AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/6 - 10/12

AEW Collision 10/11/25

LFI (RUSH/Sammy Guevara/Dralistico) vs. MXM TV (Johnny TV/Mason Madden/Mansoor)

MD: Hey, it's a multifunctional TV match. In and out in under 4 minutes, not counting the set up. That gave everything the sense of chaos you want out of a Rush match. Now that Caster's no longer doing the challenge (at least temporarily), this fills that spot on the card, gives fans the surprise of not knowing who will come out, lets Mansoor stooge big (here flipping onto his face and then trying foolishly to attack Rush), lets the challengers figure out how to deal with the problem of Mason Madden (catching him mid-pose with tandem kicks and then dodging him as he crotched himself) and work fairly even with Johnny to start. They fit in a huge spot with Dralistico crashing Johnny into the guardrail on his 'rana, a bit of sizzle with Taya hitting one off the apron herself, and then, just like last week with DCF, the big bomb train on Mansoor. Put LFI over strong to set up their trios titles challenge, entertained the crowd, filled a few minutes, and set things up by having Eddie's music interrupt them for the next match. Perfectly effective pro wrestling right here.

Eddie Kingston vs. Beast Mortos

MD: Another week, another match, another step to climb. You watch Eddie and you feel his pain. When he gets knocked down, that hurts, yeah, because of course it does. But it hurts him to get up too, to turn the body, to get his feet under him, to press up against the weight of the world and find his way back to his feet. It hurts. It doesn't hurt Speedball when he gets up. It doesn't hurt Kevin Knight. It hurts Eddie. Every single time. 

It's a contradiction lately. Every time it gets harder than the last. Yet every time it gets easier too. Because he's working his way back out of his hole, working his way back up to the light, working his way back to who he was when he won the Continental Classic and held three titles at once. 

But yeah, it hurts.

He was more of himself here. Two weeks ago, if he tried a shoulder block on Mortos, he'd crumble. Now he stood firm. He forced Mortos out of the ring, forced him to ask for a time out, forced him to push the dissonance hard. He's so big and so fierce and he had to rely on an eye poke. That hurt too but it probably felt good and right, because Eddie forced him into that spot. That was a victory right there, the only sort of victory Eddie knows, the kind where he ends up with a finger in his eye for his trouble.

Yeah, he went for the uraken right off the bat, because Mortos is a threat and because Eddie's not yet Eddie yet, not really, not all the way. But when that didn't work, he didn't stop, he didn't look down, he kept on pressing. And that meant that while Mortos got the better of him for a time, that he was able to fight back, able to get under him and hit an exploder, and able to hit a uraken that didn't feel like a fluke for once, that felt instead like like a more commanding, more dominant strike. 

So yeah, it hurts, it all hurts, it'll always hurt, but with each step, Eddie gets closer and closer to finding himself once more. 

Read more!

D3AN~!!! Day 4: SAMMY~! MORTOS~! DRALISTICO~! CHEESEBURGER~! ISOM~! TITUS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

LFI (Sammy Guevara/Beast Mortos/Dralistico) vs Cheeseburger/Eli Isom/Rhett Titus

MD: Let's embrace the chaotic indie spirit of a random match popping up out of nowhere. We don't have a choice after all and embracing it would be a very DEAN thing to do. And why the hell not, right? Look, DEAN liked all of these guys. Yes, DEAN was great at finding things to like about almost anyone who had something to like, especially in the early 2020s, but he was also great at highlighting what those things were. More on this at the end because of Sammy's promo. 

This was definitely structured as an enhancement sort of match with name talent. Powers and Roma and Brunzell on a late 80s Superstars and that's okay. It meant that Isom could fire back a bit and give everything just a bit more dramatic weight. You know what to expect with Mortos (that headbutt) and Dralistico (throwing himself into his offense for good or ill, here good), but Sammy was the one to watch. 

Sammy's been paying his dues as Dustin's little buddy for the last year+, title belt or no, putting in the effort as a babyface. But now he gets to stretch and preen. They're still working it out. Him matching Rush's Tranquilo pose with his little bit of breakdancing works great. It didn't work quite as well with Mortos and Dralistico just standing beside him. Otherwise, they were a pretty well oiled machine here.

