but he was really good here being shoehorned into that role. He engaged with everyone around him, hitting the tranquilo pose early, played face-in-peril sympathetically but with fire, downright seething when RUSH stopped the run across the ring to kick him in the face, and then fired back for the hot tag, standing toe to toe with RUSH before making that final, pained turn to tag BEEF in.

Butcher fit right in too. Obviously you want him slugging it out with RUSH. You want everyone slugging it out with RUSH. There was a bit early on too where Dralistico really played up that little dog/big dog dynamic with his brother which I find effective. This was good all around. Only thing I missed here was one of those Jake pre-tapes to set the stage. BEEF has this sort of transformative element to him that makes everyone into Giant Machine or Piper Machine like in 85. Someday we'll get BEEF/Mark Briscoe interaction and the skies will part and the angels will sing.

ROH TV 10/31/24

Athena vs Abadon

MD: Abadon's an interesting case. If you go back to the territories, they'd move around like Kamala or other monsters, never staying in one place for too long. Here, they're one of the only honest attractions (in as they're used like one) that AEW/ROH have. They're gone more than than they're here and they're instantly credible and dangerous when they arrive, generally able to challenge a champion only to come short. Then they're away again long enough to make you forget about the loss so that they have an impact when they come back. I know in the margins they're working indies and training but the lack of ringtime is probably not ideal. 19 matches in 2024 with a third of those being squashes on ROH TV coming in at less than 2:30. 2023 was much the same. It's a tricky balance.

Part of me wonders if we're reaching the end of Athena in ROH. It looks like Billie's story is cresting again and Final Battle is around the corner. Plenty of people who don't actually watch ROH have been clamoring for it. Everyone who does likely wants her to stay. I do understand that what ROH is might change in the future (and it might not) but it gives her the freedom to stretch. This went almost 20 minutes, more with the pre and the post-match. It had all the room in the world to breathe. I love AEW commercial breaks in some ways, but Athena doesn't need them like others do. She is fully formed, self-actualized, able to structure her matches in the ideal manner and make the most out of every second. This sort of match would have been very hard to pull off in this exact way getting this amount of time on Dynamite or Rampage. I think in historical terms and the comp we'll have some day of Athena's Proving Ground matches and big defenses will shine, just like she does as the biggest fish in AEW's smallest pond. If she does get moved up at some point, then she should be featured on the same level as Mercedes, getting her own segment each week. On paper, maybe that's a bold risk. In actuality, it's an investment that would pay off in time.

But there's a match here and like I said, it went almost twenty. It was wild, with a slew of big spots that went like they should have or that were all the more impressive for maybe not. Some of the latter was simple physics. A lot of it was Athena's reactions in the moment. There were plenty of moving parts here and it was very much on her to make this feel organic. Remember, Abadon's had something like 120 matches and a big chunk of those are squashes. They did a good job sticking to character and keeping things moving, being where they needed to be when they needed to be, and this was their career match, from what I've seen, but it's a little different than Athena's 17 year career.

Athena reacted to everything, from planned spots, to mishaps like the chain falling off her band, to the crowd chanting this is awesome. She reacted from Abadon absorbing the magic forearm at the start all the way to the relief of hitting the crazy O-Face into the chairs and escaping with the belt(s). You couldn't see the strings because she managed to be on so thoroughly throughout, whether it was following some sort of plan or a temporary deviation from it. I can't stress how important that is, how rare that is in 2024, and how it turns a match from a garbage spotfest into an immersive, horrific experience.

Athena went from fear to seething frustration to seething rage to seething agony. There was a lot of seething in this one. Abadon's reaction to the blood from the skewers was spot on as well, and even better was Abadon's frustration after being unable to finish Athena off on the floor. That was the moment that the match shifted inexorably in Athena's favor, the moment where her persistence and determination and madwoman drive broke Abadon's will. For the first time all match, maybe even since their debut, Abadon showed cracks, and Athena drove a wedge through them before shattering her with the O-Face. That this went so long, had certain things that didn't work as planned, and still turned out to be compelling and cohesive is a testament to one of the best wrestlers in the world and a very game opponent and one more reason that we should cherish this ROH while we can. 

BONUS: AEW Collision 11/2/24 - Kyle Fletcher

I had tossed this in a tweet (https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1853065072689496430) I'm doing a lot of these short form things over there, so do follow and follow along) but wanted to put it here as well. 

It's no big secret what I wanted MJF to do at Wembley. Channel Larry Zybzsko and stall. The stalling wasn't the point though. It was the means. The heat that it would have gotten him wasn't even the point. That was the means too. At the end of the day, heat generally is. It's a means to fuel the potential energy behind a comeback. The comeback is the thing. When you have a face and a heel and a crowd that cares about the difference, it's everything.

The traditional goal of pro wrestling has always been to figure out what a crowd wants and deny them it and deny them it and deny them it so that when they get it, it's the greatest feeling imaginable. For decades, what they wanted was to see the babyface win and the heel get comeuppance. That's not nearly as true in 2024. Right now, much of the audience wants to be part of an experience, want to have bragging rights for being live for a great match, to chant "This is Awesome" or "Fight Forever." And no one enables them to do that more than Will Ospreay. He's the poster boy for it. He gives the fans what they want. So if MJF was going to be the greatest villain of his age, how could he really get under the crowd's skin? By denying them that as much as possible in the grandest venue possible. Then, in the last third of the match when Ospreay became unchained and hit spot after spot perfectly and brilliantly, it would have felt like the greatest relief (and release) in the world. 

Max went a different way with it. That's fine. People still liked the match. We're not here to talk about that. We move on. We look to the future. Let's talk about Kyle Fletcher. I love AEW's commercial breaks. You learn so much about wrestlers by seeing how they fill time during it. This is where AEW generally sticks the heat (of shine/heat/comeback since I'm using phrases haphazardly) in its matches. That's the most important part of the match! I'm not entirely sure it would even exist for most AEW matches without the breaks because the tendency to go 50/50, your move/my move and get all the cool stuff in might be too strong.

People have been hot and cold on Fletcher the last couple of years, but I've been watching him during those breaks and I have to admit, I like what I see. He's been precociously good at interacting with the crowd, his opponent, the ref, at letting things breathe, at showing himself as a fully fleshed out character with emotions and opinions and able to emote and present all of this to the crowd. He's not just hitting stuff. He's not just sleepwalking through it until it's time for the big back-from-break spot. He's alive. It's just for a lot of the rest of the match, you didn't see it nearly as much. Great (surprising!) instincts, just maybe a career of hanging with a certain sort of crowd who had learned to get over in a certain sort of way, right?

So now he's turned on Ospreay, has cut his hair to differentiate him, and as seen on Collision's Komander match, has done something even more striking. He's managed to start moving differently. That Fletcher who we'd seen peek out during the breaks is starting to show himself from bell to bell. He used his robe as a feint to cheapshot Komander to start and then moved slowly, methodologically, with purpose. He grinded him down, played to the crowd, menaced Abrahantes. When I tried to explain what made Mark Henry so special during his Hall of Pain run, the best I could come up with was the notion of "negative space", what you did between the moves and the spots. Giving life to those in-between moments turns a match from a series of things that happened to a consistent, engaging, immersive reality of its own. Fletcher was absolutely nailing that here.

And then, in the back third (after the break and after he finally nailed Abrahantes), he let Komander off the chain and they hit bombs and fireworks on the way to the finish. The crowd responded, for the most part, as they ideally are supposed to, chanting Komander's name and getting behind him. Sometimes you find a spark of hope in the most unlikely places, right?  

That brings us to Full Gear and Ospreay. I don't want him to stall. That made sense for Max. It made sense for the cowardly heel champ full of bluster. Fletcher's wrestling like someone with something to prove and he has more to prove against Ospreay than anyone. What he has to prove, however, is that he's his own man. If he comes out and wrestles Ospreay's match to prove that he can hang, that he's just as good as him (exactly what Max did!), that doesn't prove to anyone that he's his own man. It just proves that maybe he's as good an Ospreay as Ospreay.

