AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/15 - 6/21

ROH Global Wars Cincinnati 6/18/26 / AEW Collision 6/20/26

Athena vs Syuri / Athena vs Maya World

MD: So, why do we watch?

I've been watching Athena as ROH champion since 2022. In that time, I've seen her defeat Yamashita, Nightingale, Sakura, Sakazaki, Hogan, Starkz, Martinez, Rose, Abadon, Catalina, Persephone, Windsor, and on and on and on, some multiple times. Plus, you might say the heart of the title run, the connective tissue, has been the Proving Ground matches. There have been so many of those. I've seen a lot of Athena. Anyone following ROH has.

So what's the appeal now so deep into the title reign? What made these two matches stand out against everything else last week? 

With some wrestlers, familiarity breeds contempt. You start predicting moves before they happen and while there's a sort of comfort to that, comfort only takes you so far. Athena is the definition of unpredictability. She is volatile, tempestuous. It's at the core of her character and generates the energy that draws you into her matches. But just as important, with Athena, the familiarity you develop gives you a launching point. 

For some wrestlers, it's all about spots and counters. The action drives character. The cart leads the horse. It's all about getting to the big idea with little care on how the match actually gets there. With Athena, character drives everything. Because the character is so good, so dynamic, so engaging, "everything" becomes full of organic, interesting destination points, maybe even more so than those matches that are contrived to get to certain spots. Who she is drives what she does. And she will react differently to every opponent and every situation. 

Knowing her past (encounters and otherwise) with Syuri and Maya made so much difference here. Despite her close connection to Maya as mentor and lack of such with Syuri, there were similarities. Both opponents had gotten the better of her in one way or another, and the list of those who had done so over the last few years is very small indeed. Syuri had successfully defended her IWGP Women's Title against Athena earlier this year. Maya is the one blemish on Athena's ROH singles record, surviving a Proving Ground match. She subsequently took he to the limit in the title match she earned and the Survival of the Fittest that followed. Maya may be billed as the It Girl, but there remains a sense of Final Girl to her as well, the one who might be fated to end the horror that is Athena. It's not quite a prophecy, not quite an inevitability, but it's as clear a possibility as any other right now. And Athena knows it. 

Of course, with Maya there were other factors at play. Her run through the Owen Hart Tournament, a title shot at All In on the line, is a bittersweet Cinderella story. Her brother passed away recently. Despite that, perhaps because of it, she threw herself into her work, becoming a last second substitution for Sareee and defeating Skye Blue to propel her to the semi-finals and to another match-up with Athena. The character of Athena has professed tough love when it comes to her minions. While there always seems to be a self-serving undercurrent to that, it's hard to deny the results, and occasionally, very occasionally, hints of humanity poke out from the monster she's become, though usually only to get swept away by the rage and fury of the fallen goddess. Meanwhile, Athena herself has lost in the semi-finals of the Owen tournament twice. As she carries ROH on her shoulders, she's been unable to reach the highest peaks in AEW. 

And of course, and this would be true if she was facing Shafir or Statlander in main events or Forza or Nixi XS in proving ground matches, Athena is excellent at not just finding the kernels of truth between herself and opponent but in crafting a dynamic character which will create such opportunities in the first place.

It's easy to compare and contrast how these matches played out and see that aspect plain as day. Look at the first few minutes of both. With Syuri, she extended her (yes, left) hand, Syuri took it graciously, Code of Honor met with some respect. Then they went at it, a feeling out process. Athena more than held her own, but Syuri, having the superior confidence and momentum since she won the last match, pressed her advantage. Athena didn't get dominated but she was absolutely on her back foot, forced to be reactive in the face of Syuri's technique, agility, and aggression. It was a bit of a role reversal compared to how she would normally bully around her opponents. It's actually somewhat rare that someone can get a conventional shine on her. This wasn't quite that, but it was far closer to it than usual, and it was fascinating because of that.

With Maya, things were completely different, and I don't just mean the fact it wasn't an ROH match so there was no Code of Honor (she was quick to shove Maya down and taunt her with her own M/W hand signals instead). This had more of an exhibition or celebratory feel. A playful feel. It reminded me a little of the Willow ROH match where they hit finishers of previous ROH champs. That had thrown me at the time but this didn't. Here, they went counter for counter, tit for tat, cartwheeling through things, rolling around the ring with cradles. There was a showy element to it. I'm not saying that the character of Athena was taking it easy on Maya, but I do think she was perhaps giving her some rope, was letting her shine. You might call it kindness, knowing this was Maya's moment in the sun after all that she'd been through, but knowing Athena, it was probably more like false hope. She was playing with her food, building confidence so that she could snatch it away. After the fact, she might even claim it was magnanimous, but it would have been her lying to herself, the world, the heavens. She held a grudge against Maya for taking her to the limit three times in the last few months, once literally in the Proving Ground. And perhaps even more than that, she now realizes that there is a chance that she is Cronus, not a god but a Titan, with Maya as the Zeus set to someday overtake her.

Of course, Athena is equal parts wrathful and resourceful and she was able to take over on both opponents. With Syuri, it was on the apron, absorbing repeated knee shots to hit a brutal twisting power slam upon it. With Maya, the moment that she Maya stepped just a bit too far, when her confidence was growing just a bit too much and she was maybe about to get one over on Athena, her mentor squashed her like a bug with her Something Evil variation on the floor. No Koji Clutch follow up needed here. It was all about contorting her, crushing her, and opening the door for the damage to follow. 

And the damage she did upon both opponents looked quite similar. With Syuri, it was a bit more focused. With Maya, it was somewhat more meandering, more playing to the crowd, more rubbing it in Maya's face, but it was equally brutal for both. Yet both would come back and get a measure of revenge. Here, however, is where the matches once again deviated. One of the joys of ROH matches and about Athena's run as a whole, is that there's more room to breathe, less need for commercial breaks to help drive the match (Maya came back right when they were returning from break, for instance). Instead of going down into the finishing stretch, the ROH title match was allowed to have an extra level of complexity. Syuri took Athena off the top rope with a hold and started to dismantle her arm. They were already past the conventional heat segment at this point, but it added an extra wrinkle which would make the remainder of the match more interesting. 

Athena would have to both escape submissions and fight back with one arm. Meanwhile, Syuri would shift her focus to bigger bombs in an attempt to put Athena way. As they fought to the finish, they traded those bombs, including Athena pulling out moves she only does rarely, like a Tiger Suplex. Syuri pushed her advantage (both the momentum with which she started the match with and that gained from the damaged arm) and Athena came off as something of a vulnerable champ who could lose at any moment, deepening the drama. Despite that, she was able to hit one last clutch reversal, slipping through the legs for a pumphandle tombstone, setting up the O-Face and her getting her win back and retaining the title. 

With Maya, things were very different. Athena survived Maya's comeback through familiarity, having an answer for everything Maya tried. Yet, Maya kept coming, her refusal to back down shifting Athena into the sort of reactive state she had been in against Syuri. That ended in disaster for Maya, however, as both women found themselves on the floor, and then up on the guardrail, with Athena getting the best of the moment and driving Maya down onto it with a Rock Bottom.

The match opened up emotionally from there. As it looked like Maya wouldn't beat the count (a 10 count here as opposed to the 20 count in ROH), Athena reached out to pull her in. It seemed at first like another magnanimous gesture, Athena giving her protege (though not minion) a chance to win or lose in the center of the ring, to not squander her opportunity on a fluke. She immediately began to berate her over her brother's memory, however.

Why do we watch Athena? Because she's dynamic and complex. Because she is the roiling ocean, an active volcano, because she is a villain that may not be sympathetic, may not be relatable, but that is all the more fascinating because of her strengths and her faults.

At first it seemed like she was offering a hand to Maya to lift her up. Then, as she berated her and Maya exploded upon her, it seemed like she was trying to awaken something within Maya, to try to make her fight all the more, to make her the best she could be. Here's where that familiarity comes into play though. That's not what she was doing at all. She was luring her in. It wasn't that she wanted Maya to be able to win or lose in the ring. It's that she wanted to put her down once and for all, definitively. It's not that she wanted Maya to rise up and fight. It's that she wanted her off her game and frazzled. That's why she was able to catch her in the corner and take her down, setting her up for the O-Face. Maybe if the wind had blown a little different or the sun had shined through the trees Athena may have decided differently and found just a modicum of grace. But it hadn't and she hadn't, and now it was time to end Maya.

The O-Face is one of the most protected moves in wrestling. Barring a fluke roll out of the ring or a foot on the rope, it ends matches. That's important. People love surprise kickouts and artificially propped up exciting finishing stretches, but it's so much better to define something, to make it important, to reinforce its importance, and then, when it really, really matters, when you want to make someone, when you want to highlight her journey and put her over the top, then and only then, to have someone kick out. Only then. Only when it matters the most. You build up capital, build it and build it and build it, and then you pay it off. That's the most powerful tool in pro wrestling.

In some ways, that's a symbol for Athena in general. Some people say she takes up too much of the air in her matches, that she overwhelms and eats up opponents, but she always reacts when things don't go her way. She sells it emotionally, because she expects to win, expects to dominate, and so often, lives up to her own expectations, thus creating that expectation with the fans as well. In that regard, she reminds me of Stan Hansen. By enforcing so strict a baseline, it means any deviation from it carries great rewards for an opponent who can step up and force it. 

Athena hit the O-Face clean. She pinned Maya cockily. Maya kicked out. Athena sold it like the shock, the transgression, the offense, the violation to the order of the universe that it was. She had invoked Maya's brother. She had awoken something inside of her. She had thought it would be something Maya couldn't handle, a means to the end that was the O-Face, but it was instead something that Athena couldn't handle, something stronger than her most dangerous weapon, something powered by love and not hate and therefore, something that Athena could no longer tap into or understand, no matter what she might claim. 