And of course the post-match promo was funny for what it was. Surreal to a degree to hear Sammy talk about Dean. Bobby Heenan is on record for giving someone advice in WCW that instead of saying they hated the fans, they should say they love them (the advice was not taken) and Sammy more or less did that here. Him referencing "pillars" in 2025 is a good bit. And then saying that he, and his stablemates were Dean's favorite wrestlers. Also a good bit. Sammy's online, of course. He's got that "Where are my five stars?" promo that he's never going to live down (Sorry), but I can't imagine him in these circles. So the fact that he didn't and wouldn't and couldn't know that DEAN was big on guys like Mortos and RUSH, but that he absolutely loved Sammy's JAS run with Tay, for instance, makes it even more funny. 

No, Sammy was not one of Dean's favorites, but in his own inestimable way, Dean loved wrestling more than anyone. And that meant he was going to find every awesome thing about Sammy and embrace them and shout it from the rooftops. There are absolutely things that Sammy does that I think are very good (and no, I'm not going to list them here), but I've written up a bunch of his matches with Dustin over the last year+ and while I’ve been fair and even-handed, I’ve not shouted anything from rooftops. So, though he didn't know any of this, though he was doing the right thing to get heat, what Sammy really did was remind me once again just what we lost when we lost the big guy. 

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/26 - 6/1

AEW Collision 5/25/25

Top Flight/AR Fox vs RUSH/Beast Mortos/Dralistico

MD: One of my favorite lines is that wrestling isn't math except for maybe when it comes to tag team structure. The idea there is that tags work best when the heat is longer than the shine or everything breaking down in the finishing stretch. That way you build up the drama, bring the crowd up for hope spots, take them down for cutoffs, and squeeze as much pressure out of things as possible before the hot tag. But so much of what I believe in is to set up baselines. Baselines are useful to ensure that the crowd has a certain expectation and reacts accordingly, but they're also useful because once in a blue moon you can subvert them to high effect. If you don't have baselines or if you subvert them too often, then you may create sensation in the moment, but it tends to lack substance and staying power.

If there was a set baseline for tag team wrestling in AEW (and I'd argue that it's iffy at best) this match would have done a great job subverting. It had everything break down right from the get go and only settle down into a sort of heat midway through before everything went wild again. LFI create a special sort of chaos that allows for this, the same way that Abby or Brody might in years past. Here, they ambushed right from the get go, tossing Top Flight to the floor and focusing on Fox. Rush pulled off the pad and they immediately made the exposed buckle dangerously important by having Fox do everything in his power to avoid being slammed into it. Because of their cruelty and hubris in not settling on violence but instead wanting to escalate things, Fox was able to get some space and set up a huge dive train (with Rush plastering Fox on the floor after he crashed into Dralistico and Dante hitting an absolutely crazy dive on Mortos before hyping up the crowd).

The heat then only started when they managed to finally toss Fox into that exposed buckle to cut off the early comeback. Chekhov's Gun loaded and fired to high effect. I would have liked to see the buckle play into things a little more afterwards but it was absolutely necessarily. After the break, Darius took the hot tag and hit his usual hot comeback sequence and everything broke down again, before LFI finally swept them under for a definitive win. So yes, way too much chaos and mayhem instead of building up pressure but by starting with the heels in charge and basically trading in the shine for that extra bit of heat and two comebacks, it all still worked out okay. Still, the more they stick to establishing that baseline, the more an exception like this will feel extraordinary and not just commonplace. 

Read more!

DEAN~!!! 2 Day 4: Slim J vs. The Beast Mortos

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Slim J vs. The Beast Mortos

MD: Probably the match I was most looking forward to on paper. It was one of those things that you didn't even know how badly you wanted until you saw the graphic for it. Look, I like Ciberneticos as much as the next guy but sometimes, you want wrestling distilled to its purest form as a starting point and then and only then built up and embellished with every enhancement imaginable. Contrast so often makes the world go round and that's what we had here, a monster of a base vs the most underrated babyface of all time. 

Let's talk babyface Slim J. It's easy to get lost in all the move innovations and clever ways to do things. You could stop and say "Hey, this is a half generation later Nova" and make all the jokes that go along with that. But that's not Slim J. Wrestling is symbolic. A move is nothing but a tool, a piece of diction, vocabulary. It's everything else: the selling, the overall body language, the timing, the placement, that makes up the syntax, that makes wrestling live and breathe and separates it from a video game simulation or simple acrobatics. It's the heart and the soul of pro wrestling, and that's where Slim J shines. That he's able to then marry it with all of that interesting vocabulary: entry points into moves, clever variations, the inventions that others have taken as their own for decades now, that's the best of both worlds, and he's one of the very best of both worlds. He uses his size and resolve and determination to draw sympathy and then makes the most of every opening with a souped up shotgun blast that still somehow seem organic and plausible within the narrative realities of pro wrestling. He draws you in and then stretches your suspension of disbelief instead of disrupting it. It's really a hell of a thing.

