Found Footage Friday: QUEBECERS EXPLODE~! CESARO~! GUNTHER~! LOS COWBOYS IN GUATEMALA~!

Los Cowboys (El Texano/Silver King) vs. Astro de Oro/Skeletor Guatemala 9/15/91

MD: There's a certain genre of match that I find fascinating. There's no good name for it but it's best described by the rudos/heels being visibly, noticeably concerned about the amount of heat they might get in front of a specific crowd and adapting their wrestling accordingly. I don't know what preceded this but there was nothing to make Texano and Silver King come off as particularly rudo in the early going here. They came out, they were nice to fans, they posed well with the belts and the anthems. They wrestled clean early. Texano worked really hard to get a handshake. And the trash was still coming and they seemed kind of alarmed and put off by it. For the anthem, there were a ton of kids singing which was always a good sign. Skeletor came out with a robe with Guatemala on the back. Astro de Oro was obviously beloved. 

So there wasn't any mask ripping here. Their win in the segunda was real quick. While they controlled in the tercera there was never really that sense of danger for the tecnicos. You always got the sense that even amidst the double teams Skeletor could PROBABLY make the tag if he really really wanted to. It was, shall we say, a ginger rudo performance. 

Instead, they flew all over the place. They missed leaps off the top rope and dives. There was plenty of heel miscommunication. Silver King was happy to fly out of the ring on a kick out. Skeletor was charismatic and hammed it up a bit with Texano. Silver King and Astro de Oro were really moving at times and mostly everything looked very good. There was a point in the tercera where Texano and Silver King did Tiger Feints instead of diving and one guy right in the center of the crowd shot let out a popper/firework thinking the dive was coming and that's a little bit of really interesting cultural information. It made me sad for him that they didn't get dives because his timing was perfect. Anyway, of course the locals won and everyone survived to see tomorrow. 

Jacques Rougeau vs. Pierre Carl Ouellet WWF 10/21/94

MD: This is about 80% of a perfect match to me. 75%, 75%. I was thinking structurally, but the thing needed blood too. It has parallels to MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana in some ways. And before you balk at that, think of the setting. This is Jacques in Montreal, in what was supposed to be a celebratory swansong. He's up against Pierre. He's got Raymond in his corner. Polo's out there with PCO.  

And Pierre cheapshots him before he can get his robe off. Raymond tries to break it up but the ref pulls him off which just lets Pierre stomp away. Jacques tries to fire back, but Pierre's younger, stronger, bigger. He lays in a beating, a nasty, brutal thing. Every time it seems like Jacques has an answer, he cuts him off. Jacques is able to outsmart him and back body drop him over the top. He lands on his feet. Jacques gets a flurry and he catches him in midair and puts him in the tree of woe. When the ref tries to stop things, Polo comes over to choke him. Pure heat. There's one moment where Pierre is whipping Jacques off the ropes and Jacques makes a sort of out of control bobbling motion, almost seizing, with his head as he's getting whipped and it's some of the best selling I've ever seen.

The thing is, Pierre can't put him away. So he starts to go with more and more high risk moves. He hits a flip dive. He goes off the turnbuckles, once, twice, and then Jacques catches him, crotching him on top. It's not quite the punch heard round the world but it's pretty damn satisfying, especially to this crowd. 

And it opens the floodgates for the ritual beating. And what a beating it is. When Jacques tosses him into the stairs on the outside, it's about as loud as I've heard stairs. After beating him around the ring, Jacques goes for a mounted punch (no puns). Pierre tosses him off and we get this great ref bump. Polo comes in to attack. Raymond hits him with a superkick.

And that's when they should have taken this thing home. Have it seem like Pierre was going to get the advantage, have Jacques mount one last comeback, go to the finish. They don't though. They just sort of meander with some nearfalls and momentum shifts and they don't lose the crowd, but once you see Polo back on his feet rooting for Pierre, you realize that the match went just a little long in the tooth. The finish is amazing, Pierre going for a tombstone and Jacques turning it around for this gnarly sitout variation and then slowly, fatefully draping a hand over for three. There's just no reason why that couldn't have happened almost immediately after Polo got taken out. And blood. Blood would have been good. Still, 75% perfect is pretty damn good.

Cesaro vs. Gunther WWE 11/8/21

MD: This is a house show match between Cesaro and Gunther. In Leeds. It is definitely. That's nothing to scoff at. It's just not transcendent like Cena vs Reigns or even the parts of Jacques vs Pierre that were transcendent. 

It had room to breathe. It managed the crowd well (and a crowd like that needed managing). It didn't get ahead of its sails. It didn't go off any rails. It was measured and focused and did what it had to. Instead of having the crowd go for dueling chants or ironically entertaining themselves (or shouting 2! a lot or whatever), it got them to clap up three times, early on in a test of strength, then during a surfboard (the one with the head in; Cesaro got out of it with some headbutts of his own after he turned it) and finally once in the heat as he was building to the comeback. 

It got them to chant for the swing right before Cesaro got it down the stretch. They hit hard, both early on and right before the finish. And yes, they built to that swing and they paid it off. They worked things fairly even up front. Gunther would go for cheapshots and deviate from the wrestling first but Cesaro generally had an answer. I liked the big comeback spot as Cesaro was able to catch Gunther in midair and turn him, strength outdoing strength, and the finish was good, with a near-miss with the ref before a cheapshot and a thudding top rope splash. This hit marks, and that's admirable. A good match. A good house show match. And good for the crowd for letting it guide them.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/1 - 12/7 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 12/3/25

Jon Moxley vs Claudio Castagnoli

I love babyface vs heel matches with a shine/heat/comeback format. I can almost promise you that I love them more than you do, dear reader. When done well, they are primal, speak to the basic fundamental storytelling tenets of good vs evil in a world that needs that more than ever, and take us on an emotional journey up and down and up again, placing us as viewers exactly where we need to be.

But that is not the only story that pro wrestling can tell. All too often, shedding those classifications and abandoning that structure means that wrestlers also feel like they can throw aside careful storytelling in favor of maximalism, making the story at play inherent at best and focusing instead on action, spots, sensationalism, over the top excitement. 

That couldn't be farther than what Jon Moxley has been doing in the back end of 2025. Now, within the Continental Classic, bolstered by the narrative framing of a sports-based tournament, he's able to place his own character, one that's come out of a series of babyface vs heel struggles in shambles, in a scenario where he has to figure out what could possibly come next, on how to stop or at least slow the spiral, on how to grasp at every opportunity to prove himself once more, to his followers, to the world, to himself. 

And while he's framing this with delusional, almost delirious, vaguely inspirational promos entirely full of bullshit, most of the actual storytelling is playing out in ring, artistic pro wrestling at its very best. 

Having just barely survived his initial match against Mascara Dorada, he found himself very early in the tournament against an ascendant Claudio Castagnoli, the bar, the gatekeeper, a creeping death always one step behind the lead rider. This was his next opportunity to test himself but it was also a warning, a living breathing Sword of Damocles, for if he was found wanting, then death would come for him as well.

And come it did. Claudio was the returning hero, back from Mexico with title in hand. Moxley was the one with something to prove and he took it right to Claudio, trying to outwrestle him, trying to outbully him, trying to outpower him. It was a foolish gesture for very few are stronger than Claudio Castagonoli, and he was almost instantly rebuffed. The only thing he proved was that there was blood in he water and Claudio figuratively forced that blood out with a double stomp, a sharp biting statement for the world to see.

Moxley abandoned wrestling and went to brawling. That took them to the outside, nominally his domain. But even here, Claudio remained too much for him. He turned things around, sending Moxley over the barricade. When he came back to the fight, the blood had become entirely literal, and when Claudio got him back into the ring and threw him about with the second giant swing of the match (the first being into the stairs, ruthless, merciless, death edging a half step closer), the blood really started to flow.

But Jon Moxley, mad, faltering king that he might be, was a king nonetheless; he had climbed and scraped to his throne and he would not fall easily. When Claudio screamed at him to quit, he did not. When Claudio went for the swing again, he pressed up on his head to gain the leverage to reverse it. He was able to stand back up and scrape with Claudio.