Maya got a fluke small package, but Athena pushed her way out. Then, much like Stan Hansen before her, inevitability, hierarchy, maybe even fate upon her side, Athena reared back to hit a lariat of her own. Maya ducked it, tied Athena up, pressed all of her weight down upon her, and heard the ref count three. 

Post-match, Athena embraced Maya. There's no way to know if that would have been the end of it, if she wouldn't have ambushed her if Mercedes hadn't come down. That's part of what makes Athena so interesting after all, the wild unpredictability. Even if she had spared her, it wouldn't have been heroism but instead another streak of false magnanimity from a fascinating villainess. 

So why do we watch? 

The consistency, the variance, the commitment, the familiarity, the unpredictability, the truth and the contradictions. 

How could we not? Why would we ever look away? 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/11 - 5/17 Part 3

AEW Supercard of Honor 5/15/26

Survival of the Fittest: Athena vs Billie Starkz vs Maya World vs Yuka Sakazaki vs Trish Adora vs Zayda Steel

Chapter 1: Zayda Steel

When opportunity knocks, Zayda Steel answers the door. She bet on herself, left the possibility of artificial glitz and glamour to rekindle her love for Pro Wrestling and start back at the bottom. Hard work is rewarded and she found herself under Christopher Daniels' tutelage. She lost a proving ground match to Athena back in April but found herself with a second chance, defeating Hyan to take the injured Persephone's spot in Survival of the Fittest. 

The match itself began with Athena and Billie at odds, Billie not wanting to tow the line. After a bit of shoving, Athena dragged Billie out to the floor by her hair to try to get her back on the right page, her page. Zayda saw opportunity knocking once again and she, Maya, and Trish surrounded the two of them. Athena tossed Billie into Zayda and ducked Maya and Trish's blows. 

Later on, opportunity would present itself again. Athena had survived the onslaught of Maya, Yuka, and Trish and was standing dominant in the ring. Zayda, throwing caution to the wind, slipped in with a chair and tossed it right at the champion's face. With some effort she lodged it in the corner. Maybe it took her just a bit too long, as Athena was able to reverse the subsequent corner whip. Zayda crashed hard and Athena pinned her, feet on the ropes. There would be other opportunities, other days, and Zayda would be there, ready and waiting.

Chapter 2 - Trish Adora

Trish Adora made her own opportunities. After crashing into Maya when Athena ducked, she sat out, watching Billie and Yuka criss-cross and rope-run against Athena and Billie. She asserted herself when the moment was right, chip on her shoulder, power coursing through her, and took out Billie and Zayda with a double spear. 

After Zayda was eliminated, Athena tried to continue on with the chair on Yuka. Maya may have been the one to come in with a Kendo Stick to break it up, but it was Trish who snatched it from her and flexed and stretched with it, beating Maya first with the stick and then with a chair. 

While she was busy with Maya and Billie was fighting with Yuka, Athena set up a lego set of chairs on the floor. Satisfied with her construction and feeling far more animosity towards Maya than Trish, Athena suggested a fortuitous alliance, Athena and Trish leaning down hard on Maya. But Athena doesn't have allies, she has minions, and Trish Adora is no one's minion. Refusing to let Athena berate her on the apron, Trish fired off on the champion and chokeslammed her through her own chair tower. 

Billie, initially at a loss, became enraged and targeted Trish. She had set up a table and had been working to put Yuka through it, but now she turned her all of her attention to hefting Trish up onto the announce desk and putting her through the other table. Trish fought her off, smashing Billie with a Death Valley Driver onto an announce desk that did, much like Trish herself, simply did not break. 

Back in the ring, Trish went for the kill on Yuka, throwing the Lariat Tubman at her. Yuka ducked and it hit a stumbling, still recovering Athena with the lariat instead. Trish went to capitalize but Yuka caught her with the Merry-Go-Round and pinned her. Trish had been a force in the match. She had the champion beat and it was only due to an interloper that she didn't have her pinned and eliminated too. There's more on the bone there. Athena needs challengers, and Trish, like always, has a point to prove and the strength, skill, attitude, and wherewithal to back it up.

Chapter 3 - Yuka Sakazaki

Yuka drifted through the match, the smile on her face tempered by a grit of her teeth. When everyone surrounded Athena early, it was Yuka who picked her moment and came off the apron to actually get her. She fought evenly against both Athena and Billie as the match went on. After Billie failed to put Trish through the table, Yuka successfully managed to put Athena through it, not just insult to injury after getting chokeslammed into the chairs, but injury to injury as well. 

When Trish hit the Lariat Tubman on Athena, Yuka could have hung back and let Athena get eliminated from the match, ensuring a new champion, but that's not how Yuka operates. She meets the challenge before her. She is a creature of action and motion, of life itself. Athena had tossed a trash can into the ring and despite Athena pleading and begging Yuka not to do it, Yuka struck true. Yuka may be good natured, but she wasn't about to have the wool pulled over her eyes. Instead, she took trashcan in hand and maneuvered to the apron, hitting her magical girl splash with the can. Again, Athena was saved, this time by Billie.

Thus ambushed, her moment lost, Yuka quickly fell to Billie's Avalanche Starfall cradle facebuster. But as she went to the back, she knew that she had the champ all but beaten and that she could hold her head high.

Chapter 4 - Billie Starkz

Which brings us back again to Billie. Billie, Billie, Billie. Twice rebelled against Athena, twice defeated. Inaugural TV champion, lost the belt. Made it to the finals for the inaugural Pure champion, lost. 22 years old and woefully lost. A new college graduate, but forever a MIT Student. 

Her defiance here was feckless and quickly subsumed. Her fire? It came and went. She fought hard against Yuka, only to get swept under and choked in the ropes. She was infuriated by Trish's action and went right at her, only to be dropped onto the announce desk with a Death Valley Driver. She saved Athena with a chair, but those chair shots seemed to lack a certain amount of heart. 

After eliminating Yuka, it was now two-on-one against Maya. Athena was hurting so maybe Maya had a chance, but Billie was able to come out on top in their exchange with a Destroyer. That meant when Athena did make it back into the ring, two kendo sticks in hand, things looked very bad indeed for Maya. Athena tossed one to Billie, dark master to apprentice. But where Billie's heart is clouded, Maya's is pure, and she fought back, right to the point where she was jousting with Billie on the top, chairs draped upon the mat beneath them. Athena went to strike Maya. Maya moved. Billie got cracked and then crushed with a powerbomb off the top. 

Maybe there's a light off in the distance. Maybe there's a path towards it. But for Billie Starkz, it seems so very far off.

Chapter 5 - Maya World

This left Athena and Maya. While she is, in her own way, an apprentice to Athena, Maya's never been a minion. Instead, she's become the possible heir apparent that Billie no longer is, the Final Girl who might be able to not just survive the horror story that is Athena, but to be the one to actually end it. If Billie is looking for a light, Maya glows all on her own, a light to combat Athena's darkness.

But she wasn't going to be able to defeat it here, not in a match like this. Up until this point, the threat to Athena had been the numbers, the unpredictability. There could well be a final encounter between Athena and an ascendant Maya, but not on this night and not in this way. 

That's not to say she didn't account extremely well for herself. She did. She turned the tide very quickly. Athena had used every weapon imaginable (save maybe for the ladder that she and Billie had set up in the ring), leaving her just her own precious belt left. Maya ducked it and took over with a nasty DDT on the apron. She hit her Reinera slam but couldn't put Athena away. Then she went for the ankle lock. 

Athena can sometime be craven, can often be underhanded, but she was no quitter. Billie, holding a white towel, on the other hand, is prone to being overcome by emotion, and she had so much to feel here: the sting of defeat and disappointment, the further sting of her defiance once again deferred, her honest care and affection towards Athena, no matter how she treated her. Put all those together, and she had every reason to throw in the towel. Athena wouldn't let her though, not just stopping her but altogether dragging Billie into the ring.

That was the distraction Athena needed, and one giant O-Face from the top of the ladder later, Maya, her own brightness temporarily extinguished, was staring up at the lights, and Athena had survived another day.

Chapter 6 - Athena

Diamante rushed out to help Athena celebrate. They browbeat Billie, though not with any real malice or seriousness. As things stood, it was all well past the point of that. For the most part, Billie had come through. 

More than that, through hook and crook, Athena had come through. She had defended her kingdom, had stood strong in the face of maybe her greatest challenge. The numbers were against her, and yes, at times she hid behind Billie, but at others, she faced three people down at once, running from corner to corner to inflict damage and pounding her chest in victory after the fact. 

That led to her getting a chair thrown at her face by Zayda, of course, and in truth, she had terrible luck (hubris?) with the weapons in the match. Every time she tried to escalate, furiously kicking the set-up chair out of the corner to use it as a weapon (that organic, alive element of unpredictability that Athena brings to her matches that almost no one else in wrestling can match), setting up the chair tower, the table (well, that was Billie who set it up), bringing in the trash can, trying to use the belt... it all backfired on her. She survived, but only because Yuka saved her once and Billie the second time. 

Were she just a queen, she might fall to circumstance like this: a plot, a conspiracy, the odds being against her, but she's more than that. She's the forever champion, the fallen goddess. Someday she will fall, someday she must, and yes, her own hubris might be a large part of it, but it will have to be both epic, and this war was epic, and personal and intimate, in all the ways that this was not. 

As a match, it was smartly put together, mostly solved the multi-person problem of people just laying around (in part, by eliminating Zayda relatively early so that the numbers were off and Athena could either be convalescing or setting up contraptions to be used later), and was extremely character driven. 

As a story, it call came together fairly well, leaving much on the table in the best way. Yuka, Maya, and especially Trish all have a claim for the future. Billie's tension percolates all the more as she desperately grasps at light now even further beyond her grasp. 

