AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/4 - 12/10 Part 1

AEW Rampage 12/8/23

Bryan Danielson vs. Daniel Garcia

MD: This was a hell of a match. It's almost too much to keep track of, especially when you factor in Danielson's post match promo, when you factor in Garcia's tournament, his year, the feud they had last year. Sometimes it's tough to find an "in" to write about a match. Here, I have too many and I'm not sure how to keep track of all of them. Bear with me this one time with the bullet points. Wrestling at its best contains multitudes.

• This exists within the confines of the tournament. Danielson was a match behind everyone and lives in a world where Brody King is already up 6-0. Remember, as much as Kingston put on the line here, this tournament was created for Danielson as part of his last fully active year. He never made it to the G1 and this is his one shot. It means so much to him to compete on this level, and here he is banged up, broken with escalating injuries, with the finish line so close and so very far away.
• Meanwhile, you have Garcia, 0-2, with a string of big losses before that, a guy who likely got into the tournament by the skin of his teeth, a guy who was let down by the mentor he had given up everything for, who was forced into a world of contradiction by the people who helped drive him towards those decisions in the first place. He's trying to find his way, but despite opening up to what looked to be the path to success (or maybe was a get rich quick scheme enacted by someone who can't help but put in the work), he's worse off than he was a year ago.
• Then there's the relationship between them: Danielson is Garcia's idol, Garcia is someone who Danielson saw as a potential successor. Danielson has all of the baggage of being a parent. There's a moment when your kids are young that they want to be with you all the time. You're the center of their world. There are glimpses however, when you start to realize that you're only a few years away from them barricading themselves in their room and that ending. As someone who got to be in the house each and every day with his then three year old during the pandemic, I'm acutely aware of how special those years are. Throughout this, Garcia was seeing the idol who didn't shine bright enough for him to be a true north that would light his path and keep him from straying towards temptation and Danielson conflated Garcia with his own children, understanding how the youth may eventually see you as obsolete and abandon you. Neither of them had the respective wisdom and serenity to make it past their current anxiety and grief.
• And of course, at the heart of it all, you have Garcia trying to find himself. Here he came out as the Red Death, towel around his neck. When he beat Danielson last year, it wasn't clean. Tony Schiavone likens "Sports Entertainment" to "Systemic Cheating." I personally don't feel like they ever fully played it out to its logical conclusion: Sports Entertainment as a fighting style as much as BJJ or whatever else, channeling the reactions of the fans and the uniqueness of pro wrestling in a way that something like the People's Elbow or the Worm could be as devastating as the Busaiku Knee, or a way to reach some higher level of physical prowess not through meditation but through doing an electrifying dance that gets a giant pop. There was something there, and for Garcia's year to mean anything and to have been something other a waste of time bringing him just back to where he was in mid 2022, he has to find that middle ground, has to solve that riddle that no one else has been able to solve, not even Chris Jericho.
• That is to say, I don't think he would have won, even channeling all of his rage, even learning and growing throughout the tournament, even knowing his opponent so well. He's not Misawa. Danielson is not Jumbo. They're different. Early on, after Danielson's initial role as first the aggressor and then a goading troll as Garcia got upset with it, they were purely reactive. This is why Danielson sees a successor in Garcia. One offensive attempt flowed into the next. It almost felt like a sprint in the way they were able to keep the motion going. Garcia studied Danielson: he was able to throw the elbows, able to use a small package just as Danielson had for years, able to channel that same energy and kick his head off. And, of course, Danielson had an answer for all of it because that's who he is. At the same time, Garcia studied himself. He was ready to the Dragontamer to be countered and this time he did hit the pile driver. He had gotten close before but now he pulled it off, getting just a little closer every match.
• People are saying he lost because he made one mistake. He lost because he took a step backwards instead of fully moving forward. If there is a dark side and a light side, if there is Sports Entertainment and Pro Wrestling, Garcia's going to have to figure out the path through it. Only then will he be ascendant. Only then will he be able to defeat Bryan Danielson. He won't be the first to travel that road. Look at Fujiwara's comedy spots. Look at that one confounding Karl Gotch WWWF match we have. What they had that he does not, however, is that purity of vision and endless confidence in themselves. Red Death Daniel Garcia couldn't beat Bryan Danielson on his own. Dancing Danny Garcia couldn't beat Bryan Danielson on his own. Yet somewhere in there, there's someone who can. The JAS couldn't get him there. The BCC can't get him there. He's going to have to do it himself. He has until Wembley to figure it out. And no one wants him to and no one needs him to more than Bryan Danielson, even if he's just starting to come to that understanding.

AEW Dynamite 12/6/23

Christian Cage vs. Adam Copeland

MD: I still struggle with that fith Finger. Someone suggested Mark Briscoe and that was a good suggestion. I still gravitate towards Athena, RUSH, and Christian though. The problem with all of them is that a lot of what I'd have to say is repetitive. Athena has that mix of unpredictability and commitment and athleticism. RUSH is just a force of nature, an unrelenting tasmanian devil that sweeps up all in his path. And Christian, I'll get to in a second. We'll keep it open for now but I might drop any of them (or Briscoe, or anyone else that really makes sense) depending on what's going on in any week.

Here we had a big featured singles bout between Copeland and Edge, their first in many, many years, and it was a title match in Canada on top of that. Christian's a guy who I'm very high on. The one-two punch of instantly starting a family and the other thing that happened in June 2007 got me off regular wrestling watching for a couple of years. When I came back in 2009, the modern stuff that appealed to me the most was Christian's ace ECW champion run. He had the feud with Regal and his Ruthless Roundtable, but it was the week in and week out TV work that drew me in, especially given the freedoms that being on the C show let him have. It's not unlike Athena in ROH right now. People clamor for her to be featured on Dynamite but she'd not have the time and freedom to really stretch there that she has now.

There have been great TV workers over the years, be it Regal or Rey or even Orange Cassidy in the last 18 months, but what made Christian so special and so uniquely suited for that turn of the 2010s WWE period was his ability to work his opponents' offense into his matches in varied and interesting ways. It was almost a wrestling savant level of genius, especially when he had to wrestle multiple matches against the same opponent which wasn't at all uncommon for the time.

What makes him stand out in 2023, however, is that he's one of the only guys on the roster that gets real heat. Heat is a currency. A lot of things are currency. Legitimacy. Look. A winning streak. Athleticism. Heat's some of the most value though. Having a crowd that hates you (or at least are willing to go further along the lines of pretending to hate you than they will for just about anyone else) before the lock up means that the battle is already halfway won. He came into this match having turned his back on Copeland. Whether we want it to be or not, AEW is about friendship. It's about love. Copeland left a cushy gig "up north," to finish his career with his best friend. Cage turned his back on that and said he was going to break Copeland's neck. And on some level, can you blame him? This is a guy who spent his career in Copeland's shadow, the CLB, the guy who Vince wanted to put a bag on, someone who could only ever be an ace in a secondary promotion or on the C-show or when Edge had to retire (and even then, they didn't trust him to be the babyface lead, even if the fans wanted it; he could only be the guy who feuded with the guy). Now he's evolved into his final form, an outright Bond villain towering above his heel peers of trolls and scoundrels. Well, I don't blame him, but the fans sure do.

So even though he's not working the same opponents week in and week out, he's able to squeeze as much value as possible out of every motion and every moment because of the heat he generates. And he still works his opponent's offense into the match in creative, interesting ways. It's just usually without that familiarity and variety that you can only get from building sequences and counters from match to match that takes it over the top. With Copeland, however, that familiarity was baked in. He's as acutely aware of Adam's strengths and his weaknesses as anyone and they put together one of Copeland's best non-gimmicked singles matches ever.

Copeland rushed in from the start, beating Christian around the ringside area. Cage went for a low blow as soon as he could, trying to escape with a DQ but Copeland caught him and started working over the hand, proper punishment for his misdeeds. When Cage was able to get a slight edge on the outside, he tossed Copeland over the rail and immediately pulled the ref in to start the count. He wanted out. During the commercial break, he started in on Copeland's neck. He couldn't fully capitalize due to the damaged hand, however. That would be Copeland's wedge to come back in it. Cage would pose and preen, showing off his 50 year old muscles, but Copeland would bite at the hand.

In a lot of ways, this felt like the sort of match that could have existed in WWE, an added attraction to a night of pure AEW tournament action. What put it over the top was the freedom in violence though. Some of that was how viscerally Copeland's attack began, but a lot of it was in the few big spots they did choose to do after said hand biting, a Russian leg sweep off the second turnbuckle, a big power bomb out of the corner. Both of them were moves that Copeland wouldn't normally hit and both fit perfectly into the match. When it came to some of the oddball things that he did hit, that's where the familiarity came into play. Maybe not the clothesline off the top onto Cage on the apron that happened after the blocked pendulum kick, but certainly the Edge-o-Match which they slipped in as a killswitch counter, and the spear which came crashing headlong into Christian's own after a ducked belt shot (which itself was after the awesome moment where Christian low blowed the out of position ref). So while some of the big beats, like the finish, felt a little alien to AEW but all too familiar, the trappings, structural, detail-oriented, over-the-top in ways that might not be allowed elsewhere, made it all work. Cage is a wrestling savant and he's someone that is only ever stronger on the second or third try. I'd like to see them move on from this feud for now, but if they do go back to it, I know the next match will be even stronger for what they'll be able to build off of this one.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 11/13 - 11/19, Part 3

AEW Full Gear 11/18/21

Eddie Kingston vs. Jay Lethal

MD: Variety is making Eddie's run fascinating and this was Eddie in 1983 AWA against the Heenan Family. That would make Lethal Ken Patera maybe? There's been a commonality about all of his title matches so far, that spirit of sportslike competition, no matter if he was facing Serpentico or Dalton Castle. Here, early, when Jay had to take a powder and was hiding behind Jarrett and Sonjay, you could see it in Eddie's bemused glare. He was very much in a world he didn't make and didn't want to be in. He'd been dragged into this through the loss to Jarrett. He still stood tall, still had Lethal scouted (blocking the Lethal Injection with suplexes twice), but he had to trudge through plenty of bullshit to get there.