But even then, he couldn't do it for long. Even then, he couldn't press the advantage.

When he finally locked Claudio in a choke, his own blood became the lubricant that caused it all to slip through his grasp, and what could be a greater symbol for the current state of Jon Moxley than that.

With five minutes left to go on the clock, they stood across from the ring. Moxley was able to make it back to his feet no matter the punishment he'd taken, swings, power moves, strikes, holds. He was able to push back up, no matter how much blood was upon the mat. But whereas he was able manage the upwards momentum of a survivor, Claudio drove forth with the forward momentum of a conqueror, crashing into Moxley with a predator's uppercut and downing him for three. 

Moxley had wanted Marina out with him to start, had almost reached out to the crowd once or twice, looking for that security with Claudio across the ring from him instead of at his side, and the Death Riders did come now, checking on him, congratulating Claudio, and then forming a circle to cool down with push ups in the back as Moxley too congratulated Claudio and provided platitudes for what was to come. 

But the blood was on the mat and the blood was in the water and Claudio's done more than smell it now. He drew it. He tasted it. We're all on the clock. Death comes for us all. It comes for some of us sooner than others.

So, like I said, storytelling, right? The art and magic of pro wrestling, like nothing else. The old stories, the basic ones, are beautiful things, but with commitment, care, consistency, consequence, so much more can be told. It doesn't necessarily make one story better than the other, but when ambition is fueling the ship and the navigation is done with care, the sky really is the limit.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/10 - 11/16 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 11/12/25

Death Riders (Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley/PAC) vs Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy/Kyle O'Reilly/Roderick Strong/Mark Briscoe [Blood & Guts] 

MD: Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

It was a long road, but this was where it always had to be headed. Blood and Guts. 

Yes, October and November hadn't gone to plan. He'd quit against Darby Allin at WrestleDream. He'd been on his back foot, barely surviving without quitting (twice) against Kyle O'Reilly. Roderick Strong defeated him by countout to decide the advantage.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered.

They were in the cage and everything was going his way. 

He'd turned on his partner, his brother-in-arms, had started a reign of terror, been champion and locked away the belt. Even though he lost the belt, it could all still be worth it. He was a mad king, an emperor that had been deposed, but he could get all of it back, and even more than that, he could rain vengeance down on all of his enemies. 

Hangman wasn't there, but the rest of them? Front and center. 

And they were bleeding out. 

The advantage might have been an issue. Yuta had been sent out first, the sacrificial workhorse. He'd stalled and drawn Darby out after him, had been tossed into the cage and used it as a weapon himself. He'd been opened up by Darby's modified skateboard (after going for it himself), had been thrashed further by Darby and Cassidy when it became two-on-one. But he just had to hold out long enough for reinforcements, and he did. Garcia came out to even the odds and two-on-two with one man just a little fresher, they fought even. Until they didn't. 

When Mark Briscoe's music hit, they were wrapped around in a chain, beaten and battered. But that's when everything turned. 

Briscoe had been left laying in the back. Maybe it was the Don Callis family, maybe it wasn't. It didn't matter. Moxley didn't care. He'd take opportunity where he found it. 

Roderick Strong came out to make it 3-on-2, but the advantage time had been cut into severely. He hit a few moves but that was all he could do before Claudio's music hit back.

The plan was always Claudio, infinitely strong, infinitely reliable, always a step behind. He tossed Strong into a chair and then swung both Darby and Cassidy at once. O'Reilly came out next, but by then it was too late. Even with a 4-on-3 advantage on paper, the damage was done. This wasn't the happy-go-lucky world of the Conglomeration. It wasn't even Darby's world, one with open skies to leap and dive and crash. It was the post-apocalyptic world of the Death Riders, and they made use of every weapon, every opportunity. Here, no matter what the numerical advantage might say, the odds were always in their favor.

So instead of sending PAC out next, Moxley himself came to survey his gloriously ruined kingdom, to inflict violence and vengeance. He came in with a fork and immediately opened up O'Reilly more (for his transgressions were the worst of them all). He jabbed it into Darby's back, scraped it up and down, offered it to his newest disciple Garcia in a morbid ritual that let him join in. The women had set the stage for this earlier in their own Blood & Guts match and Moxley casually walked behind the timekeeper desk to seize all of the weapons they had left for him. He dropped broken glass in the ring and scraped a shattered mirror across O'Reilly's bloody skull opening him up more. They dropped Darby on his skull and dragged him across the glass for good measure. 

Life was good. All that he had lost? None of it mattered because he'd craft a new gospel in blood and viscera. He'd show the world that everything he'd always said was true. He would be vindicated and validated. 

And when Darby climbed to the top of the inside of the cage and dropped down upon all of them, even that didn't matter. Because that was just one last gasp of futile hope from a man not meant to climb mountains but to fall off of them and PAC was the last man in. Chaotic order was restored. The door was locked. The key was stolen. The Death Riders had a 5-on-4 advantage and could now punish their enemies to their hearts' content.

Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

But fate had a way of turning, bolstered by hearts that simply wouldn't quit, hearts very different than the beleaguered, hypocritical organ beating all too quickly in Jon’s own chest.

Despite being ambushed and assaulted and left for dead, Mark Briscoe arrived, wild look in his eyes and bolt cutters in hand. 

-----

Let's stop there. You know how the story ended. Briscoe turned the tide. Yuta faced him on the top of the cage and despite multiple cheapshots ended up eating a Jay Driller onto the steel. Kidd interfered and they put Darby through a flaming table. The Death Riders were ready (with a stapler of all things) for Cassidy to put his hands in his pockets only for Orange to care more than he'd ever cared before as he ripped the staples out of his own flesh. That let him save a defiant Kyle O'Reilly who was being choked out. Kyle refused to quit and in due course, with a few more twists and turns, he made Moxley tap out once more. A poetic ending to the last month and maybe, in some ways, to the last year. Questions remain: Who attacked Briscoe (the Callis family denied it)? Will this elevate Kyle to the next level? What does this mean for an increasingly out of touch Moxley and his leadership of the Death Riders?

As War Games go, modern ones always lean more towards CZW than JCP, more weapons and theatrics than wrestlers just beating the piss out of each other to solve their issues. In some ways, I thought this was a better mix than usual though of course Mox is a Cage of Death guy, so you knew what was going to happen when he got in there. I'd like to see them try the other way just once though. There are enough opportunities especially now that they're doing two of these on one show. 

That led to its own issues too, where they had to switch things up and play around with the advantage. Between Briscoe being taken out, Strong having less time to press the advantage as a substitute, and the sheer force that is Claudio, I thought they handled it remarkably well. Before and after, the characters drove things in interesting ways. One quick example. Right before Briscoe's music hit, when it was two-on-two, Garcia and Yuta had Cassidy down and were kicking him. Garcia, full of bluster and attitude, did the mocking Cassidy kicks and threw it over to Yuta but Yuta, like an animal that had been kicked too many times itself, couldn't help but kick him full-on. The match was full of little interesting character bits like that while maintaining the overarching story. 

-----

Feedback I've gotten lately is that people really like the dramatization approach to reviewing these matches, where I dig deep into the characters and emotions at play and recount the narrative as presented on screen. It feels almost like 80s PWI or something to me and I don't want to lean too hard into it all the time as opposed to a more analytical approach. 

But here's the point: I can only do it at all because the coherency, consistency, and commitment in what's being presented. If wrestlers are just doing a bunch of stuff, even if the stuff is clever or full of workrate or stiff or whatever else, you can't necessarily draw those throughlines. It's the selling, especially the emotional selling, like what Jon Moxley has been doing as of late, which lets me even find the dots to connect. 

Not every match has this. Not every conventional five star match has this. A lot of times, maybe there's some lip service towards it but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny no matter how exciting and action-packed the match might seem in the moment. You don't have to sacrifice it for "Greatness," because if done with care, it enhances it in every way. It just takes more effort and care.

Maybe that's self-evident, but I honestly don't think you can as easily do what I did up above for the Forbidden Door 2025 cage match main event in the same way. There were too many goofy tonal shifts and funny spots that were done just to pop the wrestlers involved. Specific moments stood out and popped and were impressive but it didn't come together as a narrative in the same way. 

