AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/13 - 10/19

AEW WrestleDream 10/18/25

Darby Allin vs Jon Moxley (I Quit)

MD: So this had me, then it lost me, then it hooked me again, then it lost me, and I pretty much made it back for the finish. A bit like Moxley's year, yeah? Let's break it down. Moxley had just barely hung on at All Out in Darby's own gimmick match even after losing the title. He'd hit bottom and clung on thanks to reinforcements. In a world where Darby would have let him move on, maybe he'd be onward and upwards, taking a third swing at Hangman, going after Brodido, regaining the six-man belts, maybe refocusing for the C2 and Okada. 

But Darby wouldn't quit, he didn't quit, he couldn't quit. 

And Mox knew that. Yet here they were. 

There were ways out of this where Darby might have lost, most specifically if Sting's life was on the line. But then Sting's not normal and Darby's not normal and even that might not have worked. 

So if Darby wasn't going to quit under any circumstance, the match then was about Moxley punishing him for the sake of punishing him. There was to be no bottom. 

Moxley sees himself as a king, as truth, as a force that can mete out justice and push the world forward. He sees himself as a god. In a timely fashion, he sees himself as Inoki, a vengeful deity of struggle and conflict. Inoki was able to channel that with a certain purity of spirit though. Oh, there were lapses, like when he was in there against Maeda, but put him up against Saito, Choshu, Kimura, or even Fujinami, and there was an element of holy wrath at play.

But Jon Moxley is not Inoki. The cracks run deep, and through them, you can see glimpses of the vulnerable hypocrite within. 

What was he trying to accomplish here then? He wanted to punish Darby. He was riding the shaky confidence of beating Darby at his own game. Most of all, though, he wanted to prove to his followers and to the world that he was everything he said he was, that he could perform miracles.

And there's no greater miracle than making Darby Allin quit.

Darby planted his flag to start. Moxley stomped upon it. Darby scored the first points only for Shafir to involve herself and force the tide to turn. From there, the punishment began. Mouth, nose, ears. Soft, fragile bits. Hand, fingers, nails. A dismantling. An object lesson. All it took was one lapse, however, one bit of distance and Darby began to fire back. But then he overstretched as he so often did and slipped on the top rope, for Shafir to pull Mox away, and for Darby to wipe out on the apron (again).

I did find the first few minutes compelling. Maybe it was due to how Moxley was shifting up his offense, moving from one body part to another. But they did lose me somewhat here, as Mox whipped Darby in the ring, as Darby came back with mace and threatened immolation (again), as the Death Riders came out, as Darby held his own right until he didn't. 

Then they got me back. All it took was Claudio taking one sharp 180 degree turn. He had Darby up in a press slam. Claudio's strength is always impressive, but sometimes it feels like only Darby brings out something visceral and real within him. Claudio turning face and launching Darby into the announcer desk brought a vibrant color into the world, underpinned by Tony Schiavone's shout and Excalibur's whisper even as PAC dragged Darby's corpse around ringside. 

It wouldn't last. Part of the problem was that Jon Moxley did not have a miracle within him. There had been tasing. There was more punishment. The fishtank came into play. At one point they outright asked what would happen if Darby went unconscious. They'd just have to wake him up and try again. Sting's arrival felt like a mercy, but not for Darby. It felt like a mercy for Moxley, because the tower of babel he was building would never be high enough and he'd only look more the fool in his delusion. 

It was an onramp back into the match for me as well. Sting has that presence. Just pointing a bat, just throwing to Darby, that was enough. Mox demanded high and Darby went low, taking out the leg, defeating him soundly and quickly with a wrestling hold, a fitting conclusion for a hypocrite warrior. 

What are we left with then? It was a doomed match, one that couldn't easily follow the two tags that came before it (one goofus, one gallant). If Darby had been the aggressor throughout, maybe it would have been different, but the story here was of Moxley's ultimate hubris, of seeing himself as a god, when he is but a man. How we will remember this has a lot to do with where things go next.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 3

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Darby Allin vs Brody King

Consequence is everything. That's why selling matters. Selling isn't checking a box and doing something because you're supposed to. Selling is the means to show consequence of action. Without it, pro wrestling is meaningless. It's pure sensation without substance. Imagine watching a movie where no one registers any of the events, reading a book where none of the characters seem to care about anything that happens. Wrestling is a physical medium. The events that take place are primarily physical. The impact of them must be registered and cared about, must be shown to be consistent over time and between matches. Otherwise, what's the point of any of this? Without that, what's makes wrestling stand out from any other sort of physically impressive athletic exhibition. All of the storytelling in wrestling is found here. Things have to have consequences.

