AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/6 - 4/12 Part 2

AEW Dynasty 4/12/26

Darby Allin vs Andrade

MD: There's something to say for implicit storytelling in pro wrestling. You find it in Stan Hansen matches. You see it in shoot-style. Two characters. Two sets of attributes. Two histories. Two motivations. Two styles. One ring. A chemical reaction where things make sense because of two wrestlers being absolutely true to who they are, because things could not possibly play out any other way. You're not looking at conventional storytelling, but instead at fate, at nature playing its inevitable course. 

You're not going to learn who Andrade and Darby are from promos. You won't learn from video packages or media appearances. You won't even learn from Darby's artistically produced stunt films. With these two, you learn everything you need to know from watching them in the ring.

So who are they? They are two men whose greatest strengths are also their greatest weaknesses and their greatest weaknesses are also their greatest strengths.

Darby is undersized, but his shadow looms. You might say he's brave. You might say he's fearless. You might say he lacks common sense. Were you to say that he lacks substance, you might not be far off, but maybe, just maybe, that's what makes him constantly exist on the edge. Maybe he's never found anything else to make him feel alive. While he's a skilled and clever wrestler, that wouldn't be enough to survive in a world of relative giants, so he turns his body into a weapon and relies, bolstered by both experience and blind faith (contradictory as that may be) that his body will withstand whatever the world throws at it, even himself.

Andrade is a third-generation wrestler. He's been everywhere and done so many things. He doesn't have to push up against the darkness to feel alive; he's life incarnate, brash, bold, confident. He started his career as Brillante, Jr., and then made his career as Sombra. Light and darkness, he's seen it all. He carries himself that way, swagger driving his offense, dynamic and explosive. He would not be half the wrestler if he didn't lean so thoroughly into it, even if that means he pauses to hang in the ropes, even if that means he extracts himself from the action to take a picture with a fan in the first row. 

So that's who they are, a little of what they need in life, but what do they want here? The winner gets a title shot. What does that mean to them? 

Darby came into this claiming that he cared more than anyone. I don't actually think that's true, but I think, to the character of Darby Allin, it needs to be true, and the only way for it to be true, is for him to make it real. Everyone else cares about Everest (well, not wrestling fans), so if he climbed it, obviously he cared too right? Everyone cares about the world title, so if he claims it, then he must care too. He must care about something other than that momentary thrill. He must be a real boy. There must be substance to him. Unable to tap into the journey, all he can do is cling to the destination. 

And then there's Andrade. He's always been one for association, and here he's associated with Don Callis. A mouthpiece. I don't think he's looking for brotherhood in the way Kyle Fletcher does. But having been burned before, having been underutilized and unable to prove himself, he was looking for representation. It came at a cost. And now he was being used as a bargaining chip, as a mercenary, to keep Darby away from MJF. It chafes. It's not enough for Andrade to succeed; he must succeed as himself, leaning into the swagger, embracing the role, to prove to everyone that he can be the person he wants to be, that he wants to see in a selfie, if not a mirror, and still be a champion. 

Like any other form of fiction (and wrestling is a form of fiction even if it has athletic elements and live interactive qualities), structures and frameworks can help pro wrestling feel coherent and meaningful. Things work very well if you have a heel and a babyface, a shine with moments of heel triumph before comeuppance, heat with hope spots and cutoffs, and a comeback leading into a finishing stretch. But if the characters are strong enough, consistent enough, committed enough, compelling enough, a match can be carried without these things.

That meant that while this was close to 50-50, or at least 60-40 (Andrade), and had elements of your move/my move, the momentum shifts between your move and my move tended to be character driven, organic, meaningful, resonant. They were based on the opportunities created by the wrestlers' attributes and skill and likewise created by the weaknesses tied to them.

Andrade dodged Darby early by hitting a tranquilo pose in the ropes. Darby crashed right into him like a wrecking ball in response. He couldn't capitalize because of the damage done to him in that process and Andrade reversed a whip into the barricade. Instead of following up, Andrade took a selfie, letting Darby hit a dive off the top. Darby followed it by hitting a dropkick down the arena stairs, but he hurt himself and thus, when back in the ring, when he slammed his own body into Andrade, he faltered and buckled (selling in a meaningful way, not a performative, box checking one; this both was consequence and created consequence), and Andrade was able to take over.

The match continued on like that. Where it became 60-40 instead of 50-50 was because of Andrade's strength advantage and a chess move here or there. Andrade took an extra few seconds to pull his pants off before going for the moonsault, but he was ready for Darby to move (one of the few times where his double moonsault, unfortunately done in every match, felt organic). That meant Darby had to try all the harder, including hitting a crazy crucifix takeover off the top as a reversal, right into a hold. 

They continued on like this, Andrade locking in, Darby battered but undaunted, until Darby was able to survive Andrade's abrupt spinning back elbow and sneak out a "Last Supper" bridging pin to win. Post-match, pride bruised but undiminished, Andrade went back to shake Darby's hand. He had more to prove but nothing to be ashamed of. Darby, on the other hand, now has to live with the burden of success, of being the number one contender. Now he has to show both the world and himself just what is truly inside of him. Is he just a mindlessly determined crash test dummy or is there a fully fleshed out human being capable of caring and worthy of regard and admiration inside of him after all? The stories that pro wrestling can tell.

It was almost seventeen minutes that felt like a brisk ten. They teased finishers but didn't truly hit them. They left with mutual respect for one another, Andrade refusing to do anyone else's dirty work, wrestling only for himself. There's more left on the bone for a rematch. There were big spots and huge bumps, but this was character-driven and tightly-focused, especially for a match that was so evenly fought. You don't think of a Darby Allin match as showing discipline and restraint but this did. There wasn't a single spot which felt out of place, contrived, or worked back from instead of worked towards. Which meant, of course, that it worked brilliantly, both despite itself and because of itself.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Brody

I wrote this 15 months ago and never posted it. Another love letter to Darby Allin. 

 

Darby Allin vs. Brody King AEW Dynamite 11/27/24

ER: It feels like a bit of a visual cheat to send Darby out there covered in bandages and tape. I understand selling a beating but I also love the idea of Darby's injuries all accumulating internally, his bones sounding like a wrench in a cement mixer when he moves. I don't need him biting into blood filled condoms every other week like Ken Shamrock, but I like the quiet dignity of a nutcase who has to be compiling injuries and refuses to show them. Now, Darby is showing all of them! His head is bandaged, his ribs are wrapped, his thigh is wrapped so visibly that it's wrapped over his leggings! In my day, men used to start wrestling in chaps or trash bag pants to hide their knee braces, but Darby is now wrapping his legs over his leggings.  Darby, I want you to hide your physical pain eternally, and to only let us in by way of screams and panicked writhing after a crash. I don't think I've ever seen a Darby match where he was doing this much physical selling before the bell, already holding his ribs and hopping around on one leg, and I don't know if I needed it. Not now. Don't tell us.  