Pro wrestling is an amazing narrative artform that can tell amazing stories almost entirely in ring, through the work alone. This Blood and Guts was built from the Foundation of the I Quit match with Darby and then the subsequent O'Reilly/Strong vs Moxley matches. It was built upon pro wrestling matches that were full of emotion and character development and great emotive performances. That's what made all of the excess here resonate and matter. 

There's a lot to be learned from all of this and I hope the people who make decisions and the wrestlers of both today and tomorrow take the right lessons and not the wrong ones.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: The First Darby/Claudio Singles

 

8. Darby Allin vs. Claudio Castagnoli AEW Dynamite 11/20/24

ER: I finally got around to watching the Darby/Claudio Falls Count Anywhere match from a couple months ago and thought it was good. It made me go back and revisit their first ever singles match. Also I had written this review of that first singles match almost a year ago and never posted it so it felt like a good time to finally put it up. I"m not gonna rewrite it with a comparison to the Falls Count Anywhere match, I'll let my review from a year ago stand. Maybe next year I'll write about the Falls Count Anywhere and that review will compare them. This first match of two natural opponents was my favorite Darby singles match of last year, with plenty of contenders. Here's why I thought that: 

It's good to run occasional matches where Darby Allin doesn't make any or is simply unable to make any real inroads. It's easy to get used to Darby Always Comes Back mindset that you need to interrupt things with a good steamrolling every now and again. Darby is smart in his match layouts and is good at presenting some (some, key) of his big wins as lucky scrapes or opportunistic escapes. He also knows that to make those wins work, there need to be matches where he receives no luck, no unforced opponent errors, and no opportunities. Claudio, as a Darby opponent, feels so obvious an opponent that it feels like I've written variations on their matches for years. It's my favorite unkillable crash test dummy facing a man with unmatched strength, and the whole story of the match is feats of strength delivered to the world's greatest facilitator of those feats until he can no longer stand. That's a great story, I love that story, these two feel like the most capable of making the most of that story, then they go and do exactly that and it's as good as it's supposed to be. 

They are the most natural pairing in the world so I am surprised this is their very first singles match. I do this a lot with Darby and Danielson. It's so easy to picture how their matches with everyone will go that my memory just checks them off and moves on to thinking about Best Breakout Jerry Flynn matches. This match goes how we want it to go, with the right amount of surprise. Darby's comebacks are so legendary that he can work an All Downhill From Here match for 85% of a match and know that it's the right amount of time to still buy into a Darby win at any moment. He's never out of it until the 3. 

This match is the best spiritual update of 1995 Malenko/Guerrero matches, or the 1996 Malenko/Misterio matches. This is an evolution for good. It's no a secret I don't like Malenko/Guerrero as opponents. I might dislike the Malenko/Misterio match structure even more. But, I understand why that style of match is represented more than any other style in our modern match type 30 years later. I don't like that fact, but it means we have look for the ones who understand the restraints and the possibilities of the style. In 1995/1996 it looked like a fresh breath of unseen air, today it's house style. It's here. 

Rey/Malenko had a Going Long house show style where Malenko would ground Rey for 85% of a match and "peak" the short bursts into a big finish. Often, their matches never peaked to their big finish, and were instead long collections of go nowhere submissions and Rey ping ponging between 100% incapacitated to 80% unleashed with little in between. Darby right now is actually better at selling for sympathy than 1995/1996 Rey Misterio Jr., and that makes Darby's one-sided matches more compelling. Rey later got better than Darby at selling but right now Darby is having years in contention with Rey's best years. 

Rey was great at memorable short bursts in those Malenko matches, but Darby makes much better use of his time. He makes his 2 minutes of control and 13 minutes of pain mean something during all of those minutes. Doing so, he gives yet another good wrestler their best showcase of the year. Claudio has been a great TV worker for a long time now and can suffer from the Sameness that comes with that. Year after year TV work against many of the same guys within the same style can get repetitive. Even the best TV workers can lapse into familiarity, and it's not uncommon for them to go through peaks and valley years. Darby Allin has been able to work outside of that while always wrestling like Darby Allin, and Claudio is a guy who I think benefits from being broken just outside of his formula. He is capable of spectacular feats but doesn't go spectacular as often as he used to. Darby Allin is made for the spectacular. 

I want to see Claudio catch a Coffin Drop and throw him. I want to see Claudio walk up the ring steps while holding a vertical suplex, getting him back into the ring by way of caber toss. I want to see Misawa level elbows and Finlay level neck twisting, and I want to see Darby take one of those bumps into the turnbuckles where he finds the least safe way to take a biel. The kind where his back manages to hit the buckles in two different bad spots. Claudio is great at dealing body damage and Darby's matches are always highlights of his body being damaged. On the bigger matches, we build to head damage and this match got greater when the side of Darby's head got swung into the ring steps about as hard as someone can get their head swung into metal. The way Darby sells it, by vigorously rubbing the new heat on the side of his head, is so blindingly accurate that he's either the most gifted seller of our time or he is just a man suffering head trauma in the middle of the week after being swung into metal. 

There's a press slam from an announce table to the unbreaking timekeeper's table that bounces Darby off his hip, and the table skirt wraps around him like a bodybag. It's the kind of crazy heightened spot Darby pushes his opponents to, everyone elevated to something bigger. Claudio's strength, Darby's death wish, and one table that wasn't expecting to be used that way. I loved the finish, where Darby heroically beat the 10 count and died instantly by lariat, no threat at all to kickout while Claudio palmed his entire face. Darby's threat can only be temporarily neutralized. He will return to inspire newer punishments. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/25 - 8/31

AEW Dynamite 8/27/25

Darby Allin vs Claudio Castagnoli (Falls Count Anywhere)

MD: Johnny Valentine is attributed with the quote "I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real," and it's a quote that doesn't have a lot of meaning in 2025, that shouldn't have a lot of meaning in a post-kayfabe world. But Darby makes it mean something. In so many ways, this was a tribute to ECW, the most of which being the tribute to the Bam Bam vs Spike press slam.

But my memory of ECW had a lot more garbage can lid shots. Not quite this. Even that press slam was into the crowd which was somehow softer than the announce desk. That had more of a celebratory feel to it and this was far more grisly, the commentary cutting out so that the trainwreck could happen in deathly silence save for whatever utterances the shocked crowd could make.

And even then, the bumps kept coming. And even then, Darby's primary offense was to use his own body as a weapon, and Claudio flaunted his superhuman strength, something that we all believe is very real indeed. And when Claudio shows real personality like his annoyed impatience at the commentary team taking too long to move? He's even better.

I have things that I prefer in wrestling. My prevailing logic is that the best wrestlers are the ones who get the absolute most out of the absolute least. That's the artistry to me. But I'm not about to deny how special Darby's bumps are, not about to diminish how he puts his body on the line. But I'm also not about to say that's the entirety of the equation. 

Because it's not. 

How did Claudio get Darby into Press Slam position in the first place? Darby had been in the midst of a comeback after all. He had just climbed a support pillar and launched his own body into Claudio. He was in charge for maybe the first time in the match. But then his body simply gave out. In the midst of firing off, he dropped to his knee, held his back. No one else in wrestling is selling like this. No one else makes sure to show the toll of absolutely everything in the way that he moves. So many others would take offense and then move absolutely normally when it was their turn to take over. Not Darby. He makes you feel like he's real, like he's in that much agony, and here it served the story and let Claudio fire back. 

Likewise when he was mounting a defiant comeback on the floor. You can call it late match selling or full body selling, but even just moving away from Claudio, even just leaning into throw a shot, the way that his body lurched and strained and stumbled was best in the world stuff. People may complain about the bumps, but so long as he sells like that, they're not gratuitous. Do I think they're essential? For someone that can sell this well? It's tricky because the audience is conditioned to expect certain things from him and they're conditioned to think he can take a certain amount of damage, but then wrestling is symbolic and fans can be conditioned otherwise. I personally think he could get by with one big bump a match instead of seven. Or even one big bump every three matches and it'd all mean just a little more. He's that good at selling and he'd still make it feel that real.

