2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Brody

I wrote this 15 months ago and never posted it. Another love letter to Darby Allin. 

 

Darby Allin vs. Brody King AEW Dynamite 11/27/24

ER: It feels like a bit of a visual cheat to send Darby out there covered in bandages and tape. I understand selling a beating but I also love the idea of Darby's injuries all accumulating internally, his bones sounding like a wrench in a cement mixer when he moves. I don't need him biting into blood filled condoms every other week like Ken Shamrock, but I like the quiet dignity of a nutcase who has to be compiling injuries and refuses to show them. Now, Darby is showing all of them! His head is bandaged, his ribs are wrapped, his thigh is wrapped so visibly that it's wrapped over his leggings! In my day, men used to start wrestling in chaps or trash bag pants to hide their knee braces, but Darby is now wrapping his legs over his leggings.  Darby, I want you to hide your physical pain eternally, and to only let us in by way of screams and panicked writhing after a crash. I don't think I've ever seen a Darby match where he was doing this much physical selling before the bell, already holding his ribs and hopping around on one leg, and I don't know if I needed it. Not now. Don't tell us.  

I don't think the extra visible tape made this match any better than it was already going to be. But it is great, and Darby is provided hardly any openings. Brody catches the first kick thrown and chucks Darby into a reverse 450, then starts hitting full weight sentons, chops Darby off the apron to the floor, and introduces Darby to various areas of the floor and railing. 

There are two great missed spots by Brody that really move this match - excellently capped under the 10 minute mark - to another level: first, he misses a chop into the ringpost. I'm kind of over the missed chop into the ringpost as it's more expected than ever, but Brody is smart enough to not make it the singular miss. He swings hard and misses painfully in a way that easily could have broken his tibia, but the miss only drives him to set up something more risky, which leads to his second miss, a cannonball into the guardrail. One miss led to the bigger miss, and a twist of fate made that second miss even more special because it caused the production to short circuit. The TV screen went momentarily white, and when picture returned the commentary booth was disconnected. I really like the Excalibur/Schiavone team, but this match instantly felt different and special with no commentary, only the sounds of Darby's guttural moans and the impact of Brody's body. I wish the audio stayed unrestored for the entire home stretch. 

Where the considerable body tape continues to not work for me is during Darby's small comeback. Am I to believe his body is now in worse condition than ever before, as he does his tope and his two awesome Coffin Drops? Part of the big joy of Darby is not seeing how much pain he is going through to deliver these crash landings. I do not need visual clues beyond his own selling that Darby's skeleton is in pain. We all know he has to be in pain, and the imagination is a more powerful visual than any wrapped body part could be. I don't know if I've ever seen Darby come into a match selling damage before the bell, and it's kind of a foolish exercise as you knew those injuries were going to take a backseat once he got the chance to get moving, which is what we all wanted. The tape is not necessary for Darby. Leave that for other wrestlers. He transcends it. 

The finish rocked. They did a great job hinting at the double count out without milking drama from it, and then they just went straight to the end, playing off more than one classic plausible Darby finish in just 20 seconds. Darby is poised on the top rope, waiting for King to roll back in, waiting for that Coffin Drop. But if Brody had a miss so big that it sent the production truck scrambling, Darby had a miss so big it led to his near instant defeat. Darby trust falls straight back into Brody's big waiting arms. When Darby flipped back over into a pin, I thought my boy was going to sneak out with another one. But Brody dragged himself to his feet while never letting go of that hangman's sleeper. That sleeper also could have finished the match. Darby's eyes said that he knew it was going to finish him. He had no answer to two huge arms locked in tight around his neck and head with his feet not touching earth. Maybe Brody didn't want to chance it, maybe he didn't want to risk Darby lasting longer than his arms...so he finishes it so decisively with an over the shoulder piledriver so violent that anything other than a firm 1-2-3 would have proven Darby's T-1000 identity. He is mortal. He just shouldn't need tape. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 2/9 - 2/15

AEW Collision Grand Slam 2/14/26

MJF vs Brody King

Details matter.

They have to matter. Otherwise what's the point? It's worth saying they matter because there is a prevailing undercurrent in 21st century wrestling that what matters is just to do the coolest stuff or to do the most stuff or to constantly pop the crowd.

That's a broken mindset. The art of pro wrestling isn't to pop the crowd. It's to work the crowd. It's to make them feel something and there's so much more in this world to feel than sheer exhilaration. 

So details matter. And they especially mattered here.

This was a crowd starved for pro wrestling on a big stage, that was just happy to be there. This was exactly the sort of crowd that wanted to cheer for MJF. 

And again, details matter, and sometimes details create limitations. Limitations can, of course, inspire creativity, but that doesn't mean they're not limitations. Max just got squashed by Brody King. They had to plausibly keep him strong here, to make a finish believable (not in real life but in the fictional world of pro wrestling), had to do all this without making the crowd start to go for Max as an underdog despite the size difference. He had to stay reviled the whole way through, in front of a crowd that might be more inclined than most to cheer for him. 

Thankfully, details matter if you make them, and here they did.

The bell rings and Max is immediately on. The crowd, which had been happy to bark along with Brody pre-match, get the F*** Ice chants out of their system, accent and all. Then they lock back in. Good for them on both counts. Good for the wrestlers for navigating the waters. Max takes control of the situation. The wrestlers approach one another and he's gone. That tried and true, time-tested tool of pro wrestling heels, stalling. He basks in the boos, draws chants, rolls back in, yells at the crowd to shut up, which of course has the opposite effect. They lock up, he goes flying. Just like that. Right back out of the ring. A brief pause. He could have milked this longer, but decides to give them something more substantial instead. Max rolls back in, kicks the gut instead of engaging a second time. He mocks Brody's barks and locks in a headlock. Again, details matter. Max gloats about beating people with a headlock takeover. He can't take over Brody though. Instead he gets lifted up, shrugged off. The crowd chants for Brody and Max runs into a clothesline as Brody shouts "C'mon!" Just like that the mood is set, with a clear delineation between the characters. There's no going back now.

This ends up being a relatively short shine, so it's on Max to make the most of it. When Brody hefted him up out of that headlock, he audibly shouted. He's going to make great use of his voice throughout, adding an extra bit of sensation for the crowd to get over everything Brody is doing to him. It's not a constant vocal tic like Mick Foley, but instead additional stimuli used to enhance anticipation before comeuppance. Very few other wrestlers today use it quite like this and even Max makes sure not to overuse it but instead to save it for when it really matters, like he's facing a giant of a man. Brody chops him twice. He writhes and keels over. In between the first and the second, Max shouts "nooo!" Brody hefts him up to the top and tosses him off. Max yells "Oh shit!" in mid-air. 

And then that's it, that's the shine, because Brody goes for a cannonball, misses, and tweaks his knee, the great equalizer. They accomplished so much in just a couple of minutes though. It served them well for the rest of the match.

Here, on the other side of an act break, on the other side of a transition, Max starts in on the leg. He slams it against the post, making sure to play to the crowd in between bits offense, letting things breathe, giving them something other than moves to connect with. Brody tries to come back but the knee won't let him hit the Ganso bomb. Max cuts him off with a chop block. Max hits the Kangaroo Kick (as a heel move to mock the crowd), hits a dive, but gets not praise for it. Brody tries to fight back but is too slow on the senton. He's giving the crowd reason to stay with him, is believably staying in it given his size and his power, but the knee's making him a half step slow and giving Max a simple tool, a wedge, a lever, to cut him down to size. Max uses a knee-bar. Brody makes it to the ropes valiantly. They go the break as the crowd starts singing for Brody.