As a defense, it is another giant notch upon the largest belt in wrestling, as Athena shakes the dust of her peers off and marches ever towards the greatest legacies still left before her. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/23 - 3/29 Part 2

ROH TV 3/26/26

Athena vs Maya World

MD: Throughout Athena's historic (and extremely lengthy) reign, there really have only been one or two logical conclusions for who might take the title from her. Early on it seemed like Willow Nightingale would make the most sense, and then over the span of a couple of Final Battles, it could have well been Billie Starkz. Willow has moved on in a way where it just wouldn't make sense anymore. With Billie, they didn't pull the trigger, and while they could heat things up for a third time, it would take a lot of work to get there. I'm just not seeing it. There have been a lot of other great one-off opponents but nothing that sparked any strong sense of inevitability.

The thing with a reign this impressive is that opportunity was bound to naturally come again in time. That's just the way of it. 

And now it has with Maya World. She checks a lot of boxes. She's young, brash, confident, Texan, inspired by Athena, even a protege, but not really a minion. 

She's the first person ever to take Athena to the limit in a Proving Ground match. For a layperson, that doesn't sound all that impressive maybe, but Athena's wrestled over thirty of them in around three years. For anyone who just drops in on the PPVs or complains without actually paying close attention, the sum of these make up one of the most substantial parts of her reign, where she comes in and absolutely demolishes game opponents, looking very much like the steamroller that she is. 

Look, if I had to distill just one truth about Athena's ROH reign, it's this:

The reign is a horror movie and Athena's the killer. 

There is always a Hitchcockian sense of menace underneath the surface. Athena might offer her left hand daintily for the code of honor, might let out a big "YAY" when things go right, might start things out with athletic wrestling exchanges, might show vulnerability as she gets overconfident or has a limb worked over, but at some point in every match (and so, so many post-matches), the switch flips, rage boils over, and she becomes a monster. 

While this was an excellent match, in watching it, I just couldn't figure out if Maya World was the Final Girl, that last survivor in a horror movie that turns from victim to hero as she confronts the killer, or if she was someone along the way blissfully unaware of the fate before her. 

Does her familiarity with Athena mean that she can counter Athena's best weapons, can even use them against her, that she knows all of her former mentor's tricks and has the confidence in herself to overcome them? Or does it mean that she's lulled herself into a sense of false security because she thinks she knows it all and that maybe, just maybe, even Athena of all people would go easy on her relative to others? Did she maybe think that Athena would go out of her way to beat her but that she wouldn't really hurt her, wouldn't become the monster that would tear her from limb to limb. Not Athena, not to her?

Regardless, Athena, having failed to cut the knees off the competition in a Proving Ground match for the first time, came in thrown and Maya came in ready. 

Maya refused the handshake (and the controlled contact that came with it), dodged Athena's strike to start, jammed an armdrag after hitting one of her own, and vaulted out of the way of a fevered charge into the corner. She followed this with an early flurry: an enzuigiri, the super-sharp Billy Catanzaro full nelson into a backbreaker, and then a fisherman's suplex, just like that. 

Maya forced Athena to escape to the outside, and even there, in Athena's element, she was able to match Athena blow for blow. Right until she couldn't. She had reversed a whip into the stairs, but instead of immediately following up, she set the stairs up for something else; it's one thing to be a little out of your element and another to dive deep under. Athena caught her with a cross-chop to the throat and reverse waterwheel dropped her face first into those stairs.

And thus, the monster started to stir, but only just. Despite the Proving Ground match and the start of this one, much like how Maya possibly couldn't fully comprehend the maliciousness of the person before her, Athena's own ego couldn't let her see Maya as quite that much of a threat. So she trash talked and preened and jawed with the ref, allowing Maya little openings but then cutting her off. Athena hit her tumbling punch in the corner and followed it up with a belly-to-back, giving hope and then squashing it gleefully.

But in playing with her food, she allowed Maya to get just a bit more than she had intended. Athena crushed her in the corner and as she rushed out to set up for another assault, Maya burst out behind her and snatched on surprise waistlock and almost got back into it just from that. Almost. Athena took a few lumps before cutting her off with a flying kick to stop a leap and then knocked her of the ring out with a baseball slide. Maya made it back in but only to end up in the Koji Clutch.

Maya survived the submission by making it to the ropes. She was surviving. She was coming back again and again. She had an answer for so much of Athena's signature offense. It was an affront, blasphemy, hubris even. Through this defiance alone, and despite Athena's advantage at this point of the match, cracks were starting to show.

Athena once again lost her focus. Instead of grinding down, she took the time to slap and berate Maya, and Maya, as she had all match, took every opportunity to fight back. They struck at each other evenly (though Athena's shots had more behind them, but that's true against almost anyone). Maya fought Athena out to the Apron and went for a pile driver. Athena jammed it and lawn darted Maya to the floor with a brutal suplex.

Athena made it in first and allowed herself to gloat as Maya struggled to rise up and beat the count. At this point, it felt like Athena was putting on a show, convincing herself with feigned glee that a countout would be just as satisfying as a pin or submission. The glee faded as Maya made it at the last second.

Back in the ring, they cycled into a strike exchange where Athena got the better. Maya was able to counter a second belly-to-back and move into roll ups. She came out of that on top, using a bridging Fujiwara escape on a double leg, only for Athena to get the better again with a curb stomp.

That's when things took another turn, one that would lead to everything boiling over. Maya avoided the O-Face by charging in and hit Athena's own shotgun dropkick/front tumble punch combo. It didn't look quite as good as Athena's, but it was insult as well as injury and set up an attempt at the ultimate insult as she went for her own O-Face.

Billie came out distract. Hyan came out to even the odds. Eventually, Athena took umbrage on this and slammed into Hyan with a tope. That just let Maya go for her Reinera Slam, but Athena turned it into a roll up and followed it up with a destroyer. Despite that, she was still unable to put Maya away. 

Instead, she started berating her once more. At first, this seemed like it was one step too far, was everything Maya needed to stop playing around, to make that fateful transformation into the Final Girl that could vanquish the monster. She chased after Athena once again, running up the ropes behind her to hit a twisting sunset flip bomb. She followed it up with a gutwrench facebuster not unlike Athena's own, and then went back up again for the O-Face.

It seemed however, that Maya's awakening, admirable as it might have been, only served to fully awaken the monster that was and is and that will forever more be Athena. As well as things had been going for this potential final girl, the final boss had a final form after all. Furious at Maya going for the O-Face not once but twice, she unloaded on her with uncontrolled stomps and strikes. She hefted her up and hit a Tiger Suplex (which is a very rare piece of offense for 2020s Athena; I can't think of another time I saw her use it this decade). She pulled her out of the ring to break her once and for all on the previously positioned stairs. 

Hyan intervened. Billie hit her from behind. They both spilled into the ring. Chaos ensued. Diamante arrived with the belt and Athena used it to clock Maya and hit her own O-Face to end it. An anticlimactic ending, perhaps, one that proved nothing except for that Athena was still champion and Maya was not.

Therefore, I was left wondering. Maya had an answer to so much of Athena's offense. She subverted and stole her share of it. She came close not once, but twice to hit the O-Face. It had taken everything but the kitchen sink to put her down. But then, had Hyan not intervened on the outside, would there even have been anything left of Maya to put away? 

Only at the very end did she really face the monster in its true form, and in that moment, she certainly appeared to come up lacking, arms laced behind her, dropped on her head. 

So is she the Final Girl after all? The one who might end the reign of terror? Or is she just another victim waiting to happen, one that's going to end up as just one more bloody example, maybe the bloodiest example of them all.

Time will tell, but what is clear is that for the first time in well over a year, there is a path that feels possible, a path that might make sense, a light at the end of a tunnel. But that light, like it's been so many times before, might just be Athena on her way to turn yet another great hope into roadkill.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/9 - 3/15 Part 1

ROH TV 3/13/36

Athena vs Maya World [Proving Ground]

MD: Studio wrestling stemming from recent events when Maya, with Hyan and Deonna, stood up to Athena/Billie/Diamante back during the collaborative Metroplex show. Maya being an Athena protégé has not necessarily been a key part of her presentation so far in AEW/ROH up until this point, but I'd argue that she and Hyan don't necessarily have a clear, defined presentation relative to some others.

Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they tagging? What brings them together past an opportunity taken when others did not? What do they want out of life? What are their similarities? What are their differences? Etc. So far, it hasn't been super clear.

This helped though.

In some ways, Maya feels like even more of a "minion" to Athena than even Billie, because Billie was romping up and down the indies for a couple of years before arriving to AEW and finding her away under Athena's thumb. From a story perspective, one might wonder then why Billie was on TV with her and Maya was watching from the sidelines and then, once she arrived, left to her own devices.

Maya seems pretty happy with her lot in life though and doesn't care to ask those questions. Athena, on the other hand, in wonderfully hypocritical fashion, takes offense at Maya opposing her, complains about Maya crossing a line that Athena herself never truly drew.

Which brings them to this, a chance to make an example out of Maya, to teach her a lesson as she'd taught Billie lessons before, at the end of a forearm. But to show that Maya was even more beneath her notice (even as she was obviously getting under her skin), this was instead a proving ground match.

And Athena meant to prove her point right from the get go. Left hand extended. Her usual dainty code of honor handshake. Right into the magic forearm. Athena stomped Maya in the corner and started in on the ref, the crowd, Maya, the world. She wanted it too badly, however, showing that vulnerability which makes her stand out as much as the intensity. It's a give and take with her and once Maya got just a bit of distance between them, she took, forcing Athena to run into a very clever rope-assisted spin kick.

