AEW Five Fingers of Death (and friends) 12/18 - 12/24

AEW Collision 12/23/23

Daniel Garcia vs. Brody King

MD: I'm actually skipping out on the Kingston and Danielson matches this week. Very good stuff, exciting tournament action, matches with novelty, but I'm fighting the clock here and don't have a ton to say. I will note that the sheer level of familiarity and physical trust allowed for some very special individual spots between Danielson and Claudio though.

Instead, I want to focus on a couple of other matches from the last week, starting with Garcia vs. King. It was practically perfect. Pro wrestling perfection. One of the real joys of pro wrestling is that everything counts. Hypothetically, every match that’s ever happened can be an input to every match that is yet to come. It's that you can tell stories bigger than an individual match. You can call back on decades of history. I've written about how Garcia's past year or two shaped his run in the tournament, but here that run, and the story of the tournament as a whole, led specifically to this match.

Brody King was built up as a final boss in the early stages of the tournament. He was a monster. Some of that was in how his opponents engaged him, but even in his losses later on, he was protected. He hit his head on the post allowing Andrade to defeat him; for Danielson, it took knee after knee after knee. Garcia, on the other hand, caught between one identity and another, came up short again and again. He's good enough to beat any opponent on any night, but when push comes to shove, he hasn't and he doesn't. Certainly in this tournament, he didn't.

Brody was fighting to advance but also to make a statement, like he always does. Garcia had nothing to lose but pride, the only thing he had left, so he was fighting for that. Pride is no small thing in wrestling, but when it's the very last thing a wrestler has to cling on to, it becomes all the more valuable and potent. Garcia teased just a little dancing on the way out, but shrugged it off. His hair was cut short. He was regressing to move forward into whatever his next form may be. And he got almost nothing in the first two-thirds of this. He chose to start with a slap, to make a statement of his own, the defiance of someone who (much like his last opponent in Kingston) would dare shout into the wind and awaken the wrath of an angry god just to prove to the world that he was still alive, that his voice mattered, that he was worth time, effort, attention.

And for his hubris, King destroyed him. It was relentless and unyielding. Occasionally, Garcia would show a flash of additional defiance, a choke over the ropes for instance, but it'd just lead to a further stamping out of the embers of life; in that case, it was in the form of Brody's noose-like dangling choke. The match built to such moments, not a shift in momentum but instead small meaningful victories fought for with all of Garcia's heart. After getting thrashed on the outside, he made it back into the ring at the last second. He was able to get his foot up in the corner a few times, creating distance, hope, opportunity, showing the universe he still had a pulse. It all built to three escalating moments. First, he stood tall, pride animating a body that should have crumpled limp, standing up to Brody's chops and throwing shots of his own. Then, he kept going back to the well for a belly to back suplex, an impossible physical feat, stubbornly trying again and again, enduring the consequences of failure, until he somehow, with great effort, hefted Brody over. Then, finally, after once more finding himself oppressed and punished by this god's wrath: a death valley driver, a lariat, a solo Dante's Inferno, he channeled all of that hope and determination into a snatch of King's legs, pushing forward as if he was reaching forth towards the entirety of any possible future worth loving, and taking King off balance for a jackknife roll up. This was anything but a back and forth affair. It was a one-sided mauling building to small moments of life, of defiance, of hope, of the underdog proving something to himself, his opponent, and the world itself. It was a match that took all of the potential energy created by Garcia's last year, by everything that had happened in the tournament so far, by King's run and Daniel's tortured crawling, and turned it into kinetic gold the only way pro wrestling can. From a star-rating perspective, there was probably a ceiling on this. As a story that can only exist in this medium, at this time, with these people, it was wonderful, emotional, and resonant.

 

AEW Rampage 12/22/23

El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Black Taurus

MD: I liked their ROH Final Battle match. I did. And I thought it was appropriate for the moment. You often want a big bombastic exciting sprint to cycle off of the pre-show and into the main show. It recalibrates the crowd and sets the tone for the rest of the night. Moreover, it's part of the appeal of new-era ROH, these crazy dream matches that show up out nowhere a couple of days before the show. You wanted it to be as "much" as it could possibly be. Right match with the right people at the right time where they did the right thing.

