AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/9 - 12/15

ROH TV 12/12/24

Athena vs Billie Starkz vs Leyla Hirsch vs Red Velvet

MD: This was to see who would go on to WrestleDynasty and represent ROH. It was set up backstage with Athena demanding that Billie lay down for her. Though we didn't know it yet (though we kind of did) it also set up Athena vs Billie and highlighted Leyla vs Velvet which are the two women's matches at the PPV. 

And, it was a very creative, imaginative four-way right? There are good things about that and there are bad things about that. I liked a lot of the character bits overall. There was Athena ducking out early as everyone was upset with her antics (even Billie). There was Hirsch getting in Velvet's face. There was Athena picking her spots at times. All of that was good. I wouldn't say the creative spots all hit the same way. There were a lot of moving parts. People had to get in position. It didn't always go well. It didn't always feel smooth. There was a particularly bad bit where Athena and Billie had to wait on the apron to get knocked off and then had to wait again until they could get dived on from around the ringside area. There was a tower of doom spot. There was Velvet rolling up two people at once. A lot of imagination and effort but I'm not sure how it worked out in practice. Some things, like Athena holding up Leyla and Velvet at the same time and then doing simultaneous moves on both worked on sheer impressiveness.

Obviously the interplay between Billie and Athena was the most interesting issue here. That made me forgive things I might not otherwise, like a spot where everyone put a submission on everyone else one after the other. Billie, desperate to get out, grabbed Athena's hair. That felt like a small but poignant moment where Billie had no choice. Later on, the ref had to avoid counting a pin for a few long seconds so that Athena could bound off of the pinfall itself to hit a 'rana on Billie. But that was an intentional act as opposed to Billie's desperate one and the story benefit made me look past execution concerns. The finish had Athena stealing the win from Billie and gloating to all parties. And THAT led to the post match backstage where Billie demanded a match and Athena misunderstood and thought she'd be getting an easy night at Final Battle. 

Unlike their match last year, you get the sense that comeuppance is heading Athena's way. I don't know exactly how it's going to go. On paper, she's going to underestimate Billie and get taken by surprise. Then she's free to reemerge in the main roster next year with an excuse for why she lost. I have seen the spoilers from the ROH taping for next week and it sounds like a hot way to set things up but maybe not hot enough. Lots of other things can happen. Maybe Billie emerges as the monster Athena created and destroys her in a bloody mess and becomes the new heel to rule the division. 

I'm assuming that we're just getting a plucky babyface moment here though, and if that's the case, the build hasn't really worked for me. Let's recap. Athena created a monster in Billie, Billie stood up for herself and took Athena to the limit but lost, Athena finally embraced her and guided her to the TV title. Billie lost the title. Athena shunned her. And here we are. At no point has Billie ever become a babyface again. She's still a heel. She's still petulant. Now the difference is that she's a petulant brat that's not getting the attention that she craves from her abusive cult leader. There are a lot of ways this could go that are interesting and complex but us being happy that Billie finally got petulant enough to stomp her foot like a brat and stand up to Athena isn't actually one of them. So I guess hopefully that's not the payoff here, right? We'll wait and see.

It does speak to a broader issue I've seen in AEW that I want to briefly touch upon even if it ends up not being entirely applicable here. AEW has done some great heel turns in the last year, since the start of the company. I'm less impressed by the babyface turns. Statlander's happened backstage. Hangman is cheered but not necessarily acting any different. Swerve just sort of meandered onto the other side of the line and only later did the Gates turn on him. Jay White returned to save his friend who was also probably more heel than babyface last we checked. The list goes on. 

If it just happened once or twice, you could attribute it to a more modern and maybe mature sort of storytelling where people aren't just good or bad but layered and things happen with nuance instead of in a sharp moment of alignment shifting. On the other hand, we still have pretty clear and crisp heel turns and there just isn't any of that nuance (except for maybe in the fans' heads as they try to make sense of everything). I worry that sometimes it's just a matchmaker's contrivance, the idea that if no one's really a sharp face or heel, any match can be made at any time with anyone playing any role. It washes things out though. Dynamism is often traded for a versatility that should be unnecessary given the size of the roster and the fact that people accept face vs face and heel vs heel matches more in 2024.

