AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/29 - 1/4/26

AEW Collision 1/3/26

Darby Allin vs Wheeler Yuta

MD: Darby Allin vs Gabe Kidd from World's End didn't hit for me. It may have hit for some people and I get that, because there was nothing wrong about the match or how it was laid out. Moreover, it had build. It had story. Kidd wanted to make a mark. His stop/start, off/on role as a Death Riders associate is a little shaky given his NJPW commitments and the fact that he only partially seems to fit the ethos (a lot of tearing down, not a lot of building up, but that maybe works well with Mox's hypocrisy). He came out of nowhere to help put Darby through a flaming table. He showed up again later to toss him down some stairs. Darby wanted revenge. It wasn't a cold match, even if it had a sputtering build due to Darby's participation in the C2 and subsequent injury. 

I don't think it hit for the crowd though. Some of that was the build, sure, and some a lack of connection to Kidd overall. Some was the way the PPV was set up. By the time the crowd got to this match, they'd already made it through the plunder-laden chaos of FTR vs Gunn/Robinson, which had at least two incredibly memorable table bumps, not to mention Babes of Wrath vs Athena/Mercedes which was a more conventional all-action spotfest. There were diminishing returns in the moment.

I think there were even more diminishing returns at play though. This is my fifth year in a row writing about Darby, albeit with some gaps. He's amazing at what he does, one of the best I've ever seen at telling an in-ring story about absorbing punishment and getting the fans to get behind him as he survives and survives and survives until he can find a way to overcome. They fans believe in him. Incredible babyface. But there's a sense like many other great babyfaces over the years, maybe he had his moment and it passed him by. He chose a different accomplishment, climbed Everest instead of climbing the AEW mountain and taking the title. And now, while Moxley is moving on to bigger and better things, he's still waging a war against the Death Riders that seems to matter less every day.

There's something compelling about that, maybe, something interesting and tragic, a World War II soldier trapped on an island of his own making, an island that exists wholly within his mind, with no one to tell him that the world had moved on without him. But I'm not sure that entirely came through in the Kidd match.

It did, however, come through a little more clearly vs Yuta, and I thought the match in general worked far better.

Some of that was situational. There are different constraints and possibilities and responsibilities to be a Collision main event on a residency show on a night where a lot of the core audience is more focused on the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show, than to try to fight for air on an overpacked AEW PPV. 

Some of it is that, unlike Kidd, Yuta is one of the most over heels in the country. People will deny it. These people are wrong. He appears on the screen or comes out from off screen to interfere as he is so apt to do and the place reacts immediately. That reaction isn't just that they want him to go away. It's that they want him to go away specifically by getting killed by a babyface. That's very different. Are they paying money to see him getting killed? Is he impacting ratings? I have no idea. But I do know that he gets a more consistent, more visceral reaction than almost anyone. 

He wrestles in a manner that ensures it too. There's nothing to latch on to. Look at the layout here. Darby took control almost immediately during the feeling out process. Yuta was smarmy and it looked like he'd get immediate comeuppance, but he hid behind Marina on the floor and got a cheapshot in. Even then, he couldn't press the matter. He went for a suplex and Darby kneed him in the skull. He charged in and Darby clowned him in the corner. It was only when Marina got involved once again that he was able to take over with another cheapshot and a brutal neckbreaker onto the apron. Then when he was on top, he preened and taunted, mocking both Darby and the crowd (and the crowd's love for Darby). He was vulnerable, upstaged, outgunned, reprehensible. Not a single cool thing about him, but laser-focused on getting a reaction the whole way through.

Yuta spent the whole match serving Darby and his gripe with PAC, serving Marina and her upcoming with Toni Storm, serving the need to end the show on a high, serving everyone but himself. He took over in the stretch only due to Marina getting tossed, Storm rushing out to brawl with her, and Garcia sneaking in to get a cheapshot. Even then, he was able to hit his finisher on the apron (another amazing Darby bump) but not capitalize. His attempt to do so was to mock Darby with a Scorpion Deathlock only to have that be his quick and decisive (two Coffin Drops and lifted up for a snap Scorpion from Darby). In being so vulnerable, in being so unlikable, Yuta finds a strength that very few wrestlers in 2025-6 are willing to find. He made this work in ways that Kidd, presented far stronger, couldn't. Situations were different, yes, but you get the sense that Yuta can be counted on to make just about anything he's asked to do work. 

One last thought on Darby: as I said, he's a natural babyface given his bumps and his resilience. Six years is a long time for anything, however. It's only in the last month or two that I've started to wonder if something needs to give. If you have a few minutes and haven't seen it yet, check out Darby Allin on Hey EW with RJ City. There's a heel there just waiting to happen, one that channels some of Darby's natural personality, and I think maybe it's time for him to explore it.

 

Shelton Benjamin vs Dante Martin

MD: This should have worked. It was a good story on paper. 

Scorpio Sky has a certain level of credibility. He's a former singles and tag champion. He's got some size, presence. But he's been snakebit and he wasn't there on that night. So Dante Martin steps up. Yes, Dante's somewhat bigger than he was a couple of years ago, but he's all about speed and agility when up against the monster that is Shelton Benjamin. Shelton was always an amazing athlete, but the world had gotten smaller around him and now he towers over his opponents, a force. 

Shelton would toss him around. Dante would use his speed to create opportunities. Shelton would give exactly as much as he should give. Dante would earn (not take but earn) moments of offense and the fans would appreciate them all the more for the effort put in. Contrast makes the world go round.

Yes, the crowd saw Benjamin as a bigger star. Yes, they wanted to see Benjamin toss Dante around. Yes, they wanted to see Benjamin hurt people. Everyone knew this was just to heat Shelton up for Mox, but Dante's a likable young man, and the match had a secret weapon in its pocket.

As they went towards the break, Dante leaped up to the top rope only to get shoved off, crashing down on the guard rail chest first, a nasty bump. The match stopped. Christopher Daniels and the doctor went to check on Dante during the commercial break. MVP walked over and cut a little promo that Dante should call it a night; there'd be no shame in it. Dante, obviously hurting, told off MVP and Shelton, and they were off to the races.

At least they should have been. It was a moment of defiance that should have worked. Yes, the crowd would still go up for Shelton, but they should have gotten into Dante's comebacks. It was a good idea on paper. 

It didn't work. Shelton honed in on the chest, and I'm just not sure Dante's selling was consummate to what was happening. Dante fired backed with forearms and either got cut off or made openings for himself, but I'm not sure the crowd bought those openings were enough. Maybe he should have been a little more opportunistic in dodging Shelton to show just how high the stakes were? Dante sold to a degree and he hit stuff, but there was never a sense that he was appealing to the crowd, that he needed them, that they should get behind him. He didn't give them enough to latch on to. Daniels is relatively new in his role as a second. Babyface mangers are tough in general, but the idea is that you slap the mat and lead the fans at the right times and get them going, right? If you had an Amira Blair or Matt Menard out there, I think this might have worked, but Daniels didn't quite hit the mark. 

