Death Riders vs Don Callis Family Monster Army (AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/28 - 10/4 Part 2)

AEW Dynamite 9/30/26

Death Riders (Claudio Castagnoli/Gabe Kidd/Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia/Bryan Danielson) vs Don Callis Family Monster Army (Josh Alexander/Wardlow/Jake Doyle/Lance Archer/Mark Davis)

MD: This speaks for itself. I'm not sure if I really can add anything to it. You saw it, right? You felt it. It was the capstone on a tribute to PAC, an incredibly emotional show. 

It'd be easy to write about Kingston vs TRENT instead, a perfectly solid TV match that went time and had some great selling from Eddie and Trent being a jerk, even if it felt a little like 1998 Big Bubba up against Vincent on Saturday Night. 

I could write about Collision, all of it, a show very much made for me week in and week out (Thanks Tony); write a Workrate Report, one where basically everything worked. 

But Bryan wrestled. 

While we have all learned over the last few years that Bryan Danielson loves to lie, he's not the only data point on this one. We've heard from TK and others. I honestly believe that the wear and tear is what the reports say it is. I believe that it's hard for him to fly. I believe that he will never step in the ring again lightly, maybe never at all, that maybe he never should again. Look, Phil posted on Twitter the other week that Bryan was pumped after DEAN 2 and wanted to get in there against Mad Dog Connelly. I know Phil. He wouldn't have posted it if there was any chance that it would possibly happen. I want nothing but a healthy, happy ending with his family for Bryan, even if it means I never see him wrestle another match.

So there's every possibility this will be Bryan Danielson's last match ever. And I should write about that.

And even if it wasn't, there IS something to say about this match. 

Maybe I don't have to write about the cathartic power of pro wrestling, something that has been helping people, in-ring and out, for over a century. Maybe I don't have to talk in general about how it can help us work out our personal issues, our societal issues, our aggression, our pain. Maybe I don't have to go on about how it can be a morality play where right can triumph through heart (yes, and visceral violence as well) no matter how unfair and complicated our red-tape laden world is. 

And I don't have to talk about my last few weeks. I don't have to talk about how this match actually landed on my birthday, how it came a few days after my nine year old's birthday, how my parents who are pushing 80 real hard and I see twice a year came this last weekend, how the cat likely has pancreatitis or how we're trying to get a new boss up to speed at work. I don't have to go into detail about how I've been online for over two decades talking about pro wrestling with people and how we've carried each other through the losses of the 2000s and how everyone came together here over the last few weeks as well. And how balancing those two worlds threw me at times over this period, or how, yeah, I cried once or twice. You guys have all been living it too.

But I can talk about this match and what will stick with me from watching it.

I love this version of the Don Callis family. Maybe I'd have wanted Brian Cage in there instead of Alexander, but Alexander is probably taller and he's got the head gear and the tattooed arms and he looked like he fit in with all the other monsters. It's a Monster Army in a world of wrestling where that's far less of a thing than it once was. I'm watching 1990 NJPW where Bam Bam Bigelow is teaming with Big Van Vader and Dr. Death Steve Williams and this feels similar. Larger than life, with Wardlow returning to bring up the rear. 

The Death Riders huddled around PAC's chair. Marina lingered with it though the camera cut, so we didn't see how. We did see Danny go out of his way to get a kid's attention and then Marina linger with the kid as well. That matters. All of this does. Mox came to the desk, and while I had likened Eddie Kingston to Columbo recently, Mox was leaning into it hard here. It was cute, yeah, cute, endearing. "Oh it's live wrestling. Let's just let it play out." Something like that. "Just one more thing."

The Death Rider sting hit. Bryan's music hit. And people smiled. You just saw flashes of faces in the crowd. It was easier to see the hands go up and down for the Yes! chants, but you clearly could see the smiles too. Even on this night, people lit up. Tony and Excalibur were laughing heartily. It was wonderful. The power of one person, one song, one movement. A burst of sun through the darkness, dragonfire lighting the sky.

They got right to it, brawling around ringside, big, broad, over the top wrestling. Larger than life. A lot of the above, I didn't notice on a first watch. I was just living it. 

What I did notice on the first watch? The spin. I noticed the giant spin. And I noticed super babyface Marina Shafir spinning along with it at ringside (and selling the dizziness). 

Marina interjected herself a few times in this one, once putting Archer in a dangling armbar in the ropes, once joining in during the team corner charges, and once giving Danny permission or at least a stamp of approval to do his dance. The dance? That served as a lure to set up the corner charges. 

Every time Marina got involved, everything felt so alive. The intensity was through the roof. I know I say this phrase too much and now that I write this, you'll see it whenever I use it again, but I don't care, because it's true. The living, beating, endlessly dynamic lifeblood of pro wrestling was pulsing through her. She was doing all of these bombastic things, but she was still herself, still as intense and driven and in the moment as ever and it all felt so alive. 

And the other Death Riders did such a good job of distracting the ref and covering for her. Things could have broken down, fallen apart, and no one would have cared. Everyone would have just looked the other way or forgiven it, but they care enough about their craft and in turn in crafting an immersive reality that we can delve into that they put the attention to detail in. That is everything, even on this night (especially on this night given what we know about PAC), and I appreciate it so much.

Wardlow got to assert himself cutting off Yuta, hitting him with a fireman's carry Michinoku Driver (I call that the Amityville Horror because of Chris Chetti, but I can't imagine most other people do). Then Yuta played face in peril and the fans got behind him. (I need to fit this in here somewhere but I love the way Doyle makes a bit more space to his his forearms). I don't want to talk about the future or consequences, not really, because this wasn't about that, any of that, because very little could have mattered more than this match on this night. I will say this, however. They came back out on Collision and Yuta was enough of a heel against Austin Gunn that while he maybe couldn't fully get the crowd to boo him so soon after this, he could help them cheer the Bang Bang Gang instead and that is no small thing.

Just as it was no small thing that the crowd was so behind him here. Again, everything felt so alive. The Death Riders went to the floor and slapped the mat and got the crowd going and Yuta survived through the commercial break and got the hot tag to Bryan.

Yes, Bryan had a shirt, but it was a PAC shirt. Yes, he stumbled on the back flip. But he back flipped! Mox mentioned muscle memory. People train for a comeback. He had some gear made for him that day and just went out there. He'd been gardening and helping his kids with homework and who knows what else, and here he was, Bryan Danielson, lightning in a bottle, magic from a lamp, the American Dragon. When he was on the apron and Yuta was struggling, you could see the sweat down his face just from the opening brawling, but it didn't matter. He came in and it was all the more special because it was all the less perfect, because it wasn't effortless, because it was hard and because he was doing it nonetheless.

He had a complete exchange with Alexander, a first time encounter, eating German Suplexes, put in the ankle lock, putting Alexander  over as a threat. He didn't have to do any of that (but of course, he did). He could have been the centerpiece of the match, but instead he made another hot tag to Danny who would get his dance spot and ultimately get the pin.

Things cycled through. Bryan ended up standing next to Yuta. They were going to do the Yes Chant, were going to hit tandem knees. There's a little moment there where Yuta looked to him to get the timing right on the hands and that was as emotional as anything else in the match.

The Death Riders swarmed in the corner. Gabe hit PAC's endless run lariat. Danny got in the Sharpshooter. Claudio hit the stomp. The Death Riders hugged. Mox, while leaving the booth, quietly told a fallen Wardlow that he did a good job even in defeat, one last bit of Columbo on the way out. Danny hugged Yuta from behind and that will stick with me too. 

And I should tie it all back together, right? The emotional power of pro wrestling, how the realness and the genuine emotion is what fuels the engine and how special this all was. How this helped us and how I hope it helped them. But if you made it this far, through this match, through these words, through life up until this point and the last few weeks, I know you know, and I know you can make it the rest of the way too. 

I will say this on the way out though. Pro wrestling can be amazing. When the wrestlers care and when the fans let themselves care, it can do absolutely amazing things. And in a world often full of darkness and uncertainty, we need every amazing thing we can get.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/17 - 8/23

ROH Death Before Dishonor 8/21/26

Daniel Garcia vs Adam Priest

MD: Throughout the history of pro wrestling criticism, there has always been a premium on what was done: what (hot) moves, what spots, what popped the crowd, hot finishing stretches with a lot of kickouts. And of course, the execution of those things. Did things hit clean? Were there botches? More often than not, it wasn’t about the impact those things had on the crowd, but instead a sort of “Russian Judge” approach like the reviewer was scoring Olympics Gymnastics. How much action did the match contain? How well did the wrestlers hit their floor routine? And maybe, just maybe, how much innovation/variation existed in that action? 

Rarely, if ever, was the actual narrative of the match discussed. How that action fit into an overall story was considered almost beyond the point and even sometimes something that got in the way. I’ve seen reviews that mentioned either the overarching story being told by the wrestlers or specific character beats and flourishes in their reactions as things that got in the way of the match, as opposed to being the heart of the match itself. In the eyes of these reviewers, they disrupted the possibilities for action within the match.

I’m not sure what drove this approach, whether it was a need to feel superior, a need to cope with inferiority complexes about wrestling, resentment towards wrestlers who leaned harder on story or character beats over action as if they were somehow lazier for doing so, or just personal preference, but it would be looking at a movie review and having them focus only on the special effects and stuntwork (or maybe just the cinematography if we’re being kind) instead of the writing, acting, or overall direction, let alone things like the art design or sound.