Now it was Maya's turn to take advantage of Athena's mistake. She had caused it by getting under Athena's skin and now she pressed the issue and reaped the benefits. She hit a series of moves, including doing damage on the floor. The problem was, in the micro, time was against her. She could keep Athena on her toes, but it was too early in the match for her to keep Athena down.

Athena got up. She reversed a whip, caught a kick, snuck in a knee, and then jammed both knees right into Maya's face in the corner. She would then, of course, lean on Maya. Maya's hope spots were solid and believable and tended to come not because of any mistake Athena made (she had already made her mistake at the start of the match and wouldn't make it again), but because she had such familiarity with Athena's offense.

Eventually that let her dodge just enough moves to come back all the way and things went back and forth with bombs, blocks, and roll-ups down the stretch. Maya managed to dodge the O-Face and position around to hook in a Reinera slam just as the bell rang. We were meant to wonder if maybe she could have snuck a win there; all it takes is three and this was deep into the match. But we have seen Athena survive far more than that. No, instead, this was a moral victory, a draw in a Proving Ground match, something unheard of in all of Athena's forever reign, and an opportunity for more. Phantom pin or no, what we're actually left wondering is if Athena would learn from her mistake or if her fury would overwhelm her all the more in their next encounter.

ROH TV Special Friday Episode 3/13/26

RUSH vs BEEF

MD: Two wrestlers. All Caps. You know what you're getting. Look, I have been fairly hard on Dralistico in specific situations when he's up against a babyface and playing a heel, not even a de facto heel, an outright heel, and he tries to steal the clap up and the cheers, not in a jeering way like, let's say, Yuta does, but to really get the crowd behind him. 

And yes, to some degree, Rush does this too, he does. He eats guys up. He takes the air out of the room. But unlike Dralistico or just about anyone else, he's beyond the realm of such expectations. He draws the eye that much. He turns the head. He locks you in so that you can do nothing but hang on and go for the ride. He's Ultimate Warrior and he's Goldberg and he's Buzz Sawyer. There are so few wrestlers in 2026 that can carry that sort of energy. He is an attraction. 

He's not treated like an attraction. He's not used like one. But he is one. Sometimes, I get the sense because of how he's presented, the fans don't really have any idea what they're getting into until that bell rings and the power takes them. 

And it rang here. He kicked away the code of honor. The great thing about this is that Beef, himself, can be sort of an attraction, an everyman. Is he more Hillbilly Jim than Dusty Rhodes? I don't know. Ask me again in five years, but also don't downplay the connection a guy like Jim had with the crowd. Beef has it too. They went off the ropes to start, Beef crashing into Rush, Rush holding his ground. That's the thing about Rush. When push comes to shove (no pun intended), he does give, he does show ass, he does falter. He just makes his opponent work for it and then he takes twice as much back as wrathfully as possible. Here he won that exchange by taking Beef out on a leapfrog allowing him to land an explosive dropkick, but then he ate a bunch of BEEF's fun pokey punches, stooging around the ring for him.

That stooging was short-lived; because he is Rush, he started to fire back. Look, I am not a strike exchange sort of guy. But the strikes being exchanged aren't generally these strikes and not from these two. There was something rough and raw and wild here, something completely out of control. It wasn't pretty. It was far more about the throwing of the strikes than the withstanding of them, and as much about hyping the crowd up and getting into it as anything else. Rush would take a shot and then channel it right into the crowd as he waved his hands to try to rechannel the pain. It went from Beef's hand into his chest, into his arms, into the crowd, back through the crowd, into Rush's body, and then back at Beef. If that's not pro wrestling, I have no idea what is. And it all built to Beef just slapping hands one after the other, an out of control dynamo that wan't to lash back at what had been hurting him. 

It worked until it didn't. Rush caught him, thrashed him one last time with a forearm, sent him spiraling down to the corner. He teased the Horns, rolled back into the Tranquilo pose, and really never looked back from there. Beef had put up a good fight, a noble fight, an admirable fight, but there was a big hierarchy difference here, and all he could do was to try to catch his breath, to keep alive, to roll to the floor to recover. That's the last place you want to be against Rush though, and the end had already begun. The fans knew it too. They embraced Rush, let him lean back into a flag and bask. 

And in a different setting against a different opponent with different stakes on a different stage, maybe it would have frustrated me, but here, on an episode of ROH on YouTube in front of a crowd that just wanted to feel something, anything, no matter what, what can I do but throw up my hands and grin along. He's an attraction being an attraction. Hang on, ride the wave. He comes. He goes. He gets injured. He gets suspended. He gets grumpy. Let's enjoy him while we have him. Now and again we're allowed nice things.

Top Flight/Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs MxM/RPG Vice

MD: We talk about moments. Usually we talk about moments negatively when it comes to WWE because they fabricate unnatural ones and put them above and beyond matches, right? But moments are an important part of wrestling because they're an important part of wrestling matches, just like they're important in any other form of fiction. They should stem from the characters within the match naturally. They should be built to and they should pay off. One of the great fallacies of wrestling discussion of this decade is that it's either/or. It's not. It's all organic. That's true with promos and angles and matches and it's true with moments around and within matches.

And here, they did a great job of building to character-driven moments which had meaning within the match. Part of the joy of a match like this is to see the weird interactions. You have Top Flight interacting with Ortiz and Kingston. I was as interested in how Eddie would interact with Daniels post-match during the hand-raising as anything else in the match. That doesn't mean I don't love action. It just means that I find these characters and their history and all that they carry behind them fascinating as well. It's not either/or. It's additive. And Eddie looked as happy as I've seen him in ages post match celebrating with these guys, and I loved to see it.

There were big spots. Of course there were. Top Flight was in there. But my favorite moment in this whole thing was when MXM got Trent to pose (after trying to do so earlier in the match). He lingered too long and it ended up a transition allowing the babyfaces to take back over. That was very lucha-coded to me (though a lot of people wouldn't think of it that way because of the way lucha has been minimized in the States over the years), cocky heels doing cocky things either too many times or for too long and paying for it. What's great about it is that if the babyfaces did it, it'd be a big culminating moment, like Brody King finally doing the macarena but because it was the heels, it was them getting stooged. 

This was a lot of fun and it's always great to see Kingston in the mix with younger and contrasting talent. That's the strength of him. Yes, he can trade chops with Minoru Suzuki or whatever, but it's so much more interesting when you put him in there against a Lee Moriarty or Soberano, Jr. or, I don't know, Doink and see what happens.

AEW Dynamite 3/11/26

Dogs (David Finlay/Gabe Kidd) vs Orange Cassidy/Darby Allin

MD: This match was a cog in the storyline machine, a set up to the Roddy turn (or non-turn or whatever you'd call it) and setting up the six-man for the PPV, but it was also a way to really debut Finlay and make a statement about just who and what the Dogs were. They had that pretty amazing enhancement match on Collision, but this punctuated that real well in an actual match.

They're different than almost every team on the roster because they're dogged, just incessant energy. They have big spots for down the stretch, but for a lot of the body of the match, they just stay on their opponents. If you put Connors in there as well, then he's just throwing himself at people. With these two, it's more catching, like Finlay caught Darby on his dive with a forearm in order to really take over after the initial ambush and fire back. I liked how much they made Cassidy work for literally every inch when he was fighting from underneath. There were one or two times I thought he was about to make the hot tag but they dragged him back like their namesake and it really worked for me. 

And of course, Darby and Orange are the secret main character team of AEW, an odd couple that feed into one another in perfect, subtle ways. To make a very dated comic book reference, they're the Defenders of AEW, a non-team that absolutely work. I get there's mileage out of Roddy and Cassidy (a similar if less subtle team-up) right now, but I'd love to see Darby/Cassidy against FTR or hell even the Bucks (and for me to say that..). They're the TV workmen of the company and I'd be really interested to see a fighting champions run at some point. 

Anyway, this really got the job done and I hope that Finlay, Kidd, Connors get the freedom to keep working matches like this. So much of it was still all action but it was stifling and oppressive in the best way at the same time.

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AEW (and NJPW) Five Fingers of Death 2/23 - 3/1

NJPW New Beginning USA 2/27/26

Athena vs Syuri

MD: There isn't a single universal theory of pro wrestling. But if there was just one word that could define it all, could push towards the ideal, one word that you could boil everything down to, it would be immersion. That's the goal. You don't want people to believe it's real. You want people to invest in the false reality of it. Now, maybe one way to get them to invest is by being as real as possible. That's a means, not an end though. Instead, it's about being as engrossing, as captivating, as fascinating as possible, while building a world the audience (in person and televised) can escape to, a place that they prefer to reality itself.

And to accomplish that, the one word becomes three. Commitment, consequence, consistency.

Which brings us to one of the most immersive wrestlers going today, or back to her. Back to Athena.

Here she was positioned as challenger to Syuri's IWGP Women's Championship. Her own ROH title was not on the line, nor was Syuri's NJPW Strong title. 

But despite her role as challenger, and despite the eventual outcome, and even despite Syuri's own athleticism and charisma, Athena commanded the room.

It is because she is entirely committed to her act. There are no strings. There is no net. When you watch her on the screen, she provides you with no reason to doubt who and what she is. There's no carefully set up collaborative spots, no hesitation before she leaps headlong into danger. And maybe most of all, there's no pausing to come up with a correct reaction, no remembering to hit her mark. She hits a move. A move hits her. There is instant reaction. For every action there is a reaction, and for her, it comes off like the most natural thing in the world no matter how over the top and dynamic she may be. 

She portrays a character that is erratic, vengeful, malicious, that writhes at every failure, that is infuriated by her opponent's every act of defiance, that is strong and athletic and entirely vulnerable in the most human ways. For as dominant as she is, for as much as she takes up the air in the room, she is a few pennies short of a dollar, is unhinged and unpredictable, and whatever poise and polish she shows, impressive as those things may be, do not hide cracks so big you could consider them fault lines, the sort that lead to continental drift.