One thing that makes this run enjoyable to me is that every match has an undertone of external narrative driving it, but the main thing is the title and the match. With Angelico, that meant Eddie's merciless (though businesslike) treatment of Serpentico and the idea that Eddie felt like Angelico was stepping to him just like everyone else. With Dalton, it was Castle thinking he'd be a more dynamic champion and Eddie feeling like they were doing it for Brodie. Even with Komander, it was the commentary-driven logic that Eddie might be particularly vulnerable to luchadores traditionally. That this was almost so overt, with so many moving parts relatively, made it almost less interesting on its own to me, but it still served well as part of a greater whole. I don't know how much longer this run is going to go given the upcoming tournament. Moreover, there's every chance Eddie is going to stumble back into a "fighting spirit" mode through it instead of this more agile and flexible ace mold we're seeing now (and a lot of the people who like him best would be overjoyed with that anyway so I'm shouting at the wind probably). Hopefully he finds a way through it all, though, because I'm not nearly done watching this particular version of Eddie Kingston.

Sting/Darby Allin/Adam Copeland vs. Christian/Luchasaurus/Nick Wayne

MD: Christian's the best guy on the roster, right? He's the best at putting together a sequence. He's the best at milking a moment. He's the best at working other people's stuff into something coherent and meaningful. I was blown away by his match with Trent on Rampage. I've been down on Trent lately. Maybe I've always been down on Trent. I like the idea of Trent but not the reality of him. He's a guy who does a lot of stuff, has it all look good and sharp and crisp, but it's too much, especially consummate to his place on the card and what he's asked to accomplish. Too much, too soon, why him, why then? Over and over again. It's a little like Lucy pulling the football away with me when it comes to him. But the Christian match, that I liked. It's true with a lot of the roster in AEW. There are a ton of guys that if paired up against the right (or wrong) opponent will either have a great match or a terrible one, lots of guys with great mechanics and a sense of abandon and even commitment, but that are prone to excesses and leaning towards sensation instead of sense. These are guys who will probably still frustrate me against someone like Danielson or Cassidy even if I'll find them way more frustrating if they're up against Page or Takeshita. But never will I be disappointed when they're up against Christian. I'll be outright amazed.

Everything he did in this match was great, from the entrance with the choir to staring off against Copeland until he tagged out to Luchasaurus to the great transition to control on Darby to the callback low blow on Flair to set up his final comeuppance and the rabbiting that followed. Narratively, wrestling lives and dies on a few things most of all: entry points, transitions, hope spots, cutoffs, the comeback (which is a transition, of course, with hope spots/cutoffs as false transitions), and the finish. What makes Christian a wrestling savant is how well he works his own stuff and his opponents' into these key moments, and then how he builds to them with the space between by using those tools at his disposal. He's the glue that holds everything together, spot after spot, sequence after sequence, match after match.

It helped that everyone else did their part here. Luchasaurus looked like as much of a force of nature as he ever has. Yes, it means he wrestles more like Kane or Lord Humongous than like a lucha dinosaur but we're all better off for it. Wayne based surprisingly well for Darby early and then ate everyone's offense as well he should. Copeland hit a press slam on Nick Wayne which is exactly what I want the giant Adam Copeland to be doing to the far smaller AEW roster. Sting knows exactly who he should be and can manifest that person better than anyone else in the world could. Add in a killer entrance and an emotionally resonant post-match and you get a nice, balanced, feel-good PPV opener.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/9 - 10/15

AEW Dynamite 10/10/23

Bryan Danielson vs Swerve Strickland

MD: Bryan Danielson likes to lie. He's also on his last real run (unless he's lying about that; we don't think he is). He's also had a relatively fragile year and a half. His arm injury in the Okada match is something he's referred to as his worst injury in a single match ever. It makes every match we do have with him, especially on a week to week basis, all the more special.

The evolution of emotional investment in wrestling is a fascinating thing. Forty years ago, fans were invested in seeing the babyface get revenge on the heel. Twenty years ago, a lot of our circle was interested in seeing their favorites actually pushed and be put over. In the last few years, people seem invested on the match hitting correctly and "star"-worthy and being able to say that you witnessed a great or canonical match as it happened.

When we're watching Danielson right now, our emotional investment is helplessly tied to the fear of him getting hurt. That isn't about his athleticism or his professional; it's about us being human and seeing it multiple times over the last few years (and not just with him but with people up and down the roster) and knowing that this is the last chance we have of getting to watch him so frequently.

And Danielson, pro that he is, can use that. People argued that he used it in the Okada match (teasing a head injury to help cover for his actual arm injury) inappropriately. You can make a case one way or another about that; I downplayed it given the circumstances in my review. Here though, it was something more benign but that still gave the crowd a sinking feeling in their stomachs, one that brought them down so that he could build them up once again, which is really what heat in wrestling is all about, and something that's hard if you're just chasing immortality and glory for your match.

A lot of words to say that for a while there, I pretty much bought into the rib injury. He landed one way and sold another, back to front. It was just haphazard enough and he was doing such a good job at going back to it in between moves and to slow himself down that for a little while there, he had me and while it was a very meta sort of engagement, one that wasn't about a babyface being healthy enough to beat a heel, I was still engaged. I was still leaning a little closer towards the screen.

When Danielson hit the turnbuckle, ready to charge back in for another shot, and subsequently collapsed, I was relieved instead of disheartened, because that's the moment I was sure he was just selling. Imagine a car careening off the road, two hands clenching the wheel tightly, going over bumps and almost tumbling over itself once or twice, only to meet up with the road once again. That's what happened here. After that, everything was smooth sailing, but synapses were popping and senses were attuned. The match was back on the road but you, the watcher, were coming off that emotional high and everything heading towards that finishing stretch was more exciting and vivid than it might have been otherwise. You valued it all the more because of your sense of relief. That's what I experienced here. I hadn't been entirely on board at the start (and a lot of that was on Swerve's sideways approach to everything, which slowed down the early matwork past the point of enjoyability for me) but once the ribs came into play, the match caught me and never let go. Chalk it up to top notch selling from a man who loves to lie, even to a crowd that legitimately cares about his well-being. It also makes for very interesting contrast with the Christian match, which didn't have that additional metatextual layer at all, but more on that after a brief check-in on how Eddie is doing.

ROH 10/12/23

Eddie Kingston vs Serpentico

MD: There was an Eddie Kingston vs Minoru Suzuki match on Tuesday, but I really don't have a lot to add. You can picture basically the whole match without seeing it. I liked that they more or less sold impact more and more as the match went on. The early chops were shrugged off in a way that the later ones weren't, which is logical and makes sense. There was just a little more of "Eddie Kingston, Ace" in here even in just how he was able to finish of Suzuki in the end and I was glad to see that.

I haven't touched on anything on ROH TV for a while either. If I had time, I would have written about Athena vs Hirsch from last week; they matched up well size-wise and Hirsch seemed like a unique opponent in letting Athena stretch her considerable athleticism as much as possible. Frankly, Athena should probably be the fifth Finger because of her exceptional combination of intensity, execution, and being in the moment in her reactions all the time, but I'd just have to say those last few words over and over again every week and there's not much there. Her squashes are great; I love seeing how she works the Magic Forearm into her matches, and she deserves exposure, but there's not a lot for me to write about on a weekly basis that isn't simply apparent.

That brings us to Serpentico. I love Serpentico. Talk about a guy who is completely comfortable in his own skin, probably with the best perspective in the entire company. He knows exactly who and what he is and exactly who and what he should be. Within those confines, he tries to be as creative as possible, but never in a way that harms the overall match or what he's there to accomplish. Part of being great at wrestling is knowing what not to do and when not to do it and he's able to walk the line between over the top antics and the match's ultimate goal extremely well. This was to facilitate a future match between Angelico and Kingston, which sounds great. It was a Proving Ground match (Eliminator but with a 10 minute time limit and challenger's advantage in case of a draw). The basic story was one of hierarchy. Serpentico was quick, daring, and crafty. If Eddie caught him, it wasn't going to be good. He went so far as to hit him with the chops in the corner, but eventually Eddie did catch him and while he survived a shot or two and was able to kick out, he really put over the Stretch Plum as nasty and soon found himself tapping. What I liked was that all of Serpentico's offense was in the front couple of minutes. This wasn't a case of him getting caught but then having a big comeback. Instead, when Eddie put him down, he really put him down, which is one of those things you want to see out of an ace. Definitely looking forward to Eddie working the mat with Angelico when they run that.

AEW Collision 10/14/23

Bryan Danielson vs Christian Cage

MD: It's very easy to take Collision for granted. For all that it was supposed to be or might have been, what it has consistently allowed for is long (two commercial breaks long) main event segments on a week to week basis that don't exist elsewhere in wrestling. These can be big 8-man. They can be long tags. They can be for a title or not. They can be a singles match like this.

I'm chosing my words carefully here. There was nothing particular clever or innovative about this match. That's not to say it wasn't smart. It was extremely smart. Things were earned. Things were built to. They let almost every moment resonate. Christian is so good at linking bits of offense with interactions with the crowd and a sort of seething, methodological purpose. I've said it before, but it doesn't feel like the same sort of "spots" almost everyone else in the company are doing, but just an organic, wrathful attempt to hurt his opponent. And Danielson, as we've seen him do so much so recently, reacted to the moment.

Yet nothing in this match couldn't have existed twenty years ago, maybe even thirty. Yet it got as much reaction, thorough, earnest, heated, as anything I've seen in AEW this year. They were a few chants for Christian early, but they didn't linger. He made sure of that. There was one "This is Awesome", after a dive that was earned and a pause in the action that followed. There were no Fight Forevers. Nothing like that. Instead they milked a simple countout attempt where fans in the front row helped Danielson up and the crowd completely ate it up. They went hard. There were some big bumps. They leveraged the hurt arm and Christian was doggedly focused upon it. But they didn't go over the top like you'd see in so many matches that tried to run up a score past five stars.

So, it wasn't necessarily clever or innovative or any single thing we hadn't seen before. Yet, believe me when I say this: it was unique and it was special. Some of that was just in how thoroughly and unabashedly it leaned into those traditional elements; patiently, consistently trusting in the eternal and the primal over the ephemeral, running an experiment it working beyond all expectations. But it was also this: Up until this year, I'm not sure this match could have ever existed in this exact form. In decades' past, even a main event match wouldn't get this sort of time on TV. If it did, there would have to be something over the top to justify it. It would have to be more thoroughly obscured under the veil of sports entertainment trappings. On the indies, it would have been impossible; the sheer length and scope would have led to excess, whether through greed or insecurity.