That is to say that you could watch this match and focus just on the action and big spots. In this match, it’d be Garcia shrugging Priest off the top when he went for a superplex, and Priest’s stalling superplex later. It would be the gimmicky figure-four leglock that went out of the ring and rolled up the ramp. It’d maybe be Priest’s pile driver. Or maybe you could hyper fixate on some of the technique, the scrambling early, some of the trading of holds down the stretch, some of the false finishes like the stretch where Garcia put his foot on Priest’s head or when Priest got the half crab on. And maybe you’d call it an ok match that couldn’t compare to the spotfests on the rest of the card.

But if you did this, you’d miss so much of what made this match stand out as special.

I care about that story. I care, maybe even more so, about the characters at play. Moves are great, but we’ve seen them all. Bumps. Spots. Sequences. Reversals. When something somehow manages to be innovative in 2026, it stands out because everything’s been done, but then it’s over and copied six times. It’s ephemeral. What’s timeless is the human aspect of pro wrestling. Who are these characters? What makes them interesting? How do we related to them? How does their character shape their actions and reactions? How do they interact with one another and the crowd?

Let’s map our way through this one a little. Work with me here a bit because I truly do believe this is a different way of tracking a pro wrestling match.

First, the setting. This is a ROH PPV, where they have time to breathe. No commercial breaks. No real time constraints. It’s in the midst of a very broad card with a tag team spotfest and a bomb-throwing title match, and two Pure Rules matches, and a Fight without Honor. It’s for an opportunity, an opportunity that neither man had, to enter the Continental Cup tournament in the Quarterfinals, face Claudio Castagnoli, and potentially go to Wembley. In both cases, it might be the only possible chance they’d have to get on the biggest card of the year. For Garcia, it’s a chance to prove himself against his fellow Death Riders, to show he belongs, to show he can hang, that he’s not just the most junior member. For Priest, it’s the best opportunity he’s had in his entire AEW/ROH TV run. Clear motivation driving both of them.

There is a way to watch wrestling where you focus on their creative emotional choices, their faces, their body language. Priest came down to the ring slapping hands. He shook Bryce’s hand. He shook Bobby Cruise’s hand. He moved with purpose, intensity, but played up the southern gentleman motif as well. Garcia was doing push ups with Marina, huddled with her, slunk down the ring with that chip on his shoulder, an undertone of mouthy petulance. The Code of Honor handshake is a wonderful way to immediately establish character and tone. Do they shake? Do they look their opponent in the eye? It sets the stage for the match. Here, the shake was clean, quick, brisk. It opened the door for the possibility of a clean Continental wrestling match, something which Mox always preached but never truly practiced. 

Of course, there is a third character at play in any wrestling match, the crowd. They began to chant for Priest. That’s something he’s still getting used to given that he menaces the indies, up and down, as one of the more hated men in America. On ROH TV, though, in front of this Philly crowd, he was the favorite, and he basked in it, hyping them up, maybe even pointing it out to Garcia. That poisoned already murky waters. They scrambled on the mat (the first lock up being another way to set the tone). Priest went for a snap suplex but couldn’t get it. Too close to the ropes. He maybe took a few seconds too long to break it and Garcia, boiling over already, maybe frustrated by the crowd, maybe frustrated by life itself and his lot in it, shoved Priest back angrily. 

Priest followed with a headlock. Garcia shrugged him off and ran through him, basking in the tiny triumph, the first in the match. They went running again and Garcia stopped before a Priest leapfrog and piefaced him with one hand. He continued to get in Priest’s face, shoving him back, taking up his air, asserting himself. So what did Priest do? He shrugged and kicked Garcia in the shin. Action. Reaction. Character.

The match was maybe two minutes in but the lines were clearly defined and compelling. Active, engaged characters acting with motivation and drive, reacting to one another and the crowd. This is what gives all of those spots and moves and innovation meaning and purpose. It underpins it all and makes it resonate. They were showing us exactly who they were and what made them interesting and worth caring about. They care so we care. 

From here, Garcia responded with aggravation, having an answer to every Priest shot. He overstretched though, wanting it too badly, already gotten to a bit, and found himself with his foot caught in the corner. That let Priest start to wear it down. The crowd went up for Priest again and that distracted him, allowing Garcia to fire back. Priest went low with a chop block to cut him off. 

Just like Priest was caught up with the crowd’s reaction, he was a bit ahead of himself overall. He went for the half crab too early then went for a superplex too early. Garcia shrugged him off to the mat, forcing his leg to jam on the way down. Now both men had damaged legs which would inform the rest of the match. Priest moved right in to reassert the advantage, but Garcia caught him in the ropes and dragon screwed the leg from the outside in. He then hopped to the floor to celebrate his small victory, jawing with the fans and getting right in their faces. Was it the smartest tactical move? No. Was it absolutely what Daniel Garcia would have done and part of what makes him so engaging? Absolutely. 

You can trace these trends through the rest of the match. Priest used the crowd to help him fire back up, refusing to quit or back down, Garcia resorting to a cheap throat shot to cut him off. Garcia got distracted mocking the crowd during his ten-count corner punch and Priest was able to take advantage of the space. Priest hit a series of nasty dragon screw leg whips which Garcia sold in a unique stalling way, but Adam got caught up as the crowd wanted just one more and that allowed Garcia to lock in a sleeper. Their mistakes are human mistakes. Their resilience is a very human resilience. The balance between the two is where the human interest in the match resides and the human interest is far better than any series of complex choreographed spots that exist for its own sake and to pop a crowd.

At one point, they found themselves at an impasse, each having grabbed the other’s leg, two men intertwined through fate and determination. That was even more true during that figure-four which rolled up the ramp. Part of it was spurred on by the shared legwork throughout the match, sure, but so much of it was sheer stubbornness, with neither wanting to be the first to find a way out, neither wanting to be the first to blink, to let the other see him blink, to let the crowd and the world see him blink.

Priest was infinitely resourceful. When Garcia (leaning hard into his Death Riders rearing) managed to beat him down, he always had one last trick to use. He’s not big to begin with. He’s used to fighting from underneath and he did so literally, tossing a knife-edged chop into Danny’s knee so he could hit the pile driver. Garcia survived it though, managed one last trip using a dropdown (the oldest trick in the book but one that almost never works, fitting that it did here), and locked in the Dragontamer for the win. Post-match, he limped through the crowd from whence he came, while Priest convalesced in pain and disappointment.

It was a hell of a match but it was a hell of a match as much (more so if you ask me, far moer so) for who they were and how they presented themselves as for any specific thing that they did. There’s not really been a critical tradition of us examining that in pro wrestling. If anything it’s been lumped into the category of “charisma,” but charisma, to me, is much more about a certain sort of over the top dynamism, and really, in a lot of ways, goes back to popping crowds instead of serving narratives. 

A narrative was served here, driven by character, by actions and reactions, and the prideful, tempestuous, driven, and all too human souls underneath. That’s what makes this one of the best AEW/ROH matches of the year and a quiet triumph. Interesting people doing interesting things in interesting ways to interesting effect. Motivation, character, consequence, where the action serves and is shaped by the narrative instead of forcing it, kicking and screaming, to drag breathlessly behind. That’s the ideal and they absolutely nailed it here. 

Read more!

Graduation Day: The Education of William Peter Charles Ospreay (AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/27 - 8/2)

AEW Collision 7/30/26

Daniel Garcia vs Will Ospreay

MD: I was not a fan of the Ospreay/Mox vs Bucks tag. 

Put the bit with the 450 in the finishing stretch aside. Put even some of the over the top character beats down the stretch aside. There was a moment early on where Ospreay and a Buck crashed into one another and did a double down. Let's also put aside whether or not that spot worked (I lean slightly towards no because while you want an exception now and again to jolt people, there's a fine line between exceptional and implausible within the confines of what people have seen; doesn't matter though). It's the aftermath that frustrated me. 

They were teasing a Jackson concussion. Mox obviously wanted Ospreay to press the offense. Ospreay was hesitant. It was a microcosm to the story overall. Had Will gone to dark places in his recovery? Did he buy into the Death Riders ethos? Were the Death Riders even that bad? Did Mox have a point? Was Mox setting him up for a betrayal? Would Ospreay lose himself in order to gain the world championship? 

That's the story right? So when Ospreay gives into peer pressure and hits a dive on said Jackson, taking advantage of his potential concussion, that's a negative moment. It has to be. The fans should have responded negatively. The guy they like did an objectively morally bad thing because he was pushed into it. That had to be one of the straws breaking the back, that sets up things later in the match with Ospreay having dissention with Mox and the Death Rider mentality, and later in the night, when Ospreay refuses to bag Omega and makes the save on him instead (only for Omega to then turn on him). 

Big emotional moment. Important moment. It has to hit.

Ospreay, obviously conflicted, yet ultimately led awry, goes for the dive. He gives in to peer pressure. He gives into Mox. He acts like a Death Rider. Will he cross a line and never look back? What is the state of his immortal soul?

And the fans?

The fans start singing his name in elation because he hit a dive and they sure do like it when Will Ospreay hits dives. 

You realize how thoroughly the story is failing for that to be the outcome? It doesn't matter how strong Jackson's selling was or how conflicted Ospreay made himself seem or how charismatic Mox was or how nice the dive was (or even that they were in Montreal). It failed. That moment, a key moment for the entire story, failed. Utterly.

