AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/23 - 3/29 Part 2

ROH TV 3/26/26

Athena vs Maya World

MD: Throughout Athena's historic (and extremely lengthy) reign, there really have only been one or two logical conclusions for who might take the title from her. Early on it seemed like Willow Nightingale would make the most sense, and then over the span of a couple of Final Battles, it could have well been Billie Starkz. Willow has moved on in a way where it just wouldn't make sense anymore. With Billie, they didn't pull the trigger, and while they could heat things up for a third time, it would take a lot of work to get there. I'm just not seeing it. There have been a lot of other great one-off opponents but nothing that sparked any strong sense of inevitability.

The thing with a reign this impressive is that opportunity was bound to naturally come again in time. That's just the way of it. 

And now it has with Maya World. She checks a lot of boxes. She's young, brash, confident, Texan, inspired by Athena, even a protege, but not really a minion. 

She's the first person ever to take Athena to the limit in a Proving Ground match. For a layperson, that doesn't sound all that impressive maybe, but Athena's wrestled over thirty of them in around three years. For anyone who just drops in on the PPVs or complains without actually paying close attention, the sum of these make up one of the most substantial parts of her reign, where she comes in and absolutely demolishes game opponents, looking very much like the steamroller that she is. 

Look, if I had to distill just one truth about Athena's ROH reign, it's this:

The reign is a horror movie and Athena's the killer. 

There is always a Hitchcockian sense of menace underneath the surface. Athena might offer her left hand daintily for the code of honor, might let out a big "YAY" when things go right, might start things out with athletic wrestling exchanges, might show vulnerability as she gets overconfident or has a limb worked over, but at some point in every match (and so, so many post-matches), the switch flips, rage boils over, and she becomes a monster. 

While this was an excellent match, in watching it, I just couldn't figure out if Maya World was the Final Girl, that last survivor in a horror movie that turns from victim to hero as she confronts the killer, or if she was someone along the way blissfully unaware of the fate before her. 

Does her familiarity with Athena mean that she can counter Athena's best weapons, can even use them against her, that she knows all of her former mentor's tricks and has the confidence in herself to overcome them? Or does it mean that she's lulled herself into a sense of false security because she thinks she knows it all and that maybe, just maybe, even Athena of all people would go easy on her relative to others? Did she maybe think that Athena would go out of her way to beat her but that she wouldn't really hurt her, wouldn't become the monster that would tear her from limb to limb. Not Athena, not to her?

Regardless, Athena, having failed to cut the knees off the competition in a Proving Ground match for the first time, came in thrown and Maya came in ready. 

Maya refused the handshake (and the controlled contact that came with it), dodged Athena's strike to start, jammed an armdrag after hitting one of her own, and vaulted out of the way of a fevered charge into the corner. She followed this with an early flurry: an enzuigiri, the super-sharp Billy Catanzaro full nelson into a backbreaker, and then a fisherman's suplex, just like that. 

Maya forced Athena to escape to the outside, and even there, in Athena's element, she was able to match Athena blow for blow. Right until she couldn't. She had reversed a whip into the stairs, but instead of immediately following up, she set the stairs up for something else; it's one thing to be a little out of your element and another to dive deep under. Athena caught her with a cross-chop to the throat and reverse waterwheel dropped her face first into those stairs.

And thus, the monster started to stir, but only just. Despite the Proving Ground match and the start of this one, much like how Maya possibly couldn't fully comprehend the maliciousness of the person before her, Athena's own ego couldn't let her see Maya as quite that much of a threat. So she trash talked and preened and jawed with the ref, allowing Maya little openings but then cutting her off. Athena hit her tumbling punch in the corner and followed it up with a belly-to-back, giving hope and then squashing it gleefully.

But in playing with her food, she allowed Maya to get just a bit more than she had intended. Athena crushed her in the corner and as she rushed out to set up for another assault, Maya burst out behind her and snatched on surprise waistlock and almost got back into it just from that. Almost. Athena took a few lumps before cutting her off with a flying kick to stop a leap and then knocked her of the ring out with a baseball slide. Maya made it back in but only to end up in the Koji Clutch.

Maya survived the submission by making it to the ropes. She was surviving. She was coming back again and again. She had an answer for so much of Athena's signature offense. It was an affront, blasphemy, hubris even. Through this defiance alone, and despite Athena's advantage at this point of the match, cracks were starting to show.

