2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Sabre

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr. NJPW 2/11/24

ER: I watched this match some time last year and fell in love with it, planned on writing it up to add to my glacially growing MOTY lists, but other wrestling felt like it was more worthy of my writing time, more worthy of coverage. This match was in no way under the radar as an acclaimed match. Who hadn't heard about or seen this match? Who needed to be convinced to seek out one of the most praised matches from Danielson's brilliant farewell tour? So, I devoted my energy to other things and now, after seeing Bryan at DEAN~! 2 beautifully bear witness to the power of independent wrestling, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this match. 

Yes, I understand this match is not an Independent Pro Wrestling Match. Clearly. New Japan is the biggest wrestling promotion on that side of the world and this took place in a large arena in Osaka. But Bryan Danielson defined indy wrestling, and Sabre was a wrestler who I fully got into after seeing him up close and live on indy wrestling shows. The close up magic was always my favorite part of indy wrestling. There's nowhere to hide when you're in a quiet gymnasium and some guy with thick glasses is sitting 8 feet away while you're working strikes. It was good that I got to see John Cena live when I was 20, to hear a gassed up green bodybuilder literally shout out spots across an echoing indoor soccer arena, just as it was good that I got to see Necro Butcher fall fully on top of my girlfriend's sister at the one wrestling show she ever attended. 

I fell in love with Danielson's wrestling after getting to see him at least a dozen times live and up close, from gyms to garages to county fairs. Any lingering doubts I had about Sabre vanished when I got to see him give and take seemingly impossible punishment from 10' away, my love fully realized when I was standing in the perfect location to witness him leave a boot imprint bruise on Dan Makabe's neck. It wasn't that long ago when people were saying Sabre was a skinny guy who wrestled an "unbelievable" matwork style, and it wasn't so many years before that when Danielson was spoken of as an incredible wrestler who would never be taken seriously on a big league level. Times certainly have changed. 

I am constantly at odds with modern wrestling. Wrestling has never been more easily accessible, and yet I have never felt on such a completely different page from modern interests and styles than I do now. So many guys wrestle like so many other guys that it feels like every guy has wrestled every other guy a couple dozen times, homogenous styles making it seem like every possible match has been regularly happening for years and been done to death. Considering that, I was surprised that there weren't already a dozen different Danielson/Sabre matches, but merely four, split down the middle by a 15 year gap. It feels, on paper, so predictable that they would make great opponents that I just assumed they had been out there being great opponents for each other during every year Danielson wasn't a) in WWE or b) critically injured. But no, there wrestled four times, and this will (surely?) be the last time. It is their definitive match, and it is so good that noted wrestling historian Dave Meltzer gave it an unprecedented 5 1/2 stars (!), an honor he has only bestowed upon his favorite several dozen matches over the last two years. 

This match was fantastic at being the match I expected it to be, and even better at being a match that could break out into something different at any time. It skated a line between "close your eyes and picture the match you think Sabre/Danielson would have" and "maybe these two are going to go 30 minutes of constantly struggling over every single hold with no breaks of any kind". I don't need a match to subvert my expectations for me to enjoy it. Often I want a match to do the exact things I am expecting it to do. And, while I thought the match was at its most thrilling when it was subverting my expectations and teasing the unknown, I also appreciated the ways that it played directly into expectations. While the structure played into my expectations, the brutality somehow exceeded them. This never felt like two guys working a Dream Match Farewell, it always felt like a brutal match that kept tipping further and further into unprofessional territory, in a way that only felt more engaging the longer it went, with the possibility of either man's body actually breaking feeling like a real thing that could happen. So the match built incredibly as a well laid out wrestling match, while ramping up the intensity appropriately in time with the build. 

The beginning was playful and didn't feel the need to rush. When I say "playful" I mean playful in a way that would rip the ligaments of most humans, but it was playful for them. These two are not normal men, and they are testing each other and it is playful and painful. One of the best things about Fujiwara was how happy he could look in matches. When he smiled about what a dickhead he was being a dick or after taking a kick to the teeth, he looked like he was doing the exact thing he most wanted to be doing in this world and loving it. Danielson's farewell run was at its best whenever he could not hide how much fun he was having, and that pure joy was evident in nearly his entire AEW run. Sabre was smiling and laughing too, but his laugh was more pensive; the dance partner who wasn't sure how far this smiling battered old guy was going to take things. They were testing each other, in different ways, while also entertaining each other with something they each love doing: wrestling. 

I didn't see a single second of inactivity on the mat. There was constant advancement without ever seeming like they were in charted waters. In a wrestling world where every reversal feels like it skipped the move entirely and went straight to the mapped out reversal, this looked like RINGS. It was the kind of matwork where you couldn't grab a headlock without having a palm jammed into your jaw, no way to scramble for a leg without getting your own leg bent weird. Snapmare reversals looked so good they would have been bought as a first fall finish to men in suits watching front row in the 50s. Ankles were targeted, some moves delivered with a sigh of relief, less desperation maneuver more clever quick thinking escape. Sabre adjusts his submissions on the fly to keep Danielson from getting from the ropes, and it felt like a Johnny Saint spot...if Saint had ever worked as a heel sadist. I lived through the era where indy wrestlers began seeing their first Johnny Saint match, and you couldn't go to a show without someone throwing their name into the hat of "who could do the worst Lady in the Lake". I always felt the Johnny Saint Rip Off descriptor was unfair to Sabre, and I think he's been exceeding that tag for a decade now. The history is there, but the ceiling of viciousness was never this high for Johnny. 

The stiff work was even stiffer than I expected, and the worked violence was so tight that it made me question what was legit and what wasn't. Was Danielson really mule kicking Sabre straight in the kneecap, or did it just Look Good? Was Danielson really trying to no sell like Kikuchi until Sabre starting kicking him in the face, making Kikuchi homage impossible? Sabre has one of the greatest worked headbutts, and I also get the sense he has a great shoot headbutt. Does the 5 minute Fujiwara/Kikuchi match from fucking Ice Ribbon exist on tape? ICE RIBBON are the ones who ran Fujiwara/Kikuchi? How could that be? 

Anyway, Danielson's downward strike elbows are maybe the only thing I wished Danielson would have dropped from his arsenal. It was tough to make them Look Good, and they inspired as many horrid copycats as The Lady in the Lake. But Danielson had the best version of this spot that dozens have now done much worse. Here, his 12 to 6 elbows were the best they've ever looked...or had the close up magicians fooled me again? It sure looked like Danielson was crossing a line with them while breaking a triangle, and I loved how he was acting like a guy who knew he was clearly crossing a line. Their off-timed body shots to block strikes felt like they each could have been intentionally trying to throw the other's timing off within a worked sequence or in a playful shoot way. They worked as beautifully together as anyone with a brain thought they would.

My faults with the match are minimal but I think important: The top rope back suplex felt like it was from a different match. It's a 32 minute match and most of it had been two guys struggling against the other's force, and now suddenly it was two guys kind of holding still so Sabre can make sure he's balanced and Danielson can find his footing. Everything else felt like two men trying to neutralize the other, and the suplex felt like two friends working together to boost each other over a pretty high fence. The finish itself was kind of a letdown. I kept liking parts of it - Sabre pulling back on Danielson's leg after the Zack Driver, then throwing his other leg over to clamp it down made me think that was it. That leg looked like a nail in a coffin - but I didn't love the rush for pinfalls, and the submission reversals suddenly felt more like Dean Malenko style Early Anticipation mapped out matwork. When you get half a match of Real Shit and finish with that, it's a harsh intrusion of 2024 Wrestling right when you're about to climax. Unfortunate placement by them, unfortunate wording by me. 

Those complaints aren't what I'm going to think about when I recall this match. This match was far more than that. It stands as one of the highest points of 2024 Wrestling, and no matter what I think about modern wrestling, I mean that as positively as possible. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: DANIELSON~! SUWA~! PIRATENKAMPF~! VAN BUYTEN~! LASARTESSE~! VERNE~!

Verne Gagne vs. Bobby Nelson NWA Chicago 1955

MD: Another @pwoloss unearthing we're just getting to. Always nice to see a new match with young Verne, and he was his usual dynamic self here, feigning headlocks for quick decisive hammerlocks, hitting (and dramatically missing) that signature dropkick, ready to fire back against Nelson's shenanigans. 

And Nelson was full of them. I really liked how he moved in general. If he was going to eat a Gagne shot, he did it by getting caught up in the ropes for a second and then sold it with a full spin. Just full effort before, during, after. When he took a mare, he almost went flying out of the ring. Likewise, when he went for a front facelock, he kept putting his foot on the bottom rope to push off and send things back to the middle of the ring. Little things like that when it came to positioning and trickiness. Lots of sneaking in punches, but he'd sneak them in right in the eye in the nastiest way. 

It meant that when Verne did come back, the clobbering he could put on and the technique he used was more than warranted and the fans went up big for it. The old Gagne sleeper that he used to end it was at a slight angle and looked particularly nasty. Just a good short match up with enough contrast to make things work.

Franz Van Buyten vs. Rene Lasartesse (Piratenkampf) Germany 10/84

MD: Another month, another uncovered classic that Richard Land (@maskedwrestlers) dropped on his patreon from the German haul. We only had a few minutes of this previously, and what we had before was blurry and gripping, a fight for every inch in the corner midway through the match. The whole thing is a far more minamalist affair, with some really great high points surrounding the climbs in the corner and Van Buyten especially putting his entire body into halting them. 

It still has the sort of grueling mood that you'd expect from these matches, with a lot of wrenching at the face with the chain, scraping it against teeth with a yank from behind, but the video quality is almost too crisp for such an affair and the blood doesn't flow quite as freely as one might like. It's still tremendous how much they accomplish just by making every small movement matter as much as possible and Van Buyten's comeback is all around brutal. He's one of the greatest babyfaces of all time for a reason; his body language is as good as anyone's ever, and unique on top of that. No one moves like him, the way he throws limbs and frame into everything he does. That's especially present in the comeback. The finish is cheap as can be with Lasartesse escaping the chain and capturing the flag while getting pummeled in the ropes, but in the ensuing, heated chaos, order is restored and no matter what was written on paper, the fans at least got to leave feeling like Van Buyten was the victor.