This matters, right? It has to matter. Obviously it doesn't matter to some people, but that makes them part of the problem and part of how we got here in the first place.

But life goes on, the story charges forward. 

And that brings us to Collision and a chance to course correct and hammer home the themes. It's only to set up the biggest match of the year at the biggest show of the year, something to set the direction for the company for months. No pressure, right?

Mox is on commentary.

Mox is always compelling on commentary, always entertaining. The problem, of course, is that Mox's own story is clear as mud. He's the emperor with no clothes but the entire world doesn't care that he walks around naked, because there are no consequences and nothing matters. Pro wrestling is no longer a morality play. It's romper room. Mox wins. Mox is cool. The Death Riders stand with him. The fans go along with it. Why would they boo Ospreay for doing a morally bad thing? That's how it feels way too often.

On some level, it benefits Moxley (kayfabe) to foster such an environment, and you can hear him spew his bs on commentary. Oh, he still likes Ospreay. Oh, Ospreay trained hard with the Death Riders. This will be a nice friendly match between two sparring partners. It's all just business as usual. Just pro wrestling. None of it really matters. It's personal, but between brothers. 

It would be great delusional cult of personality bullshit, honestly, if Mox was ever going to pay for it, if it was presented as him trying to pull the wool over the world.

Traditionally, you'd have commentators who would constantly point that out. Imagine Mox trying to pull this bs with Lance Russell? You'd have babyfaces who could speak to it. Imagine Dusty Rhodes cutting through this. Instead, they joke about Tony Schiavone's wife beating him up. Everyone wants to be Mox's pal. Great.

Okay, so that's the Redemption tag and Mox on commentary.

What does this leave us with?

It leaves us with Daniel Garcia. 

And that is a massive relief, because Daniel Garcia can do his job. Daniel Garcia delivers. Daniel Garcia almost never strays from true north. Those times that he does? It's almost certainly because of pressure from above. They're few and far between though (and mostly involve multiple superplexes in a row). 

The job isn't to wake up Friday morning and count stars. It's not. That's the horse chasing the cart. It's not to work matches around a checklist specifically set up to get those stars. It's not celebrating once you got them, not when other things don't work, like, you know, the biggest emotional beat in a key match? 

The job is to work people, to make them feel, to get them to a specifical emotional point, to build pressure and then take them over the top. It's not to put smiles on faces. It's not to get them chanting "This is awesome." It's also not somehow saying that the wrestling itself doesn't matter. The wrestling itself is the point, but the goal of the wrestling is to move people emotionally. That happens through selling, and timing, patience and framing, and ultimately execution. It happens through getting people to buy what you're selling, but you need a clear vision of exactly what that is. 

And yeah, like I said, Daniel Garcia can do the job. He may not pass the airport test. He may not do the biggest spots. He may not end up in all the gifs (though the gifs he does end up in are almost all great; you just have to dig a little deeper to find them). He may not even get the pop when his music hits. But as the match goes on, he gets the crowd. He hooks them. He's more over on the way out than he was on the way in.

And whatever he was trying to accomplish in the match gets accomplished.

So then, the match.

Mox is full of shit, but it's up to Garcia (the character) to buy into that shit and give it his own spin. Maybe they were going to stab Ospreay in the back. Maybe they weren't. Maybe Garcia resented him because the fans never left Will when they had left Danny back when all he wanted to do was to restore the feeling. Maybe Garcia felt kinship anyway. Maybe Garcia liked the idea that Will was the "young boy" and not him anymore. Maybe Garcia feels betrayed that Ospreay gave back his patch. 

Maybe a lot of things. They all make Garcia's performance compelling. That said, Daniel Garcia (the wrestler) had a job to do. That job was to put over how far Ospreay had come, put over the fact that he as a different wrestler than before his injury, different from when he had just come back from it. He had to present clear lines that differentiated Ospreay from the Death Riders. He had to put forth the idea that Ospreay was not just a star, but the star, not just a wrestler, but the wrestler, not just a champion, but the champion that can carry the company forward. 

Ospreay hadn't quite landed that on his own. He had good individual moments, such as when he finally took Brooks out after Brooks played upon his remaining good nature. But that was still mid-stream in the story. Ospreay was still conflicted. He had to be past that now. He had to be fully focused, fully driven, an ace. 

And it was up to Garcia to provide the contrast to let Ospreay show it to the world.

Garcia and Mox can be mud. Ospreay has to be crystal clear. 

So Garcia started things by muddying the water. He talked a big game. His hands flew all over the place, full of attitude. He wanted the "young boy." It was "graduation day." 

And then, as Ospreay charged in, Garcia dove right out of the ring. Dissonance. The greatest tool of a pro wrestling heel. Get people thinking and feeling one way, that the world itself should be one way, and snatch the rug out from underneath them. Garcia wanted this fight and now he was running away. 

He was goading Ospreay (treating him like a twelve year old). And Ospreay gave chase, because of course he did. The Detroit fans booed, jeered, and then, when Ospreay caught on and caught Garcia, let out their pent up frustration with big cheers as Ospreay did the same with big shots. Garcia kept his cool in the face of the onslaught though and snuck in a throat shot. It didn't do him much good though. In a fair fight, no one can stop Will Ospreay. That's the point.

No one, except for maybe Will Ospreay himself. That's also the point.

Ospreay here flexed his greatest strength as a pro wrestler. It's not the athleticism, though that's a close second. It's the bull-in-a-china shop charisma. It's weaponizing that (potentially charming) 12-year old mentality to connect with the crowd. He brought Garcia over to a young fan and whacked him before high fiving the fan. On the outside, when he slipped off the guardrail (planned or not), he steadied himself with another fan' shoulder and gave him the biggest, most endearing grin.

That's when Garcia caught him, dangled him over the rail, and dropped him on his head. Ospreay's weakness is his the same as his strength, his personality. That is compelling fiction. A minor plot-related vulnerability to help rationalize his opponents not getting totally swept under is his neck. The two are very different and it's important to keep that in mind.

Garcia went in hard on the neck. Ospreay was ready for that though (this matters), so Garcia went in to the leg. This was a different Ospreay, though, and it was important to show that, so increasingly, Ospreay had counters, not ones that were just bounding and adrenaline rushes, but little bits of wrestling as well. For maybe the first time in this entire journey, Ospreay felt like a different wrestler, a more seasoned one, one that could carry a company. That had been the point of all of this and it was finally starting to come out in the actual wrestling. 

Garcia wasn't going to make it easy for him though. There were counters to counters. They didn't feel overwrought and needlessly flashy like you'd usually see (for instance, from the classic Ospreay vs Ricochet footage). This was close up magic, holds hung on to, body control kept, Garcia being a monkey and refusing to let go. The flash was additive, a magician's trick to get you to look at one hand when the other was doing the work. The flash was a means and not the end. A different world. A different Ospreay, one that was grounded in what the wrestlers were both trying to accomplish and not just what might look cool in the moment. 

Means and ends. That's the thing that's been missing, and it took Garcia to drag it out of him. Because Daniel Garcia is damn good at his job.

He's good at the emotional bits too.

By the end of the match it was clear that in Garcia was wrestling a different Ospreay, that Will had taken on the lessons and decided upon his own truths, that he had graduated. Even though Garcia had an answer of his own to every answer Ospreay provided to Garcia's questions, the fact that Ospreay had answers in the first place, adult answers, not just twelve-year old ones, meant that Garcia seemingly broke first. He started laying shots in, started berating Ospreay. Ospreay stood up and clocked him. Just like that. Garcia thought he was luring Ospreay in, just as he had tried early in the match, and caught him in a choke, but Ospreay calmly dropped his elbow pad, flipped back over, and hit the hidden blade.

For the first time since this story started, we have a truly different Will Ospreay on our hands. Post-match, the Death Riders left ringside, leaving him for dead as the Don Callis Family attacked, but this was a different Will Ospreay, one that could stand on his own, that could make his own save, and he did so, standing triumphant in the ring as the show closed, beating the odds, an ace.

What remains to be seen is how much that different Will Ospreay that we saw here was due to Ospreay finally growing into his role in the way the company so desperately needs and how much was simply due to Daniel Garcia being so damn good at his job.

We'll all know soon enough.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/25 - 5/31

AEW Collision 5/30/26

Konosuke Takeshita vs Daniel Garcia

Konosuke Takeshita is a very special wrestler.

While size is relative when comparing modern wrestling to the wrestling of old, Takeshita clearly jumps off the screen. Whether due to sheer height or the combination of size and his theatrical presence, he towers over opponents in a way that most current wrestlers do not. When it comes to his athleticism, he reminds me of Barry Windham at his prime. There's an electricity to how he moves, to the intensity he brings to the table. Given his size and his proclivity (academic and practical) for the German Suplex, you might compare him to Jumbo Tsuruta but his seething stares and alacrity of motion reminds me more of Riki Choshu. 

He's a star. He looks like one. He moves like one. Most often, he carries himself like one. Yet, he is a star specifically made for AEW. He balances the brooding seriousness with a super indie excessiveness in his match layouts (for good and ill) and under the surface of it all is that DDT-crafted smile.  In a perfect world, he would be in that Conglomeration opening credits tron instead of Ishii. 