Athena once again lost her focus. Instead of grinding down, she took the time to slap and berate Maya, and Maya, as she had all match, took every opportunity to fight back. They struck at each other evenly (though Athena's shots had more behind them, but that's true against almost anyone). Maya fought Athena out to the Apron and went for a pile driver. Athena jammed it and lawn darted Maya to the floor with a brutal suplex.

Athena made it in first and allowed herself to gloat as Maya struggled to rise up and beat the count. At this point, it felt like Athena was putting on a show, convincing herself with feigned glee that a countout would be just as satisfying as a pin or submission. The glee faded as Maya made it at the last second.

Back in the ring, they cycled into a strike exchange where Athena got the better. Maya was able to counter a second belly-to-back and move into roll ups. She came out of that on top, using a bridging Fujiwara escape on a double leg, only for Athena to get the better again with a curb stomp.

That's when things took another turn, one that would lead to everything boiling over. Maya avoided the O-Face by charging in and hit Athena's own shotgun dropkick/front tumble punch combo. It didn't look quite as good as Athena's, but it was insult as well as injury and set up an attempt at the ultimate insult as she went for her own O-Face.

Billie came out distract. Hyan came out to even the odds. Eventually, Athena took umbrage on this and slammed into Hyan with a tope. That just let Maya go for her Reinera Slam, but Athena turned it into a roll up and followed it up with a destroyer. Despite that, she was still unable to put Maya away. 

Instead, she started berating her once more. At first, this seemed like it was one step too far, was everything Maya needed to stop playing around, to make that fateful transformation into the Final Girl that could vanquish the monster. She chased after Athena once again, running up the ropes behind her to hit a twisting sunset flip bomb. She followed it up with a gutwrench facebuster not unlike Athena's own, and then went back up again for the O-Face.

It seemed however, that Maya's awakening, admirable as it might have been, only served to fully awaken the monster that was and is and that will forever more be Athena. As well as things had been going for this potential final girl, the final boss had a final form after all. Furious at Maya going for the O-Face not once but twice, she unloaded on her with uncontrolled stomps and strikes. She hefted her up and hit a Tiger Suplex (which is a very rare piece of offense for 2020s Athena; I can't think of another time I saw her use it this decade). She pulled her out of the ring to break her once and for all on the previously positioned stairs. 

Hyan intervened. Billie hit her from behind. They both spilled into the ring. Chaos ensued. Diamante arrived with the belt and Athena used it to clock Maya and hit her own O-Face to end it. An anticlimactic ending, perhaps, one that proved nothing except for that Athena was still champion and Maya was not.

Therefore, I was left wondering. Maya had an answer to so much of Athena's offense. She subverted and stole her share of it. She came close not once, but twice to hit the O-Face. It had taken everything but the kitchen sink to put her down. But then, had Hyan not intervened on the outside, would there even have been anything left of Maya to put away? 

Only at the very end did she really face the monster in its true form, and in that moment, she certainly appeared to come up lacking, arms laced behind her, dropped on her head. 

So is she the Final Girl after all? The one who might end the reign of terror? Or is she just another victim waiting to happen, one that's going to end up as just one more bloody example, maybe the bloodiest example of them all.

Time will tell, but what is clear is that for the first time in well over a year, there is a path that feels possible, a path that might make sense, a light at the end of a tunnel. But that light, like it's been so many times before, might just be Athena on her way to turn yet another great hope into roadkill.

Read more!

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.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/10 - 11/16 Part 2

AEW Collision 11/15/25

FTR/RUSH/Sammy Guevara vs Kevin Knight/Mike Bailey/Juice Robinson/Bandido

MD: An eight man tag can be an opportunity or an excuse.

It can be an opportunity. 

You have eight wrestlers. How do they interact? Both the partners and opponents. I want the camera to linger on what happens when FTR gets into the ring with LFI for the first time (Cash was quick to go slap hands and greet). These are disparate characters, disparate styles, disparate personalities. It's interesting. It makes the world seem more robust. Hiptosses are great. It's not always about hiptosses. I want to see who these people are and what they think about each other. What the hell does Dax think about Rush? That's interesting. Likewise, Juice hanging back and waiting for Bandido to show up so he could do Guns Up with him and then Bandido realizing what he wanted and getting excited and into it. That's interesting. That's compelling. It's vivid and real and immersive. It draws you in.

