AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/13 - 7/19

ROH TV 7/16/26

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz/Adam Priest/Tommy Billington vs Shane Taylor Promotions (Shane Taylor/Lee Moriarty/Shawn Dean/Carlie Bravo)

MD: I can hear it in your head.

Ospreay VS Brooks Was 8 Minutes Long With Will Working From Underneath When He's The Title Contender? What's The Ticket Sales For All In? How About Summerslam? Did The Dynamite Rating Hold Up? What Did Collision Do Against SNME? Danhausen Brought Out Karl-Anthony Towns? WWE Is Booking New York? Does That Mean There'll Be A Grand Slam To Counter SaudiMania? Someone Posted A Hogan VS Michaels Clip. Got To Post A Take On That. Dave Didn't Post The Mercedes/Maya Star Rating Yet? But He's In Arena Mexico. What's Going On With Sammy? What's Aminata's Contract Status? What About Bayley? Alvarez Says We Should Criticize AEW. Some Fans Say We Just  Should Focus On The Positives. Why Am I Typing This Like Ric Flair Tweets? What Did Styles Say This time? It's G1 Season. Big TJPW Show To Catch Up On. The TNT Champion Is Challenging at the PPV Again? Liv Morgan Supports Conversion Therapy? Tony Khan Is Playing 5 Star Booker? The Triangle of Madness Have Stardom Titles Now? 

Stop

Just stop.

Breathe. Take a breath.

None of that is going anywhere. 

Or it is, but you don't need to go with it for a few minutes.

It'll be there when you get back. Or the next thing will. Or the next. Or the next.

And you won't miss much of anything. It's fine. It'll be fine. There's something better for you out there.

A match.

A professional wrestling match.

It's full of story but not part of any storylines. 

It didn't go viral. Haven't seen a single clip from it. 

But it has eight practitioners of their craft, artists. Guys who have been around the block, guys who are on the rise, different sizes, shapes, styles. 

Twelve and a half minutes of freedom from everything above. It's on Honor Club. You have to want it to watch it. You're going to be surrounded by people who want it. It's in front of a studio audience there to see hours of wrestling. Small, intimate crowd. People who care. People who love it. People who are passionate enough to love it that much for what it is and not for all the noise around it. 

Where's Eddie Kingston been? 

Here. He's been here. Teaming with Ortiz. Wrestling with the younger guys. Wrestling the younger guys. Staring off against Shane Taylor. And yeah, you've missed him, but you don't need to miss him. He's right here waiting for you. 

Just get off the never-ending train to nowhere. Take a breath. Relax. Watch some pro wrestling that exists for the sake of pro wrestling. To entertain a crowd. To make Honor Club worth the price. To get guys reps. To create something out of nothing.

What does it look like when Eddie and Ortiz team with Priest and Billington? What does it look like when Shane Taylor Promotions come out at full strength? What does the clash of the two look like?

Aren't you curious? Even though it's not going to score you any points in any online argument. Even though it probably won't even get a look from the Observer. Even though this episode of ROH only has ONE vote on Cagematch. 

Doesn't that still sound interesting? Doesn't it sound more interesting than a lot of things that you feel far more obliged to watch and follow and post about?

Trust me when I tell you that it's better for your soul.

It was sure better for mine.

And yes, there were stories galore here, because characters drive stories and look at these characters. Ortiz and Bravo to start. Does Bravo respect the Code of Honor? No. He's tells the crowd to shut up and has a single finger on each hand for Ortiz instead. Mood set.

They trade rolling leg picks. Bravo goes under and around the leg. Ortiz gets behind him with a hammerlock. They burst into rope running. Ortiz drops down, gets a leap frog, hits an armdrag. Great way to start a match.

More stories. Eddie comes in and hits a Japanese arm drag on Dean. Dean yelps that it's an illegal move in the United States. Small crowd theatrics, maybe the best kind? Billington tagged in intending to chop down Taylor. Fearless bulldog mentality but up against a tank. Contrast makes things interesting. Styles make fights. It took Billington, Priest, and Ortiz working together to take him down. Things (like Taylor's size) mean something, have significance. 

Sometimes you want to see like vs like too. Adam Priest is any style. Lee Moriarty is the pure champ. They face off and Moriarty goes for a rolling leg pick of his own, but Priest had seen it twice so far in the match and jams it with a nasty back elbow to the jaw.

But then, Priest gets swept under. Transitions are structural, as important as any part of the match. Moriarty distracts the ref as Priest hits the ropes. Dean trips him and hits a stunner onto the apron, Bravo hits a knee drop off the apron, Taylor hits a legdrop on it. It takes mere seconds and changes everything.

Adam Priest, maybe the best heel of the 2020s, is out there playing face-in-peril, constantly reaching for his corner, constantly dragging himself across the mat, looking for any sign of hope and trying to create his own when there's none to be found. But STP stretch and do their thing. They toss him to the floor and swarm him. Bravo works small, little flourishes full of confidence. Dean has that same confidence, but he works bigger and more over the top with it. Moriarty is precise, contorting body parts, hitting suplexes, holding bridges (just as confident). Taylor is a wrecking ball. Priest tries to fire back on him. It doesn't go well for poor Adam. 

Nevertheless, Priest doesn't quit. He doesn't give up. He keeps on running, keeps on fighting, and manages to double down with Bravo after simultaneous clotheslines. He gets the hot tag. Eddie comes in like the (beloved) maniac he is. The Kobashi chops in the corner. He directs traffic. His team unloads and then toss Bravo in for an exploder. STP comes back and do the same to Eddie, tossing him in to a Taylor uranage. Things have broken down but even in chaos, there's a beautiful undercurrent of symmetry and order.

It's an 8-man tag. Plenty of people to break up pins. Plenty of offense to feature as well. Things waterfall. One guy rushes in to hit a bit of signature offense, then the next, but it all happens so quickly, and here in the finishing stretch after the meat of the match has already been consumed, that you can relax and enjoy it. The subsequent dives cleared the ring and the finish had Priest's half crab, a missile dropkick out of nowhere by Billington and dueling roll ups leading to the pin.

The progression was just right. Opening exchanges. Shine. Heat. Comeback. Chaos. Completion. All underpinned by contrast and character.

Sometimes a match can "just" be a match. That's not an insult. It can be wonderful. That doesn't mean it lacks story. It doesn't mean it doesn't draw you in. In some ways, it helps you let go and can draw you in all the more. It cuts out the distractions and lets you focus on the passion and the craft.

That doesn't mean there aren't things coming out of this I'd want to see too. We got a taste of Priest vs Moriarty. What does a Pure Title match between the two look like. We've seen Infantry vs Ortiz/Kingston once, but there's way more left on the bone. And yeah, Billington wanted to challenge himself against Shane Taylor. If he wants it that badly, I'd want to see him have the chance.

In a world without house shows, where the analytics of every quarter hour of TV is carefully examined, where fans are pushed by the algorithm to care most about lore, divisive arguments, and what's trending, a match like this can be a breath of fresh air.

I got the train for twelve minutes and just enjoyed myself. You can too. You'll be better off for it. A match like this is a gift, an increasingly rare gift. Log off for a bit and go open the present. 

You can be present. It's okay. The noise will be waiting for you whether you want it to be or not.

Enjoy the gift while you can. We don't get enough of them anymore.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/8 - 6/14

ROH TV 6/11/26

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs The Workhorsemen

Punch in. Knock out.

That's the creed of the Workhorsemen. It's built into their name. Carpenters. Good hands. Guys you want to anchor your card. Solid. Unshakable. They'll give anyone a tough match. Can credibly beat any other team on any night. Do work that anyone would be proud of. 

So that's on one side. On the other? Eddie Kingston and Ortiz. Eddie's here in ROH not to give back, not to teach, not to train, not help even, but to give the young lions of the company someone to push off against, someone to show heart against. 

That's well and good for Billington, for Price and Oliver, for Cole Karter or Griff Garrison. 

Not JD Drake. Not Anthony Henry. They've been punching in and out for years and they've seen one kid after the other get the fame, the fortune, the recognition, the opportunities. Life happens. It's happened to both of them. Maybe if things had gone a little different, one of them would have been the Continental Champ, the ROH champ, would have gotten Ortiz' chance to shine. Eddie fought for what he had. Ortiz made the most out of opportunities. But they would have too. 

Do they whine? No. Do they quit? Never. They keep punching in. They keep knocking out. They keep fighting. Maybe there's a chip on their shoulder, but given how they use it, that's a good thing.

This was just a really good mid card tv tag. The characters and the expertise drove it. That chip on the shoulder? They found the middle ground between that driving everything and classic tag team knowhow. For the latter, Ortiz especially was so good at being in the right place at the right moment for the right effect. I wasn't a huge fan of the Ortiz/Santana combo because it was a little too much of the same, maybe a little cute when it came to some of the tandem offense, but you put him in with contrast, and so much of what was great about that team gets to shine without any distractions.

Then you put him against the Workhorsemen who excel at controlling the ring and creating opportunities both for themselves and their opponents and then making the most of the former and cutting off the latter, and it just works exactly like it's supposed to. Maybe more than anything else, I love how they created time for one another. Henry would hang on against an opponent just long enough for Drake to recover and assert himself. Drake would just do the same, biding time until Henry was in the right spot so he could push his opponent into their corner for a trip. There's an element of trust and understanding that most teams never quite reach, but when you see it in practice, it's a special sort of magic.

And then Eddie was there to add the spice and, despite what the Workhorsemen might want, to be someone for them to push off of. Certainly Drake did, jawing, chopping, slamming into Eddie. Henry did as well, going so far as to throw a bunch of Kawada kicks just to make him angry. Then, when it came time for the comeback, one that was very much earned through missed tags and drawn refs and other Southern tricks, he came in like the folk hero he is, chopping away and giving everyone grief (most of all himself, like always), before a leapfrog from Ortiz set Henry up for the DDT.

