AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/31 - 4/6

AEW Dynasty 4/6/25

Daniel Garcia vs Adam Cole

MD: Let's go back to Full Gear. It was a night of misery and destruction, where babyface hope came to die in the main event as Orange Cassidy, who the company had rallied around as a leader and who had finally found the strength inside to stand tall failed to defeat Jon Moxley. The one bright spot at the bottom of Pandora's Box, however, was Daniel Garcia defeating Jack Perry and winning the TNT title. The post match was brisk moving, but we were left with the image of Garcia, draped with the AEW flag around his neck, belt in hand, walking to the back in triumph.

Immediately thereafter, we started to see something new out of Garcia. He had resigned with the company, albeit without the braggadocious fanfare of MJF and his tattoo. He was going to be a fighting champion, one that could anchor Collision. He reached to the crowd for support, sometimes literally, began using the ten-count punch like stalwart babyfaces of the past. He was a shining, glowing counterbalance to the New Heel army who were trying to get heat instead of just getting themselves over, guys like Fletcher, Ricochet, Okada, Blake Christian, Lee Johnson. 

He was the one holding up that other side of the scale; maybe with Briscoe, maybe with Hobbs, maybe with someone like Hologram, but it was mostly Garcia with a clear path forward. 

And what happened then? He did what he was asked to do. He anchored Collision. He had solid match after solid match, solid babyface performance after solid babyface performance. But look at the opponents they gave him: Mark Briscoe, Shibata, a three way with O'Reilly and Moriarty, and then on to Adam Cole. It was criminal to some degree. Yes, it was good to beat these people, but he needed heels lined up to knock down. Sometimes making a match that is going to be "good" isn't enough. "Goodness" isn't the same as vision. Garcia had the crowd behind him. Garcia was trying new things pulled out of times past, things that would have worked, that would have established themselves in the hearts of the fans, that could have worked against all of these new heels, all the way up to Mox. He could have been Misawa to Mox's Jumbo. But it needed time to grow and develop and for a crowd that hadn't seen it in years (and some of them having never seen it) to be able to latch on to and understand. 

And he was left, in the end, against Adam Cole again and again. Adam Cole might be the nicest guy in the world, but as a wrestler, as a heel, he's a cool heel, and as a face, he's a cool face. Nothing really gets to him. Nothing registers. His promo explaining why he betrayed MJF was the least apologetic, least likable promo I've heard in a very long time. He didn't take responsibility for his actions. He didn't admit even the possibility that he was wrong. He just doubled down on everything he did and their program was a disaster because of it. If he just channeled his own personal vulnerability instead of a Michaels-esque sort of self-conscious need to be above it all, he could be the top guy that people always thought he could be. He could really connect with the fans. But instead he puts on a mask, and will always ever only be (occasionally) the guy that wrestles the guy for one program.

The nicest thing I can say about this match is that it did channel all of the above, and Garcia, being as good as he is, was able to channel a lot of it in a manner which felt in character, even though you can blur the lines thinking about all of the above. You can make it so Garcia, the character, was the dragonslayer, the guy who wanted to be a new hero, to face all the cheaters and underhanded villains of the world and who was instead put up against people that the crowd backed. He was a fighting champion, so that was fine, but he wanted to carry the AEW banner against the people really doing the damage and they were keeping him away from all that. 

You can see him as someone who watched that Adam Cole promo, who had faced MJF himself and managed to fight him without losing his own standards. Yes, he escalated things with the top rope pile driver, but that was different than striking from behind and behind a mask. And now he had to stand tall against Cole, this disingenuous, untrustworthy, unrepentant (and Garcia, with his background and how he carries himself is someone who, like Eddie Kingston, seems to know a thing or two about repentance) scoundrel, who gets shot after shot on goal while the fans sing along to his catch phrase without really giving second thought to his actions. Garcia had to work for everything and Cole, even though he worked his way back from injury after injury, was never gracious about it, and instead made it seem like that was enough, like he deserved it all because of it. And the fans were split at best?

So Garcia, in the match, got more and more aggressive, strayed from the light, and in doing so, lost his way and fell. When what's happening in the ring correlates to what happens outside, it can be incredibly compelling. And I see that with Garcia now. He wanted to be something pure and good, wanted to represent a new, better AEW, one without all of the irony, one where deeds and words mattered, where actions had consequence, one with honor. And he was never truly given the chance, ultimately felled by a cool face who was the exact opposite of what he was trying to represent, and then he had to shake his hand anyway? Where does he go from there? Does he sink into villainy? Does he become just as bad as everyone around him? Does he stop caring and become jaded? Or does he redouble his efforts and find a purity of heart that help him give people hope in very, very dark times indeed. 

