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 (and Friends) 12/22 - 12/28 Part 1

AEW Collision 12/25/25

Jon Moxley vs Orange Cassidy 

At the ten minute mark, Orange Cassidy found his pockets.

He'd weathered the onslaught, the bullying, the shouts, the shoving, and finally the strikes. 

He remembered who he was. Yes, the kicks he laid in on Jon Moxley had more behind them than usual without the standard playful preludes, but he had remembered his true strength: the mind games, the way he was the one who threw his opponent off his game and snuck out a win when least expected.

And like his Conglomeration members and associates, Mascara Dorada, Kyle O'Reilly, Roderick Strong, and his sometimes partner, Darby Allin, he saw the cracks in Jon Moxley, both mental and physical, clearly, as if for the first time, and he honed in on that leg, softening him up for an Orange Punch.

But Moxley rolled to the floor and the moment was lost. Cassidy once again gave in to emotion, to the weight of the last few years, to trauma, and yes, to fear. To panic.

Every Jon Moxley match in the C2 so far has been about Moxley, though, of course, his opponent and their own struggles and journeys played into them in a secondary manner. This one though? This was about Orange Cassidy, and because of that, when Mox's back was well and truly against the wall, when he needed a win to save his own life, he entered into a situation where he had all but won before the bell had even rung. It may have looked like anything else in those first few minutes, and it may have almost become something else at that ten minute mark, but the result was all but inevitable from the get go.

In 2023, at the end of a long, arduous run as International champ, a run where he put himself up against every challenger, where he kicked off Dynamite week after week after week, where he ran his body to the ground, Cassidy crashed into the wall that was Jon Moxley. Through a fluke injury, Mox lost the title and Cassidy regained it from a third party, but a few months later, he had to face his demon again at Full Gear 2024. Cassidy didn't just survive, didn't just retain his title, he triumphed, showing Moxley and the world the strength within. 

It came at a cost. In pushing himself so far, Cassidy became someone he never wanted to be. That facade of apathy and sloth was yanked off of his face, shades broken and discarded. But it was over and he had won. 

That's not how wrestling works, though. The story never ends. Jon Moxley understands that better than anyone. He's not fighting for a single victory, for a single championship, for a single celebration. He claims to be trying to change the tides of time, the fate of the future. He's trying to shift  the path of history, to set the world turning back on its proper axis. If you are to believe him that is. Even if you don't, you can't deny that he understands the notion well enough to manipulate others, well enough to know the costs.

Time marched on. The fight was eternal. One year later, Cassidy was forced back into an even more untenable position. Moxley had turned his back on the fans and torn down AEW's heroes. Those that remained had nowhere else to turn than to a man with a good heart, who cared more than he'd ever admit, and who beat Moxley once before. Cassidy found his strength anew, led a charge, but ultimately came up short due to the numbers game and was left beaten, bullied, bleach poured down his throat.

So maybe some of his allies and friends saw Moxley for what he seemed to be as of late, a wounded animal, a man who had lost his way and was on the verge of losing so much more, but Cassidy couldn't help but see the monster that still lurked within. Instead of holding back, controlling the tempo, eliminating Moxley from the tournament and maybe from even more on top of that, he charged right in, unleashed ten count punch after ten count punch. He saw the Moxley of a year ago, of two years ago, the Moxley that he could be once again and he couldn't relent. Because of that, he wrestled Jon Moxley's match, played right to his strengths.

And Moxley well knew it. Cassidy held his own for long minutes, stayed in the fight. He was consumed by a fire within him, by the horror before him, by the trauma he carried, but he drew a panicked, fevered strength from it nonetheless. This was the Orange Cassidy of Jon Moxley's world, the one he had created, a fighter, a warrior, a berserker. 

It wasn't until Moxley berated him, yelled, put up a fit, because for all of his fighting, it wasn't enough for Mox, that Cassidy remembered who he truly was. By then, however, it was too late. Moxley escaped, drew Cassidy back outside the ring, back into his domain. Cassidy maintained an advantage on the outside, but now he was caught between two worlds, himself but not himself, able to see at the light of the end of the tunnel but dragged back into the darkness by his heel. 

He grasped at Moxley's damaged leg, but without his usual control, without the laser-focus of O'Reilly that had allowed Kyle to defeat Moxley. He hit Orange Punch after Orange Punch, but not a single one landed correctly. Despite appearances, he no longer had the inner balance to strike true. And, desperate himself, clinging to a false advantage that might have looked to the world to be the truest thing imaginable, he went for the leg one last time and was rolled up by Moxley for a relatively easy three. 

Despite his fear, Orange Cassidy stood up against the darkness he had known, a darkness in his heart, but in doing so, in charging forth when he should have laid back in wait, he played right into Jon Moxley's hands, as fortuitous an outcome as Mox could have hoped for, because he only had one hand left to play. 

But as Cassidy now knows all too well, the fight never ends. A wrestler's story can only end one way, when the heart, body, brain, and soul all break down too much to continue. Cassidy earned a respite, a moment to recover, to reevaluate what he had become and what he might still become. For Moxley, however, World's End is now before him. He's fallen so far, but by climbing back up by the skin of his teeth, he only has so much farther left to fall if he fails.

Read more!

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

AEW Dynamite 11/12/25

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

MD: Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they were bleeding out. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

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

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

-----

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

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

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

-----

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 10/27 - 11/2

AEW Dynamite 10/29/25

Jon Moxley vs Kyle O'Reilly

MD: I covered their last match last week and people seemed to enjoy it. Part of me wanted to go super stylized once again. 

Kyle O'Reilly was a man who lost it all. 

After failing to defeat Jon Moxley for a world title opportunity in 2022, he underwent neck surgery. He still does not have full strength in his arm. There was a time immediately thereafter when he never knew if he'd be able to hold his newborn.

But what he lost in strength he gained in focus, redoubling his efforts to train and to let technique push him back towards victory. Along the way, he found friends and lost them again, Paragon only barely forming before Adam Cole ended up on the shelf, possibly indefinitely. But he's a man who rolls with the punches, and with a smile on his face, he found the fun-loving whimsy still within him that was necessary to be the heart and soul of the Conglomeration. 

So on and so forth. I'd write about how this time, after scoring one of the biggest victories of his career but having been robbed of an even greater one by Jon Moxley's cowardice, he marched down to the ring with a more serious expression, how he had one more chance to snatch glory long past a point that anyone thought he'd still be in contention for it. 

But then he hit the ring and Moxley, after taking a few shots from Marina to warm him up, followed him in, and I saw the match and now that's just not what I want to write. 

I think that was a great way to remind everyone of the greatness of the first match, but here, it's worth really delving in to the storytelling at play.

Look, we take it for granted. In 2025, just as often as not, maybe more often than not, the logic is flipped. Wrestlers think up big spots and then they work the match around them. They work backwards from the special effects instead of crafting a story worthy of those fireworks and then inserting them in.

This was the very opposite of that.

What I wrote above and what I wrote last week... those things aren't just fluff. They're not just stylized dramatizations. They distill characters. Characters have motivations, hopes, fears, things that drive them. In a perfect world of fiction, these things then intersect with their attributes, physical and skill both, and impacted by environment, then underpin every single action and reaction. This should be the bare minimum in any fictional narrative but all too often in wrestling, it's an afterthought at best or ignored or shoehorned completely in order to try to pop people with something cool or with endless excess.

Not here. 

You could see it from the initial exchange. Character drove the strategic approach of both wrestlers. O'Reilly rolled to try to pick a leg right from the start. Moxley backed off and then tried to bully his way into holds, combining technique with aggression. O'Reilly had an answer to everything, in part because his technique was superior and in part because Moxley was out of control. Mox would go to the eyes, to the nose, to the ear, to anything soft to try to squeeze out an advantage, but O'Reilly was ready for it. In countering those underhanded tactics, he got a little hot though, could maybe feel Moxley's desperation and he charged in with a knee in the ropes that Moxley was then able to use to heft him up and over the top, truly taking over for the first time.

