AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/15 - 4/21

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Will Ospreay

MD: I've had RVD on my mind lately. They used him on the 4/20 Rampage. I haven't gotten to that yet. There's been a lot of wrestling to watch and I only caught the back half of Rampage so far because it more directly led into the PPV. I'll go back for it and for Yuka vs Emi because it sounds like an amazing Emi performance in difficult circumstances. When I think about RVD, though, I think about his PPV match with Benoit. I haven't rewatched it in decades and I have no desire to now, so bear with my memories. You have to understand what it was like to be a fan on the internet in the late 90s and early 00s. Benoit wasn't just a wrestler. He was a representation of a counterculture, of a certain sort of identity. He was put up on a pedestal. We put him there. He represented everything we thought we wanted wrestling to be; if wrestling was just that, we would feel good about ourselves for being fans of it. The match, as I remember it, was a disaster. Benoit did what he generally was supposed to, worked over a body part for the entirety of the heat. RVD no sold it on his comeback. Of course he did. We were furious. At the time, we blamed RVD. Twenty years later, it's obvious that the blame should go to Benoit for structuring a match that not only RVD wouldn't play along with, but that, if he had, would have actively blunted what made him special.

To some degree, that was Danielson's challenge here. The "dream match" portion of Danielson vs Ospreay was always going to be the high octane back-third: the counters, the finishing stretch, and harnessing Ospreay's physicality and athleticism in ways that only Danielson's mind could devise that would play into the weight of the crowd's expectations and the importance of Bryan Danielson in history and in people's hearts. While it might make sense strategically in character to target Ospreay's leg, it would have kneecapped the match and frustrated people one way or the other; either he would have dropped the selling (believably or not, probably not) or he would have sold and worked the finishing stretch at half speed leaving people who wanted the full Ospreay experience disappointed. So they built it by targeting the side instead. The announcers mentioned ribs or the liver, but to me, it was purely a wind issue. Danielson caught him as he was coming off the top with a kick. It took the wind out of Ospreay. Danielson was therefore able to control and contain and focus the middle section of the match, using gut shots to open up Ospreay's face, prying at the legs or twisting the fingers, but doing overall damage instead of limiting Ospreay's motion. When he recovered, it was a matter of timing and opportunity, of recovering his wind because of a lucky, skillful shot or two or some amazing feat of agility like landing on his feet out of the top rope 'rana. Then, later on, Danielson honed in on the arm, in part to set up the LeBell lock. It's easier for Ospreay to limit his upper body motion than his lower body motion and he adapted accordingly. He dropped it for a bit when it did no harm to the narrative and brought it back in a key moment when it could help it. I saw early criticism of the match attack his selling, but I didn't see it. It worked for me, but it worked primarily because it was set up to go with the flow and to not limit him in the ways that mattered for the expectations of the match while still allowing Danielson to be in control and the match to have shape and form. Danielson worked to Ospreay's strengths and minimized his weaknesses. 

What was far, far harder to work with was this crowd. When you see even the most excited crowd, a crowd that is buzzing and chanting away, they usually react to the actual action in the ring. That's true even in the early stages of matches. A clean break will garner applause. A slap instead will give you either boos or oohs. A wrenching hold will draw one reaction when it's put on and another when it's escaped, and then back to the chanting and buzzing they'll go. The "This is Awesome" or "AEW" or "Both These Guys" chants will come at the end of a sequence during the standoff. That wasn't at all the case here. These two were feeling one another out in front of the loudest vacuum I'd ever seen. They would chant whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, even and especially over meaningful emotional beats. This crowd was drunk on the idea of a dream match regardless of what was occurring. They were celebrating the finishing third before the match had even begun. It didn't get better even once they got going. Danielson took a nasty bump off an apron exchange and they were setting up Ospreay hitting a hidden blade from the apron to the floor while Bryce was trying to steady him. It was hugely important to the overall story of the match given the eventual finish. Meanwhile, the fans were chanting "We're Not Worthy!" For the first two-thirds of the match, the crowd was unquestionably excited, but the wrestlers didn't have the crowd. Whatever they were doing, no matter how good it was, no matter how smartly it was put together to be the best of the both of them combined, to be better than the sum of their parts, it wasn't compelling enough to guide and control a crowd that was there so that it could have bragging rights about seeing one of the best matches ever. It wasn't a case of looking to the back for the entire match waiting for a run-in; instead it was looking to the future, to that last third, and taking for granted what was actually happening.