Fletcher seems to get this, right? He seemed to get it in the Komander match, way more than I would have expected him to. How does he prove it then? He goes low early and then grinds Ospreay down the whole match. He makes sure Ospreay doesn't hit his usual first-few-minutes dive. He evades and avoids hope spots so that Ospreay doesn't even get to hit them. He denies Ospreay his offense. He denies the fans the chance to see Ospreay do his thing. They get absolutely nothing for the first two thirds (but the joy of booing), not because Fletcher is a coward but because he's an absolute bastard. Then? That last third? They get everything. Maybe it scores a half star less on the following Friday morning, but if Fletcher can pull it off, it would be an experience the crowd would never forget. It would define who and what he could be moving forward. It would give AEW another piece they badly need. I guess we'll know soon enough.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

 

2. Jeff Hardy vs. Darby Allin AEW Rampage 1/19/24

ER: I am pretty deep in the bag for anything involving Darby Allin and A Hardy Boy. They haven't had a single thing to do with each other since 2022, but there were three different Darby/Hardy matches in 2022 and I loved them all: I loved the Tornado Tag with Darby teaming with Sting and the Hardys, I loved Darby vs. Matt despite what everyone said about Matt's "Always Been Weird, Actually" legs, and I especially loved Darby vs. Jeff. I haven't seen any of Darby's matches with Shaun Cassidy but as I said, I've loved every other match involving Darby and the Hardy Boys so I assume they're great. Now, I assumed that Darby/Jeff match was going to be The Last Great Jeff Hardy Singles Match. There was no real indication he had another in him, and while he won that match and didn't actually pass a torch, it felt almost like a guy winning in his last match before retirement, only there was no retirement. 

Now it's a year and a half later and nobody seems to want the Hardys around anymore, so Jeff gets to have a big time swan song, again. Darby and Jeff's first match felt like Jackass Forever: two lunatics doing stunts, but one guy is old and broken so does 1-2 really big stunts, making up the difference in damage to his dick, and leaves the constant bumps to the New Jeff. This match might not have a ridiculously tall ladder made for suicide attempts, but I think it's better, meaner, and created room to be more violent without needing to build to a Big Stunt. 

Hardy wrestles completely differently here and I think it's his literal best individual performance of the decade. His game looks tighter than at any part of his career, and instead of trying to match his stunt successor he decides to just beat the shit out of him. Find me any other matches where Jeff Hardy punches someone - multiple times - as hard as he was punching Darby and I'll show you some more Jeff Hardy matches I'll be writing about. Almost every time Hardy tries any kind of risky stunt in this match, he eats shit. He learns quickly that he doesn't need to eat shit to beat Darby, because he is physically bigger than him and can hit harder. Hardy has a great early miss, vaulting off the ring steps one step late and hitting the guardrail hard enough that it looked like one of the most painful bumps of the match, and decides Fuck This and just starts stiffing Darby the rest of the match. 

For years now Hardy has been mostly doing really sloppy versions of all his trademark pieces of offense, but in this match it looks like he actually wants to murder someone. Suddenly he isn't just hitting everything crisp, but he's finding violent innovations. His Curt Hennig rolling neck snap often looks like trash, but here, when he started doing them perpendicularly, running in from Darby's side and snapping his ear to his shoulder it somehow breathed new life into a move that has been co-opted by too many bad wrestlers. Jeff Hardy is somehow working smarter, not harder, and it's like finding out a guy that has a 98 mph fastball 15 years ago also could have been using a knuckleball the whole time. 

But it's difficult to work smarter when you are historically known for making stupid decisions. Hardy figuring out to dominate Darby with fists but then relapsing into missing a swanton off the top to the floor? That's just the story of this man's life. It doesn't matter that he learned to use his fists, crash landings are hardwired into this lunatic's brain. It was inevitable. This match was one of my absolute favorite Hardy stories of his career, and I'm honestly not sure he's ever told it better. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/5 - 8/11 Part 2

Ring of Honor TV 8/8/24

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs Alex Reynolds/John Silver

MD: I'm tempted to wax poetic for a paragraph about the Problem of Sammy. Let's do it. He's been Lugered/Big Showed, in part due to the Jericho Vortex, and in part due to his own personal situations, and even just the inertia of being a featured guy for five years. It means that maybe he hasn't kept pace with Darby and MJF and even Perry. They kind of tried out the Cole/MJF story with him leading up to the four-way last year but Cole was the one to benefit from him. I don't know if he turns on Dustin or wins the tag titles with him (Dustin holding a bunch of ROH titles and challenging Lee Moriarty in a pure rules match would be amazing but that's beside the point) or what, but coming back as a babyface with a topknot doesn't feel like it's going to work. What would? I have no idea. An excursion? Feud him with Atlantis, Jr. in both settings. Maybe give him the TV Title and instead of having him complain about not getting five star matches backstage, have him defend it week in and week out and give him the sort of "list" that Cassidy in 2022-2023. Regardless, I'm glad it's not a problem I have to solve, because it does feel like a problem.

I praise Reynolds and Silver a lot; a good reason for that, as I've mentioned, is that they're able to somehow instill order upon the "everything breaks down way too early" style of tag team wrestling we've gotten for the last ten+ years in a way almost no one else can. They're also very adaptable. They've been monster heel henchmen, lovable loser underdog babyfaces, pre-show comedy act staples, and now sort of a dangerous mid-card heel act. They don't always do exactly what I'd want them to do, but they are very good at what they do.

I'd call this a studio show main event. Lots of comedy to start with Dustin and Sammy both doing the dive tease/breakdancing/pose. Dustin's comedic timing is great, of course. It was interesting how protected he was as a star when it came to the knee. He was beat down last week; he hurt it again on his own bulldog (he drove the action and reaped the consequence); he then fought off the Dark Order on the floor; Caprice mentions that if he's able to stand up on the apron, then he's ok, and he does; at that very moment, Uno comes in with the chair. Since he was going to take a beating for a while, it was fine, but that's not haphazard. It's calculated and has an effect, conscious or otherwise on the audience. Very canny. When Dustin does get the hot tag, it's entirely based on redirecting Reynolds' own momentum, first over the top and then into the power slam where he really just falls away and turns him. Again, that matters. He's not standing tall and firing back; he's showing the weight of the leg damage and finding another way, as hope does. Sammy was fine here; he works well with Reynolds/Silver, but he's definitely a Problem to be Solved.

Rampage 8/9/24

Darby Allin vs The Butcher

MD: TK's keeping me busy, huh? It's a good problem to have. I'm not sure how to tell you anything you wouldn't already know about this coming in. It was a remarkable match, a remarkable Butcher performance, a remarkable Darby performance. You should watch it if you haven't already. My brain is always going when I watch wrestling. That doesn't mean I'm not connected. That doesn't mean I'm not drawn in. It's part of why I value immersion and suspension of disbelief so much. Here's what I was thinking early on in this one:

Back in the day, old timers used to talk about how the fans knew wrestling was worked but that they wanted to be the one match on the card that made them doubt it. A "Yeah, most of it's fake, but that match maybe wasn't." sort of deal. A modern version of that might be... "Yeah, they work out all the spots in the back, but things went so crazy there that they had to be adapting on the fly!" Something like that. One thing I love about Darby is that he (like an unlikely comparison point, Nick Bockwinkel), as a character, always wants to control the start of his matches; he usually comes in with a bang. Here, he charged right in and got nailed by Butcher's foot. And his mouth started to bleed. Butcher went from slamming him leg first into the ropes to starting to work over that jaw. Darby responded in kind by spitting blood in his face. Savage? Maybe, but I was smiling big at that, drawn in. And yeah part of that is because it felt like an adaptation in the moment, and that, compared to a lot of picture perfect precision counter wrestling, felt more real. It just did. And damn it if that doesn't draw the eye and rouse the heart.

The rest of the match was an absolute mauling. Darby would throw himself at Butcher to try to get an advantage. More often than not, he bounced off. Have you ever played one of those little stick figure physics engines sort of games? It might just be picking up and dropping the figure. It might be sending them on a catapult. That was this match, eyes glued to the screen as Darby's body crashes and burns from every angle and every direction in the most sickening ways possible. A beautiful trainwreck. What was the purpose? I don't know. It made Darby look all the more like a star for winning definitively (yet believably!). It made Butcher look like a force. Maybe they can sneak him onto the All Out card? Maybe he'll be there for the Casino Gauntlet and this will get enough word of mouth that people will check it out. The joy of Darby is that while I still overthink it, he's got me overthinking it in all sorts of different and fun ways. Go track this one down.