You can continue to follow these threads. Moxley attacked the hand first, worried about O'Reilly's cross arm breaker. But he couldn't help rubbing it in, couldn't help grinding down, couldn't help stomping away. That gave O'Reilly an opening to snatch the leg and starting to work upon it. Moxley, panicking, went right back to the eye and then, not just wanting to win but needing to main, shifted to the neck, the same neck that had been damaged out of their match back in 2022. But O'Reilly knew he had him rattled and he met him standing with strikes getting a seeming advantage but really falling into Moxley's trap, a pile driver.

It's all right there in the text, all shaped by the context, driven by the subtext. Moxley had his back against the wall, respected his opponent, hated his opponent, wanted to stick it to the fans. He'd not just run him to the stairs to slam his head in but would carefully bring him over in a full nelson. He'd lose the advantage by focusing too much on the fans and charging shoulder first into the post, allowing O'Reilly to utilize a dragon screw leg whip. He was cruel and careful one moment and entirely erratic the next. When he was in the ankle lock this time, he was staring at Aubrey Edwards and everyone had to wonder if he'd slug her too.

And O'Reilly balanced the opportunistic counters of a level-headed practitioner with a man with so much left to prove. He occasionally overshot but never so much that he couldn't recover. Moxley would catch his foot when he tried to stand even with him and throw punches and kicks, but he'd be able to spin out and hit something else. When Moxley went for the Gotch Pile Driver, he kept a cool head and turned it into a triangle. This match was his moment, and while he never stopped knowing it, he refused to let it shake him.

Watch this again. At every moment, it was character driving the action, character informing the reactions, character creating outcomes. 

That took them all the way to the finish. This time, back in the ankle lock, Moxley doesn't attack the ref. He dives towards the ropes instead. That throws O'Reilly off but they both end up on the floor. After one or two rotations, O'Reilly locks in a floating guillotine. The count ticks up and Kyle, lost in the moment (his moment), loses sight of the bigger picture. Aubrey counts them out, Moxley survives again even in symbolic defeat, Shafir turns out to be the one to attack Aubrey, and the tension builds in a very organic way for Blood and Guts where Moxley will not be able to escape. 

It's all right there, and in truth, it shouldn't be worth me having to lean so hard into. In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to. If every match operated like this, like so much of other fiction does, then we could take this for granted. But matches aren't like this. This is an outlier. This is special, and the only reason I even could dramatize it and stylize it like I did last week is because they put so much into it. We should expect more. We should expect this. But until we get it match in and match out, we should raise this sort of pro wrestling onto the pedestal it deserves.    

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia

MD: Just a couple of paragraphs about this since Darby is someone we write about and I really enjoyed this match. It was there to further the Death Riders vs Darby/Conglomeration story. On paper, you wouldn't necessarily want this to be a tornado tag, even if it does suit Darby, but the four way for the tag title shot was going to follow it, and the two matches needed to feel different. 

With a tornado tag you usually get a spot-first approach as mentioned above. Here, the characters were really driving it, Darby's intensity, Cassidy's mind-games, Garcia's chip on his shoulder, Yuta just being an irritating menace. Garcia's particularly great at showing (selling) how Cassidy going to the pockets gets to him, but he also got drawn in by Darby teasing with the skateboard. Character-driven spots. My favorite bit might have been when Cassidy leaped over the rail to stymie a Garcia whip only for Yuta to nail him from off-screen (both for Yuta's trademark appearance from off camera to cheapshot, and because of Garcia's reaction). That led to Darby diving onto all of them. Or it might have been how, after jamming Cassidy's skull onto the guardrail with a brainbuster, Yuta shoved Darby off the top and Garcia and Yuta both jawed with the fans, drawing real, true, honest, genuine heat in 2025 by being as obnoxious and proud and unlikable as possible. Yuta going under the ring and only finding his middle finger to piss off the crowd would be a not distant third.

They built to a big comeback (set up by Cassidy putting his hands in his pockets while the two were on the outside) and them paying off what they had set up earlier (including, literally, a table). I hadn't expected Garcia and Yuta to lean into each other like this. It felt like they were heading towards immediate dissension. Bowens/Caster and Takeshita/Okada are already in that lane though, so it can always come later though. For now, this is a (death) ride worth enjoying.

Read more!

2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Best Friends vs. Sabian/Butcher

 

15. Orange Cassidy/Trent Beretta vs. Kip Sabian/The Butcher AEW Rampage 3/8/24

ER: I wrote about this before I knew the Best Friends suddenly broke up. The concept of a team called Best Friends makes me think about a kind of indy wrestling I've set out to avoid since Chikara, but it turns out I didn't need to soften my stance on that wrestling, because the few who weren't canceled just got better. I didn't know when watching this match I was watching the near end of a great TV match era. Orange and Trent were a team I really loved, and two wrestlers who have turned into must see AEW for me. I'm going to miss the Jefferson Starship TV era. Pixies Cassidy doesn't quite hit the same for me. Anyway. 

There are probably better AEW matches that I've watched and will not be adding to the MOTY List for reasons like "it went on longer than I thought it should" or the more accurate "I recognize it was good but not good enough to move me to want to write about it". A match like this feels like more of an accomplishment than a 20 minute ****3/4 match. They're both going to be forgotten about the next week, so I think a great Kip Sabian performance is more memorable. When I think back to the start of AEW, I think about how awful Kip Sabian was and how much TV time he was consistently getting over...well, almost everyone. I think at one point he was the most consistently featured TV worker. Those were the dark days, with guaranteed Kip Sabian and Private Party and Orange Cassidy matches every week. I couldn't stand Orange Cassidy matches for years. Now it's 5 years later, here's a show with Kip Sabian, Orange Cassidy, and Private Party, and it's the same but everything has changed. Cassidy is now one of the guys that make me watch these shows and Kip Sabian is one of the most improved wrestlers on the roster. I guess not everything has changed, as Private Party are still essentially doing the exact same thing in the exact same spot with the same spots done slower. The main event of this episode was the weakest go nowhere match on Rampage. 

I never foresaw loving Orange Cassidy, and I certainly did not anticipate Kip Sabian ever being a wrestler worth watching. But he now is, that. It happened, and it's cool. Cassidy came into the match with his back and ribs wrecked from his title loss to Roderick Strong, and Sabian and Butcher went after those ribs with backbreakers. There were two very cool physical momentum reversals, where Cassidy was slowed and couldn't pull off his round the world DDT, and Sabian and Butcher each stopped his momentum mid-move in ways that felt like both were really fighting to stop it. Butcher had wobbling legs as he powered OC up for a powerslam, then lifted him up by the front waistband of his joggers high enough to drop him over his knee. Sabian always looked like he was fighting OC's momentum, even on roll-ups. 

When they weren't working over his back, I thought Sabian was great at working around Cassidy's selling and his shtick. I liked the spot where Cassidy was fighting to tag out with his hands in pockets, as Sabian expertly crashed around him and into Butcher, credibly fucking up repeatedly against an armless man. All parts of Sabian's game have been tightened. Five years ago I couldn't imagine Sabian as a guy with good elbow smashes, but now he has them. He was always someone who could bump, but now his bumps seem more directed towards the match he is having than an empty athleticism. His bumps are an essential part of Trent's hot tag, he's great at being in position for the finish sprint, and he does it all while taking in-character bumps. The way he kicked his legs in panic while getting tossed with a backdrop, or getting yanked into a Saito suplex and knowing just how to get where he needed to be to lean into a knee, he does it like him. 

Cassidy's Superman punch to set up the finish looked its best and came in with force, like he wanted to get it in quicker than the one earlier that had been caught by Butcher and ended with his back being punished by a half nelson backbreaker. Instead of flying right at Butcher he came at an angle, blindsiding him into a Beretta Strong Zero. Cassidy is impossible to keep down but stayed with it in ways that didn't make Sabian and Butcher's back work feel stupid, it just made him seem tough. It's been five years, the surprise of my Orange love has finally faded, and now I'm spending my time writing glowing things about Kip Sabian. I'm convertible. Who will be the next to convert me?  

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/4 - 11/10

AEW Dynamite 11/6/24

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Claudio Castagnoli/PAC

MD: This was an extremely well put together tag match. I'd like to say more about Cassidy in general in a bit and then I'll follow it up with something I wrote about AEW storytelling in general, but let me start with layout of the tag itself.