I don't think the extra visible tape made this match any better than it was already going to be. But it is great, and Darby is provided hardly any openings. Brody catches the first kick thrown and chucks Darby into a reverse 450, then starts hitting full weight sentons, chops Darby off the apron to the floor, and introduces Darby to various areas of the floor and railing. 

There are two great missed spots by Brody that really move this match - excellently capped under the 10 minute mark - to another level: first, he misses a chop into the ringpost. I'm kind of over the missed chop into the ringpost as it's more expected than ever, but Brody is smart enough to not make it the singular miss. He swings hard and misses painfully in a way that easily could have broken his tibia, but the miss only drives him to set up something more risky, which leads to his second miss, a cannonball into the guardrail. One miss led to the bigger miss, and a twist of fate made that second miss even more special because it caused the production to short circuit. The TV screen went momentarily white, and when picture returned the commentary booth was disconnected. I really like the Excalibur/Schiavone team, but this match instantly felt different and special with no commentary, only the sounds of Darby's guttural moans and the impact of Brody's body. I wish the audio stayed unrestored for the entire home stretch. 

Where the considerable body tape continues to not work for me is during Darby's small comeback. Am I to believe his body is now in worse condition than ever before, as he does his tope and his two awesome Coffin Drops? Part of the big joy of Darby is not seeing how much pain he is going through to deliver these crash landings. I do not need visual clues beyond his own selling that Darby's skeleton is in pain. We all know he has to be in pain, and the imagination is a more powerful visual than any wrapped body part could be. I don't know if I've ever seen Darby come into a match selling damage before the bell, and it's kind of a foolish exercise as you knew those injuries were going to take a backseat once he got the chance to get moving, which is what we all wanted. The tape is not necessary for Darby. Leave that for other wrestlers. He transcends it. 

The finish rocked. They did a great job hinting at the double count out without milking drama from it, and then they just went straight to the end, playing off more than one classic plausible Darby finish in just 20 seconds. Darby is poised on the top rope, waiting for King to roll back in, waiting for that Coffin Drop. But if Brody had a miss so big that it sent the production truck scrambling, Darby had a miss so big it led to his near instant defeat. Darby trust falls straight back into Brody's big waiting arms. When Darby flipped back over into a pin, I thought my boy was going to sneak out with another one. But Brody dragged himself to his feet while never letting go of that hangman's sleeper. That sleeper also could have finished the match. Darby's eyes said that he knew it was going to finish him. He had no answer to two huge arms locked in tight around his neck and head with his feet not touching earth. Maybe Brody didn't want to chance it, maybe he didn't want to risk Darby lasting longer than his arms...so he finishes it so decisively with an over the shoulder piledriver so violent that anything other than a firm 1-2-3 would have proven Darby's T-1000 identity. He is mortal. He just shouldn't need tape. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/23 - 3/29

AEW Dynamite 3/25/26

RUSH vs Darby Allin

MD: This match was a gift.

Professional wrestling can be so many things, but one of the things it can be, one of the best things, is a release. It can be an invitation to take all the worries of the world, all the frustrations, all the sadness and darkness and pain, and to just lean in, lock in, hang on, and let go. 

It's functioned as this for generations, the artistic use of simulated violence as a means to quell the violence in our own hearts, as a conduit to let us scream along, wince along, clench our fists and gasp as we channel all of that emotion into a safe outlet.

It is succor and sanctuary. It understands. It knows that now and again we need to tap into the primal, tap into something grisly and raw and passionate, something forbidden in everyday society. It forgives. 

Through most of what wrestling offers us today, we can be awed. We can be entertained. We can marvel. We can wonder. We can be impressed. We can feel smart. We can feel connected. We can feel elation. And yes, some of us can chant "This is Awesome." 

All of those can be found in pro wrestling in one form or another.

But that wasn't this. 

In an age where we, as a society, have been given other invitations, public ones, harmful ones, toxic, manipulative ones, to be our worst selves in the very worst ways, this form of pro wrestling is an invitation to be our worst selves in the best of ways. 

And maybe, maybe the sanitized, produced, athletic, and choreographed form of wrestling that taps into something OTHER than our worst self is better.

But my god, we're only human, aren't we? And if we're going to get some release, let's get it through this, just like our parents could, like our grandparents could, like our great grandparents could, and like our children and their children will hopefully still be able to someday.

It is a gift. It was a gift to us, watching at home, and it was a gift to the people of St. Paul in the stands.

Even a match like this was beholden to the limitations of modern televised wrestling. There was a commercial break. They set it up well. Darby wiped out massively on a tope attempt, the sort of trainwreck you expect from him. The doctor was checking on him. Rush menaced, and then he basked.

And St. Paul chanted "Fuck ICE." They're not the first, but previously, it was tied to Brody King's meaningful presence or tacked on to already existing "Fuck Don Callis" chants. Here it was unrelated to any of that. From these people who needed to combine their voices and chant it so badly. Why then during this pause in the main event, certainly not the only pause in the show? Why get it all out here? 

Because through their sheer intensity, through their planned and spontaneous artistic expression of violence, Rush and Darby opened the floodgates of emotion and gave this crowd an invitation to let it all out. Pro wrestling.

And how did they do it?

Rush ambushed Darby right at the start, shoved him off the top rope on his entrance. That wasn't a surprise. The mood was in the air ever since the match was announced, as Rush made his entrance, fist pumping to the music, as Darby skateboarded down and everyone wondered when the violence would begin. 

This was "no countout" and they made use of the stipulation, brawling around ringside. Rush immediately went under the ring, probably for the wire he uses to choke people. It wasn't there. That gave everything an immediate feeling of being natural, organic. It drew you in. It wasn't a botch. It was the panacea to carefully planned out spots that define every other match on the card. You got the sense that Rush simply wanted to hurt Darby with any means at his disposal and if he couldn't find the first thing, he'd take the second.

And he did just that throughout the match, with Darby returning the favor when he could. This wasn't a "no disqualification" match, but he could toss Darby into the ringsteps and cause him to bump head over heels into the barricade. He could sit Darby in a chair and topple him over. Later on, after a now bloodied up Darby did hit a tope successfully, Rush would end up in that chair to eat a missile dropkick off the top to the floor. 