If this didn't work, it's not because Shelton didn't give Dante enough or because he ate him up. Yes, he hit big stuff on him, but I almost felt like he gave Dante too much after the huge bump when before it he had made Dante work a little more. 

I'm glad they did this. I'm glad they tried it. I think the idea was sound. I think there are things to learn here, especially when you compare and contrast this with Wheeler Yuta's performance against Darby. Details matter. They have to matter. The second you surrender to the notion that they don't matter, then there's no point of doing anything. You can have the best idea in the world, the best spots, the best bumps, the most exciting action, but if you don't get the details right, then it's not going to hit nearly as well as it could have, or nearly as well as it should. When that happens, it's not a call for nihilism and permission to just give up and hit spots and try to pop a crowd by overwhelming it. To me, it's the exact opposite. No matter how much the crowd wanted to see Shelton hurt people, this not only could have worked, it should have worked. In trying to figure out why it didn't (and why Darby vs Yuta did), there things to learn that can make anything and everything work better moving forward.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/26 - 6/1

AEW Collision 5/25/25

Top Flight/AR Fox vs RUSH/Beast Mortos/Dralistico

MD: One of my favorite lines is that wrestling isn't math except for maybe when it comes to tag team structure. The idea there is that tags work best when the heat is longer than the shine or everything breaking down in the finishing stretch. That way you build up the drama, bring the crowd up for hope spots, take them down for cutoffs, and squeeze as much pressure out of things as possible before the hot tag. But so much of what I believe in is to set up baselines. Baselines are useful to ensure that the crowd has a certain expectation and reacts accordingly, but they're also useful because once in a blue moon you can subvert them to high effect. If you don't have baselines or if you subvert them too often, then you may create sensation in the moment, but it tends to lack substance and staying power.

If there was a set baseline for tag team wrestling in AEW (and I'd argue that it's iffy at best) this match would have done a great job subverting. It had everything break down right from the get go and only settle down into a sort of heat midway through before everything went wild again. LFI create a special sort of chaos that allows for this, the same way that Abby or Brody might in years past. Here, they ambushed right from the get go, tossing Top Flight to the floor and focusing on Fox. Rush pulled off the pad and they immediately made the exposed buckle dangerously important by having Fox do everything in his power to avoid being slammed into it. Because of their cruelty and hubris in not settling on violence but instead wanting to escalate things, Fox was able to get some space and set up a huge dive train (with Rush plastering Fox on the floor after he crashed into Dralistico and Dante hitting an absolutely crazy dive on Mortos before hyping up the crowd).

The heat then only started when they managed to finally toss Fox into that exposed buckle to cut off the early comeback. Chekhov's Gun loaded and fired to high effect. I would have liked to see the buckle play into things a little more afterwards but it was absolutely necessarily. After the break, Darius took the hot tag and hit his usual hot comeback sequence and everything broke down again, before LFI finally swept them under for a definitive win. So yes, way too much chaos and mayhem instead of building up pressure but by starting with the heels in charge and basically trading in the shine for that extra bit of heat and two comebacks, it all still worked out okay. Still, the more they stick to establishing that baseline, the more an exception like this will feel extraordinary and not just commonplace. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/10 - 3/16

ROH 3/13/25

Gates of Agony (Toa Liona/Bishop Kaun)/Top Flight (Dante/Darius Martin) vs Frat House (Preston Vance/Cole Karter)/Premier Athletes (Ariya Daivari/Tony Nese)

MD: Different matches have different purposes. Different wrestlers in different matches have different goals. Greatness comes in a lot of forms and not all of them are well captured by star ratings. While I don't have a taping schedule in front of me, this was filmed in Oakland with a Collision and I'm almost certain it came on post-show as part of an ROH taping that ended with a Mistico trios. ROH is very much wrestling for wrestling's sake, a way to fill out cards, give people work and reps (develop talent), to create a well of extra content in a post-Elevation/Dark/Rampage world, to build up a product which may be more lucrative/marketable at some point. I think it brings TK some joy, both because of his affection for the brand and because it lets him put together matches without any external constraints (commercials, demos, network notes, etc.). For me, it harkens back to being a kid in the 90s and watching Power Hour or Worldwide or Prime Time (or later on Velocity/Heat/Jakked). The big story beats weren't going to happen there, but you'd get to just watch an hour of wrestling and enjoy it just for what it was. I think there's a disconnect with people who didn't grow up with that maybe.

Anyway, for the crowd that hangs around, it gives them an added bonus, just fun wrestling, to a degree 'house show wrestling' during a time where there are very few house shows. That's absolutely what this was, and if you look at the broad history of pro wrestling, this has its place and its value and it's honestly a really worthy entry along those lines. I am so glad a match like this is still allowed to exist in 2025, a match anchored by incredibly giving, unlikable heels, 100% willing to do their job as opposed to trying to make it about themselves, and two very diverse, very talented babyface teams, with one absolute shining star at the heart of it all in Toa Liona. 

Let's talk structure quickly so you know how they put this together, and then I'll double back to that thought. Match started with chaos as Gates came down and Toa beelined to Cole Karter (with Kaun going after Vance). Daivari pulled Dante's hair to drag him to the corner and we got a mini FIP early. Eventually, Dante made it to the corner (Karter the weak link) and they ran a sequence where everyone slingshotted in on him one after the other, with Toa being the last, after really milking it; after he did it (to big reaction), he had the biggest smile on his face; more on that later too. With some chicanery, the heels were able to isolate Darius on the floor (including some cheapshots from the associated managers and hangers oners, Sterling and Jameson, ultimately broken up by Toa rushing around ringside with a chair to a big pop). From there, we entered into a second FIP on Darius, during which the fans chanted that they wanted Toa and Dante, reading the room, hyped that idea from the apron (which, given that his brother was getting beat on was pretty selfless in serving the match when you think about it). Darius finally came back for the hot tag and everything went into a wild finishing stretch.

I don't usually do this, but I think everyone should go check out the climax of that wildness and the finish itself. I clipped it because people needed to see it and I'd like everyone (and I mean everyone, even if you've seen it before, even if you helped conceive it) to go and take a look and then come back so we can close this out. Sound on is better, but even sound off will give you the idea. Just do it.

https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1901244037081788581

This misses Kaun (a surprisingly natural babyface) shutting down everyone and hitting a poetry in motion leap and maybe another dive or two from the assembled mass of talent, but it gives you what I need you to see. First we have Toa using Dante as a weapon twice, both to kick at an opponent and then by press slamming him into everyone; great emotive reactions by Dante here. If the two weren't so ingrained in their obvious partnerships, I could see real money in a big/little tag team between the two of them. Obviously the crowd loved that.