Just to recap quickly, it started with Cassidy luring the Deathriders into Darby's dive off the set. From there, Darby fought Claudio on the floor and Cassidy fought PAC in the ring. Cassidy side stepped and Claudio hit an uppercut almost simultaneously. Yuta distracted Cassidy however, but he was able to push a resurgent PAC off the ropes and hit a jumping DDT. Claudio had been laying in wait and rushed in to break up the pin and hit three big power moves in a row to turn the tide and start the actual heat.

There's so much going on in there, so many wrinkles, so many little bits of character, so much specific highlighting of what makes each of these wrestlers unique. It was a great way to start a match. The shine wasn't long and it was fairly back and forth (as you have to keep your relatively new heel unit strong while making the defenders of the company stand out) but it was punctuated with big moments in Darby's dive and Cassidy's jumping DDT, then Claudio went way overboard in smashing him. Just a very effective opening.

That brings us to heat #1, on Cassidy, through the commercial break. It's so frustrating to see people who should know what they're talking about completely miss the boat on him. He'd already done multiple things extremely well in the match (the character-driven sidestep, getting distracted by Yuta) but he did exactly what he should have done as a face-in-peril. He was constantly fighting, constantly reaching, constantly showing the world just how tough it all was, constantly giving the fans something to latch on to. He has all of the substance of being a traditional babyface in traditional wrestling, and it's just the style and the trappings that work differently. The important stuff all hits. How can people who know so much about wrestling be blind about this? 

And the Deathriders, to their credit, kept it interesting. They had a multiple distraction spot just so Claudio (the illegal man) could hit a double stomp on the floor. Claudio is the bar, a wall, the perfect guy to cut people off and he had a great cutoff with the gutwrench over the shoulder backbreaker as Cassidy was starting to fire back after the commercial break. Then Cassidy capitalized on a banana peel slip as Claudio hit the corner and got the tag.

Darby came in hot, and things were elementary from there. He took everyone out, got caught by Claudio, gracefully avoided the catch once but not twice, got beat on a bit, and then slipped through the legs in the bumpiest, most Darby way possible for a second hot tag and to roll into the finishing stretch. Then as they were pinballing into the Deathriders and as Cassidy was hitting Orange Punch after Orange Punch, Shafir and Mox asserted themselves and we got a rare DQ. A perfectly fine DQ by the way given how good the match was and how it gave Darby and Cassidy something of a moral victory right up until Darby got lawn darted into the post (won the battle, lost the war; clearly were dominant, but the heels more than got their heat back). Matches without clean finishes happen so rarely that this gave everything a chaotic mood that kept things chugging along on the road to Full Gear. Not an every day occurrence but something they shouldn't be afraid to use when needed.

Which brings me to something I posted on Twitter yesterday (https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1855593937882247204)

The State of AEW Storytelling

The people who say there is no story in AEW are completely and blatantly wrong. Almost every match has some driving force and purpose. Every match on TV is either set up or is setting up something. There are criticisms to be made but that's not one of them. Instead, people should look at the style, the execution, the sometimes mechanical nature, the pacing, the lack of tangible change over time. While AEW succeeds sometimes in some of these things, they're apt to fail just as often.

There is a hierarchy to how AEW matches work. Wrestlers are built up on Rampage to build someone up on Collision so that they may be built up for someone on Dynamite. AR Fox will get a win vs Josh Woods on ROH TV (this well could have been Rampage) so that he can lose to Nick Wayne on Collision, very likely for Wayne to lose sometime in the near future to HOOK on Dynamite to set up a match with Christian on the PPV. Often all of those intermediary matches are further underpinned by story. Wayne wants to get back at AR Fox for Fox attacking him in his dad's school with Swerve last year. So things are both set up with lead-in matches and underpinned with story.

It's mechanically sound. It works on paper. Maybe the fact that Woods never gets a win (maybe in an enhancement match on ROH sometimes? His last was in August.) hurts things a little but hierarchy is hierarchy.

So what's the problem? Well, there are a few. For one, it's too mechanical. It's too obvious maybe. It'd work if you were scoring on a machine, if you were checking boxes on a video game. In real life, it's a logical engine but not necessarily a compelling one.  It's organized but it doesn't feel organic, doesn't feel alive. It's not vibrant. Everything feels like a means to an end.
Things are supposed to be means to ends, yes, but it's not always supposed to feel that way in the moment. Maybe some of that has to do with the fact that none of the results are ever in question. The lower-positioned wrestler is always going to lose to heat up the higher one. What would it mean to the story for the opposite to be true? It wouldn't make sense.

Maybe it shouldn't be so neat all the time? AEW is known for clean finishes but maybe there are other ways to get to Point C (that Dynamite match) where Point A and Point B (ROH/Rampage/Collision) can be a bit more in question. A few more DQs. A few more countouts. A few more double DQs or countouts. These are tools that were in the toolbox for all bookers for decades. They were used to cheat crowds out of finishes at times and that should be avoided but that doesn't mean they can't be used on the path to the match that actually matters in a way that still gets everything where it's going.

Then there's lack of follow up on midcarders after they've served their purpose. To continue with the current advantage, Woods isn't going to grow or change from his loss to Fox. Fox is going to come out of a potentially emotional substory with Wayne probably no different the next time we see him.

Things start and stop and are not always clearly communicated. Look at Top Flight. Andretti had been getting more impulsive and aggressive for weeks but it was more or less dropped so they could weave them in as early Deathriders opponents, spiking again when he needed to be bullheaded enough to fill a segment and get destroyed by PAC. They never clearly defined if Top Flight lost their new look due to the Deathriders pressing them or if it was just haphazard. There was nothing to connect Andretti's aggression in September with what was happening in late October. Likewise, there's nothing connecting Lio Rush getting pushed by the Deathriders to him potentially working with the Hurt Syndicate. Someone who watches all (and I mean ALL) of the TV can read between the lines, but the average viewer isn't at all led and it leaves the company open to criticism.

AEW's gotten better about recaps and trying to let things sink in as of late, but that's primarily served the A stories, not the B and C ones that lead to the A stories, and it's those B and C ones that fill TV time and where the criticisms tend to sit.

I know what people might say here, or what they should say. When has any company really managed what I'm talking about above? Consistently and over time especially? Maybe never. Maybe it's all an unfair expectation that I'm setting on Khan and AEW.

Here's the thing though. AEW is match-based promotion. There aren't long promos that carry the story. There aren't extended interview segments. I don't want that. Khan doesn't want that. The hardcores don't want that. The only people who seem to want those things are the bad faith grifters and the people who have only known wrestling in their lives to be one sort of thing.

So then how do you get around that? You use every tool in your disposal. You flesh out your characters as much as possible. You find ways to introduce stakes in the matches themselves, propelling the winners but also developing the losers along the way so that they either someday can be winners or that the idea of beating them time and time again becomes more important. You ensure that things, like Andretti's character development, 1) exist in the first place 2) are clear and flowing and not start and stop and haphazard, and 3) allow for meaningful change and aren't just jettisoned when no longer immediately useful. It's all a big ask but it's a big, frequent criticism and if it's to be countered, it should be in a way that furthers the company and rewards viewers not just those acting in bad faith.

Read more!

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Orange Cassidy vs. Angelico

 

21. Orange Cassidy vs. Angelico AEW Rampage 12/8/23

ER: I'm not sure I could have possibly predicted how much of a Modern Orange Cassidy Lover I have become. I am old and much more forgetful than I used to be, but I cannot think of another wrestler who went from one of my least favorite guys on the scene to one of my absolute favorites to watch. If Doc Brown had shown up at my house with a dot matrix print out of AEW's 23/24 roster and asked me to guess My Future Favorites, it would have been pretty easy to quickly pool Darby, Danielson, and Kingston. That hasn't changed. But I'm not sure how I would have explained to myself that in the future we will come to love Orange Cassidy. Liking Trent Beretta is one thing (I do), Wheeler Yuta is another (his improvement isn't a real shock I guess), but I really did not like Orange Cassidy. My hate for him was the kind of hate that was coupled with him as the masthead of a whole Type of wrestling I did not like. 