Bryan Danielson vs. SUWA 1PW 8/19/06

MD: We don't talk a lot about SUWA. This is less known then their ROH match which happened a few days earlier but it was a lot of fun. I didn't love the opening stretch, if only because I didn't feel like they were entirely in sync. Everything was clean but SUWA was messing with the cameraman and the timekeeper and Danielson didn't really play off of it. He took a really nasty double snot rocket just by reversing a whip and hitting his next few spots; yeah one of them was a dive but I wanted a little more. He did throw some toilet paper back at SUWA after he chucked it from outside the ring towards Danielson, so that was well appreciated.

When they got into the heat and the comeback and went down the stretch, I liked it a lot more. SUWA had extra oomph to everything he did. If he took Danielson up and over for a backbreaker, he went way up and over with him. Everything looked good. Danielson, on the other hand, had a really nice looking twisting European uppercut off the second ropes and a tight chicken wing. When they went to strikes and headbutts, everything felt impactful and was sold as such. When Danielson finally locked in the Cattle Mutilation in the center of the ring, it really, truly felt like there was nothing SUWA could do. That's how you want it to feel. I'm glad @aspiranteanegro sent this our way (via Tom).

ER: Matt says we don't talk a lot about SUWA but I think it's more that we don't write about SUWA enough. That's what he meant, but I think the difference is important enough to note. Because, even though we've only written about a few SUWA matches over our existence, SUWA is one of my very favorite wrestlers. He was my favorite Toryumon guy and a completely unique presence in NOAH, and then he was gone. An always eventful 10 years and then he was out. He was one of our last great punchers and last great heels. Nobody else in NOAH was a heel the way he was, with a truly heel face that everyone wanted to see punched. He has pock marks and could have worked any US territory in the 80s and been a legend. There were so many incredible SUWA matches that we did not get to see, but now we have tape of the other SUWA/Danielson match. 

SUWA worked so well with Danielson, fully understanding what the other was capable of. The match had a great build, making it feel like a really complete match. I was surprised that it was "only" 11 minutes long. It felt longer, in a good way, because the nearfalls down the finishing stretch felt well earned. SUWA comes off so authentic. He's tough, but a great stooge. He has no interest in winking as part of his heel routine. He does not ever show any interest in people liking him. He is committed to being a heel and has a moveset that fits him perfectly. There's a great bit where he toe kicks Danielson in the balls and then does full pantomime for the ref, hitting the inside of his leg and doing one of the best ball sells I've seen in showing the ref Danielson was just faking it. SUWA has great kicks. He is not a kicker, but he has great kicks. Nobody wrestling today has better stomach kicks than SUWA, and his John Woo dropkick to Danielson's stomach looked like it caused the bump Danielson took into the buckles. SUWA has a finisher worthy clothesline and throws an overhand chop across Danielson's face, his quebradora looked fully controlled and violent, and he's so good at kickouts that he made it look like Danielson could still beat him four different ways. I don't know why we don't write more about SUWA. I've wasted so much time. I haven't seen any 2013 NOAH SUWA. There are 2000s NOAH SUWA matches I have not seen. I should write a lot more about SUWA matches.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/12/24

Bryan Danielson vs Jon Moxley

MD: Wrestling is about hope. It's about creating the need for it, building up anticipation for it, cutting it off after every tiny taste of it, and then paying it off at the absolute right moment and in the absolute right way. Hope is everything. What hope has meant to the wrestling fan, both within the confines of a match and in general, has changed over the decades. If we go back forty years, it was about the heel being punished at the hands of the babyface. If we go back twenty years, it might be more about the company pushing a favorite wrestler to the top. And now? A lot of times, it's about being lucky enough to see something great, a match that picks up as many stars as are in the sky.

Ironically, the milestones of Bryan Danielson's career have run the opposite path for me. A little over twenty years ago, I sat at an ROH show hoping I'd see an all timer as he wrestled an ironman match against Doug Williams. Ten years ago, I hoped beyond hope that WWE would let him break the glass ceiling and win at Wrestlemania despite all the odds and all the plans. And yesterday, as I watched him wrestle Jon Moxley, even though I knew deep down that the end was upon us, I hoped that he would get his hands on his enemy first. What was beyond my wildest hope, however, was what the two of them would create for us before it was all said and done. They left us with one last amazing gift, one that has provided me just a bit more hope for the future.

I do not expect to see Danielson in a ring again any time soon, not even with the high heat angle that sent him off. I do expect to see him in the ring, even somewhat regularly, at some point years down the line. I know a thing or two about having a daughter, and eventually she won't be quite as eager to have him around the house all the time. When that time comes, I hope (so much of that, see?) that he returns, not as the Bryan Danielson we've always known, but as an older, wiser one ready and willing to lean upon all of the old tricks of wrestling and to cash in the fans' desire to see him again, to wrestle a completely different style, one that cares less for athleticism and more for the illusion of the same. I truly think that someday he will have a real chance of restoring something that right now feels like it might be forever lost.

That was too big an ask for one night and far too much to hope for on his last night as an active wrestler. What he and Mox managed instead was to show that something else, something related, was not forever eradicated from this earth as well. You see, I wasn't the only one who wanted him to get his hands on Jon Moxley. 8000+ in that arena wanted it too. There were so many things at play. There was Moxley's turn and the violence around it, the build to the match itself: the promos, the recrimination, the fight over the heart of Yuta, the unforgivable offense of Moxley doing this to Danielson right now when he was so close to leaving on his own terms. In some ways there were years of build to this. In other, more tangible ways, there were just weeks. They were powerful weeks, however and Bryan was here in his home region, in an arena that meant something to him, fighting against a brother that betrayed him, fighting over the ending of his story and the very soul of pro wrestling.

And this crowd, a crowd that had already been sated by a three-way that was deemed as "a different level of incredible" by you know who, a crowd that had every reason to be exhausted... this crowd, maybe for the first time in years in the United States, was made to want blood. To expect Bryan Danielson, who has gone on record recently as feeling like he no longer understands wrestling and wrestling fans, to have all the answers on this night would be impossible. But he and Mox did all that they had to; they provided a proof of concept that can be built upon, they showed that wrestling on a big stage can still touch people in the way that it once did, that it can overcome post-modern cynicism and grip a crowd by its collective heart and squeeze all of the emotion out of it.

There was no posing, no preening. People talk about wrestling being cinematic, but I can't imagine anything more cinematic than Moxley rushing right at Danielson as he started to enter the ring and the two of them fighting for every advantage, big or small, as the Final Countdown played over them. You could watch a thousand pro wrestling music videos, and they might all be artful and perfectly timed in their own way but none could possibly move you more than watching the violence unfold to this ultimate soundtrack. It took my stomach and lurched it up towards my throat in a way that I've only felt recently watching Mad Dog Connelly battle Demus, that I thought would have been impossible in an arena setting. And they managed it with a song playing in the background. That’s how deeply they threw themselves into the struggle at play, how completely they gave in to the animosity they were portraying. When two wrestlers are able to manage that, everything around them becomes additive, becomes a positive part of the equation.

Moxley is unquestionably cool, but he did certain things to make sure the fans would never even inch his way. Some of that was having Shafir at ringside and drawing the ref so that she could attack. He didn't need to do that. He had control. She hit hard; he could probably hit harder. While he was going to win the match clean, he made sure to fight it dirty. The pile driver on the table that shifted things from shine to heat was preceded by an eyerake. Later on, he'd rip the tape off and bite where it had been. That's not the most damaging thing he could have done, but it was one of the most symbolic. He took his time, let it all sink in. He jawed with someone in the front row (someone who thankfully had the wherewithal to remind Moxley that Danielson was his brother). He shoved Nigel's headset off for daring to say that Mox didn't care what any ref had to say. Interestingly, he DID care what Bryce had to say. The whole point of this was to win the title, and while he'd choke Bryan with a wire for the four count, he had til five and he used it.

Mox is a different sort of cat. Bryan and Eddie were on message boards, were trading tapes. Mox was digging through the dumpster behind Blockbuster to see if they tossed out an overwatched King of the Deathmatch commercial tape. He wasn't playing Oregon Trail in fifth grade. He probably still types with two fingers. He's not like us in the same way they are, and he can lean into that to be the other that can get under everyone's skin. Meanwhile, Bryan is of us, one of us, the paragon that we all look to, in some ways the very best of us, and as he took his advantages, he made sure to appeal to the crowd, to first conduct and then channel its energy and power.

And to their credit, these fans did not waver. Oh, there was a moment or two where I started to worry. They counted along with a ten count as both men were down. When things devolved into strike exchanges (but one where everything registered and everything was felt and sold) they were eager to yay and boo with each strike. But those were small imperfections and excusable ones. Knowing what to do with this level of engaged emotion is new for a 2020s crowd; there was bound to be (re)growing pains. They came through where it mattered, led by the wrestlers to the promised ground of chanting expletives at Moxley, buzzing for Danielson's comebacks, booing Mox's dirty fighting, as opposed to chanting "This is Awesome" even and especially when what they were seeing was in fact awesome.

Then, at the end, after the expulsion of Shafir, after the comebacks and kickouts, when Danielson finally could go no further and Bryce called for the bell; and then, as the belt was stored away safely by Claudio and the plastic bag arrived, and as Yuta, his own hope drained from him by Bryan's loss, made the only choice he felt he had left to him, the crowd fell to a stunned hush. This was their reward for allowing themselves to be led (as if they had any choice in the matter), to feel one last overwhelming wave of emotion, to be moved by the art in front of their eyes in a way that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, to feel more alive in shock and despair than any performance has ever made them feel.