Max slows things down even more for the break, picking his spots, telegraphing his shots, taking victory laps (including his groin first one), giving the crowd plenty to work with. And of course, like any good heel, he eats just a bit of comeuppance for it. But again, Brody's leg gives out and make is able to dive right through it. Brody's making all of this work just as much as Max is. There is strength in vulnerability and his selling is wonderful. He's a huge man with a giant canvas to work with between body language and the excrutiating look upon his face. A crowd loves a babyface who mows through everyone, but they fall in love with a babyface that has a mountain to climb.

As they come back from break, he's able to throw Max out, but he needs the rope to steady himself given his limp. He hits a huge tope but immediately is paralyzed by the need to clutch his leg. Still, we've hit another act break. We're into a comeback. The next portion of the match will be about Brody getting some revenge on Max but not necessarily the revenge he wants (which has to be built to). Max again, makes as much out of everything, selling not just impacts but the associated emotional damage. He tries a clothesline and hurts his arm. He is launched in a back body drop and swears in midair. Brody goes for his second cannonball attempt but Max slips to the apron. That just sets him up for the hangman's choke attempt, but Max is ready and bites the arm. He escapes to the floor, sets up a chair, but Brody catches him first and bites Max's head (immediate balancing of what Max did to him) and hits a cross body onto the chair. And that, finally sets up the cannonball on the third attempt.

He goes for his second Ganso Bomb attempt, but Max is up and over with a sleeper. Brody's knee gives out. Once upon a time, decades ago, we'd see a sleeper like this, with the arm raised three times in almost every big match, but now it's a tool rarely brought out of the toolbox. It allows Bandido to run out, to hype the crowd for Brody, and they pop big, just like they should, as his fist pops up defiantly on the third raise. Just as we've been hearing from Max all match, we now can hear Bandido cheering on Brody, including slapping the mat, telling him he can do it, leading the crowd in barks. 

Despite that, Max cuts Brody off one last time, ready for Brody's (second) tope, hitting a DDT from the outside onto the apron. Max wants a countout win, but it's clear he's not going to get it, not with Bandido cheering Brody on so he goes for a second tope himself. Brody catches him and hits a brutal Death Valley Driver onto the set up chair from before.

If this was a play (and wrestling's nothing if not theater), we're in the fourth act now. The feeling out/establishment of characters/shine, Max's control, Brody's comeback, and now the finishing stretch. It's time to pay everything off. Brody gets them back into the ring at 9 (Max would have taken a countout loss at this point). Max goes for the Dynamite Diamond Ring like he has in so many other matches. Bryce (his ref in almost all of those matches) catches him red handed, just a bit more comeuppance, one that perfectly sets up Brody clocking him and Max ending up on the apron to finally get choked out (second attempt and what a look on Max's face as he realizes it's about to happen; selling). On the third attempt, Brody hits the Ganso bomb but Max kicks out at two. He was awfully close to the ropes and I probably could have used either Max getting his foot on it at the last second or Brody's knee slowing him down a bit more on the pin attempt, but sometimes you need to just yank the rug out from under the crowd without that, I guess (but I'm not convinced).

At this point though, all that's left is the finish. Max recovers enough to sidestep a charging Brody. He pulls down the kneepad, bites the knee. Brody goes back to his well, emotion having taken over. He tries for the Ganso Bomb on the apron (fourth attempt), a literally crippling assault if he were to hit it, then for the Hangman's Choke (third attempt) while sitting on the top rope. In both cases, the knee betrays him. Max is able to hang on to the top rope (desperately, because that level of emotional selling matters more here than ever) and then punch out the knee. Max reverses things into a visually impressive modified tombstone on the apron, and hits the Heatseeker back into the ring for the win.

This match had a lot going for it. Contrast makes the world go round. There was such a physical, mental, emotional, personality difference between these two characters and it meant that there was little temptation of doing things for the sake of doing them, little done just to pop a crowd, little need to try to outshine big spotfests from earlier in the show. They could create something classic and modern and vivid all at once, reclaiming old tricks and painting clear, crisp lines. 

In order to make that work, however, the details really, deeply mattered. Max disengaging and stalling immediately ensured the crowd didn't go for him. They made the most out of a very short shine. They built in a number of callback and foreshadowing spots so that things could be cut off on a second attempt or pay off on a third (or fail on the fourth). Brody's knee was the great equalizer throughout but never stopped him from fighting for the crowd's love, never ground the match to a halt. This was a stop on the road between PPVs, an attraction match in front of a wrestling-starved crowd. They could have gotten away with less, could have coasted. Instead, they shone. They cared, they created something with care, and the crowd cared all the more for it. Details still matter in 2026. In some ways, they matter more than ever. And this match was clear proof of it.

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NJPW Wrestle Dynasty 1/5/25

 

Athena vs. Persephone vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Momo Watanabe 

ER: I'm kind of shocked by how good this was and how well they kept up a certain energy for 10+ minutes. But I also think a lot of it just might have been Athena. I think this was 10 minutes of waiting for what Athena was going to do next. She is pure lighting and can go go go. She leaps into everything at a doggish pace. She hits the mat and people hard. She gets thrown into a fast tope a minute in and I'm not sure it's the 4th coolest thing she did all match. I thought Persephone really shined in a match where they all got time to shine (and did). She had some big bumps and lands with good weight, real good babyface energy and a unique strength spot approach. Willow got the attention of a big crowd multiple times, and Watanabe was fine fourth wheel. But every great moment led to Athena making it greater. She worked into and out of sequences with everyone so well. She's like if Low Ki really loved Manami Toyota. It's electric. She chokeslams Persephone on the apron like a small Taue demon. When she hits the Eclipse on Willow it's like the finisher 2 Cold Scorpio was jealous he didn't invent. 

Willow makes the Eclipse even better by taking her straps down in power before turning into it. You know I am a big fan of Lawler strap lowering and lowering the straps before taking the final shot is arguably the best use of the straps. I love Willow. But Athena is as must watch in a match like this as prime Juvy. The opening 3 minutes was so hot and as well timed as the greatest 4 ways, and I didn't think the energy level could be maintained. Because of Athena, it was. She ran everything together and there were a lot of strong timing peaks from the other three. The finish was kind of silly, with Thekla not committing on interference enough for what should have been the finish and then Momo hitting Athena across the head with A FUCKING BASEBALL BAT as hard as she can, it comes off a bit ridiculous. Like your scoop suplex was cool, do a few of those and give your opponent something to actually sell. What's Athena supposed to do with a baseball bat shot to the head, work a brain damage angle for 10 months?  

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru/SHO

ER: Man this was good. This was most likely Dustin's last ever match in Japan. Maybe not. I wouldn't bet against him. But this was the first match he'd wrestled in Japan since 2010. The thing is, Dustin was never a Japan guy. You'd never know it from watching this match. This was a great performance that connected with a crowd that was seated far away from him, in a way where they seemed familiar with him just because his wrestling style is That Good. He's a man with an improbably long and impressively durable high end career and he's wrestling his first match in the Tokyo Dome in 30 years. It's an amazing return. He shows out for it. 