And, of course, that last third was absolutely excellent. If the first two-thirds were, in part, to minimize Ospreay's weakness, that last third completely highlighted his strengths. Danielson was able to push himself up to new heights for specific spots by pressing off against Ospreay's athleticism. Things like the Mistica LeBell lock or the top rope Tiger Suplex or the Busaiku Knee counter to the Oscutter were out of this world and stand up to any spot in any Danielson match ever. By that point, the fans were completely tuned in. I'm not sure we've ever quite heard the "Yes-No" chants as they manifested here and they were just the soundtrack the last third of the match called for. Then there was the finish, which to me was absolutely perfect. At the end of the day, that's how the match had been presented: Danielson was a legend but Ospreay was younger, faster, hungrier. So at high noon, after a war that neither man had been able to win, they had an old fashioned standoff. Ospreay, with his Assassin's Creed trappings, is perfect for this sort of over-the-top theatricality. We get endless strike exchanges and fighting spirit bits in wrestling, but this wasn't even a samurai showdown where both fighters would pass and one would fall after the fact; no, it was right out of a western with the younger upstart having the quicker draw. Given what the match meant to accomplish, the passing of a torch, it was the perfect ending. Maybe, just maybe, it was even the perfect match too. It was, unfortunately, just one that couldn't overcome the frothing anticipation that the fans in the arena had for it. It was their loss and ultimately it was ours too. 

AEW Collision 4/20/24

BUNKHOUSE BRAWL

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs. Kyle Fletcher/Konosuke Takeshita

MD: On a nexus with Connelly vs. Demus on one end and the Jarrett vs. Briscoe in the Concession Stand Brawl on the other, this would be in the middle but definitely closer to the former than the latter. I write a lot about my own personal preference for wrestling that feels organic and where you can't see the strings and that's much more of what we had here. There were numerous moments in this one where someone (more often a member of the BCC or Takeshita) would spot something in the corner of their eye and work it into the match. That's not to say that Fletcher didn't put up a good effort; he did, it's just that this probably was a lot less natural to him both from what he had seen and what he had done. You had Claudio picking up action figures or spotting a hammer (used previously) on the ground and making use of it. I do think that Fletcher has some good natural instincts in working the crowd but this wasn't the sort of match to do that in the way one usually did it. Takeshita, on the other hand, is someone who drives me absolutely nuts with his match layout: too much, too soon, all at once. But the reason why he drives me nuts is because he's so physically impressive and visually effective, dynamic and explosive. If he could just get out of his own way, he could be absolutely amazing. Here, he understood the mission, a constant violent push forward. 

I also talk a lot about the duel-edged sword that are the commercial breaks. In most matches, I actually think they help more than they hurt because they force things to slow down and the heels to lean into their characters and the heat they're trying to get. It prevents the matches from devolving into constant noise from bell to bell. Here, you kind of wanted that though, but what we did get during the break was pretty great, with Takeshita working over Danielson's would for minutes straight. I see people complaining that Fletcher didn't rub the blood into his hair, but to be fair, Danielson came out of that commercial break with a much more interesting crimson mask than he came in, all thanks to Takeshita. Unfortunately, the timing of the break ending meant that the camera couldn't linger on Takeshita about to brainbuster Danielson on the ramp again. That was the key emotional moment of the entire match, the reversal and subsequent DDT, but the folks at home needed at least a second to understand why Claudio wasn't there to make the save. While the quick cuts between the two scenarios were a plus for most of the match to add to the chaotic feel, it did hurt a little there.