But this is not a perfect world. It's one where the character of Konosuke Takeshita felt spurned by New Japan, spurned by the Blackpool Combat Club and the Elite, where he allowed Don Callis to whisper dark thoughts in his ears on what he needed to prove, on how he needed to prove it, where he went from a young man who found his way to America and fell in love with Cinnabon to the Alpha of the Don Callis Family. What he found, time after time, was that no matter how much he proved himself to the world, there was always something else. He always came up unsatisfied. 

He rose all the way to IWGP Champion, but he was overshadowed by Okada when he walked in to the Tokyo Dome to defend his title. Even that might have been fine; Okada was a legend after all, but despite being stablemates, Okada rubbed salt into the wound again and again and again. Takeshita could find no peace. Then, finally, after defeating Okada for the International Title, his found family turned on him, his brother-in-arms Kyle Fletcher being the one to turn the knife. 

So he stands on his own, reconnected with the fans, holding the International Title once more, but in other, more important ways, alone in the world again.

Daniel Garcia is a very special wrestler. 

All of those things Takeshita has? Garcia's got none of them. He fails the airport test. His music hits and the fans don't quite pop, not really. He's stumbled from one identity to another (in character and out), picked up a sports entertainment dance, lost it. Tried to pop people with triple superplexes no matter how far away that his from his own personal true north. 

But.

Unlike almost everyone else in pro wrestling today, he's move over by the end of a match than he was at the beginning. 

We're trapped in a world where people are arguing that WWE matches should be shorter and entrances should be longer. That sort of world would drive Daniel Garcia to extinction. But he defies it. He gets people to care about what happens in the ring at every moment, not just finishes and looking to the back for run-ins. He gets them engaged in a way that has nothing to do with "This is Awesome" chants or even "bald" chants. 

Why? How? First, he's genuine. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He's relatable. He's not a big superhero. That's his strength. He's a guy who put in the work, who loves pro wrestling, who cares, who picked himself up from a car crash and dragged himself every step up the way to being on TV. You see it in his reactions. You see it in his face. What you see is what you get and in a world built upon fabrication, that stands out far more than any Phoenix Splash or Fosberry Flop ever could. Far more than any triple superplex might. 

Second, he's pays attention to details. He's going to stay on a body part, and when he falls off of it, it'll be due to a character reasons not just to enact some cooler spot. He's going to set something up to pay it off later. He's not going to meander on a side trip. He's not going to do something for the sake of it. He's not going to fall into excess (except for those self-conscious triple superplexes). The thing is, he has to pay attention to details. Other wrestlers can lean on athleticism and pop the crowd again and again and play to the 5* Observer checklist. Garcia can't, not better than them. So he has to build something that stands on his own instead. He builds matches that are timeless, that work in the moment and move the crowd in the right way, that will still work in thirty years even while those other ones fall to the wayside as athleticism continues to advance.

Putting Garcia and Takeshita together led to one of those matches that will stand the test of time.

Takeshita does best against contrast. You give him someone else who is explosive, who will push him to the physical limit, and it often all becomes noise. Garcia was going to push him to emotional limits, to push his body in far more single-minded, driven ways. 

Early on, Garcia's reactiveness gave Takeshita so much to work with. They chain-wrestled to start. Garcia fell prey to Takeshita's superior reach but pulled hair to get out of a headlock and made sure to flex when he turned it into a headscissors. But they both had a chip on their shoulders, and as Takeshita escaped, he stared Garcia down and smacked him on the chest, sending a message. Garcia returned the message, piefacing and paintbrushing Takeshita in the corner before smacking his chest. Then, when Takeshita tried to take off Garcia's head in the opposite corner for his affront, Garcia ducked out of the way. Takeshita held the pose, forearm against turnbuckle, for just long enough for it to sink in with the crowd, a great visual. And then, of course, Garcia ran right into a big boot, because in this match, he was a heel and when it comes time for it, he was the sort that stooges to make the star bigger.

Takeshita would go for the running boot again but this time Garcia scurried to the floor for a time-out. You could see the panic and hesitation on his face as he did so. He laid himself bare for the world, vulnerable, human. Takeshita gave chase and Garcia went all the way from one side of the ring to the other. When Takeshita made it out to the apron, stomping away, Garcia took the blows (which made this feel less like a planned spot and instead like something more organic, something so important, and something he's so good at), and used the ringskirt to trap Takeshita's leg. 

Garcia attacking the leg and most especially using it to cut Takeshita off would drive the rest of the match. Of course, Garcia did it as meanly as possible, a bulldog, a shark smelling blood. He placed it on a chair on the outside and just stood on it. He refused to reenter the ring until he twisted the ankle one last time. He countered Takeshita's cradle tombstone attempt by turning it into an ankle lock. Likewise with the Blue Thunder into an inexplicable but amazing STF. He caught the running knee and took advantage when Takeshita stumbled on another attempt. Even when he seemingly lost focus, like when he started to pop off push-ups right over Takeshita's knee, he pivoted quickly and turned the motion into a kneedrop to punctuate the final push-up (even as Mox left commentary to yell at him). Focused detail-work. Once upon a time, maybe, you could give the crowd some more rope to work with. With someone other than Garcia, maybe you can do that and even if they don't get entirely where you need them to be, they'll still get somewhere nice and happy. Garcia doesn't leave things to chance. He ties it all up in a bow and presents it to the world, to history itself, like a present. He did that here and Takeshita was happy to go along for the ride, selling, wincing, limping, struggling the whole way.

Which brings us to the real moment of comeback, the elephant in the room, that pile driver.

Oh there had been a hope spot or two first. Takeshita created some distance with strikes but as he turned to hit the ropes, Garcia took out the leg. Then, of course, was the Blue Thunder attempt, where no one expected Garcia to turn things over with a headlock. Garcia had been using the legwork to control the match as the great equalizer, but it was also a key to unlock a door, and he meant to go through it with his pile driver. Takeshita had jammed it once, but he couldn't jam it on the attempt that followed so quickly after. Garcia hit it clean.

And then time stopped. Takeshita slowly, painstakingly, drew his head back, locked eyes with Garcia, rose, struck him down. 

And that's the cardinal sin, right? To "no sell" a pile driver, one of the most sacred and profane of all moves. It's one thing if you're Hawk (maybe not a good thing) and it's one thing if you're Clon and use technique to dull the impact.

Takeshita is neither, but he is, maybe, just maybe, the one guy on the roster who, now and again, should get away with something like this. He's so tied to the notion of fighting spirit, of carrying all of that brooding, seething power within him. He has the size, the presence. He's larger than life. Now and again, so long as everyone else isn't doing it, so long as no one else is doing it, he should get to assert himself and take up all the air in the room.

Rules are structural. They create a foundation where someone like Daniel Garcia can succeed, where everyone does better and everything matters more, where the spectacular can be grounded and have meaning. But they also give people something to push off of now and again, when it makes sense, when it will have an impact, when it turns a wrestler into a star. 

Konosuke Takeshita is meant to be a star and Daniel Garcia is so good at what he does that he can help make someone a star. 

Just as important, the detail work was there. Garcia had targeted the leg the whole match, not the head, not the neck. Those were healthy, strong, vibrant. Garcia had unlocked the door but he hadn't done the legwork (figurative since he'd ONLY done leg work) to drag Takeshita through it. In a different match where there had been bomb after bomb, that might have played differently. I saw people complain about Takeshita's selling as he looked up and pulled himself together, but given the context of the match, it more or less worked for me. When you're breaking all the rules, you're treading new ground. It was a callback of sorts to Takeshita escaping the headscissors early in the match. It cost him something but was worth so much more. 

It didn't feel like that perfidious tendency that is "delayed selling" to me so much as an act of defiance, of assertion, of staking a claim to something greater in this world. 

Just this once, it worked for me. Maybe next time it will to so long as it's built well enough and sits well enough within a match. Like anything else in wrestling, it is entirely situational.

Things moved into a finishing stretch from there. Garcia escaped a Blue Thunder. He positioned Takeshita for that Superplex, but Takeshita countered, only for Garcia to turn his top rope lariat into an armdrag and then, ultimately the Dragon Tamer. It was a great spot because it didn't feel rote. It wasn't a signature spot. It was the character of Garcia adapting in the moment. And then, after landing, he let everything sink in for a moment, letting the crowd take a breath after what happened and before what was about to happen: The Dragon Tamer. 

It would ultimately fail (Garcia's wrench back is the ultimate gambit; it either works immediately or costs him the hold) and Garcia's second attempt to hit a tricked out takeover on Takeshita would fail as well. Konosuke, channeling his preternatural strength, held Garcia there clung to him as time stood still. He slapped his own leg to give it life once more, and managed to suplex Garcia over. The beginning of the end.

Wrestlers are not one size fit all. There's not only one way to be talented, to channel that talent, to connect with crowds, to create matches and moments that resonate with people. Konosuke Takeshita and Daniel Garcia bring very different attributes and skillsets to the table. When you put them together, however, you can create a unique sort of magic built out of contrast and driven by details, one that highlights everything that makes Takeshita special by being underpinned by everything that's special about Garcia.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/3 - 11/9

AEW Dynamite 11/5/25

Athena/Mercedes Mone vs Willow Nightingale/Harley Cameron

MD: Mercedes Mone is a star. Athena makes her shine all the brighter.