Collision 8/10/24

Darby Allin/Hologram vs Tony Nese/Josh Woods

MD: I'm three matches in of Part 2 this week, so let's talk about Hologram. TK's alluded that the specific name/character has been in his head for a long time. Allow me to take a couple of liberties here. My guess is that this guy lived in TK's notebook for decades. Hologram is very much the sort of character that someone would come up with while doodling on the side of a notebook in school. He's the sort of guy who could wrestle alongside Mr. JL or Ciclope or Super Calo. It's a rabbit hole and best to just peek down it a little, but I don't think you can understand AEW without thinking about that notebook. It's sort of the "Rosebud" in this equation to some degree, right? And I am not at all unsympathetic. I'm not far off in age and had my own notebooks with my own very rough character drawings in the corner and lists of people who could be in various imaginary factions (be it a New Dangerous Alliance or different reshuffled X-Men teams). Here, it's especially a boon though, because the character is something pure, and true, and genuine, something that should appeal to kids because maybe, just maybe (I could be wrong!), once upon a time, a kid came up with it. It's anecdotal, and you'd want to follow someone who talks about the business and not just breaks down matches, but I get a sense a lot of WWE's recent success with a younger audience is due to the accessibility and ease of Peacock, the fact that they can just find the footage on their own with a few clicks of their remote. If AEW has some streaming solution upcoming, then similar kids discovering the product are going to find a welcome avatar in Hologram waiting for them.

And as for the rest of us? I liken him to Blitzkrieg in WCW. When he showed up in WCW in 99, it absolutely blew people's minds. It's not that he was doing things that much more spectacular than everyone else (though he was doing things that were just enough different to stand out). No, the bigger thing was that he came out of the blue. We were all smarks on the internet following six news sites, reading Al Issacs and waiting for Yokozuna to join the Hart Foundation (that was a couple of years earlier, but you get the idea). We thought we knew everyone and everything, and if we didn't, then we knew someone who did. We had a network of people following everything out of Mexico and every sleazy indy Japanese promotion. And here was this guy that we couldn't place doing amazing things. The fact that he was unknown to us (teenagers and young adults who felt like we knew everything) was half the appeal. Hologram is a bit of the same. It's not that we weren't aware of Aramis here, or that we didn't have some inkling of his contract issues over the years, but he wasn't on our radar or on the the public radars of the people who we trust when it comes to lucha to come in to AEW with a new character and make a mark. The vignette aired. We got word who he was. He debuted. Sometimes it's just nice to be taken by surprise, even for us, especially for us. 

As for the match itself, it was another great showcase that really gave Hologram an extra bit of rub. Despite being a star (and one with a rocket strapped to him maybe), Darby played face-in-peril and let Hologram be the hero, both coming in to clear house after the hot tag and by getting the cradle win on Woods. Before that, they had a great shine where Darby's quick shots got to pair with Hologram's slick shots and they somehow became even more than the sum of their parts. Just great, great basing by Woods and Nese here (and Sterling/Daivari on the Coffin Drop by Darby to set up the finish). They were everything and everything looked great. Just like Reynolds/Silver, Nese is a guy who never shoots for fame or fortune. He's the opposite of getting his shit in. He's an absolute professional, a total mechanic, willing to stooge and get clowned for the sake of his opponent and the match. He's the least cool heel in the world and so much more valuable for it. And Woods is someone that every time I see him, I wish I'd be able to see him more. This did exactly what it set out to do and the Hologram train rolls on. The trick now is to keep him featured so he's on people's minds every week. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/15 - 7/28

AEW Rampage 7/26/24

Royal Rampage

MD: Let me try to cover a lot of ground quickly. I wrote recently about the difference between plot and story. The only bits in this one I'd actively call "plot" along those lines would be Darby winning in general to set up the Grand Slam title match and Hangman coming out to eliminate Jarrett. There was a ton of story though.

To confuse matters further, I'd break down the story here into explicit story and implicit story. Implicit story is everyone working together to eliminate the Butcher because  he's known to be a beast in battle royales. It's Darby going right after Brody because Brody eliminated him at a prior one. It's character driven, history driven, not necessarily something to set up further matches (though it could be). It's the fact that these characters live together in a shared universe and are fully formed and fleshed out. That comes into play in a setting like this.

More explicit story would be the rivalry between the Conglomeration and the Kingdom or the backstage segment between Kip Sabian and Nick Wayne that set up their interaction here. So there were smaller stories, larger stories, a bit of plot, and then a baseline of wrestlers and characters dipping in and out. Sometimes it was for a brief burst of entertainment like with Menard or Cutler. Sometimes it was to play into that Forbidden Door feeling of a few months ago like with Lio Rush or Mortos. Or it was steak and sizzle in one like the opening stretch with Claudio and Komander.

The simple fact of the matter is that a lot of the blue check or old carny criticisms of AEW when it comes to plot and story (implicit and explicit) are either lies or fully ignorant from people who don't watch the product. Sometimes I think that it might be that these people existed in a 90s world where there were multi-month feuds with partners that were married to one another on house shows town after town after town and AEW is instead a TV product. That's probably giving them too much faith though. I don't see how you can watch something like this match and not see a plethora of character, story, and plot. Every AEW Battle Royale is like this.

ROH Death Before Dishonor 7/26/24

Dustin Rhodes/Ross Von Erich/Marshall Von Erich vs Dark Order (Evil Uno/Alex Reynolds/John Silver)

MD: I'm still getting a sense of the Von Erichs. At times they seem moderately generic, as if they've traveled around so much that they haven't really been able to specialize. They've been working since 2012 but only have ~130 matches in Cagematch (the comparison point is Nick Wayne or Billie Starkz who have double or quadruple that respectively). You'll see Ross do something like a slingblade and kind of go "Ehh" on the idea that maybe he should be leaning harder into who and what they are and who and what makes them stand out against others. Then sometimes, I'm certain that Marshall, despite the size, is sort of the Bobby Fulton of the two, the more charismatic and theatrical, and Ross is really more the Tommy Rogers, hitting stuff sharp and clean. Then you have a match like this where they both get a face-in-peril bit and I just need to see some more. Thankfully, I've got another match coming up after this one.
 
Anyway, this worked really well. The underlying story was that the Dark Order kept taking Dustin out from the floor, primarily Alex Reynolds, who is great at playing a trolling shitheel which is probably something he should stick with as he's a competent and hard-working babyface but not one that stands out on the roster. That meant that the Von Erichs had to wrestle from a 3 vs 2 deficit. It also meant that the fans were denied Dustin (other than the opening brawling) until it was time for the hot tag. The fans could relate to the IDEA of the Von Erichs, but they're still building up familiarity with Ross and Marshall as individual entities (just like I am, I guess). Dustin they know as well as any wrestler in the world. Very smart layout, but then that's one of the hallmarks of Reynolds/Silver. They're the only guys I've ever seen that can make controlled chaos consistently compelling.

Once Dustin did come in, everything broke down in a satisfying way with Dustin hitting his big stuff on everyone before the numbers overwhelmed him. I bought the kickout on the wombo combo as he's tall enough that they couldn't hit it exactly the way they wanted to. Then it all built to the claws and shattered dreams and the ref being just out of position at exactly the right time, and this was all really satisfying in the end. I don't know if Dustin and the Von Erichs will just have the titles for the residency or what, but this is much more of what I want out of a six-man tag, using the extra players to lean harder into ideas like double heat and isolation on the floor instead of just maximizing the number of possible spots.

AEW Battle of the Belts 7/27/24

Dustin Rhodes/Ross Von Erich/Marshall Von Erich vs Roderick Strong/Matt Taven/Mike Bennett

MD: A big feel-good, celebratory title win in front of the home crowd at the residency, the sort of thing that was all but destroyed in mainstream wrestling in the 2010s. This stayed grounded for the most part until the end and then went over the top with bells and whistles for the last couple of minutes.