Moreover, if Fletcher needed a bit of education, the crowd did as well. They were pavlovianly shouting for tables; sometimes giving them what they want isn't the same as giving them what they need, and Danielson did that at each point, diverting them away either through yes chants or other bursts of engaging violence. If they run something like this again, on the second or third time, people will be excited for the possibility of the powder or the chain or the wire to choke with. In some ways, all that wrestling is at its very core is the conditioning of an audience over time and then the utilization of that conditioning for the sake of manipulation. Again, that's almost the opposite of some of the maximalist, pandering performances that get over so big today, but it's that carny tugging at heartstrings where the greatest artistry can be found. On this night, through violent creativity and adaptability in the moment and a commitment to the chaos at play, these four (and yes, I mean all four of them and Moxley and Hobbs for good measure), did their part in retaking just a bit of the old ways so that they might be used once again, not to pull pro wrestling back into moldering darkness but to help push it forward back towards the light.

Adam Copeland/Eddie Kingston/Mark Briscoe vs. Top Flight/Action Andretti

MD: I really like it when they run a warm-up/showcase match for a one-time trios before a PPV. It's very likely that we never see Copeland/Kingston/Briscoe again after this and this match gave us a chance to see them highlighted against a very different sort of team than the House of Black in a babyface vs. babyface match. Top Flight/Andretti are a set unit and had the superior teamwork and the speed, but they had both a size and a presence disadvantage. We've seen Ace Kingston pushing around younger guys. Mark Briscoe, here, came off as a total beast, like the Briscoes of old, just running through Dante when he had the chance. This was maybe the first time, even through a series of Cope Opens, where Copeland got to be a giant in the land of the new normal height-wise. I probably need to go back to see his work against Rey at some point, but here he was working big. There was no ultimate opportunist here. There was a running power slam instead. 

There are a lot of things that can and should make AEW Copeland different than WWE Copeland, and he's been doing an admirable job of embracing more and more of them every week, but I don't think I've seen him look quite this imposing as of yet and it was great to see. I want more of it. No one even played de facto heel here; yes, the bigger makeshift trio sort of bullied, and Top Flight double-and-tripled teamed but it wasn't personal. There was a little bit of control on Copeland and a lot on Dante, but it was back and forth and never wore out its welcome; plus, Andretti has that Tom Zenk thing about being particularly punchable. When things broke down in the end, the fireworks were exciting but also well-placed. Even the triple double clothesline felt a little novel relative to some of the spots you see in this scenario. I'm sure that anyone who didn't blink and miss it loved Dante jamming his leg on the backflip to let Copeland hit the Impaler. It was a little detail, probably unnecessary, that still added to the match. And of course the finish of the Uraken into the Spear, with Copeland sneaking Andretti into the center of the ring for the Froggy Bow, was just a perfect highlight reel combination. If we'll never get Copeland/Kingston/Briscoe again after the PPV, at least we'll have gotten two very different looks at them.

 

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24

Adam Copeland/Eddie Kingston/Mark Briscoe vs. House of Black

MD: I dug the layout for this one. After an initial tease of Copeland vs Black before the match got going, we led into initial pairings like a lucha trios. Matthews was paired with Briscoe and King was paired with Kingston. I'm not entirely sure that the build properly set up these pairings, but both the announcers and the wrestlers leaned into them. And, of course, it was all underpinned by the delayed gratification of Copeland getting his hands on Black, which is one of my all time favorite things in wrestling. I love it in Mexico (one of the best trios setups). I love it in Japan (all those Eigen/Rusher matches I've been watching lately). I love it here and they worked it wonderfully towards the finish. The pairings, generally equal, built to a real shine where Mark Briscoe took out everyone and did the amazing, terrifying chair-assisted dive over the post on the apron, which, in and of itself, led to the heat on Briscoe. He finally fought his way out of the corner to make the hot tag and everything broke down. I could have maybe went without the tower of doom spot, but I did like how they twisted it by bringing it back to Copeland and King and the Superplex. Otherwise, it was all sequenced well, centered around the subconscious notion that if only Copeland could hit the Impaler on King, he'd be able to get his hands on Black. It took three tries and an Eddie Uraken but he eventually got it, only for Mark Briscoe to come in and get his hands on Black first in yet another little inversion. That just ramped the pressure up all the more for the the spear cutoff to Cerberus' Bite (which is what we're calling the House of Black's triple corner dropkick now if you didn't get the memo) and the ultimate inversion, the misting out of nowhere just when the fans were going to get the satisfaction of Black vs Copeland. The entire match built to that rug-swept-out moment and that's just great aggravating pro wrestling to set up another show. You have to appreciate it. This maybe needed just a bit more Eddie but other than that, I enjoyed it.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/4 - 12/10 Part 1

