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

AEW Collision 2/7/26

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

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

Eddie Kingston had finally done it all. 

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

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

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

A wonderful end to an embattled story. 

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

And yet, here he is, back once again. 

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

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

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

Getting up? That's not one of them. 

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

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

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

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

They didn't let him. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/22 - 9/28

AEW Collision 9/27/25

Eddie Kingston/HOOK vs Big Bill/Bryan Keith [Tornado Tag]

MD: So here's what I think is going on. I think Kingston's having a comeback like Japanese wrestlers traditionally come back, where they really struggle in their first few matches and they need to build back up in a very kayfabe sense. Yes, some of it is that he's against Bill, who is, in fact, Big, but that's just the feel I get. He was on the shelf for over a year. He's not as young as he used to be. He's a fighter, a slugger, even a champion, but he's got to pull himself back against some of the hardest competition in the world. It's such an Eddie thing to do. Everything is a struggle. Everything is hard. But then everything becomes worth doing and every victory, even small ones within matches, mean so much more.

The problem is that it's 2025 and we're in the US and no one's actually telling this story in a way that the fans can understand. There hasn't been a video package on it. Commentary isn't talking about it. Here, Bill and Keith took out Eddie early and he was just there on the floor while they double teamed Hook (as it was a tornado tag) and Bill sort of ran interference blocking off Eddie from getting back in. 

And it 100% fit the idea that Eddie has to build back up and regain his strength and power and stamina and just find who he is again and until then, Hook has to survive on faith against adversity. And as an aside, some of his selling as he was pulling himself up with the ropes was just excellent. Best I've seen out of him. Worth noting. BUT to the fans in that audience, I think they just had no idea why Eddie wasn't rushing the ring, because he's Eddie, and of course he wants to get in a fight. And eventually they did and of course they got behind him then, but the last thing you can afford is for fans to question their faith in Eddie because things just aren't properly explained to them.

ROH TV 9/25/25

LFI (RUSH/Sammy Guevara) vs Ross/Marshall Von Erich

MD: This was filmed during the Philly residency, towards the end, and it definitely had a lot working against it. Sons of Texas vs Shane Taylor Promotions and Rush/Sammy vs Outrunners both worked because the crowd had someone to latch on to. But in neither case, that someone was one of the teams in this match. They were anti-Texas and anti-cowboys and they were certainly anti-Sammy. They were vaguely pro-Rush but it's easy to get behind the Outrunners, even in Philly. If this was in WV the following week, it probably would have worked better.

This was closing the circle on the Sammy turn and checking the box but it could have been a lot more heated and a lot more fiery but I think they knew the crowd wouldn't get behind it as much. It needed a bit more because I've never quite seen THESE Von Erichs in a situation where they could get hot like their dad and uncle (and that could still come if they ran this back in Texas or somewhere else) and because Sammy and Rush are still coming together. Sammy's sort of figuring out the act and the possibility in the moment. And there is a lot to tap into there given the personalities at play but you kind of wish they could get a house show run to work it all out first. 

So instead of the Von Erichs getting revenge for what Sammy did and almost getting the titles, the crowd bounced all over the place until they had fun with Marshall's hat. That, at least, built to a nice moment of comeback but ultimately, I think this just had too much working against it. If they ran it back in two months in front of a different crowd, who knows? 

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Briscoe vs. Bad Apple

 

13. Mark Briscoe vs. Bryan Keith AEW Rampage 9/20/24

ER: I can't imagine what it's like being Mark Briscoe. I haven't gone through the pain that he's gone through. I've never had a brother, never lost a brother. Not just a brother, but a tag team partner. Most of you with brothers never would have spent anywhere near as much time on the road trapped in a car with your brother. How many other people have ever lived a life like that with your brother, for over 20 years? I hate that right now I don't get to see Jay Briscoe unleashed as the Jon Moxley style maniac that Jon Moxley could never be. We don't get to see Jay Briscoe as the top guy - which would have happened - but Mark Briscoe doesn't get to see it either. I hate it, but I love that he's wrestling. This match felt important, because it really felt like a guy refining himself as Singles Match Mark Briscoe. I'm sure in the last couple years he's had plenty of Meltzer 4 star + singles matches, and I've seen enough of those, but the ones I did all felt like AEW Style Great 14 Minute Match Formula. This match might not have been his most ambitious singles match over this 2 year stretch, but it felt focused and impactful and tight in a way that I associated more with Jay singles matches. This wasn't him going on Crazy Mark Briscoe autopilot in a six man, this was a guy who looked like a singles champ. 

His Redneck Kung Fu is used as comedy in those six mans tags, here it's the perfect mix of goofball delivery and stiff finish. His baseball slide was thrown with joshi speed and heavyweight impact, and his Cactus Jack elbow off the apron was one of the best elbowdrops of the year. He landed with impact on everything; on his bumps, on his follow through, on his chops that got more intense the longer we went. His clotheslines hit like a champion's. The J-Driller should be the most protected finish in AEW. I can't wait to watch the rest of his 2024 singles match run, because this suddenly feels very different. 