I'm quite high on Mercedes for much that she does. I think her reactions in the moment are believable. Her matches are ambitious in many ways. She has an incredible work ethic. As an ace, she's tremendous at treating each and every opponent differently; I loved seeing her switching up her taunts and crowd interactions for Olympia's strength for instance. 

That said, there is often a rehearsed feel to her matches. It's a perfectionist's bent, a practice makes perfect sort of feel that's impossible to escape. While the matches feel alive in the moment, sometimes the overall effect is a little plastic, a little blunted. It's more DDP than Randy Savage. That's fine. 98 DDP was great. But it's not transcendent.

Athena, endlessly reactive, endlessly electric, as dynamic as any wrestler in the world, helps Mercedes transcend herself and become her own personal Randy Savage.

They worked so well together here and it felt natural as could be, a meshing of two disparate but tangential egos, two parallel characters, two parallel paths to a flawed sort of kayfabe greatness. You could see it right from the get go when Mercedes pulled a seething Athena to fawn over the belts and how it transitioned right to the two of them almost immediately switching gears with Mercedes seething behind Harley as she entered the ring and Athena posing with her big Yaaaaaay! after their successful initial ambush of the babyfaces. 

The structure was double heat, but Harley carried both face-in-perils. That fit the hierarchy very well. It allowed Harley to gain sympathy, allowed Willow to come in like a wrecking ball after the first hot tag, and allowed Athena and Mercedes to look like the very best in the world as they took over with a tandem backstabber out of nowhere, the wild Athena dive through Mercedes' legs, and an absolutely perfect but still chaotically organic double team move where Athena basically hit Mercedes with the MoneMaker but right onto Harley. 

That unique no shine/double heat structure let them utilize a Willow blind tag (instead of a conventionally hot one) after the break and allowed for things to break down a little early without it feeling unearned or unbalanced. The finish, with Statlander coming out to disrupt Billie and the belt and distract Athena (who had just hit one of her super impressive strength spots), furthered the Full Gear title match and set up a few matches in the future including Athena vs Harley for the ROH title. 

My big takeaway, however, is that while I understand Athena and Mercedes going out like this (they were almost too big to continue on in the tournament and this furthered other storylines) the pairing, either feuding or teaming, is just too good not to go back to sooner than not. 

It's pro wrestling. You need your stars shining as brightly as possible as much as possible, and Athena burns brightly enough to be the perfect spotlight for Mercedes Mone.

Samoa Joe/Powerhouse Hobbs/Katsuyori Shibata vs Eddie Kingston/HOOK/Hangman Adam Page

MD: Keep your eye on Eddie Kingston.

I came across an obituary of Gene Wilder a week or two ago. In it, the writer noted it was a known secret in the acting industry that actors that wished to "better themselves would do well to watch a movie with Gene Wilder in it and pay particular attention to him in a scene when someone else is speaking, someone else has the focus. He was always acting in those moments too, reacting or listening in perfect character and supporting the scene with his presence. A lot of good actors are good when they have something to do. Gene Wilder was good all the time."

I had immediately connected that to Negro Casas actually, and the work he did in trios matches when he wasn't the main focus of a feud.

But then I saw this match and it clicked here as well.

Eddie's not even in this feud. Eddie is HOOK's plus-one. But he managed to do something that was absolutely a contradiction here: he not only stole the show, but he then took what he stole and donated it back to his partners. 

Here's the key: he's constantly, consistently both engaged and engaging. Someone can be the one but not the other and it goes both ways. I love watching Ultimate Warrior on the apron in tags, but he's not necessarily responding to what's happening in the moment and adding to the overall match. There are also plenty of guys able to put their arm out for a tag but not also able to use it to draw you into the match. And Eddie draws you right in while making it about what's going on in the ring and not about himself. 

Some of that is his strength as a storytelling but I honestly believe so much of it is his foundation as a fan. He remembers caring. Hell, he watches certain matches over and over and over again because he still cares. He cares as much as anyone reading this and as much as the person writing this and he's able to channel that feeling into what he was doing here. 

That meant he showed his disgust when Samoa Joe started the match by dodging Hook and tagging out to Shibata, that he sold chops as if they were hurting him, and that when Hook was trying to fight back (and after Hook hit the suplex that threw his back out the rest of the way), he'd lean halfway into the ring to try to will him over to the corner.

And when it was time for him to get in there, he did exactly what he should. That meant getting beaten on by Samoa Joe in the corner, his comeback chops ineffectual. It meant being able to fire back against Shibata but cutting himself off due to the fact he's still working his way back to full strength. It meant that when it was time to mount a comeback, he climbed that hill and almost, almost worked with Hangman to hit a tandem Uraken/Buckshot (we need to see that at some point, TK, just saying; you've teased it now and let the heels rob us of it so you have to pay it off). 

And then after Hobbs crushed Hangman at the top of the stage, he found the inner strength to fight back against all the odds one last time. That's the only shame here. If this match had five more minutes, it could have been not just a double heat, but a triple heat, with Hook making that first tag to Eddie, with Eddie coming back after a 3-on-2 beating, and then with Eddie having to crawl back after Hangman got taken out, lasting just long enough in that All Japan Trios style for Hook to recover, even if it would all end in brave but futile heartbreak. 

But that's still out there on the table for another day. What we got was the best supporting player in all of wrestling pouring his heart out for yet another one of his award winning roles (not that he'd ever admit it, but those who watch closely... we know). 

Don't believe me? Next time you get a chance, just keep your eye on Eddie Kingston. You'll see it too.

Darby Allin vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Styles make fights. Contrast makes the world go round. Character drives action. 

Three sentences. Three true statements. You put them together and you get this match. While Darby is accomplished on the mat, he's no Daniel Garcia. While Garcia has a chip on his shoulder, has been training with Moxley and has been fighting full of grit, he's no Darby Allin. The difference between these two drove this one. In the ring, whether it be in the early feeling out process or trying holds down the stretch, Garcia had an advantage. When things hit the floor or got dirty, Darby tended to have an advantage. 

But Garcia was going to blink first again and again, because he had more to prove, because he couldn't get out of his own way (that's the character bit). That meant teasing the dance after choking Darby with the turnbuckle connector protector. It meant trying for an additional suplex (or neckbreaker) after hitting a superplex. It most especially meant mocking Sting when he had the Scorpion on, which ultimately cost him the match. 

There was a third character in this one as well ( and I don't mean PAC who set up a nice nearfall countout), the ring itself. They could have done this straightforward, eye gouges, ear biting, armbars and headscissors, but they chose to go inventive with it instead. After using the turnbuckle protector, Darby stuck Dany's arm in side the ringpost. Garcia's big transition to heel offense was trapping Darby in the apron. The stairs were used liberally. Garcia hooked Darby's chain to the corner. Pretty clever stuff all around which added to the chaotic nature of the match while keeping it character-driven and laser-focused on the contrast between the two. 

Three sentences that point to true north for almost every match and Darby and Garcia followed the map to their destination here.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 10/27 - 11/2

AEW Dynamite 10/29/25

Jon Moxley vs Kyle O'Reilly

MD: I covered their last match last week and people seemed to enjoy it. Part of me wanted to go super stylized once again. 

Kyle O'Reilly was a man who lost it all. 

After failing to defeat Jon Moxley for a world title opportunity in 2022, he underwent neck surgery. He still does not have full strength in his arm. There was a time immediately thereafter when he never knew if he'd be able to hold his newborn.

But what he lost in strength he gained in focus, redoubling his efforts to train and to let technique push him back towards victory. Along the way, he found friends and lost them again, Paragon only barely forming before Adam Cole ended up on the shelf, possibly indefinitely. But he's a man who rolls with the punches, and with a smile on his face, he found the fun-loving whimsy still within him that was necessary to be the heart and soul of the Conglomeration. 

So on and so forth. I'd write about how this time, after scoring one of the biggest victories of his career but having been robbed of an even greater one by Jon Moxley's cowardice, he marched down to the ring with a more serious expression, how he had one more chance to snatch glory long past a point that anyone thought he'd still be in contention for it. 

But then he hit the ring and Moxley, after taking a few shots from Marina to warm him up, followed him in, and I saw the match and now that's just not what I want to write. 

I think that was a great way to remind everyone of the greatness of the first match, but here, it's worth really delving in to the storytelling at play.

Look, we take it for granted. In 2025, just as often as not, maybe more often than not, the logic is flipped. Wrestlers think up big spots and then they work the match around them. They work backwards from the special effects instead of crafting a story worthy of those fireworks and then inserting them in.

This was the very opposite of that.

What I wrote above and what I wrote last week... those things aren't just fluff. They're not just stylized dramatizations. They distill characters. Characters have motivations, hopes, fears, things that drive them. In a perfect world of fiction, these things then intersect with their attributes, physical and skill both, and impacted by environment, then underpin every single action and reaction. This should be the bare minimum in any fictional narrative but all too often in wrestling, it's an afterthought at best or ignored or shoehorned completely in order to try to pop people with something cool or with endless excess.

Not here. 

You could see it from the initial exchange. Character drove the strategic approach of both wrestlers. O'Reilly rolled to try to pick a leg right from the start. Moxley backed off and then tried to bully his way into holds, combining technique with aggression. O'Reilly had an answer to everything, in part because his technique was superior and in part because Moxley was out of control. Mox would go to the eyes, to the nose, to the ear, to anything soft to try to squeeze out an advantage, but O'Reilly was ready for it. In countering those underhanded tactics, he got a little hot though, could maybe feel Moxley's desperation and he charged in with a knee in the ropes that Moxley was then able to use to heft him up and over the top, truly taking over for the first time.