So they gave me something more than I could hope for and they dared me to hope even further still. I hope that this is just the beginning, that even though Bryan Danielson is gone, that Jon Moxley understands what he's brought forth, the small ember that he has reignited, and can carry the flag forward and restore honest, earnest feeling (not "the Feeling" of 2021 AEW but something even more primal that speaks to the human heart), can bring the most valuable facets of mythology back to a post-modern word. The pieces are on the table. Darkness reigns. It's up to the babyfaces to foster hope in the hearts of the AEW faithful, to achieve meaningful wins even if the ultimate goal is deferred and deferred and deferred until the time is right. Let Orange Cassidy conglomerate. Let Darby Allin be the crow that feasts upon their nightmares. Raise Daniel Garcia to be the centerpiece of a new Super Generation Army of young lions. Lean hard into the stakes. Make it matter. Show that the wrestlers care. If they care, the fans will care. Darkness has fallen over AEW, but within it and through match that heralded its arrival, I've found more hope for pro wrestling than I've had in years.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/7 - 10/13 Part 1

MD: Brief programming note. We'll have Found Footage Friday up on Saturday or Sunday this week as a one time thing. It's worth the wait. We've got some fun stuff you've almost certainly never seen before. Also, thanks to everyone for the support this week (even Max.....). If you haven't seen it, I'm back up at https://x.com/mattd_sc/ now, so give me a follow.

AEW Dynamite 10/8/24

Bryan Danielson/Wheeler Yuta vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

MD: What put this over the top for me was the characterization at play. Let's break it down. Danielson's motivations have been all over the place in his last few matches, but believably so. He's a man haunted by betrayal, carrying the weight of destiny, knowing the Sword of Damocles is over his head, knowing that he's on borrowed time, but also knowing that paradise awaits. Instead of being conflicted, he's of singular vision. There is no conflict within him, only before him. He was detached against Nigel and frustrated but engaged against Okada. Here he was consumed by the need to punish Claudio for his transgressions. Yuta's the opposite, a six man champion at odds with his partners, split between two mentors. He chose his side but now he has to live with it and it's easier to die for someone than to live for them (and despite how I'm going to end this review, I'm not convinced he doesn't have reason to doubt his choices after having seen Danielson so blinded by rage). Claudio was cool, collected. Bryan would throw himself at him. Claudio is a constant. Eventually, Claudio would catch him, bend him, break him, soften him up for Moxley. And Yuta? Claudio is confident in his cause, comfortable with his decisions. He'll lean on Yuta until he understands. He has the luxury in a match like this. That leaves PAC: PAC just wants to see the world burn. He finally has a purpose, finally has a home, finally is surrounded by people who aren't just posing and preening, finally with people who will let him light the match. Maybe Moxley wants to burn it all down to build it back up again. Frankly, PAC doesn't care. He just want to see the glow of the embers and feel the heat on his cheeks.

It all played out in the match, with Danielson bursting forth, looking away from PAC and crashing into Claudio on the outside, with Yuta and Danielson, in matching gear, with matching dives. It made me wish we had a few more months of them together, that we could see them against FTR or in a dominant 8 minute tag against Nese/Daivari. That's not the world we live in though; this is, and here, everything is coming apart at the seams. Danielson had not been reckless against Okada, not even with a time limit counting down. He had not been reckless against Nigel, no matter how badly McGuinness deserved it. Here though, he was nothing but reckless. Yuta was poised, focused, driven, and locked PAC in the Cattle Mutilation. Claudio casually, patiently walked over and broke the hold. Danielson was incensed. He dove at Claudio once more, but this time Claudio caught him.

With Danielson Neutralized (literally) on the floor, the dynamic changed. Now Yuta had to live with his decision in the most painful of ways, as a face-in-peril with a partner who had, for all intents and purposes, taken himself out of the match. He fought valiantly, but the odds were against him. Even if Claudio wasn't actively trying to hurt him, that didn't mean he couldn't punish him, couldn't teach him a lesson, and PAC, who lately has been wielding a hug like another man might wield a battle axe, well.. he had no qualms about hurting Yuta: lesson, punishment, none of the above; it was all good to him. But Yuta fought on, even made it to the corner, made it to the corner only to find Bryan not there, not yet recovered.

It was a moment of heartbreak, a stark, symbolic reminder of what is ahead of us all. Pretty soon, Bryan will not be there. Maybe he beats Moxley, but if you watched him here, driven by rage, out of balance for the first time since the Eddie Kingston match earlier this year where he found peace in defeat... you don't get the sense that he can beat Moxley. You can't beat Jon Moxley with the World Title on the line with rage. There's not enough rage in the world for that. Maybe he's lying about his injury. He does that, right? I don't think he is. What I think is that after Wrestledream, we won't see Bryan Danielson for a good long while. We're going to reach out for that tag on a Wednesday Night in cold, dark December, like we've been able to do for the last three years, and he's not going to be there.

So Yuta crumbled, suffered. Hope started to leave him. Then he felt it, the hand come down upon his back, a tag so blind that he couldn't even have imagined its arrival. Because that's the thing, for those of us who have known the love of pro wrestling in this century, Bryan Danielson will always be there. He's part of what it means for us to love this, whether it's him helping to define a brand new style in the early 00s, him demanding the full five count from a ref, him kicking someone's head in, him bursting through glass ceilings that were supposed to be impenetrable, him goofing around (on a Saturday morning kid's show, on the JBL and Cole show as the Dazzler, or at a Dark taping in a lucha mask), or him defining his last year of pro wrestling by facing every compelling opponent imaginable, he's never going to be far from our memories of pro wrestling, and I speak for everyone reading this that we think about pro wrestling way too much.

So some day a few months from now when things seem bleak in the dead of winter, you're going to take a breath, pull up some random ECCW match on YouTube, or find the 2/3 falls Sheamus match from Extreme Rules 2011, or hop onto Honor Club and watch him against Morishima, or HOPEFULLY by that point, be able to watch the RUSH match from Dynamite on Max. And you'll feel that slap on the back, and he'll tag in, and you'll get twenty minutes where everything feels just a little bit better, because that's the power of pro wrestling, and no one who made his home primarily in this current century of ours could wield it quite like Bryan Danielson.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/30 - 10/6

MD: Brief note to start. For those who came to the blog through Twitter, yes, I got DMCA'd to oblivion by TV Asahi. I had a few strikes already from when I was first figuring things out, having initially not thought that 40 year old Inoki gifs were going to be an issue, but I had straightened up and was being more careful. What ultimately did me in was a handheld (a fancam, someone's personal recording from a show that has since been disseminated through fan circles) of a 1983 match, which does not seem like something that would be at all claimable. But here we are. I've an e-mail out to them. I am not expecting much. I'll make a call by Thursday on what I'm doing next. I've seen both kindness and indignation from people and both are pushing me towards dusting off and picking back up anew by the end of the week, but we'll see. The good news is that we have a blog and they can't shut me up here. For now, if anyone wants to let people know this week's AEW reviews are up, posting a link couldn't hurt! Thanks. - Matt

(UPDATE: I am over at https://x.com/mattd_sc/ now)

AEW Dynamite 10/2/24

Bryan Danielson vs Kazuchika Okada

MD: Believe it or not, I have been accused over the years of reading too much into pro wrestling. I've heard first-hand or second-hand that "they were just listening to the crowd" and no great thought was put into sequence a or match b. The great thing about art is that those things don’t have to matter. You can read into it any number of ways no matter the author's intent. You can dig at subconscious strands and universal themes. You can connect dots that were never meant to be connected. Sometimes that gets you deep into the seas of lore, annoying everyone around you. Sometimes it means your expectations go through the roof when they really shouldn't, ultimately doing yourself and the wrestlers both a disservice.

Some wrestlers are so good and have such a track record that you can walk on air so long as you don't look down. Bryan Danielson is one of those wrestlers. And you know what? I'm going to take a nice casual stroll off a ledge here. Why? Well, look, it's possible that Danielson finds some way to triumph over Jon Moxley and they blow things off in December or even later. It's possible that he's lying to us and he doesn't need surgery. It's possible that he does but he recovers quickly and gets to make a special appearance for a match at one of the big shows early next year. Lots of things are possible. All that's for certain right now is that we have next week's tag and the match vs Moxley. That's it. Even this match was a bonus that felt like it came out of nowhere and existed outside of the Mox vs Danielson storyline. So I'm going to have a little bit of fun with it and will ask for just a bit of your patience.

Let's break down Danielson's reasons for wanting this match. He could attack Moxley at the end of a match, sure. But Moxley isn't just a serial killer or movie monster. He's not just an underhanded jerk who wants money. There's some ideology behind it all. We're only starting to see it. Part of it, however, was to take autonomy away from Danielson, to define his reign as he means to define the fate of the belt henceforth. Danielson, here, decided to push back against that in the most decadent way possible, by naming an opponent here so close to the PPV and having a rubber match against Okada.

The match ended up under Continental rules for the first twenty minutes alone, a way to protect Okada to a degree (as he would smartly retain his title) and put over the different aspect of the belt. And for much of those twenty minutes (after an initial title match feeling out process), Okada wrestled cautiously, defensively. What was interesting to me is that Danielson didn't press nearly as hard as I would have expected him to. It was only in the last minute or so that he pushed, leading to the nice fakeout of him hitting the Knee only for Okada to roll out of the ring as time expired.

Let's play with that. Why didn't he push? Maybe he didn't push because he didn't actually want the Continental Championship. He demanded the match, had his reasons for it, but likely didn't control the stipulations. He knew about the Continental Championship. He had been one of the driving forces behind the creation of the C2 last year. He knew that if he won the Championship, no matter what happened with the World Title and Moxley, he would be obliged to defend it in the grueling tournament later this year. It was never his intention to win the title. He respected the tournament, revered it even, and he wouldn't want to let the fans and the company down, but he also didn't necessarily want the weight of it hanging over him. That would take away his freedom to call his own shots and finish on his own terms. It's a little counter-intuitive and certainly nothing that the announcers picked up upon, but if you watch how he wrestled and how he didn't press, if you squint, you can kind of see it.