Face turns, the actual moment of that ultimate crystallization, even when there was subtle or overt build to it (especially then), are some of the most memorable and moving moments that pro wrestling can create. AEW is doing itself a disservice by leaving them on the table so often.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 12/2/20

What Worked

-Jericho/Kazarian was a decent enough old guy fight, though I think a lot of the best stuff happened during picture in picture, sadly. Jericho is good at keeping a nice thread of hard short right hands and stiff right elbows running through matches like these, and I liked him peppering in stiff strikes while mostly just letting Kazarian either bump or do his 2006 offense. Kazarian takes a nice big bump into the guardrail, and he lands right on Jericho while doing a Spanish Fly and while I don't think that was intentional, I dug it even more as a nearfall. I liked the bit with MJF threatening to throw in the towel, strong asshole move from the guy infiltrating the stable. The match itself wasn't clean, some things didn't quite land like they were supposed to, but that typically adds to a match like this. 

-I am not excited for 60+ year old Sting in AEW ("long term contract"!?!), but I cannot put into words the joy I felt listening to Schiavone scream his head off in excitement. It's Stiiiiiiiiing!! 

What Didn't Work

-The further we get away from a time in wrestling where battle royals were either a) an important part of a card, or b) a common match on a card, the more we get into the territory of modern battle royals filled with people who don't know how to work a compelling battle royal. Two minutes into this battle royal and I counted 9 people lying on the mat, apron, or ringside, selling exhaustion. Nobody knows how to work interesting mini stories within a battle royal, they now only know how to do actual sequences they just work in normal matches. Dustin is the best battle royal worker in AEW, and he was not in this one, and you really need at least one battle royal engineer in there to make one work. Tully Blanchard was shown smiling on from the crowd, and you'd think a super compelling battle royal worker like Tully could have at least passed along some advice. Tully was the kind of guy who you'd see constantly stooging his way through, cheapshotting people, begging off when caught about to cheapshot someone. Here, one of the few people I saw trying something like that was Kip Sabian, who was comically blocking people off so Miro could beat them down. The rest just looked like guys lying around until it was their turn to bump. Sure, there were some nice elimination bumps (I liked Quen getting thrown back over on the silly string attempt), but there just wasn't any color or battle royal artistry happening here. Everyone needs to just go watch an All Japan battle royal (any one). There will be at least 3 or 4 easy things to steal. 

-Well, Baker/Hirsch was a bit of a mess, several little time standing still moments. Hirsch is billed as 4'11 but I'm not sure she's even 4'8. She makes Baker look like a giant, but that just made it worse when none of Baker's kneelifts came close to making contact with Hirsch's head. Baker has long legs, and I don't honestly know how kneelifts can miss by 6" when she barely had to lift her knee over her waist to make contact. And that was kind of the story of the match. I liked Leyla's chops on the apron, thought her suplex was cool (but think the set up of Baker needing to sell in the ropes while Hirsch slowly runs back and forth hitting offense is silly), but that submission trading was slow and ugly. Baker is a great personality and has improved in the ring, but that was not visible here. 

-I think I would have liked the Cody/Darby tag a lot more if it was just a Darby/Hobbs singles match. Darby selling and getting ragdolled by someone like Hobbs will always be entertaining, even though Hobbs doesn't quite land with the follow through that they act like he has on commentary. All of Darby's offense looked great, my favorite being the springboard back elbow on Starks before the commercial break, and that nasty coffin drop on Starks to end things. Actually, any time Darby and Starks interacted looked good. The problem was mostly Cody. Cody tagged in with a bad run of hot tag offense, whiffing on stomach kicks, barely making contact on a springboard dropkick, landing way light on a pescado; all of his offense looked like he was just running through a rehearsal with Starks and Hobbs, saving the full contact for the actual live show.  