And this Mortos is by far my favorite version of him. Yes, he can do amazing, spectacular things, flips and dives and everything else, but so can so many others. It's more impressive in some ways due to his wideness, his mass, his imposing frame, but it's best done sparingly. He is best when he is the center of gravity that others must revolve around and must escape. I want to see him hitting those brutal looking strikes. I want him to catch people as they charge at him. I want people to have to solve the puzzle of how to stagger him, how to push him back, how to get him down. And then yeah, as an exclamation point, I do want him to do one or two extraordinary things, but that's the cherry on top, not the meal itself. 

They got the balance just right here. Slim J would chip away at Mortos only to get caught and stomped on and tossed about and hit with the nastiest strikes in the corner or the center of the ring. Then he'd use all of his ingenuity to create an opening only to get caught again. There was a sense of inevitability here but it was the journey that mattered, not the destination, and even then, he was clever enough and persistent enough and canny enough to just maybe, maybe give people some real hope. But hope just isn't enough when you're up against a wild man bull that can catch you in midair and obliterate you at a moment's notice. The only possible destination in that case is a final one. Hell of a journey though.  

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/21 - 10/27

AEW Collision 10/26/24

FTR vs. Rush/Dralistico

MD: Look, I got exactly what I wanted out of this match. The initial pairings were Dax and Dralistico and RUSH and Cash. While Dax has a good punch and all the personality you'd want and a Foley-esque sense of knowing how to create big, meaningful moments that stand out, there's just something to Cash. My go-to description of Ashura Hara is that he wrestles like a guy with a gambling problem in the best way. Cash wrestles like a guy who's just one bad day away from snapping. In any other walk of life, that wouldn't be a plus. In pro wrestling, it's a godsend. Of course, RUSH had his bad day close to fifteen years ago, a series of them, one after the next, when the Arena Mexico crowd refused to get behind him as an up and coming young tecnico and he decided that the world just had to burn down. He never looked back. All I wanted from this one was the two of them, either with an early exchange or one in the finishing stretch, getting to slug it out with each other. I knew RUSH would awaken something in Cash, the sort of thing which could make him a top singles act if he could channel it constantly without going so method that he was in constant backstage altercations. And so he did. All it took was one little slap and Cash was all over him. RUSH turned Cash into CASH. RUSH is less about big spots and more about cracking people in the jaw. No one else in wrestling is going to do a complex bypass only to slap someone. Only RUSH. What a guy.

Prior to that, we did get Dax and Dralistico to start. Dralistico's an interesting case. People more focused on lucha tend to have disdain for him, but I think he's kind of self-aware. How do you stand next to RUSH as your brother and see how Dragon Lee carries himself on the other channel and not, after all these years, have some sort of self-awareness? There's another reality where Sin Cara became a big star up north and Dralistico got to coast on being Mistico II forever (whether the crowd was behind him or not). Here though? Here I think he kind of gets it. He knows he can walk all over Dax (literally) and then after getting smacked slink off to the corner and tag in his brother to hide behind. I kind of wonder if he doesn't get quite enough credit for his act. Maybe he doesn't stick to it consistently enough, but there's something to "failed idol who decided to go into the family shitheel business," right? If you squint, the lack of smoothness at times can almost be a boon if he's leaning into it somehow. It's the little things. After RUSH redirected Dax into the corner to set up the heat, Dralistico added insult to injury by giving him a halfhearted shove into the post again. It's a little bit understated in a world of larger than life characters, but I kind of dig it. Eric's already the world's biggest Bestia del Ring fan so maybe I should watch myself here. 