Just a really good way to spend twelve minutes. Yeah, there are tag team belts stranded in Mexico right now, but this was pro wrestling for the sake of it, guys fighting for pride, fighting because the bell rings and they're faced off against each other, fighting because they're wrestlers and pro wrestlers wrestle, and we, as pro wrestling fans, watch them wrestle. Hell of an arrangement we have here. 

I don't get a lot of feedback out here. That's part of why I post on Twitter now too. Even then, I don't get a ton. But I did get sent a post a year or two ago on BlueSky where someone said that not everything needed a thinkpiece or a review of 1000+ words, that, in this case, Rhino vs Manders didn't and that it just diluted everything. Now, of course, I was going to write earnestly and honestly about a DEAN match, but I think it's something worth poking at.

Pro wrestling criticism, writing about pro wrestling, is fairly underdeveloped. I don't think what I do is honestly all that great relatively. I do my best but this is a hobby. It's just a sparse ecosystem.  In a world where the bones have been picked for years and years, I don't think anyone would need me. Wrestling isn't like that. Most of the writing has gone to the best, most lauded, most canonical stuff. You can probably read a decent amount about Flair vs Steamboat. You probably can't read a ton about 1981 German footage. You also probably can't read a ton about a mid-card match from 1993. 

You can probably read a lot about Okada vs Tanahashi from January. You probably won't read a lot of people thinking about Workhorsemen vs Eddie Kingston/Ortiz tag from ROH. But there is beauty to be found in this. I don't know how many stars someone might give it. 3 and a half? The show itself has 7 votes and a 5.something on Cagematch. But limiting yourself to canonical five star matches misses so much of what makes pro wrestling amazing. 

I think there's plenty of joy to be found in the crates, in the trenches, in the margins. It's work looking fir the greatness in the smaller moments and even a sort of craftsmanship and serenity in moments that aren't conventionally great. 

These four are so good at what they do and what they do has value and worth. So long as you open your heart to it, it will make you feel something and isn't that what this is all about? These are complex characters who have lived full lives and that can not just distill that not just through promos, but in their ringwork itself. They played with the conventions of the form, remixing and refracting complex emotions through it. There is room for it in this world. The world (of pro wrestling but in general) is better off for it. And to me, that's absolutely worth writing about.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/4 - 5/10

ROH TV 5/7/26

The Infantry vs Eddie Kingston/Ortiz

MD: I don't get a lot of chance to talk about the Infantry. I'd like to talk about the Infantry. I'm going to talk about the Infantry. 

If you asked me my take on Bravo and Dean in 2023, I'd tell you that they had a real WCW C-Show vibe to them, that sort of Men At Work or Disorderly Conduct feel. Mean Mike and Tough Tom. Nothing wrong with that. My kind of thing. Good hands. Guys you want on a card. Guys who could put over people you want to push and make them look good in a five minute or seven minute or ten minute match, whatever time you had to fill. A good team, but a low ceiling as high energy babyfaces who could engage the crowd early in the night and do their job well. 

They have come so far from that point and I'd argue without a ton of machinery behind them. You want me to liken them to someone now? I'd compare them to DDP, someone who put in the work, honed his act, got better and better, and ultimately was undeniable. Obviously, they're not entirely (definitionally) undeniable yet, but no one that takes the time, seeks them out, and pays attention would think of denying them. Right now, I don't see a ceiling except for the imagination of bookers. 

They're an incredibly alive, immersive, engaged act. Constant movement, constant working (their opponents in the ring and on the apron, the ref, the camera, the crowd, each other, other members of STP at ringside), constant jawing, constant innovation. They keep adding to the act. That could be anything from Ishin Gundan style clubbering in the corner to Dean utilizing the Bronco Buster to Bravo sitting on the apron and talking to the camera or playing to Christyan XO at ringside. Bravo has fun strikes, and I think his crossover punch looks a good as almost anything else in AEW/ROH. 

And they manage all of this while leaning into the strengths of tag team wrestling instead of just letting it fall to excess and become a structureless mess. 

Look at the Eddie/Ortiz match. Ortiz scrapped with them early, but they managed a blind tag and took over on him. They cut off the ring in about six different ways: Dean knocked Ortiz from a neutral corner into the Infantry's with a European uppercut. When Ortiz tried to proactively fight his way out, they caught him and started the tandem clubbering. That drew Eddie in and when the ref pulled him back, they Dean took the initiative to choke Ortiz into the ropes with his foot. He tagged right before Ortiz could start to fight back and Bravo cut him off. 

Ortiz was great here, constantly fighting back and looking for opportunities. When Bravo put him up in the tree of woe so he could throw punches, Ortiz proved himself to be anything but helpless and started biting Bravo's hand. Bravo in turn, stomped away. That drew Eddie and Dean took advantage. Eddie chased Dean around ringside, Bravo ambushed him, and they both attacked Ortiz. This is just great tag team wrestling, great heeling, using the rules as something to push off of to create a compelling narrative instead of running from them in the name of "creativity." The things they were doing here were far more creative than most endless bomb spotfests, because it was all creative within meaningful boundaries. 

From there, it's more cutting off the ring. Bravo shot off with Garvin stomps to Ortiz' extremities, but each one drove him back towards Dean in the corner. Dean came in, worked a hold. Ortiz fought up, got some hope, got cut off to Eddie's chagrin, and they took back control in their corner. That meant a tandem whip in, the Carlie Crossover punch, and Dean adding insult to injury while Bravo talked to the camera. They're just an incredibly complete, multi-faceted act at this point. 

After drawing in Eddie one last time, the match made it to the hot tag, but only after making Ortiz really earn it. The belly-to-back suplex he got just opened the door; he still had to dodge one last attempt to cut the ring in half and roll his way to the corner. Things broke down accordingly. Eddie cleaned house, trapped Dean and then both in the corner with his Kobashi chops (stooging; another facet to the act), and Ortiz got some revenge with a spinebuster and tandem Russian Leg Sweep/STO.

They transitioned quickly from comeback to finishing stretch by breaking up a Doomsday Device attempt and then took it home sharply, focused, avoiding sixteen false finishes and going with a banana peel instead. They hit a powerplex, which I'm not sure I've ever seen them do. Ortiz broke up Boot Camp, Eddit got his exploder, Ortiz snuck out a a drive forward pin, and they cycled into the post-match with STP going on the assault and Mance Warner making the save, building to the next thing.

Really good, focused, character-driven, technically sound, dynamic tag team wrestling that was built upon all the fundamentals of building up pressure and letting it all boil over that the art form is all about. They could have had a similar match a couple of years ago, but it wouldn't have had the same over the top confidence that makes them stand out so much now. It's the combination of the two, the substance and the style, that makes the Infantry special. People may not always consciously notice the substance, but it's there as strongly as any other team in the company, and they've picked their own stylized lane when it comes to laying sizzle on top of it, the chip on their shoulder driving an aggression that sticks with you as a viewer. You could slot them anywhere on the card and they'd deliver. 

Between Eddie's frustration on the apron, Ortiz playing his role extremely well, and the Infantry owning every aspect of this match, this reminded me of an entirely different sort of WCW match, something like Horsemen vs Rich/Morton where it was still a TV match, still niche, still relatively low stakes, but where some of us still remember it very fondly.

AEW Dynamite 5/6/26

Kevin Knight vs Darby Allin

MD: This was a solid and clever progression from the previous couple of weeks. It started out as a babyface title match, and rarely do 2026 title matches really feel like traditional NWA style title matches in the build. This did. They began by wrestling. There's something really refreshing about that. It was character-driven too. Darby's dangerous on the mat, but Knight is dojo trained. He saw how Darby kept luring people or dragging them into endless escalation, into mutually assured destruction. Darby is, as previously noted, a cockroach, and I mean that in the most complimentary way. He survives the escalation when others cannot. That's how he wins.

For most of the match, Knight was ready for it and he kept his head. That meant sticking to wrestling for as long as possible. The problem, of course, is that Knight didn't get to fully decide. Darby is a proactive, engaged competitor, a champion, one who feels like he is fighting for his life. Where Knight slipped was when he let Darby control the pace. That's when they crashed into one another with flying clotheslines, when they started rope running only for Darby to change things up again and go to striking instead. In that regard, it really felt like a world title match, like a game of human chess.

Still, Knight showed restraint and maturity. Darby has a need for excess, a need to push things farther. It's how he wins but it's also how he feels alive. Kevin Knight? He feels plenty alive all the time. He's doing fine. He's living his best life while Darby's living the only life possible for him. So when he dropkicked Darby out of the ring, he didn't go diving after him. He took a beat, took a breath, slid out and kept control. Very smart pro wrestling.

Darby is, however, a raging river, and even the strongest dam can only hold off against the rapids for so long. Knight took every opportunity but Darby kept coming. He tried to go after the leg, but Darby would have no part in it. He tried to control the pace, but there was only so much he, or anyone else, could do.  Eventually, Knight could put up with no more. Darby positioned him into a chair on the floor like he'd done with previous opponents. Knight avoided their fate (usually a missile dropkick from the top downwards), but Darby ended up in the perfect position for an insane Knight aerial attack, and Knight couldn't refuse. 

The subsequent clothesline from the top over the announce table was spectacular but also clearly a strategic mistake. Knight came out of it worse off, hobbled. Darby was prone, but Knight was a half step slow in taking advantage. He followed up with the Coast to Coast dropkick that had previously taken out Darby (at least that's what they tell us), but despite that and the UFO that followed it, he couldn't cover Darby in time due to the injured leg. When Darby rolled away on a second attempt, Knight had no choice but to follow and he walked right into a trap: Darby kicked out the leg and got the guillotine that eventually set him up to win.

Overall, another strong title defense driven by Darby's penchant for escalation and his opponent having to weigh the cost/benefit of keeping up or pulling back. Knight had managed well right until he didn't. I'll be honest that I would have been happier if the finish was set up by Knight coming up short with the Coast to Coast due to the injury. There's a tendency for AEW to overdo finishes here. Knight wiping out on the Coast to Coast would have been just as dramatic as him hitting two huge moves but not being able to capitalize and would have gotten over the consequence of what happened even more. That's a nitpick though. Overall, this, like the previous two matches and the PAC match that followed was very good. Hell of a title run so far.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/2 - 2/8

AEW Collision 2/7/26

Parking Lot Brawl: Eddie Kingston/Ortiz/Zachary Wentz/Dezmond Xavier vs James Drake/Zack Gibson/Big Bill/Bryan Keith

Here's the thing about pro wrestling. It's like life. It doesn't end. It doesn't have off-season. You can shut your eyes but it doesn't go away. It's still there. It's always there. It's always pulling and prodding you. It's always tugging you. It's always pulling you back into the ring.