-WHYYYYYY did that main even need to be 30 minutes? You ever watch one of those Jon Moxley matches where it looks like he's working at about 2/3 the speed he usually works, and throws most of his strikes so that they don't make contact? It's a thing, and that's how he spent most of this 30 minute match. Anything interesting about the match (namely Moxley getting his leg worked over after a dragon screw in the ropes and getting tossed knee first into the guardrail) get abandoned by the first commercial break, never to be mentioned again. Moxley worked this match the way a depressed man in a bathrobe makes breakfast, just dragging his feet throughout the entire thing. Kenny felt like he noticed how draggy Moxley was and decided to dump himself on his head a bunch to make up for it. It helped, honestly, but Moxley kept dragging things back down. At one point, selling exhaustion, they had one of the worst looking "on our knees throwing strikes" exchanges I've seen, the kind of thing that would stand out as bad on any local indy. Omega was making awful faces, all of the shots looked terrible, completely embarrassing stretch of match. It went so well, that not long after they decided to have an even stupider strike exchange by sitting in folding chairs and taking turns seeing who could throw a more mediocre punch. 2x speed only mildly saved things, but they couldn't save how awful Moxley's elbow strikes looked while escaping Omega's first 1WA attempt. You look at those downward elbow strikes and you tell me what they were supposed to look like. I have no idea how Moxley thought those looked, but nobody can tell me those even looked like someone miming a strike. Omega's knees down the stretch may have looked bad and landed somewhere around Moxley's tricep, but at least it looked like someone throwing a limb at their opponent. What an awful match. 

-I have no actual clue how to feel about the new relationship with Impact. Impact has gone on for so long and is so off my personal radar that it's not even an amusing punchline anymore. I used to love making fun of TNA, have fond memories of that night where they went head to head with Raw and had an impossible amount of things go wrong (the Homicide mousetrap cage, Jeff Hardy being mobbed by two teenage girls in the parking garage, Hogan driving to the building for an hour). I watched it with friends and we laughed about it for years. But at this point TNA has been around since before I could legally drink, and it's just this thing that somehow never goes away. It's managed to exist for 18 years and it may be around in 18 more, but I'm not sure how old I will have to be to want to revisit a bunch of old TNA. I will watch so many other eras of wrestling several times over before I get nostalgic for TNA. And yet here they still are, somehow getting another life preserver by being attached to a stronger product. Maybe I'll root for a partnership between two competitors to actually work! Maybe this will turn into something interesting. I'm not very interested in it at the moment, but because of the angle I found out that Impact was actually on AXS TV, and before this I just assumed they had existed on Twitch or Quibi or European Netflix for the past couple years. If my Tuesday evening is otherwise unfilled, maybe I will watch AEW invade Impact Wrestling. 

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Josh Barnett's Bloodsport 3! 10/12/20

Matt Makowski vs. Simon Grimm

PAS: Makowski damn near stole the show at the last Bloodsport, and Grimm is always good in this style too, so this was bound to deliver.  These guys hued very closely to shootstyle, although Makowski always finds a way to innovate something cool. In this match he did a moonsault to pass guard, although it was totally something I could see Caol Uno doing in a real fight.  Makowski landed some nasty leg kicks and a solid high kick, and I really liked how he didn't sell Grimm's enziguiri when it didn't land clean. I liked the idea of the finish, with Makowski turning a cross armbreaker attempt into a kneebar, only for Grimm to hit a suplex for the KO. Suplex didn't land clean though and the ref jumped in way too fast for the call. If you are going to end a match on a suplex like that, it has to look brutal or the guy taking it has to really sell being KO'd. This was a regular flack back bump sold like a flat back bump and I didn't buy it ending the match like that. Still this was good stuff, and Makowski is a must watch at this point.

ER: Grimm has been so good on these Bloodsport shows, something near entirely impossible to predict after being in attendance live for his pro wrestling debut nearly 20 years ago. It's amazing to me how long he's kept at it, but you can look at his career as a whole and then look at his three Bloodsport matches and see the kind of wrestling he truly excels at. His first Bloodsport match against Kratos was the best live match I'd seen from either of them, and they are two guys I've seen live plenty. I really loved the way he kept Makowski tangled up on the mat, eating leg kicks while standing but always super active on the ground. Sometimes it didn't work out, like when Makowski stuffed a takedown and just pancaked him, but I thought his mat skills were very impressive. I loved when he was raining down elbows from mount, and Makowski shifted slightly so that one of the elbows was a glancing blow, essentially sending Grimm straight into a snug side triangle. But I really liked how Grimm stayed calm and worked to snag Makowski's ankle, twisting it to break the hold and continuing to grapevine the legs in a painful way. The suplex did not work for me as a finish for the same reasons Phil mentioned, but I liked the work around the suplex itself. I like the brief fight for it and liked how Makowski going deadweight lead to a hard flat bump, I just didn't like that as a thing that should KO someone. Had Grimm floated right through and locked in a choke I think that would have been great, but this match was still some very good shoot style. 