But either way I can't deny how great it is to have him back on his TV. And either way I'm sure as hell not about to look away because both the car crash and Darby somehow walking away (and triumphing!) are some of the most compelling things in pro wrestling..  

ROH Death Before Dishonor 8/29/25

RUSH/Sammy Guevara vs Outrunners 

MD: And lo, we change out Dustin for Rush and TK continues to get me to write about Sammy Guevara. The good news here is that he was made for the 2300 Arena and these Philly Fans who were born to hate him. And honestly, I really liked the dynamic between him and Rush. I likened Rush to Randy Savage not long ago and the parallels are striking. He has that same unpredictable energy, puts his all into his physicality, expresses a sort of paranoia thinking the world is out to get him in the ring.

And he cares first and foremost and entirely earnestly about his family. He loves his dad, just like Savage loved Poffo. He looks out for his brother, just like Savage looked out for Lanny. And here, Sammy became a new brother to him, and it was touching in its own twisted way. Rush seemed honestly thrilled for everything Sammy did. When the fans were chanting expletives at him, all he heard was the world singing his new brother's praises. 

Sammy fell right in line. It wasn't always smooth but it was always natural. When Rush dropped down into the Tranquilo pose, it took Sammy a second to catch up, but when he did, he did his breakdance spin right down to match him. They weren't always on the same page, but they got there, and once they did, the act worked for all its contrast and for how heartfelt Rush, monster that he is, seemed to be about the arrangement. 

And the Outrunners played their part. A lot of that was to give Rush and Sammy something to push against, but they're an act that probably would have gotten grief in the Arena at various points (and probably would have been over big at others; it depends on where they were in their lifecycle), here everything built well to the double elbow. That's one other thing about Rush relative to Savage. Despite his need to look tough and protect himself, he's still willing to give when it's times to give, willing to play ball to serve the match. I imagine that's doubly so when he's going over and winning a belt.

Anyway, on night one, this act worked. We'll see what sort of staying power it has and how consistent Rush can be with it. 

Athena vs Mina Shirakawa

MD: The fact that this match kept the crowd after the spectacle that was Bandido vs Hechicero is remarkable. Some of that is that the finishing stretch in that match was a little more measured than Bandido vs Takeshita despite still being huge and weighty, but so much of that was on the two personalities at play here. 

Mina is magnetic, electric. She is a star. She knows how to work a crowd, to move hearts and minds like an idol is trained to. And Athena has the best reactions in wrestling. And react she did, fuming, seething, furious over Mina's antics, even before the bell as her new Meanie Minion let his eyes and notoriously weak attention span wander and as Mina played right in to the Philly/Dallas rivalry.

They were evenly matched to start, but Athena was a half step off her game, thrown as she was. It meant Mina was the aggressor, and again, Athena's reactions here, just the look on her face as she successfully cartwheeled out of a headscissors takeover only to have to avoid a series of kicks... it's like nothing else in wrestling today. She's so alive in the moment, so present, so able to cut all the strings and just exist as her character at all times.

They set it up early to make it seem like Mina believably had her number, right to the moment where that damaged hand went smack into the ringpost on the outside. Athena dodged, expressed true malicious glee at the mishap that followed, and immediately went to work. She smacked the hand on the commentary booth, smashed it behind the stairs, tied it up in a turnbuckle pad and kicked away. She wrestled like a madwoman unleashed, embodied the chaos that she, a fallen goddess, represents. She took her time, playing to the crowd, dancing, smiling, facewashing Mina with her foot. Sometimes it let Mina get a moment of hope, but she snatched it away. A complete performance by maybe the most immersive performer in wrestling.  

The character of Athena rides these waves of chaos and fury, and sometimes, it doesn't work out for her. Here, she had her heart set on hitting a running kick on Mina while she was seated on the outside. It failed once. It failed twice, and suddenly the match opened back up. Athena's leg was wounded and Mina honed in on it, both with offense like the ringpost figure-four and with cutoffs like a dragon whip on the way back in. All throughout, Athena's selling was amazing, working on one leg, fighting through the pain but making every effort seem almost mythic. 

In 2025, the most interesting way to talk about wrestling isn't necessarily to note dropped limbwork. So long as it's plausible, I look at it more of a lost opportunity than anything else, primarily because of how compelling Athena's limping selling was here, because of how much weight it gave everything in the match. Even then, I don't know if I'd have been frustrated by Mina dropping the hand selling through her working on Athena's leg and the big bombthrowing that following except for the fact that it started with the hand being broken and they went back to it at the end. Just something to note. For me, if Mina gave some lip service to it through the third quarter of the match, it would have kept everything tighter. More of a lost opportunity than an overall blemish.

That's because last quarter of the match was incredibly compelling, with them slugging on their knees, throwing bombs, the drama of the Koji Clutch and the Figure-Four, how Athena stopped the Glamorous Driver Mina by going to the hand and then survived it when Mina finally hit it. And at every point, whether she was kipping up or escaping the third Driver attempt by going up and over, Athena showed the toll of the match by selling that leg, by reacting in the moment, by being the most alive pro wrestler in the world. 

So they kept the crowd even though that was a minor miracle, and so Athena had another great match as she marches on to 1000 well-deserved days. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/16 - 12/22 Part 2

AEW Collision 12/21/24

Claudio Castagnoli vs Darby Allin

MD: This had a great beginning and a great finishing stretch and both were somewhat invalidated by what immediately happened thereafter. Claudio is a guy who, like Christian, is used to working matches against the same opponent multiple times. While Christian is a genius in that area, Claudio is no slouch. The C2 in general has allowed him to play upon spots and finishes and invert them over time.

In this case, Claudio and Darby played off the start of their last match together, where Claudio kept moving out of the way whenever he got knocked to the floor early, thwarting Darby's attempt to dive on him. This time, he didn't wait for the bell. Instead he leaped right at Claudio, clinging on to him all the way up the ramp and enabling the balcony dive. That was a great start considering what had come before, but I don't think it meant much in the grand scheme of the match. Once the bell rang, Claudio hit a lifter and followed it with a ridiculous Giant Swing. That did give him the advantage but it also gave him a huge round of applause. Remember, this is the guy who betrayed Bryan Danielson. At times, the crowd is going to have to "give it to him" because he is so impressive but doing one of the biggest swings ever in AEW in front of this slightly smarkier crowd was probably a mistake. There's been too many such things out of Claudio as of late and it's not doing any favors for the Deathriders storyline, already struggling as it's cordoned off into one small area of the main event and not creating any overarching effect on the show overall (save for the first few weeks). 

Of course these two are a natural pair for heat and hopespots and comeback and it was all impressive. I liked how Claudio would at times just lift Darby up by the waist and that's something he ought to do more if he can. And then the finishing stretch hit just right with another big spot through a table on the floor, and Claudio going for his recent finishing move, that clothesline after an opponent barely makes it in from the count. Sometimes patterns can get too repetitive and take you out of a match because it's no longer believable but I buy these guys getting into this situation given the physical force that is Claudio Castagnoli. So Darby ducks it and they keep going through levels of escalation, with Darby finally getting hit with it and kicking out, with Claudio going for the Ricola Bomb only for Darby to turn it into a Code Red, for Claudio to get his knees up on the Coffin Drop, and then to hit the Ricola Bomb leading to a kickout not once but twice. With anyone else it might be a bit much but with Darby, at this point so late in the C2 it felt like proper escalation.

It built to a pretty clever finish where Claudio, frustrated by Darby's resilience in the face of his best moves, went for a chair. The ref took it and when distracted, Claudio hit him with knucks. Clever finish, right? 

One little problem.

Red Velvet had turned heel the night before doing it to Leyla Hirsch in an even more clever way since she used a turnbuckle rod and a hidden wrench she had gotten from under the ring. Same finish (which is not a common finish! I've barely ever seen the sort of switcheroo played out here, ever!) two nights in a row in front of the same crowd, one of which being a heel turn. Not to mention that the knucks would be a better gimmick for Velvet anyway as a puncher (I've got a campaign going for her to dust off the Heart Punch; I think it'd be unique and super over). I don't even know what to say. I haven't seen a lot of complaining online so they probably get away with it, but you'd almost have to put Velvet in the Deathriders and say that Claudio had been inspired by her actions or something otherwise to cover it. They lucked out I guess, but it, like the Swing and the opening flourish not meaning anything, definitely put a blemish on an otherwise excellent match. 