Eddie Kingston had finally done it all. 

Before that though, he had been on the verge of selling his boots, of giving it up, (of being free), during the pandemic, but he cut a promo with nothing to lose and it opened the last door left for him.

Behind that door? At first, nothing. An opportunity. Not even fans in seats. But he made the most of it, made his mark, and when the world started back up again, it welcomed him with a loving roar.

So he fought and climbed and scraped, and it was all rewarded. He met his idols. He even battled against some of them. He won New Japan gold. He defeated his hated rival to win the ROH title. He put that on the line against all of his enemies and one of his few friends and he triumphed in the first Continental Classic. Top of the world. He earned the American Dragon's respect.

A wonderful end to an embattled story. 

But pro wrestling never ends. Life goes on and it's so damn hard. He lost one title after the next. He lost his ability to walk. He lost a year and a half of his career. 

And yet, here he is, back once again. 

Wrestling saved his life. It gave him purpose. It gave him direction. It gave him a way out from a far darker fate. And the price he paid for all that? Only everything that he ever was and ever will be. That's pro wrestling for you.

It's just like life. You can have amazing moments, weddings, the birth of your child, promotions, but the Earth doesn't care. It's going to keep spinning. The sun isn't going to care. It's going to rise the next day. 

Over time, we get old. Some things get easier.

Getting up? That's not one of them. 

Eddie Kingston is 44 years old. Something they don't tell you at 14 or 24 or even 34 is how hard 44 can be. At some point, it becomes harder to sleep through the night without having to pee. At some point, it becomes harder to just sit up. To roll out of bed. To bend down to tie those shoes. And that's without a lifetime of getting battered around the ring.

Eddie knows it. Eddie shows it. He needs to fight, hell, want to fight, but he wants finality too. When it's time for something to be over, for a grief to be settled, he wants it to be over. He's even managed it since his return. He somehow managed to move on from LFI without facing RUSH. 

He couldn't move on from the GYV though. They wouldn't let him. 

They've been off in their little corner of the world waging a private war. Eddie came out of his match with Samoa Joe wanting to stretch, wanting to show what he still had left in the tank, so he ran right through Nathan Cruz, a young associate of Drake and Gibson. That drew their ire so he fought his way past one and the next. No shame to either. They've been tagging. He's Eddie Kingston. They gave him a fight. He was ready to move on.

They didn't let him. 

Instead, they ambushed him after the Gibson match, and it was up to Ortiz to return to make the save. Ortiz and Eddie beat them with the help of an errant (more like purposeful) madball. Eddie was ready to be done. They weren't. Wrestling's wrestling though. You fight long enough and you're going to draw others into your circle. A magnetic pull, the sweet allure of violence.

So we have the Rascalz helping their Uncle Eddie and Bill and Keith bounty hunting their way beside GYV.

A parking lot, but not the claustrophobic garage attached to Daily's Place. They're up on the rooftop, the Vegas skyline behind them. 

Room to move. Room to breathe. Room to wage war.

And war they did wage. This had all the bells and whistles of cinematic pro wrestling. The Rascalz got to show off, leaping off cars, pulling Keith into a limo to smoke him out. They bled, a baptism by fire in their second match. Welcome to AEW. Hope you survive the experience.

And of course Bill was Bill. This was a perfect showcase for him. When he pressed a Rascal over the limo, it looked like we were back in 1995 and he had tossed him right off the building. Then, giant that he is, he leaned back the car, took his jacket off and brought a foot up so Eddie could run right into it. 

So yeah, while it may not have had the emotional stakes of some of the previous parking lot brawls, it had the right mix of chaos and creativity, of broken glass and nasty bumps. At one point Isla Dawn came out and it sort of made you wonder why she didn't come out earlier or later and why Reed came out only to counter her. They'd just been hiding behind cars the whole time? You say it's fun and not to question these things, but if someone had questioned and came up with an answer, everything could have been tighter and still just as fun. 

In the end, during the DDT that won the match, but well before it, certainly after it, the camera found Eddie. He's a photogenic bastard in his own way. Why? Because he's the must human wrestler there is. Maybe the most human wrestler that ever was. The pain, the agony, the effort, it all just radiates off of him, the consequence that gives pro wrestling meaning and weight.

When Eddie wants to wrap up a backstage interview, wants to get out of the ring and get back to he hotel, wants to avoid all the bullshit that everyone has to go through in order to put pro wrestling on tv, it's not because he doesn't care. He spends his whole life caring. He cares too much. When that bell rings, no one cares like Eddie does. 

It's that he's spent. He's tired. He hurts. He aches. Inside and out. The eyes reach the soul and the soul is a weary thing.

But still he fights on, because life keeps coming at all of us and it comes at him more than anyone. Scowl on his face, muttering all the way, letting out a groan that we can feel in our gut, Eddie Kingston will fight on, and hey, if he can fight on, then so can we. That realization, more than anything else, is what makes him so precious and special in a world that gets harder for all of us each and every day. Just maybe don't tell him that, because that's the last thing he wants to hear. Life's hard enough without having to inspire people.

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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. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston/Akiyama Before Kingston/Akiyama

23. Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs. Jun Akiyama/Konosuke Takeshita AEW Rampage 11/18/22  

ER: Ever since Dream Match Wrestling started in 2001 with King of the Indies, the most common way it's been naturally presented is as Matches Paying Customers and Internet Fans Want to See That Maybe Haven't Happened. It's much less commonly presented as Match Participant's Dream Opponent. Eddie Kingston's dream opponent is Jun Akiyama, and fighting a 53 year old Jun plays into every part of Eddie Kingston's 3 year + retirement tour. We never got any of Kings Road Eddie against the All Japan or NOAH rosters we all loved. We missed out on dozens of Eddie Kingston singles matches against Baba acolytes because Kingston only went to Japan for a week with Osaka Pro. Kingston's only singles match in Japan at the time of this match was against Kanjyouro Matsuyama, one of those Japanese wrestlers who has wrestled a couple thousand matches but is still obscure and only spoken about by real freaks. You have never brought up a wrestler as plain sightedly obscure as Kanjyouro Matsuyama, and we should instead all be talking about Eddie Kingston's fun but disappointing singles matches against Takeshi Rikio and Keith Walker. 

Well, now Eddie actually gets to fight Jun Akiyama in a singles match, and this match is the great teaser tag the night before that match. And what's great about it, is how they perfectly understand that it's a teaser to the singles match, and they work every little tease of Eddie and Jun going at it. What's even better is that Eddie and Jun don't even go at it until the end of the match, and I also think it's the weakest part of the match. More focus and dedication was placed on making the teases special than the actual brief squaring off: Kingston throwing a running elbow at Jun on the apron after tagging out, Akiyama kicking at Kingston on the apron after tagging in, Akiyama bailing on a pinfall attempt after a piledriver on Ortiz to not give Kingston the satisfaction of breaking up said pin, Kingston taunting Jun while giving Takeshita a nasty face lock and then not giving Jun that satisfaction by stopping his own pin. It was all hugely entertaining, and again, more so than their actual exploder trading at the match's conclusion. 

I thought Ortiz looked incredible. He looked great in peril, he looked perfectly in sync with Kingston during their runs - hitting a cool neckbreaker drop and throwing Takeshita into a neck-breaking Kingston DDT is the kind of spot that never looks natural but was smooth as silk here - and he fed for Akiyama brilliantly. I don't think Akiyama is washed. No, he seems to be working as smart as ever and seems to know the limitations that come with being a wrestler in his early 50s. But on Akiyama's hot tag Ortiz did an incredible job feeding for him, bringing all the speed and completely hiding the fact that he was moving all around Akiyama. Akiyama wasn't exactly Steven Seagal standing in place forcing everyone to run at him, but he wasn't not doing that, and I think Ortiz completely masked it. The match ending breakdown was a lot of fun, and for a guy I don't typically connect with I thought Takeshita's had an Actually Great Kawada sell off Kingston's wicked backdrop suplex, and I appreciated that his best elbow of the match was used to shut down Ortiz'a fire. It's a risk to run a Dream Match Teaser right before actually running the Dream Match, but this was an excellent tease.  

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/15 - 1/21

MD: A lot to say this week, so I'll probably keep these relatively short. I could have just as easily written up Strong vs Sydal or Garcia vs Matthews or even Copeland vs Martin. Interesting selling all around. 

AEW Dynamite 1/17/24 

Samoa Joe vs. HOOK

MD: If selling is the story of the week, then the second story is likely one of intent. Yes, pro wrestling is and always has to be about winning a simulated athletic competition. And yes, most of the time it should be about money. Why? Because that takes from professional sports and is always relatable. But having compelling characters with interesting motivations always helps. Let's take a look at Samoa Joe. Here was a guy who had been written off by his industry and by a huge chunk of the fanbase, but had never been written off by himself. Here's someone who had been misused, undervalued, not provided the opportunities that he would have rightfully deserved in a more meritocratic business. So he made his own opportunity. He's seen others come and go around him, wild and chaotic and undisciplined, and he is the calm center of gravity holding things together. 

Here, in his first defense, with two challengers chomping at his heels and a Wardlow (a man who he has quite a bit of history with) waiting in the wings, he wanted to bring understanding to a new generation. He wished to make HOOK see how the world worked, wished to bestow upon him all the harsh lessons that life had taught him, all of the lessons that HOOK's own father, blinded by pride and boundless, uncharacteristic optimism, refused to teach him. HOOK took the fight to Joe as if he could define his own destiny through skill and determination and bravery. Joe shut him down and beat him around the ring, around the ringside area, crushed him to dust. HOOK rose back up with youthful defiance, trying to snatch a second grasp at victory by denying the truth before him. Joe choked him out. Almost certainly, the lesson wasn't absorbed. It was, however, transferred. It took Joe an entire career to become the man that he is now, no matter how formidable or fearsome the man he was twenty years ago had been. One can extrapolate forward another twenty years and think of the lessons HOOK will want to bestow upon others in 2044. It might well look a lot like this.