Killer Kelly vs. Allysin Kay

PAS: This had some cool moments mixed in was some rough looking stuff. This was the second longest match on the entire show, and they didn't seem to have enough stuff to fill a match this long in this style. It felt like they started over again a couple of times. There was some bad looking strikes mixed in with some good looking ones, there was a section where both women took each other down and rained strikes which looked more like a diva era catfight then Hotta vs. Yamada. I really liked the finish though, with Kay getting a crucifix and raining down Goodrich elbows and keeping the crucifix into a head and arm submission as Kelly tried to stand out or roll out. I think with that finish and a bunch of the meat cut out of the middle this could have been a really good match, just too ambitious to really recommend. 

Lindsay Snow vs. Leyla Hirsch

PAS: This was definitely a better length for what they brought to the table. Hirsch was out sized and out skilled, but brought a bunch of fire to the match. The story was that Hirsch is a talented amateur, who is able to get some takedowns, but once she gets to the mat the much bigger Snow is able to control her. Was pretty impressed with Snow's grappling, she seemed to always find a counter or an advantage and it looked pretty slick. Definitely feels like Snow vs. Kay is the right tourney final.

Calvin Tankman vs. Alexander James

PAS: Tankman is fun in these kind of tourneys, he really feels like a guy you would see in an early UFC with some made up martial arts style, Hoodjitsu or something. He is big and reckless and strong and sometimes that will win you a fight. Not a lot of technique though, mostly James trying to take him down and getting overwhelmed by size. Tankman was crazy over with the crowd and that really added to the atmosphere of the match, as they went nuts when he dropped James for the KO.

ER: I really didn't like this at first, which was painful because I did not want to have to write a negative review now that we finally have a fat guy doing shootstyle again. There are not anywhere close to enough Vader guys doing shootstyle, so I was really rooting for a good Tankman performance. He looked like a real fish out of water at first and didn't look like he'd be able to do anything once things got serious. But after a few minutes I started growing into the minimalist style and started thinking this was actually closer to an actual MMA fight than anything else so far. It had that freakshow PRIDE feel and the crowd was way into the freakshow guy lasting longer than he was supposed to. Tankman laid on him and made slow movements, trying to cool back down after throwing some strikes. I liked the slow passes and just using his weight to plot his next move. But James always looked like he was plotting too, and eventually I got really into the short match slow burn. The triangle choke got the crowd even more into it and by the time Tankman escaped and started throwing hands with James I was fully into the match right with the crowd. The finish looked good as a winged hammer of an arm swung down at a cool looking angle to catch James. Cool approach and great build that kind snuck up on me. 

8. Erik Hammer vs. Grizzly Kal Jak

PAS: I thought this was totally awesome. This was legit heavyweight shootstyle, between two enormous guys with real skill. Jak is a Nor-Cal guy who was in WWE developmental, he was an All-American amateur and is 6'7ish, Hammer is a Barnett sparring partner who has done some IGF before. Jak wrestles this like a taller Gary Albright, huge throws and takedown, and even a big slap to the ear to open the match. Hammer is a shoot wrestler so has real submission skill, and was willing to go for a ride to bait Jak into a dangerous position. Loved the back elbows that Hammer threw when Jak took his back, real jaw clicking stuff and something Jak didn't have to worry about in the NCAA's. Finish was dope stuff with Hammer surviving the big throws until he is able to get the arm out and crank it from the tap. Maybe my favorite Bloodsport match ever. 