But... I personally liked this one more. An all out sprint between a base and a flyer, especially two of the top ones of their generation, have some inherent issues. I do think that these two know how to put together a match and especially know how to put together one of their matches, but it's a problem I have with both something like the ROH Final Battle match and some of Gringo Loco's stuff. They're are so good, and do so much, that it just screws up the relative balance with the rest of the card. It even screws it up within the match itself. For instance, both Taurus and Gringo Loco have moves that are so amazing, so breathtaking, so devastating, that they're not just bigger than anything else in the match (including the finish), and not just anything else on the card (including the finish of all the other matches), but almost anything else you've ever seen (including every finish you've ever seen). In a sprint/spotfest, because of the need to keep things moving, especially during a finishing stretch that has to live up to a match that hasn't stopped for a second the whole time through, there's little room for excuse on the kickout either. You can't ensure someone's by the ropes. You can't take extra time after the impact with both guys out. You just have to get through a clean and clear two count kickout in the middle of the ring and get to the next spot or the magic's going to get disrupted. So you have these clean kickouts (and the expectation of a clean kickout, since while these moves are groundbreaking and skullcrushing, they aren't necessarily framed as a potential finish and they almost never actually finish the match in an AEW showcase stage where the flyer almost always beats the base) after things that are bigger than anything you'd ever seen. If Vikingo was presented as a wrestler so full of heart that you can't keep him down (and Rey was like that to a degree, but he was also clever in his kickouts/escapes), it'd be one thing, but he's not presented that way; he's presented as a breathtaking offensive wrestler, not like an Eddie or even someone like Blake Christian who's billed as "All Heart."

So I do struggle with that as I watch. The Rampage match, however, while starting as big as the ROH match and ending as big as it, had a secret weapon in the middle, the all-powerful commercial break. Taurus, who I would remind you, is twice Vikingo's size, shut him down and leaned on him hard. And good! He should have! He is twice his size and more than half as agile and quick. That straight out math means that if given the chance, he could just grind Vikingo down even without big moves and headdrops. Small measures like a foot choke in the corner or more mid-level moves like a side slam are still devastating from this guy! More important, it brought the match down after the hot start so that it had a place to go down the stretch. The stretch was no longer competing with the rest of the match but could breathe more on its own strengths. And, perhaps most importantly, it rewarded the fans for hanging in there and being invested in the match. Taurus, by grinding things down, was taking away from the audience the single thing that they wanted the most in the moment, not Vikingo winning the match, but the chance to see a once-in-a-lifetime spotfest. He was denying them that by being so formidable, so imposing, by throwing around his weight without throwing around his body. When Vikingo was able to come back and hit the afterburners and force Taurus to come along for the ride, the endorphins popped in the crowd's collective mind as well. A reward withheld creates anticipation and anticipation makes the payoff all the sweeter. Is it the match that they would have chosen to have if the commercial break didn't exist? Probably not, but on a week in and week out basis, we barely know how good we have it that these matches have to go picture-in-picture. Thankfully, I'm reminded each and every week.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/1 - 5/7

MD: Going to be more words than usual this week. I can't fill any sort of void except for maybe in my own heart but I'm feeling inspired. I know to a lot of people Dean was a sort of distant memory, someone who inspired them years ago or that went to shows or wrote with them. Those stories have meant so much to so many to see. Eric's post was wonderful. To people still on the DVDVR board, however, and there is still a board, and it's a pretty damn good place to talk about wrestling in longer form with more permanence than you can get on twitter or reddit, he was still a fixture. Dean retired a few years ago and started to watch every bit of televised wrestling and drop a sprawl of text immediately after it finished. It was distilled DEAN and an essential daily part of my life even just two weeks ago. Go click on this and read some of his posts over the last few months; you'll be glad you did. 

As for AEW, I said I might shift to covering a the webshows a bit more and what they do? Kill the webshows. If it's really because their TV partners didn't want them pushing content out on YouTube and if it speaks to the strength of that relationship, great. I'm really going to miss Dark and Elevation though. Elevation especially was how I got into AEW the most in late summer and early fall of 2021. Squashes and competitive mid-card matches with no commercials or time constraints or even plot progression built up my connection to wrestlers unfamiliar to me, and there were a lot. I get that you don't want to put squashes on TV and I get that sometimes these extra matches wore out crowds, but at its best, it allowed wrestlers to experiment, to get reps, to figure out what worked and what didn't and let crowds see certain stars (the Matt Hardys of the world), pop for their entrances and themes and signature moves, even when they weren't going to be on the main show. It gave us an Emi Sakura or Nyla Rose tag week after week after week after week and they were all a blast. It let the Acclaimed figure out how to be the Acclaimed or the Gunns figure out how to be the Gunns and let Athena as hard as one could go during one night in Canada and suddenly become one of the the best things in wrestling. I'm not sure how things will shake out in the months to come, if Rampage will serve this purpose more and if we'll get that itch scratched with the ROH studio tapings or if extra matches even end up on Bleacher Report, but I'll miss goofy rookie Elevation commentary from Wight and Menard (and Eddie Kingston for a while there!) and even goofier expert Dark commentary from Excalibur and Taz. I hope we see the return of Super Strong Suplex Machine sooner than later.