ROH Final Battle 12/20/24

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs The Righteous (Double Bullrope Match)

MD: This was a good complete package with a solid build that added something different (and violent) to a pretty well put together PPV overall. I think, especially given the build, I would have wanted a bit more of a straight brawl instead of something so plunder-filled with tables and ladders and what have you, but that's hard to avoid in almost any match of this sort in the era that we live in. We see what Blood and Guts and War Games look like these days. 

That said, my favorite parts of this were when Dutch and Dustin were brawling out on the ramp (even if it devolved quickly into Dutch's Bossman slam) and surprisingly Sammy laying in forearms on Vincent on the floor (which quickly led to Sammy hitting the post and eating an Orange Sunshine). I could have used about thirty percent more of that (or sixty, or ninety, but I get it). Speaking of Sammy taking that, despite the Tornado Tag nature, they did a good job of getting people out of the way so that the big themes could play out, most especially through Dutch going through the barbed wire table of course. And Sammy wiping out as well. 

I thought those key moments hit. The nearfalls with Sammy making a last second save all worked for me. What worked even more was how at one key juncture, it was Vincent, having escaped the Rope, using it to choke out Dustin. You'd expect that moment and the subsequent comeback by Dustin to belong to Dutch, and Dutch was the one Dustin beat in the end, but despite the familial connection being Dutch's, Vincent was the one who was pulling the strings, and in this case, pulling the rope around Dustin's neck. 

At some point, I really would like to see AEW/ROH trust in a crowd to do a more minimalist brawl, especially when there's a solidly built issue like this one, but maybe this wasn't the match for that (I'm not entirely sure Dustin feels like what he has to offer along those lines is enough for a 2024 audience, though it is, 100% because no one can do it like he can). It certainly wasn't the crowd. More on that momentarily. 

Athena vs Billie Starkz

MD: When you look at a match as a thought experiment interesting things can happen. In this case, they were putting together and executing a match with over a year of build, yes, but also with just a few weeks of build, but more importantly, one where most of the crowd and the audience watching at home weren't actually familiar with either. That's fascinating. I had misgivings about the build, which I noted last week, but the reaction online didn't pick up on my misgivings at all; instead people were just frustrated that Billie didn't win on her second chance and that Athena wasn't freed up to go to the main roster. 

It showed a clear lack of understanding of the week to week storytelling that was occurring. Tourists dipping in on ROH for a PPV and the year end PPV at that, and ones with ulterior motives and interests as well. They didn't plan on hanging around ROH so they wanted Athena where they could more easily and regularly see her. They're more familiar with the idea of Billie Starkz than the Billie Starkz who has been on screen in 2024 and more than that, the idea of an idea of someone like Billie Starkz, a young talent beloved because of her indie run who was ready to take a title. 

I won't speak to real life, but on screen, she wasn't. She absolutely wasn't ready to win. I know everyone made fun of Heyman noting how early the Bloodline storyline was in being completed, but here it's valid. Billie hasn't even really seen the light yet. She's still a heel. She's just a bullied, put upon heel who petulantly stomped her foot until she got a title shot. She wanted more attention not Athena. She didn't outright claim that Athena was evil or wrong or had to be stopped. If anything, she was trying to be her own Athena. If their match last year really got her established in MIT, then ultimately this one should start the road for her to leave it and find herself, but I'm not 100% that's the path they're going to take with her. I do think Athena is headed for bigger and better things, at least in the short term. I'd like to see Billie get some different mentor but outside of Emi Sakura (and wouldn't that be interesting?), no one in house really fits the bill. 

I thought the match itself was good. Just to focus on the finishing stretch, the moment where Athena clearly has an advantage and could go for the O-Face but chooses to use the mic instead out of paranoia/a lack of more fiber/Lexy wanting to please her and then almost losing because of that was a perfect character beat. And that moment in the corner after she had eaten Billie's finisher once and ended up back on her shoulders with the turnbuckle pad in hand is an absolutely perfect encapsulation of Athena as a talent. Yes she's agile. Yes she's believable. But it's her emotiveness in the moment! She went from the worry that she was up in the electric chair position to the surprise that she had the turnbuckle pad in her hand to the savvy bit of control that she could hit the poison rana all within a split second and it played out on her face like a method actor. She was living it and it was all organic and not overwrought. No one else in wrestling today can do that. 

But yeah, it must be weirdly aggravating to book a PPV more or less how you should, but having the fans just unprepared for what they're about to see. The 2024 ROH PPVs have a much better build than 2023 ROH PPVs, with the TV really setting things up, even if I don't agree with every decision, but it's almost wasted on the audience that tunes in a couple of times a year relative to the crazy sort of sickos matches they were doing without build previously. Like I said, an interesting thought experiment. This match certainly deserved a better reception online overall.

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

AEW Dynamite 11/27/24

Darby Allin vs. Brody King

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

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

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

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

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

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Ricochet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/18 - 11/24 (Part 1?)

ROH TV 11/21/24

Athena vs Leila Grey (Proving Ground)

MD: Athena makes a tricky finger of death because there are some diminishing returns in my writing about her. I'm not necessarily interested in structural issues (like where she places the magic forearm in her matches; I'm not sure this match even had it) or in narrative ones (like how in this match Grey, due to the hierarchy, was mainly able to get opportunities by using her athleticism to help enable banana peel slip moments of Athena missing shots). I'm interested in Athena's full immersion, the way she's always on, always reacting. 

I'm interested in taking a match and watching her facial expressions and body language the whole way through, taking for granted that the match will make sense and be narratively compelling and sound, that the execution of moves and her bumping will be very good, just focusing entirely on how she reacts to everything that happens. Buddy Rose was always on, but from what I understand, he wasn't able to explain it. It was instinct, natural; it just happened. With Terry Funk, I always get the impression that his brain just worked more quickly than everyone else's, that he saw opportunities in the moment and was able to choose which one would create the biggest ripple. Maybe I'm wrong. 

I wonder a little which it is with Athena. Grey here did a very god job of reacting. At times you could see exhaustion or desperation or hope in her face. There was often a momentary gap, just a blip, and it's nothing to hold against her. It's human. I'd argue that the majority of wrestlers have that gap of making a conscious choice of how to react, how to sell, how to be, and because most wrestlers do it, there's no reason to even notice it. Athena doesn't have it though. With her, it's seamless. In some ways, you watch her matches to see just what the reaction will be, but sometimes you watch them to see what's not there, to revel in the absence of that gap and the extra semblance of immersive reality that she can create that almost no one else in wrestling in 2024 can. I'm just not sure how interesting it is to people for me to keep writing about it.

AEW Dynamite 11/20/24

Darby Allin vs Claudio Castagnoli

MD: Sometimes when someone's not going to be on the PPV they get a feature match in the week around it. That seems to be what we have here. Even though he lost, this was maybe the first time that Darby really looked like "the guy" to me. There was something about how he carried himself, a certain confidence. It's not that he was ever lacking it (no one as fearless as he is could possibly be lacking it), but it's always been a sort of of outsider edge and now it felt more mainstream, more central. He didn't feel like a pillar. He felt like a main eventer and it felt like he knew it. I'm curious if he can carry that forward in the weeks and months to come.  

Some of that was Claudio putting him over. You may ask how he put him over; it was by treating him like a legitimate threat right from the get go. Yes, there was a size and strength advantage. Yes, it played into the match, but Claudio treated him as dangerous nonetheless. The first couple of times, when he retreated to the floor (and he retreated to the floor in the first place), he quickly got out of Darby's line of fire. Then, instead of trying to aggressively overpower Darby, he took over by luring him in and catching him. If you've ever read anything I wrote, you know that I feel like details can matter. All of this can matter. Claudio choosing to take over in the way that he did, especially given the strength differential, meant that Darby was someone worth being wary of. That matters.