Dustin working against these two guys is weird and fun. The size difference between he and SHO is insane and SHO sells it as such all match. Dustin is tireless when he needs to be and makes the most out of a total name grab bag random set of career opponents. Do a fucking shining wizard thing that looks awesome, fuck yeah! Dustin's hot tag where he just wastes both of them is the best. SHO is taking Dustin clotheslines aimed at the jaw they both get powerslams he can still somehow give in the same twisting form. SHO takes almost all of Dustin's shit and he takes it so well. Once he bounced across the ring for a 55 year old code red, Dustin obviously knew this guy knew the deal and knew the Man. 

I never got the hate for Sammy. I think he's pretty great. I like a kid who's not a bad kid but also a little shit. A nice guy who is capable of saying something pretty mean to your sister. He does moonsaults with wild abandon and takes the farthest back body drop bumps of anyone on any of these rosters. Does a Good Superkick still matter in 2025? I think it can. If it can, then Sammy has some of the consistently best. Not just in execution, but in placement within a match. He has this way of milking goodwill out of every indie spot that's ever been overused: superkicks, back crackers, cutters, but maintains the timing to make all of them feed well into a legend like Dustin's offense. Kanemaru's moonsault across Dustin's knees looked pretty bad, but I guess if you were in a fight with Dustin the smartest thing you could do is target his knees so let's give Kanemaru Body Part Specific Moonsault Credit here. He still gets docked for not holding up his end of the match with his shtick. Dustin rules. 

Lucha Gauntlet

ER: Good lucha highspot showcase except it kept getting interrupted by less talented New Japan guys who threw the rhythm off. Mascara Dorada and Hechicero were standouts. Hechicero doing his thing within a growing throng of competitors was cool every time he was the focus, but I especially liked him tying up Fujita in knots when they were the only two. Dorada kept finding new ways to deliver and take offense, always throwing in something extra. He kept finding a new way to flip for a kick, and the key to Dorada at his best is he has this way of adding an extra flip or twist but making it look like it wasn't mapped way out ahead of time. His tope into Soberano was awesome, and Soberano was the best at catching everyone's dives during the big dive train. After he hit a tornillo with a million twists, they had him out front and center saving everyone's bacon.   

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Katsuyori Shibata

ER: This was an "Exhibition Match" but I am unclear on what was being exhibited. We know that Tanahashi has bad leg injuries and cannot move, but he has also had many other matches this year which were not just him exchanging chops with someone for 4 minutes before time expired. The one minute of collar and elbow lock up was much more engaging than the 4 minutes of chopping that followed. Meltzer went ***1/4 on this which might honestly be his most ridiculous rating ever. Calling a match 7 stars, we all know that's stupid, but he rated this higher than the Dustin tag and the women's 4 way, which were actual GOOD matches! Nobody could squint their eyes and even call this a match. It would be like giving Inoki ***1/4 for people lining up to take his bom-ba-ye slaps. What exactly was Meltzer rating here? What subtext am I missing that made it Good, Actually, that Tanahashi is incapable of throwing chops with any strength? 

Mercedes Mone vs. Mina Shirakawa

ER: I thought this was a really good Mina performance - one of her best long singles match showings I've seen - but I couldn't get into what Mercedes was doing. She had this weird way of silently emoting to the crowd, a PC thing that doesn't play at all in a gigantic dome. She would silently sell through her teeth as Mina was working over her leg, then sell her leg by doing a bunch of offense that required her to slam her knee into things. I don't think her teeth selling played in the large venue and I think she went to wordless crying faces too soon. Meanwhile, Mina was savagely going after her leg in ways she doesn't do in AEW. I loved all her knee breakers and the way she'd kick the inside of Mone's knee, slamming her knee into the mat and maneuvering into figure 4 leg locks (quicker than I thought she was capable of doing). Mone scrambling for the ropes was one of her only bits of selling I liked. Mina was working over Mone's knee not to soften her up for some submission, but to leave her prone for her impact DDTs, and I loved all of Mina's impact DDTs. But Mone was working this more like a "Things I Wanted To Do in the Tokyo Dome" so she was bridging up to hit the three amigos (feeling way out of place in this match) and then doing offense based entirely around fucking up her own knees: several different codebreaker/back crackers, a gutbuster, the meteora, just a total disconnect from the great match Mina was working. 

Brody King vs. David Finlay

ER: I don't know if I bought Finlay's offense against King, but I bought the way King took Finlay's offense and the way they made the most out of their misses. Finlay got sidestepped early on a charge into the guardrail, a great last second feint by King that sends Finlay into a gross full speed miss...but then Finlay hits that same flying body attack into King later in the match, delivered at the exact same speed and impacting King the way his body impacted the railing. I like that kind of commitment to not just a miss, but to show your delivery and execution is consistent and real. King is great at misses too, with a great miss very early on a charge into the corner. I love the specific way he hit the turnbuckle pad, like a dog who ran full speed into a sliding glass door. When this settled into Monster vs. Man it was at its best. Finlay's strikes look terrible so it made sense when King was knocking him around with his actual good elbow strikes, and Finlay does Staggered By Strikes selling better than I thought. The finish felt too abrupt for a match that had a good pace, but I kind of liked Finlay being unable to hit a sunset flip powerbomb out of the corner...only to just lift and hit a regular powerbomb right after. King made the Overkill look like a finish, dropping down fast face first into Finlay's knee. 

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Shota Umino 

ER: There aren't actually people out there who hype up Umino as some kind of good wrestler, right? I sure don't see that kind of praise, and I see no reason for that praise. This guy brings very little to the table. His strikes would not break through a spiderweb, and his selling is nonexistent. The first three minutes is just Claudio running him ribs first into the ringpost and a half dozen guardrails and I was looking forward to a match where Claudio beats the hell out of this man who could only exist in a post-Marufuji Japanese wrestling landscape. But this guy really has nothing once the actual moves are delivered. He is not bad at taking and selling a move itself, but once the moment has passed he is onto his bullshit. He fights this too often as Claudio's equal, but none of his offense makes him look equal to anyone. He is a less effective Kentaro Shiga, and lucky for him Claudio is good at taking all of his overly complicated DDTs. The one time Umino's damaged ribs came back into play was the only real compelling part of the match: Claudio's scorpion deathlock. This hold won me over the longer Claudio had it locked it. At first I thought it was for a pointless build to a bad Umino comeback, but the longer Claudio had it applied and the harder Umino fought for the ropes, the more I thought it could actually finish the match. The more I wanted it to finish the match, because I didn't want to see what kind of do-si-do reversal of a reversal nonsense Umino broke out for the home stretch. He made the ropes, he do-si-do'd, he somehow won without ever looking convincing in any way. 

Although he did do one thing well, and I couldn't believe it. HOW is Umino the guy who can throw good looking downward strike elbows to the head and neck?! Nobody makes those look good! Here's the lightest elbow striker on the card and he's lighting Claudio up while balancing on the ropes? What is the deal with this guy. 

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: This was the match I was expecting them to have and was a good version of that match, which is a match that I don't much care for. There are a lot of parts of an Ishii match that won't make sense when applied to most other wrestlers, because he is going to take punishment until he cannot. So it annoys me when Takeshita acts shocked at Ishii absorbing punishment. When Takeshita hits the Raging Fire falcon arrow off the buckles and Ishii kicks out, he sits there on his but in disbelief for an entire 30 seconds (!), filming an extended Performance Center tryout reaction because the guy who absorbs punishment kicked out of something like 7 minutes into a match. I hate this shit. Like man if I know he's going to get up and start exchanging elbows then you should clearly know this man will kick out of things and get up to fire off some elbows. 