It's about the narrative opportunities of having more wrestlers and their attributes to work into the match. It opens the door for creative possibilities. You have Rush's intensity, Dax's hard hitting, Bandido's strength, Bailey's agility, Sammy's attitude, Knight's explosiveness, Juice's charisma, and Cash's wild abandon. And that's just one attribute from each of them. The wrestlers can mix and match all of that. Everything can be bigger. The stooge spots can involve more people. You can go for a double heat instead of a single. There are choices for who gets the hot tag, how to do the cut offs. It's more options, more room for creativity. Maybe most of all, it's also a way to further multiple stories at once and seed future interactions and matches.

It can be an excuse.

Eight people. Eight sets of signature spots. Eight guys who can take bumps. The action can flow and flow and flow and never stop. Someone can bump and the next person can be right there, fresh and on his feet, ready to jump right in and get revenge. You can drown the fans with an endless waterfall. Everyone gets their stuff in. Everyone gets to shine. Everyone gets to show off. The spots escalate endlessly. There's no ceiling. There's no bottom. There's no reason to ever stop. 

Except of course there is, because without stopping nothing can have meaning. Without leaning into tag rules, nothing can truly resonate. But it can be an excuse not to do those things, because you can just keep cycling people in and out forever. 

Cleverness for the sake of cleverness, spots for the sake of spots. It seems to be some wrestlers' fondest wish. Endlessly entertaining, almost certainly ephemeral. 

Usually, depending on who's in the match, an eight-man tag in AEW can be one or the other. 

This one, given who was in it, sort of straddled the middle. There was just enough connective tissue. They let things get chaotic, but then they brought it back to the center. There were foundational moments: Knight mocked the heel corner with the tranquilo pose and when he got thrashed by LFI they did it back to him. Sammy teased a swanton early only to leap down and screw with the fans. When he tried the same thing later, it cost him and helped lead towards the hot tag. Speedball hit his moonsault kneedrop in the ring to finally get that hot tag but then wiped out on the apron, clearing him out of the way for the finish. 

There were excessive moments, most especially early chaos which built to FTR eating Juice's stylized punches, Rush trucking him out of nowhere, and simultaneous JetSpeed dives. 

Ultimately, everything came down to Rush and Bandido, then opened back up as everyone got involved for one last bit of excess, only to cycle back around to Rush and Bandido once more for the finish. Moreover, it came back to the characters at play, their familiarity with one another and lack of familiarity with one another, as Rush got shoved into FTR to position himself for a slightly askew 21-Plex. 

If I had my way, I'd prefer something a little more grounded with chaos even more controlled than this, but it's a big tent promotion and sometimes an excuse is what's needed. Thankfully, here, that excuse didn't leave the opportunities on the table like it so often does.

ROH TV 11/13/25

Athena/Billie Starkz vs Hyan/Maya World

MD: Here's what makes pro wrestling great. 

Athena demanded to start the match. She held out her hand to Maya World for her usual insulting left-handed, draping code of honor shake. She immediately clocked her with the magic forearm, absolutely floored her.

And all that? That was Athena selling.

That was her selling the frustration of eating a rare pinfall from Harley Cameron (of all people) during the tag tournament, of having to defend against Harley now, of being eliminated from the tag tournament when she and Mercedes were the favorites, of Kris Statlander getting into her business, of Billie letting her down, of Mercedes not doing her part (and being able to claim that Athena didn't do hers), of not being part of the first Blood & Guts. 

Grievance after grievance all going into that one seething, agitated, impatient shot. 

This was an enhancement match. Hyan and Maya are on the rise but this was to continue Athena's story. She'd sell for their offense, but she'd sell more for the ghosts in her own mind, a burgeoning obsession over Harley. She'd call Harley out within the match, even as she punished Maya or Hyan. She'd take it out on Billie, so distracted and distraught that she'd all but chop her instead of tagging her, would get in a senseless argument which would allow her to get dropkicked from behind.

The secret truth in pro wrestling is that true strength lies in vulnerability, that it's selling which draws the fans in to get behind a babyface and that showing weakness, be it physical, emotional, or moral is how a heel gets heat. So even as Athena ate up Hyan and Maya, she was being eaten up on the inside, and her performance made that clearly evident to the world. 

Meanwhile, it was on Billie, Hyan, and Maya to react. For Billie that was trying to soothe Athena's wounds through inflicting collaborative violence, of showing the emotional impact of Athena's abuse upon her, of being distracted herself. For Hyan and Maya, it was being on their back feet due to the brutality and coming in hot when opportunities arose. 

The end result was an entertaining match which was laser-focused on promoting the title bout to come. And it all hinged on Athena selling something bigger and more complex than a punch or a kick from the second she walked through the curtain to the second the camera faded on her post-match. 

Read more!