Christian Cage vs. Dustin Rhodes

MD: I am obligated to write about this match. There are, presumably, only so many Dustin matches left to write about. There are, presumably, only so many Christian Cage matches. I'm just not sure what needs to be said that isn't entirely evident, what comparative advantage I have here. Let me say this then. Everything here worked exactly how it was supposed to. We take so much of this for granted. We do not give the basic tenets of pro wrestling enough credit. It's because we've seen so much of it and we've seen it done so ineffectually. We anticipate. If you're reading this blog, I can almost assure you that if you watch a wrestler hit the ropes in context of a match, you almost certainly know what the end result of the spot will be. Our brains all work differently and we're all different people, but most of you are a half move ahead of what you're watching, sometimes more. Even if you aren't sure exactly how it'll go, you've got three or four possibilities mapped out ahead of time and it's just a matter of which path on the flow chart they decide to take. 

Generally that's ok. There's so much wrestling and a lot of it is all built similarly. The tiny nuances stand out. The massive spots and bumps stand out. The deviations stand out. A lot of times, for good or ill, the actual skeleton of the match is just there to provide us a means of delivery for the details. A match is rarely rewarded for the wrestlers doing the right things at the right times for the right reasons with the right results. It's more likely a match will get rewarded for coloring outside the lines, even if the coloring makes no sense. People flock towards innovation and sensation when there's still so much beauty to be found in the standard architecture of direct storytelling. Not here though. Here, it all worked. Here, the foundation was so strong that it moved in parallel with the details and was worth letting go and immersing yourself in. The babyface was cheered. The heel was booed. Everyone played their part. Dustin achieved multiple symbolic victories but Christian escaped with the victory and his belt once again. AEW is a big tent promotion. There will always be room for good, well executed, straightforward pro wrestling. It provides a baseline to be pressed against. There are very few 21st century wrestlers who can do it as well as these two.

AEW Collision 1/20/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston/Ortiz

MD: Building off what I just said about Christian vs Dustin, part of the issue is that the crowd no longer wants to play its traditional role, but it wants to have more pivotal a role than ever. In a world of "Both These Guys" and "Fight Forever" chants, and in a company that (probably rightfully) embraces them, it takes someone really special to make pro wrestling in that environment special. It takes someone who can adapt to what is before him, who can lead the crowd despite the incentive of the day being to follow them, who can pause the script and lean into the moment. Enter Danielson and Kingston. The first minute or two of this was absolutely compelling. Danielson tried to get under Eddie's skin, tried to stall, tried to get the crowd to cheer for him. And he did. Eddie, on the other side of the Continental Classic and a win over Danielson, was annoyed that Bryan wouldn't just lock up with him, but confident enough to meet the moment. He looked to his imaginary watch (my current favorite pro wrestling object), and showed Danielson that it was literally impossible to get under his skin in a world where the crowd would go up for him just as much if not more. If selling is ultimately just reacting in order to give meaning to the physical actions within the ring, there is a sort of emotional selling which is reacting to both physical and non-physical stimulus. Here Danielson and Kingston are exceptional. You could spend the whole match just watching their facial reactions and it'd be more engrossing than 90% of the company's breathtaking highspots. I'm so glad that they've moved back into one another's orbit for at least one last go around.

AEW Rampage 1/19/24

Darby Allin vs. Jeff Hardy

MD: This was the rare case where I don't think the commercial break helped the match. Darby is the exception that proves the rule. He's so good at generating impact and fabricating consequence that he could ground a trainwreck and make it into a narrative. Hardy was, in many ways, the Darby of two decades prior. This match was best in the early going when it was like two ships firing their cannons at one another, calibrating and recalibrating with each perilous shot. Except the cannonballs were human cannonballs. One wrestler would crash and burn on a near miss and the other would line up his next shot and fire away. I wouldn't want it every day for the wrestlers' sake and the sake of my own sanity, but once every year or two, it's nice to see these two ships pass in the night, guns blaring. 

 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/9 - 1/15

AEW Dynamite 1/11

Bryan Danielson vs. Konosuke Takeshita

MD: Takeshita's raw physical abilities makes him sort of anything for anyone. Eddie Kingston had a very specific match that he wanted to have with him. Adam Page did as well. So did Mox and Claudio. I think his own pro-wrestling instincts are a bit much for my tastes, but I'd love to see what some of the other 5FoD like Punk or Dustin might do with him. I think it was pretty clear to anyone paying attention what Danielson wanted, someone to push him as far as possible so they could have a high octane, hard hitting match. That's exactly what he got. 

Coming in, knowing that, I was ok with the end product, give or take a few nitpicks, but overly impressed by a few points as well. For instance, I think they filled the time on the top rope during the commercial break and ending with that amazing lariat off the top exceptionally well. Timing was perfect; you didn't know where it'd end up and were happily surprised by the eventual place; it never felt cooperative; it always felt perilous. I liked the little bits of mat sections early. Takeshita's strength and flexibility meant that Danielson could really stretch, both in his own bridging and with the Romero special into the dragon sleeper. The one place where it fell apart was the ugly spot on the floor, and even then, Danielson recovered beautifully at first by selling his leg. It would have been even more beautiful if it was all a ruse and, after the knees up on the flipping senton in, he had dropped the selling completely. Instead, he dropped it conveniently, not selling it after that spot to set up the LeBell lock, selling it immediately thereafter, and then dropping it for the rest of the match, including after he landed on his feet after the German. It would have worked way better as a feint but obviously, it's a lot to keep track in the moment. Not every conversation about Danielson has to be about whether he's the best in the world or not, I suppose.

Instead, it was nice to see Danielson against a handpicked opponent, getting time and fully flexing his pro wrestling interests. On some level, I miss a more mat-based, hold-based, Danielson, one that would really dismantle an opponent, but it's still thrilling to watch him do what he wants to do most.  

AEW Rampage 1/13

Darby Allin vs. Juice Robinson

MD: This felt like the match needed for the specific moment. It was a reset after the ladder match with a big bloodbath to come. It was a nice little title match too. I've heard from a lot of people that Juice is better positioned as a babyface but I think he adds a nice bit of contrast and there's a real sense of escalation in his offense as the match goes on. They started out on the mat, giving it a bit of a title match feel, shifted with one huge bump by Darby, and then went into an extended control period by Juice which was constant and consistent. Darby is a guy who doesn't necessarily need to get in a lot of hope spots because the fans are behind him and because half of the joy of his matches is watching him take stuff. When there is a comeback and a cutoff, it means all the more for it. Juice started with the double axe handle building to the sentons (which he went for initially too early to start of the match and then paid off later) and ultimately the Harlem Sidekick. When he couldn't put Darby away, because who can, he went to the top, made a mistake, and Darby took the win. Just a good straightforward match which gave Juice a lot of room to stretch, gave Darby another win (a bunch in a very short period of time) and got the crowd recalibrated for what was to come next.

Malakai Black/Brody King vs. Eddie Kingston/Ortiz

MD: Lots of moving parts here. A lot like the Cassidy vs Sabian match from last week, they did a good job of playing out the story with the actual ringwork. AEW's roster is a dual-edged sword. You'll get Eddie wrestling relatively short enhancement tags on the webshows (even if sometimes the opponents have been great) and then you suddenly realize that you never knew you wanted him to face off against Malakai Black. This was more of a tease than a real payoff, but it was a hell of a tease, culminating with the drop into the seated position and King interjecting to lead into the commercial break and the heat. Eddie kept coming back, kept getting assists from Ortiz, kept refusing to tag. I'm not sure anyone in wrestling today could have portrayed this level of stubbornness, defiance, and toughness than Eddie. His face was visibly banged up; he kept throwing backfists wildly; he stood tall and foolish and prideful and people believed in him and suspended their disbelief and let themselves get frustrated at him and hopeful for him. That's what Eddie Kingston could do. Everyone else played their role perfectly, especially Ortiz who took it to Brody at the start and worked the apron like an all time tag worker and including Julia with picture perfect timing and a resonating scream when a lot of people were probably expecting the mist. I'm glad this is getting time and look forward to see how it all plays out.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/12 - 12/18

AEW Dark 12/13

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Trustbusters (Slim J/JVSK)

MD: Sometimes AEW will tape something and then not show it due to changing circumstances. This was taped all the way back on 11/4 in Atlantic City, and Eddie, post Akiyama, has apparently cooled down. He was still pretty hot for this one. Still, they came through and showed it nonetheless and we're glad they did. Slim J vs Eddie Kingston is about as much of a Segunda Caida match as is possible. If Punk doesn't come back, then Slim J becomes the fifth finger sort of by default. This got a ton of time too and was a good showcase for everyone involved.

Eddie and Slim J got really stretch to start with Slim just absolutely driving Eddie nuts and goading him into things. Eddie came back by responding to some more goading with a perfect eyepoke. Later on the Trustbusters would get to really lean on Ortiz, looking pretty good working as a unit for a team that has maybe one or two Dark matches together. Slim J has been around forever but he's traveled in different circles than a lot of the other AEW guys. I think Davari said that he'd first met him the day that they started as a unit. And I don't see any signs of VSK working him before either (even though VSK has been around for fifteen years). This broke down to some pretty wonderful chaos with Eddie suplexing everyone, taking Slim J's flying reverse DDT perfectly (which not everyone does), and less perfectly eating another dive. They had Eddie break up a couple of lesser things by VSK but made Ortiz kick out of the Amityville Horror/Cradleshock, which I think is JVSK's finisher, so that was a dubious choice but it fit the moment of the match, I guess. I liked the little bit of Sonny Kiss we got as a second in this one, including to set up the finishing miscommunication. Trustbusters are just such a weird and random unit but it somehow works. Excalibur was trying one last ticket sale read as Ortiz made the final hot tag and Eddie spun into the backfist and he carried that manic energy forward into the call. If this is the only Eddie and Slim J encounter we get in AEW, it'd be a shame, but it still felt pretty substantial for a month and a half old Dark main event and I'm glad we got at least this much.