Ishii will take plenty of punishment and I only find that so entertaining in 2025. He's a nut, this is what he does. He will get dropped on the top of his head on a German suplex, Takeshita trying to compress any more vertebrae that haven't been compressed yet, and Ishii will take a big clothesline bump on the back of his head. As tired as I am of stand and trade showdown wrestling, I did actually like them holding waistbands and throwing their hardest shots of the match, and how Takeshita levels him with one of his hardest elbows after they let go of the waistbands. I hate how we seemingly have to sit through a lot of bad stand and trade to get to the part where "this time we really mean it" but they did a good job of making the shots mean something more down the stretch. Ishii's popped me with a frankensteiner that I through looked great, and was a nice payoff to Takeshita taking an eternity to set up a powerslam off the top rope. I bought into Ishii's lariats down the stretch. Takeshita threw some of his best strikes and Ishii built up to his biggest lariats, but even though the shots landed harder in the last half, I still never truly feel a sense of escalation as a lot of the selling is the same in the first few minutes as it is in the last few minutes. I guess we are supposed to be surprised that it is Still Going On but that sounds like a terrible way to structure a wrestling match. Can you still believe we're doing this shit? 

My favorite little moment was Ishii's lunging back elbow after absorbing lots of elbows and kicks in the corner. Takeshita held his chin afterward in a way that made it feel like an actual real moment, like he got popped and knew this was going to be the first of many. He recognized Ishii's fight, and Ishii made a single shot resonate more than a dozen Takeshita had just thrown. But the longer these things go the longer those shots all blend together. 

Young Bucks vs. Great-O-Khan/Jeff Cobb vs. Hiromu Takahashi/Tetsuya Naito

ER: Man I don't know. Maybe this would have been better if it were a simple tag match instead of this three way tag, because this three way tornado tag format stinks. Shoot maybe even with the three way format but guys actually waiting to tag in on the apron it would have worked, but this does not. Guys appear and disappear at will, and the longer guys disappear the more reminder that it's all about blatantly setting up a bunch of spots that never add up to much. There's plenty of superkick spamming, plenty of suplex spamming, plenty of dives that nobody seems to have any idea how to catch. There were plenty of spots that looked good. I like the way Cobb throws a German suplex, I liked when Matt was struggling in the tree of woe and all his strands of pearls were hanging in his face as he sputtered, and I thought the Bucks staying vocal throughout (including telling the ringside cameras they were going to go make love to their wives) brought something. But the disappearances were too frequent for chained spots that didn't land so hot, and the glue joining those spots was awful. Naito looks completely lost at times waiting for what to do next, and the only way he and Takahashi know how to interject into a spot is with bad kicks to the stomach. O-Khan was gone far too much to make an impression and the Bucks conveniently sold based on when they needed to be in position, with no regard to what move they were selling. That's the worst, and that's what kept happening all match. 

Jack Perry vs. Yota Tsuji

ER: One of those matches where nobody really looked good but one guy looked better, and it went longer than you'd want but only because it wasn't that good. They didn't do much wrong, besides not wrestling a compelling or good or watchable match. Perry has good DDTs and a couple better suplexes than you'd think but Tsuji is a real zero. What's the entry point with Tsuji? What is the draw? How does the Raymond Chandler's Carmen San Diego Zoo Suit entrance gear tie into a guy who is so on the nose The Worst Influences of Edge that he even has a Spear finisher and makes spooky faces? Perry was good at cutting off several Tsuji charges/spears, catching one in a well timed DDT and stopping another with a sly kick. I like Perry as a heel more than I did as a babyface and I think he's closer to being a good wrestler now. His personality is much more natural. I would have probably liked Edge more if he tried doing a Spanish Fly in 2002. After Perry takes the spear for the loss, he exits the arena holding a hot water bottle to his tummy and maybe Perry is actually a good wrestler. 

Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd

ER: I typically do not connect with big match Kenny Omega, and I don't believe I have ever connected with a single thing that Gabe Kidd has done, but I think I loved this. This was a 12 match show and I'm not sure there was a match I was looking forward to less. Well, I knew the Yota Tsuji match would be worse, but I knew this would be twice as long and I knew the show was already five hours long. I mentally wrote this one off, and yet I found myself hooked from the start. Kenny works this like he actually cannot stand Kidd, which is something I never get from Omega matches. I always get "he is trying to have an EPIC match with X" but I never get "he is extremely annoyed by this guy and wants to hurt him" and that makes me enjoy this Kenny Omega match so much more than his usual 6+ star affairs. I also think it's fantastic that Omega is hellbent on not adjusting his ring style to account for his exploding insides and deteriorating body so now his biggest matches have this extra layer of deep pain and human stupidity that finally adds Consequence to his work. 

He bounces Kidd's body on the apron and ringside like he has no regard for his safety, bouncing him off the ropes to the floor, a snap dragon on the floor, and a big powerbomb onto a table in the announcer's area. It's one thing for him to have little regard for his opponent's body, but it's key to his character (and his character is clearly just himself) that he also has little regard for his own body. I got actually invested into him being unable to stop himself from flinging his body into dives and stupid bumps all match while his innards are screaming and his legs and hips cry out for some goddamn mercy. That disregard for self and opponent only gets cooler when disgusting suplexes into edges of chairs turn into unprotected chairshots in the year 2025. Real 1999 Chairshots taking place at a Tokyo Dome show so sparsely attended that the reactions may as well have been piped in. Kidd takes the nastiest chairshot after braining Omega with a couple. He felt that fucking swing bad too, because he sure gets his hands up quick when Omega comes swinging again. 

Drilla Moloney and Clark Connors unexpectedly added to this match without ever getting involved. Kidd's crew of ringside fuck boys yelling around the ring made the side of an idiot getting destroyed even better, and it seemingly made Omega wreck Kidd even harder with suplexes. There's just no good way to take a snap dragon off the top rope. Kidd's knees get smashed straight into the mat and that might be even more disgusting than the neck damage. 

The early shift to Kidd is great, culminating in Kidd kicking out of a double underhook piledriver, with Omega pulling back on that leg the same way he does when he knows he's getting a 3 count, comes off more obnoxious than "first in a series of moves that shouldn't be kicked out of" and I loved the juxtaposition of him kicking out of a dangerous looking piledriver that should have finished most matches, into making Omega scream with an abdominal stretch. Gabe Kidd slips out of a One Winged Angel into a Desperation Abdominal Stretch, elbow dug deep into Omega's inflamed intestines, and it is one of the all time best uses for an abdominal stretch in wrestling history. Kidd going into Payback Mode ruled. His knee to Omega's guts landed harder than Omega's V-Triggers and contributed led to a future where Omega has a few feet of intestine being removed. Not satisfied with damaging Omega's insides, he always wants him concussed. He spikes Kenny on his head with a short piledriver, and when Omega reverses a powerbomb with a rana, Kidd does not accept that reversal and just drops to his knees with a ganso bomb. There's not attempted lift into a convoluted spot, he just drops Kenny onto the back of his head. I'm laughing my ass off about it when Kidd piledrives him again. 