Darby Allin is the human embodiment of consequence. He is transcendent. Nothing he does in the ring is for the sake of it. Nothing he does in the ring is simply to impress. If he is creating action, then that action is with the simulated intention of hurting his opponent. Given his size, the best weapon he has to do so is his own body. There are wrestlers who will do a series of three dives one after the other, and it's obvious that they are meant to thrill, to pop the crowd, to show off. When Darby does a series of multiple dives, a few elements are at play. First, he HAS to do this. He has no other way to hurt his opponent. He has no choice. The impact has to look like it's doing real damage and not just pushing his opponent backwards. He has to be a primed cannonball, not just a wrestler hitting a spot. Second, things could go horribly wrong with any dive. This isn't some inputted video game move where once the first dive hits, the second two will automatically follow. This is not a looped gif. At any point, something can, and so often will, go horribly wrong for Darby. Yet he presses on because he has absolutely no choice. There is a heavy sort of pressure that weighs down upon the viewer as they watch Darby wrestle. Nothing is light and fluffy. Even the things that involve some level of set up do not feel prearranged. Each moment is a hinge point, Schrodinger's spot, where everything could go right for him (at great cost nonetheless) or everything can go so, so wrong.

And Brody King is in many ways the perfect partner for this. Brody, like few others in wrestling today, lives and breathes that Hansen-ian mentality, always driving forward with the violence of the moment. It feels at any point that he surveys the scene like some unholy, bestial terminator and calculates in a heartbeat what would be the most impactful, the most hurtful, the most violent act. Then he does it. If Darby embodies consequence, Brody is more than happy to cause it. He's the beautiful and horrible butterfly flapping its wings. He's the grubby, wart-covered thumb that causes the first domino to fall. Together, they're a two man demolition crew, demolishing the ring, each other, and the feeling of safety and security that we call normalcy.

Therefore, the drama in any Darby match isn't about how many counters he can skillfully pull off. It's about survival. What is going to break first, his body (for his spirit will never break) or his opponent's? How much devastation can he take vs how much can he cause, knowing full well that every bit that he causes also hurts himself. Does his opponent have enough to push Darby over the limit, to leave him in such shambles that he can't get a shoulder up, that he can't twist and contort his body to escape just one more time, that he can no longer pick himself up and throw himself like a blunt object into the face of his enemy? When your body is your only weapon, everything matters. When there's a chance that you are going to crash and burn at any and every moment, everything matters. Darby is the human embodiment of consequence and a king of anticipation. The fans believe in him, believe in his resilience, believe that even though he registers every bit of pain, there's always a chance he can fight back, that he can persevere. They believe in him all the more because he registers everything that happens and it matters so, so much more when he does overcome and even when he doesn't.

And what mattered here? What mattered here was that this was a war, and not a war of posturing and preening. This was a war with casualties, bruised skin, battered bones, blood between the teeth. When the smoke cleared Darby was victorious, but there was no shame in Brody's loss; there was glory in he even making it back into the ring to beat the count after the coffin drop onto the stairs. There was a handshake that actually mattered. There was even a tiny taste of hope for what Darby and Brody might be able to do together given the darkness falling upon AEW. Sometimes you have to fight darkness with darkness. And none of this exists, none of it matters, none of it catches in your throat and pumps your heart without consequence. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Bryan Danielson vs Jon Moxley

MD: Wrestling is about hope. It's about creating the need for it, building up anticipation for it, cutting it off after every tiny taste of it, and then paying it off at the absolute right moment and in the absolute right way. Hope is everything. What hope has meant to the wrestling fan, both within the confines of a match and in general, has changed over the decades. If we go back forty years, it was about the heel being punished at the hands of the babyface. If we go back twenty years, it might be more about the company pushing a favorite wrestler to the top. And now? A lot of times, it's about being lucky enough to see something great, a match that picks up as many stars as are in the sky.