But then Toa just... dropped the chain, broke through the limiters, and for about a minute looked like the biggest attraction imaginable, slapping the ground, charging up, looking for prey, and absolutely bursting through everyone in sight on the floor, all leading to him hesitating only slightly as Sterling got in the way before plowing right through him and send him careening into Nese (great work all around by everyone). The crowd went wild, even here for an (on paper) disposable post-show ROH match with absolutely no stakes. And yes, it was a good crowd, absolutely, but there was magic in what they did. And it was magic that all came to fruition as Toa rolled back into the ring and slammed the mat again, his gaze set on the last man standing in Preston Vance. 

As Toa was slapping the mat, as the post-Collision fans were going nuts for him hyping them up, there was the biggest smile on his face. Toa portrays a wild man, a bestial presence, a throwback to decades past, a killing machine, but my god, that smile. This was a guy absolutely living in the moment, basking in the crowd's excitement and adulation, realizing the sheer joy that he, through his presence and physicality brought into the world for at least those in attendance and living his very best life. You can't fabricate that smile. You can't bottle it and sell it. It was an honestly beautiful thing during a time where we need as many honestly beautiful things that we can get. And of course, that made it all the better when he had his leg grabbed from the outside and Vance (who has a history of robbing people of joy) cut him down with a very credible clothesline before the Gates fired back and won the thing. 

Sometimes wrestling is just special and it doesn't always have to be two guys leaping off the top of the cage or wrestlers bleeding buckets. Sometimes it can just be one wrestler using everything at his disposal without hesitation or abandon, just embracing all of the complicated absurdities and simple blissful truths of pro wrestling and everyone around him being selfless and giving and professional in enabling that moment. That's what they had here. The crowd in Oakland was lucky to see it. We were lucky to see it on ROH TV last week. And hopefully, now all of you reading this that went back and clicked on that link feel like you're lucky to have seen it too. I know I feel that way.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/27 - 6/2

ROH TV 5/23/24

Workhorsemen vs Angelico/Serpentico

MD: We've got no Fingers of Death active this week and it's going to be a little bleak for a while with Kingston out. The fifth one is eternally floating and there are various people that will get rotated in there like Christian and Rush and Athena, but today, we're playing moneyball with the Workhorsemen and friends.

Anthony Henry is right off of an ill-timed jaw injury and a sort of a strange journey of being gone and being back and you can tell that he was rearing to get back in the game. JD Drake is the very definition of a DVDVR/Segunda Caida guy and I'm happy for whatever focus he gets. These ROH matches really do buck a lot of the current AEW criticism. They're closer to ten minutes than twenty, not stretched out by a commercial break, and very often, you don't know coming in who's going to win. There was just as much chance that Angelico and Serpentico took this as the Workhorsemen. And given that Workhorsemen won this, just as much chance that they were going to win as Top Flight in the match covered next.  

While the comeback was a lot of fun, my favorite part here was the opening exchanges. Where the Workhorsemen excel most is enabling their opponents to really be the best versions of themselves possible. They're versatile, contrasting in size and shape and style. Drake's excellent at knowing when to give and when not to give. Here he was matched up with Angelico and combined one or two slick and smooth little counters with jamming Angelico on a trip, only to miss a senton a moment later to put himself off balance for Angelico to actually hit. He was able to be there for Angelico so he could hit some of his more tricked out stuff but not make it look overly collaborative either. Then Henry and Serpentico did an extended tit-for-tat exchange that veered just far enough away from looking choreographed to work even though it was all done at high speed with everything hitting. Then, as the crowd was cheering, Henry nailed a cheapshot to take over and start the heat. Maybe it's because he appreciates the roar of the crowd and the thirll of the action more than ever post-injury but he was really living in the moment in these matches, pumped up and gloating during the spaces in-between. He's always a "hit it clean" guy but he was projecting for the last row in the best way in these. They made it seem like Angelico and Serpentico were going to take this before Maria's guys came out for the distraction, but that's part of the Workhorsemen's strength as well, making it all believable not matter what 'it' needs to be.

ROH TV 5/30/24

Workhorsemen vs Top Flight

MD: More of them enabling their opponents to be their absolute best. That meant that Dante was bounding off of Drake's back or leaping over and under and in between the ropes with Henry on a hook for a big move. It meant that Darius was able to storm in after the hot tag as scrappy and gritty and fiery as can be, with big and broad canvases to attack. Darius has pretty snappy punches in a world where no one's doing punches anymore and he stands out even next to his own brother because of it; that said, you couldn't overly fault Dante's rapid-fire forearms right into Henry's recently injured jaw.

And in between those moments, when it was time to grind down on Dante, the Workhorsemen kept things moving while being oppressive and interesting at the same time. Drake's took full advantage of Dante's jumping ability in the transition to heat as he pressed him up against the ropes and smashed him on the outside. It's a move that always looks great and effective, that was especially so here, and that is used at varying times in the match by Drake, but I'm actively glad it didn't show up in the Angelico/Serpentico match because while it can be a 75% of the time move, it really shouldn't be an every match one. It's too unique and conditional for that. This had just the right balance for a competitive mid-card TV match that could have gone either way, the sort of thing people occasionally lament is missing these days.

AEW Collision 6/1/24

Workhorsemen vs Daniel Garcia/Katsuyori Shibata

MD: Got to admit that it seemed like a nice neat way to do it this week. Three Workhorsemen matches over two weeks. Three very different sets of opponents. I didn't know that JD's leg was going to go out here putting a bit of a damper on all of this.

That said, it makes for a completely different sort of watching experience, right? It's 2024. When you peel back why we watch wrestling, old wrestling, new wrestling, it doesn't matter, it's not the same as why and how someone might have been watching it in 64 or 84. A lot of the time when I watch matches, I already know who goes over, right? I want to see the journey. I want to see it play out. I want to see the creative choices and how they're executed. I want to see if they zig in the way I want them to zig or zag in a way that I'd never seen before. I want to see them take the old structures and overlay new bits of execution. I want to see them tug at those most human emotions like only wrestling can do in ways both classic and novel.

Rarely do you really, truly connect with who you're watching though. When you do, it's special. It's like watching a perfect game in baseball a little bit, right? That butterfly in your stomach feeling where you don't want to jinx it. You want them to hit the landing. You think to yourself "man, if this thing just has the right finish and they make it the rest of the way..." I'll admit to watching some 2023-2024 Danielson matches and thinking to myself "I hope he's ok," but then he's been a jerk like that (and has landed on his head errantly a few times too).