In general, it was a little more of a standard shine/heat/comeback than the Dark Order match which started with brawling and went into double heat instead. There were similar themes though. Here, things broke down on the floor at the end of the shine and led to Dustin being taken out by a pile-driver leaving things 3 on 2 and letting the Kingdom press their advantage. It's a good model and they can definitely continue to run with it over the next few weeks so long as they can find ways to believably take Dustin out of the matches. Then they can start inverting and tweaking and seeing how that looks like. With just two data points, we'll call it coincidence for now.

I liked the point of transition with Bennett hitting his bounce back shot on the apron before the pile driver and then Strong sealing the deal with a backbreaker. There wasn't necessarily that same anticipation for Dustin on the hot tag (as he was taken out but not repeatedly like in the Dark Order match), but the Kingdom fed for him like pros; it's what they're best at. No one in wrestling can take a nut shot quite like Matt Taven; it's his best quality other than the fact he's still throwing punches instead of forearms. Then the finish maybe got a little silly with the cowbell hitting this time (it missed in the Dark Order match) and all the interference, but when you're going to send everyone home happy, sometimes you can get away with that. Great to see Dustin with a belt again, and yes, 91 WCW and the York Foundation as six-man champs is a sweet spot for my youthful wrestling watching, so I absolutely want them to lean more into that aesthetic than the spot-heavy Elite idea of trios tags.

AEW Collision 7/20/24

Darby Allin vs The Beast Mortos

MD: Playing catch up here. There's story and there's plot and then there's purpose. Usually, if you look at a match through the lens of purpose, the other things come into focus. What was this one trying to accomplish? It was the first televised match for the residency so it was setting the (somewhat literal) stage for that in tone and look and feel. It was Darby's first singles match since March and had to heat him up to a degree for Blood and Guts and for all other things to come. He's in a slightly different spot now. Despite being a ragdoll who can sell and sell and sell and then come back, he may have to be presented as more of a force and take more of his matches in a post-Sting (and soon to be Post-Danielson) world. He's more of the face of the company now. That meant he ended up taking closer to half of the match here, more than you might expect.

Then you had Mortos. He needed to be heated up a bit for his ROH match as he's going to be a player there and kept strong enough to put over Hologram on the 27th on Collision to make that meaningful. I had previously thought that he shouldn't be doing the top rope press slam and the spinning dive in every match, that these should be held back a bit because they stand out so much against everything else happening (which says a lot!) but since he needs to be used to put over others right now and can't be fully protected, it's one way to keep him strong and formidable. I think maybe it sacrifices potential growth in the long run but there are a lot of short term goals where he fits perfectly and keeping him spectacular in every match helps it feel special. It just comes at a cost and that should never, ever be forgotten or minimized. Even here, Darby won by hitting the crucifix bomb off the top and it was a bit of a banana peel protecting Mortos even if he ate the coffin drop and was pinned cleanly. The other thing about him that maybe I've discounted, is that he's wider than he is tall. I see him as a Killswitch like monster, but he's really not. He's more of a LA Park and that changes the dynamic somewhat.

AEW Dynamite 7/24/24

Blood and Guts

MD: I'm kidding. I'm not going to review blood and guts too. This is already enough words. I'll just say this. Next year, I would very much like the people in the match to watch the first few War Games and try to figure out what made those special and tap into that instead. No plunder. No big set pieces. No crazy bumps. Blood, guts, crazy selling instead. It would stand out against the competition. It would stand out against Anarchy in the Arena. It doesn't have to be all the time. It could just be once. Just try it. This is established now. There's nothing to lose.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Garcia

 

11. Bryan Danielson vs. Daniel Garcia AEW Rampage 12/8/23

ER: Matt already wrote an insanely in-depth analysis of this match back when it actually happened, touching on storyline elements that wouldn't have even crossed my mind while watching the match, and does one of my favorite wrestling review things (that I am mostly intellectually incapable of doing) which is to look inside - and perhaps beyond - the possible intentions of what two wrestlers were working towards. As in, reading Matt's reviews, I often find myself thinking that he knows more about the match stories and intentions behind structure and build than the actual wrestlers in the matches. Importantly, he manages to do so without ever coming off like he thinks he knows more than them. He can take visuals in front of him and apply meaning to them where, perhaps, the wrestlers themselves had no meaning, and gift them something deeper. Our brains all view wrestling slightly different, and Matt has an ability to go a bit deeper in viewing wrestling. My mostly useless little review is going to be more like "DaMn DaNiElSoN KiCkS HARD!!!!!"

It's safe to say I am likely spoiled by Bryan Danielson matches, because I am kind of tired of Bryan Danielson matches. They are so repeatedly good in so many similar ways that, stepping back from it, makes me wish we actually did get any of these Danielson Style Changes that he has been hinting at over the years. We get teased with different Danielsons but at the end of the day his matches still feel like the same quality of Danielson work we saw in 2013. We could have gotten full Danielson BattlArts - he is clever enough to work BattlArts style violently and safely - but we only get part of it and never the full commitment. We could have had maestro lucha Danielson, we know he's capable of doing compelling mat matches with some basing, but it has only been teased. These styles have been sacrificed at the altar of Reliably Great Matches. This was a great match, but to me these Great Danielson Matches have felt like by and large the same match for a very long time now. There are standouts and next level exceptions, but to me it feels like every Danielson match passes a certain quality line while staying below a next level experience. 

It's impossible to get to that level of the 2013 Cena or 2018 Brock match. You can't get to that level with a good wrestler like Garcia, and so, Danielson gets the Garcia match to his expected level. And yes, every single Danielson leg kick looked brutal, even match finishing. He was not holding back on Garcia's hamstring. Every hit looked severely damaging, and the match easily could have been built around Danielson just demolishing this leg. But it wasn't built like that, and instead the vicious kicks made every single miss look weaker and mapped out, not throwing misses anywhere near the same as he throws hits. But this isn't really a vet stomping out an upstart, it's more a vet who almost allows an upstart to try some things and then responds with something worse. When Garcia tries to mimic something Danielson did it never goes quite as effectively. It felt like too many things looked worthy of finishing the match, and I think the more they went to those extremes the more it weakened the match after. When Danielson hit a Gotch piledriver and rolled it into a triangle choke, ending with him holding a triangle while sitting on Garcia's chest and throwing punches...I don't know how that didn't end the match, let alone wind up leading to an entire third act after. It didn't come off - to me - like Garcia weathering and persevering, it felt like an escape that was necessary to continue the match and get to the other plans. 

There's been a distinct lack of selling in a lot of AEW Danielson matches, and he tends to encourage it from his opponents too. When Garcia was leaning allllll the way back on the "Dragontamer", making Danielson's heels touch his ass, I was left wondering what damage at all he had weathered. Nothing Danielson did seemed to have any effect on Garcia, and vice versa. Anything done to accumulate damage, didn't. The effective things were the ways they left themselves open, like Garcia leaving his chin open during that Dragontamer, allowing Danielson to hook it. The damage didn't ever seem to lead to anything, but the openings while delivering damage lead to the best parts of the match. In the theme of paying receipts back more viciously, Danielson delivers his trapped arm stomps to the jaw FAR meaner, and I love this meanness. I guess I just wish this meanness felt like it was in service to something bigger, and not in service to checking off the list of things happening in his Great Matches. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Orange Cassidy vs. Angelico

 

21. Orange Cassidy vs. Angelico AEW Rampage 12/8/23

ER: I'm not sure I could have possibly predicted how much of a Modern Orange Cassidy Lover I have become. I am old and much more forgetful than I used to be, but I cannot think of another wrestler who went from one of my least favorite guys on the scene to one of my absolute favorites to watch. If Doc Brown had shown up at my house with a dot matrix print out of AEW's 23/24 roster and asked me to guess My Future Favorites, it would have been pretty easy to quickly pool Darby, Danielson, and Kingston. That hasn't changed. But I'm not sure how I would have explained to myself that in the future we will come to love Orange Cassidy. Liking Trent Beretta is one thing (I do), Wheeler Yuta is another (his improvement isn't a real shock I guess), but I really did not like Orange Cassidy. My hate for him was the kind of hate that was coupled with him as the masthead of a whole Type of wrestling I did not like. 