I've said that I don't fully buy into the Hangman Page character, but Bounty Hunter was a character I didn't buy into even a little. I don't buy Bryan Keith as a Bad News Brown. I think he looked so good in his spaghetti western Entrance Pancho that a lot of people bought in on sight. But he wrestles like a 2024 Scoot Andrews update and wears his pants at 75 year old luchador height. He makes a lot more sense as Already in the Ring Bad Apple Bryan Keith, so he worked great as Singles Star Mark Briscoe's opponent he was 100% going to beat. I don't like matches he works as a back and forth, and think he benefits from a match where he has a few minutes of control in the middle and a couple spots down the stretch. It tightens his 3-4 minutes and it all looks better when stacked. He has a great kneedrop and I am always going to rate a guy who uses a kneedrop in 2024, and not one of those safe ones to the chest, an honestly worked kneedrop to the temple that would have played in a Nick Bockwinkel match. He leaned into chops and clotheslines and he doesn't just have a good kneedrop, he has a good kneelift.  

There's a real sweet spot in hitting a nicely built 12 minute match. AEW should pepper way more 8-12 TV classics into their cards than ringing the 20 minute Great Match bell so often. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/29 - 2/4

AEW Collision 2/3/24

Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Keith

MD: I'm pretty sure I first encountered Keith back in '21 with the Kevin Ku match. I'm almost certain that was DEAN's doing, because he, in his retirement, was watching literally everything there was to watch and he'd force certain things everyone's way and who were we to say no? That was an excess-laden spectacle where they simply wouldn't bend or break. They kept coming at one another, escalating the violence more and more. I've not heard enough interviews with him to fully understand his influences, but between noting how important his recent (first) tour of Japan was personally and the fact that his finisher is the Emerald Tiger Driver, well, you get some sense of it, right?

It's a testament to both men that this didn't feel performative or like a pale shadow. Instead, these were two fully fleshed out characters (people even; let's go with people, characters only in the narrative sense), who were looking for any advantage they could get in the moment. It was organic and natural and uncooperative in the best of ways. You could see it right from the opening; Keith slapped Eddie even though no one had really been able to break him lately. He blocked the Uraken, ran right through a chop. He wasn't trying to break Eddie, not really, just throw him enough that he wouldn't be able to tell which way he'd come at him next. Keith was strong and tough enough to stand with Eddie, but he couldn't take him down that way. He didn't have to. He just had to last long enough to see an opening, going low with a dropkick to open Eddie's face up for a kick. He'd spend the whole match enduring punishment to find that opportune moment; that was Kingston's own trick. 

In some ways, it was like Eddie was facing a version of himself from a year or two ago, which is what made this so compelling. That and the selling. Yes, there was plenty of fighting spirit to go around. Yes they pushed through strike exchanges and throws. Yes, Eddie kicked out of the Emerald Tiger Driver even, and that was with a couple of minutes left to go in the match (thankfully, Keith had Diamond Dust in his back pocket so there was still a potential point of escalation left for him). But they were registering each and every shot. When Keith absorbed three to hit one (the only way he was going to hit that one), you could see the cost on his face and in his movement. In this regard, being slightly distanced from that true "purity" of the source material allowed them to take a more hybrid approach and the match resonated more for it.

Bryan Danielson vs. Hechicero

MD: The height of me getting into lucha was 2014. And when I say lucha, yes I primarily mean CMLL and certain indies. That's when I started writing on the blog. That's when I was writing up three matches a week to try to make sense of it all. I was watching while exercising and while laying on the floor of a toddler who wouldn't go to sleep if I wasn't there, and I was sneaking the live streams on the laptop while the TV was going before bed like the stereotypical kid slipping a magazine into his textbook at school. There was a wealth of riches: RUSH coming into his own and dragging Sombra and Mascara with him; Casas and Shocker standing tall as beloved rudos; Virus defending the Lightweight title; Porky comedy matches; Toro Bill and Rey Apocalipsis undercard matches on Monday nights, and so on and so forth. But there was the 2014 Busca too, with such a class, including Cavernario, Cachorro, Dragon Lee. And yes, Hechicero. It was always a little weird as they did mix young guys with guys who had been wrestling for over a decade, but that's CMLL for you. In some ways it felt like Danielson or Low Ki in the original NXT, guys that you never expected to make it in the mainstream filling out a side full of guys the company wanted to support.

Coming out of that, when everyone was, probably rightfully, focused on Dragon Lee vs Kamaitachi, I was just glad Hechicero was still drinking his cup of coffee and getting his payday. It already took a certain sort of obstinance to follow CMLL in the first place, but to follow it and then focus on a guy who they'd probably never push was just setting yourself up for headache if maybe not heartache. And he's made a good career of it, a nice reliable hand with the right amount of balance and flourish and crowd interaction that you could put with guys with names like Mephisto and Luciferno and Ephesto in a post Averno world, someone who can base for midcarders and show a tenth of what he can actually do but still be effective nonetheless. He was even a pandemic champion with a title that never means as much as it should which I think he got to defend in over a year's time maybe twice? I'll admit that I haven't followed as closely over the last few years. If you read the blog, you see what I'm watching and I'm pretty full up. In a world where I didn't get so into AEW in 2021, I probably would have been following along more with the CMLL resurgence of the last few years, but it sure got pretty depressing in the few years before that. I'm glad that people are enjoying it now. I'm always going to have a soft spot for it.