But if Omega can keep his guts in his body he isn't going to be slowed by head trauma. He has been through fights that Gabe Kidd hasn't yet imagined, and before long he is kneeing this man in the face repeatedly. A double middle fingers spot is something that comes off hack in 2025, but Gabe Kidd possesses the exact correct dumb guy energy to make a last gasp double bird from the knees feel exactly like something he would do when he's about to lose a fight. Kenny grabbing those middle fingers like handlebars to drive the final V-Trigger home was the best. Kidd played the best version of his character and I don't think any of this felt like Great Match mode, it felt like dangerous escalation with great big match selling. Maybe the match didn't need to be a half hour, but I thought it was a rare case where the extra time made the match better. They didn't use the extra time on more kickouts from bigger moves, it was almost always spent letting in pain. The way they sold the big move punishment and exhaustion made it all resonate, made it feel real. Kenny wrestles like a guy who is in pain and Kidd wrestles like a guy too dumb to stop taking damage. Ospreay wouldn't have the guts to sell offense as long as Omega and Kidd did, and that made me feel their story.  

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ricochet

ER: I loved Ricochet for the first 30 seconds, and thought he was good enough for the next 20 minutes as an overwhelmed guy whose offense keeps getting lighter and lighter in the face of an unflappable champ who hits much harder. But those first 30 seconds, man. It's always great when a heel jumps somebody at the bell. When I think of a heel team rushing some babyfaces, it's almost always with punches and clubbing arms, almost always as just another way to get into the action. No different than a collar and elbow start. When it's used to debilitate an opponent, it can approach brilliance. Think Tenryu blindsiding Giant Baba with a suicide dive into Giant Baba in the 1989 Tag League. Ricochet doesn't have debilitating weapons, but he uses speed and heel flying to throw Sabre off and I loved it. A heel ambushing their opponent with a suicide dive, springboard dropkick, Sasuke Special, and springboard 450 splash before they can get their ring jacket off, is fantastic. A hot 30 second Jersey All Pro match-finishing stretch as a heel ambush.  

I don't think he kept up that attitude or energy or idea execution the rest of the match, but I also don't think it mattered because him flying into Sabre's buzzsaw was entertaining because he couldn't keep it up. The first 30 seconds worked so well because it could only work for so long. While Sabre's full body European uppercuts to take control felt plan in comparison, that was something that could be kept up for 20 minutes. Sabre hits hard early and keeps it up all match long, and once he started hitting Ricochet I don't think anything else Ricochet hit had the same immediacy. Like he ran and ran until he got a wake up call and then lightened up, hoping it would make Sabre lighten up. Sabre's shots all look dangerous, but Ricochet is still hanging onto a light springboard clothesline, chops that hit lighter the longer the match goes, arms that barely club back. His combos are also too slow, and there are almost a half dozen times where he leaves Sabre waving in the breeze like an idiot so he can do another spin. Had the story of the match actually been "Sabre endures punishment and Ricochet slows the more punishment Sabre takes" then this could have been incredible. Sometimes I think they were working that story, and those were the best parts. Other times I think Ricochet's offense just didn't work because it didn't work, and it would have been hit that way regardless. I didn't buy Ricochet as a worthy Sabre challenger, but I liked when the match was structured around not buying Ricochet as a Sabre challenger. 

Sabre's dedication to believing that being the IWGP Champ means hitting hard and trying to get guys to hit hard is what made this good, and Ricochet did well at not understanding that this was not a battle he was going to overcome and Sabre was not going to be moved off that hill. Sabre was good at reacting to a lot of Ricochet's stuff that didn't belong in the match and turning it into something painful. Sabre catching an Asai moonsault with a cravat feels like something Chris Hero had to have done in Chikara at least once. It's fun, and then everything else is very mean. Ricochet's rolling vertical suplexes going from the ring to the apron to the floor was a lot of painful bumps for a dumb spot. Sabre's selling is almost enough to make it work, especially the way he got up at 18 but lost his balance and slipped back into the guardrail before making it in. Ricochet calls him a motherfucker and Sabre laughs at the idea. I'm a motherfucker? Ricochet, a man who doesn't slap very hard, is dumb enough to challenge a guy who can slap very hard to a kneeling slap fight. It only takes two exchanges for him to get to his feet. Sabre even tells him, "You're back in Japan now, mate." Is this match about how Ricochet has Dragons Gate Mindset and isn't catching on that Sabre fancies himself as submission wrestling Scott Norton? I like that. 

So, there can't be any complaints against Sabre's submissions anymore, correct? I always felt they were hilariously wrong, but if those opinions persist anywhere they only look more wrong now. His execution is fast and it always looks extremely painful. The way he bent back Ricochet's legs for a bridged figure 4 variation, the limb wrenching llave he pretzeled him into, the neck snapping ankle cranks he kept doing. Every strike and every twist looked painful and every sub he trapped Ricochet in looked potentially match finishing. The problem might have been that everything Sabre did looked so effective, that very little Ricochet did looked as effective. Ricochet's worked punches to drop Sabre at the end of the match were good worked punches...but the spot in question didn't call for well-worked punches, they were supposed to be KO shots that each dropped Sabre to his knees. I love a good worked punch, but they don't "work" when they're the only worked looking strikes in a match, and now they are supposed to be dropping the champ. Ricochet's mid-match slow down does set up the finish nicely, as he throws his sliding clothesline so slow that Sabre just snatches his arm out of the air and maneuvers him disgustingly into a modified Rings of Saturn. I kept going back and forth on this. I liked Ricochet, and I liked the story of his bullshit not standing up to Sabre's strong style...but the match story was inconsistent because sometimes his bullshit would stand up to Sabre and then a minute later it would be clear that his bullshit was supposedly equal to Sabre...

 

Well, the opening women's match was so good that I got lured into watching and writing about an entire show from a fed I don't love...and while there were some more rewards there was also way more stuff I didn't like. The Omega/Kidd match was great, the women's match was great, Mina was great in her match, the luchadors showed out in their gauntlet, the Dustin tag was incredibly fun, and most of the people I dislike wrestled expectedly bad. Two great matches on a 5 hour card isn't much of a success rate, but I'm glad I took the time to watch them. 

2025 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/24 - 3/30

AEW Dynamite 3/26/25

Kyle Fletcher vs Brody King

MD: Kyle Fletcher is the most interesting wrestler in AEW. I'm not 100% sure they know what they have in him. He's the honestly surprising frontrunner of what I'm more or less calling the New Heel Movement (Neo-Heelism? Probably I stick with New Heel Movement). Yes, he looks like a star now, in his own way. But it's not his looks but how he carries himself. So long as he's kept away from some of the worst perpetrators of action for the sake of action on the babyface side, he expands and takes up the air in every match that he wrestles in the most selfless, entertaining, productive way. 

He's a counterbalance to three decades of cool heels who refused to take anything seriously and show real vulnerability and at least a decade and a half of selfish spottiness that has honestly plagued pro wrestling, pushing fans away from caring about outcomes and characters and towards rewarding sensationalism and celebrating the means, not the ends. And he's not alone. You see it up and down the card, from people like MxM, Blake Christian, Red Velvet, and Lee Johnson on ROH, all the way to guys like Ricochet and Okada at the top of the card (and of course there's MJF when he's at his most MJF-ish). 

But none of them are managing it quite like Fletcher. You actually expect it more on ROH with looser time cues and more creative freedom and less need to clutch onto every ratings decimal. But there he is, taking his time, basking in every moment, leaning hard into every opportunity to push things over the top and get under the skin of the fans. And they respond in turn, chanting against him, chanting for the babyface, chanting anything at all except for "This is Awesome" or "Fight Forever." In this case, they were going after Callis too and I wonder how much of that was the fan in the first row dressed just like him, but it's still all way more of a positive scenario than having fans blandly celebrate the match simply existing as a spectacle instead of being engaged in its outcome. 