Every time I write about OC I am still framing it around my actual shock that he connects with me as much as he does, but I shouldn't be shocked anymore. It's been too consistent. I was probably on board with OC by the pandemic Jericho match, but that felt like me occasionally liking a Johnny Gargano match rather than me coming around on his style and gimmick. But now he is must watch for me, a perfect babyface. Maybe I like Jefferson Starship more than Pixies and that shifted my mental balance. Maybe my tastes have changed so much that I no longer recognize my tastes. I don't know. But I'm great at recognizing just what works for me, and he works. 

He's just an excellent babyface, and that's that. He defies the odds such, that here I am writing about a truly enjoyable match against one of the Top 50 IWRG Wrestlers of 2010 and plenty of Danhausen at ringside. If this is slop, I guess I'm a slop swiller now. I liked every little part, even the stupid stuff. I loved OC tying up Angelico's arms and the exhibition rope running and avoidance they started with, the fighting over Angelico keeping Cassidy's hands out of his pockets, and the 1-2 of Orange finally getting those hands in his pockets but hurting his knee while showing off. The pocket hands headscissors looked great, the knee buckle on the pocket hands kip-up perhaps even better. 

Angelico's work on Cassidy's knee was good, and I loved the way Cassidy was able to sell that leg convincingly while still hitting big offense. It's not easy to sell well while still building to the hot part of the match, and while I don't need every match to feature someone limping around and grabbing at their knee, I like when Cassidy does a limb selling match. Angelico had some great asshole stuff on OC's leg: running around the ring to kick his leg out, knocking him back on his face with an inside ankle kick after Orange had just fought to his feet, twisting hard into the Grapevine, and an awesome moment where he lifted Orange for a knee breaker and instead ran him knee first into the top turnbuckle (spinning him around nicely into a back suplex). Would I have wanted less of Danhausen and Serpentico at ringside? Probably. But I liked when Serpentico was throwing punches at Cassidy's kneecap, and the payoff to Danhausen punching Serpentico in the dick was well done. Angelico's fall after catching the Orange Punch right after is a beauty, takes it on the chin and goes sideways and stiff on the fall. I eat-a the slop now. It's delicious. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Santana Breaks Up With Ortiz

 

20. Mike Santana vs. Ortiz AEW Rampage 10/27

ER: We don't get that many matches that are blowing off an actual real life breakup. This is probably the least you could do in a Good version of one of those rare matches, but we don't get many specifically-reasoned real world-kayfabe world blowoffs like this so the match existing is already kind of interesting enough to make it good. No matter what they did in this match, there would be some kind of psychological implications or the opportunity to project psychological implications onto them due to their situation. 

Santana and Ortiz were one of the best tag teams of the 2020s, Jersey indy guys who became a consistent highlight and major part of AEW. They were in the literal main event of the first episode of Dynamite, against the guys with an ownership stake in the company! Stadium Stampedes, the Parking Lot Fight, Anarchy in the Arena, Blood & Guts, all great fights that are among the best matches in AEW history, and these two were real highlights of them all. But, they got bogged down in AEW roster bloat, relegated to being not even the featured tag team in their stable, never sniffing the tag titles, a total miss for reasons I don't know. Still, it was a good steady gig. 

But Santana wanted more out of work and life - which is an impossible thing to not respect - and Ortiz wanted to keep the guaranteed gig, and they had a normal real life disagreement like men. If you are exclusively a tag team wrestler with one man for over a decade, you have ceased being a pro wrestling tag team and become an actual real life partnership. You are married, you are in a band that constantly tours together, you have never been in a car for more hours than you have with this person, you are a full on real partnership. And, if you start wanting different things than your long time partner wants, the only fair way to proceed is for both of you to be 100% honest with each other about your wants and needs. Santana wanted his fake first name back, Ortiz was happy with his last name and his place in life, and so two men came to the end of the trail. 

But at the end of the trail they got to officially implode their partnership and their AEW deals with a No DQ match on television. When it ended, it didn't really feel like the blow off of a 10 year + partnership, but they had some nice peaks where the emotion suddenly went from lurking to out in the open. It's a fun show-off singles match between two guys who rarely had singles matches, which is kind of an oddity in itself. Santana and Ortiz were in AEW for 5 years and literally 95% of their matches were tags with each other. They aren't singles match guys at this point. Now they're done. Santana has been out with a knee injury, Ortiz has been off television, and now they're back having their last AEW singles match. 

For a match with a real life disagreement and break up at its core, I don't think it lived up to the possibilities. It didn't deliver for me like their tag matches regularly delivered, and those didn't have any drama attached. This is a tag team having their first and only singles match, and too much of it felt like any two guys on this roster having a 10 minute singles match on Rampage. Now maybe Santana's 2024 singles matches have been really great, I haven't seen them, but I know for a fact they were really good at tag team wrestling. This is singles match wrestling with potentially emotional and violent stipulation, and too much of it felt like the exact same match Jack Perry would have had with Juice Robinson. So that sucks. 

BUT the moments that actually met the gravity of their team's collapse were when this actually went into something beyond. Beyond move trading, beyond strike trading, suddenly it felt like two guys who had been waiting to hit each other. Like they had been waiting a really, really long time to start teeing off on each other, and it turned a fairly typical TV No DQ match into something better. I'd be hard pressed to name too many "fight from your knees" exchanges or the best standing slap exchanges because they are things that usually make their matches worse. Here it was those played out stand-off moments that made this match worth writing about. Trash can lids and kendo sticks don't much thrill me anymore, but knuckle punches into foreheads will always thrill me; two brothers throwing fast slaps without holding back will always thrill me. Those punches and slaps were what I will remember about this. They were finally working the proper emotion for the important occasion. 

Plenty of things here looked good - Ortiz getting suplex off the apron onto a pile of chairs he pulled out, the way he theatrically went vertical for Santana's rolling cutter, the way Santana went hard on a short arm clothesline or his winning sitout powerbomb, even just the way Ortiz started lightly jogging to loosen up his body after getting a nearfall - but Santana stepping up with actual passion, demanding to be set free, was what brought emotion to a match that should have been overflowing with it. Santana did not want to be part of a team any longer, and when he was throwing slaps with both arms it looked like that was exactly what was being communicated. Ortiz didn't shake his hand after the match. This wasn't what he wanted. He was happy, he was content, and his face after the match was not one of a content man. 

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Cage

7. Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage AEW Rampage 8/11 

ER: Maybe one day I will tire of watching Darby Allin fall in ways I don't think the human body should fall, but this tunnel is black with no sign of any light at the end. Darby Allin appears to not just lean into bad landings, he seems to relish aiming the plane directly at them. I can't get past it. Darby has this Low Ki precision to his landings, but Low Ki's landings were works of athletic physics that made his body spring across the mat and ropes with a violent control. Darby seems to have the same incredible control but opts to make his landings worse. When Prince Nana clotheslines his legs out from him on the top rope, there were dozens of ways he could have take a great-but-less-painful bump; he didn't have to get swept onto the back of his head from that high up, but he constantly seeks to aim the plane beyond the runway. That's important in a match with Brian Cage. Darby is the most ideal opponent for Cage, and again I must state that it is no coincidence that the AEW roster works UP to Allin. When Brian Cage asks himself "How do I view myself as a pro wrestler?" you can bet that he views himself as the guy throwing Darby's ass around in this match. If you wrote out The Whole Basic Idea of Brian Cage it would read like this match. Darby Allin allows wrestlers to achieve their full potential. 

I used to think Cage was a doofus who did too much and not enough at the same time, but he somehow means more to me in 2024 than ever. He's a real dummy, and I need gassed to the fucking gills lunkheads wearing silver face paint in wrestling. I need a freak with a distended HGH belly that leaves him prone for an apron Coffin Drop. Of course all of Cage's offense wouldn't be possible without a willing opponent, but I've seen plenty of guys hold back with very willing opponents, and Cage does not do that. That's important. I knew I would be writing about this match the moment Cage stopped a full speed Darby tope with a shoulderblock, like he was setting a screen against a guy on a moped. Darby bounces extra hard on every landing, and Cage throws him into landings that deserve that bounce. The way Cage threw himself into his inside-out vertical suplex from the middle buckle, running through a table like he was jumping into a swimming pool while wearing a Darby Backpack, and throwing Allin so hard into the turnbuckles that Darby hit them as fast as possible, sideways, on his neck, just seemed like what would happen if you were thrown by Brian Cage at his Fullest Powers. Darby Allin makes Brian Cage look like an Essential Worker. Darby Allin is a boon to American Prosperity, making everyone's dreams possible. 