It took these wrestlers, in this moment, in this setting, on a show that neither made but both saw the potential in, in a company that neither made but that allows for the utmost in creative freedom, to let all of their years of experience and all of their trust in one another, in the crowd, in the manipulative art of pro wrestling, for something so simple, straightforward, and serene to come into being. This felt like where Pro Wrestling should have always been headed, back to the beginning and forward to the future. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/25 - 10/1 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/1/23

MD: Since there's so much to cover, I'm only going to do a full write-up if I have a lot to add. I don't have a lot to say about Kingston vs Shibata, for instance, just a few sentences. The announcers covered it well at the start, noting it was sort of a clash between the UWF-inspired NJPW style and the King's Road AJPW style, and at the end where they pointed out that Kingston had used up his theoretical rope breaks to protect the Pure Champion in his loss. I thought the image of Shibata rising up in the corner as Eddie was beating him down was absolutely iconic and shouldn't be lost. Likewise, Shibata goading Eddie with kicks worked really well. They kept the pop-ups to a minimum, a brief flash in the overall match. The finish effectively got over the power bomb as Eddie's finish moving forward and not just a one time thing.

While there was a sense of anticipation of the post-match hanging over the main, it was still a definite hit. A 2/3 falls match, much like a Texas Death Match, allows for different finishes than usual. The turtleneck bit was brilliant but might have felt like robbing the fans in a different match; using a countout after the stairs shot really put it over as something even more gruesome than normal but would have been impossible in a different main event. Christian having trouble getting him over for that spot added instead of detracted because it made it seem less cooperative, like less of a "spot" and more of a murder. That's something with Christian's offense in general. It was a lot of him just leaning on Darby instead of carefully placing move (or counter) after move (or counter). The best part of the post-match was Christian's overall demeanor. He wasn't horrified or excited to see Copeland show up. He was begrudgingly accepting that "this guy" was here again and that even in the best case, he'd have to share the spotlight. I don't think anyone else in wrestling would have played it quite like that.

Bryan Danielson vs Zack Sabre Jr.

MD: Let's start at the end. Post-match, Sabre refuses the handshake and Danielson calls Aubrey Edwards back into the ring. She's a hometown hero, much like Danielson, and there's a special connection between them, as there's footage of Aubrey crying during Danielson's retirement speech. He's on record on saying that he wasn't even sure what he was thinking in bringing her back, that it just felt right because the referee is such an important part of the match. That's the cool thing about art though, about everything we do in writing about it. Intent matters, but not nearly as much as effect. After a grinding, focused, measured technical match, one so good and credible that it was the spot in the show that they chose to cut to a MMA star afterwards, Danielson chose to give Aubrey her flowers. What that evoked to me was the theater, that curtain call where the actors take their bow and then clap towards the stage crew, light operators, the pit band. Danielson chose this moment, after this match, to do something which pulled the "curtain" down in as directly figurative a way as I can imagine. It wouldn't have worked after almost any other match. It would have seemed winking and cutesy and metatextual and pretentious, no matter the intent. Here, it felt appropriate, as if we'd reached a transcendent moment of wrestling as a performance art, and just this one time, we were allowed to acknowledge it.

I've been through this twice now, once just experiencing it, once trying to make sense of it. Because of that second pass, I can tell you that it was the fourth exchange of the match where they had all of the quick ins and outs and clever reversals and escapes; that's where Sabre knocked down Danielson's structural arm to disrupt the Indian Deathlock, for instance. That entire exchange was amazing, everything you'd want from a war of technical pro wrestlers. Narratively, however, if you want a skeleton key to the effect of the match (leaving intent aside again), Moxley's commentary provided it early on. Danielson is a reactive wrestler. That's the key to the match.

There were two big transitions, or more appropriately, act breaks. The first was Sabre goading Danielson into using his steel-reinforced right arm for a strike only to cleverly block it and damage it heavily. That would be Sabre's "end" throughout the rest of the match. He wanted to hurt the arm enough that he could get a submission with it. Even when he hit some other move, it was all to create an opportunity to go back to the arm. The second was Danielson starting on the leg, first in the corner with kicks and then with the dragon screws, most especially that stomach-turning one where everything seemed jammed in all the wrong directions. That, however, was not an "end", but instead a "means," something Danielson could use as a point of leverage to open Sabre up for the offense that he really wanted to hit, to create opportunities, to help facilitate escapes when his arm was in danger.  

On paper, Sabre's strategy should have been the one to win the day. In fact, you could make the case (and Danielson, Nigel, and Sabre all made it in one form or the other) that Sabre may have come out of this looking like the better technical wrestler. Just not like the better overall wrestler. He had one singular goal in the arm whereas Danielson, as per his personality and character, was adaptable, flexible, able to ride with the currents of violence and pain instead of trying to bend them to his will. And isn't that what a technical wrestler does? Technical wrestling is about control, about manipulating the human body in ways it shouldn't bend, about playing chess three steps ahead, about constraining possibilities so that there is only one inevitable future, the one you define. Danielson is, in many ways, the antithesis of that, which is why, when it seemed like Sabre had finally gotten him, Danielson, not ready for it so much as able to react to it due to his openness of mind, turned it right around into the RegalPlex, setting Sabre up for the Knees.

Danielson's 2023 is full of matches that play out not quite like you'd expect or anticipate. Sometimes it's due to injury. Sometimes it's simply due to unforeseen circumstances placing him into a match not his making. Here, in this battle of the greatest technical wrestlers, he ceded the competition entirely, instead serving as the ultimate steel for the very best to prove himself against. It just shows that to best appreciate Danielson, sometimes we have to take a page out of his book and be reactive and adaptive ourselves. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/18 - 9/24 Part 2

MD: AEW's producing a lot of content right now. We've got another PPV this weekend with Darby vs Christian (2/3 Falls), Kingston vs Shibata, and Danielson vs ZSJ. Even with Punk gone and Dustin used infrequently, I have to pick and choose a little. So no Sting tag, which was good but on a Rampage so full of tags that even I got a bit overwhelmed by faces-in-peril, and no Danielson vs Starks. I don't have a ton to say about the latter anyway; I think it achieved its goal of elevating Starks. I liked how he came in unfocused and violent, shifting from strategy to strategy and weapon to weapon while Danielson was centered and focus and thus victorious. I thought they flubbed the Texas Death Match rules just a little and cut off some of the drama because of that. The pinfall > count element is a feature, not a bug. Getting everyone, including the ref, on board is important. 

AEW Collision 9/23/23

Darby Allin vs. Christian vs. Luchasaurus

MD: This was one of the better triple threat matches I can remember, which says more about three ways than it does about the match itself. It was a bit of a cheat overall because it had an entirely different story engine powering it. Is a triple threat match really a triple threat match when it's just worked like a handicap match without tags and where anyone can get pinned? Technically yes. Usually a triple threat is an excuse to get someone else on a card and to just keep the spots constantly going. More often than not, unique possibilities created by having three characters in one match are tossed to the wayside along with, you know, the notion of selling and letting things breathe, to instead tap into the ability to always have something happening. In some ways it's the opposite of creativity because it's just the lowest common denominator. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Therefore, this being worked as it was gave it an unfair advantage over all other matches of its ilk. Even just the first minute of this was cleverly thought out: Darby came in with an immediate strategy for victory, throwing powder at Luchasaurus, taking out Christian (who had his own strategy by sending in Luchasaurus first and going to the floor for a chair) with a dive and then going for the immediate victory with the Code Red. From there Darby would get some swipes in or would be able to dodge out of the way and clear the ring of one of his opponents to try to score a quick victory, but he would get overwhelmed again and again. It was great inherent storytelling in that regard, feeling like a competition with set odds or even like actual sport in a way wrestling usually doesn't (and unless you're watching Steve Grey, probably shouldn't). They made sure to put in a couple of car crash spots that would be contrived in a match where you didn't have a third guy to set things up, most especially the gut-churning chairlocked German Suplex.

And yes, there were those character bits in there, not just in how Christian pressed advantages and how Darby worked to find openings and capitalize on them from underneath but Christian trying to steal the belt and Luchasaurus finally starting to value it. The last part opened the door for the finish and Christian at least temporarily getting his due for all the work he's put in lately. Speaking of that, Punk obviously has to be replaced for our fifth and I'm leaning Christian's way, though I do ultimately prefer him as a TV working babyface. I want to give RUSH a chance to come back and get a couple of matches under his belt though, so we'll see. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/14 - 8/20

AEW Collision 8/19/23

Darby Allin vs. Christian

MD: I can think of very few matches that I want to see more in AEW than this. The thing is, I want to see it four or five times. That's when Christian's skillset really comes into play. You saw a chunk of it here, of course, because they had a lot of time to fill. I prefer him as a babyface to a heel, but with the right babyface, with the right stuff, you get the same sort of effect. He's an absolute savant at spot placement, one of the best TV workers ever when it comes to that. As a heel, a lot of his arsenal is left on the table and it becomes more of a matter of collaboratively working his opponent's stuff in, but that worked well enough here considering Darby's signature spots are perfectly suited to working from underneath.