There was another moment during the break which was just as organic. Rush walked over and took Taz's water, pouring it over himself. It felt like a fully formed, completely "on" character doing exactly what he would naturally do in the moment. Every pro wrestling match would be better off with two or three moments like this, just someone making use of the situation in front of him, even if it meant things go off track for a few valuable TV seconds. Part of the appeal is the live improvisation. It's always been part of the appeal.

Darby was a clear underdog here. He had set a dozen traps for Gabe Kidd the week before, but here he was trudging through nature naked and with only his wits, skill, bravery and resolve, and Rush was the storm. The advantages he got where daring, defiant, and clever. He pulled the apron curtain out to trap Rush's foot. When Rush was leaned back in his Tranquilo pose, he pounced at him from across the ring to attack. He moved out of the way as the Horns corner dropkick came sailing in causing Rush to wipe out which allowed him to float over with a jackknife pin to win it. 

These were not sure things by any means. In the first two cases, Rush fired back. He would be quick to cut Darby off with an eyerake, a headbutt, a sharp kick. Darby won, not with the Scorpion Deathlock, not even with the stylized Last Supper, but instead with whatever flash pin he could sneak on to escape with his skin intact. 

It was eleven and a half minutes, with a chance to take a breath, or to express pent-up frustrations with that breath, in the middle. They let things set in. They made sure to portray massive physical consequence to everything that happened. It was a war but not necessarily a sprint or a bomb-fest. Even when they did a strike exchange, there was contrast and things were not just absorbed without immediate meaning. 

It didn't need to be a twenty minute epic to grab  you by the soul and twist. It was a match that made the most out of every second, even the seconds where Darby was convalescing or Rush was basking, preening, or seething. That sort of inaction and reaction can be just as consequential as any spot, maybe even more so.

No matter how you used that breath during the commercial break, you were almost certainly catching it by the time the match ended. Maybe your heart felt lighter. Maybe you felt inspired to run through a wall. Maybe you were left jittery, not sure what to think, not sure how to feel. But you did feel. Maybe it had pulled you away from the worries of the day. Maybe it had dragged you right through them to the other side. But wherever you were, it wasn't where you had began and you were almost certainly better off for the journey.

Pro wrestling can be so many things.

But it can be this too: organic, raw, visceral, meaningful, beautiful, terrible, and brisk, if only we let go and allow it to be; if only the wrestlers can let go and dive in and commit themselves to it fully and fearlessly.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/16 - 3/22

AEW Dynamite 3/18/26

Darby Allin vs Gabe Kidd [Coffin Match]

MD: Darby Allin coffin matches are bulletproof, right?

Maybe not.

There was a real booker's dilemma here. Kidd is a guy that they want to push over time. He's the apparent centerpiece of the new heel stable, a pretty dynamic and over the top persona, the kind of wrestler that maybe you can market. 

Darby, on the other hand, after getting mobbed and mogged by the Dogs for the last month or two, is ready to move on. He's not just ready to move on but to be pushed back into the world title scene. The Coffin Match is his match. Theoretically, it makes things easier since you don't need a pinfall or submission. It's perfect for a heel to slip on a banana peel and get shut in.

Finally, AEW prides itself on fostering the wrestlers' creativity and that is honestly wonderful in a processed, overly produced top-down world of pro wrestling. It doesn't always work out and it can lead to excess and bloat, but when you sum it all out, this sort of creative freedom is ultimately a good thing.

So where did that get things here? This time, Darby ambushed Kidd outside the arena. Every else was banned so he didn't have to worry about numbers, and he used his pluck and canniness to ether Kidd, toss him in the truck of a car, and immediately crash it. While both would be battered, Darby was more prepared and accustomed to that sort of insanity and he had the advantage. He pressed that advantage by carting Kidd into the arena and trying to put a straightjacket on him. He got most of the way there, limiting his motion. Kidd fought back, but got swept under again, allowing Darby to cinch the straightjacket, giving him even more of an advantage. Kidd, with no arms, had a last burst of offense anyway, and then, even after surviving two Coffin Drops, was so tough that needed to be crashed into by Darby at full speed to go into the Coffin. 

On paper, it checks boxes, right? Darby gets to be creative and do a big stunt that people will remember, one that gives some poetic closure to the Dogs' out of ring ambushes. The character of Darby is shown to be clever and a world-beater. Kidd is doubly protected, both for the car crash and then the straightjacket. Maybe triply so for all that he survives. Darby moves on with a definitive win, ending the feud, and goes into the main event scene.

So where does this go wrong?

Let's start with the car crash. They noted that cameras were on the scene. Maybe not the best rationale but better than some omnipotent outside force. This was supposed to be live though. Darby ambushing Kidd by where he parked a beat up car, Darby using the ether rag, Darby stuffing him in the trunk. All plausible enough. Darby setting things up so that there was a trash pile right in front of the car that would cause a perfect flip? I mean, he's Darby, maybe? Likewise that Kidd would be more hurt by Darby. Hell, maybe Darby even wore a seatbelt. Seatbelts save lives. 

Maybe that's me giving all of this a lot of grace, but I've seen some crazy things out of Darby over the last few years. 

But those picture perfect camera shots? A bridge too far. I buy that a camera and production crew used to filming live wrestling would be able to cut from one shot to another relatively quickly. But that's around ringside in a controlled environment. Here, in the midst of what was supposed to be the insane antics of two madmen, some of those cuts were just too perfect, whether it was the flip, the aftermath, Kidd falling out of the trunk. You can do something like this if you really feel the need to, but you have to make it plausible, which they did well enough, and then make sure it's not so polished that it seems like it's just part of the show. Here, it absolutely did.

Which leads me to the straightjacket. In principle, it's a fun idea. Darby's a trickster, to a degree, maybe not as much so as Orange Cassidy, but he's a trickster nonetheless. He's an underdog. He's resilient and resourceful. He's done arts and crafts before to create weapons of war. Kidd had an obvious physical advantage. This helped to level the scales. 

Plus I love the idea of wrestling around limitations. The coolest part of the match wasn't the car crash (Sorry), but after Kidd was fully locked in the straightjacket when he kicked the ref into the ropes to stumble Darby and somehow hit a running power slam with no arms. Just like endless, boundless, borderless creativity has its charms, so does creativity within firm limits, even limits that wrestlers don't have to usually deal with. And this created a sense of the real. He really couldn't move his arms. That draws you in immediately.