Every time I write about OC I am still framing it around my actual shock that he connects with me as much as he does, but I shouldn't be shocked anymore. It's been too consistent. I was probably on board with OC by the pandemic Jericho match, but that felt like me occasionally liking a Johnny Gargano match rather than me coming around on his style and gimmick. But now he is must watch for me, a perfect babyface. Maybe I like Jefferson Starship more than Pixies and that shifted my mental balance. Maybe my tastes have changed so much that I no longer recognize my tastes. I don't know. But I'm great at recognizing just what works for me, and he works. 

He's just an excellent babyface, and that's that. He defies the odds such, that here I am writing about a truly enjoyable match against one of the Top 50 IWRG Wrestlers of 2010 and plenty of Danhausen at ringside. If this is slop, I guess I'm a slop swiller now. I liked every little part, even the stupid stuff. I loved OC tying up Angelico's arms and the exhibition rope running and avoidance they started with, the fighting over Angelico keeping Cassidy's hands out of his pockets, and the 1-2 of Orange finally getting those hands in his pockets but hurting his knee while showing off. The pocket hands headscissors looked great, the knee buckle on the pocket hands kip-up perhaps even better. 

Angelico's work on Cassidy's knee was good, and I loved the way Cassidy was able to sell that leg convincingly while still hitting big offense. It's not easy to sell well while still building to the hot part of the match, and while I don't need every match to feature someone limping around and grabbing at their knee, I like when Cassidy does a limb selling match. Angelico had some great asshole stuff on OC's leg: running around the ring to kick his leg out, knocking him back on his face with an inside ankle kick after Orange had just fought to his feet, twisting hard into the Grapevine, and an awesome moment where he lifted Orange for a knee breaker and instead ran him knee first into the top turnbuckle (spinning him around nicely into a back suplex). Would I have wanted less of Danhausen and Serpentico at ringside? Probably. But I liked when Serpentico was throwing punches at Cassidy's kneecap, and the payoff to Danhausen punching Serpentico in the dick was well done. Angelico's fall after catching the Orange Punch right after is a beauty, takes it on the chin and goes sideways and stiff on the fall. I eat-a the slop now. It's delicious. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby & Orange vs. Swerve & Keith (Lee)

 

11. Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Keith Lee/Swerve Strickland AEW Dynamite 7/5

ER: I didn't consciously set out to write about every Darby Allin match I haphazardly cherry-picked my way through, but it's certainly become that. It would be great if I could just watch a Darby match that I didn't feel the need to say something about. Alas, he does too many things I like, finds too many ways to do new twists on old crash landings, and manages to do something every match that is astonishing enough that it makes me exclaim aloud. When compared to any of the other wrestlers who make me do the same on such a consistent basis during nearly every match of theirs I watch - Stan Hansen, Fit Finlay, Necro Butcher were the first that came to mind - it puts Allin in the immediate company of my favorite wrestlers of all time. It is still probably too soon to say that Darby Allin is one of my favorite all time wrestlers, but he's certainly put up some numbers through his 20s and I've been persistently surprised by his sustainability. There are only so many times I can say that before his run is cemented as legendary, regardless of when it ends. 

I've written up plenty of matches that I thought were Darby elevating one or even three opponents to something grander, but I think one of his great strengths is how selflessly he interjects his stunts and feats. Darby Allin manages to take Shane McMahon stunt bumps in a way that is in service to his opponent, never to himself as a Show Stopper. At this point there is a lengthy list of people who have had some of their greatest performances and matches while in the role of Darby Allin Opponent, and that is not a coincidence. Darby is a canvas that allows wrestlers of all sizes and styles to rise to something greater, in the same way Rey Mysterio or even Amazing Red did. 

Keith Lee is one of our great Should Be So Much Better wrestlers. He is a study of a man shaped like a root beer barrel who mostly works the least interesting style for his size and shape, a Mo Vaughn who bunts and works walks with men in scoring position. Swerve has a CVS receipt length list of matches where his focus was on doing a cool one armed handstand before hitting a move rather than just hitting a move, a John Morrison with more thigh slaps and less backspins. This match, surely not coincidentally against Star Maker Allin, was Lee and Swerve working to their full potential. This was a typically great show opening Darby Allin performance, with a constantly pushed pace getting one-upped all the way to the finish, laying things out to the strengths of every person involved. Keith Lee was Donkey Kong instead of a man the size of Trent Williams doing rope running reversals. His Only On Darby biel to start the match set a tone that every Lee match should have. Darby and Orange played off Lee perfectly, using him as a rock climbing gym who could throw them, and I love how their team works as one man split into two attacking beings, attacking in 1-2 flurries, one sacrificing his body so the other might have an opening to land a shot. 

Lee focuses too often on agility, Orange and Darby made him focus on power. He looks more powerful than ever with Allin getting ragdolled over ringposts and bouncing violently on throws. He brings interesting dogged struggle to stopping OC's constant attempts at diving DDTs or Slumdogs, and his lack of neck makes him impervious to backpack sleepers. Swerve forgets about matching athleticism with Darby, instead focusing on hitting him hard and torturing him. Swerve wedging Darby under the ring steps so that Lee (carrying Cassidy on his back) can walk up the steps while Darby screams like he's slowly being crushed in an industrial press? That's four men coming together to creatively inflict pain on a masochist babyface icon. 

I loved OC climbing all over Lee, attempting to drag him down by the neck while kicking his legs against Lee's resistance, before finally holding Lee stooped over with two consecutive Slumdogs, setting up an actual plausible way for a man Lee's size to bump for a Darby code red. Lee hadn't taken a bump all match and they found a complicated set up that could have looked bad at every step, and instead built to the most logical use of a Keith Lee Agile Bump. The finish is Darby and Orange as Santo and Casas: OC diving off the top with a leaping DDT that spikes Swerve onto his head while sending himself running and diving straight through the ropes into a the exact same DDT on Lee, while Darby ensnares the spiked Swerve in a Last Supper. It's a great twist on Santo's rolling senton/tope, taking out the man on the floor while Casas majistrals the man left in his wake. I don't seek to keep comparing Darby Allin with the greatest names in wrestling history, but he sure does make it easy. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby/Orange vs. Gates of Agony

 

7. Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Toa Liona/Bishop Kaun AEW Dynamite 5/31

ER: Yeah, I'm pretty in the bag for Darby Allin matches and I can't see what can drag me out of the bag at this point. I was a huge Spike Dudley fan and that was without Spike running as fast and hard into his opponents as possible. Spike sprinted headlong into danger like few else, while Darby does exactly the same, somehow endures the punishment, then throws his own body as a weapon. He is weapon and he is a projectile and he has the ability to be thrown so hard that I can only watch captivated while not thinking of a day where his body while suddenly shatter into a million pieces. Darby Allin is a supernova who will explode into stardust while doing something stupid like getting pounced out of the air on a tope en reversa or being dropped back first onto the top turnbuckle. Nobody gets blown up like Darby, nobody offers as much of himself in recompense, nobody but Darby has issue taking as much punishment during his opponents' swarms as during his own triumphs. Imagine if Ricky Morton had also murdered himself during his end of match comebacks, or if Spike Dudley's matches had finished not with a cooperative bulldog but with him throwing his own body even more violently into his opponent than they had just been throwing him. 

I liked Bishop Kaun's match against Dustin a couple weeks before this, but I liked it because I thought it was Another Excellent Dustin Match where he bled a ton for no real reason on a B-show and thought Kaun could have been just as well have been 50 other guys on the roster. It was a Dustin match and Kaun was interchangeable. Here, with two smaller opponents, Kaun and Toa looked exactly like the monsters they're championed as. They leaned in for all of Darby's blows and because of the size difference, Darby got to hit them as hard as possible. Darby is fearless, and the sequences where he slaps Toa across the face and then pays for that for the next couple minutes is key to everything. Kaun whipping Darby into railings while Toa sprints around the ring to upend OC, running almost so hard that he nearly flies into the crowd himself; later you can see Darby running full speed back and forth into the corners to send all his weight into these beasts, and you can see the rag in their faces as they get suckered into running after him just as hard. I love moments like Darby using an Irish whip to knock Kaun off the apron, even though it slows him down enough to leave him prone for a nasty Toa hip attack. 