If he didn't want the Continental Title, what did he want? He wanted to draw Okada out. He didn't want the underhanded cheater, the coasting heel. He wanted a warrior. He wanted the person who faced him twice so far, not the version of Okada (entertaining as he might be) that we've seen in AEW so far. Okada simply wasn't giving him that for the first twenty minutes of the match; he was too focused on retaining his belt, through hook or crook. At the same time, Danielson couldn't let Okada overly goad him because Bryan DID want to keep his title, because retaining the World Title was the path to fighting Moxley. Therefore, he had to endure Okada's defensive strategy, take the damage that went along with it, and wait things out until he could have the battle he actually wanted. It was only in the last minute of the initial period that he got caught up in the moment and almost accidentally won the Continental Title.

So do I think that was the intent. Nope. Could you read it from the text as presented and the characters as we know them in their current storylines? Absolutely. Is it primarily due to the richness of Bryan Danielson's work that we can do so? Yes. Yes (Yes), it is. Am I going to leave this write up at that? Mostly, I'm around 900 words already, not that anyone's counting, and unlike the service you get from other writers/critics, I don't rate or rank anything. No stars. I'm not even ranking this vs the other two Danielson vs Okada matches. I get to leave it as is... except, I guess I have one more (Columbo-esque) question that I unfortunately can’t leave unasked.

Is what we were actually presented as good as the story that I laid out in the paragraphs above through gluing together some unlikely (but plausible!) and disparate (but existing) dots? Is the match still as good if what I just said wasn't true and if the more likely, more straightforward possibilities/intentions were instead the truth? No. Sorry. That urgency just wasn't there. Danielson didn't get goaded into mistakes made because he was urgent. Okada was wrestling one match. Danielson was wrestling another. It didn't come together in the way it should have.

Unless you squint. If you squint, well then it was a hell of a thing. If we have only two more full-time Danielson matches after this, well, just this once, I'm going to squint and it's okay if you do too.

ROH TV 10/3/24

Dustin Rhodes/Marshall Von Erich/Ross Von Erich vs Tony Nese/Ariya Daivari/Mark Sterling

MD: I wrote a few days ago (and then reposted it here) about how some of the old ways need to come back, and I meant it, and this match was reminiscent of Heenan teaming with his family in 83 AWA for very entertaining matches. And this, I think, was an entertaining match that was worked well. The problem is that Sterling just isn't credible. It's not his fault. He works hard, tries a number of different things, is sufficiently irritating and punchable. He even goes the extra mile with some very well crafted, clever social media videos. But those are only for people that seek them out, basically. 

The bigger issue is that his guys don't win, not even on ROH. On Dark, they won. Nese didn't get big wins over big wrestlers, but he came off as dangerous enough with the shot in the corner and the pumphandle pile driver. He's absolutely selfless in the ring, willing to be one of the rawest, truest heels in the company. Completely unlikable. Theoretically valuable because there's only a handful of people who are willing to stooge. (That's why I'm ok with Saraya sticking around - super solid stooging, even if maybe they should stop using her husband's theme song and think of the optics of everything a bit more. AEW doesn't have as many comparative advantages vs 2024 WWE as it did vs 2019 WWE as the latter was a trash fire, but one that remains is to be more moral and progressive). As noted, Sterling did just about everything right here, but it wasn't getting the reactions it should. The fans only woke up when Dustin worked the corner with big slaps on the turnbuckles. They use the Premier Athletes almost every week. There should really be some way to fix this, even if it's just making Woods seem like more of a protected threat within each match and the other guys be the ones who lose the offense. Like Gordy with the Freebirds maybe? I'm glad they gave Sterling an opportunity in his homestate but for a guy doing everything right in there, this all should have been more heated.

AEW Collision 10/5/24

Darby Allin vs Johnny TV

MD: This was one of Johnny's best matches in his run. I do get the sense that he probably needs the right dance partner. Having seen him in Lucha Underground and given the lack of heels on top, I was confused when WWE brought him back in as Miz's second banana, but I guess neither of us were entirely right there. His issue is more the dissolution of QTV than anything else. They spun it a bit on the idea that he and Taya are "TV-Ready" and maybe they could lean into that a bit more with the new TV deal. Taya's off with her burgeoning faction here and without the stable and without Taya, I'm not entirely sure what Johnny even is right now. 

The backstage Darby/Evil Uno interaction really set up their match and I didn't quite get that here. There were some mitigating factors. Darby was potentially just a little more cautious after being goaded into losing his title opportunity. That explained the early feeling out process and them starting with a test of strength maybe. Darby usually throws himself right at his opponent to start in the best of times. As the match went on, however, they starting showing some of the aggression (or maybe we should call it counter-aggression) that he should be inspiring in everyone he faces right now in the arms war against Moxley and his ideology. 

Things got pretty wild. The Russian Legsweep off the apron was not something you see every day. Likewise Johnny's spinning Splash Mountain Full Nelson Slam or whatever the heck that thing was. Just by his nature Darby opens up opportunities. And the Coffin Drop at the end was to a standing opponent (a Coffin Drop Press) which you never see end a match like this. So it got there, and you can argue away why it didn't start there. This was clearly put together for the challenge at the end though. And while that's ok, story after the fact isn't as good as story before, during, AND after the fact. 

Read more!

2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Hechicero vs. Danielson

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero AEW Collision 2/3/24

ER: One of the things I really love about AEW, is that a guy like Hechicero can unexpectedly show up 5 years into the whole thing and get placed directly into a match where he gets to spin off into his thing more than maybe any time since I called him Rey Hechicero. I don't think I ever stopped calling him Rey Hechicero. We wrote a ton about Hechicero in the 2010s. I was enough of a maniac to write up weekly episodes of more than one CMLL TV show, and Phil and I were adding Hechicero matches from all over Mexico to our 2014 MOTY List. It felt like I was writing about Hechicero literally every week, because I was. And now 10 years later, there's a fed that can bring him in and let him get a whole new bunch of people addicted the way he hooked us. Honestly, I don't know of a match where Hechicero does go off into his thing more than this one. This was the one big singles match in his entire AEW run (so far?) that was allowed to Deliver. This was the match the most people wanted to see, and it delivered in a way that even those who knew what Hechicero was capable of couldn't have anticipated. 

I didn't go into this match expecting anything, really, but I didn't expect it to be such a Hechicero match. This whole thing felt designed to make Hechicero a star which is pretty incredible. I don't think there are any actual plans to bring in and use Hechicero on a regular basis, and the idea of bringing a guy in who is Not Yours just to make him look like a superstar and then hang around to wrestle AEW Miz is a weird mainstream wrestling thing that never would have happened before AEW. This was not Hechicero working a Danielson match. This was Danielson trying to work a Danielson match but instead being constantly foiled and taken for a ride by Hechicero until barely escaping with a win. Danielson looked like a guy who knew he escaped with a win. That's cool as hell. 

I love how Hechicero had an answer for all of the Danielson stuff, as if during all these years of Danielson talking about wrestling Blue Panther, Hechicero was actually doing the same and preparing to wrestle Danielson. If he didn't have an answer for it, he calmly withstood it. He walked through kicks and backed him down while also working two steps ahead of him on the mat. When Danielson started realizing his shit wasn't working - maybe after Hechicero held onto Danielson's ankle during a surfboard escape and crept into his own rolling surfboard and then later surfboard wheeled him into a rear naked choke - Danielson just started punching him a lot, and even that didn't work. Hechicero just withstood, forcing Danielson to go to more punches and headbutts. The knot he tied Danielson up in after snaring him on a missed diving headbutt was getting so painful that it looked like a spot that was actually getting away from Danielson, like Hechicero came into the Rio Grande Valley and started shooting. 

Hechicero has such explosive violence on all of his impact spots. I don't know if Danielson has done a Busaiku knee as well as the Average Hechicero Running Knee. Hechicero mangling his way through Danielson with a flying knee as a means to hook a sleeperhold from the apron is as violent as Bill Dundee's best clotheslines yanked into a sleeper. The way that he keeps twisting Danielson into different llave stretches takes me right back to that space when I was getting fully into lucha 25 years ago and branching out into older and indy lucha. Bihari's Skayde video, seeing IWRG Negro Navarro, Solar matches; Hechicero always brings that feeling but combines it with Shocker's charisma and movement and impact. Shocker was one of those guys whose best years coincided with my favorite wrestling years, where I was tape trading more than ever and seeing more new things than ever. Hechicero has the physical spark of those best years of Shocker, while also feeling like at all times older man Negro Navarro. His final roll through three different submissions and two different pinning combinations, with his arms and legs moving for constantly better and contrasting positioning, was brilliant. It's the kind of fun twisting lucha that you'd find on a 4 minute YouTube video inappropriately scored by something off Tool's Lateralus. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/23 - 9/29 Part 1

AEW Dynamite Grand Slam 9/25/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness

MD: Nigel McGuinness has long dreamed an impossible dream. His career did not end on his terms. He sat on the sidelines, first figuratively and then literally as a commentator, as his peers, many of them even a few years his junior, rose to levels of success that they could have only previously imagined. It could have been him. It should have been him. Not only was it not him, to earn a livelihood, he had to sit and watch every moment of it, to try to translate it for the layman. And worst of all was Bryan Danielson. He rose higher than all of the others, had lost it all as well, but had found some way to reclaim it whereas Nigel never rose and never reclaimed. Yet through perseverance and persistence, through a dogged single-mindedness that never wavered, Nigel both created and seized opportunity. There was no level he would not stoop to, no insult he might leave unsaid. Just as Jon Moxley had goaded Darby Allin, Nigel found his way to the matchmaker's ear and suggested to him a match that would be irresistible to any Ring of Honor fan, Bryan Danielson vs Nigel McGuinness one last time, on the grand stage of Grand Slam, an unplanned, unexpected stop on the path of Danielson's final countdown. If Danielson wasn't cleared, Nigel would get an empty victory that would still fill his belly. If he was, then he was hurt and vulnerable, a prime victim. Either way, everything was coming up Nigel. This was one last chance to right the wrongs, to take everything that he deserved, to show the world that somewhere along the line, history itself had gotten off track. It was his dream.