It's unfortunate that what he was primed to become wasn't fully capitalized on, but there's still an opportunity now for something special, because as entertaining and refreshing it has been to see heels that are willing to get heat, that are willing to serve the match and the company instead of just themselves, that are fearless and daring and push to make every action mean something instead of just hit clean and look cool, there needs to be babyfaces that can take advantage of that to help move hearts and minds. And Garcia was willing, was trying, was even starting to succeed. There's a feeling out there that still needs restoring, now more than ever, and it's not the feeling of 2019 or 2021. Where does he go from here, a good man that briefly lost sight of his true north and lost all that he had fought for because of it, trapped in a world that he didn't make? I don't know about the rest of you, but that's something I want to find out.

Kyle Fletcher vs Mark Briscoe

MD: There's nothing in wrestling I'm enjoying more right now than the first few minutes of a Kyle Fletcher match. He's bold and fearless, a wonderfully confident and selfless stooging heel. The more selfless he is, the more over the top, the more willing to look the fool, the more he comes off like a star and the more over he gets. And this match, unfortunately, likely because it wanted to hang with the rest of the PPV card and start from a more "elevated" place of action, tossed that entirely out the window. 

From a story perspective, it did make sense for Kyle to begin with a dive. He had lost two of his previous matches with Briscoe. He knew how dangerous it was. They went right on to apron spots (albeit with some fun vocalization by Fletcher) and then Briscoe going for the chair (with a great moment of Mark telling the fans to boo the ref when he stopped him). That all made sense in character. For the sake of the match, it was about getting a hot spot and feeling PPV worthy. I think that was a mistake. While the show had some fun stuff overall (like the headslapping bit with Ricochet which was one imaginative sequence out of 20 in that match), contrast makes the world goes round and five minutes of Fletcher stooging and stalling and letting things sink in at the start would have stood out far more on this card and would have stayed with people far more than the aforementioned 'hot start.'

What it did allow, perhaps, was Fletcher to really take his time on the heat. I saw people complain about Moxley's "plodding" heat segment in the main event and I honestly that was pretty good with how he moved from one hold to the next smoothly and worked the wound. But even if that isn't for everyone, Fletcher's approach is more engaging. He has big pieces of offense and then he milks them after the fact, really posing and preening and playing to the crowd and let it all sink in until his theatrics lets Briscoe come back and Fletcher cuts him off with something big again, going right back to the preening. It's less, but it lets each thing that actually hits, already impressive on its own, mean so, so much more than if he had just went from spot to spot to spot. No one in AEW is really letting everything sink in quite like he does and if they couldn't have both the early match stooging AND the time-taking in the heat, then I guess it's good that they gave us at least one of the two. 

It worked down the stretch as well, as they threw bomb after bomb and they really, truly needed the weight of Briscoe being so hurt that he couldn't capitalize after, for instance, the cutthroat driver. That became believable because the weight of what happened during Fletcher's control segment and so much of that resonated because Fletcher was so engaged and engaging throughout it. But I think this could have even been better if they did 1/3rd less down the stretch and reallocated some of that time to an opening third where Fletcher could have stalled and posed and used his new tearaway pants and gotten some early shine comeuppance from Briscoe.

AEW Collision 4/5/25

Athena/Julia Hart vs Mercedes Mone/Harley Cameron (Parejas Increibles)

MD: This wasn't actually a parejas increibles match, but at the same time, it really, truly was. Athena and Julia Hart, despite celebrating together after the match was over, were absolutely strange bedfellows. This wasn't Julia and Sky hanging in the ropes together pre-match. It wasn't Athena and Billie (or Diamante currently) with meanstreak MIT appeal up against Ronda Rousey and Marina Shafir (what a fever dream that was). Harley and Mercedes did get it and were allowed it in the build to this, but the circle wasn't squared and all the pieces didn't quite fit together. 

That's not to say both Athena and Julia didn't get individual moments. There was a palpable buzz even from a very exhausted double taping crowd whenever Athena and Mercedes shared a ring. Julia's comeback against Mercedes when she lifted up out of the tree of woe was memorable, especially for Mercedes' bump. Very on point for Julia. It's just that they never quite came together and interacted the way you would have wanted to. A parejas increibles match is all about those interactions, the weird mix of alchemy of putting these robust, dynamic, larger than life characters in situations they wouldn't normally be in.

And it's important to make the most of that, because there are some natural shortcomings. In lucha, you often see partners refuse to cooperate to the point of a match breaking down or one rudo helping his opponents instead of his partner, and while that can be chaotic, it doesn't exactly lend to compelling narratives over time (like over the entire CMLL Parejas Increibles Tournament for instance).  Here, the problem was one of sympathy. Julia and Athena are tweeners at best with Athena being positioned as an outright heel on ROH TV. The Hounds of Hell have been babyfaces this year but Julia is maybe less of one depending on who she's facing. Harley is clearly a babyface; not only is she a babyface but she's one of the most sympathetic ones in the company, up there with Orange Cassidy and Mark Briscoe, beloved. 