Ironically, the milestones of Bryan Danielson's career have run the opposite path for me. A little over twenty years ago, I sat at an ROH show hoping I'd see an all timer as he wrestled an ironman match against Doug Williams. Ten years ago, I hoped beyond hope that WWE would let him break the glass ceiling and win at Wrestlemania despite all the odds and all the plans. And yesterday, as I watched him wrestle Jon Moxley, even though I knew deep down that the end was upon us, I hoped that he would get his hands on his enemy first. What was beyond my wildest hope, however, was what the two of them would create for us before it was all said and done. They left us with one last amazing gift, one that has provided me just a bit more hope for the future.

I do not expect to see Danielson in a ring again any time soon, not even with the high heat angle that sent him off. I do expect to see him in the ring, even somewhat regularly, at some point years down the line. I know a thing or two about having a daughter, and eventually she won't be quite as eager to have him around the house all the time. When that time comes, I hope (so much of that, see?) that he returns, not as the Bryan Danielson we've always known, but as an older, wiser one ready and willing to lean upon all of the old tricks of wrestling and to cash in the fans' desire to see him again, to wrestle a completely different style, one that cares less for athleticism and more for the illusion of the same. I truly think that someday he will have a real chance of restoring something that right now feels like it might be forever lost.

That was too big an ask for one night and far too much to hope for on his last night as an active wrestler. What he and Mox managed instead was to show that something else, something related, was not forever eradicated from this earth as well. You see, I wasn't the only one who wanted him to get his hands on Jon Moxley. 8000+ in that arena wanted it too. There were so many things at play. There was Moxley's turn and the violence around it, the build to the match itself: the promos, the recrimination, the fight over the heart of Yuta, the unforgivable offense of Moxley doing this to Danielson right now when he was so close to leaving on his own terms. In some ways there were years of build to this. In other, more tangible ways, there were just weeks. They were powerful weeks, however and Bryan was here in his home region, in an arena that meant something to him, fighting against a brother that betrayed him, fighting over the ending of his story and the very soul of pro wrestling.

And this crowd, a crowd that had already been sated by a three-way that was deemed as "a different level of incredible" by you know who, a crowd that had every reason to be exhausted... this crowd, maybe for the first time in years in the United States, was made to want blood. To expect Bryan Danielson, who has gone on record recently as feeling like he no longer understands wrestling and wrestling fans, to have all the answers on this night would be impossible. But he and Mox did all that they had to; they provided a proof of concept that can be built upon, they showed that wrestling on a big stage can still touch people in the way that it once did, that it can overcome post-modern cynicism and grip a crowd by its collective heart and squeeze all of the emotion out of it.

There was no posing, no preening. People talk about wrestling being cinematic, but I can't imagine anything more cinematic than Moxley rushing right at Danielson as he started to enter the ring and the two of them fighting for every advantage, big or small, as the Final Countdown played over them. You could watch a thousand pro wrestling music videos, and they might all be artful and perfectly timed in their own way but none could possibly move you more than watching the violence unfold to this ultimate soundtrack. It took my stomach and lurched it up towards my throat in a way that I've only felt recently watching Mad Dog Connelly battle Demus, that I thought would have been impossible in an arena setting. And they managed it with a song playing in the background. That’s how deeply they threw themselves into the struggle at play, how completely they gave in to the animosity they were portraying. When two wrestlers are able to manage that, everything around them becomes additive, becomes a positive part of the equation.

Moxley is unquestionably cool, but he did certain things to make sure the fans would never even inch his way. Some of that was having Shafir at ringside and drawing the ref so that she could attack. He didn't need to do that. He had control. She hit hard; he could probably hit harder. While he was going to win the match clean, he made sure to fight it dirty. The pile driver on the table that shifted things from shine to heat was preceded by an eyerake. Later on, he'd rip the tape off and bite where it had been. That's not the most damaging thing he could have done, but it was one of the most symbolic. He took his time, let it all sink in. He jawed with someone in the front row (someone who thankfully had the wherewithal to remind Moxley that Danielson was his brother). He shoved Nigel's headset off for daring to say that Mox didn't care what any ref had to say. Interestingly, he DID care what Bryce had to say. The whole point of this was to win the title, and while he'd choke Bryan with a wire for the four count, he had til five and he used it.