I got what I wanted right from the get go, so the rest was sort of gravy. They focused on Dax's shoulder. RUSH knocked Cash off the apron to delay the hot tag. Dax had to really work for it. Cash came in hot. Dralistico hit that wild crucifix driver. They went home strong with the Mortos miscommunication. Maybe you didn't want LFI losing so early into their revitalized run, but this is the RUSH/Dralistico pairing where the money pairing is the RUSH/Mortos one. They more or less got their heat back after the fact. It'd probably be good for them to get a couple of single wins coming out of this even if you don't necessarily want FTR or Outrunners to lose on the way to whatever they're doing. Run Truth vs Mortos, Dax vs Dralistico, Cash vs RUSH (Yes, please, run CASH vs RUSH) next week. Have them split wins 2-1 with LFI on top. Then figure out how to glue together a six-man or eight-man. They can get a few more weeks out of this on Collision. That's the joy of Collision. This was great fun. Now we just need that CASH vs RUSH super libre match. 

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/14 - 10/20

MD: So we're down a few fingers right now. While I won't necessarily cover all of their matches, since I'm driving this thing, I am at least temporarily elevating Christian, Rush, and Athena from "friends" to fingers to bridge us to Eddie coming back at least. 

AEW Dynamite 10/16/24

Christian Cage vs. Jay White

MD: Overall I liked this, though it had one big issue that touches upon something people are well aware of but that I'll still cover in a bit. Before that, let's hit the elephant in the room, the botched interference from Kip (which then led to Hangman having to sit on the floor forever). I didn't mind it. I actually kind of liked it. Sometimes you need an exception that proves the rule. There's a moment in the first SNME match between Demolition and the Brainbusters where Arn holds Smash's leg down so Tully can hit a double axe-handle to his chest in a prone position and that one move justifies every transition that comes from the "flying nothing" of a double axe-handle that's being done just to get a foot up. Likewise, Flair winning the NWA title vs Race with a flying body press justifies every subsequent time he gets tossed off the top, which is basically every time he tries it as a heel.

Same thing here. If there's seven hours of AEW/ROH TV a week you'll probably see a couple of successful interference finishes every week and a reversed/backfiring one every few weeks. They're almost all perfectly timed and perfectly executed. When you think about it, both Kip and Hangman were out there to cause trouble. It sort of make sense that Kip would just be irritating and get involved whenever he could, not just at the single point where it would have the biggest impact and open things up for the finish. Likewise, Hangman was waiting for a moment of opportunity and Kip gave him that. That it didn't work out for either of them the first time made everything feel weirdly more organic (Christian's understandable yelling maybe notwithstanding, but I only caught that when it was pointed out to me). Basically, stuff should not work out perfectly more often because it makes it more believable when it does.

So what was the problem then? Jay White is not over as a babyface. Some of that is just Jay White, right? He's a sleazy, slimy sort of guy, in his look, in his character, in his wrestling. People CAN get behind that, but you have to really work at it. The BBG have been tweeners or just entities, up against whoever gets in their way and maybe that works too, but not if you need him to be over as a face because you've got a roster imbalance and he's got the star power to help fill it. People were pretty frustrated by the lack of an actual face turn for Statlander. On some level, at least White got a moment, but the moment was coming back with his theme and making a save for his best friend, who is also an erratic tweener at best. That's not really a face turn. Then the subsequent promo was kind of all over the place. Christian is absolutely over as a heel. People get enjoyment out of specific things he does because they're legitimately funny and so over the top, but they don't hesitate to boo him. They don't fall to This Is Awesome chants (which are not always a good thing to be lauded! I'm not going to go into detail on this today but it's something to stop and think about). But for this to work, I think they needed to be more behind White. For him to get to the next level as babyface, if that's what he's going to be for a while, he has to do something that's not just in his own self-interest that happens to be against a heel. He needs to do something worth cheering.

So there needed to be just a bit of extra wind behind the sails of this one. Part of that is the nature of the two combatants. Christian controlled during the break, but overall, these are counter punchers. Christian is one of the best ever at coming up with interesting and believable ways to work people's stuff into matches and then to have counters that don't feel choreographed and contrived but like the exact thing that might happened. White's in-ring gimmick is that he's a defensive wrestler, an opportunist, someone who creates traps and then springs them, and while that takes an extra level of thought and work, it makes him stand out as unique. That meant that this match in specific was always going to be a bit back and forth; again, fine, if the fans were more into it. That said, I'd love to see these two as rivals over the next few years. I'm not sure there's much AEW could put together in-ring right now that would be more compelling mechanically and structurally (at least moment-to-moment) than a best of 5 or 7 between these two. I liked what I saw. I want to see more. I didn't have an issue with the interference. I just wish that White had a bit more of a babyface push driving him forward to make it all resonate a bit more.