Of course, Darby, being who he is and the size he is, enabled Claudio, who could do almost anything to anyone anyway, to do amazing things. The endless gutbusters, the walk up the stairs, the swing into the guardrail, the press slam that all but ended things. There's some question of whether Claudio doing such impressive, crowd-pleasing spots is counter productive in some way. Some of it comes down to execution. A lot of it is on his opponent. They care about Darby. Darby makes them care. That matters. It makes the difference. If you have an over babyface, it can work. If you don't, then Claudio will just get himself over. Here, it worked, and Darby made it work, constantly fighting from underneath, biting, scraping, and even almost picking Claudio up, something that made Darby look just as unreal in his own way, as all of Claudio's big power moves. Again it's because they made things like the differential matter. They kept it consistent, they leaned into it, they reacted and sold what was happening, not just the physical toil but the emotional weight behind it all. That turns Darby lifting Claudio in a fireman's carry out of a hold as a hope spot from just another spot, a checked box, to something with massive emotional resonance that will get the crowd chanting not for the match or for the company or for each other or for action for the sake of action, but for Darby Allin to overcome.

Darby finally came back by combining his bite hope spot with Claudio's luring tactic earlier in the match, getting him out to the floor and biting a face instead of a finger. They went into the sort of finishing stretch you'd expect all building to the huge spot off the table. Darby valiantly crawled back into the ring to beat the count only for Claudio to wipe him out for a sort of surprise pin. All in all, Darby wasn't hurt by it and it was a win Claudio probably needed relative to his current role. I will say that the climb back in, even after such a huge spot, wasn't as impactful as it could have been. I think of early-mid 80s NJPW where they occasionally did huge countouts. While it was incredibly unsatisfying when one or both wrestlers went over the rail for the DQ, the countouts still had oomph. Some of that was the fighting spirit element of it, but a lot of it was because they actually happened. People loosely understand the symbolic idea of a countout now, the notion that someone who makes it back to the ring is heroic and deserving of praise, but the element of risk of Darby NOT beating the count wasn't actually there. It never happens. If it did, then people would care more when someone beats the count. The baseline isn't someone not making it. The baseline is someone making it, always, even if they just barely make it. You can't push against something that never actually happens and expect for it to hit as well as it might have. In this case, I actually wonder if Darby might have been more over for even getting up and crawling towards the ring and almost making it and NOT beating the count. That wouldn't have been about the spirit being unwilling but just the body holding him back. Just something to think about right?

-----

BONUS: On Hangman Page, my most improved wrestler of 2024 (with every bit of implication that statement carries).

This should be a pretty safe one right? A positive message. Adam Page is my most improved wrestler of the year. I think he's taken extremely well to the maligned heel act.

Except for one little thing. He's not my best wrestler of the year. He's my most improved wrestler of the year, and to be improved, well, you had to start from some sort of deficit.

And yeah, did he ever have a deficit in my mind. When I started watching AEW in fall 2021, I had never seen Adam Page before. On paper, there seemd a lot to like. Hard hitting cowboy. An undeniable expressiveness that went hand-in-hand with the whole depressed millenial sensitive guy deal. A fairly solid person behind the character with a good social media presence.

So I gave him a shot. Believe it or not, that's what I do. I saw him win the title, saw him on his first few defenses. And deeper into 2022. I come from a school of thought that tosses conventional wisdom out the window. Other people can help guide you places, but once you get there, you delve in yourself and make your own judgments. And judge I did, and I found him wanting.

When it comes to conventional workrate metrics, he was aces, right? Worked hard. Hit hard. Had big spots (big enough at least: the fall away slam, the death valley driver, the moonsault, the springboard clothesline).

It was just how he used them and how big spots seemed to be all that he had. He was lacking simple things: punches, kicks, a standard clothesline, a corner clothesline, a bodyslam, any of the stuff that you'd normally expect early into a match. And lacking that early and mid-level offense, he started dropping the bombs too early.

It worked well enough when someone huge (like a Lance Archer) controlled the match. Then he could hit a fall away slam or even a death valley driver as a hope spot or a big comeback spot. He was a dominant presence though, a lead babyface, and he went too big too quick, and then there was nowhere for his matches to go. He was consistently hitting something like a death valley driver in the first few minutes and it meant multiple finisher attempts and finishers later on when he should have been hitting some of those bombs that he might have theoretically saved instead of used earlier in the match.

The thing was, it worked for him. Maybe not with me, but it worked with the crowd. Some of that was buoyed by his personality and his connection with them, but a lot of it was because he was giving them gratification and plenty of it. A lot of sensation. A lot of reason to pop. That it ultimately wasn't as memorable as it could have been, that it wasn't sustainable over time, that it didn't always build to emotional beats, well, it was beside the point, because he was rewarded.

Page has an art nerd background. I get the sense he's a creative guy, that he often tried to pop himself and his friends, do the things that he thought would be cool in a match. And it meant he was rewarded repeatedly for things that didn't necessarily hold up narratively, things that might have worked over the span of months or if he was used as an attraction, or if he had an opponent who could bring the right sort of structure to the table but that faltered against certain opponents. My least favorite match of 2022 was the Takeshita match, because Takeshita is very similar. He was new to me too and I didn't know the criticism of him from DDT, but both of them rushed to as much cool stuff as possible without building it in a way that feels earned or paid off. 

So yes, it works, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it could potentially work. It leaves things on the table. However good you might feel he is, he could have been so much better. This year, he has been.

A heel turn alone isn't a magic fix. I'd argue that Takeshita still stumbles with a lot of the same pitfalls. Action without substance. Payoff without build. Athleticism without meaningful escalation.

Page, however, has leaned into it far more thoroughly. He's captured a mood. He moves with purpose. He's found that mid-level offense. He leans on opponents, takes the air out of them, out of the room, oppresses them, an imposing presence that now wrestles from the incensed, hateful, look in his eyes outwards. He's channels a methodological presence in the best of ways. Now when he hits one of his bombs, it resonates with narrative force. I've gone from dreading how he might structure his matches to looking forward to it.

People felt things in certain of his older matches. So much of that was due to the set up outside the match. Now he's the one creating the mood and tugging on hearts with his actual wrestling. And he deserves all the credit in the world for it.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/4 - 11/10

AEW Dynamite 11/6/24

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

MD: This was an extremely well put together tag match. I'd like to say more about Cassidy in general in a bit and then I'll follow it up with something I wrote about AEW storytelling in general, but let me start with layout of the tag itself.

Just to recap quickly, it started with Cassidy luring the Deathriders into Darby's dive off the set. From there, Darby fought Claudio on the floor and Cassidy fought PAC in the ring. Cassidy side stepped and Claudio hit an uppercut almost simultaneously. Yuta distracted Cassidy however, but he was able to push a resurgent PAC off the ropes and hit a jumping DDT. Claudio had been laying in wait and rushed in to break up the pin and hit three big power moves in a row to turn the tide and start the actual heat.

There's so much going on in there, so many wrinkles, so many little bits of character, so much specific highlighting of what makes each of these wrestlers unique. It was a great way to start a match. The shine wasn't long and it was fairly back and forth (as you have to keep your relatively new heel unit strong while making the defenders of the company stand out) but it was punctuated with big moments in Darby's dive and Cassidy's jumping DDT, then Claudio went way overboard in smashing him. Just a very effective opening.

That brings us to heat #1, on Cassidy, through the commercial break. It's so frustrating to see people who should know what they're talking about completely miss the boat on him. He'd already done multiple things extremely well in the match (the character-driven sidestep, getting distracted by Yuta) but he did exactly what he should have done as a face-in-peril. He was constantly fighting, constantly reaching, constantly showing the world just how tough it all was, constantly giving the fans something to latch on to. He has all of the substance of being a traditional babyface in traditional wrestling, and it's just the style and the trappings that work differently. The important stuff all hits. How can people who know so much about wrestling be blind about this? 

And the Deathriders, to their credit, kept it interesting. They had a multiple distraction spot just so Claudio (the illegal man) could hit a double stomp on the floor. Claudio is the bar, a wall, the perfect guy to cut people off and he had a great cutoff with the gutwrench over the shoulder backbreaker as Cassidy was starting to fire back after the commercial break. Then Cassidy capitalized on a banana peel slip as Claudio hit the corner and got the tag.