Mox is a different sort of cat. Bryan and Eddie were on message boards, were trading tapes. Mox was digging through the dumpster behind Blockbuster to see if they tossed out an overwatched King of the Deathmatch commercial tape. He wasn't playing Oregon Trail in fifth grade. He probably still types with two fingers. He's not like us in the same way they are, and he can lean into that to be the other that can get under everyone's skin. Meanwhile, Bryan is of us, one of us, the paragon that we all look to, in some ways the very best of us, and as he took his advantages, he made sure to appeal to the crowd, to first conduct and then channel its energy and power.

And to their credit, these fans did not waver. Oh, there was a moment or two where I started to worry. They counted along with a ten count as both men were down. When things devolved into strike exchanges (but one where everything registered and everything was felt and sold) they were eager to yay and boo with each strike. But those were small imperfections and excusable ones. Knowing what to do with this level of engaged emotion is new for a 2020s crowd; there was bound to be (re)growing pains. They came through where it mattered, led by the wrestlers to the promised ground of chanting expletives at Moxley, buzzing for Danielson's comebacks, booing Mox's dirty fighting, as opposed to chanting "This is Awesome" even and especially when what they were seeing was in fact awesome.

Then, at the end, after the expulsion of Shafir, after the comebacks and kickouts, when Danielson finally could go no further and Bryce called for the bell; and then, as the belt was stored away safely by Claudio and the plastic bag arrived, and as Yuta, his own hope drained from him by Bryan's loss, made the only choice he felt he had left to him, the crowd fell to a stunned hush. This was their reward for allowing themselves to be led (as if they had any choice in the matter), to feel one last overwhelming wave of emotion, to be moved by the art in front of their eyes in a way that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, to feel more alive in shock and despair than any performance has ever made them feel.

So they gave me something more than I could hope for and they dared me to hope even further still. I hope that this is just the beginning, that even though Bryan Danielson is gone, that Jon Moxley understands what he's brought forth, the small ember that he has reignited, and can carry the flag forward and restore honest, earnest feeling (not "the Feeling" of 2021 AEW but something even more primal that speaks to the human heart), can bring the most valuable facets of mythology back to a post-modern word. The pieces are on the table. Darkness reigns. It's up to the babyfaces to foster hope in the hearts of the AEW faithful, to achieve meaningful wins even if the ultimate goal is deferred and deferred and deferred until the time is right. Let Orange Cassidy conglomerate. Let Darby Allin be the crow that feasts upon their nightmares. Raise Daniel Garcia to be the centerpiece of a new Super Generation Army of young lions. Lean hard into the stakes. Make it matter. Show that the wrestlers care. If they care, the fans will care. Darkness has fallen over AEW, but within it and through match that heralded its arrival, I've found more hope for pro wrestling than I've had in years.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/25 - 10/1 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/1/23

MD: Since there's so much to cover, I'm only going to do a full write-up if I have a lot to add. I don't have a lot to say about Kingston vs Shibata, for instance, just a few sentences. The announcers covered it well at the start, noting it was sort of a clash between the UWF-inspired NJPW style and the King's Road AJPW style, and at the end where they pointed out that Kingston had used up his theoretical rope breaks to protect the Pure Champion in his loss. I thought the image of Shibata rising up in the corner as Eddie was beating him down was absolutely iconic and shouldn't be lost. Likewise, Shibata goading Eddie with kicks worked really well. They kept the pop-ups to a minimum, a brief flash in the overall match. The finish effectively got over the power bomb as Eddie's finish moving forward and not just a one time thing.

While there was a sense of anticipation of the post-match hanging over the main, it was still a definite hit. A 2/3 falls match, much like a Texas Death Match, allows for different finishes than usual. The turtleneck bit was brilliant but might have felt like robbing the fans in a different match; using a countout after the stairs shot really put it over as something even more gruesome than normal but would have been impossible in a different main event. Christian having trouble getting him over for that spot added instead of detracted because it made it seem less cooperative, like less of a "spot" and more of a murder. That's something with Christian's offense in general. It was a lot of him just leaning on Darby instead of carefully placing move (or counter) after move (or counter). The best part of the post-match was Christian's overall demeanor. He wasn't horrified or excited to see Copeland show up. He was begrudgingly accepting that "this guy" was here again and that even in the best case, he'd have to share the spotlight. I don't think anyone else in wrestling would have played it quite like that.