And Bryan Danielson did not care. Not in the least. While Nigel was living his dream, Bryan Danielson was living his own personal nightmare. This was his final countdown. This was the end of the road. This was his last taste of glory. This was him defining his own destiny in every way that Nigel had never been allowed to. He was going to retire on his terms, champion until someone could take it from him, a true sportsman's exit, a true wrestler's final chapter. But instead, his friends, his brothers-in-arms, had decided to take matters into their own hands. They had betrayed him in the coldest of blood over a difference of vision, over promises unfulfilled and the sort of dissatisfaction over the state of the world that would only be felt by those who intended to remain in it. Danielson had one foot out the door. To Jon Moxley, Bryan Danielson could not be the change this world needed. He was already half checked out, already doing arts and crafts with his daughter in a cabin in the woods. Best to push him the rest of the way and make a statement to the world that needed changing in the process, to do something that mattered in a way that would make it matter the most.

What was Nigel McGuinness and all of his verbal barbs, and his boasts, and his Oasis theme, and the spiky hair he doesn't even have anymore, in the face of a betrayal of the heart? What was Nigel McGuinness in the face of what Jon Moxley was taking away from him, the chance to end his story in a way that would allow him to be the best father he could possibly be? Nothing. Nigel was dirt beneath Danielson's feet as he walked towards the end of the night and his first chance to get back at Moxley. He was a gnat to be swatted away. Nigel McGuinness had spent the last few years of his career seeing Bryan Danielson's face on every wrestler in every match he was providing commentary for. Bryan Danielson, however, could see nothing except for the road to Jon Moxley and revenge before him. In the entire match that would follow, save for one slap, Bryan Danielson did not see Nigel once.

And let's pause right there.

I'm not going to take you through the rest of the match. I'm sure you can find some really good accounts out there of the nuts and bolts of it, the easter eggs, the thought put into it. Despite what I just said, there was thought and care put into it and not just from Nigel. It was a match at least eleven years in the making, an anchor for one of AEW's biggest shows of the year, and it was put together as such.

That doesn't, however, mean that it was presented that way as seen through the lens of Bryan Danielson's performance. Not only is that a good thing, it's a great thing, a truly impressive and admirable thing, the exact sort of thing that AEW needs and everything that its detractors says it is not. This was an indy dream match, fan service to ROH devotees, a wonderful nostalgic box that could be checked, a gift! And it was unquestionably, undeniably, 100% an afterthought to the main story in the company, the title match of WrestleDream between Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley, exactly as it should be.

That didn't lessen the emotions. It didn't stunt people's feeling in the moment. If you followed along online, people were absolutely into it. The people in the crowd were into it. The announcers, though scattered, were into it. But more importantly, everyone was exactly where they needed to be by the end of the night.

That's a pretty astounding balancing act when you think about it. This was the character (I won't speak on the person) Nigel McGuinness' dream, the culmination of a year of him mouthing off and years more of things in the margins. It built on a dozen prior matches, some borderline legendary. And it cashed in all of that to get over the look on Bryan Danielson's face and what was really on his mind. He never wavered, never blinked, never slowed down. He was a freight train out of control heading straight to Jon Moxley, tie in his hand. Sometimes that meant he made a mistake here. Maybe he charged in the wrong way. Maybe he fell wrong. He was looking past this in a way no wrestler had ever looked past a rival before. Nigel capitalized as you'd expect him to do. It didn't make a difference. Of course it didn't. Nigel mouthed off to the bitter end. Of course he did. Bryan marched on without looking back.

There is power in sacrifice. The more something matters, the more value it can provide when put on the altar of necessity. This mattered a lot. It mattered to longtime fans. It mattered to one of the key commentators of the company. It mattered to the crowd. It was a dream match, a miracle match. But in the grand scheme of things, what matters is the overall direction of the company, the big picture story, the brewing war between Jon Moxley and Bryan Danielson, and how the resolution of that war will take the company into 2025. For AEW to truly succeed, hitting those wonderful nostalgic marks aren't enough, being the legacy of all wrestling, from the territories to WCW to Japan and Mexico and whatever else, that's not enough. Those all have to be means to some greater end, not the end itself. And there is a greater end in sight than Danielson vs Moxley, and this match was mercilessly, heartlessly, brilliantly sacrificed to that end. The notion of "Killing Your Darlings" is often misattributed to Faulkner or Chesterton, but the notion is clear enough. In the past, there's been reason to doubt whether or not AEW booking could ever do that given the love of wrestling that ingrained in the company and the nostalgic streak that runs throughout, but there couldn't be a clearer sign than this that it's willing to do what needs to be done no matter how hard it might be. Nigel's dream, though fulfilled on paper, ultimately died to glorify Bryan's nightmare. And both we and the company are better off for it.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/2 - 9/8 Part 2

MD: This was a jarring enough experience that Tim Livingston is tagging with me on it. His thoughts are below mine

AEW All Out 9/7/24

Bryan Danielson vs Jack Perry

MD: This is not necessarily the match I would have booked, but it was the match that we had. And this match had to carry weight. It had to carry more weight than matches I would have probably preferred. It did so admirably, valiantly even. This match had to lower the guard of nine thousand people in an arena and tens of thousands of people at home. It had to provide them with something meaningful, believable, understandable, acceptable, leaving them absolutely and completely unprepared for what was to come. It had to be conventional, predictable. Maybe it even had to carry its own flaws proudly, like a badge of honor. It had to manage this while following an emotional war in MJF vs Garcia, multiple spotfests that shot for the stars, and a physical war in Statlander vs Willow, plus Mone vs Shida which may or may not have hit as intended. It had to precede the angle, yes, but also the sickening spectacle of Hangman vs Swerve. It had to create a mood of complacency right in the middle of all of this.

Let's break down what this match seemed to be and what people's expectations for it were. On paper, looking at just the straight text, the TNT champion, much like the International Champion earlier this year, was challenging for the AEW World Title. Danielson had more or less made an open challenge. Perry was more than ready for it. I don't think anyone thought that Perry was going to beat Danielson, however. The subtext, outside of kayfabe, as it was, is that this was not the main event. Swerve vs Hangman was main eventing. It was a way to help keep Danielson active, to potentially give Perry some rub, maybe even to prove if he could hang on this level. People suspect that part of Perry's push was due to the reaction he got for the NJPW Strong show in Chicago. If this was somewhere else, maybe he wouldn't be in this spot. There was the usual chatter about Danielson being selfless and wanting to highlight new talent, etc., to help support the people that would be there after he was gone, and so on.

So that was the text and the subtext leading into this. Of course the context is that it had to set the stage for the angle at the end while taking advantage of the biggest thing the angle had going for it, the element of shock and surprise. Given all that, they treated it as if the subtext was really all that mattered. People knew that Perry didn't have a chance, so the match couldn't be just about Danielson beating him. The drama and the tension had to come from something else. Here it was Perry getting his comeuppance at Danielson's hands. Look at the first couple of minutes. The fans chanted for Perry right from the start but that wouldn't last long. He was quick to rush forth, to get an armdrag, to muss Danielson's hair, to be as insufferable as possible. He actually won the first exchanges but when Danielson rushed in to try to undo that, Perry escaped to the floor. In some ways this was even more insufferable than if Danielson had gotten an armdrag back before the escape because Perry wasn't even allowing him the chance at it. He took the tiniest of wins and scampered. Quickly Danielson DID catch him, reversing a hold and leaning hard, capturing him in La Tapatia so that he couldn't escape and going for what would become the central throughline of the match, the ultimate goal, to stomp Perry's f'n head in with the hands trapped. Here, though, in the first act, Perry slipped out beginning a dance of denial that would drive the proceedings moving forward.

Instead, Perry ate some feet to the face and Danielson's end-of-career flip dive but Perry rolled through the ring and caught him on the other side. The fans knew they had been denied the stomps, and now Perry would lean on Danielson in his irritating manner. That meant focusing on the neck, sure, but also false ten count punches in the corner, eyerake cutoffs, and plenty of posing and preening. Danielson came back with a huge belly to back off the top and got a modicum of revenge, but Perry snuck his way back into control with the Snaretrap, again being as irritating as possible with Cattle Mutilation and a couple of dragon suplexes. Danielson would even the odds with another huge suplex, this time a butterfly suplex off the apron, but they'd repeat it with another Snaretrap and escape to set up the ref bump. Maybe it was all a little bit long but everyone expected that to give Perry a chance to shine as much as possible. Normally a ref bump is about covering up a false finish. Here though, it was to deny the crowd Danielson stomping Perry's head in once again. Before he could the Bucks ran in. After they did their damage, Claudio and Yuta ran in, which made extra amounts of sense given they faced off earlier in the show. All of this set up a finishing stretch, full of Perry pushing Danielson too far and paying for it, and maybe one too many kickouts from Perry, which met well the suspected subtext of making him look strong in defeat Finally, the head did get kicked in, not once but twice, and to the tune of the Yes Chants, and Perry, all but asking for it, got wiped out by a third knee.

All of this met expectations perfectly. The match was set up in a way so that the crowd got satisfaction not through Danielson's victory but instead through Perry's comeuppance. It went long on a show that had already drowned people in sensation, but that worked well enough with the misdirecting post match angle: Killswitch attacking, Perry having a moment with him, Christian coming down to cash in. Moxley showing himself. It all would have been enough to push the ball a little further. In and out, nice and neat, Christian lurking in the wings, ready to prey upon Danielson's fatherhood as only he could. And how long could Moxley, up to whatever he was up to, coexist with Bryan? Both the text and the subtext were satisfied, closed off. Expectations, both positive and negative, were met. People sang along to the Final Countdown, were glad to see Moxley and Danielson reunited, were ready to move on to the gory finale of the main event. AEW is plagued by Excalibur (through no fault of his own), quickly transitioning to the next thing with a "But what about..." and there was no reason to think we weren't headed into a video package here. They burned down a house after all.