The timing of everything was  - and seemingly always is - so good when Darby is in there directing traffic with his adamantium skeleton. The way he smacks Toa around with back elbows and ducks a big swinging arm just in time for OC to hit the Orange Punch, allowing Darby to hit his cannonball tope which is now so expected that it's almost easy to forget how much of an all time great tope it is. I remember buying a lucha tape and seeing Black Warrior hit a tope so hard that it flipped him upside down on collision, making the tope read like a car crash with the physics causing the elements to fly off into their own trajectories. Darby's topes always look like a man was trying to sneak through a more-red-than-yellow light and getting t-boned, and Darby is the world's most durable Yugo. 

Also, as someone who used to not be amused in any way by Orange Cassidy, he is one of my favorite babyfaces now. I get excited to hear Starship, I give a thumbs up with my thumb barely extended, and I flipped out for how hard he crashed onto his tailbone while hitting Stun Dog, holding Toa in place for a code red. I am a full on OC Guy now. That said, he's even better when Darby is the one setting up the timing of the misdirections. Darby just makes everyone stronger. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Cassidy vs. Moriarty

 

11. Orange Cassidy vs. Lee Moriarty AEW Rampage 2/8 (Aired 2/10/23)

ER: I've never been a Lee Moriarty Guy. I didn't use to be an Orange Cassidy Guy, and then one day I realized I had become an Orange Cassidy Guy. It doesn't always work but I root for it to work much more than I used to. So I'm an Orange Guy but not yet a Lee Guy. For 5 or 6 years now Lee Moriarty has done a mechanically sound recreation of a style I have grown tired of seeing; a guy doing a Technical Wrestler gimmick with the precise hollowness that the Smooth Technical Wrestler gimmick requires. Did the acting get better from both, to the point I eventually grew to like each of their styles? Maybe. I think their styles have grown and evolved and now they're both just better versions of the guys they were when I didn't like watching them wrestle. 

I'm not ready to call myself a Moriarty Guy just yet but I can say this match is the most I've liked him in a match. There's still a theatrical disconnect there in the application of every single thing, so it's a lot of faces and ham, but now his stuff has a much better combination of painful application and stiffness so that it overshadows the times it veers into mechanically technical. Cassidy brought even more ham with a match-long arm sell that was aggressively present in a way that I appreciated but wish we actually saw less. Most of this match is Orange Cassidy shaking out his arm like his hand was stuck in a hornet's nest, pervasive enough that it felt like a waiter topping off your coffee too often, not understanding the rhythm of too much or not enough Checking In. You were getting constantly topped off coffee and mostly avoiding eye contact while saying a sincere but progressively muttered Thank You. 

But all of Moriarty's stuff stretching out and bending at Cassidy's arm looked painful and Cassidy's athleticism gives him fun ways to fight out of snug holds. Moriarty has good elbows and strikes while working holds now, and he has a real gas tank. Like Cassidy selling the arm too dedicatedly, Moriarty comes off probably too active. But they both work this like limb shaking overactive spazzes and I'll take hyperactivity when it leads to Moriarty getting spiked by two different awesome tornado DDTs and weird spots like Cassidy climbing all over him like a sleeperhold spider monkey. I like how Moriarty goes floppy limbed on tightly timed late kickouts, and the way he flops too much for bumps. When there's actual honesty to the holds and leveraged pins, the hyperactivity adds to the game. Maybe I am a Moriarty Guy now. Maybe it only clicked for me this one time. That's fine. I click with a Natalya match every couple years and maybe Moriarty fills that Natalya Niche. 

I can't see a future where I suddenly find out I'm a Danhausen Guy, but I guess that's why we watch this shit. Maybe I'll be a Danhausen Guy next week I don't fucking know. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/23 - 10/29

AEW Dynamite 10/25/23

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs Orange Cassidy/Kazuchika Okada

MD: Let's talk about intent though we'll take the long way to get there. I'm bad at lists. I'm bad at ranking things. I'm bad at star ratings. I get that even the C+A version of Skippable/Fun/Great/Epic would probably be useful to people for these AEW matches or what we did with Catch or whatever, but that's just not the way I'm set up. I'm much more into looking for patterns and trying to understand the nuts and bolts of what makes things work. I'm also not as much of an execution guy as some of my esteemed peers. Good execution helps more than bad execution hurts. However, I'll certainly hold it against a wrestler/match if he does something beyond his own physical abilities or beyond the abilities of the wrestlers combined to make feel somehow organic and natural. In a lot of ways, that goes back to theory, to mapping out what will be done, either in the back or in the moment. I imagine Erik might have some controversial things to say about Okada's execution here and that would make for a good article but it's not my lane, not really.

I'm also not one to just hunt for the greatest matches. You learn a lot from the things in the cracks. You learn a lot from matches that are never positioned for that sort of established, star-adorned greatness. I think a lot about purpose and situational understanding. What can you learn from a squash? What can you learn from a ten minute TV match meant to set up something else? What about a house show? A tag vs a trios vs a triple threat? A gimmick match? A match building off of limb damage vs more of a bomb throwing sprint? And yeah, a main event title match too? But we're never all the way in. We never know exactly what we don't know. For instance, I don't know when Bryan Danielson got injured. Was it off of Andrade's back elbow on Collision? Was it off of Okada's pancake that Taz was wincing all over the place on? Was it really somewhere in the Orange Punch/Rainmaker? Did he work the whole match hurt? Was he even hurt at all (he likes to lie, remember)? 

Here's another one we don't know: How long ago was the match planned? Okada's schedule is what it is. Danielson's just coming back from injury and only has so much time left so it makes sense to hotshot matches that might have been held off on otherwise. Cassidy's program with the BCC seemed more or less over until Moxley's injury. Basketball's back so they needed a big base-popping match to try to keep the ratings steady given the competition. This match might have set up Danielson vs Okada at WrestleKingdom. It did set up Claudio vs Cassidy at Dynamite. It's probably a step on the road to Cassidy vs Moxley. 

So there's a lot we don't know. Does that matter to your individual enjoyment of the match? Maybe. Maybe not. For me, the context matters, because I am personally curious just what the circumstances of the match are and how well the wrestlers manage to accomplish their goals. That's a driving force in how I look at a match. The brain doesn't shut off. I'm not ranking anything here. I'm not just thinking of greatness for the sake of greatness. So, even putting aside the potential injury and potential frustration for the matches lost to a future that is quickly slipping away, I'm left to primarily engage with the text itself. That's not unusual for me. A lot of the matches for Found Footage Friday end up like that. Some of the Panama matches do. Most of the Catch matches did. It's one reason I'm so thoroughly enjoying Esteban's putting all of the Puerto Rico matches in context.

There are things we can know from the text. This wasn't Orange Cassidy's match. He was a cog in the machine. It elevated him to be in this spot. It continued his story to a degree. He was there to eat the fall to set up the Claudio match. This was an attraction match, however. It was the local star and Mil Mascaras or Andre the Giant against some of the top heels. In this case, the heels were tweeners who could go either way, but the idea was the same. Moreover, it was set to build to one key exchange at the end, Bryan vs Okada, before giving way to the coda of Claudio vs Cassidy that would set up what was to come. That meant we got Danielson vs Cassidy to start but also that we didn't get much of it. Danielson didn't engage with Cassidy's theatrics. He just went right at him instead. It was almost like we didn't have the interaction between them at all. It wasn't even a tease for what might have been; it was a mauling that defied it but that also didn't deny the possibility that it might some day exist, that if given the time and the space and the opportunity, Cassidy might get under Danielson's skin. It was almost defensive, as if Danielson was afraid to open that door and see what might be behind it. In a tag setting, he was able to get away with that. In a singles setting, things might be different.