Bryan Danielson vs Zack Sabre Jr.

MD: Let's start at the end. Post-match, Sabre refuses the handshake and Danielson calls Aubrey Edwards back into the ring. She's a hometown hero, much like Danielson, and there's a special connection between them, as there's footage of Aubrey crying during Danielson's retirement speech. He's on record on saying that he wasn't even sure what he was thinking in bringing her back, that it just felt right because the referee is such an important part of the match. That's the cool thing about art though, about everything we do in writing about it. Intent matters, but not nearly as much as effect. After a grinding, focused, measured technical match, one so good and credible that it was the spot in the show that they chose to cut to a MMA star afterwards, Danielson chose to give Aubrey her flowers. What that evoked to me was the theater, that curtain call where the actors take their bow and then clap towards the stage crew, light operators, the pit band. Danielson chose this moment, after this match, to do something which pulled the "curtain" down in as directly figurative a way as I can imagine. It wouldn't have worked after almost any other match. It would have seemed winking and cutesy and metatextual and pretentious, no matter the intent. Here, it felt appropriate, as if we'd reached a transcendent moment of wrestling as a performance art, and just this one time, we were allowed to acknowledge it.

I've been through this twice now, once just experiencing it, once trying to make sense of it. Because of that second pass, I can tell you that it was the fourth exchange of the match where they had all of the quick ins and outs and clever reversals and escapes; that's where Sabre knocked down Danielson's structural arm to disrupt the Indian Deathlock, for instance. That entire exchange was amazing, everything you'd want from a war of technical pro wrestlers. Narratively, however, if you want a skeleton key to the effect of the match (leaving intent aside again), Moxley's commentary provided it early on. Danielson is a reactive wrestler. That's the key to the match.

There were two big transitions, or more appropriately, act breaks. The first was Sabre goading Danielson into using his steel-reinforced right arm for a strike only to cleverly block it and damage it heavily. That would be Sabre's "end" throughout the rest of the match. He wanted to hurt the arm enough that he could get a submission with it. Even when he hit some other move, it was all to create an opportunity to go back to the arm. The second was Danielson starting on the leg, first in the corner with kicks and then with the dragon screws, most especially that stomach-turning one where everything seemed jammed in all the wrong directions. That, however, was not an "end", but instead a "means," something Danielson could use as a point of leverage to open Sabre up for the offense that he really wanted to hit, to create opportunities, to help facilitate escapes when his arm was in danger.  

On paper, Sabre's strategy should have been the one to win the day. In fact, you could make the case (and Danielson, Nigel, and Sabre all made it in one form or the other) that Sabre may have come out of this looking like the better technical wrestler. Just not like the better overall wrestler. He had one singular goal in the arm whereas Danielson, as per his personality and character, was adaptable, flexible, able to ride with the currents of violence and pain instead of trying to bend them to his will. And isn't that what a technical wrestler does? Technical wrestling is about control, about manipulating the human body in ways it shouldn't bend, about playing chess three steps ahead, about constraining possibilities so that there is only one inevitable future, the one you define. Danielson is, in many ways, the antithesis of that, which is why, when it seemed like Sabre had finally gotten him, Danielson, not ready for it so much as able to react to it due to his openness of mind, turned it right around into the RegalPlex, setting Sabre up for the Knees.

Danielson's 2023 is full of matches that play out not quite like you'd expect or anticipate. Sometimes it's due to injury. Sometimes it's simply due to unforeseen circumstances placing him into a match not his making. Here, in this battle of the greatest technical wrestlers, he ceded the competition entirely, instead serving as the ultimate steel for the very best to prove himself against. It just shows that to best appreciate Danielson, sometimes we have to take a page out of his book and be reactive and adaptive ourselves. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 9/25 - 10/1 Part 1

AEW Rampage 9/29/23

Eddie Kingston vs. Rocky Romero

MD: I wanted to hit at least one of the TV matches and while there's a lot to cover with the 8 man tag, it's a lot to work through again. I liked how it felt like worlds were coming together and how they held off on using both Bill and then Danielson, but I don't have a ton to say there and AEW is just producing so much content. As I write this on Monday, I haven't even been able to watch Danielson vs. ZSJ yet.