I scrapped a paragraph here about chemical changes in wrestling (incentives for wrestlers and spots as ends as opposed to means). No one wants to read me go on about all of that again. Focusing on the match itself however, I thought this struck a great balance between spots and the connective tissue. A twelve minute match can still have time to breathe if it's worked a certain way. A lot of times, barring the commercial breaks, AEW matches are distinctly not worked that way. This had twice the time and really leaned into it. That meant that Christian really leaned on Darby, really doubled down on little character bits and personality highlights, be it hiding behind Luchasaurus to cut off a moment of hope or the bit with luring Darby in towards the belt. Past that, I don't actually have a lot to say here. This was just what I wanted it to be. I just need more of it, not within the match itself, but within a series of matches. There are still places for this to go. Darby is a guy who makes everyone's offense look great and Christian is someone whose offense I really do want to look as good as possible. I wanted Darby to use the Last Supper against Cage last week, but now that he's won with a couple of different roll ups, I'm fine with him continuing to press in that direction. He's on a parallel path to Cassidy now, both of them up against the world and surviving by the skin of their teeth. People say that Page or Kingston are the main character of AEW, but this year it's been Darby and OC. And yes, I want to see Christian vs. Cassidy just as bad, and then six more matches between them. Maybe we get them before it's all said and done.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/17 - 7/23

AEW Collision 7/22/23

CM Punk/Darby Allin vs Ricky Starks/Christian

MD: This was very down to earth and very conventional, albeit with some unique partners and a certainly unique crowd. I came in to the first Collision thinking they needed to run some big angle from the start, and maybe, if they wanted to keep every single eye that fell upon the show, they did, but that's not what they went with and it's obviously not what they're doing. They're looking a slow, steady, consistent pro wrestling television and that means long, disciplined, measured TV matches of high quality like this. You can draw a throughline from the booking overall to the layout of this match. 

For one, all four wrestlers were completely engaged, completely committed, selling every emotional beat 100%. That might be the early bits with neither Starks nor Christian wanting to get it. It might be Starks on the apron watching Christian go for the diving headbutt and deciding to do the "look out to the crowd" visor pose of Christian's. It might be Punk making mental mistakes by chasing Starks after he committed slight transgressions at various points, or even Christian looking at Starks across the ring to get him to commit one of those transgressions. That meant for clever and elaborate transitions. It allowed for a strong double heat after a long and entertaining shine. Starks wrestled big. Darby made everything look better and more impactful. Christian's every movement was absolutely precise. Punk was a star, drawing heat and adulation and getting the fans all the more behind Darby.

This was comfort food at a high level. I try to watch things with an open mind, but if you've seen enough tag matches, especially ones that play within the line to try to make the most of the modality's conventions and norms, certain timings just feel right. They nailed it at almost every point here. Exactly when I felt some sort of inner need for Punk to loop in a hope spot, he did. Darby's offense is set up for big comebacks but that also makes him a great hot tag. He got in a few of his bombs and then immediately transitioned things back to heat by bouncing off of Luchasaurus. 

Everything was built up. Everything was paid off. Everything mattered. It was the complete opposite of the sort of matches we often get on Dynamite where babyfaces will break the rules of the match in the name of spots (where the spots are the ends and not the means) or where things break down a third the way through the match and then never come back. This was far more grounded, takes a different sort of patience and investment, but has a greater payoff. So long as you have crowds reacting to Punk and Punk reacting to crowds (and to a degree the emotional beats that FTR are good at setting up and laying down), there's a real chance that fans can be conditioned to expect something more than pure candy, imaginative visuals and set pieces, and emotional payoffs that are welcomed but not really earned from tag matches once again.

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Found Footage Friday: MISAWA~! KAWADA~! THE LAND OF GIANTS~! CHRISTIAN~! JOE~! DYING DAYS IWE~!

Rusher Kimura vs. Carl Fergie IWE 6/6/81

MD: It's always fun to see a journeyman overachieve in another country. You can think of Jim Dillon in the Maritimes (not that we have that footage) or the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs in Puerto Rico (that we do have and it's fun). Here, it's Carl Fergie - fresh off a midcard run putting guys over in Mid-South and on his way to do the same in Crockett - in a main event with Rusher Kimura. I was going to say that he was well prepared for this one by wrestling Lawler, but he doesn't wrestle Lawler until 1982, so it was somehow the other way around.

You need somewhat similar skill sets against both, mainly being able to snap your head back at the sight of a great worked punch and take a back body drop. With Rusher, however, you also had to deal with nasty chops in the corner and headbutts.  That gave the match a more visceral feel; when Fergie snuck in a kick out of the corner and tried to assert himself, he was probably forcing a break for the sake of his forehead and poor chest. Rusher was in a hybrid phase here: not the wrestler he'd been in the 70s, not the comedy statesman he'd be a few years later. It meant he'd try for things like a stretch out of a Russian Leg Sweep or the bearhug into a butterfly submission he won with, but no longer had the flexibility he once did. This set up other matches on the tour as much as anything else, with Gypsy Joe interfering to mercifully (as he was trying out that first submission) cause the first fall. I thought Fergie looked like he belonged, for the most part. Some of that was the state of IWE, but enough of it was Fergie himself.

ER: King Carl Fergie the Wicked, wearing a Nazi helmet for his dying days IWE main event. King Carl Fergie, conqueror of Goro Tsurumi and Atsushi Onita, partner of Gypsy Joe. Rusher Kimura's takedowns look so impossible to stop. Rusher had lost some speed but this man moved and manipulated the larger Fergie like a real shooter. When he pins Fergie's arm and grapevines the leg, you can see him using all of his weight to effortlessly drop Fergie to the mat. It's the way Fergie keeps trying to push Rusher off him from his back, but Rusher won't let go of that boot for anything. The shoulderblocks hit hard and Fergie gets tossed immaculately by a backdrop, then gets punched directly in the face, taking a tremendous floundering back bump with windmilling arms that almost catches the back of his neck on the ropes. Fergie took that punch like he was a heavy getting knocked out by Rick Simon. This is really fucking good. Fergie walks right up to Rusher Kimura because he's the man, and he punches Rusher in the face and shakes his fist out angrily after punching him, and every man in Korakuen knows that Fergie is the man. His elbow strikes to Kimura's collarbones only reinforces that feeling.  

I loved every headlock in this match. 

Carl Fergie takes an even higher backdrop than he did earlier and Rusher locks him into a killer butterfly mid-squat bearhug like he was a Negro Navarro T-1000 sent back to send Carl Fergie back to Memphis. Who was the human (?) who, over 40 years ago, knew how important it would be to document the time crimes that were happening in the final three months of the 4th most popular wrestling promotion in Japan. 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/20/90

MD: Eric already covered the hugely entertaining 11/21/90 Land of the Giants vs Dory/Terry match (amazing Terry performance) so I'm poking at the guts of this thing instead. And on paper, it's kind of interesting. Misawa and Kawada had spent most of the last many months against Jumbo, Taue, Inoue, Fuchi, Doc, Gordy, Hansen and even occasionally stablemate Kobashi and Ace. Those are all guys you can do a lot against. Here, they were up against the sort of challenge rare to AJPW, two absolute lugs with size, no mobility, terrible clubbering strikes, little presence. That's the sort of thing you expect out of post-WWF talent 80s NJPW maybe, where they'd just trot out Mad Maxx and Super Maxx managed by Wakamatsu to face Fujinami and Kimura, but it's a lot less of an AJPW thing.

And, yeah, it goes ok. The real testament to Misawa, Kawada, and the crowd, was that there was a legitimately hot tag to Misawa towards the end and the crowd went up for it; I don't think it was entirely warranted, but they went with it anyway. After that, there was a great American tag moment of Misawa and Kawada whipping the giants into each other too. Otherwise, the big appeal here would be the Super Generation Army throwing really high kicks at really tall guys. Nitron took them pretty well too. That's about the nicest thing I'm going to say about Land of the Giants here, unfortunately. The blows didn't look great, crummy knees in the ropes, weak sweeping clubbering forearms, a couple of slams that didn't have much mustard behind them. There was stuff that worked in theory but not execution, like Nitron catching Kawada with a cheapshot clothesline from his spot on the apron to cut off a flurry. Their finish at this point was an assisted legdrop (from an atomic drop position) and Masters pumping his arm before going up with it was sort of entertaining. The finish worked too, with Kawada getting Nitron out of the ring so Misawa could throw some magic forearms and duck a clothesline to hit a pretty beautiful bridging German on a giant of a man. But like I said, that they got the crowd back was the most impressive thing here.

ER: Yeah, this wasn't great. It merely existed, and was worked surprisingly straight forward for being a couple of Faux Warriors vs. the two hottest young studs in the company. Misawa and Kawada didn't go after them any differently than they would have gone after Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith, so that was kind of disappointing. I either wanted to see two giants with bad offense hold down two elites, or two elites absolutely lace into two bad giants, and we got something much less risky and much less interesting. What *is* important to note, is that the team of SKYWALKER NITRON and Butch Masters is not "Land of the Giants", which I suppose makes more sense than their actual name. No, their name is THE Land of Giants. Their team name makes sure to place the focus on the Land rather than the Giants who inhabit this Land, much like hit the hit Sid & Marty Krofft series The Land of Lost. 

In This Land of Giants, the Giants do not hit very hard. Of all the future X-Men, I imagine Misawa or Kawada could have worked a more compelling match with Kelsey Grammer or Alan Cumming. SKYWALKER NITRON throws two of the piddliest clotheslines, even though Kawada mostly saved one of them by just running neck first into it. Running into an actual clothesline in the backyard would have provided far more resistance that NITRON's long noodle of an arm. I do like how Misawa came in and kicked at him, actually liked his kicks more than Kawada's here. Lighter on form, harder on impact. Butch Masters is really good at stepping over the top rope, which is not a thing that every tall wrestler can say. SKYWALKER NITRON can't say it. But Butch steps over it straight, an optical illusion that makes it look like he's just stepping up onto a curb while he's actually clearing three ropes. NITRON meanwhile looks like he's trying to get into a ski boat from the water. Each man who hails from The Land of Giants did their own bearhug, and Misawa broke up SKYWALKER's by walking in and just elbowing him straight in the kidneys. Kawada hits a cool pescado into NITRON, and I do like the finisher of the team who hails from The Land of Giants, a man-assisted legdrop. What other Giants come from this Land? Were they sending their biggest and best Giants to the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium? Was this merely a work placement program, or a study abroad kind of situation? What is the Giant Exchange Program in The Land? Are these two as good as Tall Rick or Thomas Big Boots? 

Christian vs. Samoa Joe NEW 4/21/07

MD: I love Christian's WWECW work. He was an amazing week to week TV wrestler, someone who could work his own spots and his opponent's spots into a match in clever, believable, varied, and interesting ways to deal with the grind of televised match after match after match. A sort of neo-Bret Hart for a different era with different demands. I've never really had any indication that he worked it out much before that though. Some of that is on me in that I didn't chase down his TNA run. Unfortunately, I do think some of it might be on him too.