The problem was, maybe, that Kidd isn't the guy I was supposed root for here, and this wasn't just Darby being clever and resourceful. It was Darby laying a trap on top of a trap on top of a trap. This isn't Home Alone. There's a size disadvantage, but it's one thing to set up a rake for your opponent to step on; it's another to ether him and put him in a trunk for a car crash. There's a different power dynamic there. This was partially mitigated by the first half of the match where Kidd was slowed down but had his hands still free, and this was leaning on a lot of bad actions that Kidd and his cronies had done up until this point, making this more of a revenge fantasy against bullies, but by the end of it, you were maybe left wondering just who the real bully in this situation was. 

Again, there's an interesting story there that could possible be told, but it's not the one that they were telling and not the one that will propel Darby back into the main event scene. We're used to the notion of a babyface having to fight back against the odds, and wrestling is set up so that what matters the most is what's happening in the moment. Instead, Kidd had the deck stacked against him from the get go, and he came off as an almost valiant madman who refused to quit in the face of adversity, which is, in so many ways, Darby's own deal. 

Even on the finish, it was just too much. Kidd had made his last burst after being helpless. Just let him get put away with the two Coffin Drops. Don't have him fight back onto his feet after that. It protects him just a little more, maybe, but it doesn't necessarily protect him as a heel. That's borderline heroic stuff in today's pro wrestling. It's one thing for the monster to rise up one last time, a boss' final form, before the hero finally slays him. That doesn't work if the monster's in a straightjacket and is an easy target. It's a headshot on a helpless opponent. 

You can't fault them for what they went through, how they put their bodies on the line, how hard they worked, and you also have to be sympathetic to the way this was laid out, because on paper, it did check certain boxes. In reality, however, this one crashed off course (and maybe did a flip in mid air along the way).

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/9 - 3/15 Part 1

ROH TV 3/13/36

Athena vs Maya World [Proving Ground]

MD: Studio wrestling stemming from recent events when Maya, with Hyan and Deonna, stood up to Athena/Billie/Diamante back during the collaborative Metroplex show. Maya being an Athena protégé has not necessarily been a key part of her presentation so far in AEW/ROH up until this point, but I'd argue that she and Hyan don't necessarily have a clear, defined presentation relative to some others.

Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they tagging? What brings them together past an opportunity taken when others did not? What do they want out of life? What are their similarities? What are their differences? Etc. So far, it hasn't been super clear.

This helped though.

In some ways, Maya feels like even more of a "minion" to Athena than even Billie, because Billie was romping up and down the indies for a couple of years before arriving to AEW and finding her away under Athena's thumb. From a story perspective, one might wonder then why Billie was on TV with her and Maya was watching from the sidelines and then, once she arrived, left to her own devices.

Maya seems pretty happy with her lot in life though and doesn't care to ask those questions. Athena, on the other hand, in wonderfully hypocritical fashion, takes offense at Maya opposing her, complains about Maya crossing a line that Athena herself never truly drew.

Which brings them to this, a chance to make an example out of Maya, to teach her a lesson as she'd taught Billie lessons before, at the end of a forearm. But to show that Maya was even more beneath her notice (even as she was obviously getting under her skin), this was instead a proving ground match.

And Athena meant to prove her point right from the get go. Left hand extended. Her usual dainty code of honor handshake. Right into the magic forearm. Athena stomped Maya in the corner and started in on the ref, the crowd, Maya, the world. She wanted it too badly, however, showing that vulnerability which makes her stand out as much as the intensity. It's a give and take with her and once Maya got just a bit of distance between them, she took, forcing Athena to run into a very clever rope-assisted spin kick.

Now it was Maya's turn to take advantage of Athena's mistake. She had caused it by getting under Athena's skin and now she pressed the issue and reaped the benefits. She hit a series of moves, including doing damage on the floor. The problem was, in the micro, time was against her. She could keep Athena on her toes, but it was too early in the match for her to keep Athena down.

Athena got up. She reversed a whip, caught a kick, snuck in a knee, and then jammed both knees right into Maya's face in the corner. She would then, of course, lean on Maya. Maya's hope spots were solid and believable and tended to come not because of any mistake Athena made (she had already made her mistake at the start of the match and wouldn't make it again), but because she had such familiarity with Athena's offense.

Eventually that let her dodge just enough moves to come back all the way and things went back and forth with bombs, blocks, and roll-ups down the stretch. Maya managed to dodge the O-Face and position around to hook in a Reinera slam just as the bell rang. We were meant to wonder if maybe she could have snuck a win there; all it takes is three and this was deep into the match. But we have seen Athena survive far more than that. No, instead, this was a moral victory, a draw in a Proving Ground match, something unheard of in all of Athena's forever reign, and an opportunity for more. Phantom pin or no, what we're actually left wondering is if Athena would learn from her mistake or if her fury would overwhelm her all the more in their next encounter.

ROH TV Special Friday Episode 3/13/26

RUSH vs BEEF

MD: Two wrestlers. All Caps. You know what you're getting. Look, I have been fairly hard on Dralistico in specific situations when he's up against a babyface and playing a heel, not even a de facto heel, an outright heel, and he tries to steal the clap up and the cheers, not in a jeering way like, let's say, Yuta does, but to really get the crowd behind him. 

And yes, to some degree, Rush does this too, he does. He eats guys up. He takes the air out of the room. But unlike Dralistico or just about anyone else, he's beyond the realm of such expectations. He draws the eye that much. He turns the head. He locks you in so that you can do nothing but hang on and go for the ride. He's Ultimate Warrior and he's Goldberg and he's Buzz Sawyer. There are so few wrestlers in 2026 that can carry that sort of energy. He is an attraction. 

He's not treated like an attraction. He's not used like one. But he is one. Sometimes, I get the sense because of how he's presented, the fans don't really have any idea what they're getting into until that bell rings and the power takes them. 

And it rang here. He kicked away the code of honor. The great thing about this is that Beef, himself, can be sort of an attraction, an everyman. Is he more Hillbilly Jim than Dusty Rhodes? I don't know. Ask me again in five years, but also don't downplay the connection a guy like Jim had with the crowd. Beef has it too. They went off the ropes to start, Beef crashing into Rush, Rush holding his ground. That's the thing about Rush. When push comes to shove (no pun intended), he does give, he does show ass, he does falter. He just makes his opponent work for it and then he takes twice as much back as wrathfully as possible. Here he won that exchange by taking Beef out on a leapfrog allowing him to land an explosive dropkick, but then he ate a bunch of BEEF's fun pokey punches, stooging around the ring for him.