It let them tease out Claudio vs Okada, strength and size vs star power and presence. It let them bear down on Cassidy during the commercial break, and it finally built to Danielson and Okada facing off with one another and the pop that went with it. From that hot tag on, they rolled into an extended finishing stretch. They kept quite a few interesting beginning and middle bits for this sort of a match on the table for some other time and built instead to the duel moment of the camera cut outs for Okada and then the hug, before paying off the Punch/Rainmaker combo and the swing and setting things up for next week. As a stop on the road, it was satisfying. As a first encounter between Danielson and Cassidy, it was lacing. As a second 2023 encounter between Danielson and Okada, it was only a tease. As a set up for Claudio vs Cassidy (and potentially for future BCC matches with Okada), it was entirely effective. As a clutch TV main event you could never get anywhere else, it felt special. As a dream match, it was probably lacking. To some degree, every match exists in multiple states in this way. This one, however, just happens to be worse than most.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 1

AEW Collision 8/26/23

Orange Cassidy/Penta/Eddie Kingston vs. Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade

MD: One of those random WAR like six mans that we get just a bit too rarely in AEW. It's good to have Eddie back between the injury and the excursion and the fans felt the same. Penta handled most of the shine (against Kip who reacted but didn't do anything novel like I'd expect, though at least Penelope got to take out Abrahantes on the glove catch) and Cassidy most of the FIP (after a very solid transition, with Kip goading Cassidy right into a Blade superkick, which IS what I'd expect). Penta and Abrahantes did most of the apron-working, including a freshly squeezed chant that was perfectly timed, with Eddie's only contribution being a memorable face made at Butcher. Butcher and Blade were pretty vocal in there with their 1966 Batman Goon muttering, like Butcher calling out a powerbomb that would never come and Blade shouting "Butcher and the Blade!" in a moment of beatdown on Cassidy.

It was a bit of a consolation prize for Kip and co. for not making the Wembley card. It was a longshot but Kip is local and original and worked hard to reinvent himself and Butcher and Blade are loyal, capable soldiers who pull off whatever's asked for them. The crowd was behind Cassidy when he worked from underneath, but they really wanted to see Eddie and he delivered, coming in hot, chopping everyone, and then starting the chain reaction of spots and linked finishers that set off the stretch. This ended with a sort of WWE dark match main event multi-man feel, with everyone getting their stuff in, but with an AEW twist, as all of that stuff ended up connected together. Eddie capped it all off by debuting a sliding elbow (obviously "a move he learned from Japan," which if a more present announcer was there, might have actually been noted). Fun stuff to open up a go home show and set up the post-match in-ring interview that followed.

Sting/CM Punk/Darby Allin/HOOK vs. Swerve Strickland/Jay White/Luchasaurus/Brian Cage

MD: Challenge here was to follow a fairly similar match. Well, not follow because it was taped first but you get the idea. This had plenty of time to breathe, with heat on both Punk and then HOOK. Theoretically it was all leading to White and Sting because that was teased early in the match but it only got there with a chop block cheapshot by White, probably a combo of making sure to protect Sting before the PPV and teasing something for the future. That'd be a great interaction somewhere down the line. White is a guy who is just always on. He tries to make the most out of every second he's on the camera and he's constantly active. It makes for a good pairing with hyperactive guys like Juice and Austin Gunn. The most interesting things here were Punk interfacing with Swerve's offense (he didn't take the headscissors well but did take the rolling suplex fine; when they were just posturing it was great) and to a lesser degree White (including the Sting tease that they really milked) and then HOOK having to work from underneath, especially against Luchasaurus and Cage. In the end, the fact they didn't pay off Sting and White was fine. He had his big moment against Luchasaurus and Punk and Joe was the ultimate focus, with Punk getting to make up for the flimsy GTS last week with a pretty solid one on Cage, and then to use the Kokina Clutch to end it setting up the perfectly timed Joe (who was a total pro on commentary) run in. Fun stuff with big star moments, but maybe a little slight relative to other Collision main events.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/12 - 6/18

AEW Dynamite 6/14

Sting/Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy/Keith Lee vs Mogul Embassy (Swerve Strickland/Brian Cage/Toa Liona/Bishop Kaun)

MD: You watch enough wrestling on TV and you start to think about formatting as it pertains to the structure of the match. Maybe it's because the fact they went thirty to start the show but this had a commercial break during the entrances and then another one in the middle of the match. In order to deal with that, they started hot and then took things down. Most Sting matches tend to be brawls around the arena but this turned into a standard tag getting heat on Darby. Before that though, there was a barrage of Coffin Splashes and Stinger Splashes on Swerve, followed by a Code Red and a tease of the Coffin Drop. You can get away with hitting stuff like that right at the start of a match, especially right at the start of a tag, where a wrestler is fresh and then can recover on the apron, but it's probably something to be done carefully and something done with the specific programming needs of this match in mind. 

Cage made the most of things in his 80s Sting cosplay, coming off as bombastic and larger than life. Kaun hit a spot or two but was a bit of a non-factor while Toa was there to knock people off the apron and play crowd control. I like 2023 Keith Lee as a guy who leverages his size as much as possible while still hitting one or two breathtaking spots. I like that more than when the balance leaned further towards athleticism. Everyone in AEW is athletic. Only a few people are his size. It didn't help here that the athletic spot didn't quite work though. Cassidy didn't do much in this one but break things up and set things up (like the finish for Sting); speaking of setting things up, he also shared the Stundog with Darby, who used it to create the opportunity for the hot tag. They've been teaming lately so it's a shame the announcers didn't pick up on that. It's hard to blame them though, because once things broke down, they really broke down. They probably want to move on but there's still meat on the bone here for a street fight if they needed to fill time right after Forbidden Door.

AEW Collision 6/17

CM Punk/FTR vs Jay White/Juice Robinson/Samoa Joe

MD: Very nice to have the 5th Finger back in action for the first time in ten months, and paired up against Joe for the first time in over 6000 days (at least according to Kevin Kelly). Wrestling is all about anticipation and there was plenty of anticipation here, anticipation even from the beginning of the night to the end, anticipation from the Sports Interview Punk piece from the day before, anticipation from Khan and his media partners making one announcement after the next, week after week (the existence of Collision, that Chicago would be the first venue, that Punk was back, that this was the main event), and anticipation in the match itself: the first lock up between Dax and White, first time Punk would get tagged in, the first encounter with Joe, the hot tag to Cash, the hot tag to Punk, and finally, that final encounter between Joe and Punk, the last one only increasing anticipation for a singles match to come. And of course, there was the anticipation for Punk hitting the GTS after failing to multiple times within the match.

This match, as much as any I'd seen in AEW in a while, certainly had time to breathe. There was quite a bit of back and forth to begin with, double heat, the discipline not to have things fully break down until it was time for Punk's big entrance in the back third of the match, and then an exciting finishing stretch with all the drama you'd want as Punk gasped for air in the Coquina Clutch while Dax and Cash desperately tried to get to him or at least each other in order to do something, anything to turn the tide. Punk didn't seem to have much ring rust at all, though he was buoyed by a familiar opponent in Joe and two very game ones in Juice and especially White. This was the best I've seen Dax look in months. He'd seemed off somehow during the Jarrett feud, maybe still healing up from a slew of injuries but he was sharp and absolutely on point here. Cash is always that. Joe is as comfortable in his own skin after years of portraying a very consistent character as anyone in wrestling and Juice, the absolute definition of trying too hard, somehow manages to transcend that artificiality to succeed more often than not for his efforts. Sometimes you go so far in one direction that you come back around the other way. 

This was a show full of hubris, from Punk's initial interview all the way to not having some sort of big angle at the end, with Dax trying to stand toe to toe with Joe representing it as much as anything else in the match, but to have faith in a great wrestling match to be enough to carry the load? Well, that's the kind of hubris I suppose I can get behind.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/5 - 6/11

AEW Dynamite 6/7 

Orange Cassidy vs Swerve Strickland

MD: Swerve is one of those wrestlers that I respect more than I like. He's always thinking, always looking, always trying to capitalize on the moment, always trying to get better along the lines that he thinks will get him over and will produce the best result. That doesn't always produce the best result with me, but he's over, he's dynamic, and I see no reason why they shouldn't push him to the moon. He's never rote, never trite, never boring. He's also a lot better as a heel because his offense comes at weird angles, takes an extra aggravating breath, and basically shouldn't work. As a babyface, it kind of drives me nuts. As a heel, you have to begrudgingly give him credit because he executes it and lays it out just well enough to make it almost, almost work. And that gap between working and not gets him heat, at least with me, and probably, subconsciously, with the crowd as well.