I don't think a shorter match would have worked quite as well. I don't think a different match could have worked quite as well. It had to be this, something people begrudged but accepted, something that was worked smartly and provided satisfaction in the moment even it was a little contentious just how much satisfaction that turned out to be, something that seemed to accomplish multiple things, that set up a perfectly conventional post-match that we were all too familiar with but were ultimately okay with.

I can't imagine anything that could have understood us as an audience more or brought our guards down more effectively. In this, our familiarity and our complacency were our undoing.

TL: As we tend to do with big setting AEW matches, the meta speaks much louder than the story trying to be told. This is (sadly) not a new phenomenon for the company, but it becomes weirder when the meta context rewrites or even overwrites what’s presented to the viewer. There’s little doubt here as to the result, and there’s no doubt at all as to the perceived gap in talent and stature between Bryan and Perry, even with Perry’s in-company position as the #2 guy with the title he’s holding. For three years, it’s been a guarantee that Bryan was the better wrestler in any match he was in; the challenge was always how to overcome that perception and tell a story that grabs. The larger the perceived gap, the seemingly more impossible the challenge. It just so happens to be a challenge Bryan relishes.

The setting had a few things going for it; Perry is absolutely loathed in Chicago for obvious reasons, is considered a failson even though his dad never wrestled, and he’s not above going low to get to his destination, as has been his MO for the last year. Fans are also happy to see Jack eat shit, slip on the proverbial banana peel, all the comeuppance tropes you’d want to see a heel take. To Perry’s credit, he's smart enough to troll, even if it’s the easy way out. It’s one thing to do the Cattle Mutilation to Bryan in a title match, or even do the Snapdragon Suplexes to show up Bryan’s first AEW showcase opponent and the man he usurped in The Elite, but he also does the charging corner lariat and reverse neckbreaker combo in Chicago, which is an easter egg for the sickos and an attention to detail that goes above and beyond what is usually the case for AEW house style references.

However, I feel the best thing it has going for it is it’s a Bryan title defense. For all the types of matches Bryan gets celebrated for, and all the matches he’s had in what’s becoming a career-defining run, it’s become a rarity for him to be The Man holding off a challenger. His last WWE title run was hit or miss save an all-timer of a reign ender, and while the ROH house style at the time of his monumental reign was 10-15 minutes too long on the regular, that run was rightfully celebrated for its breadth and depth given the quality of opponents was so varied. There are fewer matches sweeter than a Bryan title defense; he gets to show off a mean streak when he wants to, his technical superiority, counter wrestling smarts, all the beats that make him the all-timer he is. 

Put it all together, and while it’s probably not the match we wanted for Bryan’s first title defense in a half-decade, what we got was exactly what it should have been. Bryan hit all the beats expected of him; he hit the familiar high spots to harken back to his heyday, laid it in stupendously to the point where he was downright mean at times (the chops, the kicks/knees to the prone arm, the torque/technique on all his suplexes), played to the crowd even when they knew the result was inevitable; how do you not get involved in a match when someone is so earnestly making sure you pay attention?  Perry was given every opportunity to shine in ways that made sense, and on top of that, decided to bump like a madman in key moments. Say what you will about Perry, but his self-awareness has become one of his biggest strengths, if not his biggest. He knew when to stooge, knew when to gloat, knew when to die.

The post-match, though…5-year-old me should have never seen the Clash VIII post match during the awesome 1989 NWA Main Event two-hour Year in Review special when it aired that New Year’s Eve. Subconsciously, it’s difficult to shake, as you might imagine. So now imagine having that deep in your memory recesses, getting shocked to your core initially with the Claudio uppercut, the look on Bryan’s face in a close-up (one of the great AEW production moments), and then the plastic bag from Mox (making it THE great AEW production moment), all in the span of about five seconds. Now throw in Yuta crying helplessly while Claudio and Marina hold everyone at bay while Mox holds the bag over Bryan’s head for way longer than you’d expect.

Yuta unwillingly became an avatar of my now 35-year-old trauma being reawakened. I had to pause and walk away on my rewatch right after the BCC jumped the rail to stare away the Patriarchy cash-in attempt, right when my heart started trying to leap out of my chest. Bryan got me in Wembley by pulling at my heartstrings. I don’t think I can go back and rewatch the match because it is one of my favorite wrestling memories ever, and I want it to stay unaltered. Maybe when my own daughter comes of age (if she even becomes a wrestling fan) and I show it to her as an example of why it’s important to have balance between your dreams and family, hoping as we watch that it somehow grows in stature. 

Yet I went back and watched this match and angle until literally my brain told me danger was lurking around the corner and I needed to get away or something very bad was going to happen. You appreciate the story they’re trying to tell, but what it uncovers about yourself in the process might literally bring hidden demons into the light. The Sport of Kings remains, always and forever, undefeated.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/2 - 9/8 Part 1

AEW Collision 9/6/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli/Wheeler Yuta/Pac vs. Jack Perry/Kazuchika Okada/Matthew Jackson/Nicholas Jackson

MD: Wrestling seems to be the easiest thing in the world and the hardest thing. It's creating a primal connection with people that touches the core of their humanity, denial and gratification that stimulates the endorphins in the brain. It's building imaginary towers, bigger and bigger, creating more and more emotions. Yet if you try to overcomplicate it in the wrong ways or if you don't control for extraneous bits, you lose people along the way and only end up with a ghost of what you might have otherwise built. Worst case, the entire structure collapses in upon itself. The main thing you're trying to do is build up a credible, believable reality while at the same time creating as few disruptions that hinder suspension of disbelief as possible. Wrestling isn't math, but if there was an equation, you'd have that positive element and that negative element summing up to create as much immersion and emotion as possible.

I wrote about alignment the other day and I'll double down on it a little bit here. The build for Pac vs Ospreay has been all about Pac ambushing the likable chap. Cheapshots, denying the crowd the first Ricochet vs Ospreay interaction, walking around with a chip on his shoulder. Maybe Pac has a point but the way that he's going about it is not buying him any favor with the crowd. Yet due to opportunity or circumstance, he's one third of the trios champs, with a group that he had grievances with just last year after their last attempt to team up. And here he had to be a fiery babyface. Yes, characters can be three dimensional and don't need to follow clear heel/face alignment, but they do need to be presented in consistent ways. Moreover, I have no idea what Pac thinks about his partners or how he feels about working with them. I don't have a great sense how he feels about the Elite right now. Here, it felt like a chink in the armor of the match, something that raised questions that weren't going to get answered, that took people out of the proceedings.

There were both structural positives and negatives as well. I'll get to Perry and his antics in a paragraph or two. Top of the list of positives was the denial and payoff of certain elements: Danielson getting his hands on Perry (an alchemy of its own), and certainly the giant swing, which was teased early and then cut off only to come back for the finish, denial and gratification just like it should be. Also there was a very strong face-in-peril segment on Danielson and co. with the Elite hitting a lot of interesting, dynamic, mean, credible offense in rapid succession. On the other hand, you had the big frog splash on multiple members of the babyface side at once, which probably took too long, and had things like Okada hanging on to the much stronger and not all that damaged Claudio for ages while they set it up. Another crack in the foundation. You can kind of get away with something like that if the babyfaces are doing it to the heels as part of a comeuppance laden comeback because you're expecting the babyfaces to be stronger and the heels to try to (and be unable to) wriggle away, but it doesn't work nearly as well when it's the heels doing it to try to get more heat. It's stuff that looks good on paper, maybe, but that ends up being more of a negative in the equation than the positive.  

And then there was the timing of everything breaking down only to come back together and calm down for the first ten minutes or so of Rampage. A match like this was always going to break down once or twice and probably needed to cover a few extra minutes to keep people engaged for the transition to Rampage. I'll admit that I was kind of ready for everything to go home shortly after the teased Okada dive. If they were going to go a few more minutes, just beating Okada around without major attempts to try to pin him wasn't the most engaging thing in the world. Another round of heat on someone like Yuta leading to a second hot tag and the actual finish would have reset the tension enough to get them over the finish line. I get that they had to get through the first commercial break for Rampage but the crowd was low again after the chaos of everyone hitting big moves in rapid succession and beating on Okada didn't really give them a chance to build up dramatic tension again for the finish.

Speaking of tension, let's talk about stalling. I'm still not quite over the lack of it in MJF vs Ospreay at All In, but that doesn't mean I want him to do it against Garcia at All Out. The situation is different. Vs Ospreay he was the blowhard champ and there was a real opportunity to figure out what the crowd wanted (in this case to see Ospreay do his stuff in a stadium and amass rating stars) and deny it completely while showing a cowardice and hypocrisy relative to what he'd been saying. Against Garcia, Max has a hierarchical advantage and while Garcia wants revenge, it makes sense to go a different route with layout and exactly how to heel. Perry's an interesting case. He claims to have just wanted a chance to prove himself but was benched, to be his own man and not Jungle Boy, that he was a scapegoat when he's really just a standup guy, that it wasn't his fault. But then in ring, he's been taking shortcuts and avoiding confrontation wherever possible. He'll get in when it's easy and hit the floor when it's hard. 

I never wanted stalling for the sake of stalling (I never want anything for the sake of itself!). For MJF vs Ospreay, it would have been purposeful, and I think with Perry, maybe it is as well. The heart of any heel is cognitive dissonance. Just like how comedy works by creating a gap between expectation and reality, heeling does as well. Within that contradiction, animosity can be created within the hearts of the fans. Heels can say one thing and do another and then deny that there's any difference at all. There's heat to be found there.