That stooging was short-lived; because he is Rush, he started to fire back. Look, I am not a strike exchange sort of guy. But the strikes being exchanged aren't generally these strikes and not from these two. There was something rough and raw and wild here, something completely out of control. It wasn't pretty. It was far more about the throwing of the strikes than the withstanding of them, and as much about hyping the crowd up and getting into it as anything else. Rush would take a shot and then channel it right into the crowd as he waved his hands to try to rechannel the pain. It went from Beef's hand into his chest, into his arms, into the crowd, back through the crowd, into Rush's body, and then back at Beef. If that's not pro wrestling, I have no idea what is. And it all built to Beef just slapping hands one after the other, an out of control dynamo that wan't to lash back at what had been hurting him. 

It worked until it didn't. Rush caught him, thrashed him one last time with a forearm, sent him spiraling down to the corner. He teased the Horns, rolled back into the Tranquilo pose, and really never looked back from there. Beef had put up a good fight, a noble fight, an admirable fight, but there was a big hierarchy difference here, and all he could do was to try to catch his breath, to keep alive, to roll to the floor to recover. That's the last place you want to be against Rush though, and the end had already begun. The fans knew it too. They embraced Rush, let him lean back into a flag and bask. 

And in a different setting against a different opponent with different stakes on a different stage, maybe it would have frustrated me, but here, on an episode of ROH on YouTube in front of a crowd that just wanted to feel something, anything, no matter what, what can I do but throw up my hands and grin along. He's an attraction being an attraction. Hang on, ride the wave. He comes. He goes. He gets injured. He gets suspended. He gets grumpy. Let's enjoy him while we have him. Now and again we're allowed nice things.

Top Flight/Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs MxM/RPG Vice

MD: We talk about moments. Usually we talk about moments negatively when it comes to WWE because they fabricate unnatural ones and put them above and beyond matches, right? But moments are an important part of wrestling because they're an important part of wrestling matches, just like they're important in any other form of fiction. They should stem from the characters within the match naturally. They should be built to and they should pay off. One of the great fallacies of wrestling discussion of this decade is that it's either/or. It's not. It's all organic. That's true with promos and angles and matches and it's true with moments around and within matches.

And here, they did a great job of building to character-driven moments which had meaning within the match. Part of the joy of a match like this is to see the weird interactions. You have Top Flight interacting with Ortiz and Kingston. I was as interested in how Eddie would interact with Daniels post-match during the hand-raising as anything else in the match. That doesn't mean I don't love action. It just means that I find these characters and their history and all that they carry behind them fascinating as well. It's not either/or. It's additive. And Eddie looked as happy as I've seen him in ages post match celebrating with these guys, and I loved to see it.

There were big spots. Of course there were. Top Flight was in there. But my favorite moment in this whole thing was when MXM got Trent to pose (after trying to do so earlier in the match). He lingered too long and it ended up a transition allowing the babyfaces to take back over. That was very lucha-coded to me (though a lot of people wouldn't think of it that way because of the way lucha has been minimized in the States over the years), cocky heels doing cocky things either too many times or for too long and paying for it. What's great about it is that if the babyfaces did it, it'd be a big culminating moment, like Brody King finally doing the macarena but because it was the heels, it was them getting stooged. 

This was a lot of fun and it's always great to see Kingston in the mix with younger and contrasting talent. That's the strength of him. Yes, he can trade chops with Minoru Suzuki or whatever, but it's so much more interesting when you put him in there against a Lee Moriarty or Soberano, Jr. or, I don't know, Doink and see what happens.

AEW Dynamite 3/11/26

Dogs (David Finlay/Gabe Kidd) vs Orange Cassidy/Darby Allin

MD: This match was a cog in the storyline machine, a set up to the Roddy turn (or non-turn or whatever you'd call it) and setting up the six-man for the PPV, but it was also a way to really debut Finlay and make a statement about just who and what the Dogs were. They had that pretty amazing enhancement match on Collision, but this punctuated that real well in an actual match.

They're different than almost every team on the roster because they're dogged, just incessant energy. They have big spots for down the stretch, but for a lot of the body of the match, they just stay on their opponents. If you put Connors in there as well, then he's just throwing himself at people. With these two, it's more catching, like Finlay caught Darby on his dive with a forearm in order to really take over after the initial ambush and fire back. I liked how much they made Cassidy work for literally every inch when he was fighting from underneath. There were one or two times I thought he was about to make the hot tag but they dragged him back like their namesake and it really worked for me. 

And of course, Darby and Orange are the secret main character team of AEW, an odd couple that feed into one another in perfect, subtle ways. To make a very dated comic book reference, they're the Defenders of AEW, a non-team that absolutely work. I get there's mileage out of Roddy and Cassidy (a similar if less subtle team-up) right now, but I'd love to see Darby/Cassidy against FTR or hell even the Bucks (and for me to say that..). They're the TV workmen of the company and I'd be really interested to see a fighting champions run at some point. 

Anyway, this really got the job done and I hope that Finlay, Kidd, Connors get the freedom to keep working matches like this. So much of it was still all action but it was stifling and oppressive in the best way at the same time.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/26 - 2/1

AEW Collision 1/31/26

Darby Allin vs Clark Connors

MD: I didn't write up Darby vs PAC. I should have but I was focused on MJF vs Bandido. That wasn't it though. There was something more. It was that belly-to-belly on the stairs. Every single Darby Allin match has a bump like that. Something that takes your stomach and shoves it up into your throat. He's such a good seller, such a good underdog, so credible with his timing and opportunism and fight, has such a connection with the crowd, that every single one of his matches probably doesn't need one of those massive exclamation points. There are going to be a lot of really effective, meaningful periods along the way. Lots of punctuation. But every match has an exclamation point or two.

That one struck me harder than most though. It reminded me of Foley going off the cell, actually. Not at all the same thing, but that's not the point. The point is presentation. It was visually ghastly, gutwrenching. It took me out for the rest of the match because all I could think about was the spot. It just ran through my head over and over. And it left me thinking "This won't matter in a week," and that thought made me frustrated, because it was special. Even within the confines of Darby's exclamation points, it felt special. Too special to just be thrown away. But that's what I thought was going to happen. It should be one of those things we're talking about ten years from now. 

Pro wrestling is about presentation. That's what Vince worked out back in the 80s and it's what carried him for decades. It's not just about presentation. But so much of it is. You can do the best work in the world and if the promotion doesn't present that work the right way, doesn't frame it in a manner that makes it feel important and that sets it up for success, then it won't mean nearly as much as it could. That's not the banal storytelling argument. This is actually something different. They turned Foley's bump into myth. Yet Darby takes a bump like that every few weeks. How do you square that circle?