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AEW (And CMLL) Five Fingers of Death 3/25 - 3/31

AEW Collision 3/30/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Katsuyori Shibata vs. Dutch/Vincent/Lance Archer

MD: Not quite an all-star trios match but certainly a unique one with Shibata in the mix. We're just at the start of him as a weekly player as opposed to an attraction and on some level, I feel like he'll add as much as Okada and Ospreay, maybe even more, because he is a contrast to a lot of the roster. Every match up with him feels like a fresh match up. Even with Archer, Cagematch says he's only faced Archer two times before this and they paired up really well to start. Likewise the early Dutch vs. Claudio bits where Dutch provided Claudio a massive canvas to work his strength spots on. 

The meat of the match, however, was Danielson working FIP against the unified trio. It was easily explained away by Danielson's jetlag and the Righteous and Archer's superior chemistry (even Danielson and Castagnoli have only teamed up ten times or so in the two years of the BCC existing). Plus, he got to absolutely dominate all three (including him getting up on the apron to take Archer out with a knee with lightning fast speed, really) right before he got dragged down by a Vincent cheapshot out of nowhere. It was a great face-in-peril performance, one that will probably get overlooked in time, but stood out hugely to me on a random Saturday night at the end of March. Danielson knew he had Claudio's strength and Shibata's suddenness and technique on the apron so it made sense for him to be in the role. He had to look strong despite the totally valid excuses because each week he's being judged against what Ospreay is up to. That said, he had to ensure that Archer, Vincent, and Dutch could keep dragging him down for their sake, the sake of the match, to justify this being a main event. And while Archer's instantly credible whenever he enters the room, the Righteous are, through no real fault of their own, deeply below their opponents in the hierarchy.  

That meant that while Danielson would be able to flip back over Dutch or get kicks in on Vincent in the corner, he'd make sure to give his opponents their due: Vincent with his ferocity, Dutch with his size, and Archer with the monstrous combination of both. Given that the crowd was hot all night and it built the pressure just right for Claudio to get the hot tag and come in like a freight train, and then, after everything broke down and we got the swing and various finishers, for Shibata to close things out almost simply by being himself. Overall, a difficult performance managed masterfully by Danielson, and we will continue to appreciate how lucky we are to get to see it week in and week out while we still can.

CMLL Homenaje a Dos Leyendas 3/29/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley/Matt Sydal vs. Blue Panther/Mistico/Ultimo Guerrero/Volador Jr.

MD: Speaking of being fortunate, well, there's this, isn't there? Something that would have been impossible to imagine ten years ago or five years ago and that would have seemed very unlikely just one year ago even. For a lot of us, it's up there with the Sting retirement match as something that's just unbelievably special, so much so that it's hard to even put down words for. Arena Mexico is special. When you get a crowd that's really committed to what they're seeing, it's like nothing else in the world in 2024, or 2014, or 2004, or even maybe 1994 (Outside of Puerto Rico, I imagine). While there is ritual and expectation and that wonderful pro wrestling reality that exists with the particular style of CMLL's lucha, there's still a level of suspension of disbelief and immersion that almost undoes the chemical change that has affected (afflicted?) pro wrestling over the last few decades and has completely changed the incentives of wrestlers. 

That's the environment that the BCC and their erstwhile "captain" Matt Sydal (with his Peace, Love, and Pro Wrestling tron to counter the Violencia sin Limite BCC shirts) walked into. And while it didn't give me 100% of what I wanted, it gave me a lot of it. I wish that there was a longer feeling out process with initial pairings. I get why on a time-crunched PPV that was unlikely and it's total valid to skip that part in a trios or atomicos match in order to get straight to the heat. That's a totally valid way to build a match like this and maybe extra heat was what the doctor called for here given the stylistic issues and, frankly, inexperience of most of the BCC in maintaining the rhythm and flow of a lucha beatdown. I just wanted to see initial pairings, that's all. As for those shortcomings, Claudio was dropped in as natural as could be given his background, the ultimate base in so many ways, and I just can't imagine a world where Jon Moxley, if given two months of weekly Friday and Monday shows, wouldn't be an amazing traffic director; for his first try, he wasn't exactly Satanico in there keeping things moving though.

That meant you ended up with some weird, weird stuff where the more familiar you were with the trappings, the more it'd take you out of the moment. I'm talking about Blue Panther getting a full, momentum shift (mandate-of-heaven) comeback with the big Mistico leap into the ring, only for the BCC to take back over on Ultimo Guerrero (the best of all time in getting beaten up in a corner and still raising the roof to show the fans that he's the toughest star you've seen) to set up that lovely bit of ritual, his power bomb off the top and the real final third of exchanges and break-ups. As a match in a vacuum, it absolutely worked. It just threw me given that watching lucha in Arena Mexico is always a quarter about expectations being met and worshiping at the altar. 

There were a lot of great individual moments though: Panther celebrating Danielson at the start (and celebrating Danielson's celebration of himself, of course), Danielson embracing the yes chants, all the energy that led to things breaking down with that initial beatdown, Sydal being a spin kicking attack dog for the BCC, the giant swing on Volador, Claudio destroying Ultimo Guerrero after he raised the roof, and then the exchanges at the end, with Guerrero and Moxley scrapping and Mistico subverting the Yes chants like only he could, and Claudio basing for everyone, including allowing Panther to be absolutely fearless, down to just charging through the knee when Danielson hit him with it. So yes, overall, very special and they're even giving me what I didn't get here next week by running Danielson vs Panther back. Yes, I have a few nitpicks but absolutely no complaints for something we're all but blessed to have in the end.

AEW Rampage 3/29/24

Dustin Rhodes vs. The Butcher

MD: There are a lot of bad faith arguments about storytelling with AEW. I thought about engaging but we don't really engage with bad faith arguments around here. We focus on the text itself more often than not. Let's do that. Dustin's deferred his retirement which he was thinking might be this year. He feels good. He's ready to go. Butcher and he have history, so a feel good promo was interrupted on Wednesday. That history includes a Bunkhouse Tag back in 2020. They have familiarity. Usually a match on Rampage is either setting something up (including heating someone up), paying something off, or an attraction for a live crowd. Menard was in the main event here to do the last bit (and to set up a chain reaction ending with the Bucks standing triumphant if not tall), but there's probably something to Dustin, being an old WWF guy, popping a Quebec crowd. 

This was straightforward and leaned on that familiarity. That meant that they were able to make things that were less than smooth, like an early backslide attempt, feel like organic struggle and not miscommunication. It meant Butcher was ready for the first dropdown punch. It meant that he was able to capitalize and yank the arm over the top to take over. He had very straightforward, credible offense, mainly headbutts to the arm, but I'm never going to complain about headbutts to the arm. He was able to use it to cut Dustin off and take back over. Dustin, despite his size, was always so good at making himself smaller when he sold, and he did so here, pulling inwards with the arm to get the point across. He was able to tap into his bombs (like the code red) as hope spots, but Butcher was right there to take back over, playing to the crowd as he pressed his advantage. Down the stretch, Butcher had one last tricked out arm assault, a pulling fireman's carry right into a crossface which was something that would have played just as well in 1960s France, but Dustin was able to pay off the kneeling punch, hit his short power slam that the commentators weren't sure he could hit, the Cross Rhodes that he needed two tries on, and then the final reckoning for the win. We won't know for a couple of weeks if this was to heat Dustin up for something or just was an attraction for the crowd, but every chance to see Dustin work from underneath and get a crowd behind him is worthwhile and this crowd was lucky to experience it at least one more time.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW PARKING LOT BRAWL 2

 

13. Trent Beretta/Chuck Taylor vs. Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley AEW Rampage 8/4/23

ER: This is the second Best Friends Parking Lot match, and if the Height of the Pandemic words I wrote about the first one are to be believed, I thought that one was one of the best matches of the year. That one was against LAX, who doesn't exist anymore. This one is against Blackpool Combat Club, who didn't exist then but is as good and as watchable as LAX was then. But this wasn't as good as that and I know that even though I couldn't tell you one clear detail of that first match which I loved if you had a gun to my face, I would guess, but it would be a lie and I would spend some days unexpectedly suddenly afraid that I cheated death and would someday be forced to pay back double. That first match was the first match Chuck Taylor was a part of that I thought was great. Now it's a couple years later and he has the dark red cheeks of a man with lupus and it reminds us all how we've aged since our last parking lot fight a couple years ago. 