AEW Rampage 12/8/23

Bryan Danielson vs. Daniel Garcia

MD: This was a hell of a match. It's almost too much to keep track of, especially when you factor in Danielson's post match promo, when you factor in Garcia's tournament, his year, the feud they had last year. Sometimes it's tough to find an "in" to write about a match. Here, I have too many and I'm not sure how to keep track of all of them. Bear with me this one time with the bullet points. Wrestling at its best contains multitudes.

• This exists within the confines of the tournament. Danielson was a match behind everyone and lives in a world where Brody King is already up 6-0. Remember, as much as Kingston put on the line here, this tournament was created for Danielson as part of his last fully active year. He never made it to the G1 and this is his one shot. It means so much to him to compete on this level, and here he is banged up, broken with escalating injuries, with the finish line so close and so very far away.
• Meanwhile, you have Garcia, 0-2, with a string of big losses before that, a guy who likely got into the tournament by the skin of his teeth, a guy who was let down by the mentor he had given up everything for, who was forced into a world of contradiction by the people who helped drive him towards those decisions in the first place. He's trying to find his way, but despite opening up to what looked to be the path to success (or maybe was a get rich quick scheme enacted by someone who can't help but put in the work), he's worse off than he was a year ago.
• Then there's the relationship between them: Danielson is Garcia's idol, Garcia is someone who Danielson saw as a potential successor. Danielson has all of the baggage of being a parent. There's a moment when your kids are young that they want to be with you all the time. You're the center of their world. There are glimpses however, when you start to realize that you're only a few years away from them barricading themselves in their room and that ending. As someone who got to be in the house each and every day with his then three year old during the pandemic, I'm acutely aware of how special those years are. Throughout this, Garcia was seeing the idol who didn't shine bright enough for him to be a true north that would light his path and keep him from straying towards temptation and Danielson conflated Garcia with his own children, understanding how the youth may eventually see you as obsolete and abandon you. Neither of them had the respective wisdom and serenity to make it past their current anxiety and grief.
• And of course, at the heart of it all, you have Garcia trying to find himself. Here he came out as the Red Death, towel around his neck. When he beat Danielson last year, it wasn't clean. Tony Schiavone likens "Sports Entertainment" to "Systemic Cheating." I personally don't feel like they ever fully played it out to its logical conclusion: Sports Entertainment as a fighting style as much as BJJ or whatever else, channeling the reactions of the fans and the uniqueness of pro wrestling in a way that something like the People's Elbow or the Worm could be as devastating as the Busaiku Knee, or a way to reach some higher level of physical prowess not through meditation but through doing an electrifying dance that gets a giant pop. There was something there, and for Garcia's year to mean anything and to have been something other a waste of time bringing him just back to where he was in mid 2022, he has to find that middle ground, has to solve that riddle that no one else has been able to solve, not even Chris Jericho.
• That is to say, I don't think he would have won, even channeling all of his rage, even learning and growing throughout the tournament, even knowing his opponent so well. He's not Misawa. Danielson is not Jumbo. They're different. Early on, after Danielson's initial role as first the aggressor and then a goading troll as Garcia got upset with it, they were purely reactive. This is why Danielson sees a successor in Garcia. One offensive attempt flowed into the next. It almost felt like a sprint in the way they were able to keep the motion going. Garcia studied Danielson: he was able to throw the elbows, able to use a small package just as Danielson had for years, able to channel that same energy and kick his head off. And, of course, Danielson had an answer for all of it because that's who he is. At the same time, Garcia studied himself. He was ready to the Dragontamer to be countered and this time he did hit the pile driver. He had gotten close before but now he pulled it off, getting just a little closer every match.
• People are saying he lost because he made one mistake. He lost because he took a step backwards instead of fully moving forward. If there is a dark side and a light side, if there is Sports Entertainment and Pro Wrestling, Garcia's going to have to figure out the path through it. Only then will he be ascendant. Only then will he be able to defeat Bryan Danielson. He won't be the first to travel that road. Look at Fujiwara's comedy spots. Look at that one confounding Karl Gotch WWWF match we have. What they had that he does not, however, is that purity of vision and endless confidence in themselves. Red Death Daniel Garcia couldn't beat Bryan Danielson on his own. Dancing Danny Garcia couldn't beat Bryan Danielson on his own. Yet somewhere in there, there's someone who can. The JAS couldn't get him there. The BCC can't get him there. He's going to have to do it himself. He has until Wembley to figure it out. And no one wants him to and no one needs him to more than Bryan Danielson, even if he's just starting to come to that understanding.