Where I'm going here is that shortly into this one, JD Drake messed up his leg or his foot. They could have went home. They persisted. He could have stayed on the apron and had Anthony Henry work the lion's share of it. That would have been a pretty tough sell overall though. For a minute, it seemed like they might go that route, that we might have actually gotten something of a heel-in-peril structure for good or ill. Truth be told, they needed JD in there to shut Garcia down, to turn the tide, to justify a team of two killers like Shibata and Garcia getting dragged under.

Shibata and Garcia are like a modern day Raging and Ravishing, except for Shibata is more cold steel than hot fire and Garcia has a ton of steak to go along with the sizzle. When it happened and they were checking on Drake, Shibata dropped down into his pose and after a moment, Garcia did the same. Then we got that extra bit with Garcia and Henry, with Garcia hitting his new triple twisting neckbreakers (with a Henry heelbutt in the middle to keep it interesting), before Drake came in and asserted himself. The guy could barely walk but he is such a presence and an imposing figure that he could control the center of the ring with sheer gravitational force. Garcia created motion and movement by coming towards him and he powered through and did the rest.

There were moments in the back half where you maybe looked twice or wondered at something feeling just a bit off. Shibata has a great way of making his violence look natural, of just walking over and getting a shot in as opposed to setting up a complex spot (the world's big enough for both approaches), but some of those Tenryu tribute shots looked a bit hesitant which might have had to do to filling in necessary gaps. But like I said, they didn't just go home with it even though no one would have blamed them for that. They kept going. Shibata and Garcia needed a win that meant something, one that had heft and weight to it. Shibata and Garcia didn't need to just win; they needed to overcome. That meant when Drake finally did make it up and hit his moonsault, the fans knew full well what they were witnessing, the effort at play, the gutsiness in front of them, and they popped big accordingly. And when Shibata interjected to set up a win for his side, it meant something. It meant everything that it needed to mean, really a hell of an accomplishment, all things considered.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/6 - 5/12

AEW Collision 5/11/24

Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli) vs Top Flight

MD: Unfortunately, I didn't love this one. And no, it's not because we had gotten in our heads the moment the show was announced that we wanted Makabe vs Danielson. I like Top Flight in general. Dante is a special talent. He has that extra bit of something that lets him go a bit higher, snap off a bit quicker. He can couple that with sympathetic selling. I've known that ever since the Malakai Black singles match. Darius has looked his best standing up to guys like Moxley. He's a scrapper deep down and should lean harder in that direction. Claudio's one of the greatest bases outside of Mexico ever. Danielson is Danielson, incentivized to make every match he has left special. 

So it had a lot going for it on paper. It also had a lot working against it. This was a hierarchy clash, and that meant that Top Flight was going to be punching up. Maybe two years ago you could have played up Top Flight having a significant teamwork advantage, but the BCC has been around for a while and Danielson has teamed with Claudio a bunch. Maybe in Minnesota, Top Flight would be the underdog babyfaces and treated as such by the crowd, but this was the first main match on the first main show in Vancouver and Danielson, a Pacific Northwest icon was in the match. There was a time a couple of years ago where I had hoped that the BCC would become Tsuruta-Gun and they'd spend a year feuding with a new Super Generation Army (I was thinking Garcia/Moriarty/Dante/Hook type guys with Yuta in the Taue turncoat role). But things didn't work out that way. The matches we have gotten along those lines had been too scattered to really coalesce into any sort of meaningful movement.

Still, Danielson and Claudio are two of the best, and top, top notch tag workers as well. Dante and Darius are talented and fiery. While I didn't realize it coming in (and in fact was frustrated that they weren't doing a Danielson/Cash tag given Dax had a singles but we don't know what we don't know, of course), the match was meant to have a few purposes: to establish how much Danielson values AEW and its talent, to reestablish him as dominant after his loss and a couple of weeks away, to position him to have the post match promo and for Claudio to walk out. So this could have worked. Those were not necessarily hard goals to achieve. It more or less achieved them. As a match judged on its own standing however, it failed both in theory and execution. Execution first: quite often, the wrestlers didn't seem on the same page. I can think of a couple of clear occasions, when Claudio took a twisting headscissors from Dante and during a moment where a Top Flight double-team pressing off of Claudio was maybe supposed to take out Danielson too (maybe it wasn't? Who knows. It sort of did, just not clearly). Nothing overly egregious so long as everyone is healthy and fine. They were just jarring and unexpected moments from guys you expected to hit things clean even more so than anyone else. 

The structure was the bigger issue. Top Flight managed to control in their corner early, but a lot of this ended up being Darius getting swept under and battling from underneath. The problem was that the crowd was entirely behind Danielson as he was laying a beating on him. Darius' hope spots elicited boos at worst and woos at best and neither were exactly promising in the face of "yes" strikes. If Top Flight had taken a cockier, more brazen approach earlier with their control maybe they could have leaned de facto heel later on but they instead chose to breathlessly try to contain Claudio. It meant that it was far too much a stretch for the match to course correct and make Danielson's dominance feel deserved. Dante was able to shift the tide just a little with his rapid-fire forearms to Claudio after the hot tag, but things fell apart again soon after and the match stumbled to conclusion more than it stuck the landing. I fully believe there's a good match between these two but also that we'll probably never get to see it. It unfortunately wasn't this match in this place on this night with this purpose. It did enough of what it was supposed that we'll all just move on to the next thing, but I can't say it doesn't leave me a bit wistful for what might have been.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: The Elite vs. Top Flight Fox

 

Kenny Omega/The Young Bucks vs. AR Fox/Dante & Darius Martin AEW Rampage 2/15 (Aired 2/17/23)

ER: On paper the idea of The Elite working a 10 minute long NBA on TNT match filled with amateur Harlem Globetrotter routines sounds fucking terrible. I mean just awful. They're wearing jerseys and yucking it up real chuffed with themselves, throwing the rock around. It sounds so fucking bad man. But I guess my brain is just wrecked on gas station Stay Hard pills because I enjoyed all of it and actually wish it had way more basketball spots. How were the basketball spots in this actually good? Everybody in the match handled a ball much better than I would have guessed and what should have played as Bad Chikara Shit played out as Good Chikara Shit: Jump balls leading to atomic drops or superkicks, Kenny catching a ball to the nuts running in to interfere, Nick getting a ball thrown at the bridge of his nose two different times! Who could have possibly guessed that everyone but AR Fox had Necro Butcher Throwing Chair precision with a basketball. 