In some ways that makes him a mirror image of Cassidy, who takes such a classic babyface trickster formula, the Brer Rabbit/Bugs Bunny approach, overlays it with the slacker character, and underpins it all with more attention to detail and consequence than any wrestler has in years. At the end of the day, wrestling isn't about action. It's about reaction. It's in the word: selling. They're selling the reality of what they're doing through expressing pain, both immediate and lingering. And not despite the character, but because of the unblinking devotion to it and refusing to show any air in anything he does, the crowd buys every bit of what Cassidy is doing. Moreover, they bought everything Swerve brought to the table here, even if it was often infuriating on multiple levels. And most of all, they bought the threat of the title change. This felt like the moment, the straw that was going to break the camel's back, an ascendant force that was going to be too much for even wrestling's most unlikely enduring champion, now at the very end of his rope. 

All of that build, all of the weight behind this, the unique two-sides-of-the-same-coin nature of Cassidy and Swerve meant that they were able to get away with more than usual. They countered one another's mind games. They rode the house style of a full bit of heat and comeback before a big transition leading into the commercial break. They made everything take an extra attempt, an extra counter, and then paid it off with another piece of offense they wouldn't be able to otherwise hit. Then, later on they hit what they were initially going for when it mattered so much more. They called back the battle royal finish. They played with all the tropes: Nana up in the apron, it backfiring, neither of those leading to the actual finish, and so on. I had been a little hesitant to see them in an actual match. I thought it could have been the worst of both worlds, but they're so good and so smart and so aware of themselves and one another that it led to the best of both instead.

AEW House Rules 6/3

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Matt Menard/Daniel Garcia

MD: We got this a little late but at least we got it. I, for one, am loving these house shows. The wrestlers are obviously trying things out. The dynamics are different. They have room to breathe. They can really work the crowd. The matches don't have to be built around commercials (though I often see that as a structural feature and not a bug on AEW TV). They really milked this one for all it was worth. Pre-match, Garcia comes out to jaw on the mic allowing Menard to low blow Darby. They then hammer Cassidy's midsection with the skateboard before the bell. He gets dragged out by officials making it two-on-one. Darby survives at first (and is smart enough to go for quick wins both here and in his hope spots) but when he goes for the early code red on Menard, Garcia, having gotten a blind tag, is in to boot him in the face. The heat that follows is solid, with the numbers game cutting off Darby's comeback attempts and Menard and Garcia showing their personalities and letting it breathe.

Obviously, every builds to Cassidy running out, bandaged up. It comes right after another big comeback spot from Darby and you think that the drama might have had Cassidy run out first and then Darby have to come back but it works for the moment as the match had clearly and cleanly established that no matter what Darby did, he wouldn't be able to pin one JAS member without the other breaking it up. Cassidy coming in like this after the hot tag felt like watching Super Astro or someone doing their beloved shtick in the feel good tercera of an 80s lucha trios. Once Darby was sufficiently recovered, they cycled into a fun, bomb filled finishing stretch. Just a nice piece of business overall that they couldn't get away with on TV quite the same way.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/29 - 6/4

AEW Dynamite 5/31

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Gates of Agony

MD: This had a few masters to serve. It followed right after the massive heatseeking segment with Callis and Takeshita so you had to bring the crowd back to reality with something that balanced heat with big spots and a fun finish. They were rebuilding Darby after he took the pin in the 4-way at the PPV. They were hyping up the big house show draw of the Darby/Cassidy team. They were continuing the story of Cassidy going through a lot of pain and here doubling down on it with Swerve's heaters (they're all heaters for swerve really). 

I liked the Dustin vs. Kaun match but I think this worked better. Here, Kaun didn't have to look up at his opponent which let him tap into just a bit more intensity and come off like a beast. I liked the bit where, once they took advantage off of Toa's pounce, Kaun rushed punctuated the transition to heat by pulling Cassidy in from the outside and taking him out. Toa, of course, always comes off like a beast. Except for in out of character interviews, where he comes off like the best guy. Someday, he'll be a huge babyface. Here, he was a monster. I liked how Darby and Cassidy didn't try all of their signature spots early. That's the house style, to try the familiar things, have them blocked, have them pay off later in the match. They did hit them early in the match but due to the unique qualities of the Gates, they got shut down trying even basic stuff early. It gave things a different feel and really put over the Kaun and Toa. It was a nice balance where Cassidy and Darby did some things that they could only do with larger opponents and Kaun and Toa did some things that could best be done with smaller ones. Nothing was forced or contrived based on spots that anyone felt like they had to get in. I know some people might complain but I'd certainly be happy to see this specific match up with a couple thousand other people in a C-town. 

Speaking of House Rules, as of the writing of this, there were only three matches fancammed and uploaded from the weekend shows. They're all worth watching. Ruby and Britt had a hilarious bit where Ruby tried to explain to Bryce that the spraypaint was for her hair. Lethal had to go far, far out of his way to get the fans to turn on him. And Caster found the best kid to do Bowens' part after having an exaggerated house show work the leg match with heel trainer Pat Buck. They're definitely working these differently than on TV and they're worth going out of your way to find. Hopefully whenever a streaming deal hits, we get to see all of these.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/22 - 5/28 (Part 1?)

MD: I'm only two hours through ROH, but it was a good show so far, with nothing that I felt an absolute need to write about. There was also a Fletcher vs Cassidy match from Dynamite. I like Fletcher as the guy who contrasts HOOK for the next decade. There's a lot of upside there. He's still at a stage where he's just giving up the struggle to set up the next spot at times, but his reactions are good. I would have liked a bit more character-driven rationale (immaturity from Fletcher) for the kickouts towards the end. Too many bombs. I get that they're getting over Cassidy's resilience under impossible circumstance, but it was a bit much. I'll start the PPV here and maybe do the pillars match on Wednesday if I get around to it.

AEW Double or Nothing 2023

Blackjack Battle Royal for the International Championship

MD: You can tell a lot about someone's love of wrestling when it comes to how they feel about battle royals. There's nothing wrong with a person not liking them, complaining about it being too hard to see the action or too much hugging in the corner, etc., not enough "action," the notion that if you've seen one, you've seen them all. I wouldn't necessarily hold that against someone, but I'm always glad when someone appreciates the possibilities inherent. 

Before my time watching, a Battle Royal, like the big San Francisco one, but others as well, was a chance to see wrestlers you wouldn't normally see interacting with the local stars. They built it up as the most dangerous sort of match possible (despite that lack of action) where a punch could come from any direction and a freak injury could occur at any moment. That made a lot of sense during in age where kayfabe was protected and strikes and holds, not spots, were the glue that held wrestling together. 

When I started watching, towards the late 80s or early 90s, WWF Battle Royals were a way to break up the stultifying structure of the WWF feud system. The British Bulldog would feud for eight months with the Warlord and you'd rarely see him up against else during that time. A battle royal would let him interact with the Barbarian or Haku or Ted Dibiase and also brush shoulders with some of the other babyfaces, a brief save, a little nod, a quick team-up. That stuff was magic for a kid who wanted a more coherent universe in his wrestling and not just a series of isolated feuds. So maybe there's some level of comfort food for me in battle royals.

In AEW, it's not that guys don't cross streams and interact. Khan books random matches all the time. It's more a case that we can never have enough of it. There's only so much time and there are hierarchical needs that keep certain wrestlers away from one another. That was true a few weeks ago in the Darby vs Swerve match. It was true in Ricky Starks vs Jay White. For us to get matches like that every week, it makes continuous elevation of certain wrestlers tricky. In a Battle Royal, though? There's very little harm in getting knocked over the top. Moreover, here the wrestlers are encouraged to interact with one another and, more often than not, the spots are frequent and clever. 