I think Perry's doing a pretty good job at striking the right balance. The first time he came in, the fans were happy to chant along with his catch phrase. But after he escaped Danielson kicking his head in (and that never did get fully paid off in this one; that's for the PPV), and after he popped in and out for a few cheapshots, they seemed a lot less willing to sing along and more eager to see him take a beating. Good! There's a place for all sorts of things on the card, and if he wants to lay claim to that, and if he can find the slightly shifting balance that really fits his character in different situations against different opponents, there's a real chance that Perry can find that niche after all. But like I said, while it's pure and primal, a burr in the heel of the audience that will drive them to care, it's not always easy. But often times, it's the hardest things that are most worthwhile.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/19 - 8/25 Part 2

All In 8/25/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Swerve Strickland

MD: I cried a little, maybe. It's important I lead with that because the next sentence is going make it seem like I'm less engaged than I should be. Look, here's the deal... one reason that I get these reviews out so quickly is because the brain doesn't shut off. It never shuts off. It's just who I am, right? I watch a match and I'm thinking, thinking, thinking. I'm thinking all sorts of things, but one thing I'm thinking about is what I'm going to say, if I'm going to say something at all. I don't watch a Bryan Danielson match without that in my head. What's the hook? What's the entry point? What's the unifying element that will get me into a review. Once I get in, I'm good. And maybe you might feel like that's a terrible way to consume any form of entertainment, art, whatever, but I'm not just consuming. I'm constantly engaging. It's built into my DNA. I can't fix it. It doesn't mean I'm less tapped in; it means I'm more tapped in, or at least that's how I feel. Here's the point, as I'm watching this thing, I'm thinking to myself: how am I ever going to write about this? I posted the master list recently. I had written up something like 90 Danielson matches from the last few years. What is there that I can possibly say about this that is additive or useful or meaningful or something you don't already know?

Maybe I don't go timeless. Maybe I go topical (and find something timeless by doing so). Let's try that, because I'm struggling a bit here. This is way bigger than me. Here goes. There was some talk last week about storytelling, whether it existed around and before a match or whether it exists in a match itself. I'm going to quote my pal Charles here. "I really disagree with the idea of wrestling and storytelling somehow being at odds with each other. It's about the overall viewing experience, and it all should work together and be cohesive. There are some skewed ideas now of what storytelling is." And my god, isn't this the perfect example of that?

There were so many elements set up in the build, so much rich narrative and character to draw from. With Danielson, it was a culmination of a lifetime of wrestling, of so many failed attempts at winning the AEW title, of the tension between family and passion and accomplishment, of going out on your own terms given the trauma of the first retirement, of finding drive and pushing yourself over the finish line when you're so close to peace and serenity and your final reward. For Swerve, it was about knowing just how far you climbed to get to the top, all the things you did that you had to live with, all the doubters you had to prove wrong, balancing the adulation of the crowd with the knowledge that in order to justify it all, you'd do anything, absolutely anything to keep it. It was about carrying the company only to realize that this night wasn't even about you, that your opponent was looking past you, not towards glory or victory but towards peace and finality, something you couldn't even imagine given the fire burning in your heart, and trying to find some way to bring that all together to become a force that could the change the fate of one night and define history for all time.

That was all before the bell rang! And then when it did, these forces began to crash and clash against one another. Early feeling out faded quickly as Swerve, mutable like water in his movements, tried for an early float around suplex. Danielson, however, had trained for all of Swerve's moves, and more than that, for his unique way of moving, and jammed it with a knee shot so that he could follow up by dismantling Swerve's shoulder. Swerve, champion that he is, was able to fight forward, to endure the first set of attacks, both grounded and daring, only for Danielson to lock in a headscissors in the ropes and target the shoulder again. Realizing that he wasn't going to beat him on these terms, he took advantage of a distracted ref and Nana's assistance and crushed Danielson's head onto the ring bell. Everything in the last paragraph, everything that these two are and were and might ever be led into everything in this paragraph. You can draw direct lines, direct correlation. It's a snake eating itself, backstory feeding action drawing on character and creating reaction. When wrestling hits like this, when it is allowed to draw upon decades of history and lifetimes of desires, there's nothing else in the world like it.

Things progressed along these lines. Danielson, bloodied yet resilient, came back (maybe using the iron in his arm on clotheslines? Maybe not; there are so many elements in here that you can tap into that it's hard to know where to stop). Certainly he showed his versatility and relentlessness by turning a Cattle Mutilation attempt into a pair of brutal Tiger Suplexes. Swerve, in response, put him down with the Vertebreaker. Again, so much was at play, not just Danielson's history of head and neck injuries, including his current vulnerability for which he says he needs surgery, but the fact that the Vertebreaker is such a dangerous, forbidden, rare move (not unlike the Tiger Suplexes that preceded it, actually; parallels are great too. Excess isn't usually a good thing but the time to unleash it is on the biggest match at the biggest stage; you hold it back in other matches exactly for this moment).

As Swerve drove the doctors away, the match shifted into a gripping third act. All throughout, Bryan Danielson's family presented themselves as a character in this play, with a splotch of pink standing out among this massive sea of humanity: Birdie's hat. You found yourself looking in their direction whenever the camera allowed us to see their reaction, to see their connection with the action in the ring. When Swerve took his first major advantage using the ring bell, he pulled a bloodied Bryan out to stomp his face in front of them and proclaim himself as Birdie's hero since he'd be the one to send Bryan back to her once and for all. Now, after the Vertebreaker, as Swerve hit Danielson with House Call after House Call, Bryan's hand extended to them and he mouthed an apology that somehow felt so much more sincere and heartfelt (empowered perhaps by a certain level of human ambiguity as opposed to something more contrived) than the one Bryan's own trainer made at Wrestlemania XXVI. He refused to stay down. More than that, he stood. An apology gave way to a declaration of love as he absorbed blow after blow and then turned to face Swerve as the crowd took a collective breath, and threw forth a resounding slap, one of the truly great comeback moments of this century.

From there it was a finishing stretch deserving of what came before, with both wrestlers surviving each other's best shots and one last bit of dangling plot, Swerve's own past coming home to roost as Hangman Page rode his way past security to disrupt Swerve's final defiantly indomitable moment. Just that last bit of narrative protection for a champion that earned it, for a man that will be here day in and day out in the years to come. Swerve would do everything to win, but there was a cost and some of those costs you pay for the rest of your life. With that cost paid once more (not for the last time), the smoke cleared and Danielson stood in the ring with his family as the fireworks went off and the show came to a close.

Here's another disclosure. I didn't see this live. I didn't get to see this until a few hours later, actually. I was able to see parts of the show live but not all of it. Why, you may ask? I took two (2) nature walks with my six year old daughter yesterday (2 is a lot for one day). We saw three foxes, two turtles and a blue heron. She caught multiple bugs in her net including a couple of end band net-wing beetles. That was on top of assisting her with Super Monkey Ball, reading a Franny K. Stein book to her, and overall helping prep her and her sister to be ready for the first day of school today. So maybe you weren't looking for that splotch of pink every moment of the match, but I was, and maybe your eyes were dry at the end, but mine weren't. It's funny. If she told me tomorrow that I should give up something I love to hang out with her more, I'd probably hedge. She's not the most rational entity I've ever dealt with. She's the sort that'll refuse to budge for ten minutes because she's still hunting a moth. She's six. She's also the third kid. I've seen a couple of other six year olds go down the path first. That said, if you stacked up all the most valuable and worthwhile times in my life, those couple of years during COVID when I was working from home every day and here, home, watching these kids grow up every moment that I could... well, that would top the list, I think. So maybe I wouldn't make exactly the call that Bryan is making here, but I can certainly understand it, and I'm certainly going to make something akin to it each and every time I can, even if that means I don't get to have the shared experience of watching this match with the rest of you live. It was still there for me when I was able to catch up. And that ring will be there for Bryan when he's ready for it again. For now, though, the Countdown keeps ticking down, and we'll be there for every moment (even if I might be a little late for some because of a more pressing engagement with a six year old).

AEW Five Fingers of Death Master List

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/5 - 8/11 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 8/7/24

Bryan Danielson vs Jeff Jarrett

MD: There's a lot floating around the ether this last week. There were discussions about the best wrestler potentially being the one who drew the most. The Olympics were happening, including one person scoring more than another in gymnastics for a less graceful looking routine because the level of difficulty was higher. While I wouldn't subscribe to the first notion, I do play with the idea that the point of most matches is probably not to have the aesthetically greatest match possible. When trying to examine a match, it's worth figuring out the purpose behind it. What were they sent out to accomplish? How does it fit into a bigger picture? What was the point? Occasionally you'll get something that is meant to be great for the sake of being great, but usually, they're trying to do something else and greatness is, in part, revealed by how thoroughly they are able to succeed at that goal. And yes, some purposes are far, far harder than others. In fact, I'd say having a great match for the sake of having a great match is generally far easier than any number of other possibilities that could potentially limit unbridled creative freedom.

The point being is that what they accomplished in the first half of this match was downright miraculous, as high a level of difficulty of anything I've seen this year. The purpose of this match was not to give people a potential dream match in Jarrett vs Danielson, though that didn't hurt. The purpose of the match was to heat up All In's main event, most specifically by heating up Swerve Strickland and making him out as the most dangerous man in the company. Swerve was shown watching from the back on a monitor and came out post match, but he wasn't otherwise involved. Ricky Steamboat was on commentary instead. It was up to Jeff Jarrett to push Bryan Danielson, a man he claimed to respect and admire, as hard as humanly possible in order to reinforce the artistic concept that Swerve Strickland was dangerous enough to warrant such torturous treatment in a "tune up" match.

And they nailed it. Jarrett attacked with the guitar even as Danielson was making his entrance, and the next many minutes of brawling backstage and through the crowd brought forth into the world an idea, a notion, a truth: Strickland was simply that dangerous. It became undeniable. They bounced off of jarringly unforgiving trash cans. They hit each other with some of the most beautiful punches of the year. They went up and down stairs. They drew a mob around them in the concession area that didn't feel like they were watching a pro wrestling spectacle, but instead like they were watching an actual fight; that last bit was like nothing I've seen on televised wrestling in ages.