Fox didn't really contribute to any of the good pass drill clown hijinks, but he at least spammed a hall dozen high hang time dives. AR Fox dives look impressive in air but make very light contact, so spamming them as a swarming attack instead of impact attack works better. They made the smart choice and made all of the basketball spots end with actual impact. The Comedy lead to The Violence. A basketball to the face hurts, and the ball was flying around the ring while guys were busy doing other spots. Darius Martin looks cool backflipping with a basketball. Really cool. Like the Phoenix Suns Gorilla cool. The Goon worked excellently as a violent hockey player gimmick because it's cool seeing big Bill Irwin checking guys into boards and going low on shoulderblocks. We've never gotten a Bill Laimbeer/Draymond Green violent basketball player gimmick. We're not there yet. The technology isn't ready. But the basketball spots in this match transcended Human Tornado dunking on a huracanrana and I was not expecting that. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson & Mox Chop Fight Top Flight

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Top Flight (Dante & Darius Martin) AEW Rampage 1/6/23

ER: I am not really a "Top Flight" guy. They are the style of wrestler of which AEW already has Too Many. There are 50-70 guys on the AEW who wrestle exactly like this. The timing changes, the moves change, the backflips differ, but the beats are all the same. Any indy show I go to has a half a dozen Top Flights - at minimum. There are good versions of them and bad versions of them, but it is now the most commonplace style of wrestling for every young athletic man foolish enough to get into pro wrestling. I have never been moved by a Top Flight performance, while acknowledging that both brothers are creative and capable of doing athletic things and clever combos that probably puts them above their similarly complicatedly styled peers. But Top Flight vs. Top Flight Doppelgängers isn't a match that excites me, because odds are I have already seen two other Top Flight vs. Top Flight matches on whatever card I'm watching anyway. 

It turns out, the way to get maximum enjoyment out of Top Flight, is to pair them with a couple of dudes who have doing this for longer than any wrestler could sensibly hope to wrestle, who have gone through the dark tunnels of addiction or career ending injury and come through the other side with new zeal, ready to hit smooth athletes like Top Flight as hard as humanly possible. And Top Flight gets to successfully play the role of All Japan young boys who are being playing above slot, lasting longer than they were supposed to last, making it more of a match than the men with freshly washed balls expected it to be. Dante Martin makes the same teeth clenched fist-balled expressions in every match of his I've seen, but after watching him absorb kick after kick from Danielson I finally bought into his determination as if finally seeing it earned for the first time. Athletic wrestlers like Dante Martin act like they've been through A War in every match, and here that acting finally felt like it wasn't An Act. 

This also felt like the greatest Darius Martin performance. Dante is the younger, more consistent bother, and the one who has been tabbed as the breakout star of the two. Here he is actually given the chance to respond as the first born, sticking up for his brother after a major beating. Dante has some inspired moments of putting one over on the vets: taking out Moxley with a a blindside top con hilo over the ringpost during Moxley's entrance, flipping onto his own feet to stop a rana after Danielson had literally just been standing on the top rope potatoing him in the head, but a lot of this was Dante being punished. Stiff kicks, stiff chops, stiff punches, a Mox piledriver that stands him on the top of his head, a Mox clothesline that flips him inside out to a degree that his hang time lands him on top of Mox. It is a beating to be withstood, and it leads to a tremendous hot tag moment from his older and less acclaimed brother. 

I'm not sure I've ever loved a Top Flight moment more than when Danielson and Moxley kick each other in the shins because Dante collapses, and then Darius tags in to stand up for his little bro. The way Darius goads Danielson - who should know better - into kicking him harder and harder, catching the challenge kick and throwing by far the hardest elbows and chops I have ever seen him throw, that's fucking pro wrestling. I've seen hundreds of shitty moments in these matches where two guys challenge each other to hit harder, and it almost always feels rote and out of place, a moment you create because at a certain point it became expected to have this moment in half the matches on a card, but this was a rare example of this spot feeling right. I believe that Darius actually wanted to know how hard Danielson could kick. I believe that he wanted to know that he could take Danielson's hardest and survive, take his worst and learn more about himself in the process. It doesn't lead to a win, and nothing the brothers do ever makes it feel like a win was going to happen, but everyone hit their moments so perfectly that every part of this felt like a win. 

I loved a late match use of a save, something too under-utilized in wrestling, and one important thing that made this feel like a big Kings Road tag rather than the kind of AEW match where a few guys kick out of a few other guys poison ranas. Danielson's Busaiku knee to Darius face was the most match-finishing moment of this match, flipping him on top of his head and down hard on his face, and Dante's expert timing with the pinfall save extended the match without diminishing the impact of that vicious knee one bit. Dante is thrown from the ring, Danielson is clearly going to finish Darius, and Moxley is prompted to hit a completely unnecessary and fully passionate plancha to take Dante out on the floor for good, when he easily could have just watched the ropes to prevent another save. Danielson and Moxley were not ever in a real position of danger, and yet they were pushed beyond a point they expected to be pushed into, goaded into foolishness they shouldn't have been goaded into, two clear winners forced to show how Gotten To they were. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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

AEW Dynamite 1/4

Bryan Danielson vs. Tony Nese

MD: A lot of grumbling and backlash for this one when it was announced, and my big takeaway was that I wish it had gotten just another minute or two so that Danielson and Nese could really go. Nese is probably the most giving, selfless guy on the roster, someone who knows his job, knows his role, knows his skillset, that can go but that still wants to get under the skin of the fans instead of having them cheer for his exchanges. He's the guy on the roster most likely to get cake in his face or to be completely embarrassed by Orange Cassidy but he has just enough credibility through his stuff looking good, through having Woods at his side, and through the sheer cardio and shape he's in. Basically, he's everything I'd want a Seth Rollins type guy to be. That means he's a lower-midcarder who makes everyone around him look better, but I'm almost always glad to see him. It's just that we live in an upside down world where Seth Rollins is Seth Rollins and not Tony Nese. It's not Tony Nese's fault. It's the world that's backwards.

They were exceptionally careful about this. Nese used everything at his disposal from an early ambush while Danielson was basking in the crowd's reaction to having Sterling and Nese out there to get tiny bits of advantage. He could never press it because the idea here was to show Danielson as an absolute star. And he was, but what I'm going to remember most is Nese's missed knee in the corner, just how well he set it up, just how well he pinballed off, the action and the reaction. Ultimately, this match was the right match for the moment, something celebratory, something tangentially connected to MJF, something quick and clean, and high impact, that showcased Danielson in front of his home crowd to set up the gauntlet ahead of him and the lure of the PPV match stip. Still, I had assumed he had picked Nese because he wanted to have one or two cardio exchanges where he really pushed himself, and I'm a little sad we didn't quite get them here. It would be a hell of a Dark match at Universal with no stakes or story purpose if they ever wanted to do it again though.