You can continue to follow these threads. Moxley attacked the hand first, worried about O'Reilly's cross arm breaker. But he couldn't help rubbing it in, couldn't help grinding down, couldn't help stomping away. That gave O'Reilly an opening to snatch the leg and starting to work upon it. Moxley, panicking, went right back to the eye and then, not just wanting to win but needing to main, shifted to the neck, the same neck that had been damaged out of their match back in 2022. But O'Reilly knew he had him rattled and he met him standing with strikes getting a seeming advantage but really falling into Moxley's trap, a pile driver.

It's all right there in the text, all shaped by the context, driven by the subtext. Moxley had his back against the wall, respected his opponent, hated his opponent, wanted to stick it to the fans. He'd not just run him to the stairs to slam his head in but would carefully bring him over in a full nelson. He'd lose the advantage by focusing too much on the fans and charging shoulder first into the post, allowing O'Reilly to utilize a dragon screw leg whip. He was cruel and careful one moment and entirely erratic the next. When he was in the ankle lock this time, he was staring at Aubrey Edwards and everyone had to wonder if he'd slug her too.

And O'Reilly balanced the opportunistic counters of a level-headed practitioner with a man with so much left to prove. He occasionally overshot but never so much that he couldn't recover. Moxley would catch his foot when he tried to stand even with him and throw punches and kicks, but he'd be able to spin out and hit something else. When Moxley went for the Gotch Pile Driver, he kept a cool head and turned it into a triangle. This match was his moment, and while he never stopped knowing it, he refused to let it shake him.

Watch this again. At every moment, it was character driving the action, character informing the reactions, character creating outcomes. 

That took them all the way to the finish. This time, back in the ankle lock, Moxley doesn't attack the ref. He dives towards the ropes instead. That throws O'Reilly off but they both end up on the floor. After one or two rotations, O'Reilly locks in a floating guillotine. The count ticks up and Kyle, lost in the moment (his moment), loses sight of the bigger picture. Aubrey counts them out, Moxley survives again even in symbolic defeat, Shafir turns out to be the one to attack Aubrey, and the tension builds in a very organic way for Blood and Guts where Moxley will not be able to escape. 

It's all right there, and in truth, it shouldn't be worth me having to lean so hard into. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to. If every match operated like this, like so much of other fiction does, then we could take this for granted. But matches aren't like this. This is an outlier. This is special, and the only reason I even could dramatize it and stylize it like I did last week is because they put so much into it. We should expect more. We should expect this. But until we get it match in and match out, we should raise this sort of pro wrestling onto the pedestal it deserves.    

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia

MD: Just a couple of paragraphs about this since Darby is someone we write about and I really enjoyed this match. It was there to further the Death Riders vs Darby/Conglomeration story. On paper, you wouldn't necessarily want this to be a tornado tag, even if it does suit Darby, but the four way for the tag title shot was going to follow it, and the two matches needed to feel different. 

With a tornado tag you usually get a spot-first approach as mentioned above. Here, the characters were really driving it, Darby's intensity, Cassidy's mind-games, Garcia's chip on his shoulder, Yuta just being an irritating menace. Garcia's particularly great at showing (selling) how Cassidy going to the pockets gets to him, but he also got drawn in by Darby teasing with the skateboard. Character-driven spots. My favorite bit might have been when Cassidy leaped over the rail to stymie a Garcia whip only for Yuta to nail him from off-screen (both for Yuta's trademark appearance from off camera to cheapshot, and because of Garcia's reaction). That led to Darby diving onto all of them. Or it might have been how, after jamming Cassidy's skull onto the guardrail with a brainbuster, Yuta shoved Darby off the top and Garcia and Yuta both jawed with the fans, drawing real, true, honest, genuine heat in 2025 by being as obnoxious and proud and unlikable as possible. Yuta going under the ring and only finding his middle finger to piss off the crowd would be a not distant third.

They built to a big comeback (set up by Cassidy putting his hands in his pockets while the two were on the outside) and them paying off what they had set up earlier (including, literally, a table). I hadn't expected Garcia and Yuta to lean into each other like this. It felt like they were heading towards immediate dissension. Bowens/Caster and Takeshita/Okada are already in that lane though, so it can always come later though. For now, this is a (death) ride worth enjoying.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 9/1 - 9/7

AEW Collision 9/6/25

Jon Moxley vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Jon Moxley saw something wrong with the world. Bryan Danielson came to him in 2022 with a vision. Wrestling was broken, but they could redirect its fate, could band together and bring up the next generation how they saw best. They could reforge the youth through iron clashing with iron and force hammering down, tempering steel. And yes, they took Wheeler Yuta under their wing, his path forged in blood. But then the things went astray. They ended up feuding with the Jericho Appreciation Society, with the Elite. They bounced without purpose all over the card, sometimes beloved by the fans, sometimes reviled. They lost their way. 

So Mox took matters into his own hands. Deciding that Danielson wasn't up to the task, he put a knife in his back and a bag over his head and called it love and mercy. He took the title for himself, locked it in a briefcase, and went about to create the future.

Except for that's not what he did at all. After Private Party bounced off of the Deathriders, they found their nerve and became champions. He didn't say a word. On the same show that Mox won the title, Daniel Garcia became TNT champion. He didn't say a word.

Because maybe it wasn't about the future. Maybe it was about the present. Maybe Jon Moxley was just an animal deep down, a beast that needed to sit as king of the mountain and do anything at all to make sure he didn't fall, even if it meant keeping anyone else from rising and destroying or ignoring them when they did.

And Daniel Garcia? He became TNT champion, literally carried the flag of AEW, vowed to restore the feeling, encapsulated an earnestness of babyfaces of old, and then spent six months trudging through mud. He meant to be the front line against the Deathriders, but Moxley wasn't actually interested in that fight. Instead, Garcia fought through the C2, defended his title against figures as beloved as he was if not more so in Briscoe, Shibata, Adam Cole, when he should have been facing all the villains of the world. It was hard to maintain his purity of vision in the face such blurred lines and eventually he came up lacking. 

He needed iron to brush up against, needed the hammer coming down upon him so he could press back, fire back, prove himself. 

But the iron was nowhere to be found and the hammer was busy elsewhere protecting its own kingdom. 

Eventually, that kingdom came together in revolt and toppled the king. Mox was left wounded and vulnerable, a beast with his back against the wall. Garcia had been left aimless, frustrated, barely hanging on to the feeling he meant to restore. 

But now on the other side of All In, with no rankings to get in the way, no title defenses to distract either man, the path was clear. Garcia could now do what he had wanted to do back in Fall and throw himself at Moxley, to test his mettle, to show the world that Mox was a hypocrite, that his words had always been empty, that he was a false leader selling a false bill of goods.

The 2300 was the perfect venue, stifling, closed in with nowhere to run, blood soaked into the floor, intimate. And on Dynamite, Garcia pushed Moxley to the limit. You could see it down the stretch. Moxley had him beat on the floor, was content with a countout win, wounded beast that he was. But Garcia literally grasped the hands of the fans, and with them behind him, pulled himself up and beat the count as Mox fumed and raged. Moxley doesn't just defeat people. He beats them. He drops them on their heads or chokes the life out of them. But in order to best Garcia, he had to rely upon a roll up. He didn't beat Garcia in that first encounter; he survived him. 

It made sense that after the fact, and then again before Garcia's next match, that Mox tried to get in Dany's head. He was paranoid. Darby Allin was haunting his steps. He couldn't face a war on two fronts; he was already bleeding out after the title loss. Losing now to someone beneath him in his own mind like Garcia might have opened the door to Darby doing more than just beating him. It might have ended him for good.

But Garcia had chased this for almost a year, had lost so much along the way in part because he didn't get it, didn't get the attention of Mox, the recognition, the respect to even just fight him. He'd been underlooked, overlooked, and he knew just how close he had come. 

He was going to challenge Mox again.

And challenge him he did. 

Garcia started by wrestling, by dragging Mox down into the STF. Moxley responded by goading him in. Garcia was happy to comply, throwing shots into Mox's face, but that put him into Moxley's world, and there, Moxley still reigned, belt or no. Once it became a fight, Moxley took over. That trend continued. Garcia caught a leg in the corner, hit a dragon screw and stared to work it over. But when he took it to the floor, Moxley regained control. 

But even in control, he couldn't put Garcia away. He'd kick out again and again, fight back again and again. He survived a pile driver, endured the cross arm breaker. He continued to find his courage and, strengthened by the support of the fans, he refused to back down. He reversed Mox on the apron and hit a pile driver of his own. He turned the bulldog choke into a belly to back. Garcia pressed on with a twisting neckbreaker into the superplex (a better and more logical combo than the triple superplexes or a superplex into the twisting neckbreaker).

They inverted roles from the the first match as Mox tried to add insult to injury with a scorpion deathlock and Garcia rolled him up for a nearfall (the same way Mox won the Dynamite match). Garcia went for Mox's Bulldog Choke and got absolutely planted by a DDT for his hubris. But Garcia not only survived that, he was able to capitalize on the escape by locking in the Dragon Slayer. Moxley tried to grasp the head as Garcia leaned back but to no avail. Instead, Jon Moxley, the great mat scrapper, had to get to the ropes, a wounded animal looking for a way out.