AEW Dynamite 5/3

Jericho Appreciation Society (Daniel Garcia/Jake Hager/Angelo Parker/Matt Menard) vs Orange Cassidy/Bandido/Adam Cole/Roderick Strong

MD: Nice big 8 man tag with a lot of little story beats. It's nice to see Strong outside of the WWE system again where he can feel like a big deal. That's part of the joy of AEW. I don't usually have a ton to say about Cole. My main takeaway on him is that he's been woefully miscast as a heel forever. The fans want to cheer him. They want to cheer his song. He has the offense of a scrappy babyface. He has the size of a scrappy babyface. I've seen him in interviews say that it's not an issue because he gets the fans to boo him during the match, but I honestly don't think that has played out in practice, at least not in AEW. This feels fresh. They played up the relationship between Cassidy and Cole but never really did anything with it unfortunately. The only sign of anything off at all was Bandido tagging Cole by slapping him on the back.

I liked how the match turned on the caught dive on Cassidy (with Garcia coming out nowhere with a knee to the back). I like Cole getting taken out when he went for Jericho at first opportunity; in general, even with him getting to tag with Strong again, he portrayed a certain intensity from his entrance to his first big boot, to the finish and both charges up the ramp. The buried what I was looking forward to the most in the commercial break, but 2.0 feeding and stooging for Orange Cassidy was a ton of fun as you'd expect, as was the suplex spots with Bandido. Garcia was a glorious jerk during the beat down on Cassidy, walking over him repeatedly and stepping on the ankle to prevent him getting away. Everyone got to get something in down the stretch. I'm looking forward to Strong against any of these guys and certainly to Hager vs Bandido if they ever want to run that, but Garcia is a top potential AEW Cassidy opponent and they're running that next week.

Darby Allin/Jungle Boy vs MJF/Sammy Guevara

MD: I don't think anyone would say that this main event angle has been a total success, though people can definitely appreciate that they're taking this swing and trying to elevate the pillars like this. What has worked, more than anything else, has been the MJF/Sammy pairing. In fact, given that we're still weeks from the PPV, it's a shame they've gone away from it here. I wouldn't mind if they go back to it at some later point. They were full on Heavenly Bodies/Too Cool here, full of themselves, congratulating one another, constantly jawing (including with the crowd during the commercial break to get big heat), constantly posturing. I would have liked some dumb simplistic double teams but I was ultimately happy with what we got, including the assisted abdominal stretch and Hollywood Blonds' terrible towel with Max's scarf.

Darby and Jungle Boy hit everything clean and played face-in-peril well enough, though the focus was really on the heel antics instead of the come back attempts. It's a bit like seeing Jarrett again. AEW's tag scene has had such a focus on big spots and cut off near falls that bullshit like this is fresh and really stands out. I liked Jungle Boy as a hot tag. We saw him so long with Luchasaurus where he didn't get to play that role. And Sammy looked amazing taking the tiger driver and code red, almost as good as I've ever seen either taken, which was impressive in such quick succession. Max's convoluted killshot looked great too, though he'd probably be better served with something way more simplistic that is just put over as deadly due to superior execution or some such. The finish with MJF and Sammy hitting moves but the other wanting the pin contrasted Darby tagging himself in but to hit a move and then go for the pin instead, making the babyfaces look somewhat more respectable while still playing into the animosity between them and pushing the 4-way to come. I have no idea what Khan has planned between now and May 28 but hopefully it's even more entertaining than the Sammy/MJF pairing; that feels like a bit of a high bar to clear though.

AEW Rampage 5/5

Lucha Bros/Hijo del Vikingo vs QTV (Powerhouse Hobbs/QT Marshall/Aaron Solo)

MD: Figured I'd give this some time too. There are a lot of different possible structures and narratives in pro wrestling. It doesn't have to be shine/heat/comeback. As long as there's a narrative throughline and things have weight and matter, as long as they have some semblance of build and payoff, you can do a lot of different things. Some stories are easier to tell than others. Some are more natural. Some require less work on the viewer. And, it's valid to occasionally just do a your move/my move fireworks spotfest so long as it's driven by a purpose on the card and it doesn't have a negative impact on it. Even then, however, I tend to find that last option limiting. If you pull back just a little on that, if you just take a breath and think things through, you can still hit a lot of those spots but underpin them with a more compelling narrative. Doing that will only make the spots feel more impressive and compelling because there'll be something providing them with actual substance. It's almost always additive if done well and smartly. The best wrestling is when people combine working smart and working hard, when you have both "workrate" and narrative, when one is the means and the other is the end.

So often with the Lucha Bros, I see a heck of a lot of means and not a lot of end. That's most especially true when they're up against similar opponents with similar mindsets. They try to go over the top and in doing so end up completely untethered. It pops the crowd in the moment but you end up remembering spots and moments, not the match as a whole.