There is strength in vulnerability. The greatest wrestlers have always known that. In vulnerability there can be found the most human elements of a character-driven performance. A wrestler who comes off as cool and untouchable, above it all, ironic, cannot tap into any of that same humanity. Athena, for all of her triumphs, so often evokes the most human of failings, all turned up to 11.

Everything went hard early here, both the wrestling and the character work. They crashed into each other on the lock up. Syuri broke clean against the ropes. Athena offered a (left) hand. Syuri looked to the crowd... Athena is eternally erratic. At some point in the match she's going to throw that magic elbow but would it come with the shake? Here the answer was yes, but Syuri was ready. She ducked and they went right back into a feeling out process worthy of a title match: mat wrestling, rope running, until Syuri locked her into a single underhook suplex and started in on the arm. 

That would be the great equalizer for Syuri in the match and the great opportunity for Athena, as a performer, to act and react and be as vulnerable as possible. While she sold for a bit after the initial submission attempt, it was just the start of a longer story. Instead they went to the floor. Syuri knocked her back but Athena was too strong, too fierce, too ready and hefted her up to mercilessly toss her into the guardrail.

This, before her arm deteriorated further, was Athena's time to shine on offense. She hit her running punch in the corner and followed it with one of the only front handsprings in pro wrestling history that undeniably increases momentum and impact instead of just being a piece of flair. She snatched Syuri in a front facelock and spun around with her. She even hit the magic forearm out of nowhere. But she couldn't put Syuri away.

Instead, emotional cracks started to show, a seething frustration, and that brief inner distraction opened the door for Syuri to come back and start to dismantle the arm with various submissions. It was still back and forth. Athena was able to roll Syuri up with a counter that sent her careening into the corner. She was able to stop things flat and flip her into the Koji Clutch, but the damage had been done. 

Athena's selling wasn't just when the holds were on or immediately after. It wasn't even between her own moves. It impacted everything she did, the entire way she moved. If she was going to head up to the top, she'd be a half step slow because she only had one arm to work with. When she tried to slingshot back in, she couldn't gather proper momentum and ended up caught into a DDT. It took everything she had to force Syuri up to counter a triangle with power bombs and the first two didn't have nearly the oomph to them that they normally would. It took three to escape. 

It's because she wasn't checking boxes and she wasn't selling for the sake of selling. Instead she was embodying a character in a specific situation. Her arm was injured and it was a quality she had to deal with in every single action and reaction. It was definitional. It limited the way her character could move; it opened up any number of narrative possibilities as she lashed out again and again, as she constantly showed desperation and frustration on her face and in how she interacted with the referee, the fans, and her own inner heart; and it provided the character of Syuri any number of plausible, compelling opportunities to mount a comeback or double down and do more damage to Athena.

In the end, Athena managed an almost miraculous counter into a modified tombstone but couldn't put the weight upon Syuri to fully keep her down. With one bullet left to fire, she went up to the top for the O-Face, but she was that half step slow given that she had to drag her arm beside her. Syuri was able to dodge, to strike, to put a diminished Athena out of her misery and get the win. 

Athena presents herself as an ouroboros of emotion and reaction, constantly boiling over, a powder keg always waiting to explode. It's what makes her maybe the most fascinating and engrossing wrestler to watch today. With some wrestlers you're afraid to look away because you might miss a move or an athletic feat, and that's true with Athena as well, but she takes it so much further. If you look away even for a moment, you will absolutely miss some expression or little (or big) movement or even just a flick of her eyes that carries with it madness and destruction. Everything matters. Everything is monumental. Of course the crowd is immersed. So far as 2020s wrestling goes, she is immersion personified.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/26 - 2/1

AEW Collision 1/31/26

Darby Allin vs Clark Connors

MD: I didn't write up Darby vs PAC. I should have but I was focused on MJF vs Bandido. That wasn't it though. There was something more. It was that belly-to-belly on the stairs. Every single Darby Allin match has a bump like that. Something that takes your stomach and shoves it up into your throat. He's such a good seller, such a good underdog, so credible with his timing and opportunism and fight, has such a connection with the crowd, that every single one of his matches probably doesn't need one of those massive exclamation points. There are going to be a lot of really effective, meaningful periods along the way. Lots of punctuation. But every match has an exclamation point or two.

That one struck me harder than most though. It reminded me of Foley going off the cell, actually. Not at all the same thing, but that's not the point. The point is presentation. It was visually ghastly, gutwrenching. It took me out for the rest of the match because all I could think about was the spot. It just ran through my head over and over. And it left me thinking "This won't matter in a week," and that thought made me frustrated, because it was special. Even within the confines of Darby's exclamation points, it felt special. Too special to just be thrown away. But that's what I thought was going to happen. It should be one of those things we're talking about ten years from now. 

Pro wrestling is about presentation. That's what Vince worked out back in the 80s and it's what carried him for decades. It's not just about presentation. But so much of it is. You can do the best work in the world and if the promotion doesn't present that work the right way, doesn't frame it in a manner that makes it feel important and that sets it up for success, then it won't mean nearly as much as it could. That's not the banal storytelling argument. This is actually something different. They turned Foley's bump into myth. Yet Darby takes a bump like that every few weeks. How do you square that circle?

Could it be instead that Darby is greater than the sum of the parts? That if any single part was raised to be too important then the whole might be diminished. There are people who will kick and scream if they ever see this sentence (thankfully they don't read my stuff) but in a lot of ways, Darby is the heir to Johnny Valentine. Valentine always said that people might think wrestling is fake but no one would think he was fake. 

We feel everything Darby does so acutely. We know it hurts. It's 2026. We all love and respect wrestling and we appreciate deeply the way wrestlers put their bodies on the line to create art for us to enjoy and engage with. With Darby it's different though. He carries with him that element of deathmatch realism, distilled into bumps. Yeah maybe they could protect themselves on X, but Darby? Not Darby. It's impossible. So he's the heir to Jeff Hardy and Mick Foley and ECW and Johnny Valentine all at once. That perfect package of size and shape and vulnerability and selling and bumping and grasping fight. But Darby Allin? Darby's different.

But still, when you have a bump like that, something so gripping and brutal and visual, where the angles are all wrong and the metal is unforgiving, and the jag fits right in between the vertebrae just so, you want it to be treated differently. You want it to continue to matter. You want the commentary to remember it and for it to be on highlight packages and in the opening to the show. It should live for years. If the production cares, then we can care and not just move on from it. It doesn't become crash TV or Excalibur using "But" or "and" to move right on to the next thing. There's a fine line between Vince thinking that pro wrestling fans have no memory for anything and the idea that it's worth it to immortalize things that can, do, and should matter to them with reinforcement. That's all selling is in the end, getting fans to buy in that things can and do matter. 

A lot of that is what I was going to say if I did write about the PAC match, and it's important I said it here, because they succeeded beyond my expectations in making that spot matter here against Connors.

They established up front that he had an alliance with Kidd, that he was there to make a mark against an AEW original, a perennial world title contender, the heir to Sting (let alone everyone else I mentioned). And the damage from the belly-to-belly was the perfect wedge to let him do it believably. 

If Darby was a crash test dummy of sorts, then Connors was an absolute wrecking ball. Darby came in with his back bandaged, and from even before the bell, Connors made it his goal in life to toss his own body at Darby, in some ways using Darby's favorite tactic against him. 

It started even as Darby was skateboarding down to ringside. He was there like a bull charging right into him. It continued again and again. He'd have Darby on the apron dangling and he'd just go headlong. He accomplished more with shoulder tackles than anyone in a decade or two. Darby would get a hope spot in, but his hand would clutch his back and Connors would charge right back at him. It was force vs object but both of them were moving in the most impactful way, a 21st century version of titans clashing, where things resonated not because nothing would give but because everything had to again and again.

And then they found themselves back on the outside and with the specter of the spot hanging above them, Connors went to double down upon it, tried to manifest it once again. He got greedy, hungry, possessed by the violence he had witnessed PAC orchestrate. Darby was ready, and literally used the steps to vault himself back into the match. There were bumps along the way but that was the beginning of the end, and he scored yet another mythic, impossible, gripping win. 

And yet. The one moment where Connors really shut him down, really took over? Darby had gone to the top and Connors (yet again) charged in. The bump Darby took, careening onto the apron and somehow managing to hit it multiple times on the way to the floor? An exclamation point in a sea of periods. The sort of thing that will stick with you, that should stick with you, that they should show again and again, that should be in an opening show package, that should matter next week. That should be used, just as the belly-to-belly was used here, to build something meaningful in the future. 

The problem of Darby Allin. Just how high can these towers of devastation get? All the way to Everest maybe. 

ROH TV 1/29/26

Athena vs Vertvixen

MD: Athena's entire rise was a Johnny Valentine moment as well. She had been transitioning from being a babyface, had dropped down the card, was on ROH, was up against Jody Threat in Canada, and she went hard against her. The clips went viral. Old timers and engagement accounts hoping to grift against AEW to make a buck and stay relevant leaned hard into their inherent misogyny and berated her for being careless, for not looking after her opponent in a way they never would if, let's say Lance Archer had a match like that, and she embraced it and ran with it, all the way to becoming one of the most engaging characters in wrestling. 

Wrestling shouldn't feel collaborative. It shouldn't feel cooperative. In 2026, the lean towards elaborate spots and counters and sequences have meant that all too often it does. 

That means if something goes wrong, it's jarring, and we're conditioned for the response to be consummate.