Samoa Joe (c) vs. Darby Allin

MD: I don't think I liked this quite as much as the first match between them but that doesn't mean there wasn't a ton to love. Darby's matches almost always start in some interesting way. Here it was Joe going after Nick Wayne just because he could (he's the King of TV after all) and Darby making him pay for it, then capitalizing on that advantage before the bell rang with some well-deserved revenge with the skateboard and a huge dive off a ladder. Joe's up there with Yokozuna and Abby as someone who can believably cut anyone off at any moment though. Here he caught Darby (who had maybe messed up his leg on the dive) off the apron and just crushed him on the stairs. This started a pretty awesome Joe control bit through the commercial break where he pinballed off the post again and jawed with the crowd. Between the size differential and the leg, Joe was able to just squash Darby, blocking his attempts to recover. You have to appreciate Joe's expressiveness here, just how deeply he was into every moment. He was absolutely living the character, smug, bemused, believing in himself entirely and looking down on everything and everyone around him. Great finishing stretch here, with Sting's pep talk driving Darby to Sting up, Joe putting forth amazingly portrayed struggle in not trying to get pulled out of the corner (causing the turnbuckle cover to go flying) and the two of them somehow making the code red believable before the finish. I almost would have had Darby hit the drop from all four corners just to put a sort of Warrior vs Macho Man exclamation point on things, but you can't argue with the hometown pop at the end.

AEW Rampage 1/6

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Top Flight

MD: It's since come out in interviews that the entire idea behind the BCC was to give young guys top guys to work. Regal has his own way to explain it but the others explained it more like Tsuruta-gun vs. the Super Generation Army. We did see a little bit of that at first, with Yuta and with a tag or six-man here or there but eventually, it all got subsumed into the JAS feud and it went away. This is it back and as clear as day.

That meant, as opposed to the Claudio tag from a week or two ago, that the BCC pressed and pressed and pressed and pressed. They pushed the Martins to their absolute limit and every glimpse of hope, every bit of offense, felt entirely earned and like a small victory in and of itself. This felt a lot more like one of those AJPW tags, where Top Flight might be able to force a tag, get a shot or two in, but then would get shut down immediately. A tag didn't, in and of itself, represent a shift in momentum. Quite the opposite as the damage had been done to the guy tagging out and it was still two-on-one until he recovered. In fact, some of the most hope Top Flight had was when Darius tagged while he was still more or less on the floor outside. They capitalized on his positioning as best as they could but it never lasted long. The BCC were just too much. That was the point as it made every iota of Top Flight's fight all the more valiant for the impossible odds. It's been a while since Mox and Danielson were able to have a straight up tag and they had some tandem stuff that was on the backburner for quite a while and that made the task even more impossible for Top Flight.

The Dante vs. Danielson bits were shiny and flashy and made me want to see a singles match. Darius balanced exhaustion and fire well when he did get something of a comeback, but he still has to find his own niche; it's never going to benefit him to be compared to Dante if they're doing very similar things. This was brutal in the best way and it kind of makes me hope for them to run it back again with Mox and Yuta where they can get some some revenge on Moxley.

Darby Allin vs. Mike Bennett

MD: Credit to Bennett here for being a good hand. He took most of the match but the only things I remembered after a first watch was Darby's finishing shots: the dropkick onto the chair on the outside that you know Bennett insisted on taking, as opposed the usual Darby wipe out bump; the bit where Maria laid on top of him and Darby was going to jump anyway; the code red off the top. Maybe that super slick kick out of the leg right into the grounded hammerlock too. And Bennett held up his end on keeping heat, even if the fans were going to chant Boston Sucks and You Still Suck instead of Bennett Sucks, alongside Let's Go Darby and just Darby's name. To his credit, they weren't chanting about Maria. I thought his cut offs were particularly good though I have to admit that his offense in general, while it all looked solid and gave Darby things to work with, was definitely all over the place. He did just enough focusing on a leg or an arm to establish that there was something there but not enough for it actually to be a meaningful story beat. It distracted instead of resonated. This is one where maybe Darby should have either taken just a bit more of it and flex his muscles as a champion once again or at least had Maria and Taven give him a bit more trouble to help protect him. I will say that Bennett came out of this looking better than he came in, even despite the most memorable moments being him getting his comeuppance.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/19 - 12/25

AEW Dark Elevation 12/19

MD: Got some sickness in the house (yeah, that sort) right now, and right at XMas too. I had initially thought about doing the whole show as it had a lot of things to like (Shafir hitting people at weird angles; Athena being Athena, the best act in AEW right now; Workhorsemen vs BCC; Emi and Bunny doing their thing) but that's out. There was a Kingston/Ortiz tag, but I don't have a ton to say about it. If I was going to do a Shinno match from this week I'd do the Omega one from Dark that I didn't like one bit, but no one wants to hear me talk about that, so instead, let's go with our honorary Finger Slim...

Ethan Page/Matt Hardy/Isiah Kassidy/Top Flight/Konosuke Takeshita vs. Trustbusters (Sonny Kiss/Slim J/Jeeves Kay)/Wingmen (Peter Avalon/Cesar Bononi/Ryan Nemeth)

MD: The AEW webshows reward and punish those that watch them all. I've seen some griping about the Hardy Party/Ethan Page story popping up here and there and it's a shame as I think Page has done a great job with it. I get people being frustrated by the idea of yet another contract storyline (Khan writes what he knows), but the backstage stuff has been a lot of fun. Page is walking this obtuse line between being malicious and so egotistical (naturally) that he actually gets into the moment at times. He really leans hard into the fabricated enthusiasm that you get the sense that the character is sort of losing himself to the moment at times, but in a way that somehow makes the humiliation worse and not better for Hardy and Private Party. I'm not sure it's entirely coherent, but it's actually pretty compelling.

Here, he burst through the pair as their music hit and did the big hardy gun hang signal only to cut the music when he didn't get a big pop. He had a mic and it was a fun little gimmick but I don't think he leaned into it enough. Past one moment where he freaked out that Takeshita was ending the dive train, he only said anything when it was a plot beat. He should have been commenting on a lot more, like the Trustbusters triple combo sliced bread. That was my big gripe there. It seemed a little too in your face because of it, even if his facial reactions and faux babyface cheering on was actually pretty engaging throughout.