One of the great things about AEW is the WAR-like nature of the potential pairings. You'll see Lucha Bros and Vikingo against the most logical guys in the world (let's say Rush and Dralistico) but you'll also see them here against QT, Hobbs, and Solo, three guys with wildly different skillsets. After a bit of posturing, QT took all of Vikingo's flashy stuff. I'll admit I had mixed feelings about his basing. In general, we applaud wrestlers for getting into positions on dives and saving the spot and their opponent. That's outside of the ring; when it happens in the ring however, it always feels a little dodgier. That was the case with the implosion 'rana. QT rushing to position made it feel more impactful but also poked at the suspension of disbelief just a tad. Still, it felt novel for him to be taking all the offense instead of someone like Kommander or Gringo Loco. There's value in that sort of dissonance too. Then Hobbs came in and just shut everything down. Solo is a 14 year vet 34 year old still trying to find his way but he can hit stuff clean and is pretty punchable, so it's not like he's a bad hand to have in there and to follow up Hobbs' stuff with a bunch of annoying offense to get under the crowd's skin. The built through the commercial break to the comeback and went into a finishing stretch. That's where we got the dives and the real bombs and because of the anticipation everything felt bigger than it would have if they were just escalating and escalating through spot after spot after spot. Speaking of escalating, I'm glad we didn't get the 630 through the table here. That shouldn't be an every match move, even if it's teased every match. It's one of the biggest spots in the promotion and they should only use it when it really matters, not against QT on a Rampage with a weird time spot. It was ok to do it a couple of times early to establish it but now keep it in the pocket so that when it happens, it means as much as humanly possible and that it also doesn't devalue other big dives and spots people do across the promotion. The finish felt a little abrupt to me but ultimately worked; Hobbs was distracted. Why was Hobbs distracted? Because he was choking Abrahantes and that's the best reason to lose a match I can think of.

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Arez vs. Vikingo

9. Arez vs. El Hijo del Vikingo RIOT Lucha 3/21

PAS: These are two of the young lions of lucha going out there to stake their claim. They demonstrated a real skill at a bunch of different levels of lucha, starting with some pretty slick chain and mat wrestling, including both guys doing some crazy rope tricks to manuever out of arm locks. They then have some cool rope running exchanges with headscissors and ranas, before breaking out the big dives and bombs near the end. I thought the end run was a bit your turn/my turn although the turns they were taking were really spectacular, spot of the year contender stuff. Vikingo hits a spring board rope climb 450 splash to the ring apron, and Arez hits this amazing looking rope bounce assisted northern lights superplex, just crazy inventive stuff. I would have liked to see a bit more structure near the end, but this was these guys trying a Top This Style PWG main event, not my favorite type of lucha, but for that style this is the pinnacle. 

ER: This kind of move trading wrestling is right down towards the bottom of my Least Favorite Wrestling barrel, ahead only of stuff like forearm trade exhibitions or mid-match Street Fighter II references. But whereas those styles are completely unsalvageable for me, a big moves match can always win me over. When they don't take a couple directions I expect them to take, or they find some unique ways to deliver a move, or focus the kind of moves they do, all those things can make a big moves match stand out from a typical moves match. Arez and Vikingo did enough to surprise me here, both offensively and in the direction of the match, turned into a great mixture of cool spots and painful landings. They worked some co-operative but impressive strength spots into the matwork and it plays into the finish, which I liked. 

I'm not sure I've ever seen the ways they got into and out of Rito Romero specials before, like some kind of lucha Mark Henry sorcery. I really flipped for Arez's hook kick feint, which at first looks like he was doing bad Low Ki kick combos, kicking past Vikingo's head, but the missed kicked is used to hook his leg around Vikingo's head to get him into position for a great sitout powerbomb. I kinda like when wrestlers spam a specific move into their moveset, set up in different ways. I like Asian Cougar throwing weird legdrops or DDP's diamond cutter variations, and I liked Arez throwing out a bunch of double stomps while Vikingo kept nailing running double knees. Arez had this great 1-2-3 stomp where he hit a big one on the apron, hit a slingshot one back into the ring, then another flying stomp from the other side. Vikingo hit a running knee like a baseball slide, flying through the ropes and sending Arez to the floor. Vikingo's step up 450 to the entrance ramp was nuts and pulled off more slickly than any similar Fenix spots I've seen this year. The finish was cooperative as hell, but it's also something I've never seen before, so greater good and all. Arez lifts Vikingo up to the middle rope, I had no idea where they were going with it, and I was not expecting them to turn it into a Spanish Fly with a near vertical landing from Vikingo. That felt like the right thing to end on. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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