Could it be instead that Darby is greater than the sum of the parts? That if any single part was raised to be too important then the whole might be diminished. There are people who will kick and scream if they ever see this sentence (thankfully they don't read my stuff) but in a lot of ways, Darby is the heir to Johnny Valentine. Valentine always said that people might think wrestling is fake but no one would think he was fake. 

We feel everything Darby does so acutely. We know it hurts. It's 2026. We all love and respect wrestling and we appreciate deeply the way wrestlers put their bodies on the line to create art for us to enjoy and engage with. With Darby it's different though. He carries with him that element of deathmatch realism, distilled into bumps. Yeah maybe they could protect themselves on X, but Darby? Not Darby. It's impossible. So he's the heir to Jeff Hardy and Mick Foley and ECW and Johnny Valentine all at once. That perfect package of size and shape and vulnerability and selling and bumping and grasping fight. But Darby Allin? Darby's different.

But still, when you have a bump like that, something so gripping and brutal and visual, where the angles are all wrong and the metal is unforgiving, and the jag fits right in between the vertebrae just so, you want it to be treated differently. You want it to continue to matter. You want the commentary to remember it and for it to be on highlight packages and in the opening to the show. It should live for years. If the production cares, then we can care and not just move on from it. It doesn't become crash TV or Excalibur using "But" or "and" to move right on to the next thing. There's a fine line between Vince thinking that pro wrestling fans have no memory for anything and the idea that it's worth it to immortalize things that can, do, and should matter to them with reinforcement. That's all selling is in the end, getting fans to buy in that things can and do matter. 

A lot of that is what I was going to say if I did write about the PAC match, and it's important I said it here, because they succeeded beyond my expectations in making that spot matter here against Connors.

They established up front that he had an alliance with Kidd, that he was there to make a mark against an AEW original, a perennial world title contender, the heir to Sting (let alone everyone else I mentioned). And the damage from the belly-to-belly was the perfect wedge to let him do it believably. 

If Darby was a crash test dummy of sorts, then Connors was an absolute wrecking ball. Darby came in with his back bandaged, and from even before the bell, Connors made it his goal in life to toss his own body at Darby, in some ways using Darby's favorite tactic against him. 

It started even as Darby was skateboarding down to ringside. He was there like a bull charging right into him. It continued again and again. He'd have Darby on the apron dangling and he'd just go headlong. He accomplished more with shoulder tackles than anyone in a decade or two. Darby would get a hope spot in, but his hand would clutch his back and Connors would charge right back at him. It was force vs object but both of them were moving in the most impactful way, a 21st century version of titans clashing, where things resonated not because nothing would give but because everything had to again and again.

And then they found themselves back on the outside and with the specter of the spot hanging above them, Connors went to double down upon it, tried to manifest it once again. He got greedy, hungry, possessed by the violence he had witnessed PAC orchestrate. Darby was ready, and literally used the steps to vault himself back into the match. There were bumps along the way but that was the beginning of the end, and he scored yet another mythic, impossible, gripping win. 

And yet. The one moment where Connors really shut him down, really took over? Darby had gone to the top and Connors (yet again) charged in. The bump Darby took, careening onto the apron and somehow managing to hit it multiple times on the way to the floor? An exclamation point in a sea of periods. The sort of thing that will stick with you, that should stick with you, that they should show again and again, that should be in an opening show package, that should matter next week. That should be used, just as the belly-to-belly was used here, to build something meaningful in the future. 

The problem of Darby Allin. Just how high can these towers of devastation get? All the way to Everest maybe. 

ROH TV 1/29/26

Athena vs Vertvixen

MD: Athena's entire rise was a Johnny Valentine moment as well. She had been transitioning from being a babyface, had dropped down the card, was on ROH, was up against Jody Threat in Canada, and she went hard against her. The clips went viral. Old timers and engagement accounts hoping to grift against AEW to make a buck and stay relevant leaned hard into their inherent misogyny and berated her for being careless, for not looking after her opponent in a way they never would if, let's say Lance Archer had a match like that, and she embraced it and ran with it, all the way to becoming one of the most engaging characters in wrestling. 

Wrestling shouldn't feel collaborative. It shouldn't feel cooperative. In 2026, the lean towards elaborate spots and counters and sequences have meant that all too often it does. 

That means if something goes wrong, it's jarring, and we're conditioned for the response to be consummate.

Athena, athletic, dominant, confident champion that she is, outwrestled Vertvixen to start. That confidence gave way to arrogance though, and Vertvixen turned it, both the wrestling and the mocking back onto Athena. Athena snapped, made use of her superior agility, and dropped Vertvixen's face right onto her knees. Vertvixen sold it hard, rubbing at her jaw and her nose and her teeth. There was the sense of something being slightly off as they didn't quite roll into the next bit of offense. In some ways, that's not surprising since Athena's so good at reacting and letting things sink in and resonate, but as an audience, we're used to specific timing cues and this felt just a little long. 

But then, instead of moving away from the potentially hurt area, Athena leaned hard into it, grasping the nose and whacking it. Before there was maybe the possibility of blood. She ensured the reality of it, and having done so, waved her bloody hand around to show the crowd. Aubrey was the referee and moved to get gloves on immediately even as Athena veered off course and into the wonderful world of woundwork. 

I have no idea what was planned and what was called. All I know is the effect it had on the audience and myself, the narrative power of something going off course and a heel pushing it even harder in that direction and reveling in it all the way. All I know is that the crowd, already inclined to get behind Vertvixen, got behind her all the more, and she came off looking all the better for fighting through the pain and doing some real damage to Athena long the way. And THAT in turn, made Athena's shaken confidence and deep anger down the stretch and especially in the post-match, set things up perfectly for Maya World and Hyan to run down to make the save and set things up for the big six-woman tag next week. 

Athena is always on. Athena gives herself completely to the role. But unlike most wrestlers, that doesn't just mean that she's reading her lines using as a method actress. It means instead that she's so tuned into who and what she's trying to portray that she'll perfectly take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way, and that, as much as anything else, is the true spirit of pro wrestling.

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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 11/18 - 11/30 Part 2

AEW Dynamite 11/26/25

Darby Allin vs. Kevin Knight

MD: I'm no expert on the concept of challenger brands, but I know a thing or two about comparative advantage. At the end of the day, AEW is wrestling, and in the US, wrestling is associated with WWE. It has been for four decades basically, and for over two of those, WWE has had a functional monopoly. It's a starting point for whatever sort of pro wrestling any other company is going to present, even if it long ago morphed into sports entertainment, and even if that particular flavor of sports entertainment has become something plastic, homogenized, and entirely corporate.