It's a little off-putting how much of this match is rote heel champion vs. local dominant attraction house show fare, actually. It's not that the stalling isn't fun and the antics with the ref aren't good and the cheating isn't effective. It just doesn't stand out as special like you'd expect a Christian vs. Samoa Joe match to be. In fact, even though he hits some of his big offensive moves, it's the least "Joe" match I've ever seen. He's so submerged in the formula that he comes off as just another guy lacking his usual aura. Because it's such an aberration, I'm leaning towards Christian not quite being there yet and my gut says that this would have been a lot better a couple of years later or even right now. Again, there was nothing bad or wrong about it and the stuff that was good was very good; it just was less than the sum of its parts should have been. That's all.

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The 2002 WWF Royal Rumble Match: A Great Royal Rumble Match

ER: I had not watched this Rumble since it originally aired, and I was surprised at just how many specific things I remembered. I have real goldfish brain these days and yet I somehow remembered more about this Rumble than almost any of the 20+ that have happened since. I watched this one specifically for the 2002 Boss Man content. Boss Man was good enough in 2002 that it's worth checking out a 70 minute match for what is no more than a few minutes of Boss Man action. This was his final PPV match appearance before spending the next few months working compelling matches on Heat. Going out like a legend. But this match had a lot more value than just a few minutes of Boss Man. This is one of my favorite Rumbles, one with nothing but great punches and ass kicking. Goldust/Rikishi was a great starting two for this Rumble. Honestly, Goldust making his WWE return and looking this damn good is something that should be brought up every time you talk about Dustin career highlights. He and Rikishi were pacesetters for this, focusing snug punches, fast near eliminations and hard bumps, and at least 15 guys in this Rumble focus on the same. Boss Man is actually the third guy in this whole thing, and in a Rumble where half the men involved made a case for having the best punches in WWF, Big Boss Man made the best case for #1. 

Based on this Rumble alone, the 10 best punchers of 2002 WWF were:

1. Big Boss Man

2. Matt Hardy

3. Val Venis

4. Goldust

5. Perry Saturn

6. Mr. Perfect

7. Chuck Palumbo

8. Christian

9. Scotty 2 Hotty

10. Steve Austin

Goldust/Rikishi/Boss Man makes for a really great fast paced three way, with all taking big bumps and throwing stiff strikes. Goldust gets crotched up top, Boss Man gets whipped into Goldust's groin, and Boss Man slips Rikishi ass over elbow with a running forearm shiver. During his few minutes in the Rumble Match, Boss Man threw upwards of 16 different precise punches to Rikishi's and Goldust's body and face. 

He made the most of his too brief time, then took a real tough elimination: He was the matches' lone Stink Face victim, and it was a particularly aggressive and lengthy, just buried. What were they doing out there. How were we a baby step away from a wrestler being allowed to put his balls in his opponent's mouth or something. Boss Man staggered into a big bump elimination, Rikishi blasting him with a fully extended superkick and a freight train clothesline over the top. I still can't believe how great Boss Man was in 2002. 

Goldust has some of the best in-ring timing of any wrestler of the last 20 years, but we get blessed with an unintentionally hilarious Rumble moment where Goldust starts a corner 10 count punch sequence on Bradshaw at almost the exact same time the countdown clock begins, so you have 13,000 people colliding on numbers with everyone going in different directions. 

Undertaker clearing the ring, laying waste to everyone - Goldust claiming best elimination with his chokeslam bump elimination - was really well done. Undertaker felt like a real force and everyone in 2002 moved like they were somehow injected with extra testosterone. But the best past of Undertaker eating waste was Matt Hardy and Lita beating the shit out of him, and it only got better when Jeff Hardy came in because then all three of them kicked the shit out of him. I wish we got more of that before Taker made his comeback, but I just love the Hardys. The Last Ride on Matt was huge, and Jeff got to distract Taker enough for Maven to make him look like a bug eyed idiot. But they got a lot of good mileage out of the Undertaker/Maven brawl, with Undertaker beating the shit out of the never-eliminated Maven and then walking down the aisle to punch Scott 2 Hotty in the face before just walking back to continue the beating. Maven bleeds and gets dragged into the concourse area, security guards having to actively shove fans out of the way as they crowd in. 

There's a lot of star power, and the guys who get less of a reaction all do stuff to make the crowd pay attention. Christian, DDP, Scotty, Chuck Palumbo, Godfather, Albert, all worked hard for their 1-10 minutes, everyone of them throwing hands and bumping big. DDP had this great tumbling backwards bumps through the ropes after a Scotty superkick; Christian, Palumbo, and Perry Saturn all have a face punching challenge and we are all winners, with Saturn and Chuck especially teeing off on each other. 

The match can be divided up 65/35 between the build to Austin charming the big crowd by running the ring, and the comedown when Austin has to share the ring with HHH. Even though the entire Rumble has good parts, it is top loaded and I like how everyone filled time before HHH was in there. Austin is a great battle royal worker. That's no secret. I love watching him fill time and I loved the gag of him eliminating everyone too quickly, so needing to punch everyone back into the ring to eliminate them again. Austin runs through several guys and it's a weird call to have Val Venis show up for the first time in 8 months and be the first guy in the match to ice down Austin. Turns out, it was a good call. I liked the Austin/Venis stretch so much that I immediately checked for any singles matches they had, and now I'm definitely going to watch their 1999 Smackdown match. I don't think HHH is bad in this Rumble per se, but he's so fucking serious and it kind of spoils all the fun. He's a scowling frowning buzzkill who glowers and sucks the fun out of exchanges, and spends a lot of time lying down and catching his breath. The first 70% of the match is kids having a blast at a sleepover, and the last 30% is like kids still having fun, but it's on a field trip while a teacher keeps telling them to be quiet. 

I really loved this match as Mr. Perfect's last big moment. Making the final three, swatting his gum into the crowd while Austin and HHH try to eliminate. What a guy. Does anyone else swat their gum like they're Mr. Perfect? I think I'd be too afraid of it getting stuck to my hand or whiffing. It takes high levels of confidence to pull Curt Hennig's gum swat success rate. Do you remember the little buzz after Perfect came back after almost a decade? I was on those message boards. I was talking about how great the Perfect/Tommy Dreamer match was on Heat. I didn't know he wouldn't even work 20 matches after that one. Is the Curt Hennig Puerto Rico any good? What about the XWF that he recorded right before returning to WWF? It probably is, and I'll probably watch that along with the Austin/Venis match. This Rumble has a lot of fallout. The push to the finish of the match was exciting enough. Big Show looked really good in the double strap Bundy singlet. Kane lifting, walking, and tossing Big Show over the ropes to eliminate him was legitimately impressive, Kurt Angle had a lot of enthusiasm, the Austin elimination was fairly shocking, and you're left with a 70 minutes match that did not at all feel 70 minutes long. I think that counts as high praise. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/30 - 6/5

AEW Dynamite 6/1

CM Punk/FTR vs. Max Caster/Gunn Club

MD: Obviously, it's hard to watch this one back and not be on the lookout for how Punk is hurt. They really build to him coming in the first time and he's there for the hot tag at the end, so there's not a ton of it but it was a little striking how often he went up to the top in that short time he was in there, a double axehandle to start, the body block back off the ropes, the elbow drop on Caster, the springboard attempt that goes wrong on his way in. The Gunns, Austin especially, with his manic energy, have a lot of potential, but they're not there yet. I've come around on Austin's chop block to take out the legs. The first times I saw it, it felt inadvertent, a move of opportunity that shouldn't come up every match, but now he seems to look for it more, as part of his overarching strategy. He's great at reacting when he knows something is coming, when it's a planned spots, but you never know when the crowd is going to start an ass boys chant and he's not always so great at organically working that in. Punk, on the other hand, old pro that he is, can switch a facial expression or little appeal to the crowd mid-sequence depending on how they're reacting. Most of the match was the heat on Dax, and it was good, with a great cut off to lead into the commercial as Dax knocked two of his opponents out of the ring only to have them rush around to take out Punk and Cash off the apron. The fact he put them in position to do so made it even better. Having Billy to sneak in a punch and Bowens to use the crutch only helped matters. Any issues with the match down the stretch were due to Punk's foot, and the internal feeling in your gut that we'll be missing out on what this pairing might have been the start of.

Matt Hardy/Christian Cage/Darby Allin/Jurassic Express vs. Hikuleo/Young Bucks/ReDragon

MD: This was the homecoming match for the Bucks and was going to showcase them while also theoretically giving a little attention to Hikuleo in advance of Forbidden Door, given that Cole is apparently banged up. It wasn't going to be for me but I thought the structure was generally effective for what they were trying to do. Here, there the sort of shine where everyone got to get their stuff in before the dives were all to set up the transition, by clearing the ring so that you were left with Christian and the Bucks. The most interesting moment in there was Christian interacting with Matt Hardy for a moment. Anyway, it meant that Christian worked as face-in-peril during the commercial which is always where they stick the heat, and even though it was a fairly pro-Bucks crowd, by the end of it, there was a chant for him because he's one of the best traditional babyfaces in the company. I know people are itching for the Express to lose the titles and Christian to turn on Jungle Boy but I've always much preferred Christian as a face and there's about another thirty match-ups I'd like to see him have in the company before such a turn. After the hot tag to Luchasaurus it all broke down like you'd expect, an extended, chaotic finishing stretch leading to the Bucks ascendant. Hikuleo got to show a few things here defensively, jamming the chokeslam attempt, catching a dive, no selling Hardy's slams into the corner, but he didn't do much of anything on offense which seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity. This wasn't anything I was particularly looking forward to but it gave the crowd things that they wanted and had enough good things that it did me no lasting harm.