Ring of Honor 10/17/24

Athena vs. Lady Frost

MD: I know exactly who Athena is. She lives and breathes it with every thing she does, every look on her face, her entire body language. I've noted before that I never really had a great sense of who Ember Moon was. The entrance didn't seem to sync perfectly with the ringwork and she never had enough in the way of stories and profiles to really hammer home the connection. Zero problem with her now. Lady Frost is another story. She's from Imperial Iceland. She has the fur and the blue themed gear. Her moves have icy names. She primarily has a gymnastic background in ring. She's tough, confident both in ring and out. You get little moments like her blowing her hair out of her face early on or her fighting through the pain of the crossface to make one last attempt to escape on the finish. She has an interesting real life story, coming from a wrestling family but starting relatively late in life. But I don't get how it all connects. She'd either be better off committing and doubling down or drawing back and dumping a lot of the gimmick for something more real. I'm sure having an Elsa on the roster could be marketable, but that's not what she is. She's talented and driven as a wrestler, but the gimmick is just window dressing and extraneous to that.

None of that is to say this wasn't good. It was. Athena was totally on, like always, as this existed in the backdrop of a number of things, both Abadon hunting her and the ongoing stockholm syndrome relationship between her and Lexy (and how it's all impacting Billie). They worked the security blanket chain into it as the first big transition to heel offense as Lexy used it to clothesline (literally) Frost. They had Athena constantly look to the crowd and to her credit, she made it seem like she was doing it to gloat and heelishly get cheers, not to constantly be searching for Abadon's presence. I'm not saying it's rocket science, but within the confines of pro wrestling, it's kind of next level to be balancing so many balls at once. All the while, she was working her normal intensity and merciless drive up against Frost's athleticism and gymnastic counters and offense. None of Frost's comebacks were rote; they were all interesting and based on her own personal strengths. Part of the appeal of Athena's matches are that she's able to adapt her act to not just every opponent, but to every moment, always reacting to what's going on around her and channeling the Funk-ian deranged mania. That worked here from the second she stepped out of the curtain to the second she retreated back through it as Abadon's music played.

AEW Collision 10/19/24

LFI (RUSH/The Beast Mortos) vs. Outrunners

MD: I also covered the BCC six man here. The Jake pre-match voiceover deal is a good idea and should be used as much as possible, as I get the sense he might not always be on the road. Plus, while I like the pairing, when he stands next to them, they (especially Mortos) look pretty small. No one's fault. Just how it is. 

This was one of those cases where neither team should probably be losing but where one team really did need to win. That's ok. They went out of their way to protect the Outrunners here. Mortos showed quite a bit of versatility early with the comedy charges with Truth. He's not just a lucha base which is important given that he has a lot of broad marketability moving forward. Overall this was fun. There were bits of Morton/Gibson styled rope running to get over early and then more Roadies strength stuff. Slugging it out with Rush is always fun to watch because Rush has a follow through which swings for the fences. Dralistico was all over the place here as a nuisance to the point where maybe some of the heat ended up on the ref it was so over the top. In some ways, that felt a bit like a Savage/Dibiase/Shawn match with Sherri on the outside or another over the top 80s heel manager, so I didn't hate it, but it was a bit jarring. 

I'm hesitant to even write this because I do like the Outrunners and I'm glad they're getting this opportunity, but I see the crowd getting behind a lot of what they're doing in the moment, a lot of the old tricks, and I worry a little people will see it all as pure, limiting parody and not even try to figure out how to extrapolate what they're doing into a more modern setting now when that is needed the most. I'd ask instead that people see this as a proof of concept. If it can work here, with these silly guys, and still get people behind them, then figure out how to distill that and tap into it with serious, main event storylines as well. Because it can work and it will work, and look at this as a way of proving it, not as a way of seeing it just as something silly that only works in a throwback pastiche like this.

Read more!

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

AEW Rampage 7/26/24

Royal Rampage

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

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

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

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

ROH Death Before Dishonor 7/26/24

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

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

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

AEW Battle of the Belts 7/27/24

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

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

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

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

AEW Collision 7/20/24

Darby Allin vs The Beast Mortos

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

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

AEW Dynamite 7/24/24

Blood and Guts

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

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and friends) 12/18 - 12/24

AEW Collision 12/23/23

Daniel Garcia vs. Brody King

MD: I'm actually skipping out on the Kingston and Danielson matches this week. Very good stuff, exciting tournament action, matches with novelty, but I'm fighting the clock here and don't have a ton to say. I will note that the sheer level of familiarity and physical trust allowed for some very special individual spots between Danielson and Claudio though.