So it has to be familiar enough that sponsors, tv execs, grandparents buying Christmas presents, etc. will recognize it. That doesn't seem particularly hard though, not really. And it's not particularly interesting to talk about. What is interesting to talk about is what AEW does from there. How do they differentiate themselves? How do they fill a hole in the market? How do they offer something that the frontrunner cannot. 

We've seen some of that throughout November. The compare/contrast between War Games and Blood and Guts pretty much speaks for itself. 

Now we're into December though and December, in AEW, is all about the Continental Classic. The C2 is a beautiful thing, a celebration of wrestling as sport, a round robin tournament where faces can wrestle faces and heels can wrestle heels, where every match matters and where it all comes down to points, endurance, match-ups. 

It's a false dichotomy to try to separate wrestling from storytelling. Every match tells a story; some tell a story more clearly and cleanly than others of course. In this case however, the difference (dare I say the advantage) is in the sorts of stories that can be told. 

Case in point, Kevin Knight vs Darby Allin. Outside of the tournament, there wouldn't be an underlying story coming in. It would be a 'cold match,' one completely hinging on who these two wrestlers are and where they currently stand within their own fictional lives and the overall fictional universe, and of course, the wrestling styles that they bring to the table.

That, in and of itself, might be enough, because there's a lot that's interesting there, but it's made all the more so in the tournament environment.

Darby is fighting a never ending war, one that's left him in shambles. He just lost to PAC (dishonorably) after being burned (also dishonorably). The C2 is a chance to pull himself back together and try to gain some measure of tangible, conventional, professional success. It's also a chance to face off against PAC (and maybe Claudio and Moxley) again and ruin their aspirations. It's a chance to live life dangerously, to leap headlong into facing new opponents and proving himself, of pushing himself as far as human can possibly be pushed so that he can once again feel alive. 

For Kevin Knight, it's a chance to prove himself, to stand on his own, to show the world what he can accomplish. He just failed to win the National title. He has failed once or twice to win the tag titles. He's been told he might be a main eventer in three years. Maybe people see him as just a high flyer, the less experienced junior partner to Speedball. This is his best chance to test himself against the best in the world and moreover to show the world that he belongs alongside them. It's his best chance to supercharge that sideways promise of what he might someday become.

Darby came in hurt. Knight came in hungry. And they had a match that was sports-based in its trappings far more than the critics who don't actually watch the product might imagine. They, like other first round match-ups so far, started on the mat, a feeling out process, Darby showing off his background and Knight wanting the world to see he was multifaceted. Knight, perhaps leaning on Darby's physical weakness coming in, took an advantage and drove Darby to the floor. Darby tweaked a leg on the way down, opening himself up for a picture perfect barricade dive from Knight, and the match opening up in the latter's favor.

Interestingly, Knight didn't hone in on the leg. Instead, he worked the arm, and when that failed him, tossed Darby into the corner at full speed. Every subsequent time that Darby started to come back, he shifted gears, refusing to stay with one tactic for long. When it looked like Darby was about to beat a ten-count, he took the fight right to him with a leaping clothesline out of the ring. There was a real sense of keeping the ball on one side of the field and continuously shooting on goal here. It's not wrestling as sport in the same way that Bret Hart or Steve Grey or Tatsumi Fujinami are necessarily, for they move entirely differently. Knight and Darby are broad, full of a physical charisma that emphasizes output, consequence, instead of input. But a similar feeling is there nonetheless in the creative strategic decisions at play.

You could see it all the way down to the finish. Knight missed with the UFO but caught Darby on the way up for a Coffin Drop. He hit the coast to coast dropkick, as breathtaking a move as could be, and then followed it up by hitting the UFO splash, also spectacular. What really stood out to me was what he did in the middle, however. When Darby was stunned by the dropkick, he hefted him across the ring with grit, without hesitation. In that moment, even more so than the coast-to-coast or the UFO, that you could see how badly Knight wanted it. 

The C2 isn't just one thing. It's a celebration of so many of the things that make wrestling great. Part of that is the high bumping and huge selling of people like Darby and Knight, and the amazing moves they do. Part of it, though, is how much they care, how genuine they are. There's nothing plastic or artificial here. It may not resemble the "wrestling as sport" of decades ago, but it embodies a similar spirit and it's nothing that the frontrunner brand can begin to hope to offer.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/17 - 11/23

AEW Full Gear 2025 11/22/25

Darby Allin vs PAC

MD: There were people that questioned why this needed to be on the PPV when it was announced. On paper, maybe it was just a good match for the sake of being a good match, the sort of thing that has been used for years now to fill out AEW PPVs and tilt those Observer Thumbs Up and Cagematch ratings. And maybe that would have been enough. But there was more at play here.

Darby came in literally hot, having been burned by PAC (or more accurately put through a burning table by him, with Gabe Kidd's help) at Blood & Guts. But this is a Darby that had come down from Everest, one that's at peace with himself. He came in hot but he used that heat to fuel a wrestling machine. He didn't fly in with strikes but instead with headlock takeovers. The purpose of this was twofold. First, PAC had come in saying that they were going to wrestle a clean match and the better man would win. By outwrestling him early, Darby would hurt PAC more than any single punch to the face. More than that though, Darby was bandaged up. He had to wrestle conservatively, even if aggressively. While he had the luxury, he wouldn't use his own body as a weapon.

That luxury wouldn't last long. After barely escaping a makeshift Scorpion Deathlock attempt, PAC was able to catch him on the apron and press slam him to the floor. What followed was a brutal heat section where they did a great job mixing up big bumps/moves (that press slam, though that was a transition, Darby's absolutely brutal bump past the corner to the floor, even the neck-first catapult into the bottom rope) with PAC being a malicious maniac, tearing off the bandages and giving Darby an Indian burn. Everything came together for the latter: Darby's distorted skin, the way the bandage flew through the air, the look of exultation on PAC's face and agony on Darby's, how shocked and horrified the commentators were. It got as big a reaction from the crowd as both of Darby's huge bumps. 

Anything in pro wrestling can matter so long as it's presented correctly and much, much more effort should be made in making small things like this matter as much as possible. Not only is it safer and more varied than big bump after big bump, but it also allows those bumps, if framed correctly, to mean even more through escalation. The proof is in the audience reaction here (and yes, they did go up even higher as Darby crashed through the corner).