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AEW All Out 9/5/21 Pt. 3

CM Punk vs. Darby Allin

PAS: This was excellent, maybe one of my favorite Punk matches ever. He really leaned into what he does well, and I thought his execution in this match (which was always a bit of a weakness) was precise and excellent. I don't really think of Punk as a stiff worker, but he throws a brutal looking short clothesline, some hard punches and a great looking leg lariat, which is a Punk spot which I had always thought looked sort of crappy. Darby was of course tremendous, he has some of the best offense in the world and is an all time bumper. I loved how the sick ringpost bump led into all of Punk's abdominal stretches, and how hard Darby bumped for simple things like shoulder blocks. He is so fast, that he always seems moments away from winning, and eats offense so well that he is always moments away from losing. They cribbed an opening spot from Bret Hart vs. 1-2-3 Kid, so that is the obvious comparison, but this was a very Bret Hart performance by Punk, and Darby is an even more self destructive 1-2-3 Kid. I honestly think this is a classic match, it easily exceeded my expectations. 

ER: If this match somehow didn't exceed someone's expectations then that person may want to find a new fandom. This was going to be a difficult match to make memorable beyond "return of the guy people have been waiting to return for 7 years". The return was always going to be memorable, but that's no guarantee the match was going to be. Hometown Returning Mega Babyface vs. one of the biggest AEW babyfaces is tough to work around without one of them working heel, and I'm happy that they used Bret/Kid as a loose framework to successfully work around that. Nobody wanted to see either as the bad guy, and so instead they made the match work with some excellent focused work and execution. Punk has always famously been a John Cena bad execution wrestler, but execution is just one facet of a great worker. Here, however, his execution looked as good as any Punk match I've ever seen, and Allin's offense was on another level. Allin is one of the best "body as weapon" wrestlers today, and he was hitting Punk so hard with shoulderblocks and corner body attacks harder than ever, like he wanted every back row Chicagoan to know how hard the hometown boy was getting hit. Allin's ringpost bump was insane, and no matter how redundant it has felt to still be calling Darby bumps insane, he somehow keeps managing to top himself. I've never seen someone take that bump as a cannonball, bouncing back first off the ringpost. 

Punk immediately starts working over Darby's back and it's the most effective use of an abdominal stretch in a big match in who knows when. Excalibur smartly pointed out before the match that Punk's gas tank would be his biggest concern, so I loved how all of Darby's offense was focused on Punk's stomach and ribs. A guy with a iffy gas tank getting pounded in the abdomen makes a ton of sense. Darby was great at moving this show along, taking a mammoth bump through the ropes to the floor off the first Go2Sleep, and I loved the spot where Punk merely sat up out of the way of the first Coffin Drop. Darby made Punk's calf kick look lethal, and Punk made the Diamond Dust really look like something that could break your jaw. Both men really lit it up and the time really flew by. There was no nonsense, no unnecessary outside involvement, and that couldn't have been easy to pass up. This match had to accomplish several things, and they managed to find the best way to balance a huge star's return while having the best match possible and STILL keeping Darby strong. This was a smashing success in every way. 

Paul Wight vs. QT Marshall

PAS: This was great for it's spot, I believe in a cooler match, and Wight bumping around some goofs is a great cooler. This was a Women's match spot in the WWE forever, and it is smart for AEW not to demean their women by putting them there. I liked Comoroto not dropping from the punch, that guy has potential and I would be into him and Wight going at it. 

Kenny Omega vs. Christian

PAS: Good main event, focusing on vicious Omega rather then spot guy Omega. Christian took a real shellacking in this match for an older guy, blasted in the mouth with knees, big bumps to the floor, that double stomp with a table on top of him. You get the sense his body was one giant bruise after that match. Omega kept the do-si-doing to a minimum and instead just tried to drive his knee through Christian's head. Some of his facial expressions are too Tom Green for me, but I appreciate violence. That one winged angle from the top rope is a great looking super finisher. Adam Cole debuting post match is sort of a bummer, but I am excited to see what Danielson can do in this stage of his career. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Royal Rumble 2021 Live Blog

Nia Jax/Shayna Baszler vs. Asuka/Charlotte

ER: I thought Charlotte and Nia looked like a real mess throughout their whole Raw match earlier in the week, and they seem to have less chemistry a week later at the Rumble. I think it's pretty shocking how much Charlotte especially has regressed in the past couple years, and I wish they would hurry up and get Asuka away from her. I've mostly been a high voter on Jax but she's been noticeably slow and lazier in exchanges since coming back (ACL tears in both knees will do that to you). Things get clunky whenever Charlotte is in this one, and part of that is Baszler and Jax not being great at getting into position for Charlotte's offense, but a bigger part is Charlotte requiring people to too often be in specific position for offense that doesn't look great. She made a great diving save to break up a pin, but every one of her stomach kicks looked like she forgot what move she was supposed to be replicating. I'm also well beyond the point of needing to see Ric Flair on TV more than once or twice a year, and do not care about this angle with him and Lacey. I don't think this match ever came together as anything resembling a satisfying tag, the Asuka/Charlotte pairing does nothing for me, and the Baszler/Jax pairing has been very underwhelming. They need to separate all four of them and see if that helps freshen any of them. 

Goldberg vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: I am here for MMA shorts Goldberg. Really, I am here for Goldberg, so. This didn't really have the same kind of impact or sustained heat of the other Goldberg comeback matches, and ended really flat. It had a lot of promising steps throughout, like the spear nearfall to start, or the spear through the barricade, and I fully bit on the jackhammer kickout. Once Goldberg hit it I actually thought they were giving us another Goldberg run. And while I liked Goldberg's missed spear chest first corner bump, McIntyre needs to find something a little more interesting to do than making dumb Edge faces in the corner for FAR too long while Goldberg sells damage. I know part of the modern WWF dogshit style is to make dumbshit faces in the corner for too long before hitting your finisher, but this felt way too long, and ended this on an unfortunate note. 

Carmella vs. Sasha Banks

ER: A lot of this match really was not hitting for me, until things picked up with the Reginald involvement. It felt like they kept skipping steps within the match, like there weren't any kind of transitions between offense, they just went right to moves. Except Carmella was doing the moves deliberately slow, because heel I guess, and then when Sasha took over she was already doing "frustrated by only a 2 count" faces. It all felt really underbaked. The Reginald involvement added something unique to the match, loved him catching Sasha and eating a headscissors, this guy rules. But he's quickly sent to the back and Carmella does a dive that lands her right on her face. It used to be Sasha's job to almost break her face on dives, so Carmella is trying to do the equivalent of stealing her rival's finisher. Ending felt abrupt and not set up super well, with Carmella getting a couple nice reversals of big Banks spots, but then just getting tapped anyway. This was not a strong title match, and there aren't any weaker Banks title matches coming to mind. Major disappointment. 

Women's Rumble Match

ER: Bayley/Naomi is a good way to start the Rumble, but MAN has Naomi been a complete afterthought for seemingly 2 years. Her whole career has felt like her having a big showing on one of the big WWF PPVs, then them mostly not doing anything with that. She really could have been a major star a few years ago and they just repeatedly stall out on her. This is the first time she's been in any kind of match for 5 months, but I'm not sure if there were injuries or just a lack of interest. This really should be Bianca Belair's match. It has to be. If they just pull the trigger on her, come on baby! How awesome is Belair, skipping to the ring and removing her earrings for a fight? I've really been enjoying Billie Kay's solo run. I thought she was sunk for sure, but she's done far more interesting things than Royce since the split. Still would like it more with them together again, but oh well. I don't love Shotzi coming in and just doing all of her offense, the way she would entering a tag match. Everyone running at her, one at a time, the way you would in a hot tag or in a ninja movie is just dumb. It's one of the main reasons there aren't many good battle royals anymore, because "working a battle royal" is not the way most wrestlers work battle royals now. I don't like regular match in my battle royal, I get that in regular matches, which are plentiful. Watch a Rumble match like '89 or '90, and it's all those guys just filling the time with fighting. It's all punches and clotheslines and choking with boots. Now it's offense and I don't think it's better. 

Jillian Hall seems to be doing a Judy Tenuta thing now, and I think it works? Maybe it's an indication how well Peyton Royce is doing post Iiconics that I had no idea who her entrance music was for, and the Titan Tron video took forever to say it was Royce. Ohhhhhhhh shit I've been typing about it this entire time and I just realized they might get the Iiconics back together for this and I fucking want that so bad. It's a good way for them to get back together. Let them eliminate a couple people together and it's a great way to organically show that they're better when they're together! It would actually be a smart way to freshen up the roster, get an interesting team into the lifeless Asuka/Charlotte and Jax/Baszler stuff. But, of course, they don't do any of that. Royce almost immediately blends into the background of the match, and Kay is eliminated a few minutes later. A fruitful storyline abandoned without mention. 

Not a fan of the early and tossed off Toni Storm elimination. I've kind of unexpectedly become a big Toni fan over the past year. I am not interested in this becoming The Charlotte Match. But it really feels like a dumb thing WWF would do. "Ric had what we've defined as the Greatest Rumble Performance so now we need to give Charlotte her Greatest Rumble Performance." Please don't give us that. Too many people have been entering with missile dropkicks. It is stupid that so many have entered the match by immediately climbing to the top rope, and nobody has been punished for climbing to the top rope in the Royal Rumble. The ring is FILLED with people, someone should knock this person off the top rope while they are voluntarily standing there! This is another reason why people cannot work battle royals. The handstand set up for it was dumb, but I did like Dana Brooke hanging off Ripley's neck in a headscissors while Ripley tried to shake her off from the apron. Brooke was memorable in elimination. The layout of this has been weak for long stretches, like a couple instances of someone getting eliminated right before a new entrant, losing any impact of the elimination. BAYLEY'S elimination happened DURING Mickie James's entrance!! Who fucked that up!! Bayley was clearly one of the favorites to win this match, and they moved on within three seconds!! They showed her elimination as a replay, because the cameras were on James and not the arguable biggest name in the match being eliminated. That's really really bad layout for a Rumble. 

WWF could use Alicia Fox back. She would be a fun NXT act at minimum. Give me a Foxy/Aliyah pairing, that would be great. Strong inside cradle on R-Truth to get the 24/7 title back from Fox, good weight on the back of the thighs. I love Dakota Kai, and goddamn did she get eliminated. Ripley just dumped her face first on the apron. Not happy seeing Mandy and Kai eliminated back to back. I'm jinxing the hell out of my personal favorites. They do ANOTHER elimination RIGHT BEFORE a new entrance!! It has to be intentional at this point, and that is so stupid! Nikki Cross gets eliminated one second before TAMINA comes out. Eliminations with zero fanfare are a battle royal curse. There is a way to make eliminations sink in and at least let the announcers talk about the implications a bit, no need to be doing all of these at the exact same time as a thing that everyone is more interested in. The Naomi/Bianca stuff was good, they need to focus more on how long both have been in and they've been a little background, but I like how they're getting more screen time the longer they're in. 