And he keeps adding to the act (which is much more of an overall philosophy and mindset than a series of spots/bits). Here, he had the pullaway pants at the start. He ambushed King and then took the time to really show off the new gear to the crowd, smiling, posing, all but preening, even as King crept up behind him. It was honestly beautiful stuff and he leaned into it 30% harder and 30% longer than anyone else on the roster would have and that investment paid off huge in reaction and how memorable it all was. 

It's incredibly hard for a heel to balance the sort of corpsing, stooging, sprawling bumping and selling that Fletcher did here while still maintaining credibility, but he managed it. Some of that is simply putting him over enough (as they did here), but so much of it comes down to the heel figuring out how to be vicious and making the most of his time on top in a match. Fletcher, in the midst of cracking the code, seems to realizes that it doesn't just mean hitting great looking dynamic offense, but making sure to engage with the crowd, with the ref, with the opponent, with the world while doing it, and then letting it sink in and resonate after the fact. Basically, everything he's been doing while taking offense applies just as much when he's on top. That could be as simple as living and breathing and being the Protostar while stepping on Brody's face. It's showing that he cares about what he's doing instead of just rushing to hit the next spot and spoonfeeding the fans action on top of action. It sounds so simple but it's become increasingly rare and it doesn't just make him stand out, but it makes both the moments and the overall effect of his matches mean all the more. 

It also means that when he does something truly impressive, like hefting up Brody for his tombstone, the fans are even more frustrated, for they have to give it to him, and he's given them nothing to latch on to before that. It means that instead of supporting him or thinking the match is simply great, they end up resenting him all the more, and that he gets real, honest, meaningful heat that maybe, just maybe can drive the sorts of business metrics that had seem dead and dusted, the notion that you want to see a heel get his comeuppance at the hands of a babyface. And of course, just when they had the fans begrudgingly handing it to Fletcher and resenting him all the more for it, Mark Davis came out to take things over the top and push everything the other way, distracting Brody so that Fletcher could steal the win. That he did it with the corner brainbuster, yet another impressive move on a massive opponent, just increased the dissonance and writhing, churning feeling in the stomach of the fans.

Fletcher's become a heel that poisons everything he touches in the very best of ways, something that frankly, we haven't seen on top in a US company in ages. He's gold, and in some ways, he's going to be bulletproof as long he can continue to lead with bluster and live in the moment, as long as he doesn't lose his nerve and get pressured to speed things up and rush to the next thing like so many of his peers. But he still needs to be protected and valued. Everyone around him, from the wrestlers he faces, to the commentators, and all the way to the top of the company should be shown to care as much as he does, in both his successes and his failures. If that can happen, way I see it, the sky's the limit.

ROH TV 3/27/25

Athena/Diamante vs Jordan Blu/Mazzerati

MD: I honestly love matches like this. Yes, it was a squash. Blu/Mazzeratti got almost no offense in. But if you watch five hundred matches in one year, you're probably not going to see another match that tries to tell this specific story. The last time I can remember something quite like this was back during the Mercedes Martinez vs Serena Deeb feud where they were trying to one-up each other. This wasn't quite that but it was a similar idea, with Diamante trying to show her value to Athena. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the story overall (for one thing, it's going to clash with the main roster story, almost like Lawler doing one thing in Memphis and another on WWF TV). Diamante doesn't quite seem minion material, but she also seems like she might go with the flow if she sees a success bully successfully bullying, so who knows. 

The match itself was a lot of fun though, because Diamante kept looking over for approval and to see what Athena had to think about things, and Athena would react accordingly. My big regret here (and it's a shame because I can't see them doing this again) is that I wish they had an Athena cam set up. I'm not sure what the rationale for it would have been, kayfabe-wise, but I'm sure they could have thought of something. And she could have been a corner insert for the entire match as we just saw her reacting to all of Diamante's stuff. Otherwise, this was fun because it was so different and told so unique a story. I love the idea of a tag match where the focus is equally on the person on the apron as it is the person in the ring. It just expands and stretches the limits of the form. It's one of those things you can really get away with on ROH that you can't quite get away with as easily on Dynamite or Collision.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 11/25 - 12/1

AEW Dynamite 11/27/24

Darby Allin vs. Brody King

MD: Darby's an interesting case right now, in general and for the tournament. He's the guy. He almost has to be, right? He's 31. He's the heir to Sting. He's been positioned as the one making the big dramatic over the top saves recently. We're also relatively early into the Moxley run. And there's a mountain between them and the finale. Everest looms and Darby has to be protected but he can't be launched into the stratosphere until it's time. He can't peak too early because he's got a peak to climb. 

Wrestling doesn't have to seem real. It has to seem consistent, but even more than that, it has to seem compelling. I'd argue that consistency is part of being compelling, but I'm annoying that way. I'll also argue that occasionally, a push towards a sort of real helps wrestling be compelling, because the point is to help suspend your disbelief like you do when you're consuming any fictional medium. That's where Darby shines. I have no idea where the line blurs between work and shoot with how banged up he is at any one point. You tell me he's feeling the effects of the worked car crash from Saturday night and I tend to believe it. You tell me he broke his clavicle in a motorcycle stunt last Tuesday? Sure. You tell me he set himself on fire by trying to fry his turkey with a flamethrower? It's plausible. 

That helps, right? It helps bridge the gap and explain away why he, the lead babyface in the company, is going to lose to Claudio one week and Brody the next and probably a few more times during this tournament. Wins and losses matter. They absolutely matter. But it's not math. What matters more is the presentation. What matters is how things are framed because that's how it works in life. This isn't just some sort of numerical exercise. Life isn't quantitative. What's the cost of a win? How does a loss make a wrestler grow? How hard did he fight? I get the impression sometimes that AEW is full of wrestlers who are hesitant to take losses (That makes Darby come off all the better, by the way). But what matters is the way it's shown on screen and how it's presented to the audience. 

Darby was fighting a monster. He was hurt. He'd beaten the monster once or twice. He'd lost to him once or twice. He got absolutely thrashed at the start. He had to fight his way back the entire match. He came close! That matters. It matters if it's shown on screen to matter. It matters if the audience opens their hearts and lets it matter. If you just look at the results on paper you can start griping about how they let Darby lose when he might have to carry the company next year. If you actually watch the match, you know he didn't lose a single thing in defeat in this one and he came out looking just as strong as he came in (though I wouldn't necessarily say stronger). 

Real life things can help. When the sound dropped out due to Brody crashing into the post, that broke from the norm; it was literally exceptional, and it was all due to the force that Brody brings to the table. Yes, we lost commentary for a bit but how could you see that and not even be more drawn in than you were a moment before? Likewise, the looming mountain. There's such an opportunity for that to be worked into the story, for Darby to find what he needs as part of that journey to vanquish Moxley in a way that would be impossible now. It's Hero's Journey stuff. It just has to be framed and sold and presented that way. Wins and losses matter, but they matter because of what they mean in a fictional sense, not what they mean in a real one. That balance between real and worked is all part of what makes pro wrestling so unique and wonderful. 

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Ricochet

MD: This was problematic. Let me lay out the pieces here. Claudio Castagnoli is a monster. He was presented at the end of the episode, chair in hand, looming as he meant to do permanent harm to Darby Allin, as a behemoth. It was meant to matter when Brody King, who he will face the following week in the tournament, stood up against him. He was to be respected, feared, reviled. He betrayed Bryan Danielson. That betrayal was on Jon Moxley's order, but it came at Claudio Castagnoli's hand. He struck the blow. 