AEW Dynamite 12/6/23

Christian Cage vs. Adam Copeland

MD: I still struggle with that fith Finger. Someone suggested Mark Briscoe and that was a good suggestion. I still gravitate towards Athena, RUSH, and Christian though. The problem with all of them is that a lot of what I'd have to say is repetitive. Athena has that mix of unpredictability and commitment and athleticism. RUSH is just a force of nature, an unrelenting tasmanian devil that sweeps up all in his path. And Christian, I'll get to in a second. We'll keep it open for now but I might drop any of them (or Briscoe, or anyone else that really makes sense) depending on what's going on in any week.

Here we had a big featured singles bout between Copeland and Edge, their first in many, many years, and it was a title match in Canada on top of that. Christian's a guy who I'm very high on. The one-two punch of instantly starting a family and the other thing that happened in June 2007 got me off regular wrestling watching for a couple of years. When I came back in 2009, the modern stuff that appealed to me the most was Christian's ace ECW champion run. He had the feud with Regal and his Ruthless Roundtable, but it was the week in and week out TV work that drew me in, especially given the freedoms that being on the C show let him have. It's not unlike Athena in ROH right now. People clamor for her to be featured on Dynamite but she'd not have the time and freedom to really stretch there that she has now.

There have been great TV workers over the years, be it Regal or Rey or even Orange Cassidy in the last 18 months, but what made Christian so special and so uniquely suited for that turn of the 2010s WWE period was his ability to work his opponents' offense into his matches in varied and interesting ways. It was almost a wrestling savant level of genius, especially when he had to wrestle multiple matches against the same opponent which wasn't at all uncommon for the time.

What makes him stand out in 2023, however, is that he's one of the only guys on the roster that gets real heat. Heat is a currency. A lot of things are currency. Legitimacy. Look. A winning streak. Athleticism. Heat's some of the most value though. Having a crowd that hates you (or at least are willing to go further along the lines of pretending to hate you than they will for just about anyone else) before the lock up means that the battle is already halfway won. He came into this match having turned his back on Copeland. Whether we want it to be or not, AEW is about friendship. It's about love. Copeland left a cushy gig "up north," to finish his career with his best friend. Cage turned his back on that and said he was going to break Copeland's neck. And on some level, can you blame him? This is a guy who spent his career in Copeland's shadow, the CLB, the guy who Vince wanted to put a bag on, someone who could only ever be an ace in a secondary promotion or on the C-show or when Edge had to retire (and even then, they didn't trust him to be the babyface lead, even if the fans wanted it; he could only be the guy who feuded with the guy). Now he's evolved into his final form, an outright Bond villain towering above his heel peers of trolls and scoundrels. Well, I don't blame him, but the fans sure do.

So even though he's not working the same opponents week in and week out, he's able to squeeze as much value as possible out of every motion and every moment because of the heat he generates. And he still works his opponent's offense into the match in creative, interesting ways. It's just usually without that familiarity and variety that you can only get from building sequences and counters from match to match that takes it over the top. With Copeland, however, that familiarity was baked in. He's as acutely aware of Adam's strengths and his weaknesses as anyone and they put together one of Copeland's best non-gimmicked singles matches ever.