They're going to do dumb Alexa Bliss stuff, aren't they. Yep. But THAT is a good elimination by Ripley! Thank god they had at least some Rumble decency, to have a dozen people in the ring just watching someone go through a long "transformation" without doing anything about it. I am so happy we didn't have to spend more than a minute on that. Ember Moon is yet another person coming in and doing all of their offense like a a normal match, but she dropkicks Naomi right in the face in a way that didn't seem intentional. Ember Moon looked really bad on her elimination, with that slow motion "setting up a spot" run she did to get backdropped by Shayna. Loved Nia's "I can't, she's family" excuse to not go after Tamina, but her hockey fighting with Shayna after Tamina's elimination looked bad. I'm not into the Nia/Shayna thing, just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere and the journey to get there isn't interesting. Do I hate Natalya's new gear? My instinct says yes, but is there an element of it I'm underappreciating? Perhaps. I'll level with you, I did not know there was important emotional history with Natalya and Lana. Was that elimination effective? I could not tell you. I have not been closely following the Natalya/Lana relationship. Charlotte has felt like a complete non-factor the entire time she's been in the Rumble. She was not working to stand out at all, so I am fully not interested in her valiantly battling against two foes, and I also don't understand her treating her elimination like a drunk sorority girl getting thrown out of a bar that overserved. 

I'm a big fan of Bianca going to WrestleMania, it's a great choice and the most interesting direction to go. But I wished I enjoyed her and Ripley's final two. I thought a lot of it looked real bad, like them doing really slow reversal sequences and slow thrown missed strikes. Ripley was hanging on the ropes dangling, and Belair just stood there waiting instead of kicking at her hands, literally standing there waiting to do the spot that came next. Working battle royals as a normal match suuuuucks. So I thought their final two stretch was not good, but the end result was great, and they did a genuinely great job of making it look like either Belair OR Ripley had a chance. That's important. Bianca's winner's speech was the kind of thing that would have been nice to see in front of a live crowd. 

Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns

ER: This didn't hook me until they started fighting up into the "crowd", and I liked some of the stuff up there. Owens had all these nasty chairshots to Roman's knees. He was jabbing the edge of a chair into Roman's patella, then just bashing them from the side, all really nasty stuff that should be sold throughout a match. They looked really hobbling but Reigns didn't treat them as such a moment later, which is disappointing. Owens had a nice bump off the riser and a good moment of him beating the 10 count. But once they went backstage it just felt like the same kind of slow Shane McMahon prop show that they've been doing into the ground. This whole thing is going too long, and I am so tired of these slow epic brawls that always make 20 minutes feel like 30 and 30 minutes feel like 45. These matches are more "ideas" matches than interesting fights, but none of the ideas are as good as any of the homebrew shit cooked up in the Last Battle of Burke. Sitting through an endless 25 minutes with a handcuff spot at the end taking up over 10% of the match is such a punishing waste of time. Michael Cole was right when he described this thing as brutal. I thought it would never stop. 

 

Men's Rumble Match

ER: I have not been following the storyline here, and that is just cruel to start this thing with Edge/Orton. This feels like they're fucking with me. Edge is at least a more compelling character now that his gimmick is that his body could break at any minute. Sami Zayn is looking, dressing, and wrestling more and more like Buck Robley, and I think it could make him one of my favorites. Has Mustafa Ali had his first name back since joining Retribution? Is Retribution a stable where getting back your own name is important, and that's why most of them have names like their parents were "child can choose their own name" parents? Edge has a better spear now than he did 10 years ago. When I'm not too into a match, I usually don't find myself saying "You know I bet this thing could get better if Dolph Ziggler got involved." I want to see a run from super gassed Carlito!! He looked like peak 80s gas Jimmy Snuka with cool Dick Anthony Williams facial hair. 

These things kind of stink now that the moments are all planned in the exact same way. Guy comes in, does his signature offense while people run at him one by one, do pose to hard cam, storyline for next elimination starts once new entrant is done with his offense, elimination culminates with 10 seconds until next entrant. They have gone to that exact same pattern in this and the women's rumble, and it sucks. 

Kane comes out looking more like the local guy playing Kane on an Australian knock off indy. That other guy might look better in ring at this point though. I wish Otis would have been in the match longer, thought his discus clothesline and capture suplex looked really great, but at least his elimination bump was the nastiest of the men's rumble so far. Dominik got big height, and Hurricane would be a nice guy to have back somewhere, but this rumble is not great. There are no compelling stories here, and it's felt like it's been full of restarts. Christian return is cool, and here's a thing I cannot believe: When Christian, Riddle, Big E, and Bryan all teamed up to force Lashley over, that was literally the first time in EITHER rumble that a group decided to go after one person. It's been all these stupid paired of "stories" that aren't really interesting, instead of people actually thinking like someone IN a rumble. That moment actually felt like a rumble, like a few people suddenly remembered a rumble strategy. What I said earlier about Edge having a way better spear in 2021 than he did in 2010? Still holds, as his spear on Styles looked great. Victoria Beer, seen in the background of every lucha match I've been watching lately, is now sponsoring Royal Rumble entrants? Nobody else got sponsored? Kane and AJ Styles were in there, StopTheSteal didn't want to sponsor them? Christian and Sheamus always had great chemistry. I'd love to see a 2021 Christian/Sheamus match. 

Cesaro lifting and throwing Strowman over the top would have been far more interesting than Strowman eliminating Cesaro, and Sheamus deserved better. Bryan and Riddle really laced into each other during their portion, and Bryan would be my easy pick if asked "Who would you like to win this rumble?" This is the first time these two have had an exchange of any kind, and it all looked really great. What looks riduculous is every person still left in the match lying around the ring while Bryan and Riddle can just have a 4 minute match. Nobody should be lying on the mat for that long, let alone four people at the same time. I thought the finishing run was pretty bad, thought the Bryan elimination was a pretty big nail in the coffin. The Edge story is not something I can get too interested in, but all of his spears looked great in this match, and I could actually see him being a part of a good match now. I'm not expecting it, but he is slightly more interesting now than a decade ago. 

ER: Disappointing show top to bottom. Both Rumbles were really uninspired and badly laid out, the Last Man Standing match felt endless, the tag title match was bad, and the Sasha match was below her level. That's a bummer of a show right there. 

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RIP Xavier

Xavier vs. Homicide JAPW 8/24/01

PAS: This was a death match, and a great example of these two at their athletic primes. We had some really nifty wrestling early, including Xavier flipping out of the cop killer countering into a grounded cobra, which Homicide broke with a kick to the knee. Young Homicide was really explosive, even just a run into a corner had so much pop, and his flip dive was as crazy in this match as I ever remember it.  Xavier was great in this too, he was a natural unlikable heel and had his shit talk game down. I loved him pricking his finger on the barbed wire bat when he grabbed it, such a great little heel move. I didn't love the finish of this match, felt kind of cheap to end it on the distracted heel banana peel, but otherwise this was great stuff.

ER: This match ruled so hard. JAPW guys really beat the shit out of each other (there was probably a reason why I glommed onto JAPW and IWA-MS when I was tape trading), and this match really highlights the violent athleticism of this perfect era of JAPW. Both guys take some shots that look like they'd put someone on the shelf, just an awesome level of trust and fearlessness and craziness on display. Homicide gets a rope around Xavier's neck and chokes him over the ropes, then snaps him around by the neck. A lot of necks and bodies looked like they were getting messed up throughout this match. Homicide threw several kill shots, and Xavier leaned into all of them. Homicide's yakuza kicks, big lariat, and corner elbow all looked like they hit Xavier square in the jaw. And while the hits in the match are big, I'm not sure any hit was as big as Homicide hitting the guardrail on a tope con hilo. I don't know if I've seen a man crash faster into a guardrail, he just flew past Xavier and I have no clue how he didn't break or tear anything. Xavier wraps a chair around Homicide's neck when he's crazy enough to go for a dive right after, then kicks the chair while it's still on Homicide's neck. I loved Xavier's corner cannonball, and his somersault legdrop while Homicide's head was under a chair was nasty as hell. I said necks and bodies looked like they were getting messed up, and Homicide's manager Johnny D gets in on the fun. He didn't look like a guy who knew how to take a neckbreaker, but Xavier made sure he took a brutal looking neckbreaker. The cop killa looks like it could have punctured a lung, just a match filled with sick shots. I love the violence this crew are capable of with each other, truly a special era.


Xavier vs. Christian Cage NEW 4/5/08

PAS: This was the second phase of Xavier's career with him working these 90s WWF style main events as the NEW champion. It didn't have much of an internet profile, but NEW drew (and still draws) big crowds. Xavier wasn't doing any of the athletic stuff he was doing earlier in the decade, but was really great as an undeserving champion willing to take any shortcut. Christian is great at working babyface in these kind of matches, times his comebacks well and bumps big for Xavier's shots. I really liked Xavier's short forearms, added a bit of violence to this match. Full on Dusty finish which works well for this crowd, especially because it wasn't a finish run into the ground in 2008.

ER: This was real satisfying, a well worked title match with some big moments, and a fun engaging performance from both. NEW crowds must be really nice to work for, as they are always enthusiastic and respond loud for crowd work. Xavier's style would be completely unrecognizable if you had seen any of his early 2000s indy work, but he knows the crowd he's performing for and has a completely different bag of tricks. A few years prior he was a super fast athletic bumper who leaned way into strikes, here he is a classic stooging heel who still has some explosiveness but doesn't show it off as much. There was a really great turnbuckle gag, a gag you've seen before but with an additional crowd pleasing twist: Christian slams Xavier's head into the top turnbuckle a few times, works his way down to the middle buckle, throws him into the bottom buckle (we've seen this, it's a good gag), but then works him back up the buckles, which I have never seen. It was great, the kind of spot any stooge heel wish they thought of. Xavier always went the extra stooge mile on bumps here, not simply falling to the floor after taking Christian's teeter totter kick in the ropes, but leaping to the apron and then making a comical face after hitting the rail. Christian bumps to the floor off a hotshot (I thought Xavier was going to throw him to the floor with a belly to belly, too much French Catch has been seeping into my brain and wrecking expectations) and Xavier does a good job dragging Christian around ringside to give all sides a show (Christian did this earlier and even posed for photos while dragging Xavier). He crushes Christian with a clothesline, and his neckbreaker finisher is just as nasty as it was in 2001. The Christian kickout after the 2nd ref came in was really unexpected, a big babyface moment that got a huge reaction. The finish is something that I am into, but it works great on shows like this, and Christian is pro enough to know exactly how to handle the post match in a way that fans weren't even thinking about him getting DQ'd.