AEW Rampage 12/16

Dustin Rhodes/Orange Cassidy/Chuck Taylor/Trent vs Kip Sabian/Trent Seven/Butcher/Blade

MD: Feel good way to end a yearly themed AEW taping, especially important considering the big hometown babyface lost to end Dynamite. Lots of moving pieces here but they came together pretty well, with everyone more or less where they should be when they should be and plenty of gaga. I enjoyed the Trent-off to start and the fans got into it. Seven is a guy with a couple of unique ideas, a slightly different body type. I think there's probably more value to AEW overall to bring guys like him in occasionally instead of full time, that sense that anything can happen at any moment as opposed to just making a huge roster even huger, but he was more than happy to play along with everything here. Probably my favorite moment in this one was when he was taking Dustin's punches by really throwing his head all over the place. Sabian is someone I give some credit to, as while I don't entirely think the act works, I like how broadly he thinks about things; there was a moment during Dark a week or two ago where he was mocking Alex Reynolds about the Preston Vance turn that is something almost no one else on the roster would have done in that spot. Sort of a galaxy brain approach to his matches.

I get that WWE is better in many ways than it was at the start of the year, but it's always refreshing to highlight someone like Dustin in Texas. It's so intuitive and so special. It's part of what WWF was doing for years at the start of the war in the 80s, bringing in people like Wrestling II in Louisiana or Mad Dog Vachon in AWA territory. All of Dustin's interactions with Danhausen (constantly staring at one another) or Cassidy (playing air guitar to the theme as Cassidy leaned upon him on the entrance) were enjoyable and the sort of things I'd hope would lead to something more. I feel it's off brand to note on Segunda Caida that I would have liked a hug with everyone involved, but I kind of would have. The bits with Danhausen and the faux low blows (and the one actual one) set up the finishing stretch in a fun and different way than a dive train would have. They could run a match like this once every few weeks or once a month, highlighting a local guy, pulling together some characters and some feuds, to send a crowd happy, and it'd be part of what will always make AEW special compared to a lot of what we've been forcefed over the last two decades. I still hope this is leading to Dustin challenging Cassidy for the All Atlantic Title at some point though. I'd even take Dustin and Danhausen interacting more.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/14 - 11/20 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 11/16

Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli) vs. Jericho Appreciation Society (Chris Jericho/Sammy Guevara)

MD: Just a high quality, functional tag to start the show and set up the PPV 4-way. The ultimate goals were to make Claudio look strong coming in, make Jericho look vulnerable, and lean in hard on the preexisting vulnerability from the previous week with Danielson's eye. All three factors will likely come into play in the title match. They've mentioned the idea that Sammy might go into business for himself, but that wasn't really touched on in the text itself here. I mentioned last week that in some ways he's the perfect 2022 Bryan Danielson opponent, even if he's not the wrestler I'd like to see him up against the most. It's not far off to say that about Claudio too. The hangtime he was able to off of Claudio's power on a few spots (like the pop up uppercut) was just amazing. Outside of that one specific pairing, the other three have been married to one another off and on over a good chunk of this year. Again, it's maybe not what I'd want for Danielson, and even, at this point, not what I want for Jericho anymore (I was all for the idea of a JAS vs Neo-Pinnacle w/Joe feud back around the Canada shows), but familiarity, at the very least, can breed creativity. Three matches in, Danielson's able to twist and contort certain spots and a certain comfort level on things like dives. Sammy hit a spectacular one on Danielson to get the two of them out of the way for the Claudio/Jericho Giant Swing/Walls bit. Danielson hit a visceral tope on Sammy to get them out of the way for the finish. Likewise, that giant swing spot with Jericho holding the bat and Aubrey recoiling back into the corner so she didn't get clocked by it on the rotations was brilliant. So there's value in the continued pairings. So when I truly, deeply hope that with the ROH PPV up coming, if not this PPV ahead of us, we're at the end of this feud, it's not necessarily because the content is stale or no longer worth watching. I'm just ready to see these four wrestle other people.

AEW Rampage 11/18

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs. Jun Akiyama/Konosuke Takeshita

 

MD: Different people will give you different answers about this, but if you forced me to come up with a single, unified theory of pro wrestling, it would be this: Pro wrestling is about anticipation and payoff. Here the anticipation was for seeing Jun Akiyama and Eddie Kingston fight each other. And the payoff? Well, we only got a taste of it as it was, in the best and carniest pro wrestling fashion, building towards another show and another match and another moment. I have to admit that the anticipation was pretty glorious in and of itself. They did everything they could to keep Eddie and Akiyama out of the ring together, starting with Kingston vs. Takeshita, with heat on both Ortiz and then Takeshita so that partners could cycle in and out without the two facing. Ortiz knew the match wasn't about him but also that he'd have to carry a lot of it in order to prevent the teased pairing and he rose to the occasion, hitting hard, but taking all of Akiyama's stuff. Akiyama was sudden and decisive in his violence. For all of the anticipation in the match, when he struck, it was without flourish or hesitation. He'd reach for Ortiz and spike him with a pile driver with no pomp, just impact. Kingston let himself get distracted but then shut down every opening. His eyes wandered. His fists did not. All of my issues with Takeshita tend to be structural and almost all of them were alleviated by this being a tag match. 

The match built and built to the possibility of Kingston and Akiyama facing off. When they did it was to prevent the exploder, with Ortiz still the legal man and Eddie doing his best Taue impression to rush in and break up an opportunity and break down the match, the way so many All Japan tags broke down. The encounter disappointed only so much as it was a tease for something more. As a tease, it was everything you might want though: thrown blows, traded exploders, with Akiyama's snap quick, tight and snug. He didn't take shots as you so often see, but registered them and sold as he fired back, and if anyone watching this in the back learned anything from him here, I'd hope it was that. But in the end, the payoff was all just a tease after all, bringing us back to anticipation for what yet remained ahead. That's pro wrestling too.  It never ends and it always leaves us wanting more.

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

AEW Dark Elevation 10/31

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Breaux Keller/Myles Hawkins

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

AEW Dynamite 11/2

Darby Allin vs Jay Lethal

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

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

AEW Dark Elevation 10/24

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

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

AEW Dynamite 10/26

Bryan Danielson vs Sammy Guevara

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends): 10/17 - 10/23

AEW Dark 10/18

MD: Eddie was our only guy this week and he was on Dark, so I figured I'd just do the whole show. It's been a little over a year now since I've been watching AEW. One interesting thing about the promotion relative to other ones over the years is that different people from different generations get very different things out of it. Punk and Danielson coming back drew me in. Kingston and Dustin and Darby, among others, kept my interest, but on a week to week basis, it was the webshows that really worked for me. If Dynamite feels like crash TV with original ROH style dream matches, and Rampage feels a bit like late 91-early 92 WCW Saturday Night with a Dangerous Alliance match and a few midcard matches, Elevation and Dark feel like WCW syndi shows. Squashes and a few midcard matches. It's one of those things people of my generational tolerated for years, maybe grumbled about, but ultimately had no idea how good we had it.

In an ecosystem like what I described above, squashes are a amazing, right? Guys like Naylor have been so good at highlighting them and why they were special over the years, but they highlight moves, characters, give the announcers room to breathe. They're not exhausting like sprints can be. They're pro-wrestling comfort food while giving wrestlers the ability to really express who they are. You can tell a story in them or not depending on what you're trying to achieve. All the talk about how wrestlers are wasted not being on TV is irritating, to say the least. The nature of AEW's roster is that people get rotated on and off to keep things fresh. Someone like Ruby Soho coming out to her theme on Elevation gets the fresh and excited crowds going. Emi Sakura is the MVP, having hard-hitting entertaining tag after entertaining tag with partners that can vibe with her act and opponents that are better off for getting reps with her. It's the perfect place for Dalton Castle and Danhausen and Brandon Cutler and the Wingmen, giving the crowd extra value for their ticket and helping to keep acts over. It lets them try out new talent or new tweaks upon a gimmick. I was excited when Deeb, for instance, finished up her title match programs and was interacting with people like Emi and Skye Blue again.

The problem, as much as fans being small-minded, is AEW not doing enough to use the shows to build to everything else going on. There was a patch back six months ago where if someone was going to have a match on Dynamite or Rampage they'd often get featured on Elevation, and they did some things, like building to the ROH PPV with Dark and Elevation, but in general, it's underutilized. I don't know a single person who watches the webshows and feels like they're not valuable or worth watching though, no matter how much griping you get from the people who don't watch (the most worthless griping of all). This was an especially star-studded episode given they were in Canada and it was taped before a live Rampage, but don't sleep on the studio Darks either. Studio wrestling is great given that with AEW we get all sorts of variety. You may not want it as your only wrestling but as part of the whole, it balances things out.

Hikaru Shida vs Vanessa Kraven

MD: I've been giving a lot of thought about 'aces' lately. I think it's due to watching a ton of Inoki over the last year. It could be because I want to watch some Big Daddy and make some calls for myself soon. Don't hold me for that. One aspect that I think is important in an ace is to leverage the cachet you have with the crowd to find ways to highlight what makes your opponent unique. Shida absolutely did that here, making full use of Kraven's size and strength. This was not at all the same sort of match that she would have had with someone smaller or with a different background. Some of that was leaping into the catch on the outside off the chair and eating that samoan drop on the apron (which then, thanks to the AEW house style, she could use later in the match to escape the Samoan drop and set up the finishing stretch). Some of it was the struggle for the falcon arrow, barely getting her over, and then letting her kick out of it. The creativity and imagination and care that went into how she laid this out was definitely appreciated however.