Darby mounted a comeback by catching PAC in the apron (and the sense of struggle here was great; PAC was desperate to get out in a way that others in that rare spot often aren't), setting him up for a dive and then a gnarly dropkick from the top to PAC seated on the floor in a chair. 

Darby was obviously hurting and PAC presents himself successfully as one of the best in the world, so they would go back and forth from there. PAC was able to catch Darby off the ropes turning a Coffin Splash into a suplex. He was unable to put him away with the Brutalizer though. Darby was able to get out of the way of a Black Arrow and it looked like he was going to put PAC away with the Scorpion Deathlock.

But there was a plan for this. The Death Riders have quit a little too much lately (even if it's almost all been on the head of their leader). PAC had vowed that this would be a fair fight, that the best man would win. So in some ways, he'd already lost when Wheeler Yuta rushed up to the apron to distract Darby and the ref, and doubly so, when he used the bat to knock Darby out. But moral victories don't exist in the record books, only wins and losses. 

And later on when Moxley faced O'Reilly there was a plan as well. Once it was clear that O'Reilly had an answer for every bit of wrestling Moxley could throw at him, Marina handed Mox the fork and he used it to take over. The plan worked for PAC. The plan only failed in the Casino Gauntlet because Matt Menard chose to punish Garcia and run him off instead of trying to win the National Title. The Plan here worked right up until the point it didn't, until the point where Moxley, having broken Kyle's arm, still managed to tap out to a chain reinforced ankle lock. Maybe he went back and finished the job after the match but even if he won the war, he lost the battle, and in this case, the battle was more important than the war. 

So yes, Darby vs PAC was great, but it wasn't just a great match for the sake of having great matches. There was a grudge coming in and it was worked to that. More importantly, it set the stage, through a begrudging plan of the Death Riders coming to fruition, for Mox vs O'Reilly where a similar plan, unveiled far sooner and far more desperately, nonetheless failed. That contrast hangs over Moxley like his own personal Sword of Damocles, just waiting to fall.

AEW Full Gear 2025 Collision Tailgate Brawl 11/22/25

Eddie Kingston/Hook vs Workhorsemen

MD: It's amazing what you can do in two minutes. Look, I'm not going to say anyone should or shouldn't have done whatever they did or didn't do. We never have the full story and it's always complicated and we do far too much speaking up on matters that we're just blind men touching elephants on.

What I can speak on, however, is this match. They had two minutes, less than two minutes according to cagematch (just 1:48). But the Workhorsemen punched in and showed what they could do. They ambushed Hook and Eddie on the way down. Drake took Eddie out, and that's the way things have been for Kingston as he builds up his fighting strength from match to match. That meant they had Hook isolated and though he tried to fire back off the ropes or out of the corner, they went to work. 

That meant hitting their signature flurry of a Drake apron clothesline, the Henry headtwist, and Drake flying in with a slingshot somersault senton. Hook was finally able to get out of the way causing a bit of miscommunication and then launching Henry. By then Eddie was recovered and he did the same to Drake setting the stage to hit a quick DDT out of nowhere and scoring the win. 

But in two minutes the Workhorsemen, professional as can be, got a spotlight to show that they could take the initiative, knock Hook around the ring, and hit some polished, brutal offense on the guy who was going to be the hingepoint of the PPV's main event. No small thing even for two men who are very, very good at what they do.

ROH TV 11/20/25

Athena vs Harley Cameron (Ported: https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1991866317486555505)

Throughout the years, we've created a critical system of reviewing and ranking matches that's based on things like action, execution, big spots, and exciting finishing stretches.

It often leaves more performative elements behind. These would include facial reactions, body language, character driven creative choices, and yeah, even selling. 

In fact, over the years, matches that lean too hard on some of these elements tend to be judged by some as unfortunate because they can "negatively impact the action" and make it so a match isn't considered as conventionally great as it might have been if the wrestlers had just been allowed to go hard and lean into workrate instead.

A recent review I saw of Demolition vs Brainbusters from SNME 21, a match that trades workrate for a clever and consistent story of Demolition getting increasingly frustrated leading to a DQ, comes to mind.

Along these lines, some of Jon Moxley's recent performances where he's been leaning hard into the role of a mad king who saw his pro wrestling kingdom crumbling, a man who claimed to stand for things but was slowly being revealed as an emperor with no clothes, an animal with his back against the wall desperate for victory, for revenge, but forced to look himself in the mirror and see a coward, quitter, and hypocrite, have been excellent.

But there are different lanes for different sorts of performances, and I think there's no one as good in the world right now at letting her character drive her physicality and matches as Athena. 

That was evident in her 11/20 ROH TV title match against Harley Cameron. 

Despite being champion for over 1000 days, she came in on her back foot, having been pinned by Harley in the tag tournament (albeit after eating Willow's doctor bomb).

That was maddening for Athena (the character) for multiple reasons. First, she and Mercedes were a sort of super team and they were defeated in the first round. Second, she's been pinned only a handful of times in the last few years. Third, there's a massive difference in hierarchy and experience between Athena and Harley. Harley's treated as plucky and determined, hard-working and fiery, but also as an upstart underdog and often as a comedy act.

That gave Athena a ton to work with but it meant shaping the match and her performance around this mentality as opposed to shooting to have the most exciting, spot filled match possible.

She came out to the ring without her usual celebratory fanfare, scowling instead. She offered a normal handshake instead of her usual left handed princess dangle. Then she ran right in, impatient and irritated, charging into Harley's armdrags. That Harley's execution wasn't perfect only added fuel to the fire here.

When Athena took over, she was constantly distracted. At times, after her running punch in the corner or when putting on a hold, she'd start to unveil her usual grin only for reality to hit and the scowl to return. Just when she started to relax and enjoy herself, the fans began clapping up Harley and she became irate. She jawed back with them, delusionally claiming that they were taunting Harley and not her. 

The match was built around Athena's character-driven mistakes (rushing in, losing her cool, being distracted by the crowd, trying to use Harley's own finisher) creating openings for Harley in order to counteract the hierarchal differences. It demanded absolute consistency from Athena in both what she did and in how she did it. It demanded selling that's far more complex and nuanced than remembering to limp now and again, a selling of the soul. 

These performances tend not to earn stars, but they move hearts and minds. And in 2025, Athena is as good at them as anyone.

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

AEW Dynamite 11/12/25

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

MD: Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they were bleeding out. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

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

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

-----

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

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

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

-----

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: The First Darby/Claudio Singles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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