Instead, I want to focus on a couple of other matches from the last week, starting with Garcia vs. King. It was practically perfect. Pro wrestling perfection. One of the real joys of pro wrestling is that everything counts. Hypothetically, every match that’s ever happened can be an input to every match that is yet to come. It's that you can tell stories bigger than an individual match. You can call back on decades of history. I've written about how Garcia's past year or two shaped his run in the tournament, but here that run, and the story of the tournament as a whole, led specifically to this match.

Brody King was built up as a final boss in the early stages of the tournament. He was a monster. Some of that was in how his opponents engaged him, but even in his losses later on, he was protected. He hit his head on the post allowing Andrade to defeat him; for Danielson, it took knee after knee after knee. Garcia, on the other hand, caught between one identity and another, came up short again and again. He's good enough to beat any opponent on any night, but when push comes to shove, he hasn't and he doesn't. Certainly in this tournament, he didn't.

Brody was fighting to advance but also to make a statement, like he always does. Garcia had nothing to lose but pride, the only thing he had left, so he was fighting for that. Pride is no small thing in wrestling, but when it's the very last thing a wrestler has to cling on to, it becomes all the more valuable and potent. Garcia teased just a little dancing on the way out, but shrugged it off. His hair was cut short. He was regressing to move forward into whatever his next form may be. And he got almost nothing in the first two-thirds of this. He chose to start with a slap, to make a statement of his own, the defiance of someone who (much like his last opponent in Kingston) would dare shout into the wind and awaken the wrath of an angry god just to prove to the world that he was still alive, that his voice mattered, that he was worth time, effort, attention.

And for his hubris, King destroyed him. It was relentless and unyielding. Occasionally, Garcia would show a flash of additional defiance, a choke over the ropes for instance, but it'd just lead to a further stamping out of the embers of life; in that case, it was in the form of Brody's noose-like dangling choke. The match built to such moments, not a shift in momentum but instead small meaningful victories fought for with all of Garcia's heart. After getting thrashed on the outside, he made it back into the ring at the last second. He was able to get his foot up in the corner a few times, creating distance, hope, opportunity, showing the universe he still had a pulse. It all built to three escalating moments. First, he stood tall, pride animating a body that should have crumpled limp, standing up to Brody's chops and throwing shots of his own. Then, he kept going back to the well for a belly to back suplex, an impossible physical feat, stubbornly trying again and again, enduring the consequences of failure, until he somehow, with great effort, hefted Brody over. Then, finally, after once more finding himself oppressed and punished by this god's wrath: a death valley driver, a lariat, a solo Dante's Inferno, he channeled all of that hope and determination into a snatch of King's legs, pushing forward as if he was reaching forth towards the entirety of any possible future worth loving, and taking King off balance for a jackknife roll up. This was anything but a back and forth affair. It was a one-sided mauling building to small moments of life, of defiance, of hope, of the underdog proving something to himself, his opponent, and the world itself. It was a match that took all of the potential energy created by Garcia's last year, by everything that had happened in the tournament so far, by King's run and Daniel's tortured crawling, and turned it into kinetic gold the only way pro wrestling can. From a star-rating perspective, there was probably a ceiling on this. As a story that can only exist in this medium, at this time, with these people, it was wonderful, emotional, and resonant.

 

AEW Rampage 12/22/23

El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Black Taurus

MD: I liked their ROH Final Battle match. I did. And I thought it was appropriate for the moment. You often want a big bombastic exciting sprint to cycle off of the pre-show and into the main show. It recalibrates the crowd and sets the tone for the rest of the night. Moreover, it's part of the appeal of new-era ROH, these crazy dream matches that show up out nowhere a couple of days before the show. You wanted it to be as "much" as it could possibly be. Right match with the right people at the right time where they did the right thing.