AEW has had a good year when it comes to reigns and I'm hoping we get just that from Eddie over the next six months or so. Theoretically, we can get matches both on AEW and ROH TV and whatever NJPW tends to be doing with their Strong guys against a variety of opponents. Rocky fits really well in that "variety" mold. He's never quite the spiritual successor of Ogawa that I want him to be, but you get just enough of it, tempered by his own eclectic background that it becomes interesting. That was at play here. He'd slam right into Eddie despite the size differential and then pieface him to try to goad Eddie into a headscissors takeover (it worked). He'd throw himself at him with three topes in a row (that didn't work). Meanwhile, Eddie would keep asking for more, goading Rocky back and maybe drawing him out of his game as well, not necessarily out of some sort of grand strategy, but just because Eddie's Eddie and how do you even deal with that level of stubbornness? It let them rationalize Eddie staying in position in the ropes to set up one more or another; he was just asking for more until Rocky gave him enough to keep him stuck there for a few extra seconds.

So yeah, I want to see Eddie against quick guys (for ROH, Gravity and Blake and Andretti/Martin are right there, for instance), and big guys (JD Drake, Lance Archer, Shane Taylor) and sneaky guys like Rocky or Moriarty. As a match in and of itself, this wasn't necessarily going to be as memorable as most of what we got over the weekend, but as a match as part of a memorable title reign, it fit right in.

AEW WrestleDream 10/1/23

MJF vs. The Righteous

MD: I know. I still haven't seen the Danielson match and I'm detouring for this. I'll get there. We have to pace ourselves in this world. Speaking of that, I thought a lot about Punk as the heir to "neo-Bret-ism" which is the idea of making moves matter, or at least that's how I define it. You can see that in some of the reviews here in the last two years. It's about creating a sports-like approach using pro-wrestling tropes and norms that's based in logic and consequence. I don't actually think MJF is that, but he's doing something very similar. He's being the heir to Dusty.

Phil (Schneider not Brooks) and I are both big fans of minimalism in wrestling, but I think Phil leans more towards amazing execution, as in the sheer amount you can accomplish with a punch that either looks legit or is legit. Simple, straightforward, primal, violent, right? For me, the ultimate goal of pro wrestling is to do as much as possible with as little as possible. That's the height of the art form, to manipulate hearts and minds with as little pressure put upon the lever as possible. It's a work, not a sport. You're supposed to work people. Doing it with as little as possible to the highest possible effect means that you leave more in the tank for later.

I loved MJF talking to Alvarez in the post-show scrum trying to explain that this wasn't a gimmick; it was the point, and that by getting the crowd to care about personalities, you can get anything over. I wouldn't put it exactly that way. I think a lot of it has to do with narrative structure and storytelling, and commitment to character and being on all the time (if you believe, they will believe; if you show consequence, they will feel consequence), but it's close enough that I have lots of warm feelings towards this entire endeavor. My feeling on the historiography of pro wrestling, or maybe, I guess, the history of criticism, was that fans in the early 80s were absolutely spoiled with this sort of working, with the artfulness of someone like Dusty or Valiant knowing how to do so, so much with exactly as much as they needed, finding every shortcut (And shortcuts are amazing to watch and appreciate), with guys like Lawler and Bockwinkel knowing when to pick up the pace and control the tempo, to bring things up and then back down. They didn't know how good they had it and became desensitized to the wonders of the form. Something like Dynamite vs Tiger Mask was candy, pure and simple, a drug right into the pleasure center of their brains, and a way to rebel against artfulness through sheer sensation.

And over time what was truly valuable ended up lost traded instead for what was physically difficult but mentally easy, a lowest common denominator put up upon a pedestal as the highest treasure of the land. MJF is trying to reclaim what was lost, one stupid gimmicky move at the time. He walks to the ring setting up the body slam, setting up the kangaroo kick, setting up the idea of choking out Joe, setting up ramming a head into an ass, and then he builds a match to the payoff, teasing it, denying it, fighting for it. And then he provides it. He's the Pied Piper, the Music Man, the Monorail Salesman, and he wove it all together in the face of difficult odds and fighting from underneath and hope lost and gained once more, and it's every wonderful, ridiculous, serene thing wrestling can be when you just lean into making things matter and creating meaning. How can wrestling be better than that?

I guess maybe ask me again on Wednesday after I've seen Danielson vs ZSJ.

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