Athena, athletic, dominant, confident champion that she is, outwrestled Vertvixen to start. That confidence gave way to arrogance though, and Vertvixen turned it, both the wrestling and the mocking back onto Athena. Athena snapped, made use of her superior agility, and dropped Vertvixen's face right onto her knees. Vertvixen sold it hard, rubbing at her jaw and her nose and her teeth. There was the sense of something being slightly off as they didn't quite roll into the next bit of offense. In some ways, that's not surprising since Athena's so good at reacting and letting things sink in and resonate, but as an audience, we're used to specific timing cues and this felt just a little long. 

But then, instead of moving away from the potentially hurt area, Athena leaned hard into it, grasping the nose and whacking it. Before there was maybe the possibility of blood. She ensured the reality of it, and having done so, waved her bloody hand around to show the crowd. Aubrey was the referee and moved to get gloves on immediately even as Athena veered off course and into the wonderful world of woundwork. 

I have no idea what was planned and what was called. All I know is the effect it had on the audience and myself, the narrative power of something going off course and a heel pushing it even harder in that direction and reveling in it all the way. All I know is that the crowd, already inclined to get behind Vertvixen, got behind her all the more, and she came off looking all the better for fighting through the pain and doing some real damage to Athena long the way. And THAT in turn, made Athena's shaken confidence and deep anger down the stretch and especially in the post-match, set things up perfectly for Maya World and Hyan to run down to make the save and set things up for the big six-woman tag next week. 

Athena is always on. Athena gives herself completely to the role. But unlike most wrestlers, that doesn't just mean that she's reading her lines using as a method actress. It means instead that she's so tuned into who and what she's trying to portray that she'll perfectly take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way, and that, as much as anything else, is the true spirit of pro wrestling.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/1 - 12/7 Part 2

ROH Final Battle 12/5/25

Athena vs Persephone

In so many ways, pro wrestling storytelling is about the creative and strategic demonstration of vulnerability. Both babyfaces and heels find their true strength in knowing when and how to deploy it.

This then was a story of three vulnerabilities.

Coming into the match, Persephone had Athena's number. Maybe Athena is a fallen goddess but Persephone is one at the height of her youthful power. She was able to keep up with her athletically to start, no small feat. Even when Athena got a temporary advantage, Persephone turned it back around. When she went to mind games, switching hands and dancing to mock Persephone (and maybe her superior strength) on the test of strength, Athena got clocked in the face for her trouble. 

The champion allowed the cracks to show, heading to the floor for a time out. She returned to the ring with another left-handed handshake (the first one refused by Persephone). This was a ploy for her can't miss magic forearm, but her younger opponent had her scouted and avoided it. Back on the floor, Athena tried to whip Persephone into the rail only to have it turned around on her. Nothing was working. Everything was failing. The walls were closing in already. 

That left her desperate, full of an emotional sort of vulnerability that she was confident enough to show. Diamante was out to second her, and she saved her boss from getting tossed into the stairs (generally Athena's own tactic). That allowed Athena to launch an ambush. She dove off of the stairs at Persephone knee-first, but Diamante's presence meant she couldn't hit a meteora but instead had to drop backwards into a code-breaker, taking the advantage but also badly harming her back.

She carried that second vulnerability with her for the rest of the match. It defined everything she did, every reaction, every bit of strategy, the possibilities at play. Selling isn't about holding your back after a move. It's not even about holding your back before a move. It shows consequence, yes, but it also defines the state of play for a character. Athena, far better than most, portrayed this pain throughout everything she did. It impacted how she moved across the ring, how she hefted Persephone up for a suplex, how she failed to heft her up for her more advanced signature offense. It made her a half step slow and a half step sloppy. It increased her desperation and doubled her paranoia. It created an underpinning of panic even as she tried to celebrate her advantage (and all but caused Athena's eyes to bug out as Persephone lifted her up out of the Koji Clutch down the stretch). 

And of course, it ultimately lead to Persephone not only being able to come back, but also able to put Athena's title at as much risk as it had ever been.

To defeat Athena, a wrestler has to not just be lucky, as Persephone was here (even if she had created her own luck) but also, as a character, be able to wrestle their very best match.

And that was the third vulnerability, Persephone's relative youth and overexuberance. 

Once she took back over from Athena and started doing damage, she repeatedly took her eyes off the prize. Right after taking over, she made a little pose as if the belt was around her waist. Her first real cover was lackadaisical. After slamming Athena into the announce table brutally, she went out of her way to say it had been for the commentary team and stuck her tongue out to either them or the crowd. 

And most of all, after finally hitting her Razor's Edge finisher, after Athena still managed to barely kick out, she completely lost her cool, pounding on Athena wildly and rushing up to the top rope to try to put her away. Athena followed her up, hit a killer German back into the ring, and then dropped her with the O-Face for a skin-of-her-teeth win.

Wrestling isn't math, of course, but a good match can often be defined by one good vulnerability. This one had three and it was the mix of the three, two character driven and one a situational result from one of the others, and the wrestlers' dedication and courage to show such weaknesses, that made this match sing.

Eddie Kingston vs Josh Woods

MD: Never in the history of pro wrestling has a tune-up match been more necessary.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure that a tune-up match has actually ever been necessary before this. Usually it's just a way to get a little more heat/momentum for a wrestler before a bigger match. That's not even true. Usually it's just a way to fill TV time and allow the announcers to hype the upcoming bigger match. Rarely does it make sense in practice. 

Here it absolutely did.

Look, I love Eddie Kingston. We all love Eddie Kingston here. And yeah, he's been interesting to write about, and I am absolutely looking forward to write about his match with Samoa Joe. While I'm going to be surprised by how it plays out, I've got the hook in my head already (not that Hook). 

But he has been trudging through mud. He came back from injury and through design or simple reality (pretty sure it's design), he's been slugging it out, one step after another, dragging the weight of all that he is behind him. It's going to seem counter-intuitive to some people, but that's compelling. The best match is not necessarily the one that moves the fastest and hits the cleanest. It's not the one with the most stuff. When you come across a match or a story where you actually have to invest time, effort, focus, patience, almost always, the payoff there, so long as there is payoff, can mean even more. Anyone can invest in an Ospreay match, right? It's candy. It's fluff. It's special effects. This is a journey. And it's a risk too. You know Ospreay's going to get you where you're going, even if you're a baby strapped into a car seat and going around the block to make you stop crying. 

You can trudge through the wasteland watching Eddie Kingston and who knows if you have any idea if you're going to actually get there. Maybe, in 2023 you did. We're in 2025 now, almost 2026, and who the hell knows? 

But you know what? I think this match took us one step closer. 

It reminded me of Roderick Strong vs Erick Stevens that I wrote-up recently. 

Much like Stevens in that match, Eddie knew he needed something from Woods. What made this a tune-up is that you could squint and see Woods in the Ops. He's got that same sort of dogged skill. It's exactly what Eddie needed to throw himself up against.

And I think he worked the match like someone who knew he had to pick up speed, dragging all that weight behind.

They shook at the beginning (it's ROH after all) and Eddie got him right in the corner, and he didn't chop. Why not? Because chopping then and there wouldn't help him. It wouldn't give him what he needed. Now, later on, after Woods had wrenched at his arm, had tossed him around a bit, had charged at him from three different corners. When Eddie chopped later on? Well, then it mattered, it showed that he had it in him, that he could slug, that he could fight. It reminded a body that's still waking up from a year+ out of the ring what it's like to fire back. But he needed something to fire back against first. When Eddie hefted him up to top rope and slung both of them off with a superplex? That's not something you see Eddie do all that much, but he needed that impact, he needed to jar his bones and his spirit, to realign his spine so it could be one with the ring. And when he dropped the strap and started tossing Woods around? Well, that just felt right, didn't it? In a way things hadn't felt right for a long time. When he had dropped the strap against Shibata recently, he got a cheapshot for his trouble. This though? This was one step back towards the light, one step towards the promised land. And then, when he shouted Samoa Joe's name before hitting the DDT and picking up the win? Well, you ask me, that shout wasn't for Joe and that shout wasn't for us, but that shout was for Eddie, because he still needs to feel it, because maybe, probably, unfortunately, tune-up match or no, he's not quite there yet.

But here's the thing. All that weight Eddie's dragging? It's emotional weight. And if you let go and invest and have patience, he'll end up dragging you along with it and you'll get where he's going and it may not be where you thought you wanted to be, but it's where you needed to be. And honestly? That's a hell of a thing for pro wrestling to accomplish. Let's see how far he can take us on Wednesday Night. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/17 - 11/23

AEW Full Gear 2025 11/22/25

Darby Allin vs PAC

MD: There were people that questioned why this needed to be on the PPV when it was announced. On paper, maybe it was just a good match for the sake of being a good match, the sort of thing that has been used for years now to fill out AEW PPVs and tilt those Observer Thumbs Up and Cagematch ratings. And maybe that would have been enough. But there was more at play here.

Darby came in literally hot, having been burned by PAC (or more accurately put through a burning table by him, with Gabe Kidd's help) at Blood & Guts. But this is a Darby that had come down from Everest, one that's at peace with himself. He came in hot but he used that heat to fuel a wrestling machine. He didn't fly in with strikes but instead with headlock takeovers. The purpose of this was twofold. First, PAC had come in saying that they were going to wrestle a clean match and the better man would win. By outwrestling him early, Darby would hurt PAC more than any single punch to the face. More than that though, Darby was bandaged up. He had to wrestle conservatively, even if aggressively. While he had the luxury, he wouldn't use his own body as a weapon.

That luxury wouldn't last long. After barely escaping a makeshift Scorpion Deathlock attempt, PAC was able to catch him on the apron and press slam him to the floor. What followed was a brutal heat section where they did a great job mixing up big bumps/moves (that press slam, though that was a transition, Darby's absolutely brutal bump past the corner to the floor, even the neck-first catapult into the bottom rope) with PAC being a malicious maniac, tearing off the bandages and giving Darby an Indian burn. Everything came together for the latter: Darby's distorted skin, the way the bandage flew through the air, the look of exultation on PAC's face and agony on Darby's, how shocked and horrified the commentators were. It got as big a reaction from the crowd as both of Darby's huge bumps. 