But... I personally liked this one more. An all out sprint between a base and a flyer, especially two of the top ones of their generation, have some inherent issues. I do think that these two know how to put together a match and especially know how to put together one of their matches, but it's a problem I have with both something like the ROH Final Battle match and some of Gringo Loco's stuff. They're are so good, and do so much, that it just screws up the relative balance with the rest of the card. It even screws it up within the match itself. For instance, both Taurus and Gringo Loco have moves that are so amazing, so breathtaking, so devastating, that they're not just bigger than anything else in the match (including the finish), and not just anything else on the card (including the finish of all the other matches), but almost anything else you've ever seen (including every finish you've ever seen). In a sprint/spotfest, because of the need to keep things moving, especially during a finishing stretch that has to live up to a match that hasn't stopped for a second the whole time through, there's little room for excuse on the kickout either. You can't ensure someone's by the ropes. You can't take extra time after the impact with both guys out. You just have to get through a clean and clear two count kickout in the middle of the ring and get to the next spot or the magic's going to get disrupted. So you have these clean kickouts (and the expectation of a clean kickout, since while these moves are groundbreaking and skullcrushing, they aren't necessarily framed as a potential finish and they almost never actually finish the match in an AEW showcase stage where the flyer almost always beats the base) after things that are bigger than anything you'd ever seen. If Vikingo was presented as a wrestler so full of heart that you can't keep him down (and Rey was like that to a degree, but he was also clever in his kickouts/escapes), it'd be one thing, but he's not presented that way; he's presented as a breathtaking offensive wrestler, not like an Eddie or even someone like Blake Christian who's billed as "All Heart."

So I do struggle with that as I watch. The Rampage match, however, while starting as big as the ROH match and ending as big as it, had a secret weapon in the middle, the all-powerful commercial break. Taurus, who I would remind you, is twice Vikingo's size, shut him down and leaned on him hard. And good! He should have! He is twice his size and more than half as agile and quick. That straight out math means that if given the chance, he could just grind Vikingo down even without big moves and headdrops. Small measures like a foot choke in the corner or more mid-level moves like a side slam are still devastating from this guy! More important, it brought the match down after the hot start so that it had a place to go down the stretch. The stretch was no longer competing with the rest of the match but could breathe more on its own strengths. And, perhaps most importantly, it rewarded the fans for hanging in there and being invested in the match. Taurus, by grinding things down, was taking away from the audience the single thing that they wanted the most in the moment, not Vikingo winning the match, but the chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime spotfest. He was denying them that by being so formidable, so imposing, by throwing around his weight without throwing around his body. When Vikingo was able to come back and hit the afterburners and force Taurus to come along for the ride, the endorphins popped in the crowd's collective mind as well. A reward withheld creates anticipation and anticipation makes the payoff all the sweeter. Is it the match that they would have chosen to have if the commercial break didn't exist? Probably not, but on a week in and week out basis, we barely know how good we have it that these matches have to go picture-in-picture. Thankfully, I'm reminded each and every week.

Read more!

Matches from WXW 16 Carat Gold 3/6/20 - Night One

Mike Bailey vs. Chris Ridgeway

ER: This match never really grabbed me, because they kept showing throughout the match that there weren't going to be any real consequences for any of the actions they chose. These guys both do plenty of things I love, but it seems like their default style is something that I do not love. So we get a long elbow exchange, we get enough knee work by Ridgeway that you think it would have slowed down Bailey a tiny bit (it didn't), and we got a few Both Guys Down moments (which is too many for an opening match that only goes 12 minutes). You could make some really great gifs of all this, like Bailey's big middle buckle moonsault to the floor, and number of kick combos (although I was getting sick of guys selling a big kick by just doing a big kick), and several awesome body shots by Ridgeway. I didn't realize until the tag match opposite Ikeda/Ishikawa, but Ridgeway has a fantastic body shot, set up with him throwing a dummy distraction strike. He lands a couple here and they were both right towards the top of the things I liked about this match. There was also a great moment where Bailey went for the shooting star kneedrop only for Ridgeway to get his knees up...into Bailey's knees! Give me the choice of knees landing on my guts or knees landing on my knees, and I'm taking my guts every time. There was a real nasty clonk sound from their colliding knees too. Luckily for both of them, while they were down recovering from their clonked knees, it didn't actually bother them in the least once they were standing. Bailey's Ultima Weapon off the top directly into Ridgeway's back is such a disgusting move that it really should have been the finish, but by the time it got to that point I didn't much care.