ER: I'm really happy Grizz got the opportunity to have this match, and hopefully it exposes him to a larger audience and gets him some more bookings. He's a good guy who has given up a lot of his time for our local indy north Bay Area Phoenix Pro Wrestling, a real popular act with that crowd, and here doing something completely different and completely awesome than anything else I've seen him do. This match was pure shootstyle, the kind of thing that could have been between a Belarussian and a Georgian in RINGS. The only pro wrestling in this entire match is the tale of the tape (Grizz is a big guy, but he's not six and a half feet tall). Hammer has a great look, like a jacked Gary Hart. But this is just fantastic shootstyle wrestling and I agree with Phil that it's arguably the best Bloodsport match we've seen. I would rank it with the best under 10 minute matches we have, honestly. The scrambling and takedowns were really cool, and Jak came off super strong with some big lifts and suplexes from positions where he didn't have leverage. The grappling felt like it could always explode into something new, and sometimes that was a throw, sometimes that was Hammer throwing 4 elbows in a row back behind his head directly to Jak's jaw. I thought that was going to be the finish and I was fully prepared to buy that as a finish. Hammer spots his best chance to finish as going after Jak's arm, and I dug how you can see him trying and see Jak keep lifting him, and you got that sense that eventually Hammer was going to be able to get that arm loose before getting thrown. This was an awesome little journey. 

17. Homicide vs. Tom Lawlor

PAS: I thought this was a good wrestling match which sort of failed as a Bloodsport match. Weirdly I place the blame on Lawlor who really should have known better. He was the one throwing those bad looking New Japan elbow smashes which were by far the worst part of the match. There was a fair amount of really cool shit though, I loved Homicide countering the guard by brutally stomping Lawlor in the head, exactly the way a Bed-Stuy street fighter would react to a ju-jitsu sweep. Homicide also landed some nasty clinch knees, and even kind of made an STF look like a shoot hold. I also dug the finish with Cide going for the Cop Killer and paying for it by getting choked and then tapped out. Would love to see Homicide back here, especially against someone who hues more towards strict shootstyle for a contrast.

ER: I thought this was great, and an incredible Homicide performance. I mean, we've written up a lot of Homicide matches in our time, but this was some next level wrestling in a style I've never seen him utilize before. It was still pro style Homicide, but with more shootstyle reactions. I don't like when other guys bring too much pro wrestling into these shows, but I really loved how Homicide specifically brought it in. Homicide still wrestling as Homicide but within a shoot fight is something I didn't know I wanted and didn't know I would love so much. I, too, did not like the elbow exchange portions of this (thought the first one was good due to both mixing up shots well, but then we got three others after that and we really could have got by with the one), but I was in awe at everything else. 

Homicide looked outgunned at times, but then would find his way out of it in ways perfect for Homicide-in-a-shoot. The moment where Homicide started stomping hard down on Lawlor's head to get out of an ankle lock was one of those moments where people there realize they're seeing something special. Phil and I synced up and watched some of these matches over the phone, and when Homicide caught a sliding Lawlor kick and violently twisted Lawlor's leg around his own and then cranked into a STF? I lost it and yipped loudly into the phone. Homicide's exploders were great, and the finish was tremendous. Homicide gets to power out of a choke by grabbing onto the ref's shoulder to help pull himself to his feet - at this point Homicide felt like he was acting out a serious church play for special sermon, with the Lord helping him pull himself to his feet and power through the chokehold the Devil has on his life - and fought back to the point of going for a Cop Killer. I was losing it on the phone at the prospect of Homicide finishing a shootstyle fight with a Cop Killer, but Lawlor slipped off into a sleeper choke, Homicide rolled him off, and then Lawlor hit his best action of the entire match: He slides past Homicide and hooks the ankle he softened up earlier while getting his face stomped in, and yanked Homicide into a flat out disgusting single leg crab. I loved this, the kind of genuinely special performance from a legend that makes standing elbow exchanges melt away. 

Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Josh Alexander

PAS: This was the least of the matches on the show. I thought some of the early grappling was fun, I especially liked the spot where Alexander got caught in submission as he fell to the floor, really looked like he jacked up his back on the ring apron. It devolved into a New Japan forearm exchange though, and DBS won with a Liger Bomb. Sort of pointless to do that kind of stuff, if you are going to bother to work this show, work the style. 