This match knew what it was, in a way that hurt it. It didn't have the freshness or the element of surprise that the original had. This was violent - Trent Beretta essentially got busted open good in the first few seconds - but had this weird approach where everything that happened in the parking lot was equally damaging as anything else that happened in the parking lot. Selling is less important to me in matches where guys are just taking "real" bumps. But this felt long in ways the other one didn't, moving at a pace that was like the match walking alongside itself. Getting hit with a spoiler was about the same as getting piledriven on the roof of a KIA which was about the same as getting powerbombed through a windshield. The price was about 3 seconds. It felt like they were on an itinerary. But also Trent Beretta tried to recreate the legendary Real Parking Lot Fight where Cliff Booth threw Bruce Lee into the side of a Lincoln Continental. 

Really it's the Trent Beretta match. That's why we watch this. We love Claudio doing strong man spots in a junkyard brawl, we love Moxley bleeding almost as quickly as Trent, but Beretta is the guy doing the spots you want to see on cars. That cannon ball into the side of the car was sick, Claudio press slammed him on top of a car, he got slammed inside the engine and stayed inside as Taylor was powerbombed on the hood, he gets bombed through a windshield, Claudio swings him into the head of one of those big yard waste bins, and every time he fought back his offense it was just him taking the same awful falls only offensively instead of defensively. He drove this forward and his body kept taking the most real bumps on concrete and cars and then getting right back up to do it again. I don't give a shit about his mom. Chuck Taylor siphoning gasoline should have led to something special - and I'm not looking up whether Taylor actually siphoned like a divorced dad who hates his wife's new boyfriend, because I believed he was that man; eyes flaring redder than his rosacea cheeks, he thought only of his hallway that used to be lined with pictures. But a man siphoning gasoline shouldn't lead to the weakest stretch of the match, not when guys are out there killings themselves. 

Trent Beretta is a guy who I just realized has three different Tags on our site because I've spelled his name differently three different times. But I thought he was so good in this match that it made me take the time to go back and fix all of the times we tagged him as Trent Barretta. I didn't have the energy to update the ones that just used Trent. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Dustin vs. Claudio

 

37. Dustin Rhodes vs. Claudio Castagnoli AEW Rampage 8/24 (Aired 8/26/22)

ER: Matt already wrote this gem up at length when it originally aired, but I wanted to add a few perfunctory thoughts years later just to officially add it to our MOTY List. I have such fond memories of that brilliant but brief era in WWE where Cesaro and Goldust were among several of my favorite guys producing great weekly tag matches. I think of that window so fondly that it's hard to believe that was a full decade ago now. Cesaro and Goldust matched up a lot over a 6 month stretch from late 2013 to early 2014 and the matches were always given ample time to deliver. Most of them did. But were weren't getting Goldust singles matches during that era, just letting the best hot tag-slash-best face in peril in the world play to his strengths in perhaps the last best era of WWE tag team wrestling. 

So now, nearly a decade later, we finally get one of the singles matches that would have slotted perfectly into that era and excites me just as much today. Dustin is older and doesn't have that same gas tank, but the pairing is no less intriguing. I love a Veteran Who Has Lost a Step match story, and Dustin is great at playing that story. The way he misses his high crossbody and blogrolls all the way to the floor or hits his head on the bottom rope taking a shoulderblock, these are spots that mean more when done by Old Dustin than Young Spry Dustin. Falls are more serious to us old people. Claudio is the perfect guy to take advantage of Dustin's slower step, and Dustin is great at firing people up by regularly seeming he was about to go on a tear before Claudio could shut it down again as quickly as it began. 

Regal says on commentary that Claudio is the only person he's known who can throw an uppercut as hard as Dave Taylor, which is the coolest kind of compliment Regal can give someone. But more than that, Claudio is capable of working spots on Dustin that nobody else could do, while catching Dustin spots that nobody else could catch. He's arguably the perfect modern Dustin opponent. He catches the cannonball safer than anyone while making it looks like catching a 240 pound medicine ball, and I can't imagine Dustin trusts anyone on the roster enough to leap off the top rope with his rana. Claudio's giant swing is one of the great wrestling spots, but perhaps never better than performed on Dustin. Claudio is the guy who is actually capable of swinging the big man, and it looks so great because nobody has legs longer than Dustin's. AEW's top down angle of that swing and how much of the ring surface area they were covering was perfection. All of Claudio's displays of strength only imply that his crossface grip has the power of a trash compactor, like it's shifting Dustin's teeth in his gums. 

I really couldn't care less about the "Is this Dustin Rhodes' last attempt to win a World Championship?" story they kept trying to push on commentary, and seemingly only on commentary. Dustin's approach in this match, to me, didn't feel any different than it has in any other high profile singles matches. What does the ROH World Championship actually mean to anyone in 2022? This is a belt Matt Taven held for half a year, what is it really supposed to mean for Dustin Rhodes to hold this specific title? Would it really have been any different than giving him a nice Lifetime Achievement watch? I guess one difference is that the watch would actually mean something to Dustin. Dustin potentially winning the World Title of a company he never worked for in a company that is financing the company he never worked for doesn't really carry a lot of emotional weight for me. Of course Regal has to tell me that the ROH World Title is a Title that is "coveted by every single wrestler in the world"; they need to say those things, but none of it sounds convincing in any way. 

What I did buy into was Dustin's fatigue down the stretch: his red face swelling in Claudio's crossface, the way he almost bailed on a piledriver, tossing Claudio off to the side rather than sit back on it, the way it felt like he couldn't totally hold Claudio down on pinfalls. It led perfectly to the finish of an out of breath Dustin unable to duck Claudio's leapfrog, running face first into Claudio's balls, but also being tired enough to be incapable of capitalizing. Claudio momentarily compartmentalizes his ball pain and uppercuts Dustin's body out of the air, a final shot to the hull of an old ship. 

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Dustin vs. Swerve

 

10. Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland AEW Rampage 2/15 (Aired 2/17/23)

ER: I don't know how he keeps doing it. At the time, I didn't know Dustin was only in his late 20s during his heavy schedule years as Goldust. That was half his and half my life ago, and he wasn't taking Death Valley Drivers on the ring apron then. He's an old dude and he keeps surprising us. A 6'6" great actor is almost a curse. It doesn't matter how good Tim Robbins or Jeff Goldblum are, it makes everything tough when your leading man is a foot taller than everyone. Liam Neeson's wife and family die in every movie so he can just be 6'5" alone in every scene. Dustin is a 6'6" old guy who is somehow a perfect opponent for every style opponent. I guess shooting guard bodies age with more grace than center bodies, but seeing Attitude era Dustin I wouldn't have guessed he'd be this adaptable into his 50s. Swerve is a talented guy who sometimes shovels a ton of bullshit onto things that don't need shoveling, and I let out a loud HA when Dustin just kick stopped some kind of slow motion handstand capoeira to hit an all time Code Red. 

Fighting Dustin made Swerve cut down on the bullshit and just kick and stomp on a seeping cut, raking his wrist tape across it to cover his arm deep red. I wish Dustin had been wearing all white instead of all red; it's like he was trying to cover up how much he was bleeding. He doesn't even need to bleed to draw sympathy, but he hides his blood showing he doesn't need such gimmicks; he bleeds for his love of the boys in the back. Dustin fucking slaps Swerve a couple of times. I like that Swerve's offense doesn't hit as hard as Dustin's. He's taking his shots and walking through them, an old man winning a gym game 10-8 over a young guy who keeps claiming he was shot from cardio day. I could never see Swerve do a handstand again, but I love how good he is at different angled spikes on his head. He'll take piledrivers, Code Reds, suplexes, a Cross Rhodes, all of it bouncing on or around the top of his head. Every nearfall worked. Retirement will never happen. Dustin is Satanico. The Code Red will get adorably slow but gracefully old but his uppercuts will be exactly the same. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby/Sting vs. House of Black

 

31. Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King AEW Rampage 9/21 (Aired 9/23)

ER: So this probably isn't a Cool Guy thing to admit, but I was never a Sting Guy. Maybe it's because I didn't start watching WCW until 1997, and the only reason I knew Sting even existed before then was because of my friend Justin's wrestling buddy, which I thought was a knock off Ultimate Warrior wrestling buddy. To be clear, I was never anti-Sting, just due to era and timing he was never anyone I had any real connection to, and it is wild to me that the most connected I have ever felt to Sting is now that he's a 63 year old Terry Funk in faceprint. Old Man Sting has this crazy match formula that's like a one move Bray Wyatt match but not dogshit like those matches. He punches his way through his match until he takes a dangerous fall and spends most of the match he just works Vibes until his finisher, and it's fucking great. It just works so well and feels impossible it's happening, a Superstar Wrestling Legend boiling down Big Star wrestling to just vibes, while adding Serious Falls to your formula. It's insane and it's a direction I somehow didn't even see coming when he was working Deathmatch adjacent matches with fucking Abyss in TNA in his late 40s. 