Dark Order (Evil Uno/John Silver/Alex Reynolds/10) vs Tyler Tirva/Shane Hawke/Zak Patterson/Jordano)

MD: Again, we get the freedom of the web shows here. They're not trying to hit any major time marks. They're not worried about picture-in-picture commercial breaks. This was in Canada. This was about showcasing Uno, as well it should have been. It's one of those things AEW does best and that we spent decades getting denied due to weird piques of spite "up north." Though some of this was diluted by Taz poking Jose the Assistant on commentary, but certainly not for the live crowd.

This was surprisingly complete, with Reynolds getting some shine to start (useful given that he plays FIP a lot), a tease of Uno early only for him to get swarmed, some heat on Silver (including eating a huge gutwrench), and everything set up to combine the big Dark Order spots and all of Uno's signature spots mixed with all of his showmanship. They could have just had Dark Order run through these guys but they gave it enough substance to make Uno's spots mean just a little more.

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs Mo Jabari/Jake O'Reilly

MD: Just a stylized mauling. Jabari and O'Reilly might get one shot in but they sure wouldn't get two in a row. Ortiz knows this is his moment to come into his own and showcase his own identity and he's been doing that with the Rick Rude or the crotch chop before the veg-o-matic or the tiger style (which, now that I think about it, may not be his own identity at all). Those crossfaces in the corner were nasty though, and Eddie's chops sounded as good as they ever did. The anger management angle for Kingston made sense in the Sammy match; I'm not sure if it's totally believable moving forward, but the Pac match it seems to be building to should be fun at least.

Best Friends (Orange Cassidy/Chuck Taylor/Trent) vs Kobe Durst/Steven Mainz/Jessie V

MD: This was a straight up crowdpleasing squash on the heels of the Cassidy/PAC main event one day earlier. Occasionally they'll run these where guys can just do whatever and they don't even give the enhancement talent a hope. It was pretty brutal with Trent not quite getting all of the flip into a spinebuster (and he save the same sort of shrug that Silver got when he tried to suplex two guys at once). The Sole Food into the Half and Half looked great though. Cassidy then came in and punched everyone. I'm not sure if it's Keith Mitchell retiring or what but they don't seem to time the hug nearly as well as they used to. Anyway, this was never going to be much but it was fine for what it was.

Ari Davari vs Brandon Cutler

MD: Like I said, people watch AEW for different reasons. There are some people who are thoroughly into the Elite, to the point of having Omega avatars and whatever else. I don't have a ton of time for any of them for reasons no one needs to hear right now, but I do think Cutler's been one of the bright spots of the company over the last month. He's a guy who throws himself entirely in the act, who's unafraid to do anything necessary. He cares so much that the fans care, and as the only bastion of the Elite remaining, they care just a little bit more. You put him up against a guy like Avalon (like we'll see this week) or Danhausen or Serpentico and you get a fun comedy match, but if you put him against an actual wrestler like Davari, and you get a kind of interesting, contrast-laden match, where he can work from underneath. Here, Davari threw a lot of simple, driving shots, credible stuff that put over his annoyance of the entire situation. Cutler would comeback with fun 80s offense but Davari would cut him off by going for the eyes or with Kiss' help or through something just as conniving that sort of defies hierarchy and highlights how offended he is that he has to lower himself to wrestle Cutler. It made for a pretty fun match. I would have rather Hook had to go through all of the Trustbusters first before getting Davari, though part of that was just beacuse I wanted to see Hook vs Slim J (who is the new 5th finger if Punk isn't coming back, by the way).

Willow Nightingale vs Seleziya Sparx

MD: In a lot of ways this was an inversion of the Shida match. Willow still wanted to give some shine to the local, even if she was working heel, but she made her work for it and chip away, not going down easily, leaning hard into her size. It's hard for a babyface with a size advantage to know just how much to give while still showing the right amount of vulnerability, especially given the hierarchical difference here, but I think she nailed it. Willow has great emotive reactions in her selling, able to switch between ebullience, exhaustion, and aggression. All of Sparx' stuff looked pretty good, even some of the overwrought things like how she vaulted over the turnbuckle to hit a running kick. That's the sort of thing that is maybe a bit much but you can't fault it if the kick looks good. Jody Threat got a lot of attention last week, but Sparx should get some as well.

QT Marshall vs Dante Martin

MD: A year ago, when I first encountered him, I thought QT should wrestle more like a manager. He's capable of a lot of things (including missing a 450) but just because he can, doesn't necessarily mean he should. That said, for a lot of this period, AEW's needed credible mid-card heels to eat losses. Having the Trustbusters now help a little bit, but that's really been the Factory and the Wingmen, and Lethal, and as such, it does make sense for QT to stretch his wings a bit more. He's good at it and especially good at engaging with his opponent and the audience. They were all over him, despite having sat through all of the previous matches and even if no one necessarily bought a ticket for him, they all had a seemingly great time getting on his case and it'll be, consciously or subconsciously, part of their enduring good feeling about the night in the months and years to come.
 
Dante, in the meantime, probably through no choice of his own as he'd rather be teaming with his brother, has had a lot of ring time to improve. I thought he was already pretty far along in the singles match with Black last October, but his expressiveness and interactions with the crowd have developed since then. He's a great seller on top of his ability to seemingly freeze time as he flips around the ring and soars through the air. He's a case where the sum is greater than any specific part, as his flipping rana into the ring here would be the most spectacular thing in almost any other match in the world but felt almost subdued alongside his huge dive to the outside and stuttering splash to avoid the cutter. The finishing stretch worked to protect QT in loss but still felt like an accomplishment for Dante. Definitely the sort of match that Dusty would have been proud to call the Moo Match of the Week on WCW Prime in 1995 even if maybe it wouldn't make a comp tape for the year.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/23 - 5/29 (Part 2)

Double or Nothing 5/29

Darby Allin vs. Kyle O'Reilly

MD: I had to run this one back a second time to get a better feel for it. First time through, it felt sort of disjointed, with Darby getting opened up immediately and that botched first dive not helping things, plus the finishing stretch coming off as a deflation instead of impactful (more on that in a bit). Second time through worked better. The skeleton key here, which Ross missed completely and Excalibur came to too late, was that this wasn't just a match for the sake of a match. The whole point was Darby going for revenge while it was just business for O'Reilly. O'Reilly had lured him out and he was prepared to capitalize on not just mistakes but on basic emotion. O'Reilly was ready right from the get go, countering the initial single leg and opening Darby up. Darby was able to hit his counter-based offense (like the flipping stunner) but his dives and drops were themselves countered. Then, towards the end, O'Reilly used Darby's chain necklace against him to set up the choke, the kicks, and the knee drop off the top. I fully admit I haven't seen a ton of O'Reilly's AEW run so if they've built up the PKs as a deadly finish for the crowd, I missed it. They didn't look all that great and the kneedrop was to the side and not the skull, and it's Darby whose whole deal is resilience so I'm not sure I bought the finish. Overall, though, the underlying story worked for me, even if the announcers could have told their side of it better, with the choppiness chalked up to Darby being out for revenge.

Anarchy in the Arena: Danielson/Kingston/Moxley/Ortiz/Santana vs. Jericho Appreciation Society (Jericho/Menard/Parker/Hager/Garcia)

MD: Sort of hard to write about this. Obviously the finish absolutely worked. Danielson had Jericho beat. Kingston marched back to the ring covered in blood, murder in his eyes. He was ready to set not just Jericho on fire but Danielson as well. Danielson ends up the one who pays the most for it setting up whatever's to come next. What might have been most impressive here was the production, from the looping music (with the fans popping big once they realized it was looped) and Jericho shutting it down to the fact that they were able to capture so much of the action overall while never making us feel like we were truly missing out. We were missing out, absolutely. We missed transitions. We'd come in and one guy would be winning the fight, cut to something else, and come back to have the situations reversed. It didn't really matter though because it all felt like a welcome part of the chaos. We didn't really see how people got opened up. We didn't need to. The blood on their faces and their chests were enough. We have no idea what happened in the freight elevator with Kingston and Garcia. That's fine. We saw the aftermath. I did feel Regal's absence here but I'm not sure how you would have best utilized him in the match. Overall, Jericho actually carried the emotional brunt of this, first with the brawling with Moxley, which was entertaining and had history behind it, and then by being front and center for everything that happened at the end, but everyone had their moments and Parker and Menard bleeding, stooging, and clowning really deserve recognition too. One of my lowkey favorite moments was Garcia hitting a shining wizard in the middle of the concessions area on Kingston obviously as tribute to his new mentor. He should start using that to set up the 1990s style Liontamer instead of the lean-back Sharpshooter. Anyhow, the match lived up to its name, but that almost goes without saying.

CM Punk vs.  Adam Page

MD: I am relatively new to Adam Page. I hadn't seen any AEW until Punk and Danielson showed up and it's not like the blog has gone out of its way to cover 2010s NJPW. In fact, given the prevalence of that style in the overall community, one could argue that we went out of our way not to cover it. I like the interviews I hear from Page. I appreciate his social media presence. I admire that the guy has persevered through his issues and has been open with them. I think there are certain things he does very well in the ring. He emotes well. His stuff hits hard and clean. He brings a lot of energy and aggression and dynamism. We all liked the Archer match from earlier this year. In general, though, his matches kind of drive me nuts. He goes straight from punching and chopping to the fallaway slam/kip up/springboard clothesline spot, usually followed by a dive, and he never looks back after that. I don't know if it's taken from an all-bombs NJPW style I'm not familiar or just Brock-ism, and I get that I'm an outlier on both fronts, but the lack of mid-level offense that lets a match build before escalation really gets to me. There absolutely isn't one way to do things and there shouldn't be, but his matches somehow both seem to miss a chunk of something integral while still being overflowing with stuff. 

Meanwhile, CM Punk has been all over the promotion, and he's brought with him this sort of Neo-Bret-ism: slowing things down, fighting hard over the value and payoff of single spot, bringing the bodyslam back into wrestling, heavy focus on limb selling that reoccurs throughout a match and drives narratives, interesting match layouts that work around the commercial breaks. Danielson, on the other hand, has brought a sort of hard-nosed, forward pressing aggression that interfaces with whoever he's in the ring with. It meant that Page's matches with him ended up less of a clash of styles but instead a merging of them. 