Ricochet is a new hire. He chose to come to AEW to be free of creative chains, to wrestle the way that he always wanted to wrestle on a huge stage. He's supposed to be a trailblazer who helped set the current style due to his battle with Ospreay years ago. He's presented as something of an equal to him (him being the guy they present as the best wrestler in the world). He just came off of big loss to Takeshita. 

They both happen to be bald. So is the referee, Rick Knox.

This was the second match of the Continental Classic, the engine that is going to drive AEW through the month of December, something that was a legitimate ratings draw last year. It was Claudio vs Ricochet, one of the greatest bases of the century vs a high-flyer. It should have been a big bounceback match for Ricochet who hasn't quite connected the way he was expected to. 

The match starts like you'd expect with Claudio basing. It builds to a big moment where Claudio, who had walked away from previous dives, catching Ricochet's dive impressively, crushing him to start the heat. Ricochet sells, emoting well, using his face and body language to try to draw the crowd in.

The problem is that they're all bald. And the crowd starts chanting about it. The commercial break starts. The heat continues. Ricochet tries to fight from underneath as Claudio leans down on him. The crowd creatively chants different things about baldness. Tony Khan then tweets about how wonderful this all is.

None of this is good. If it was on last week's Rampage which had a dance off between Nyla and Mina, a ten-count punch off between Butcher and Juice, and Redneck Kung-Fu off between Briscoe and Silver, that would have been fine, good even.

There was supposed to be some level of gravitas about the tournament though. Claudio is not just a heel, but a guy who just went over the lead babyface in the company clean last week. He's a monster. He's not just a in-ring monster, but he's the guy who betrayed Bryan Danielson. If you can't get heat from that, what can you possibly get heat from? What hope is there? 

"Putting smiles on faces," having babyfaces lose and shrug it off with a smile? That's the 2010s WWE style that AEW was created to push up against and compete with, to be an alternative to. The fans were sure having fun. But they weren't connected or engaged to what the company was actually presenting, and what they were presenting should have been compelling. The start of a beloved and anticipated tournament. An impressive spot. A monstrous heel. A babyface trying his hardest to draw them in. 

It's on Khan not to celebrate that. He's celebrating that his product completely failed to compel the audience to react in the way that they were supposed to react despite doing everything right on paper. That's not worthy of a celebratory tweet. It's a presentation disaster. It's failure. Honestly, it's kind of frightening. If I was AEW creative, I'd be frightened. If you do everything right (and I think they DID do everything right here!) and it still doesn't work, what could possibly work? 

I do think Khan is part of the problem. He celebrates every This is Awesome chant like it's a victory. Sometimes things aren't suppose to be awesome. Sometimes awesome isn't the goal. A lot of times awesome isn't the goal. Most of the time you're trying to create other emotions and move people in different ways. For them to have that wash right off of them and for them to just neutrally celebrate what they're watching means that it's not reaching them emotionally in the way it was intended. 

Wrestling is broken. I do fully believe that Khan wants to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. He's the leader of the company and he's, to a degree, a leader in how the fans receive its product. In order to do so, he needs to take a step back and try to think what went wrong here and how he can help to fix it moving forward.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Premier Athletes vs. Kings of the Black Throne

 

10. Tony Nese/Ariya Daivari vs. Brody King/Malakai Black AEW Rampage 7/12/24

ER: Kings of the Black Throne? House of Black was fine, but it wasn't enough so now I have to type out something truly stupid to refer to a monster finally wrestling like a monster and a jaundice-thighed Dutch kickboxer. What's happening with the AEW jaundice tan? We established orange as the ridiculous tan color for two decades and suddenly the Big Yellow 5 feels emboldened by a lax FDA to start branching out into other areas, away from sodas with a high school reputation for shrinking dicks. I don't know what's happening with Black's legs and midsection but something needs to stop and we need to contain this. This isn't normal. You would be called Piss Boy every year of high school if you showed up with yellow legs from some kind of chemical burn accident, so there's no way we should be letting 40 year old Dutch kickers and skinny fat bunny hopping piledrivers get away with it. 

Maybe Brody King worked big in this match due to the fatigued state of his friend, finally throwing aside the middling forearm exchanges and fake big man work for stiff clotheslines and aggressive size. His Throne Buddy's brain is slowly being eaten away as the yellow spreads outward through his tissue, but it's making King hit hard and miss with a toppling big man intensity. His work with Premier Athletes associations was a real plus for the match, taking a great out-of-control-big-man bump to the floor on a low bridge, and aiming a crossbody at Daivari through Mark Sterling. It was a good way for him to stay occupied and make this more of a match. 

Tony Nese is arguably the least cool AEW worker to champion but I like him. I didn't like him in Evolve but I grew to enjoy him in 205 Live when I was watching that a bunch for Drew Gulak, Jack Gallagher, and Oney Lorcan matches before those guys were retired or canceled or canceled into partial retirement. Nese isn't so different from 30-40 other good body speedy backflip guys in AEW but I think he's better than a lot of them. He's good at getting naturally into place for unnatural offense, falls in some ways you wouldn't expect, is good at pinballing between two guys, and is capable of fucking up in cool ways that feel like part of his character. He goes up for one of the highest backdrops in AEW history, has shockingly good worked arm strikes, and he repeatedly eats shit on his 450 splash no matter where Black sets up. People love holding the opinion that Great Sasuke slipping off the ropes only makes his Jushin Liger match more legendary, but nobody is quick to accept missed spots as part of a wrestler's charm, unless it's a JT Smith situation. Tony Nese does these missed spots that are almost surely unintentional but can read like expertly planned out Chris Hamrick or Juventud Guerrera misses, because they're never sold as something that connected and they often lead to his downfall. His meathead athlete Dave Portnoy energy makes the misses more charming, and his first overshoot barely got him a nearfall. His second was supposed to hit knees and instead his rotation is fucked up and he winds up connecting knees hard with Black and whipping his own head into the mat. Tony Nese has the tight physics on headscissors and backdrops like Billy Kidman with the same type of "I kind of want him to mess up this finisher though" charm. 

Nese and Daivari are both really good at getting in the way of Black's crescent kicks, and you know who has spent years gently flying under the radars of anyone offering a wrestling opinion? Ariya Daivari. Daivari is another guy I fell for during the glory days of 205 Live, but doesn't get talked about because his brand of professionalism can fade into the background. He has a consistently good floor, and a style that has always reminded me of Christian, but with less offense and less upside. He's great at using logic in matches the same as Christian, like the way he changed his pescado delivery here in an attempt to actually damage Brody King, getting a running leap that he doesn't otherwise do, just to throw more weight. He doesn't bump big like Christian but he has good selection in bumps. My favorite here was the way he fell off rigidly to the side after a running back elbow. The finish played great: Nese getting his face in the way of another kick while King hanged Daivari's motionless body off the apron in a sleeper in the camera foreground. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Darby Allin vs Brody King

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

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

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

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

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

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

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Will Ospreay

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

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

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

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

AEW Collision 4/20/24

BUNKHOUSE BRAWL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24

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

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

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby/Sting vs. House of Black

 

31. Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King AEW Rampage 9/21 (Aired 9/23)

ER: So this probably isn't a Cool Guy thing to admit, but I was never a Sting Guy. Maybe it's because I didn't start watching WCW until 1997, and the only reason I knew Sting even existed before then was because of my friend Justin's wrestling buddy, which I thought was a knock off Ultimate Warrior wrestling buddy. To be clear, I was never anti-Sting, just due to era and timing he was never anyone I had any real connection to, and it is wild to me that the most connected I have ever felt to Sting is now that he's a 63 year old Terry Funk in faceprint. Old Man Sting has this crazy match formula that's like a one move Bray Wyatt match but not dogshit like those matches. He punches his way through his match until he takes a dangerous fall and spends most of the match he just works Vibes until his finisher, and it's fucking great. It just works so well and feels impossible it's happening, a Superstar Wrestling Legend boiling down Big Star wrestling to just vibes, while adding Serious Falls to your formula. It's insane and it's a direction I somehow didn't even see coming when he was working Deathmatch adjacent matches with fucking Abyss in TNA in his late 40s. 