Copeland rushed in from the start, beating Christian around the ringside area. Cage went for a low blow as soon as he could, trying to escape with a DQ but Copeland caught him and started working over the hand, proper punishment for his misdeeds. When Cage was able to get a slight edge on the outside, he tossed Copeland over the rail and immediately pulled the ref in to start the count. He wanted out. During the commercial break, he started in on Copeland's neck. He couldn't fully capitalize due to the damaged hand, however. That would be Copeland's wedge to come back in it. Cage would pose and preen, showing off his 50 year old muscles, but Copeland would bite at the hand.

In a lot of ways, this felt like the sort of match that could have existed in WWE, an added attraction to a night of pure AEW tournament action. What put it over the top was the freedom in violence though. Some of that was how viscerally Copeland's attack began, but a lot of it was in the few big spots they did choose to do after said hand biting, a Russian leg sweep off the second turnbuckle, a big power bomb out of the corner. Both of them were moves that Copeland wouldn't normally hit and both fit perfectly into the match. When it came to some of the oddball things that he did hit, that's where the familiarity came into play. Maybe not the clothesline off the top onto Cage on the apron that happened after the blocked pendulum kick, but certainly the Edge-o-Match which they slipped in as a killswitch counter, and the spear which came crashing headlong into Christian's own after a ducked belt shot (which itself was after the awesome moment where Christian low blowed the out of position ref). So while some of the big beats, like the finish, felt a little alien to AEW but all too familiar, the trappings, structural, detail-oriented, over-the-top in ways that might not be allowed elsewhere, made it all work. Cage is a wrestling savant and he's someone that is only ever stronger on the second or third try. I'd like to see them move on from this feud for now, but if they do go back to it, I know the next match will be even stronger for what they'll be able to build off of this one.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 11/13 - 11/19, Part 3

AEW Full Gear 11/18/21

Eddie Kingston vs. Jay Lethal

MD: Variety is making Eddie's run fascinating and this was Eddie in 1983 AWA against the Heenan Family. That would make Lethal Ken Patera maybe? There's been a commonality about all of his title matches so far, that spirit of sportslike competition, no matter if he was facing Serpentico or Dalton Castle. Here, early, when Jay had to take a powder and was hiding behind Jarrett and Sonjay, you could see it in Eddie's bemused glare. He was very much in a world he didn't make and didn't want to be in. He'd been dragged into this through the loss to Jarrett. He still stood tall, still had Lethal scouted (blocking the Lethal Injection with suplexes twice), but he had to trudge through plenty of bullshit to get there.

One thing that makes this run enjoyable to me is that every match has an undertone of external narrative driving it, but the main thing is the title and the match. With Angelico, that meant Eddie's merciless (though businesslike) treatment of Serpentico and the idea that Eddie felt like Angelico was stepping to him just like everyone else. With Dalton, it was Castle thinking he'd be a more dynamic champion and Eddie feeling like they were doing it for Brodie. Even with Komander, it was the commentary-driven logic that Eddie might be particularly vulnerable to luchadores traditionally. That this was almost so overt, with so many moving parts relatively, made it almost less interesting on its own to me, but it still served well as part of a greater whole. I don't know how much longer this run is going to go given the upcoming tournament. Moreover, there's every chance Eddie is going to stumble back into a "fighting spirit" mode through it instead of this more agile and flexible ace mold we're seeing now (and a lot of the people who like him best would be overjoyed with that anyway so I'm shouting at the wind probably). Hopefully he finds a way through it all, though, because I'm not nearly done watching this particular version of Eddie Kingston.

Sting/Darby Allin/Adam Copeland vs. Christian/Luchasaurus/Nick Wayne

MD: Christian's the best guy on the roster, right? He's the best at putting together a sequence. He's the best at milking a moment. He's the best at working other people's stuff into something coherent and meaningful. I was blown away by his match with Trent on Rampage. I've been down on Trent lately. Maybe I've always been down on Trent. I like the idea of Trent but not the reality of him. He's a guy who does a lot of stuff, has it all look good and sharp and crisp, but it's too much, especially consummate to his place on the card and what he's asked to accomplish. Too much, too soon, why him, why then? Over and over again. It's a little like Lucy pulling the football away with me when it comes to him. But the Christian match, that I liked. It's true with a lot of the roster in AEW. There are a ton of guys that if paired up against the right (or wrong) opponent will either have a great match or a terrible one, lots of guys with great mechanics and a sense of abandon and even commitment, but that are prone to excesses and leaning towards sensation instead of sense. These are guys who will probably still frustrate me against someone like Danielson or Cassidy even if I'll find them way more frustrating if they're up against Page or Takeshita. But never will I be disappointed when they're up against Christian. I'll be outright amazed.