You watch a big twelve man match like this looking for a few things: the rapid fire spots, interesting match-ups of opponents, and interaction between guys who wouldn't normally interact. I don't think we really got that last one. It was nice to see Page pat Darius on the shoulder pre-match as an extension of the above gimmick, but in general the Trustbusters (still working out their act) and the Wingmen kept to themselves and didn't work together much. We did get some fresh match-ups though. Kassidy and Kiss come to mind, and as Darius been on the shelf for so long, even the Wingmen and Top Flight working against one another seemed pretty fresh. So in that regard, this was a hit for me. They especially used Takeshita well here, as a big clean-up hitter. I would have liked Bononi teased a bit more (or even get to lean on Kassidy a bit) before the big showdown with Takeshita though. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing one of these on Elevation with various guys on the massive roster once a month.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends): Week of 7/11 - 7/17

AEW Dark Elevation 7/11

JD Drake vs. Dante Martin

MD: Once Phil realized I was watching AEW fairly regularly, he looped me in that we'd be doing the FFOD. I'm not sure if these would be the exact five I'd pick or not. The blog's always been high on Darby but he ends up in a lot of matches I only half want to see on paper, for instance. He always makes them good and it's good for me, but I'd probably have dropped a guy like Drake or Serpentico in there. Past catching Rampage Saturday morning like it's the Power Hour, the webshows are the most enjoyable AEW experience. There are no commercial breaks to drive the layout of the match (which helps as much as it hurts, but still...). Elevation has a generally hot crowd since they're the opening matches. Dark has a studio audience which hits a nostalgia sweet spot and allows for different interactions, and lets Taz and Excalibur goof off on commentary. We went decades without a lot of things, but one of those things was enhancement matches/squashes, which, for a lot of us, was such a part of our youth. There's nothing more limiting than to watch pro wrestling only by seeking out the very best stuff in the most conventional sense. If you're always chasing five star matches, you miss out on so much. Watching Emi Sakura drag and position a young wrestler around a ring or watching House of Black just maul some guys has its own level of enjoyment. 

And the same's true with mid-card matches where either guy could win, where the stakes are fairly low, where it's wrestling to cover TV time and build up rankings and to put something extra in front of the crowd and to keep reps going. It's the WCW Prime Moo Match of the week or a Worldwide Main Event or Lord Alfred and Sean Mooney talking us through a Prime Time match with Heenan and Monsoon bridging things through the commercial break. Yeah, it gets a little much to see endless permeations of the Wingmen or the Factory vs the Dark Order or Best Friends, but it's all good stuff and no one's making you watch it. Do it at your convenience. 

A match like this, with Dante and Drake just hits that sweet spot. Dante's endlessly talented, endlessly innovative, surprisingly good at selling and reacting for his age, and he'll always bring something interesting to an enhancement match. Put him in there against another flyer and you'll get something spectacular. Put him in there against one of the best bases in the company like Drake and you'll get something borderline great. The opening exchange had Drake shrug off Dante's attempts and Dante have to escalate, to go higher, faster, more offbeat to chip away at him. When he finally nailed the backflip off of Drake's shoulder to hit the springboard arm drag and get Drake down, it felt like a big earned moment. They would hit spots rapid fire but then do something to slow things down and let it sink in, like when Drake walked away to cut off the dive and draw boos. The big transition to Drake taking over wasn't just his big lift up whack to the apron, but a very clever duck as Dante was sliding out to put him out of position so he could capitalize. 

Drake is a guy who can do a ton of things contrary to his size and look but knows how to highlight his opponent by doing just as much as he should do but no more. Here, a lot of that was being in the right place at the right time for Dante, being able to turn it up when the match called for it, and being able to hit something impressive out of nowhere, like his lightning-fast dropkick cut off, to shut Dante down when he was picking up speed. Most of his heat segment was just him leaning on Dante with stomps and shots in the corner. He'd give Dante some quick shots back or a chance at rope running, but then would just crush him with a suplex or that aforementioned dropkick. Dante, to his credit, would go flying in response and then give the camera a great shot of him draped over the rope and on dream street. At times, things may have seemed just a little collaborative, like when they were working for the Superplex position in the corner, but it was really Dante setting things up so he could get in a counter. He wasn't helping; he was working for his next chance. Meanwhile, because of the size differential, he had to work three times harder to get an opening, low kicks, a flip from one side of the apron to the other, a kick up, a bounding leap off the ropes; Dante may have had to work three times harder but he's capable of working even two times harder than that. Primarily, he had to survive, had to keep moving, and had to draw Drake in for mistakes. All it took was one or two and Dante was able to soar high and capitalize. It was nice to see Drake and Henry get to go up against Mox and Danielson a few months ago as JTTS, but it's even better still to see him get ten minutes in a match like this against a talent like Dante where they can highlight each other even if it's on a much smaller stage. When you have a good flyer vs a good big man, often times both can stretch to do more complex and advanced things than they normally might be able to, while still having the underlying story and pacing to keep things ground and not making it feel like it's flown off into a world of excess.

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AEW (And Friends) Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/16 - 5/22

Only one AEW match this week but Eddie Kingston's been barnstorming, and since Phil has to watch them all for the Ringer, we're on top of all of it.

AEW Dynamite 5/18

Blackpool Combat Club (Moxley/Danielson) vs. Peace, Love, and Pro Wrestling (Matt Sydal/Dante Martin)

MD: I am heartened, but not hardly surprised, by Phil picking this match over the Hangman Page one for AEW's match over at the Ringer, and go over and read his review there. I'd put Woods vs Yuta up there as well for the week and even Bear Country vs Workhorsemen, but I'm happy to write about this one. This is the first time in a short while that we've seen the BCC up against babyfaces instead of heels, interesting given that they are in a program now against the JAS. The match was structured accordingly, with an immediate rudo ambush and no shine. It meant that both Sydal (paired primarily with Mox) and Dante (hitting everyone but especially paired with Danielson) got to be the recipients of hot tags and got to be houses afire. It did mean that we missed out on some early feeling out or a quick exchange with Sydal or Martin and Danielson. There's a twelve minute Danielson that's going to be very exciting some day but for now it was just a taste on the comeback and then Martin getting stomped out and surviving up until the point he didn't in the stretch. Regal and Jericho did a great job getting over the discrepancies between the two groups as the match was going and you know Jericho's going to design a "Money, Merch, and Sports Entertainment" shirt out of the exchange, whereas Regal was great at indicating that he knows everyone's weaknesses and that he was the one who had been there for Hager from the start, not Jericho. We missed out on a shine but two comebacks of Sydal and Dante doing their thing surrounded by Mox and Danielson beating people to a pulp works pretty well too. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Isaiah Broner AIW 5/21/22