Anything in pro wrestling can matter so long as it's presented correctly and much, much more effort should be made in making small things like this matter as much as possible. Not only is it safer and more varied than big bump after big bump, but it also allows those bumps, if framed correctly, to mean even more through escalation. The proof is in the audience reaction here (and yes, they did go up even higher as Darby crashed through the corner).

Darby mounted a comeback by catching PAC in the apron (and the sense of struggle here was great; PAC was desperate to get out in a way that others in that rare spot often aren't), setting him up for a dive and then a gnarly dropkick from the top to PAC seated on the floor in a chair. 

Darby was obviously hurting and PAC presents himself successfully as one of the best in the world, so they would go back and forth from there. PAC was able to catch Darby off the ropes turning a Coffin Splash into a suplex. He was unable to put him away with the Brutalizer though. Darby was able to get out of the way of a Black Arrow and it looked like he was going to put PAC away with the Scorpion Deathlock.

But there was a plan for this. The Death Riders have quit a little too much lately (even if it's almost all been on the head of their leader). PAC had vowed that this would be a fair fight, that the best man would win. So in some ways, he'd already lost when Wheeler Yuta rushed up to the apron to distract Darby and the ref, and doubly so, when he used the bat to knock Darby out. But moral victories don't exist in the record books, only wins and losses. 

And later on when Moxley faced O'Reilly there was a plan as well. Once it was clear that O'Reilly had an answer for every bit of wrestling Moxley could throw at him, Marina handed Mox the fork and he used it to take over. The plan worked for PAC. The plan only failed in the Casino Gauntlet because Matt Menard chose to punish Garcia and run him off instead of trying to win the National Title. The Plan here worked right up until the point it didn't, until the point where Moxley, having broken Kyle's arm, still managed to tap out to a chain reinforced ankle lock. Maybe he went back and finished the job after the match but even if he won the war, he lost the battle, and in this case, the battle was more important than the war. 

So yes, Darby vs PAC was great, but it wasn't just a great match for the sake of having great matches. There was a grudge coming in and it was worked to that. More importantly, it set the stage, through a begrudging plan of the Death Riders coming to fruition, for Mox vs O'Reilly where a similar plan, unveiled far sooner and far more desperately, nonetheless failed. That contrast hangs over Moxley like his own personal Sword of Damocles, just waiting to fall.

AEW Full Gear 2025 Collision Tailgate Brawl 11/22/25

Eddie Kingston/Hook vs Workhorsemen

MD: It's amazing what you can do in two minutes. Look, I'm not going to say anyone should or shouldn't have done whatever they did or didn't do. We never have the full story and it's always complicated and we do far too much speaking up on matters that we're just blind men touching elephants on.

What I can speak on, however, is this match. They had two minutes, less than two minutes according to cagematch (just 1:48). But the Workhorsemen punched in and showed what they could do. They ambushed Hook and Eddie on the way down. Drake took Eddie out, and that's the way things have been for Kingston as he builds up his fighting strength from match to match. That meant they had Hook isolated and though he tried to fire back off the ropes or out of the corner, they went to work. 

That meant hitting their signature flurry of a Drake apron clothesline, the Henry headtwist, and Drake flying in with a slingshot somersault senton. Hook was finally able to get out of the way causing a bit of miscommunication and then launching Henry. By then Eddie was recovered and he did the same to Drake setting the stage to hit a quick DDT out of nowhere and scoring the win. 

But in two minutes the Workhorsemen, professional as can be, got a spotlight to show that they could take the initiative, knock Hook around the ring, and hit some polished, brutal offense on the guy who was going to be the hingepoint of the PPV's main event. No small thing even for two men who are very, very good at what they do.

ROH TV 11/20/25

Athena vs Harley Cameron (Ported: https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1991866317486555505)

Throughout the years, we've created a critical system of reviewing and ranking matches that's based on things like action, execution, big spots, and exciting finishing stretches.

It often leaves more performative elements behind. These would include facial reactions, body language, character driven creative choices, and yeah, even selling. 

In fact, over the years, matches that lean too hard on some of these elements tend to be judged by some as unfortunate because they can "negatively impact the action" and make it so a match isn't considered as conventionally great as it might have been if the wrestlers had just been allowed to go hard and lean into workrate instead.

A recent review I saw of Demolition vs Brainbusters from SNME 21, a match that trades workrate for a clever and consistent story of Demolition getting increasingly frustrated leading to a DQ, comes to mind.

Along these lines, some of Jon Moxley's recent performances where he's been leaning hard into the role of a mad king who saw his pro wrestling kingdom crumbling, a man who claimed to stand for things but was slowly being revealed as an emperor with no clothes, an animal with his back against the wall desperate for victory, for revenge, but forced to look himself in the mirror and see a coward, quitter, and hypocrite, have been excellent.

But there are different lanes for different sorts of performances, and I think there's no one as good in the world right now at letting her character drive her physicality and matches as Athena. 

That was evident in her 11/20 ROH TV title match against Harley Cameron. 

Despite being champion for over 1000 days, she came in on her back foot, having been pinned by Harley in the tag tournament (albeit after eating Willow's doctor bomb).

That was maddening for Athena (the character) for multiple reasons. First, she and Mercedes were a sort of super team and they were defeated in the first round. Second, she's been pinned only a handful of times in the last few years. Third, there's a massive difference in hierarchy and experience between Athena and Harley. Harley's treated as plucky and determined, hard-working and fiery, but also as an upstart underdog and often as a comedy act.

That gave Athena a ton to work with but it meant shaping the match and her performance around this mentality as opposed to shooting to have the most exciting, spot filled match possible.

She came out to the ring without her usual celebratory fanfare, scowling instead. She offered a normal handshake instead of her usual left handed princess dangle. Then she ran right in, impatient and irritated, charging into Harley's armdrags. That Harley's execution wasn't perfect only added fuel to the fire here.

When Athena took over, she was constantly distracted. At times, after her running punch in the corner or when putting on a hold, she'd start to unveil her usual grin only for reality to hit and the scowl to return. Just when she started to relax and enjoy herself, the fans began clapping up Harley and she became irate. She jawed back with them, delusionally claiming that they were taunting Harley and not her. 

The match was built around Athena's character-driven mistakes (rushing in, losing her cool, being distracted by the crowd, trying to use Harley's own finisher) creating openings for Harley in order to counteract the hierarchal differences. It demanded absolute consistency from Athena in both what she did and in how she did it. It demanded selling that's far more complex and nuanced than remembering to limp now and again, a selling of the soul. 

These performances tend not to earn stars, but they move hearts and minds. And in 2025, Athena is as good at them as anyone.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/10 - 11/16 Part 2

AEW Collision 11/15/25

FTR/RUSH/Sammy Guevara vs Kevin Knight/Mike Bailey/Juice Robinson/Bandido

MD: An eight man tag can be an opportunity or an excuse.

It can be an opportunity. 

You have eight wrestlers. How do they interact? Both the partners and opponents. I want the camera to linger on what happens when FTR gets into the ring with LFI for the first time (Cash was quick to go slap hands and greet). These are disparate characters, disparate styles, disparate personalities. It's interesting. It makes the world seem more robust. Hiptosses are great. It's not always about hiptosses. I want to see who these people are and what they think about each other. What the hell does Dax think about Rush? That's interesting. Likewise, Juice hanging back and waiting for Bandido to show up so he could do Guns Up with him and then Bandido realizing what he wanted and getting excited and into it. That's interesting. That's compelling. It's vivid and real and immersive. It draws you in.

It's about the narrative opportunities of having more wrestlers and their attributes to work into the match. It opens the door for creative possibilities. You have Rush's intensity, Dax's hard hitting, Bandido's strength, Bailey's agility, Sammy's attitude, Knight's explosiveness, Juice's charisma, and Cash's wild abandon. And that's just one attribute from each of them. The wrestlers can mix and match all of that. Everything can be bigger. The stooge spots can involve more people. You can go for a double heat instead of a single. There are choices for who gets the hot tag, how to do the cut offs. It's more options, more room for creativity. Maybe most of all, it's also a way to further multiple stories at once and seed future interactions and matches.

It can be an excuse.

Eight people. Eight sets of signature spots. Eight guys who can take bumps. The action can flow and flow and flow and never stop. Someone can bump and the next person can be right there, fresh and on his feet, ready to jump right in and get revenge. You can drown the fans with an endless waterfall. Everyone gets their stuff in. Everyone gets to shine. Everyone gets to show off. The spots escalate endlessly. There's no ceiling. There's no bottom. There's no reason to ever stop. 

Except of course there is, because without stopping nothing can have meaning. Without leaning into tag rules, nothing can truly resonate. But it can be an excuse not to do those things, because you can just keep cycling people in and out forever. 

Cleverness for the sake of cleverness, spots for the sake of spots. It seems to be some wrestlers' fondest wish. Endlessly entertaining, almost certainly ephemeral. 

Usually, depending on who's in the match, an eight-man tag in AEW can be one or the other. 

This one, given who was in it, sort of straddled the middle. There was just enough connective tissue. They let things get chaotic, but then they brought it back to the center. There were foundational moments: Knight mocked the heel corner with the tranquilo pose and when he got thrashed by LFI they did it back to him. Sammy teased a swanton early only to leap down and screw with the fans. When he tried the same thing later, it cost him and helped lead towards the hot tag. Speedball hit his moonsault kneedrop in the ring to finally get that hot tag but then wiped out on the apron, clearing him out of the way for the finish. 