Pushed against the wall like he was, both by life and fate in general, and by Daniel Garcia in specific, something awoke in Moxley, something that we haven't seen for the better part of a year. Just for a minute there, we saw the Jon Moxley of old, all but begging Garcia to throw his very best at him, meeting him head-on, the two firing off on one another inside the ring and out. This was the Jon Moxley that backed up what he said, that stood for something, that would face down anything in the world that came his way, and just as he had brought out something special in Daniel Garcia, Daniel Garcia brought something back in him. 

He blinked first, catching Garcia with an elbow off the ropes. Garcia tried one last flourish in response, channeling both Moxley and his recent partner Nigel McGuinness with a comebacker clothesline. Moxley ducked it, went for the rear naked. Garcia was ready and turned it into a roll up, only to get rolled back and pinned. Once again Moxley had to escape with the banana peel, opportunistic win instead of planting Garcia on his head definitively or choking him out. Once again he scrambled away, leaving Marina Shafir to clap for the dejected Garcia. Post-match, Garcia cut a heartfelt, real, unpolished promo about how all the good and all the fighting just wasn't enough.

I don't know where they go from here. A week ago, I was sure that this was going to lead to a Garcia heel turn, one that almost felt like a mercy killing and a necessary shame given that he's such a great babyface. After this, the lines all feel so blurred. Maybe Garcia's hit bottom, but the fans are more behind him than they've been in almost a year. Maybe that means he can turn from a place of strength and not weakness. Even then, it makes it all the more important to ensure that the reasoning and the explanation and the moment itself are all ironclad with no holes.

What stands out the most however is how real and human this story feels. This isn't a pro wrestling story, not someone pointing at a sign or wanting to best some sort of imaginary record. It's not about main eventing a big show or making moments for a universe. A path back into the light and a possible descent down into darkness. There's pathos here. A fallen king. A tarnished hero. Hypocrisy and truth. All the frustrations of life. This speaks to the human condition. And it's not just the story behind it, not just promos and angles. So much of it is in how the matches themselves play out. It's all integrated, all organic, exactly as pro wrestling once was and exactly as pro wrestling should be. 

I'm not sure where it's going to go next, but I can't wait to find out.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 8/11 - 8/17

AEW Collision 8/16/25

The Technical Spectacle (Nigel McGuinness vs Daniel Garcia vs Hechicero vs Lee Moriarty)

MD: My dislike for 4-way matches is pretty well documented at this point. I went into detail back during Double Or Nothing a few years ago. In short, 4-ways are the ultimate immersion killer. They're quite possibly the least organic form of pro wrestling ever invented. They're excuses for big spots and big set pieces that are elaborately set up in ways that have nothing to do with winning a match. They force wrestlers to act outside of their established norms, often contriving them to do things in parallel in a way that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. You end up with people laying around for far longer than they would in any other match and it all becomes a muddle with too many cooks and too many ideas. At best, you get some cool and memorable things, but we're so desensitized to that anyway that it barely registers after the fact. 

Quick pause on that. I've been watching a lot of Newborn UWF/UWF 2.0 lately. It's almost all on YouTube so I suggest people go and do the same. It's helped me refine my thoughts about shoot style and how best to engage with it. I'd seen my share of UWF 1.0, but that's so centered around a few characters and they were still figuring out the style so that you're not necessarily watching a distillable shoot style match so much as you're watching a Super Tiger or Fujiwara match. With UWF 2.0 though, everything is more locked in and refined. You can best understand the matches along three axes: technique/physical attributes (this is self-evident), opportunity (what openings exist in any single moment and how can a wrestler take advantage of them), and personality (who are these people and how do they approach the fight). You can't necessarily look at things through a traditional narrative (shine/heat/comeback) lens. Instead, by trying understanding those three things you can jump in and see how, let's say a smaller fighter apt to tire his opponent out and fight defensively like Shigeo Miyato will face off against a larger fighter who has to make use of his size and press hard early (but that might still get one powerful blow in late) like Tatsuo Nakano. Who are these people? What drives them? How does that create opportunities and how do they respond to them? What opportunities do those responses then create in the moment and throughout the match?

Still with me? Ok, so maybe people wouldn't necessarily define the Technical Spectacle as shoot style (maybe they would), but it was at least a sibling or cousin to it, and so many of those same tenets operated here. Unlike almost every other 4-way I've ever seen, this was set up around opportunities and personalities. Nigel carries the weight of the world on his shoulders knowing full well the possibility of every impossible opportunity (a different sort of opportunity, but related), having had so many of his dreams slip through his fingers. Garcia is watching his own dreams start to slip as well, stumbling through a series of failures and wanting to wrench back his future. Moriarty sees himself as the present, the time-tested Pure Champ, but without the recognition or respect he deserves. And Hechicero is just a malignant spirit, Bandido and a title shot ahead of him, a wretched, brilliant creature that just wants to ply his craft and hurt people. 

In parts of the match technique drove things and the wrestlers grappled evenly, looking to create opportunities. But when those opportunities arose, it was their personalities that defined the action, this a direct opposite of so many 4-ways where the necessary over the top spots override and overwrite personality. Moriarty was the one who went out of his way to get multiple people in a submission at once, leaning into his bravado and swagger. Garcia always had an eye out for what Nigel was doing, seeing him as the biggest threat, as the one he'd never faced off against (only teamed with). And Nigel? Nigel may be a sympathetic figure given his journey, but there's something of the rogue within him, of the scoundrel, but even more than that, the stone-faced realism of a man that has been through life's wringer. When his opponents were in simultaneous submissions, he laid in an opportunistic stomp to break it up. In a similar moment, he dropped an elbow on Garcia. And then, when it seemed like Garcia had his Scorpion Deathlock on while he himself had the London Dungeon locked in, he threw a nasty, chippy, possibly even underhanded elbow, flooring Garcia. It wasn't personal; in fact, it was even regretful on some level, but it was life, the only life Nigel knew and the only life that he could possibly have left.

And all throughout, the technique was as compelling as the personalities. Handfighting, moments of leverage, tricked out takedowns, lightning fast pin attempts that never felt like needless waterfall spots existing for their own sake. They solved the problem of someone laying out by almost constantly having wrestlers paired off, and here it worked because success for one wrestler didn't mean a headdrop or huge bump but instead gaining advantage over a limb or locking in a hold. 

While watching this, I had the sense of something incredibly rare in 2025: the feeling of watching something brand new. Usually things that are touted as new are instead just "more." Bigger spots, more excess, more people, more risk, brighter colors and flashier fireworks; adding another few floors to a tower that already exists. Here though, even the foundation felt new. This feels like something that could be done again with the same wrestlers or different ones, with huge stakes, incredible techniques, and opportunities driven by personality.

They could have done this the old way, could have had all of the holds be tandem things, could have done so many more suplexes, could have slipped in a tower of doom spot and some dives, could have gone around the world a few times with all of their finishers. That would have been safe as crowds tend to be more favorable towards those things than I am. This was not safe. It was brave and it was daring and in its own way, it was brilliant. So much of that was on the courage to trust that the crowd would come along, that their own skill and personality and commitment would win the day. But win the day it did, and in doing so they broke ground on something that felt brand new and very worthwhile.

CMLL 8/15/25

MJF vs Zandokan, Jr

MD: Another data point has arrived from Arena Mexico and the results are conclusive: the system works. Pro wrestling is a wonderful, gripping, engaging, vibrant art form, and it is as strong as ever in a fabled place where the fans can live and breath on every heroic and villainous act and find exhilaration in every single punch (yes, there are punches there too, not just chops and forearms).

The combination of MJF, with Jon Cruz at his side, in Arena Mexico, is the best act in wrestling today, and so much of that is due to the sheer commitment to everything that's always worked, the timeless, universal elements of pro wrestling, an appeal to the heart based on morality and identity and pride. 

This replicated a number of the elements from MJF's previous appearances in Arena Mexico, most especially the recent title win over Averno, but in every way, it took the act even further. Now Cruz was out dressed like Abraham Lincoln, still taking editorial license on MJF's insults stretching them this way and that, as his twisted, fawning C-3PO. Zandokan's response was perfect, shutting it all down instantly so the match could begin and getting a crowd that was already inclined to support him due to his upstart rudo charisma fully behind him. But then, of course, Max hit the floor to massive boos. The game had begun.

And what a game it was. At Zandokan's first touch, Max rolled back out and complained (on the mic with translation) about hair pulling. Then, of course, later, when it came time to cut Zandokan off, he pulled the hair and mask himself. Perfect hypocritical pro wrestling symmetry meant to get heat. When Max was in control, he made sure to punctuate each and every offensive move or cut off by rubbing it in the face of the fans, and they booed huge. Whenever Zandokan fired back, MJF sold for the back row and the back row was duly elated. Cruz intervened all the more which meant that when it was time for Zandokan to really come back, Cruz got to bump huge for him as well. Chekhov's Gun was loaded and fired and the universe was placed in perfect balance. 

The dive, when it came, was singular and spectacular, smashing MJF who had been draped on the guardrail (again a likely unintentionally but wholly meaningful parallel to how he lounged on it when he ducked out of the ring a first time). And they build to an exciting series of finish attempts before Max had to go an extra mile to get the ref out of position so he could hit another foul and steal the win, a payoff to the match and a set up for the post-match Mistico challenges to come. 