Darby came in hot, and things were elementary from there. He took everyone out, got caught by Claudio, gracefully avoided the catch once but not twice, got beat on a bit, and then slipped through the legs in the bumpiest, most Darby way possible for a second hot tag and to roll into the finishing stretch. Then as they were pinballing into the Deathriders and as Cassidy was hitting Orange Punch after Orange Punch, Shafir and Mox asserted themselves and we got a rare DQ. A perfectly fine DQ by the way given how good the match was and how it gave Darby and Cassidy something of a moral victory right up until Darby got lawn darted into the post (won the battle, lost the war; clearly were dominant, but the heels more than got their heat back). Matches without clean finishes happen so rarely that this gave everything a chaotic mood that kept things chugging along on the road to Full Gear. Not an every day occurrence but something they shouldn't be afraid to use when needed.

Which brings me to something I posted on Twitter yesterday (https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1855593937882247204)

The State of AEW Storytelling

The people who say there is no story in AEW are completely and blatantly wrong. Almost every match has some driving force and purpose. Every match on TV is either set up or is setting up something. There are criticisms to be made but that's not one of them. Instead, people should look at the style, the execution, the sometimes mechanical nature, the pacing, the lack of tangible change over time. While AEW succeeds sometimes in some of these things, they're apt to fail just as often.

There is a hierarchy to how AEW matches work. Wrestlers are built up on Rampage to build someone up on Collision so that they may be built up for someone on Dynamite. AR Fox will get a win vs Josh Woods on ROH TV (this well could have been Rampage) so that he can lose to Nick Wayne on Collision, very likely for Wayne to lose sometime in the near future to HOOK on Dynamite to set up a match with Christian on the PPV. Often all of those intermediary matches are further underpinned by story. Wayne wants to get back at AR Fox for Fox attacking him in his dad's school with Swerve last year. So things are both set up with lead-in matches and underpinned with story.

It's mechanically sound. It works on paper. Maybe the fact that Woods never gets a win (maybe in an enhancement match on ROH sometimes? His last was in August.) hurts things a little but hierarchy is hierarchy.

So what's the problem? Well, there are a few. For one, it's too mechanical. It's too obvious maybe. It'd work if you were scoring on a machine, if you were checking boxes on a video game. In real life, it's a logical engine but not necessarily a compelling one.  It's organized but it doesn't feel organic, doesn't feel alive. It's not vibrant. Everything feels like a means to an end.
Things are supposed to be means to ends, yes, but it's not always supposed to feel that way in the moment. Maybe some of that has to do with the fact that none of the results are ever in question. The lower-positioned wrestler is always going to lose to heat up the higher one. What would it mean to the story for the opposite to be true? It wouldn't make sense.

Maybe it shouldn't be so neat all the time? AEW is known for clean finishes but maybe there are other ways to get to Point C (that Dynamite match) where Point A and Point B (ROH/Rampage/Collision) can be a bit more in question. A few more DQs. A few more countouts. A few more double DQs or countouts. These are tools that were in the toolbox for all bookers for decades. They were used to cheat crowds out of finishes at times and that should be avoided but that doesn't mean they can't be used on the path to the match that actually matters in a way that still gets everything where it's going.

Then there's lack of follow up on midcarders after they've served their purpose. To continue with the current advantage, Woods isn't going to grow or change from his loss to Fox. Fox is going to come out of a potentially emotional substory with Wayne probably no different the next time we see him.

Things start and stop and are not always clearly communicated. Look at Top Flight. Andretti had been getting more impulsive and aggressive for weeks but it was more or less dropped so they could weave them in as early Deathriders opponents, spiking again when he needed to be bullheaded enough to fill a segment and get destroyed by PAC. They never clearly defined if Top Flight lost their new look due to the Deathriders pressing them or if it was just haphazard. There was nothing to connect Andretti's aggression in September with what was happening in late October. Likewise, there's nothing connecting Lio Rush getting pushed by the Deathriders to him potentially working with the Hurt Syndicate. Someone who watches all (and I mean ALL) of the TV can read between the lines, but the average viewer isn't at all led and it leaves the company open to criticism.

AEW's gotten better about recaps and trying to let things sink in as of late, but that's primarily served the A stories, not the B and C ones that lead to the A stories, and it's those B and C ones that fill TV time and where the criticisms tend to sit.

I know what people might say here, or what they should say. When has any company really managed what I'm talking about above? Consistently and over time especially? Maybe never. Maybe it's all an unfair expectation that I'm setting on Khan and AEW.

Here's the thing though. AEW is match-based promotion. There aren't long promos that carry the story. There aren't extended interview segments. I don't want that. Khan doesn't want that. The hardcores don't want that. The only people who seem to want those things are the bad faith grifters and the people who have only known wrestling in their lives to be one sort of thing.

So then how do you get around that? You use every tool in your disposal. You flesh out your characters as much as possible. You find ways to introduce stakes in the matches themselves, propelling the winners but also developing the losers along the way so that they either someday can be winners or that the idea of beating them time and time again becomes more important. You ensure that things, like Andretti's character development, 1) exist in the first place 2) are clear and flowing and not start and stop and haphazard, and 3) allow for meaningful change and aren't just jettisoned when no longer immediately useful. It's all a big ask but it's a big, frequent criticism and if it's to be countered, it should be in a way that furthers the company and rewards viewers not just those acting in bad faith.

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

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

AEW Dynamite 10/8/24

Bryan Danielson/Wheeler Yuta vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and friends) 9/23 - 9/29 Part 2

AEW Collision Grand Slam 9/28/24

Claudio Castagnoli/PAC/Wheeler Yuta vs Private Party/Komander

MD: I'm going to pass on Moxley vs Allin. I just have more to say about the Collision matches. It was very good. It's wrestlers pressing each other to the limit. It's exactly what we need. I'm not going to cover too much of the actual happenings in this trios match either. Obviously, Claudio was an amazing base; PAC is really finding himself in this role, is reveling in it; Kassidy, Quen, and Komander saw their opportunity and fought from underneath and showed fire with a never-say-die attitude.

But really, this was all about the interplay of Yuta with his partners. This will play into the Jarrett vs Page match as well, but balancing complex characters in pro wrestling is hard. At the end of the day, it has to transfer to the ring and has to live in front of a crowd, an opinionated, reacting crowd. You can't control these reactions except for through craft and cunning. We're in an age of instant response where people will tweet about a new episode of scripted television, but that won't affect those shows in the moment. It doesn't impact the actual art as it's happening in the same way as wrestling where the crowd is part of the overall effect.

It means that if you lead with real complexity, you could get a split crowd when you don't want that at all. But if you can actually pull it off? Well, then you get something that only a tiny fraction of all pro wrestling ever has managed to deliver upon and that has almost always been a success.

Wheeler Yuta is the most interesting character in wrestling right now. By its inherent nature, this moment can’t last. He's going to make a decision one way or another. Then, maybe he'll be a heel, one who has to live with his decision and his actions and the constant peer pressure around him. He'll be the living, breathing definition of a young man trying to justify what he had done and what he had become, likely by throwing himself entirely into the dark vision that Jon Moxley presents. He could be a heatseeker, bolstered by his betrayal, getting under everyone's skin, made all the worse because deep down, everyone knows that he's just weak. Yes, there are some parallels to Jack Perry that they'll have to navigate but it's not quite the same.

Or he can lean hard into what the fans want right now, can master his rage and frustration and emotions and stand for something. He can be the light that continues to shine after Bryan Danielson has gone off into his retirement. He can be the nucleus for a new Super Generation Army, someone to actually be elevated into a star. He could be a Kobashi who represents the fans' love of wrestling and the spirit they all want to have inside of them. Remember, AJPW didn't push Misawa and company to the moon right after Tenryu left. They held steady on with hosses like Hansen, Doc, and Gordy on top until the younger talent was built up, into 1991. That paid off for years. Yuta can be built in the same way. He can press up against PAC, Claudio, Moxley again and again, getting just a little farther each time, until he finally overcomes. Is that something AEW wants? Do they want to sacrifice part of the now, maximizing the moment, in order to truly build people, to not just give them one big feud, one big moment, and then shunt them back down onto the card because they don't fit the Dynasty dynamic?