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There is a Place Reserved in Hell for William Regal and his Friends

William Regal v. Christian WWE 4/10/10-GREAT

Really fun 10 minute house show handheld. Regal works really stiff for a house show, and he and Christian had an awesome slugfest back and forth forearm and punch exchange. I also really dug Christains Meiko Satomuraish top rope dropkicks. Christians top rope headbutt was pretty great looking too, although it was dumb to do this spot as a regular move. Finish was really great too. I would have lost my shit if a match this good showed up on a house show I went too.

Complete and Accurate Regal

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

12. Antonio Cesaro v. Daniel Bryan v. Christian v. John Cena v. Sheamus v. Randy Orton WWE Elimination Chamber 2/23

ER: The Chamber match has been my favorite yearly gimmick match for some time now. I love all the nasty bumps on the grating, I love the "guy gets thrown through pod" spots, I love how bruised all the participants are the next night on Raw. They always feel a different sort of violent compared to other WWE matches. Cesaro and Sheamus was a great choice to start, with their work in the Christian/Sheamus/Real Americans tag being what put that match over. They match up nicely. Sheamus doesn't seem like a guy that people talk about being really good, but he is really, really good. He always surprises me with cool new things. My favorite here was him slumped in the corner and kicking out Cesaro's knee as he approached, with Cesaro dropping down hard to his other knee. Sheamus and Cesaro were the best guys in this. Cesaro's strength spots are tailor made for a match like this, where you get to see him powerbomb Christian into a pod and toss Bryan and Cena with one suplex. Sheamus gets the spot of the match by Brogue Kicking through Orton's pod to get to him (while the crowd chanted "pussy" at Orton. Don't think I've heard that before...). Everybody's personality slotted nicely into this match, with Orton's time kept to a minimum while he taunted the crowd, Christian getting to be sneakily overlooked, Bryan getting tons of big spots to make the crowd go nuts (him catching Orton with the running knee was a big spot, since they'd shown him winning on TV numerous times with that move in recent weeks) and him getting to kick out of the RKO was huge. Some nitpicks aside, like Cesaro tapping super quick to the STF, this was a great, violent match that never lagged or felt stale. I also think it aged well as I liked it even more on rewatch.  Tough match for me to properly rank.

PAS: This is a match type I never get super excited for, but always really enjoy. We were missing Rey who is the maestro of the Elimination Chamber, but otherwise we had a damn good group of dudes. I am not sure why they have run 50 Sheamus v. Christian matches lately as the Sheamus v. Cesaro match up is one of my favorite match ups right now. Sheamus can get a bit repetitive but Cesaro seems to force him out of his comfort zone. Really liked Christian as he got to do all of the athletic spots which Rey normally does. His top of the pod dive was really nuts because he doesn't have the smoothness of other guys who have done that spot and it looked really out of control and nuts. The booking finish was pretty bad though, I suppose they were in a spot if they weren't going to give the belt to Bryan (which they shouldn't have, no reason for him to get it in a fluky multi man match like this before Wrestlemania) but the run ins have been so overdone, that it just killed the match dead. Still the vast majority of this was great, I can't in good conscious put it above matches with satisfying endings

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

4. Sheamus/Christian vs. Real Americans WWE Raw 2/10

PAS: Man WWE TV has been on fire lately, the Wyatt trios on this same show just missed the cut and this was a damn out of nowhere classic. It starts out good with some fun Christian and Cesaro mat work and then just goes into overdrive as Sheamus and Cesaro just start waling on each other, it's like a WAR match broke out in the middle of random TV tag, after that everyone stepped up their game a ton. Christian was a great face in peril, and the Real American's have developed some cool double teams, and then we get a WWEDG finish which was super, loved Christians DDT off the apron, and that finishing kick was tooth loosening. It's like Kip Frye is handing out bonuses backstage or something

ER: I don't really consider myself much of a WWE mark, but whatever they're doing matchwise right now is working pretty great. I used to be able to DVR an episode of Raw and blow through it in about 30 minutes. There have been stretches over the last couple years where a couple months go by without me really digging a match on Raw. And here we are in 2014 and it's become a must-watch show (well, I still fast forward like hell during most of the angles, Orton promos, HHH/Steph scissor sessions, etc.). I'm not sure when it happened but WWE Dragons Gate is the most fun thing possible for me right now. For years a complaint about WWE is that the matches could be too slow or plodding. Well, that talking point is pretty much dead and buried as now WWE is about as go-go-go as humanly possible for guys this size. The tag and trios format is really perfect for this style as you get to avoid a bunch of awful kickouts and keep the action constantly fresh with tag outs instead of rest holds. It's like the best kind of NOAH trios or yes, WAR tags. Match was fun for a couple minutes and then took off and never looked back once Cesaro and Sheamus started trading uppercuts and Cesaro overpowered him with dual left/right uppercuts like some sort of demon Punch-Out! character. Once we go into 5 minutes of Cesaro/Swagger double teams and set-ups I was losing it. The Cesaro double stomp followed by scream into camera, Christian's right hand sucker punch on Swagger on the apron, Cesaro's flapjack uppercut on Christian (Christian always gets crazy height on that kind of stuff), Cesaro leaping out of nowhere with a forearm to stop Sheamus dead in his tracks in the corner, the tornado DDT to the floor, Sheamus' big bump to the floor with Dutch getting in his face. When this match was over I rewound it and watched it all over again. Also, big props to Ryback, Axel, Swagger, Ambrose, really everybody over the last few weeks who are having a weird competition to see who can be first to get their nose pushed into their brain by the Brogue Kick. Everybody has been leaning hard into some stiff shots this year, as if they haven't been shown in HD for a few years now.


2014 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWECW Workrate Report, 8/4/09

Show starts with a 13 minute (!) Abraham Washington show where we get to hear a whole bunch of the comedic chops of Shelton Benjamin. He calls Wash a low rent Byron Allen which works, and Zach Ryder is also here because they're in Long Island or somewhere close and boy Ryder is boring. They eventually do ECW Idol and Shelton does a fairly accurate Darius Rucker which - as far as celebrity impressions go - has to have one of the lowest pussy attainability ratios possible. It would be like a girl at a party trying to thrill you with her really good Bonnie Hunt impression.

1. Ezekiel Jackson vs. Dangerous Danny Danger

Pretty sure I've seen Danger on some Beyond Wrestling shows so this already gets a win. Zeke does two of the nastiest backbreakers you've ever seen and hits the nastiest urunage you've ever seen and this is 30 seconds but he doesn't care about his opponent's safety or well-being at all and good lord now Kozlov is coming out and I LOOOOOVE their jobber squash-offs. Koz hits his rad spinebuster urunage and then Zeke gets pissed and hits his urunage AGAIN. Backstage Danny Danger receives a handshake and the new superpower of "peeing blood".

2. Sheamus vs. Goldust

God Stryker is garbage. "Last week Goldust was able to counter Sheamus using fundamental offense tactics." Whatever. Sheamus works over Goldust's arm in all sorts of cool ways, with single arm DDTs and a weirdo bulldog to his arm. GREAT spot early where Goldust pushes Sheamus into the turnbuckles to reverse a powerslam, gets a schoolboy with the good arm, and when Sheamus kicks out it leaves Goldust prone which leads to Sheamus locking on the old Rings of Saturn, which is just a fucking KILLER chain of moves. Goldust gets to the ropes and goes on a freaking great tear, hitting all sorts of great punches, his great bulldog, great clotheslines, THAT powerslam, and you love all of it. Finish is quick and clever, with Goldust going to the 2nd rope to hit a bulldog, but Sheamus sweeps his leg and gets the flash pin. Logical and totally acceptable. Afterwards Sheamus starts to cut a promo on the floor and 'Dust levels him with a clothesline to the back of the head. Pretty much a flawless 5 minutes of pro wrestling. I am LOVING this feud.

3. Extreme Rules Match: Tommy Dreamer vs. Christian

This starts out as one of those late 90s plunder matches, but works pretty well because Christian has much more creativity in setting up garbage spots than all those guys. It's not just dudes brainlessly hitting each other with cookie sheets, Christian finds some interesting ways to fly into garbage. They had rolled out a hot dog cart and I had no idea how they'd use it, as it was far too small to do moves on, but too heavy to be picked up. Well Christian runs at Dreamer at one point and takes a drop toe hold into the cart, sending buns and condiments flying. Another great spot had Dreamer whip Christian into the ring steps, but Christian baseball slid to stop his momentum and then charged at Dreamer, only to take a nasty backdrop on the floor. Christian also sets up a bunch of cool counter/reversal spots to put neat twists on getting hit in the face with a trash can. At one point Christian gets clotheslined over the barrier into the crowd, and while Dreamer finds a trash can Christian recovers, Dreamer misses the can shot, Christian punches him, then does a massive missile dropkick off the ring barrier. Finish is really cool as Christian had come out with a car door which I had totally forgot about. He brings it into the ring, Dreamer bashes him with a can hilariously through the window (Christian clearly forgot he had the windows down). Then they work some fun reversal spots around Dreamer trying to hit a piledriver on the car door until Christian nailed the Killswitch on the door, and then pinned Dreamer underneath said door. Really good match. Christian brought a bunch of cool elements to a garbage match and it felt like Dreamer had a real chance at winning. Even though I wouldn't care about Dreamer being champ again, I was getting real excited at the prospect of a piledriver on a car door. So now I want somebody to make that happen.


WWECW MASTER LIST

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