There were excessive moments, most especially early chaos which built to FTR eating Juice's stylized punches, Rush trucking him out of nowhere, and simultaneous JetSpeed dives. 

Ultimately, everything came down to Rush and Bandido, then opened back up as everyone got involved for one last bit of excess, only to cycle back around to Rush and Bandido once more for the finish. Moreover, it came back to the characters at play, their familiarity with one another and lack of familiarity with one another, as Rush got shoved into FTR to position himself for a slightly askew 21-Plex. 

If I had my way, I'd prefer something a little more grounded with chaos even more controlled than this, but it's a big tent promotion and sometimes an excuse is what's needed. Thankfully, here, that excuse didn't leave the opportunities on the table like it so often does.

ROH TV 11/13/25

Athena/Billie Starkz vs Hyan/Maya World

MD: Here's what makes pro wrestling great. 

Athena demanded to start the match. She held out her hand to Maya World for her usual insulting left-handed, draping code of honor shake. She immediately clocked her with the magic forearm, absolutely floored her.

And all that? That was Athena selling.

That was her selling the frustration of eating a rare pinfall from Harley Cameron (of all people) during the tag tournament, of having to defend against Harley now, of being eliminated from the tag tournament when she and Mercedes were the favorites, of Kris Statlander getting into her business, of Billie letting her down, of Mercedes not doing her part (and being able to claim that Athena didn't do hers), of not being part of the first Blood & Guts. 

Grievance after grievance all going into that one seething, agitated, impatient shot. 

This was an enhancement match. Hyan and Maya are on the rise but this was to continue Athena's story. She'd sell for their offense, but she'd sell more for the ghosts in her own mind, a burgeoning obsession over Harley. She'd call Harley out within the match, even as she punished Maya or Hyan. She'd take it out on Billie, so distracted and distraught that she'd all but chop her instead of tagging her, would get in a senseless argument which would allow her to get dropkicked from behind.

The secret truth in pro wrestling is that true strength lies in vulnerability, that it's selling which draws the fans in to get behind a babyface and that showing weakness, be it physical, emotional, or moral is how a heel gets heat. So even as Athena ate up Hyan and Maya, she was being eaten up on the inside, and her performance made that clearly evident to the world. 

Meanwhile, it was on Billie, Hyan, and Maya to react. For Billie that was trying to soothe Athena's wounds through inflicting collaborative violence, of showing the emotional impact of Athena's abuse upon her, of being distracted herself. For Hyan and Maya, it was being on their back feet due to the brutality and coming in hot when opportunities arose. 

The end result was an entertaining match which was laser-focused on promoting the title bout to come. And it all hinged on Athena selling something bigger and more complex than a punch or a kick from the second she walked through the curtain to the second the camera faded on her post-match. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/3 - 11/9

AEW Dynamite 11/5/25

Athena/Mercedes Mone vs Willow Nightingale/Harley Cameron

MD: Mercedes Mone is a star. Athena makes her shine all the brighter.

I'm quite high on Mercedes for much that she does. I think her reactions in the moment are believable. Her matches are ambitious in many ways. She has an incredible work ethic. As an ace, she's tremendous at treating each and every opponent differently; I loved seeing her switching up her taunts and crowd interactions for Olympia's strength for instance. 

That said, there is often a rehearsed feel to her matches. It's a perfectionist's bent, a practice makes perfect sort of feel that's impossible to escape. While the matches feel alive in the moment, sometimes the overall effect is a little plastic, a little blunted. It's more DDP than Randy Savage. That's fine. 98 DDP was great. But it's not transcendent.

Athena, endlessly reactive, endlessly electric, as dynamic as any wrestler in the world, helps Mercedes transcend herself and become her own personal Randy Savage.

They worked so well together here and it felt natural as could be, a meshing of two disparate but tangential egos, two parallel characters, two parallel paths to a flawed sort of kayfabe greatness. You could see it right from the get go when Mercedes pulled a seething Athena to fawn over the belts and how it transitioned right to the two of them almost immediately switching gears with Mercedes seething behind Harley as she entered the ring and Athena posing with her big Yaaaaaay! after their successful initial ambush of the babyfaces. 

The structure was double heat, but Harley carried both face-in-perils. That fit the hierarchy very well. It allowed Harley to gain sympathy, allowed Willow to come in like a wrecking ball after the first hot tag, and allowed Athena and Mercedes to look like the very best in the world as they took over with a tandem backstabber out of nowhere, the wild Athena dive through Mercedes' legs, and an absolutely perfect but still chaotically organic double team move where Athena basically hit Mercedes with the MoneMaker but right onto Harley. 

That unique no shine/double heat structure let them utilize a Willow blind tag (instead of a conventionally hot one) after the break and allowed for things to break down a little early without it feeling unearned or unbalanced. The finish, with Statlander coming out to disrupt Billie and the belt and distract Athena (who had just hit one of her super impressive strength spots), furthered the Full Gear title match and set up a few matches in the future including Athena vs Harley for the ROH title. 

My big takeaway, however, is that while I understand Athena and Mercedes going out like this (they were almost too big to continue on in the tournament and this furthered other storylines) the pairing, either feuding or teaming, is just too good not to go back to sooner than not. 

It's pro wrestling. You need your stars shining as brightly as possible as much as possible, and Athena burns brightly enough to be the perfect spotlight for Mercedes Mone.

Samoa Joe/Powerhouse Hobbs/Katsuyori Shibata vs Eddie Kingston/HOOK/Hangman Adam Page

MD: Keep your eye on Eddie Kingston.

I came across an obituary of Gene Wilder a week or two ago. In it, the writer noted it was a known secret in the acting industry that actors that wished to "better themselves would do well to watch a movie with Gene Wilder in it and pay particular attention to him in a scene when someone else is speaking, someone else has the focus. He was always acting in those moments too, reacting or listening in perfect character and supporting the scene with his presence. A lot of good actors are good when they have something to do. Gene Wilder was good all the time."

I had immediately connected that to Negro Casas actually, and the work he did in trios matches when he wasn't the main focus of a feud.

But then I saw this match and it clicked here as well.

Eddie's not even in this feud. Eddie is HOOK's plus-one. But he managed to do something that was absolutely a contradiction here: he not only stole the show, but he then took what he stole and donated it back to his partners. 

Here's the key: he's constantly, consistently both engaged and engaging. Someone can be the one but not the other and it goes both ways. I love watching Ultimate Warrior on the apron in tags, but he's not necessarily responding to what's happening in the moment and adding to the overall match. There are also plenty of guys able to put their arm out for a tag but not also able to use it to draw you into the match. And Eddie draws you right in while making it about what's going on in the ring and not about himself. 

Some of that is his strength as a storytelling but I honestly believe so much of it is his foundation as a fan. He remembers caring. Hell, he watches certain matches over and over and over again because he still cares. He cares as much as anyone reading this and as much as the person writing this and he's able to channel that feeling into what he was doing here. 

That meant he showed his disgust when Samoa Joe started the match by dodging Hook and tagging out to Shibata, that he sold chops as if they were hurting him, and that when Hook was trying to fight back (and after Hook hit the suplex that threw his back out the rest of the way), he'd lean halfway into the ring to try to will him over to the corner.

And when it was time for him to get in there, he did exactly what he should. That meant getting beaten on by Samoa Joe in the corner, his comeback chops ineffectual. It meant being able to fire back against Shibata but cutting himself off due to the fact he's still working his way back to full strength. It meant that when it was time to mount a comeback, he climbed that hill and almost, almost worked with Hangman to hit a tandem Uraken/Buckshot (we need to see that at some point, TK, just saying; you've teased it now and let the heels rob us of it so you have to pay it off). 

And then after Hobbs crushed Hangman at the top of the stage, he found the inner strength to fight back against all the odds one last time. That's the only shame here. If this match had five more minutes, it could have been not just a double heat, but a triple heat, with Hook making that first tag to Eddie, with Eddie coming back after a 3-on-2 beating, and then with Eddie having to crawl back after Hangman got taken out, lasting just long enough in that All Japan Trios style for Hook to recover, even if it would all end in brave but futile heartbreak. 

But that's still out there on the table for another day. What we got was the best supporting player in all of wrestling pouring his heart out for yet another one of his award winning roles (not that he'd ever admit it, but those who watch closely... we know). 

Don't believe me? Next time you get a chance, just keep your eye on Eddie Kingston. You'll see it too.

Darby Allin vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Styles make fights. Contrast makes the world go round. Character drives action. 

Three sentences. Three true statements. You put them together and you get this match. While Darby is accomplished on the mat, he's no Daniel Garcia. While Garcia has a chip on his shoulder, has been training with Moxley and has been fighting full of grit, he's no Darby Allin. The difference between these two drove this one. In the ring, whether it be in the early feeling out process or trying holds down the stretch, Garcia had an advantage. When things hit the floor or got dirty, Darby tended to have an advantage. 

But Garcia was going to blink first again and again, because he had more to prove, because he couldn't get out of his own way (that's the character bit). That meant teasing the dance after choking Darby with the turnbuckle connector protector. It meant trying for an additional suplex (or neckbreaker) after hitting a superplex. It most especially meant mocking Sting when he had the Scorpion on, which ultimately cost him the match. 

There was a third character in this one as well ( and I don't mean PAC who set up a nice nearfall countout), the ring itself. They could have done this straightforward, eye gouges, ear biting, armbars and headscissors, but they chose to go inventive with it instead. After using the turnbuckle protector, Darby stuck Dany's arm in side the ringpost. Garcia's big transition to heel offense was trapping Darby in the apron. The stairs were used liberally. Garcia hooked Darby's chain to the corner. Pretty clever stuff all around which added to the chaotic nature of the match while keeping it character-driven and laser-focused on the contrast between the two. 

Three sentences that point to true north for almost every match and Darby and Garcia followed the map to their destination here.

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