2. Eddie Kingston vs. Daniel Makabe

ER: Here's another Kingston dream match being brought to us by a Europe fed, and this is the match I pictured when Kingston vs. Makabe was announced. I would have loved to see Kingston forced more out of his element and into a mat battle, see how he handles things, see how he brute forces his way through other things, and we do get a little of that. I dug Kingston working Makabe into a head and arm choke and how Makabe kept his hands clasped to force separation before Kingston could take it further. This was always going to be Kingston aiming to land shots and other cruelty before Makabe could take him down and tap him, and we got some good moments of Makabe getting slick single legs and a nice takedown where he slid to Kingston's side and swept the leg. But when Kingston lands, he lands, and the first time Makabe mixes it up and goes for the Big Unit, Kingston hits one of the coolest strike combos of his career when he smacks Makabe in the stomach and right behind the ear with a quick 1-2. We get big Kingston STOs and a nice lariat, all leading to a uranage and suplex so cursed (a beautifully cursed high arcing Saito suplex) that I thought for sure that was the match, wasn't expecting the kickout. Makabe makes sure to pay that forward with one of his best Big Unit punches I've ever seen him hit, really accurately pasting Kingston's chin, and Makabe's figure 4 German suplex dumps Kingston on his shoulder in an ugly way. The finishing exchange was a real fun clash of their signature strikes, with Kingston immediately shrugging off a great Big Unit and whiffing on a backfist before catching Makabe with a backfist as Makabe was going for another punch. I would have liked to see more style clash moments, or fish out of water moments for both (Kingston forced into matwork vs. Makabe forced into strike trading), but these two bring such a high floor with them that of course this was good.

PAS: I thought this was excellent, one of the coolest things about Kingston is his variability. We saw him work as Fuerza Guerrera in an LA Park match, and here he is working like Kawada in a Daniel Makabe match. Eddie is a sneaky good matworker and I liked all of the early matwork, including Eddie with a power takedown and working into side control. I want to second the greatness of the Kingston big punch counter, the quick shot to the ribs and palm to the ear was totally awesome stuff. I love when wrestlers beat someone to the punch instead of just exchanging. All of the suplexes in this match were super nasty, both guys were landing hard on shoulders and necks, nothing was a flat back bump. I also love the backfist as a KO move, and this was an especially great one. Kingston almost left his feet, and Makabe slumped like his lights shut off. Makabe has been on a big run for the last couple of years, and this was one of my favorite matches of his, and Kingston continues to be the best.

Black Taurus vs. Shigehiro Irie

ER: This was definitely stiff heavyweight wrestling, and had some incredible moments, while also having plenty of moments that minimized the impressiveness of some of their best attacks. This had plenty of those moments that are the lamest version of something cool: instead of just hitting hard shoulderblocks like Scott Norton, they have to hit hard shoulderblocks that bounce them back into the ropes and spring back into another shoulderblock that sends the other guy bouncing back into the ropes; instead of Irie using a elbow smash to repel a charging Taurus, they just stood there and traded a dozen of them. You don't need to throw 3 western lariats to win, and Eddie Kingston on this same card shows the value of having a killshot (his spinning backfist) instead of hitting hard but demanding no consistent selling. Hitting hard is cool, but hitting hard sold by standing back up like nothing happened and continuing to hit hard? That just undersells what punishment they're actually dealing.

These two undeniably have a ton of cool tricks, no shortage of cool shit to make people leap out of their chairs. Early on Irie hits a tope while Taurus is seated on the apron, crashing both of them into the guardrail with a visual like nothing I've seen. And I can't stand that they did so many things that approached "nothing I've seen" and all of those things got sold exactly the same as everything else. Taurus has some great stuff, a high rotation powerslam, big agility spots like a springboard corkscrew cannonball, and the fearlessness to really run right through Irie. Watching Taurus run full weight into and through Irie is a treat. Irie has a wild set of offense, from cool little things like his slingshot standing splash, to HUGE things like that bananas springboard samoan drop he pulled. Just attempting something like that is pure madness. We got heavy cannonballs and a perfect spear, and plenty of these two crashing into each other at full speed. But there's a strong can vs. should aspect to this, and some restraint would have made the work pop more.

Jeff Cobb vs. Alexander James

PAS: This had some moments I really liked. James was working straight heel, which is refreshing in a tourney setup like this. It is good to have some character work instead of just a series of guys working "great matches." Cobb is one of the most explosive wrestlers in the world, so it is tough for a guy to try to go toe to toe with high impact moves against him. I liked James dropping Cobb on the floor with a Tower of London and dragging him up the aisle to try to get the count out. I really would have liked that to be more of a focus of the match, but they just went back to a back and forth match after that.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!