MD: The match is on IWTV, and Phil wrote it up on the Ringer. It was a war. There are explicit narratives and implicit ones in wrestling. Explicit ones are more along the lines of long limbwork or big vs small or a southern tag where there's a lot of cheating with hope spots and cut offs or even shine-heat-comeback. To me, an implicit narrative is more about making everything take effort and struggle and filling in gaps, by making the match absolutely airtight. This match was airtight. Everything was worked for. Nothing was given. Eddie wasn't going to get a single throw without battering Broner first. Broner could heft Kingston up but he'd have to put him back down and smack him around a bit before tossing him too. Eddie chipped at the arm, not to actively dominate the story for five minutes, but to passively make it so Broner's killshots weren't quite enough to kill him. That's the other half of the equation. If a match is airtight and violent but nothing's registering, if nothing has impact, it's just going to be noise. Here they hit hard and then sold the impact of what happened. They recoiled. They staggered. They sold. So everything took effort, but once it hit, it was worth the effort. That was from the first chops and Broner's killer forearm all the way to the finishing stretch where he could show his toughness, where he could get up in the face of Eddie's best stuff, but once he did, he was helpless to do anything but to take the next shot. Nothing was glaring. Nothing was telegraphed. Nothing was over the top. Yet it was all violent and it all earned and it all meant something and it all mattered. When a match can pull all of that off, it's a hell of a thing.

Eddie Kingston vs. Davey Richards Glory Pro 5/22/22

MD: I haven't seen a Davey Richards match since chain suplexes in and out of the ring were involved. It's been a decade probably. That said, he's an interesting and unique Kingston opponent, not to mention older and maybe wiser. I'll say this: you watch a Davey Richards match and you're going to get commitment. This is a guy who is always on, who is always feeling it, who is always in the moment. I may not have always liked or agreed with those moments during his career but you never doubt his belief in himself and what he's trying to portray. You may end up disbelieving what he's trying to portray, but you end up believing that he believes it, and in this day and age, that is a special quality and it's worth something. That gels with the notion that with Kingston, what you see is what you get.

It meant that that the early wristlock feeling out process was full of struggle and grit. They covered a bit of the match with work on Eddie's leg, and he was the guy, out of the two, you'd want selling, so that was a good thought. Eddie, maybe inspired by his opponent, hulked up after a bunch of insulting Kawada-style kicks and you can't say it didn't fit the match, and then the finish had Richards full on motion charging in only to run into a freight train. I'm not sure I need to see them run it back, but as a thought experiment and a clash of two very different styles but similar levels of commitment, it was fun and never wore out its welcome.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 4/18-4/25

AEW Dynamite 4/20

CM Punk vs. Dustin Rhodes

MD: Hey, it's two of our guys wrestling each other. Phil, unsurprisingly, covered this over at the Ringer, but here's my take. I love how organic this felt. Some of that is Punk adapting, both in the obvious ways, like when the bow and arrow didn't work, but also how he responded to the crowd. The match had spots but it wasn't about them. Punk knew that the crowd was going to get behind Dustin when he was in holds, but he couldn't know what the split would be or how best to capitalize on it before the fact. It gave a pretty good preview overall to what Punk vs. Page might look like and how Punk might adapt with the crowd.

The other half of it was how both Dustin and Punk responded to the moment. They sold everything, both physical and emotional. At one point a CM Punk chant broke out, even when he was on top, and he gave Dustin a sly grin. Likewise, when he taunted Dustin later with the Goldust bit, the crowd turned on him and he again reacted accordingly. The turning point of the match was after Dustin went flying through the ropes and hurt his knee. There was a chance Punk wasn't going to capitalize on it, but Dustin kicked up at him and it visibly pissed Punk (the character) off and he started on it. Later on Dustin had control and hit the ten punches in the corner only to sell the leg huge as he landed back on it again. Everything had weight and consequence, not just the spots but every incidental movement, every interaction between the two wrestlers, every reaction from the crowd. The wrestlers cared about everything and then the wrestlers care the fans care and when the fans care you can get real emotion and something like the hug and the handshake at the end resonates and stays with you. That's what the masters do, they take something fabricated and artificial and they give it substance and make it real. It may not be spectacular or conventionally breathtaking in a 2022 sense, but it still can manage to take your breath away in how it engages your heart and mind and gut.

Blackpool Combat Club vs. Dante Martin/Lee Moriarty/Brock Anderson

MD: This had a great beginning and a great finishing moment and some good ring time for Brock Anderson (past maybe landing on his head with Moxley's Half and Half) in the middle. Yuta's turned a corner in his ring-work which is exactly what needed to happen. One of the first things he did in this one was to pull Martin back to his corner by the ear. The early Martin vs Danielson stuff was really good too. I know we're not getting those long single epics from Danielson right now but there's still a lot of value in seeing him with little exchanges like that in tags. Everything built to Moriarty coming in to get the hometown pop and he made the most of it. Danielson turning the Border City Stretch into a capture suplex was fairly magical too. Things felt a little bit out of control and unhinged towards the end until the Blackpool Combat Club got control with the stomps and hammer and anvil elbows and Dante went way up for the Paradigm Shift. Overall, this was a functional piece of business with a couple of unique, fun exchanges that furthered along Yuta's development and everyone else some ringtime or shine.

Darby Allin vs. Andrade el Idolo

MD: A lot of the spectacle of this one was in the first half leading to the Sting dive. The back half had a little too much set up or getting things into position, but the payoffs were all good so it only matters so much. Because it was structured to have all of the nonsense up front and end with Andrade vs. Darby, I could have used another minute or two in that section, maybe a little more back and forth, even if a totally believable aspect of Darby's MO is to survive everything and win with a big one-two shot where he sacrifices his own body, as happened here. If this is the feud blowoff, it feels a little past due, but they have a lot of masters to serve. I'm curious where both wrestlers go next.

AEW Rampage 4/22

Eddie Kingston vs. Daniel Garcia

MD: Apparently about half of this was cut. I rewatched it with that in mind and the biggest takeaway was that the gaps weren't too easy to pick up on, except for that the damage done to Garcia was not equal to what we actually got to see. Kingston's so good at sneaking shots in from every angle when he's working from underneath but still, Garcia's chest would just be lit up or his lip would be opened and you weren't quite sure when that happened. So this explained that. There were a few things going on here, the hierarchical beating and finishing stretch where Garcia kicked out of the exploder and it took both the Saito Suplex and the backfist to put him down; the great equalizer in Kingston taking his stomach/chest/ribs out on the stairs and Garcia using that in his offensive focus and the cut offs. I liked the Big Josh log roll in the corner but it really hammered home how while Yuta is changing up his act, Sports Entertainment Garcia is just Garcia with a new hat. He really needs to work in Road Dogg's shaky legs knee drop or the Worm or a bunch of catchphrases or something. It's not enough to just troll people with the gimmick. He needs to figure out what being a sports entertainer actually means in ring and then work that into his matches. Otherwise, what we actually did get of this was unsurprisingly very good, clipped and all. 

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