Terry Funk added a moonsault in his late 50s and it's one of the coolest things a Legendary Wrestler has ever done. "But it always looked like shit" it literally doesn't matter you baby. If you went over to your grandparents one day and he called you into the backyard and said, "Eric, you're going to love this, I've been working on this trick..." and then my grandfather attempted to moonsault off a ladder or the roof or his truck, then I don't think it would have been possible to trust my grandfather ever again. If my grandfather fell off a ladder in front of his unsuspecting grandson I would be forever scared that my grandpa was going to suddenly swerve his truck into traffic for a thrill. Sting has children and now takes bigger falls than at any point of his career and he's doing it while living a life of full financial and personal responsibility. Adding a dangerous fall into your B-Show TV Match Formula is an insane thing for a financially stable man who has lived through 13 U.S. Presidents. Sting is a thrill seeker and an addict and it's made me fascinated and captivated by Sting. He punches, he falls, the he makes a lot of faces until the finish. Why do I hate Danhausen doing the exact same thing? I have no idea. I don't know why I chose this path.  

Buddy Matthews was a perfect Sting dance partner for this, so active at getting his ass kicked around by Sting, taking a break to take his own big bump and make a big catch, then back to the ring to pinball around for sexagenarian signature offense. It's a great performance to match Sting's vibe, the guy taking the important "small offense" bumps while every other person in the match took 1-3 dangerous stunt falls. Matthews gets RVD bounce taking the Death Drop and it's the perfect way to use athletic show-off bumping. Everyone else dies. Sting gets shoved off the top rope through a table and hits his head on a second table on his fall. It was incredible. Darby crashed like a sack of laundry on a blocked tope suicida, hit a high coffin drop, and fell off the stage with Brody King while getting choked. Julia Hart's bump might have been the most dangerous and unexpected of the match, with perfect placement after Great Muta finished his walk-on Carol Burnett Show appearance. It's a great spectacle, with Matthews whipping violently for a Muta dragons crew and staggering into mist, knocking Julia Hart too far off the apron, mostly beyond the table she was aiming for, a sicko landing that left the table partly broken in a silhouette of her body. Sting is indispensable.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: The Elite vs. Top Flight Fox

 

Kenny Omega/The Young Bucks vs. AR Fox/Dante & Darius Martin AEW Rampage 2/15 (Aired 2/17/23)

ER: On paper the idea of The Elite working a 10 minute long NBA on TNT match filled with amateur Harlem Globetrotter routines sounds fucking terrible. I mean just awful. They're wearing jerseys and yucking it up real chuffed with themselves, throwing the rock around. It sounds so fucking bad man. But I guess my brain is just wrecked on gas station Stay Hard pills because I enjoyed all of it and actually wish it had way more basketball spots. How were the basketball spots in this actually good? Everybody in the match handled a ball much better than I would have guessed and what should have played as Bad Chikara Shit played out as Good Chikara Shit: Jump balls leading to atomic drops or superkicks, Kenny catching a ball to the nuts running in to interfere, Nick getting a ball thrown at the bridge of his nose two different times! Who could have possibly guessed that everyone but AR Fox had Necro Butcher Throwing Chair precision with a basketball. 

Fox didn't really contribute to any of the good pass drill clown hijinks, but he at least spammed a hall dozen high hang time dives. AR Fox dives look impressive in air but make very light contact, so spamming them as a swarming attack instead of impact attack works better. They made the smart choice and made all of the basketball spots end with actual impact. The Comedy lead to The Violence. A basketball to the face hurts, and the ball was flying around the ring while guys were busy doing other spots. Darius Martin looks cool backflipping with a basketball. Really cool. Like the Phoenix Suns Gorilla cool. The Goon worked excellently as a violent hockey player gimmick because it's cool seeing big Bill Irwin checking guys into boards and going low on shoulderblocks. We've never gotten a Bill Laimbeer/Draymond Green violent basketball player gimmick. We're not there yet. The technology isn't ready. But the basketball spots in this match transcended Human Tornado dunking on a huracanrana and I was not expecting that. 

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Bennett

 

6. Darby Allin vs. Mike Bennett AEW Rampage 1/6/23

ER: Darby is such an excellent opponent for nearly any wrestler to paint a masterpiece. Mike Bennett is a wrestler who I like without also having much of an opinion on him either way. If I had been asked before this match what my favorite Mike Bennett memory was, I would say with no hesitation "his leather WWE ring jacket that had Maria and their baby airbrushed on the back". This is Valentine's Day. This is going to be the day I add a Mike Bennett match to a MOTY List. That perfect jacket and he/his wife's perfect WWE theme "True Love" are more highlights than many wrestlers I like. But those are things. That's me connecting to two things associated with Mike Bennett, not connecting with his wrestling. I don't think I've ever connected to Bennett in an actual wrestling match the way I did here. Part of that is due to Darby as an opponent, part of it is to Bennett going all out and taking a real fight to Darby. Importantly, this is not the kind of Darby match we've seen where he withstands a mad beating and body breaking bumps before eking out a win; it is a match where Darby withstands a mad beating and body breaking bumps while also going toe to toe with his opponent. 

I don't think I've written about a Mike Bennett match since ROH was airing on Destination America - a TV channel I am sure has not existed since 2015 - but this Mike Bennett is one worth writing about. Mike Bennett is great at being the larger man in a Darby Allin match (a role almost every Allin opponent is placed into) while making certain to work only so much larger. Bennett works this knowing he is larger and is almost surprised by Darby working as his equal. Several times in the match Darby catches him over and over with these awesome whipping punches, like the best version of Jeff Hardy's punches, thrown 3x the speed as Jeff's and able to land multiple times before Bennett realizes what is even happening to him. Darby, sitting on the top rope, starts whipping Bennett's face left and right and it's like it forces Bennett to start shoot punching him back. Later on when Bennett catches a kick, he stands there absorbing so many of these whipping punches that it's as if he's stunned by them, realizing they're happening but only realizing it after the seventh one lands. He finally just drops the leg but that leads to him immediately eating some of Darby's hardest elbows, and all the man can do is respond with chops thrown as if he was Drew McIntyre size and cut off more elbows with a single Kawada-like right hand. Darby's toughness seemed to inspire Bennett's stiffness, which inspired Darby's toughness. 

Both men got rocked onto their heels multiple times, and their execution and impact on everything was cleeeeean. Jaws rattled, Darby ploughing into Matt Taven at full speed with a low rope tope con giro, Bennett sacrificing both of their bodies with a side Russian legsweep off the apron, and of course Darby hitting a flat back missile dropkick from the top to the floor, Bennett prone in a folding chair, Darby knowing at best he is taking a 10 foot drop flat onto his back...I felt it all in HD. Every impact felt important. I loved the false finish bullshit to set up our real finish, involving Maria stalling the Coffin Drop by laying over Bennett so Taven could kick Darby off the top into a great Bennett piledriver. Two piledrivers on this Rampage that looked like finishers. Every finish to every Darby match is the best. He either dies biggest or crashes hardest and it always rules. Bennett gets greedy and wants the avalanche piledriver, but Darby turns that into an Avalanche Code Red, then finally hits that Coffin Drop as Tenryu hitting an elbowdrop. Crumbling Kingdoms, Wrecked Ribcages. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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