I'm not entirely convinced that it completely survived back in the ring, but very few good and true and pure things survive in front of a 2024 pro wrestling crowd unfortunately. That was ok, though, because once they hit the ring something else happened. The job was already done. The idea was birthed into the world with two proud papas laying in shots on one another with a real sense of chaos. The match was now big enough for a second idea and the second idea was just as perfect in its own way and solved the other necessary half of the equation.

Jeff Jarrett had the purest intentions; to take this man that won the Owen Hart Cup, a man a generation younger than him but that was tapped into the true spirit of pro wrestling, that represented so much that Jeff loved and that this family had loved for generations, and give him the one last push he needed to make it all the way to the top one last time. Jarrett knew that he was just the man to do it, that he'd walked the paths of darkness and light and come out the other side, beaten and battered, grizzled and aged, but knowing all about the limits that a man need be pushed to. His intentions were pure. He meant well. But you don't step into the shadows without the shadows changing you. You don't get so close to glory without glory tempting you. Jarrett was just the man to give Danielson what he needed, but that meant that he was a man always walking the precipice of his own weakness.

And in the back half of the match, blinded by the light, he slipped and he fell back into the darkness. He lost sight of all of his good intentions and gave in to his old instincts. It no longer became about sharpening Danielson's steel or hardening his hide. The means became the end and the end became destruction. The goal shifted, no longer to strengthen Danielson, but to break him, to snap his leg.

If the first half of the match was about establishing just how dangerous Swerve Strickland was, then the second half became about showing how Danielson could overcome. He escaped Jarrett's attempt to use a chair to break his leg. He used the chair in a moment of brilliant visual desperation and innovation to escape the figure four. And then, chair bracing it, he put a knee through Jarret's chin, opening him up and scoring the win.

It's ok to watch this and appreciate moments of execution, to bathe in the great punches, the immersive selling, the clever spots, the chaotic feel. But take a step back and really think about what they were trying to do. Think about how many other matches you've seen that actually accomplished the sort of challenging task that they managed here. They hyped up the main event of the biggest show of the year by indirectly making a third party (the champion) look more dangerous and then, through channeling who and what Jeff Jarrett is and has always been, redirected the spotlight back onto Danielson (the challenger) to show how he can meet that threat head on. There may be greater matches this year, but I'm not sure I can imagine a greater in-ring accomplishment in 2024.

Read more!

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Danielson CC Semi

 

2. Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Danielson AEW Dynamite 12/27/23

ER: A couple weeks ago I wrote about Bryan Danielson's match earlier in the Continental Classic against Daniel Garcia, a very good match that somehow left me a bit uninspired. We're so used to seeing Danielson have the same kind of good matches that even liking his wrestling can still leave me dry. It's the least exciting result of anything you consume: when you are forced to honestly break it down into uninspiring technicalities. "I think that movie deserves an Oscar but I can't see ever watching it again" or "That pizza was good but I doubt I'll ever go out of my way to have it again" are perhaps internal looks in the mirror that you are not appreciating life enough, or perhaps you are too bored with having it so good. 

Maybe you deserve to go without for a stretch, to re-center, to realign. To learn to be thankful again. In my review of that Danielson/Garcia match I was more negative than I typically am when writing about something I thought was good enough to recommend, but I suppose there is always room for humdrum within nirvana. I said that Danielson couldn't just will himself to have a match like 2013 Cena or 2018 Brock with a He's Good wrestler like Daniel Garcia. He elevates matches with lower guys to a certain level, but gets transcendent against Legends. Big Match Danielson is so much better than Great Match Danielson. And while Eddie Kingston, my boy, is not a legend in the same way John Cena or Brock Lesnar are, he has never been more a pro wrestling legend than coming into this match. Other than after this match. Because that's the kind of run Kingston has been on, making each match feel like his biggest battle. 

Kingston's AEW run has been such a necessary late career revelation, crossing over to the biggest crowds of his life with a charisma that makes every next match feel like one of the most important matches of his career. He has denied haters and spoken directly out into TV screens, the best years of his life happening in his 40s. He knows how to connect with people, and Danielson knows how to transcend with others who can connect to crowds. Kingston can make moments out of anything - I enjoy every era of Kingston's career, even Shabby Hair and Beard Pandemic Depression Kingston and TNA Flak Jacket Kingston - but this is a man who knows how to shine especially bright in Big Matches. Danielson transcends to Legends, Kingston is one of the all time great Everyman Legends. 

This was a semi final in the Continental Classic and had real tournament implications, as a Kingston win meant he would be the one fighting for 3-7 of the various belts that AEW gives everyone upon completing a one year probationary period. But the great thing about the best Kingston matches - and this is certainly one of those - is that you can strip away any of the match's implications and the Kingston performance stands alone. This would have played just as big had Kingston already beaten Danielson a couple of times, or if there was not a straight-faced Larry Sweeney amount of fake belts on the line, because Kingston has that power. 

It would easy to say that this was Danielson's WWF UWFi style vs. Kingston's Kings Road, because both of those elements were there in the match-long build, but this felt like the first time I've seen these two work an Ikeda/Ishikawa match, and it was like this beautiful Venn diagram of three of the greatest Big Match styles. Danielson took after Eddie with the kind of surly glee that comes with the best Ikeda matches. Danielson grinned so many times the way Ikeda would when he would collapse Ishikawa with a kick, and Eddie is one of the most sympathetic salesman since Ishikawa. Eddie knows how to weather damage the way Ishikawa could, Eddie just sets up his comebacks like Kings Road and not like a Fujiwara Follower. Kingston catches Danielson several times the way Ikeda would get caught, when he would start having too much fun with his sadism that he ends up losing balance and control. I love when Danielson similarly commits too hard to something, enjoying the punishment too much, tipping control back when he goes harder than needed. I'm so glad the ringside camera got such a perfect angle of Danielson missing that running corner dropkick that led to Kingston fucking him up with a clothesline. What a shot. Eddie endured an Ishikawa level of punishment in this, maybe his defining AEW match. As if the match needed it to make his win feel like a big deal. This was the best of modern wrestling, while loudly shouting out the days of tape trading. 45 years of combined experience both in the ring and on the brain. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Garcia

 

11. Bryan Danielson vs. Daniel Garcia AEW Rampage 12/8/23

ER: Matt already wrote an insanely in-depth analysis of this match back when it actually happened, touching on storyline elements that wouldn't have even crossed my mind while watching the match, and does one of my favorite wrestling review things (that I am mostly intellectually incapable of doing) which is to look inside - and perhaps beyond - the possible intentions of what two wrestlers were working towards. As in, reading Matt's reviews, I often find myself thinking that he knows more about the match stories and intentions behind structure and build than the actual wrestlers in the matches. Importantly, he manages to do so without ever coming off like he thinks he knows more than them. He can take visuals in front of him and apply meaning to them where, perhaps, the wrestlers themselves had no meaning, and gift them something deeper. Our brains all view wrestling slightly different, and Matt has an ability to go a bit deeper in viewing wrestling. My mostly useless little review is going to be more like "DaMn DaNiElSoN KiCkS HARD!!!!!"

It's safe to say I am likely spoiled by Bryan Danielson matches, because I am kind of tired of Bryan Danielson matches. They are so repeatedly good in so many similar ways that, stepping back from it, makes me wish we actually did get any of these Danielson Style Changes that he has been hinting at over the years. We get teased with different Danielsons but at the end of the day his matches still feel like the same quality of Danielson work we saw in 2013. We could have gotten full Danielson BattlArts - he is clever enough to work BattlArts style violently and safely - but we only get part of it and never the full commitment. We could have had maestro lucha Danielson, we know he's capable of doing compelling mat matches with some basing, but it has only been teased. These styles have been sacrificed at the altar of Reliably Great Matches. This was a great match, but to me these Great Danielson Matches have felt like by and large the same match for a very long time now. There are standouts and next level exceptions, but to me it feels like every Danielson match passes a certain quality line while staying below a next level experience. 

It's impossible to get to that level of the 2013 Cena or 2018 Brock match. You can't get to that level with a good wrestler like Garcia, and so, Danielson gets the Garcia match to his expected level. And yes, every single Danielson leg kick looked brutal, even match finishing. He was not holding back on Garcia's hamstring. Every hit looked severely damaging, and the match easily could have been built around Danielson just demolishing this leg. But it wasn't built like that, and instead the vicious kicks made every single miss look weaker and mapped out, not throwing misses anywhere near the same as he throws hits. But this isn't really a vet stomping out an upstart, it's more a vet who almost allows an upstart to try some things and then responds with something worse. When Garcia tries to mimic something Danielson did it never goes quite as effectively. It felt like too many things looked worthy of finishing the match, and I think the more they went to those extremes the more it weakened the match after. When Danielson hit a Gotch piledriver and rolled it into a triangle choke, ending with him holding a triangle while sitting on Garcia's chest and throwing punches...I don't know how that didn't end the match, let alone wind up leading to an entire third act after. It didn't come off - to me - like Garcia weathering and persevering, it felt like an escape that was necessary to continue the match and get to the other plans. 

There's been a distinct lack of selling in a lot of AEW Danielson matches, and he tends to encourage it from his opponents too. When Garcia was leaning allllll the way back on the "Dragontamer", making Danielson's heels touch his ass, I was left wondering what damage at all he had weathered. Nothing Danielson did seemed to have any effect on Garcia, and vice versa. Anything done to accumulate damage, didn't. The effective things were the ways they left themselves open, like Garcia leaving his chin open during that Dragontamer, allowing Danielson to hook it. The damage didn't ever seem to lead to anything, but the openings while delivering damage lead to the best parts of the match. In the theme of paying receipts back more viciously, Danielson delivers his trapped arm stomps to the jaw FAR meaner, and I love this meanness. I guess I just wish this meanness felt like it was in service to something bigger, and not in service to checking off the list of things happening in his Great Matches. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!