ER: I liked this more than Phil. I thought it was a tight 5 minutes, and thought the strength from both guys played well in all the rolling and grappling moments. The match had a lot of tough body scissors and a lot of the grappling looked really tiring. I thought Davey Boy used the Sharpshooter attempt really well, as there wasn't any fumbling or any actual attempt to go for the move, but a cool turned kneebar into a low squat single leg looked as painful as Bret's finisher. They made a couple good uses of the apron, with Davey throwing hammers down at Alexander's head while trapping him against the edge, and later the visual of him holding that Sharpshooter variation right on the edge of the ring looked really cool. I thought the pro wrestling stuff at the very end worked well they way they played it. There were no exchanges, just Alexander getting to his feet and throwing to quick elbows that surprise Smith (strikes really hadn't been thrown in the match) and leads to Smith throwing a couple of hard kicks to the chest. I thought the Liger Bomb worked as a KO finish, as it looked like Smith really powered him into the mat like a Zangief Street Fighter KO. 

Allysin Kay vs. Lindsay Snow

PAS: This was the tourney final and felt like a tourney final. I continued to be impressed by Snow on the mat, super pace pushing, always looking to press and counter and attack. I also liked how she threw big looping forearms whenever she got on top, they really looked out of control. Kay nicely used her height to throw up legs to counter submissions, and I dug how she went for the crucifix again, but she did look a bit tentative at points, and Snow was clearly the class of their women's division. 

ER: This was good, I liked both working long stretches basically neutralizing the other. Kay impressed me by staying with things the whole time, the way things were constructed made her come off strong while not even being in control a majority of the time. She has strong legs and was good at using her legs and height to push through different Snow attacks on the ground, and she looks like she's making headway while always being bent painfully bending over her own midsection. When she was able to stand Snow up she through hard knees, and they looked good while she was balancing and preventing a takedown. Snow was relentless and they seemed like they were each making the other work hard. I liked their ground work and it looked like neither was having an easy time advancing, made the whole match feel like a cool struggle. 

Chris Dickinson vs. Jon Moxley

PAS: I thought this was a heck of main event, and I give Moxley a bunch of credit for working as hard as he did to put Dickinson over. Dickinson is on a hell of a Rona roll, and was firing shots with real intent behind them, just mashing Moxley's legs with low kicks. I really like how they used the ring outs, made both big bumps that Dickinson took look totally credible. It is a real shame they stuck that strike and grimace elbow exchange in the finish run, match didn't need it and it took it completely out of the style. Trust the audience, there were responding big to all of the work they were doing, we didn't need a cheap short cut, really turned the end of the match into a indy wrestling match, and they were doing something special before that. 

ER: I thought this was good, but less than Phil. It mainly made me feel bad for Dickinson, as we review all of the big matches that he was supposed to get before the pandemic. But knowing what his Mania weekend was looking like, seeing why he was one of the obvious choices for a current indy guy as Moxley opponent, and seeing how much momentum he's had over the past year, and it's not hard to see Dickinson on TV within 6 months (I mean when WWE has Anthony Greene and Curt Stallion on every other week now you have to assume Dickinson isn't far away from being part of a stable with Lorcan and Burch). But I do wish this match wasn't so strongly tilted to Moxley. Moxley worked a lot of this the same way AEW main guys work a lot of AEW competitive squashes, and that's something I see every week. Moxley didn't treat Dickinson like a chump obviously, but I don't think a lot of the Moxley control was as interesting as it could have been. 

I loved the surprise moment of Dickinson getting kicked off by Moxley right into/past the ringpost, spilling to the floor. It was a great kind of jump moment, but by the end of the match we had two other shoves to the floor, and again this just kept feeling more AEW than Bloodsport. That was before the big standing exchange/face making portion of the match, which felt like the culmination of this match going from grappling and leg kicks to a certain comfort zone. I think the best part of Bloodsport is getting out of that comfort zone, and this kept feeling like they were fighting to get back to normal pro wrestling. I still thought it was a strong Dickinson performance and the connection he has with crowds is undeniable. Even though they were full indy match by the end, he still kept me invested with his hot comeback after being kind of smothered by Mox, as their aren't many current guys I like see make a fired up last stand in a match. 

ER: Another great Bloodsport show, at this point feeling like the kind of thing that can work as its own promotion. We landed two matches HIGH on our 2020 Ongoing MOTY List (with Kal Jak/Hammer making our top 10 and Homicide./Lawlor making our top 20) and there were several matches (Dickinson/Moxley, Tankman/James, Makowski/Grimm) that were narrow list misses. That's a great show, something we've come to expect from Bloodsport. 

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