With so many different opponents each with their own quirks and history (imagine him against Blue Panther or Ultimo Guerrero or Barbaro Cavernario, etc.), this match, as much as anything else, was proof positive that the act isn't just one spectacular firework meshing old and new, but instead something with real legs and that can bring real joy each with each and every outing. 

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/7 - 7/13

AEW All In 7/12/25

Dustin Rhodes vs Sammy Guevara vs Kyle Fletcher vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Look, at the end of the day, we don't know what we don't know. I'd love to get into the booking here. I'd love to try to make sense of this situation and I will to a degree, but there's a lot we don't know, some of which may become more apparent over the next few weeks as they decide what to do next with the TNT title. Here's what we do know.

Adam Cole is beloved...

Not a hard one here. He comes off like the nicest guy in the world. His peers drop the masks (sometimes literal) and speak incredibly highly of him. I have my opinions of how that has and hasn't connected into his ringwork and if you're reading this, you probably know what they are, but even those have never come from a point of wanting anything other than for the guy to succeed. He's been through some really tough injuries and made a couple of valiant comebacks and I hope he gets to come back and prove me wrong about my criticisms. Nothing would make me happier. 

When the news was first announced, I noted that I wanted them to just do a forfeit; yes, even on a stadium show, because that would have gotten so, so much heat for Fletcher and because enough babyfaces were probably winning at the top of the card (I had thought Omega might be going over Okada at that point but half figured Mercedes was going to beat Toni so it was a wash). I get the sense TK really doesn't ever want to underdeliver on something he promoted but sometimes there's more longterm value in trying to get the heat on the heel and not the booker (and Callis is better than that at most) and it would have set up a Fletcher reign perfectly. You still could have done the Cole theme (which is what the fans wanted the most here) and the speech. Which leads to this:

It was Fletcher's moment...

It's no big surprise that I'm incredibly high on Fletcher. You always saw little sparks during commercial breaks but at some point he went from being Ospreay's young boy clone to the most surprising heel in wrestling. For me, it was right at the start of the C2 and the Benjamin match where he rode the wave of the crowd and helped get Shelton over as a mega-face on that night. You can go back to the Komander match that slightly preceded it though. 

Regardless, he's showing amazing instincts in getting underneath the crowd's skin, in taking his time, in living in the moment, and in adapting on the fly. If wrestling is a form of interactive theater, and if we've gotten into a world with far too many pre-planned spots, sequences, and counters, he's the panacea to that illness, the future of pro wrestling, because he is so able to (whether he knows it or not) pull from the heatseeking tradition of the past.

If the TNT title is a de facto TV title, with open challenges and defended on TV, he's perfect to run out the time limit and survive by the skin of his teeth week after week. No one thought Cole was winning. This was one of the only singles matches on the whole show that wasn't a main event and it was because it was Fletcher's time, his mid-card title coronation. 

But when you make a substitution, you put a babyface over.

Is that a Paul Boesch rule? I think it might be. Regardless, it's generally a pretty good one. It's an even better one in a world where you didn't want to burn a town. From what I hear, the biggest problem with All In for those there was the length of the show (lengthened to assault SNME in retribution or not) and maybe that's something to tackle somehow next year.

As it was, if you were going to do the speech, then yes, it did make some sense to put Dustin over. I do think the fans were down during the match, bummed out by the severity of Cole's words. The concussion rumors came out later but it sounded even more dire than that in the moment. It's a little hard to tell given how the stadium was mic'd though. Given the build of Garcia's ten count punches, for instance, I refuse to believe the fans weren't counting along even if we couldn't hear it on PPV. 

And we love Dustin. Of course I'm glad Dustin went over. I have no idea how banged up he might be. Excalibur mentioned his shoulder and knees (a couple of times). He wrestled three times in two days and the Infantry match was pretty good. They do really deserve the ROH belts sometime soon for how far they've come but I get not doing it in Texas. I will say that the pre-show match was a little rough in general and leave it at that.

But yes, I'm glad Dustin went over and got his moment. I'm glad he's got a new contract. I'm glad that he can still go at such a high level, even if I do think he shies away a bit from his comparative advantage (strikes, selling) in a moment where heels exactly like Fletcher need babyfaces who know how to maximize their value. At one point before Bandido beat Jericho I had wanted him to win the ROH title here so he'd finally have that World Title, but in some ways, him finally getting the TNT title was a better journey. And that leads us to..

The Match Itself

They were still announcing Cole vs Fletcher until the night of the show (and my initial want for THAT was Fletcher to stall, Cole to finally get his hands on him, to go for the Sunrise too soon, and for Fletcher to pull his head up to crotch him and get a quick roll up and run to the back with the belt; sometimes you want to make people feel things). Plus Dustin, even the pro that he is, and Sammy had two other matches in a 24 hour period. 

With that in mind, this came together quite well really. Some of that was having Garcia and Fletcher as your anchors. Garcia brings so much to the table in a situation like this. He can fit into technical matches, spotfests, brawls, sprints. He can go full-on babyface or have an aggressive chip on his shoulder. He's been around AEW so long that he has history with almost everyone. In this case, it was with Sammy, who had given him the long leather pants at one point and was involved with the genesis of the dance. So they got to have a few moments in there working together before they came to blows.

And Fletcher was the straw that stirred the drink, the catalyst who everyone would work against, who would take opportunistic advantages, who would pull Garcia out of the ring when he had the Dragontamer on, who got to eat big crow by having all three of his opponents hit him with the Unnatural Kick in the most crowd pleasing spot of the match.

It was a spot that got him out of the way for a while as well. They did a pretty good job of that, including with a Sammy dive or two. The only spot that came off as entirely contrived to me was the dual figure-fours. Again, the last thing I want to see in a four-way match is a "waterfall" spot of people doing things they wouldn't normally do (it's ok if they do things that they WOULD do). Which is unfortunate because it's in almost every one. Garcia is a guy will use multiple submissions, and Fletcher got to make a scene over it, so ultimately it was plausible and it led to a great payoff after it got reversed. Fletcher seemed to want to reach for Garcia's hand and they almost had a moment before coming to their senses and pummeling each other. So here the cost, not too high in the first place, was worth the moment I suppose. I think Garcia's superplexes spot is a big mistake on multiple levels and that he'd accomplish more standing out with something like a heart punch that could be made to be over with the crowd despite not being nearly as flashy/damaging, but that's not something to litigate now.

I'm not going to say Sammy isn't a useful guy in these things in bringing action, movement, and sensation. I think in some ways he's gotten lapped by, let's say, Kevin Knight who was taking all sorts of gnarly bumps in the tag match that followed this. He hits clean and does what he's supposed to when he's supposed to do it, but I never quite find the soul in what he's hitting. You bought the animosity between him and Dustin towards the end after the miscommunication superkick, but just because you buy something doesn't mean it's entirely compelling (plausibility is a starting point, not the end point). 

All in all, though, it was an accomplishment that this was as solid as it was. Maybe it felt more like it belonged on Collision than in a stadium but it was more or less a cold match that came after a chilling speech. They got the crowd back a match or two later and this was there to stop the bleeding, make sure no one felt let down by something they were expecting, and to give Dustin the big homestate celebratory moment. 

Given the circumstances (and again, I bet I only know half of them, but what I do know is still daunting), it's a credit to the wrestlers involved that it came together as well as it did. I know that sometimes plans change and they never quite course correct. I still think that Fletcher could be an amazing TV champ, and I think that he could have a generational rivalry (think Cena vs Orton) against Garcia, but time will tell where everything falls now. On this night, given the situation they were facing, one that no one would have wanted them to face, I think they did the very best they could.

ROH Supercard of Honor 7/11/25

Athena vs Thunder Rosa

MD: Here's another one where it's best to just focus on the text. There was an intellectual challenge here. I remember watching Athena beat Mercedes Martinez for the title in Texas a couple of years ago. She had just started the heel run and she was gaining a ton of traction and momentum with Martinez presented as the babyface as the situation but the match itself was a bit of a muddle because the local fans really wanted to root for Athena.

So even though Rosa was a clear babyface coming into this one, they knew they'd have a problem and I think they set up the match accordingly. In this case, it was by having dueling bodypart work. Athena (who has plenty of varied and interesting offense) went after the back early, and Rosa sold for much of the match helping to create openings for Athena. Athena eventually ended up with a bum arm and that served as an equalizer. The sum of these two allowed for momentum shifts that weren't necessarily based on heel/face dynamics so the crowd was allowed to chant for both of them.

Then, late match, things took a pivot with Athena trying to escape up the ramp and Billie getting involved (though she got tossed into the stairs and she, herself, was able to sell her abdomen, even into the post match interview). So in order to land the plane they had Athena hit the big bomb through a table on the ramp onto Rosa and lean full heel. After that point, they got out of it pretty quickly, with Athena doing a great job listing to one side as she (still impressively) hefted Rosa up for the top rope bomb. 

I think if they had tried a more conventional heel vs face match for 10+ minutes, the crowd would have been much more of a problem. By leaning on the bodypart selling and introducing the notion of alignment only at the end, they still allowed for a satisfying finishing stretch but without the match collapsing in on itself before that and with Athena not losing any momentum heading into All In itself. 

Read more!