Everything he did in this match was great, from the entrance with the choir to staring off against Copeland until he tagged out to Luchasaurus to the great transition to control on Darby to the callback low blow on Flair to set up his final comeuppance and the rabbiting that followed. Narratively, wrestling lives and dies on a few things most of all: entry points, transitions, hope spots, cutoffs, the comeback (which is a transition, of course, with hope spots/cutoffs as false transitions), and the finish. What makes Christian a wrestling savant is how well he works his own stuff and his opponents' into these key moments, and then how he builds to them with the space between by using those tools at his disposal. He's the glue that holds everything together, spot after spot, sequence after sequence, match after match.

It helped that everyone else did their part here. Luchasaurus looked like as much of a force of nature as he ever has. Yes, it means he wrestles more like Kane or Lord Humongous than like a lucha dinosaur but we're all better off for it. Wayne based surprisingly well for Darby early and then ate everyone's offense as well he should. Copeland hit a press slam on Nick Wayne which is exactly what I want the giant Adam Copeland to be doing to the far smaller AEW roster. Sting knows exactly who he should be and can manifest that person better than anyone else in the world could. Add in a killer entrance and an emotionally resonant post-match and you get a nice, balanced, feel-good PPV opener.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/6 - 11/12

AEW Dynamite 11/8/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs Outrunners

MD: This was a tight piece of business, obviously, a way to keep the Sting farewell tour feeling special, in front of a crowd that was chanting for him in the early going, and a nice way to throw a bone to the Outrunners who ape his early aesthetic, maybe by way of the Beverly Brothers. That meant they could lean on Darby coming off of injury and let the Outrunners play the numbers game early, sneak in the clever tag out of a suplex position that we saw Darby and Orange Cassidy use when they were teaming in the already-missed house show run, and give Sting his iconic moment of shrugging off the double back elbow. Small nitpick: maybe have him win with the Death Drop considering that a Scorpion Deathlock played into the finish of the previous match, but at the end of the day, let Sting be Sting too, you know? A fun match that lets everyone in the crowd who hadn't been watching wrestling in 89 say that they got to see Sting live.

Ring of Honor 11/9/23

Eddie Kingston vs Angelico

MD: Of all of Eddie's great quality, maybe the greatest is that every match he's in, no matter how little build or notice it gets, instantly becomes a grudge match. It's because the chip on his shoulder is so big that any contest, be it an enhancement match or a dream match, tumbles right into it. Just to stand across the ring from him unlocks all sorts of grievances. Heel, face, storyline or no, he takes it personal and he makes it personal. You look at him the wrong way and it's an insult. And there's no right way to look at him if you're his opponent. That gives us, as viewers, reason to care about each and every match. 

It can be a little exhausting too. It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but you don't let go and relax when watching Eddie wrestle. He carries a weight and you carry it with him. That feels good. It has substance to it. When he walks a mile, you walk that mile with him, and you're better off for it, but it's hard. And sometimes, it leaves some possibilities on the table. An Eddie Kingston match is going to be a fight. This isn't Bryan Danielson who is endlessly adaptable and reactive. Eddie's a black hole and you can't escape his gravitational pull. Traditionally, if you're wrestling Eddie, it can only be about one thing, that chip, that insult, that grievance.

The belt kind of changes that though. Yes, sure, Eddie is going to see it in personal terms; you want to take away what he cares about, what he clawed and scraped for, what he fights for every day, something he cares about more than you ever could. But it's also business too. And more than that, it's wrestling, the grandeur of wrestling along with the blood, something that you might not think a guy like Eddie would understand. But he does, because he understands what it means to be an ace, to carry a weight upon his back that's not just the burden of life, to carry a company, the hopes and dreams of everyone in the back, the reputation of everything that came before. 