Here's where I'm heading: being a Hechicero fan, while a no brainer for some, was a niche of a niche. He was a guy who could show you something amazing on the indies but that would rarely get to do it on a bigger stage. You were glad for his steady paycheck and the ability to see him a bit more easily or more frequently but sad that he wasn't out there being an absolute artist on a weekly basis. There are dream matches we all have in our head. Obviously for years it was Blue Panther vs Danielson. There are matches that are possible and matches that are maybe probable and matches that are just so out there and so outlandish that you couldn't even imagine them. Extrapolating back to 2014, when you could watch a handful of Hechicero matches against Caifan or into 2015 when you could see him against Navarro or Black Terry thanks to Black Terry, Jr., and when Danielson was absolutely on top of the world and main eventing Mania, it was a wild fever dream. Even if Danielson got free and ended up in the wild, even if he ended up at Arena Mexico, there's no way they'd book him against Hechicero. Most likely we'd get the Volador match which would look like a lot of the other Volador matches we've seen. Big spots, quick action, rote exchanges, good execution, something you could so easily imagine in your head that you'd never actually have to watch it. 

It's hard to criticize Bryan Danielson. When you make the "greatest wrestler ever" argument, he's got such an amazing case that it's hard to chip away at him. One of the angles to potentially try, however, is that sometimes he let's his opponent define too much of the match without putting his own stamp on it. That doesn't mean that he gives his opponent too much of the offense, more that he seems to let his opponent shine in a way that doesn't feel like the merging of two worlds to create something more special than either world could be on its own. On some level, for instance, I though the Bandido match didn't take enough advantage of what it might look like if someone with Bandido's unique style and skillset met someone with the mythos and presence of Bryan Danielson. You really got to see what Bandido could do but a lot of Danielson's contribution in interacting with lucha spots came off as predictable in their own way, of Danielson playing in a different pond but in the most predictable ways. The alchemy isn't there necessarily. It doesn't make for a bad match by any means, but it doesn't raise to the level of uniqueness or specialness that you'd want someone who is potentially the greatest wrestler ever to distill from this sort of a once-in-a-lifetime pairing. Again, that's the problem with thinking critically about Danielson. Opportunity was left on the table. You have to hold him to almost impossible (Bockwinkel-ian) standards because of the discourse around him. 

That's part of what made the Hechicero match so special. The alchemy was there (maybe not surprising given that a very self-aware alchemist was facing Danielson). What made this work, more than anything else, was that Danielson drove so much of it. That's not to say he was in control offense-wise . He wasn't, but he was always active, always creating motion, always pushing things further with what makes him come off as formidable. He wasn't a cipher in this match. He was every bit his legendary self. And he had Hechicero counter him time after time after time. If he had given anything less than his best and if he didn't react with such abject desperation, this wouldn't have mattered nearly as much. Instead, he used up all of his pro wrestling capital to get the skill of Hechicero over. (I always point back to Demolition Ax begging off from Bret Hart getting a hot tag at Summerslam 88 when heel Demolition hadn't backed down from anyone in over a year as a great example of this; Hart was smaller but needed to be established as a babyface threat and by backpeddling for the first time in a year, Eadie made him come off as a huge threat in the eyes of the fans. There are plenty of examples though).

It started simple and Danielson was able to hang. The fans chanted lucha libre. They didn't fully know what they were getting into. Hechicero escalated into more advanced but still familiar exchanges, putting little twists on them, like rolling with the tapitia instead of just holding it as Danielson did. He had simple answers for Danielson's complex problems. As they went down into the stretch, starting with Hechicero catching Danielson out of the diving headbutt attempt, Hechicero turned the complexity up to max. Suddenly the fans and Danielson both were left with gaping jaws as limbs were contorted in ways that defied the laws of human anatomy. The match built to this. It didn't lead with it. That's what made the dramatic moment of Danielson reaching his wits' end so effective. He was able to sneak a win that didn't at all feel like one and live to fight another day but the emotional damage that he suffered in being unable to lean into his traditional strength along the way did so much to get Hechicero over. 

In the reactions, it was great to see so many people note that the match expanded their idea of what lucha libre can be. I hope at least subconsciously they recognize the emotion at play and don't just substitute the idea of tricked-out matwork for tricked-out highspots in their mind. We're not quite there to the point where everyone realizes the true wonder and joy of lucha libre can really and truly be in the momentum shifts and the emotion underlying the pairings, and that all of the spots and the contortions and the dives are just means to the emotional end. It'll take undoing two and a half decades of conditioning for that, but the more they see a CMLL presence, the more hope I have that they'll get there. That's saying quite a bit actually considering this encounter was for years absolutely beyond my wildest hope. 

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