I have no idea who agented this one, but they absolutely earned their keep. While there was brawling and guys hanging from the ropes and certain guys disappeared from the action (Butcher didn't get much shine for a change), it was one signature spot after the next, one interesting interaction after the next. The Lucha Bros, working with Bandido and Komander, interacting with Jay White, for instance, were standouts. The most memorable moment of the match might have been Bandido hefting up Nese for a delayed vertical suplex as Fenix and Penta fought off all comers. Brian Cage and especially Big Bill got plenty of shine. Bill's a guy who has been delivering and entertaining week in and week out and this felt like the first step in moving him to whatever might be next. I know people were high on the Swerve vs Cassidy finishing stretch but I find Swerve best as a heel and against someone with a little contrast, a few less twists and rolls, someone a bit more conventional. I worry that a straight up match between the two would frustrate me. Here though, as just a taste at the end of a very well put together Battle Royal, just a taste of it was more than enough. Cassidy was especially good at selling the cumulative damage of weeks on his back and hand, in the midst of a match where that wasn't the narrative centerpiece. It was just another detail in a twenty minute stretch of AEW that had a ton of excellent ones.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/15 - 5/21

AEW Dynamite 5/17

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Lee Moriarty/Big Bill

MD: One brief thought. I'm only going to speak for myself here, because Eric really has his own way of looking at things, even though the two of us agree a lot. When you watch as much wrestling as we do and are just awash in so much discussion about wrestling, you're often juggling multiple contexts. This is where some of the old prevailing thought (and I won't name names) that people can't judge old wrestling because they're not looking at it with the specific context of its time is silly and dismissive and throttles conversation instead of encourages it. This match is a great example. Do you know what excited me the most about this? The fact that I saw a couple of spots that Allin and Cassidy tried out in the House Rules match against QT and Hobbs (and maybe the Moriarty/Bill match from the day before which we don't have). There was the ref-missed hot tag hope spot while Cassidy was trying to knee his way out of Bill's suplex and then the combo Stundog/Code Red. I was legitimately happy that they were using the house show run as an experimental proving ground to see see if something worked or not in front of a crowd and that we had video proof of this.

Now then, if I were to watch two Rockers vs Powers of Pain matches from January 1990 at MSG and Philly (which I wouldn't because we don't have Philly that late) and they ran almost the same match both time, I'd probably be disappointed instead of happy. I'd forgive them given the travel schedule and the fact that there would be almost no way that someone would have seen both matches, but I certainly wouldn't be excited about it. There's a joy in watching Buddy Rose in Portland where we have him on a week to week basis, often against subpar opponents, in front of the same crowd, where he has to constantly keep things fresh. Likewise with Negro Casas in Arena Mexico year in and year out. You almost always see something, an action, a reaction, and interaction, new and different in each match. It's not dissimilar with modern television workers. They're in front of the same TV audience ever week and have to switch things up to a degree. But here we really got to see Cassidy and Darby workshop something in front of a controlled crowd and then immediately, just a few days later, unveil it on a national stage, and that was exciting to see.  

AEW Rampage 5/19

Dustin Rhodes vs. Bishop Kaun

MD: There's not much in wrestling as comforting and reliable than Dustin getting an AEW feature match in Texas. On paper, including him in the extremely prolonged Swerve vs Keith Lee feud might not be the world's best idea, but I'm not going to argue about additional Dustin matches. He and Kaun matched up pretty well. Kaun's obviously a few inches shorter but he's presented, with Toa, as monsters, and he carries himself decently along those lines, though I would have maybe liked to see him somehow swallow Dustin up more when he was in control here. I'm not sure what that would have looked like. It probably would have looked like more woundwork and less neckbreakers, actually. 

The opening was very good. Dustin had an answer for everything Kaun had, leaning into his size and expertise. He could come back on every chop. He was dealing with Skandor Akbar in 1990. Prince Nana isn't going to distract him all that much. It took the reversal into the corner and amazing bump into the camera to change the direction. Really, that was one of the best transitions of the year, and as it was on a time-shifted Rampage, it's something they should steal for a PPV match at some point. I'm not sure if anyone on the roster could execute it as well as Dustin did here, but even half as well to lead to blood and a beating would be memorable. Kaun was focused after that and of course Dustin drew sympathy and brought the crowd up and down for his hope spots but given the amount of blood at play, I could have used just a little more viciousness. Dustin's string of signature spots on the comeback were as crisp and perfectly timed as ever, and everything worked out well post match to set up, hopefully, a singles match at the PPV. They could have gotten here quicker and more directly, but if they're going to have an extraneous player, better Dustin than almost anyone else.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/8 - 5/14 (Part 2)

Ring of Honor TV 5/11

Athena vs Skye Blue

MD: There's just so much to like about Athena matches right now. She's always on. Always. There was a spot in here where she cartwheeled out of Skye's moves, because she can, because she has that extra bit of athleticism she always had, and it set up Skye doing the same a moment later, the old tit-for-tat heel getting oneupped sort of moment you get at the start of a match like this. Then Athena floored her with a big boot for her indignity. Any of the elements at play that I just mentioned, the athleticism, the standby oneupmanship, the furious cutoff, is absolutely worth noting, but the best, most potent part? In the midst of the cartwheel, Athena was already laughing with malicious delight. She has the ability to come out of complex movements already emoting. We take certain things for granted sometimes, but I can't tell you how rare that is. She never takes a breath and focuses on hitting her spot. She's always living in the moment. There's nothing I personally want more in a wrestler than that level of commitment and immersion. 

To point, about half of her spots don't even feel like spots. They feel like organic violence, linked together by those in-between moments that aren't simply moving from spot to spot but instead swimming through a sea of malice and rage and fury and fear and despair and desperation every other emotion imaginable. You'll note that I said half and I said it like it was some sort of giant accomplishment. In 2023 when almost everything in the match is a spot and not just systemic flowing violence marked with a few called high spots, it is exactly that. Almost no one else on the roster is able to manage it. That's ok for the most part. It's just how wrestling is now. It's the house style, but in this facet, she's able to make it work at a different level more often than almost anyone.

And then there's the layout. We're maybe seven, eight months into this character. She has a 23-0 record in ROH. She's had a string of Proving Ground and title matches. She's had matches now without TV time constraint. She's able to play with callbacks (the stairs), unique traits (controlling the outside and the apron), multiple finishers and now multiple submissions. Certainly she has the forearm of doom that she likes to hit at the start of the matches and plenty of variation on how she does it. Here she was also stealing Skye's finisher (better than Skye can hit it) and Skye snuck in the O-Face (not better than Athena could hit it). Skye brought plenty of intensity and some nasty bumps to the floor. They don't have to cut the camera on each forearm which is well appreciated. And she's able to channel a plucky throwback babyface with her flying body press and even the shock of the all heart one-count kick out and desperate crawl towards the ropes at the end. This was so strong down the stretch that people seemed to even believe Athena when she was raising Skye's hand post-match and there was absolutely no reason in the world to believe. But that's just the hot streak Athena's on now.

AEW Dynamite 5/10

Orange Cassidy vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Cassidy, is, of course, someone else who can work variations. Other than Athena's forearm, the mind games with the hands in the pockets is the other best entry point in wrestling. He also has one of the best ongoing stories in wrestling, the simple, logical, reasonable notion that he's a fighting champion without much care. He'll defend the belt against anyone at any time, on an amazing streak, and it's starting to weigh heavily on him; it's the price of apathy. He may not care but his body certainly does. This match wasn't at all an end to itself but a means to further that along. It built from the 8 man last week; it set up the exhausted promo and the ambush by Fletcher later in the night. It made Garcia look like a beast but also one lost in his own world, completely full of himself and adrift in his sports entertainer persona, and still pretty damn effective past that. Watching, you saw him weighing himself down with it and couldn't help but wonder what he might be without it. Garcia targeted the hurt hand, the hurt knee, the hurting back. Sometimes cutoffs or transitions would be indirect, Cassidy being a half step slow because of the hand and walking into something two moves later because he'd ended up just a little behind. Sometimes it'd be overt, the two of them jostling on the top rope and Garcia striking Cassidy's hand to block a punch. The moves that always seem so smooth out of Cassidy felt labored here, as if he was barely getting over for them by the end. For the second week in a row the Stundog came at an askew angle. He couldn't hook the head on the Beach Break.

I found myself kind of dreading sitting through it though, which took me a minute to parse. This is the stuff I love in wrestling, wrestling-driven storytelling, deep application of creative consequence, the weight of what came before hanging over every moment, allowing the wrestlers to craft possibilities and inversions. This is the good stuff and it doesn't seem overwritten or overwrought. So why wasn't I into it as much here? Why was I dreading it? I'm not sure if this is shameful or admirable, but it comes down to this: there's only one endgame for the scenario. Cassidy loses the belt. His body gives out. His spirit can't sustain. A monster approaches to take advantage. There's no other logical end point. And I, more than a tad too old and too experienced to be so emotionally invested in something like this, don't want to see Cassidy lose and the run end. It's as simple as that.

Read more!