In the ring, this match embodied the underlying stories of the program far better than the lead-up or promos or announcers had been able to present them. It felt like a battle between at least what I imagine the AEW of 2019 and 2020 to be and what the AEW of 2022, with a broader roster and more diverse inspirations, seems to be. Page had overcome his demons, overcome the challenges that plagued him in 2019 and 2020 and finally conquered the AEW that he helped create. In the meantime, however, he had taken months off for the birth of his child and the AEW he returned had grown and changed, in ways that were not at all aligned with his norms and values. Despite that, he had overcome Danielson, only to see that CM Punk was in the center of every promotional image, only to watch Punk lay down those bodyslams and start to pull things back to a world that he felt that the Elite had transcended, building back up old idols that they had successfully torn down, just as the successful NJPW of the 2010s didn't resemble the NJPW of the 80s or 90s and as the Young Bucks continuously have immense success tearing down the norms of traditional tag team wrestling. He finally won, finally reached the top of the mountain, only to realize that it wasn't everything he had hoped and dreamed for. He faced down the challenge of Danielson, a physical challenge, one based on hard work and toughness, only to realize that there was a more invasive, more perfidious challenge before him and his kingdom, in the preachings of Punk. And Punk, who was working with all of the younger talent, who was putting the time and effort in, who was trying to be a decent human being no matter how much of a strain it was when he's just naturally a grumpy bastard, didn't see why Page was so upset over a little thing like his heresy. But a king has to defend his kingdom, from ideas most of all, and Punk, more secure in his own skin after all he'd been through, realized he had the higher moral ground for once. And he acted upon it.

So the match, a match still between two crowd-favorites, between two babyfaces, became less about who would win and more about who was right? In the end, that mattered far more to Page than to Punk. Page had his doubts. Punk had arrogant assurance. Punk wanted to win more, but he had his ego and he believed in his values, and he was going to return Page's affronts within the match with ones of his own. As the match went on, it got both of them in trouble. It took both of their eyes off the ball and the fans, otherwise equal, united in expressing their frustration at either when that occurred. You rarely see that in a match where the fans were not booing the wrestlers, but instead passing judgment upon their actions. You'd see it more in older Japanese matches when someone took a liberty. Here it was when they stopped and taunted, when they refused to follow up but basked in the moment instead, when they tried to prove something instead of trying to win. Maybe, just maybe, Page could beat Punk in a wrestling match all things equal. There's no way in the world that Page could win a pissy bitching content with Punk, though. No one could. That's what he chose to fight, and in the end, after he tossed Punk over the table, after he watched Punk stumble about failing to hit Buckshots, after he hit a GTS of his own, he stood there in the center of the ring, belt in hand, living a Wrestlemania 8 Bret vs Piper moment, and completely lost and adrift. How had he gotten there? Who was he anymore? What had he fought so hard for? It certainly wasn't this. He tried to change course, tried to get back onto the path, but it was too late. 

So, yeah, I liked it.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 4/11-4/17

AEW Dynamite 4/13

CM Punk vs. Penta Obscura

MD: Writing about 2022 Punk almost every week, what stands out to me the most is probably his connection to the crowd. There was a moment early on where he somehow managed a step up armdrag off the ropes. It seems like the sort of thing he only did because he was wrestling a "lucha guy" but hey, Penta based for him and it worked even if it wasn't the prettiest thing in the world. Point being, afterwards he had a big shit-eating grin on his face and made enough of a connection with the crowd that they cut the camera to this random guy giving him that big grin back and Fonzie-pointing to him like he was telling a friend of his "'ey, good one, pal!" It's no small thing.

It wasn't just that moment either. I was wondering how he was going to deal with the Penta taunt at the start and he played into the fact that the C and the M were his name and got the crowd chanting back and forth. When the taunt (and shove) came, they went right into a strike exchange, and if you're going to do a no-sell strike exchange, best to do it right at the start. Punk didn't exactly no sell though; instead he let Penta's chops turn his body so that he was wound up for his own shot back. Regardless, the thing, simple as it was, drew an AEW chant in the first two minutes of the match.

It's good they had the crowd too, as the match sort of went off the rails the longer it went. They were already moving sluggishly for what they were trying to do even before Punk fell off the ropes and started to sell the knee heavily (which could have been intentional or him covering, but it doesn't really matter). After that it became even more overwrought. There were a couple of nice teases of spots afterwards (like the pile drivers on the apron) and it looked like Penta even had a shot, which spoke well for the layout of the finishing stretch. But there was also Punk being a little too selective with the knee selling and maybe getting out of the arm snap a little too easily (twice) instead of protecting it well enough. They ultimately probably tried to do just a little too much when they should have been leaning more into who they were and not what they could do.

Eddie Kingston/Santana/Ortiz vs. Chris Jericho/Jake Hager/Daniel Garcia

MD: This was the first actual match in this chapter of the feud and they ended up giving it more than I expected them to, while also keeping it very conventional and conservative, though with some definite high spots at the end. The opening bit with Santana and Jericho was perfect, with Jericho mouthing off and getting punched in the face for it and then giving for Santana, ending with the double leg and everything breaking down. They used Hager as a brick wall to cut off Ortiz with the heat lasting through the break like usual. It was solid though: good hope spots, good cut offs, Kingston and Santana working the apron. They mostly kept Garcia out of it so that he could provide that last burst of energy and motion and speed to set up the hot tag and then take everyone's offense after Kingston came in. His double-underhook suplex out of the ropes looked great. It felt like there were some timing miscues on the end, more like three or four than just one, but overall this was disciplined and a good prelude to the street fights to come.

ER: Man this was really good. It's smack dab in the middle of a Dynamite that had several Meltzer 4 star plus matches, except this 4 star match actually had a good layout and didn't have several blown spots like those other classics that people definitely remembered a day later. I loved how this built, love how these guys spend 10 minutes. Everyone had something to do and knew exactly how they could add to the match. Santana looks bigger and more aggressive, Jericho played weak to Santana but tough to Ortiz, Kingston is frothing on the apron and targeting Garcia, Garcia plays a great punk, Ortiz is a great FIP, Hager is the muscle. They all blend it so well. I loved Santana battering Jericho, with Jericho even running from him! It made it that much better when Jericho was beating up Ortiz, throwing tighter punches and harder chops than he was throwing at Santana, his entire body posture changed. 

Kingston isn't a rabid dog on the apron, he's a dog being held just outside the gates of the dog park, waiting for every little burst where he's finally allowed to play. He doesn't just pounce on Garcia on the floor, he grapevines his leg while punching him, yanking him off the apron to get more; when Jericho is starting to pick apart Ortiz and posing for the cameras, King runs in and shoves him out of his shot. JAS are really good in their corner, especially Garcia. He had a truly great choke from the apron, hooking that arm and leaning back with his weight, and I love how they handled the hot tag: Garcia ran in and came down hard on Ortiz, in his first real attempt at a hot tag. Ortiz managed to make the tag anyway and it left him wide open for King and Santana to tee off on him. Santana's three amigos and big splash were strong, and it all kept building to a bigger and crazier stretch: Kingston hits a heavy tope suicide, Santana flies out with a plancha, Ortiz takes out 2.0 with a tope con giro, loved all of it. I'm not sure I noticed any of the miscommunications that Matt saw. I thought all of this was tight. Then again, on a show with another classic 4.5 star Luchasaurus match, anything would seem tight. 

AEW Rampage 4/15

Blackpool Combat Club vs. Gunn Club

MD: If the BCC is going to stay a three-man unit for a while, this was our first look at what their matches might look like. Obviously, you came into this looking for a change in Yuta, for him to be wrestling somewhat different, for some new fire and viciousness within him, and I think they got that more right than wrong. There were hints of finger manipulation early and that, I think, is something he should really be leaning into. Steve Grey is one of his favorite wrestlers, but he needs to be looking to Breaks and Rudge and instead of the world's greatest blue-eye. That's not his path right now. The crowd was very behind him though, and they built to a big moment in the end where he stood up to Billy Gunn. Gunn's a great visual element in small doses and was so here. Maybe Yuta doesn't have to be killing people left and right if the crowd gets behind him primarily for his resilience, sort of like an Ogawa teaming with a Misawa. I still think he can be more though, so long as the work continues.

Danielson, who worked the middle and took the heat, had a great little bit where he forearmed the side of the head while holding Colton (I think) in the Romero Special, but the best stuff was when he faced off against Billy. I like how they kept Mox out of it for the most part, mainly having him working the apron and trying to get in. It meant when he did come in, it was all this built up potential energy waiting to be unleashed. I know it's ridiculous and over the top but there's no way Austin Gunn is going to stand out in this roster otherwise, so he should keep doing what he's doing. It gets a reaction, it's memorable. It works. I think it's important that the BCC continues to wrestle both faces and heels but this was a nice first showing for them as a unit.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 1/3-1/9

AEW Dynamite 1/5

Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page

PAS: Hell of a way to start the year in wrestling. A classic, bloody hard fought world title war.

One thing that is challenging and unique about pro-wrestling is that you can’t just tell the story alone, you have to tell the day after story as well. Page climbed the mountain, but how does he live his day by day. What is the second date like for Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves when there is no exploding bus? Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks kiss on the Empire State Building, but how do they combine their finances and decide who moves where?

Narratively Page’s story was over with his title win, and while it was playing out (and while Page was out on paternity leave) two of the biggest stars in 21st century pro-wrestling CM Punk and Bryan Danielson joined AEW, and the focus of the promotion shifted. The feud between Danielson and Page was focused on Danielson running through the Dark Order and taunting Page, Page felt like someone reacting to Danielson, rather then the protagonist of his own story. It felt like the promotion was at a crossroads, they could either shit the title to Dragon who had multiple clear directions to go as champion, or try to make Page into not just a man fighting to climb a mountain, but a guy standing on top.