Here she was expected to help Mercedes work over Julia, and the fans, on one level, would be glad for her when Mercedes accepted her and praised her, but on the other, it all made it tough for the Julia/Athena team to get sympathy. I think this situation would have been hard for anyone on the roster let alone two wrestlers (in Julia and Harley) that had around 150 matches under their belt between them. In a company that's so good at coming up with clever spots and set pieces, I do wish sometimes they'd pause and think about what the most interesting squeezing out of characters and interactions would be in any situation, that could put more emphasis on character motivations and how they feel about what's before them and the broader world. That would have helped Julia here and it probably would have helped Harley too. This was a good effort and an entertaining match (with a great, if muddled, comeback moment with the puppet), but I think in a situation like this, there's still so much more that could be mined with just a little more thought behind it all.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/19 - 9/25 Part 2

AEW Rampage Grand Slam 9/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King

MD: Unless they're in there against a team that's the top of the top, like FTR who can carry the heat in a more conventional structure no matter the opponent, Sting's tags always have a bunch of bells and whistles. That's in part because Darby Allin is bell and a whistle and his matches probably should have big set pieces anyway. It's in part to cover Sting's physical limitations. It's always amazing how well the matches go regardless and that nothing ever goes wrong. Here, things went wrong, but as with most wrestling, when things go wrong, they tend to create an even bigger dramatic effect. For the most part, these matches are tied together by Sting's presence, his star power, Darby's ability to bump and throw himself into situations, and the big stunts that everything builds to. This was no exception. There was the early ambush, the visual image of Julia going full Sherri (as she did often in this match) hanging on Sting's back, things ending up in the ring with Sting standing off and then fighting off both Matthews and King. There tends to be less of an overall narrative in matches like these. You're building from moment to moment and capitalizing on the opportunities the last moment presented. Darby hitting King with a code red and then himself out on a dive on Matthews allowed for Sting to match up with Matthews and set up his own dive. King recovering early enough meant that Sting could go flying through the tables (which included the first mishap that made everything more grisly and helped justify how out of it Sting would be for the rest of the match). That allowed for the handcuffing and Darby to fight back up the ramp during the commercial break and the 2-on-1 at the top with all of the individual story beats, ultimately leading to them revisiting the dangling choke that started this feud and both men crashing into tables and ultimately out of the match.

It's a tricky balance, having everything weighty enough, having it all make sense, having it all justified, having it remain consistent with everything that's happened in Sting's other matches and across the rest of the card. The weight of things here had to balance with the Starks/Hobbs street fight for instance. But I think they more or less nailed it, aided in part by some of the mishaps like the tables not cooperating or Julia's huge bump going wrong at the end to help get across the weight of the finish. Obviously, everything here built to the big surprise of Muta and it worked because the crowd went up for it and because Matthews portrayed shock and fear exactly when he should have. Plus he took an absolutely amazing dragon screw. That helped too. But that highlights a broader point. There wasn't a moment in this match where any of the wrestlers (including Julia, though maybe not Muta) wasn't entirely engaged and putting everything they had into it. When you've got a stunt show held together by star power and spots, that engagement is absolutely everything.

Sammy Guevara vs. Eddie Kingston

MD: I've been watching a lot of 1986 New Japan lately. Actually, let me rephrase that. I just finished watching every single NJPW match we have on tape for 1986. The throughline of that year is the NJPW vs UWF feud and there are two matches in particular: Fujinami vs Maeda and the match where Koshinaka wins the title from Takada that you can sum up like this: the NJPW guy had to wrestle an absolutely perfect match to hang in the UWF guy. In both cases, Fujinami and Koshinaka rise to the occasion and you end up with two just great matches. As this started towards the finishing stretch, I kind of had that same feeling. After all that had happened, given pent up rage in Kingston that had been simmering and simmering, given that Sammy robbed Eddie of his revenge against Jericho, given how Ruby Soho was hurt, and most especially given the way Sammy repeated his line to start the match, he would have had to wrestle an absolutely perfect match to hang with Eddie, to have any sort of chance of actually beating him. That would have meant leaning on every advantage, his speed, his agility, Tay at ringside, Eddie's own rage used against him, everything. If he had managed that, he would have had a shot, not to pin Eddie, not to make him submit, but maybe to knock him out. 

Sammy did not wrestle that match. He got beat around the ring. He capitalized on a mistake. He drew some heat during the commercial break doing snow angels in the ring and yes, leaning on Tay. He survived a strike exchange even. But the tide was too much. It was not his perfect match. It's not within his character to do so. What he did manage to do, however, was to tap into that rage, that pent up aggression, a symbolic throbbing heart of AEW that is connected to everyone sitting at home and every missed opportunity past and present. He unleashed a monster too big for him to stop, but also too big for itself to stop. Eddie had been stretching Jericho in his own head for months. With Sammy in his grasp, he couldn't let go. So Eddie lost a victory and Sammy won a Pyrrhic one, celebrating down the ramp while Eddie's angst and frustration, the towering monster inside of him, only grew stronger and more intense. It got me thinking though, got me wondering. Maybe someday we'll see them run it back. Maybe someday we'll see what Sammy's perfect match against Eddie might be. Koshinaka spent all of 86 getting better, made stronger against the hard steel of Takada. Maybe Eddie is exactly what Sammy needs?

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