I don't know, but right now he's Schrodinger's Wrestler, trying to control his own emotions, with all of us unsure where he’ll land. Jon Moxley has given into his emotions. Bryan Danielson has conquered his own. Yuta is in flux. He's a trained killer with a good heart. It's so essential here to have Claudio and PAC clearly coded as heels in the ring, ones that believe in something, ones with a chip on their shoulder, ones with a point, but ones that are absolutely painting a crystal clear picture. The crowd knows exactly how to respond to them. They're the grounded stability that makes this sort of complexity possible. Claudio has an almost familial expectation for Yuta, simple and direct. PAC, finally at home in a way that maybe he never was with his last set of partners, in turn has an almost bestial glee at the idea of Yuta giving into the twisted spirit and joining them. Every cut to him snarling and smiling provides the exact color this storyline needs.

And Yuta walks the line like the star he could be, believable, compelling, engaging. He's an unlikely protagonist but wrestling is an unlikely business. The fans have cautiously let him into their heart, for in so many ways he represents them in the face of what’s happened. If a TV deal is just about to be signed, there's never a better time to take a risk. It could well be time to make a leap of faith and take a gamble on Yuta for the sake of the future, no matter which way he falls. After all, there isn’t currently a better story in wrestling.

Jeff Jarrett vs Hangman Page (Lumberjack Strap Match)

MD: And Hangman Page is the second most interesting character in wrestling. I think this needs less breaking down, but I do want to note a couple of things. Hangman won the match. After doing so, he slapped the mat like he was a fired-up babyface. Then he hung a guy. Before that came a low blow and the Deadeye. Before that came him basically fighting off nine people, including someone's wife and a giant, all with straps. Talk about being all over the place narratively. Or at least, it should have been on paper. But it worked on the strength of Hangman Page and Jeff Jarrett as performers, maybe with a little of Tony commentating based on what Page had just threatened to do to him too. That's super impressive (and incredibly compelling) when you think about it.
 
What I loved most about this one, however, was how they treated the gimmick. Maybe a straight up chain/dog collar/strap match between the two would have been more visceral and gripping, but since they decided to go this route (seemingly to transition Page towards the BBG; small concern there as they're not the same sort of constants that Claudio/PAC are playing - it could get messy), the way to do it was to treat the straps held by the lumberjacks like a big deal. They built to Page getting whalloped by basically everyone and they built to it smartly. That meant him getting pushed towards the apron early on and treating it like a huge thing, something to be avoided at all costs. He took it seriously with total earnestness. There was no inkling of irony. It reminded me of how Onita would get over the exploding cage early in those matches. If you build up a gimmick as something the wrestlers are wary of, then the fans are going to care about it too.

They were laser-focused and consistent with it. When they did play things as cute, for instance when Jarrett got tossed out to his cronies and they gave him a hug and pushed him back in, they immediately turned it by Page throwing him out the other side of the ring so that the heels over there could give him some shots. Therefore, when Page finally did hit the floor, him getting whipped as a huge deal. Remember, this was a show with a Texas Tornado tag and a Saraya's Rules hardcore match. They'd seen crazier things than even Satnam whipping someone, but none of it was built to like this. Just impressive stuff overall. If Hangman can keep some of these lessons close to his heart moving forward, the sky is the limit for him. I know a lot of people think he was always great, but this little bit of discipline, this little bit more of giving himself over to believing and getting the fans to believe, well, it can take him even further, further than he's ever been.

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

AEW Collision 9/6/24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/10 - 6/16

AEW Collision 6/15/24

Blackpool Combat Club (Castagnoli/Danielson/Moxley/Yuta) vs. TMDK (Haste/Nicholls)/Lio Rush/Rocky Romero

MD: Right before the finish, Tony Schiavone called the giant swing a work of art. He was close but not quite on the mark. The real work of art was that entire sequence, everything from Danielson's knee (and Nicholls crashing hard into the ropes in a way no one ever does as they take the move), Haste's dropkick, Yuta's sweeping Angle Slam, Rocky's Shiranui, and then finally the double leg into the swing. All of that worked in a rhythmic motion to become something greater than the sum of the parts and greater than most "everything breaks down" finishing stretches. I'm not one to wax poetic about specific visuals in wrestling. I'm a substance over style sort of guy, but the "follow the bouncing ball" wind-swooshing motion here was truly spectacular. I can't really believe it was intentional because creating the sort of visual effect that pulls your eye in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time over multiple moves while still feeling at least somewhat organic would take immense coordination between multiple wrestlers at least somewhat unfamiliar with one another, not to mention the camera crew and producers. I'd worry that any attempt to intentionally replicate the effect would create the most tragically artificial and stilted pro wrestling imaginable. Honestly, I'm not even sure if it even hit anyone else quite like it hit me, but hit me it did.

Speaking of things that are just hitting me, there seems to be an extra bit of magic to Forbidden Door season this year. Part of it is that I wasn't a big 2010s New Japan guy so a lot of these dream matches aren't that dreamy for me. What does appeal, however, is the wild WAR feel of it all in the build, the sense that there's a greater world out there, one that is only enhanced by CMLL and Stardom being in the mix this year. With that in mind, and this being a cold match, I thought they made the most of it. That meant letting Lio Rush go wild against Danielson and Yuta to start. It meant having TMDK act as a unit in almost everything they did. It meant having Danielson play face-in-peril yet again, another stellar such performance in a long line of them now. It meant having Rocky get cocky and then having his coccyx crushed by the absurd and sublime top rope inverted atomic drop. It meant Claudio as the hot tag, running through every bit of interference they tried to throw his way, and Moxley as the monster unleashed who they had antagonized throughout the match but who didn't really get to come in until it was time to end things. Add in the pro wrestling version of The Great Wave off Kanagawa that I recounted in the first paragraph and you ended up with a very fun way to kick off a Collision during Forbidden Door season. Hopefully we get at least one more of these before it's all said and done.

AEW Dynamite 6/12/24

Dustin Rhodes vs. Jack Perry

MD: I had reason to watch some 1984 Tully Blanchard lately. Now, due to the law of transitive properties (We know Perry didn't listen to SOME advice. We know SOME people didn't listen to Tully's advice. Therefore...), we can assume that Jack has probably not been watching 1984 Tully. Tully had this amazing way of starting most of his matches like he was a gentleman, wrestling by the rules, going hold for hold, breaking clean. Only after the babyface got one up on him did he break bad. It made things somehow more hypocritical and underhanded and got him loads of heat.

So, Jack doesn't do that. Dustin came in with a punch to start and Jack immediately went for the eyes. He was pulling the turnbuckle pad off just seconds letter and tossing Dustin into the stairs the first chance he could. He was pulling the padding up and going for a pile driver. Then, later, when had capitalized on the exposed buckle, he hit a DDT on the floor. After that, he nailed Dustin with a (revenge, admittedly) low blow even when he didn't have to. And you know what, I have to admit that it kind of works for me. Yes, there could be some issues with it (and Perry's promos) being out of sync with the Elite's ironic gimmick but no one needs the dripping irony in 2024 anyway. This is far more genuine and visceral. In a singles match where he can be his own thing, he should be the most direct shitheel imaginable; just straight to the point, no filter, no hesitation, not an attempt at sportsmanship or even the very notion that such a thing might be worthwhile or admirable. It kind of works. It makes him stand out. You can have shades of grey matches. You can have Piper vs Bret. You can have Punk vs Page. But more often than not, there's something to the most direct and straightforward approach, especially if no one else seems to be doing it. No one else on the roster is an unmitigated, petulant jerk like Perry (not even the guy that maybe he is listening to, Christian, who professes to be a paragon of paternity, even if it is just the thinnest of patinas).

Of course, this is Perry having Dustin Rhodes, one of the best babyfaces of this century, to play off of,. Dustin is pretty much the only guy on the roster getting the the fans to clap up for him with his selling and his hand motions alone. But still, efforts like this matter. I'm rooting for Perry to build off of it.

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