Terry Funk added a moonsault in his late 50s and it's one of the coolest things a Legendary Wrestler has ever done. "But it always looked like shit" it literally doesn't matter you baby. If you went over to your grandparents one day and he called you into the backyard and said, "Eric, you're going to love this, I've been working on this trick..." and then my grandfather attempted to moonsault off a ladder or the roof or his truck, then I don't think it would have been possible to trust my grandfather ever again. If my grandfather fell off a ladder in front of his unsuspecting grandson I would be forever scared that my grandpa was going to suddenly swerve his truck into traffic for a thrill. Sting has children and now takes bigger falls than at any point of his career and he's doing it while living a life of full financial and personal responsibility. Adding a dangerous fall into your B-Show TV Match Formula is an insane thing for a financially stable man who has lived through 13 U.S. Presidents. Sting is a thrill seeker and an addict and it's made me fascinated and captivated by Sting. He punches, he falls, the he makes a lot of faces until the finish. Why do I hate Danhausen doing the exact same thing? I have no idea. I don't know why I chose this path.  

Buddy Matthews was a perfect Sting dance partner for this, so active at getting his ass kicked around by Sting, taking a break to take his own big bump and make a big catch, then back to the ring to pinball around for sexagenarian signature offense. It's a great performance to match Sting's vibe, the guy taking the important "small offense" bumps while every other person in the match took 1-3 dangerous stunt falls. Matthews gets RVD bounce taking the Death Drop and it's the perfect way to use athletic show-off bumping. Everyone else dies. Sting gets shoved off the top rope through a table and hits his head on a second table on his fall. It was incredible. Darby crashed like a sack of laundry on a blocked tope suicida, hit a high coffin drop, and fell off the stage with Brody King while getting choked. Julia Hart's bump might have been the most dangerous and unexpected of the match, with perfect placement after Great Muta finished his walk-on Carol Burnett Show appearance. It's a great spectacle, with Matthews whipping violently for a Muta dragons crew and staggering into mist, knocking Julia Hart too far off the apron, mostly beyond the table she was aiming for, a sicko landing that left the table partly broken in a silhouette of her body. Sting is indispensable.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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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.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/11 - 12/17 Part 2

AEW Collision 12/16/23

Eddie Kingston vs. Daniel Garcia

MD: In the Garcia vs Danielson match, I talked about how Garcia had to find the middle ground between Pro Wrestling and Sports Entertainment in order to beat Bryan Danielson upon his own terms. I do believe that. I do believe that there's a short to medium term story there with a resounding payoff. In the medium to long term however, I see something else for and in Garcia. There's something artificial and disingenuous about the sports entertainment thing. It's not Garcia's fault so much as it's just an unnatural fit (which gets heat through dissonance, sure, with a limited shelf life) and something that hasn't been fully fleshed out, developed, and defined. It was initially introduced a way to vilify the WWE, their ridiculous trappings and corporate speak, and Vince's insistence upon them. Then it was neutered almost instantly with Vince being removed from control. After that it became more about cheating and about Jericho as a symbolic figurehead tainting the ROH name but without actually doing much to taint it. 

But there's the dancing, right? And the dancing is over. We're not talking Greg Valentine with dyed black hair and a guitar here. Why is the dancing over? It's not over because of the idea of sports entertainment. I'd argue that it's not over in the same way that Nana's dance is over, actually. The dance an extension of a key aspect of Garcia's personality, the chip on his shoulder. You can practically see his aggression and irritation and impatience and insolence channel through his body and into his arms. It's an act of defiance against the crowd, against his opponent, against Menard and Danielson and Jericho, against the world. So for all of his technical skill and all of the things that make you wonder if he's not the heir to Bryan Danielson... you know who the dancing actually reminds me of in its own, unlikely way?

Eddie Kingston.

That's the longterm path for Garcia. It's not some sort of war between pro wrestling and sports entertainment within him. It's the fact that he's the heir to Bryan Danielson and the heir to Eddie Kingston at the same time. He's the guy who studies tape, who loves wrestling so much that it changed his life, that wanted it so badly that it got him out of Buffalo and provided him with purpose and determination after a car wreck that might have left him crippled. He's the only person in the company that can challenge Kingston when it comes to real or perceived grievances. You can see it on his face. You can see it in the way he moves. You can see it in the way he hits. He can tear apart a limb, can go to the mat, can demand every second of that five count, but he's also consumed with an roiling aggravation; he addresses his enemies in every match, and those enemies, well they're the whole damn world.

Which leads us to this match. Eddie came in having to win or else he'd lose everything. Garcia had nothing to lose but pride, which is all that he has left. Two elemental forces crashed into each other. Garcia met him head on. That worked until it didn't, so he started tearing at the leg. If he couldn't beat him by channeling Eddie Kingston, maybe he could by channeling Bryan Danielson. It worked. It worked so well that when it time for Kingston to show his mettle, to show his spirit, his heart was willing and strong, but his knee gave out. That gave Garcia just enough to stay in it despite the hierarchy, despite Kingston's desperation, but not enough to put him away, not yet, not on this night. 

Post match, Kingston said that Garcia had to be his own man, and he does, ultimately. But for now he stands on the shoulders of giants and only with open eyes and hard truths will he be able to look out upon the forest of his own conflicted spirit to find a path through into the light. When he finally does, the Daniel Garcia that emerges is going to be draped in the greatness of the past but like nothing we've ever seen before.

Bryan Danielson vs. Brody King

MD: Quick thoughts for this one. It was laser focused and very disciplined. You can get away with that in a tournament like this when you're not competing for attention on a stage that is both bigger and more temporally limited like a PPV. Danielson came in more cautiously than a lot of King's previous opponents, kicks to the leg. King took over on the outside violently and started on the eye. Unyielding purpose inspired the creation of grisly visual stimulus, resonant in blood and pain and physical peril. There were no power moves for the sake of power moves, no suplex city that disrupts the currency of moves up and down the card. He ground Danielson down, buoyed in part, by the narrative advantages allowed by the commercial break. The power moves came after when it was time to try to win; when that didn't work, he went back to the well of violence on the outside, made a mistake, allowed Danielson to capitalize. Danielson went back to the leg, opening up the body, queuing up the Busaiku Knees. King had barely been damaged, and he's a giant and a beast and proven to be formidable through the early stages of the tournament: it only made sense that it would take multiple shots to finally quell his power. This match had a relatively low ceiling when it came to pure spectacle on a weekend full of it but an incredible high floor in its single-mindedness and logical focus.

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