That means we get to see a little bit of a different side to Eddie in these matches. Yes, he took it personal when Angelico made the challenge, but that didn't define this match; it just provided some extra color to it. Eddie's used to charging forward with a certain sort of abandon. He's used to being a man with nothing to lose. Now he has something to protect. That meant he came at this different. Angelico's always dangerous so he started the match by switching from one hand to the next, and avoiding a lock up, cautious. But he's Eddie so he got goaded in and threw a shot that let Angelico start to twist and tear at his hand. But he's Eddie so he pushed through it and kept throwing those chops, relentless. 

In return, Angelico realized that he wasn't going to get a quick tap on Eddie, no matter how skillfully he tied him up. He started throwing low kicks, started throwing his body at Eddie with dives. Angelico could chip away at his arm or his leg, but he couldn't make a chip larger than that one already on Eddie's shoulder though. All it ever takes is one backfist to change the complexion of the match and that's what it did here. Still, they gave Angelico a kickout and then finished things with the Northern Lights Driver, a nice hierarchy decision that helps keep over one of Eddie's four viable finishers after the story with Claudio where he needed to escalate to the power bomb. The variety of opponents and the more ace-tinted approach to these matches has been a nice change of pace, especially knowing that Eddie can take things deep into a land of grudges whenever the situation calls for it.

AEW Collision 11/11/23

Adam Copeland/Sting/Darby Allin vs Vincent/Dutch/Lance Archer

MD: Very complete, very satisfying match given that it had two commercial breaks, a little less time than some other Collision main events, and a lot of personalities to highlight on the face side. We've seen some matches lately where they hold back Sting and you sort of would expect them to do that with Copeland too here but they cycled through all of the faces early on (teasing Darby being in trouble and having him smack Archer away and dart to the corner) and gave the crowd a taste of everyone before they leaned into the first commercial break not with the usual transition into heat but with chaos and everything breaking down. That gave us the great shot of Sting elatedly dragging Vincent around the ringside area. It wasn't until the end of the break that they had Dutch jump him to lead into the first face-in-peril. It's important to have a little bit of variety now and again.

I always see the commercial breaks as an opportunity. Someday when AEW's on a streaming service and people are going back through these the same way that we watch 1992 WCW or 95 All Japan or 84 Mid South or old Houston footage, we'll hopefully have the international feed to watch and not have to worry about picture and picture and it'll be a net positive overall. It stops the proclivity for pure action for the sake of action and forces interaction with the crowd and a doubling down with the story at hand. 

This was our second look at Copeland and while he was fine against Luchasaurus, he wrestled like someone with something to prove here, hitting a dive, asserting himself with clotheslines, hitting a double team with Sting which harkened back to his late 90s creativity with Christian, eating Dutch's Bossman Slam with wild momentum. He's such an interesting case in some ways, someone who great up as much of a fan of wrestling as could be, but that has spent the entirety of his time within a carefully controlled system. He's someone that excelled in gimmick matches, that had offense which maybe wouldn't have held up in a less produced environment. He can't compete with the conditioning of  a lot of the AEW talent, but relying on smoke and mirrors instead of sheer athleticism might make him stand out, especially if he leans into his height a bit more than he has in his career. A lot of his major WWE feuds were against his size or larger than him. I'm curious how he resets this last act; he's suggested an interest in facing a lot of the ex-WWE guys that he missed in the 2010s, the Samoa Joes and Andrades and Malakai Blacks of the world, and to port his WWE act over against new a generation he missed could be of some interest, but the real value would be if he took what made him special over the years and tried to figure out how to refine it in a world without corporate limits and monolithic preferences. That doesn't necessarily mean aping Sting's proclivity for crazy dives. It doesn't just mean blood and pile drivers and a freedom of speech either. I don't entirely know what it means. Were I Copeland, I'd be spending every second of this borrowed time that was an impossibility ten years ago trying to figure out the myriad possibilities before me though. For the first time in two and a half decades, he can be anything and do anything; for someone who loves pro wrestling, what could that possibly look like? 

Here, in this bizarre WAR six-man with Jake Roberts on the outside and very unlikely partners on the inside, it looked like a pretty good start actually.

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