AEW kicked the booking decision can down the road a bit by having the first match between the two go to a time limit draw, and they came into this match with a trio of judges at ringside in case this match went the distance as well (leaving everyone to expect a Terry Funk from someone, smart for AEW to let it lie). One of the good things about AEW’s booking so far is that they have usually gone with the narratively satisfying finish rather then trying to do a swerve for swerves sake, here however there was no obvious direction this match would go, there were sensible arguments for either guy to win, so there was real drama in every near fall.

Danielson controlled the pace early, countering a Page tope by bealing him into guardrail damaging his arm, and drop toe holding him into the ring steps opening up a cut. Danielson then worked both the damaged shoulder and the bloody head, surely putting Page behind on those hypothetical scorecards. Page however was able to block a Danielson attempt to drive his head into the ringpost, which was something Danielson successfully did in their first match (and legendarily did to Nigel McGuinnes 15 years ago during their ROH feud), Page was drive Danielson into the post insted badly open him up with the same move. AEW has distinguished themselves from WWE by bringing back the red to mainstream pro-wrestling, recently however they have been hitting the ketchup bottle heavily, the previous week they had a very gory women’s tag match, it might make sense for them to leave it dry for a bit.

From that moment the sides were leveled with both men badly lacerated, Danielson especially going the extra mile, his face and hair soaked. We had a compact and impressive sprint to the finish with multiple callbacks to the previous match between the two and to wrestling history, including a bloody Danielson failing to skin the cat, a neat way to show how much danger he was in, and Page getting a 2.99999 kickout on Danielson’s running knee, the move he used to win the WWE title from John Cena. The buckshot lariat which Page used to win was maybe the nastiest of his career, and a great way to end this rivalry. It will be interesting to see where AEW goes after this with both guys, there aren’t clear directions for either, but the match got me much more interested in a Page title run then I was before, which is something great matches can really achieve.

MD: I thought Danielson was, once again, excellent here. This had a few extra story beats, most specifically the judges; he worked well towards them and towards potentially winning on points early but still did things like look at Lynn after the "Gotch-style" cradle pile driver late. Talk about maximizing narrative opportunities. Danielson has definitely reached that point of combining physical intensity with trying to squeeze out every bit of oft-literal blood from the storytelling stone. In a lot of ways Page held his own. I thought his reactions were good, his selling was good. Where he struggles, and this is about the style he came up in and lords over now as much as anything else, is mid-level offense. Fall away slams, German Suplexes, and death valley drivers especially are pretty big bombs to be used as hope spots here. A slam, a belly to back, a samoan drop all would have served him better in the places in the match he used them. That's not entirely his fault. The actual transition/comeback was all about Danielson getting absolutely opened up and once that happened, every second had him bleed out more and more energy towards an eventual defeat. The other story beat towards the end was them paying off all of the different finishers he used to defeat the Dark Order (and others before that) with Page surviving them all only to win off of one buckshot. It was as solid a blowoff to the last couple of months as I could imagine, even if I ultimately enjoyed it and the pacing less than the draw.

ER: Jim Ross's "Who's ready for some Cowboy Shiznit?" is truly one of the worst ways anyone has ever kicked off what would turn out to be one of the best matches. Also, this is literally the most I've ever seen Phil write about one match on Segunda Caida, so guarantee this review is a special sneak preview of Way of the Blade 2. It feels almost pointless for me to talk about a Danielson match and say "this is one of the greatest Danielson performances we've seen". He's the kind of guy you say that about and then run the numbers in your head and know that he has a hundred performances you can say that about, but it also doesn't make the statement any less true. It feels ridiculous to make statements about a guy for 20 years, but he just keeps having matches like these that make it undeniable. This was also probably the most I've ever enjoyed Hangman Page. This could have easily been a total Danielson show, and while Danielson gave a huge performance, I don't think Page wasn't overshadowed as champion at all. I liked the immediate story of Page trying to put the match away one minute in. I would have loved to see the reactions live and online if Danielson hadn't rolled to the floor away from that Buckshot lariat, losing without getting any offense. 

But it quickly goes into Page really getting punished, when he gets matador'd into the guardrail on a big tope. Page had some great crashes after that missed dive, getting thrown painfully into the railing, into the ringpost, and getting busted open on the ring steps. Page throwing his body into out of the ring bumps like Matthew Justice is a great version of Page. But his offense was also really strong once he started making his way back into the match with an awesome vertical (yet safe) Death Valley Driver, and a harder corner lariat than I'm used to seeing from him. What I wasn't expecting was Danielson getting even bloodier than Page over halfway into the match, after Page pulls him hard by the arms several times into the ringpost like it was 2006 ROH, when Champions tried to see if their heads were harder than ring posts. I thought this was going to be a savage Danielson bloodying but ultimately losing to the champ, not the champ rising up and making his foe lose even more blood. Once both men were fully masked there were some incredible bits of character. Page getting lightheaded and dropping to his butt with a Kawada sell after doing Danielson's jumping jacks taunt back to him was fantastic, and a bloody Danielson collapsing just before he would have gotten leveled by the buckshot lariat was the kind of wrestling idea that would have secured Danielson the #1 spot on both of the 2001 DVDVR 500s. Danielson's busaiku knee decapitated Page like that that log sliding through the trucker's cab in Red Asphalt, and he gets destroyed by a backdrop driver and buckshot lariat. Nothing like starting the year off with a match that we'll still be talking about in a year.

AEW Rampage 1/7 (Taped 1/5)

Eddie Kingston/Santana/Ortiz vs. 2.0 (Jeff Parker/Matt Lee)/Danny Garcia

PAS: You put some New Yoricans in a street fight and I am going to be into it. This had a JAPW arena brawl vibe to it, lots of moving pieces, big shots and great little moments of character work. Eddie Kingston is the best wrestler in the world, and is the highlight of every match he is in. I loved the ground and pound on the floor, with Kingston trying to clear Garcia's guard, and all of the leg selling was killer. King hopping across the ring to hit the Exploder ruled and was a heck of babyface hot tag spot. 2.0 are just great filler guys, can pretty much play any role up and down the card and make it work. Garcia is obviously headed for bigger things and I am excited for them to revisit the Kingston feud down the road, I could easily see it as a main event match for a big title.  

MD: I don't want to be mean about this, because the effort and layout were both very good for the TayJay vs Ford/Bunny match, but a brawl like this exposes what happened with them as a lot of bells and whistles. Again, not anything necessarily wrong about that, but this is striking, as it didn't need any of that and it was still gripping. I'm generally the low SC vote on Santana/Ortiz, but here their double teams (which usually feel more like ends unto themselves than means to achieve a greater purpose) worked as a tool for them to assert dominance whenever the action actually did make it back into the ring. Kingston's selling and overall sense of defiance was spot on as always as was Garcia's dickish targeting of the leg on the outside. 2.0 got to show some extra versatility here proving that they could take a lot of stuff and fill the space properly in a garbage brawl. From a structural standpoint, it felt a bit off to me how after Garcia/2.0 eliminated Kingston and therefore had a theoretical numerical advantage for the stretch, they still lost. Maybe you could play it up that they paid some sort of greater cost by being so focused on Kingston, but it raised a flag. I probably would have liked this more if it ended after the bell shot.

ER: I have been loving this feud, and this was the best match of the feud so far. It really did capture that classic 2000s indy brawl feel, the kind of match where you can have 6 favorite guys. Jeff Parker was a huge standout for me. I was an Ever-Rise fan, and like that he's one of the few guys left who throws a strong fistdrop, but here he looked like a heel indy legend. He's out there in perfect street fight gear, sporting a mustache and haircut that makes him look like Eric Roberts in Star 69, which is a fucking great way for a wrestler to look. Santana and Ortiz had some fire double teams in this, some great timing on a cutter where Santana slid into the ring to toss Ortiz back into Parker, and no matter what the Inner Circle did Parker had the timing and ring placement down precise. Parker also threw the best punches in a match that has several good-to-great punchers and really fueled the big babyface comeback. Matt Lee is a great unhinged idiot and also kept gluing himself into things, working in and out with everyone and running into constant chaos on the floor. The Kingston/Garcia was some awesome story advancement, with Garcia taking advantage of a Kingston slip on the floor and immediately going after his knee like an asshole. Kingston was his perfect self, egging on his own beating, never able to help himself from making his beating worse. They worked a hot finishing stretch into a brawl that was more about stiffness and strikes (like an old JAPW or IWA-MS brawl) than about modern AEW garbage stunt brawling. There were some big spots, but they managed to convey a ton of violence without using blood, and it takes a great brawl to stand out like this without the AEW crimson. 

AEW Battle of the Belts 1/8

Dustin Rhodes vs. Sammy Guevara

MD: Combination of good smart work from Dustin plus a few big set pieces that made full use of Sammy's athleticism. It stands out so much watching Dustin as basically the only guy (save a few exceptions) in the roster that draws claps up or does the ten count punch in the corner. Then he'll turn around and do the Canadian Destroyer through the table. That said, he probably was the wrong opponent for Sammy. Either you need a heel that'll base for him and try to tear him apart or a younger face who can really go to highlight Sammy's offense. Dustin started and ended with a handshake and while he played savvy vet at times, he was just too over as a face to make the most of things. I hadn't seen their previous matches so I'm not sure how those were worked, but this never quite gelled the way I would have liked. I did think the finish, where Dustin tried to repeat Cody's success, was very good. All that said, what people will probably remember in the end are Sammy's bump for the first CrossRhodes, the big dive, and the Destroyer through the table.

PAS: We really haven't seen Dustin work a highflyer before. It's too bad we never had a Dustin WCW run in 1997 or so, I imagine he would have had some awesome Worldwide matches against Juvi or Billy Kidman. I liked the early sections where he tried to match speed with Sammy only to get winded, and I liked him working the leg to slow him down. Lots of big spots here, including the Sammy TAKA style double jump dive and the Canadian destroyer through the table, which is something you expect to be sloppily done by an indy scrub in a deathmatch, not perfectly executed by Dustin Rhodes of all people. Fun stuff, and every Dustin match we get these days is a mitzvah. 

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