AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/25 - 8/31

AEW Dynamite 8/27/25

Darby Allin vs Claudio Castagnoli (Falls Count Anywhere)

MD: Johnny Valentine is attributed with the quote "I can't make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I'm real," and it's a quote that doesn't have a lot of meaning in 2025, that shouldn't have a lot of meaning in a post-kayfabe world. But Darby makes it mean something. In so many ways, this was a tribute to ECW, the most of which being the tribute to the Bam Bam vs Spike press slam.

But my memory of ECW had a lot more garbage can lid shots. Not quite this. Even that press slam was into the crowd which was somehow softer than the announce desk. That had more of a celebratory feel to it and this was far more grisly, the commentary cutting out so that the trainwreck could happen in deathly silence save for whatever utterances the shocked crowd could make.

And even then, the bumps kept coming. And even then, Darby's primary offense was to use his own body as a weapon, and Claudio flaunted his superhuman strength, something that we all believe is very real indeed. And when Claudio shows real personality like his annoyed impatience at the commentary team taking too long to move? He's even better.

I have things that I prefer in wrestling. My prevailing logic is that the best wrestlers are the ones who get the absolute most out of the absolute least. That's the artistry to me. But I'm not about to deny how special Darby's bumps are, not about to diminish how he puts his body on the line. But I'm also not about to say that's the entirety of the equation. 

Because it's not. 

How did Claudio get Darby into Press Slam position in the first place? Darby had been in the midst of a comeback after all. He had just climbed a support pillar and launched his own body into Claudio. He was in charge for maybe the first time in the match. But then his body simply gave out. In the midst of firing off, he dropped to his knee, held his back. No one else in wrestling is selling like this. No one else makes sure to show the toll of absolutely everything in the way that he moves. So many others would take offense and then move absolutely normally when it was their turn to take over. Not Darby. He makes you feel like he's real, like he's in that much agony, and here it served the story and let Claudio fire back. 

Likewise when he was mounting a defiant comeback on the floor. You can call it late match selling or full body selling, but even just moving away from Claudio, even just leaning into throw a shot, the way that his body lurched and strained and stumbled was best in the world stuff. People may complain about the bumps, but so long as he sells like that, they're not gratuitous. Do I think they're essential? For someone that can sell this well? It's tricky because the audience is conditioned to expect certain things from him and they're conditioned to think he can take a certain amount of damage, but then wrestling is symbolic and fans can be conditioned otherwise. I personally think he could get by with one big bump a match instead of seven. Or even one big bump every three matches and it'd all mean just a little more. He's that good at selling and he'd still make it feel that real.

But either way I can't deny how great it is to have him back on his TV. And either way I'm sure as hell not about to look away because both the car crash and Darby somehow walking away (and triumphing!) are some of the most compelling things in pro wrestling..  

ROH Death Before Dishonor 8/29/25

RUSH/Sammy Guevara vs Outrunners 

MD: And lo, we change out Dustin for Rush and TK continues to get me to write about Sammy Guevara. The good news here is that he was made for the 2300 Arena and these Philly Fans who were born to hate him. And honestly, I really liked the dynamic between him and Rush. I likened Rush to Randy Savage not long ago and the parallels are striking. He has that same unpredictable energy, puts his all into his physicality, expresses a sort of paranoia thinking the world is out to get him in the ring.

And he cares first and foremost and entirely earnestly about his family. He loves his dad, just like Savage loved Poffo. He looks out for his brother, just like Savage looked out for Lanny. And here, Sammy became a new brother to him, and it was touching in its own twisted way. Rush seemed honestly thrilled for everything Sammy did. When the fans were chanting expletives at him, all he heard was the world singing his new brother's praises. 

Sammy fell right in line. It wasn't always smooth but it was always natural. When Rush dropped down into the Tranquilo pose, it took Sammy a second to catch up, but when he did, he did his breakdance spin right down to match him. They weren't always on the same page, but they got there, and once they did, the act worked for all its contrast and for how heartfelt Rush, monster that he is, seemed to be about the arrangement. 

And the Outrunners played their part. A lot of that was to give Rush and Sammy something to push against, but they're an act that probably would have gotten grief in the Arena at various points (and probably would have been over big at others; it depends on where they were in their lifecycle), here everything built well to the double elbow. That's one other thing about Rush relative to Savage. Despite his need to look tough and protect himself, he's still willing to give when it's times to give, willing to play ball to serve the match. I imagine that's doubly so when he's going over and winning a belt.

Anyway, on night one, this act worked. We'll see what sort of staying power it has and how consistent Rush can be with it. 

Athena vs Mina Shirakawa

MD: The fact that this match kept the crowd after the spectacle that was Bandido vs Hechicero is remarkable. Some of that is that the finishing stretch in that match was a little more measured than Bandido vs Takeshita despite still being huge and weighty, but so much of that was on the two personalities at play here. 

Mina is magnetic, electric. She is a star. She knows how to work a crowd, to move hearts and minds like an idol is trained to. And Athena has the best reactions in wrestling. And react she did, fuming, seething, furious over Mina's antics, even before the bell as her new Meanie Minion let his eyes and notoriously weak attention span wander and as Mina played right in to the Philly/Dallas rivalry.

They were evenly matched to start, but Athena was a half step off her game, thrown as she was. It meant Mina was the aggressor, and again, Athena's reactions here, just the look on her face as she successfully cartwheeled out of a headscissors takeover only to have to avoid a series of kicks... it's like nothing else in wrestling today. She's so alive in the moment, so present, so able to cut all the strings and just exist as her character at all times.

They set it up early to make it seem like Mina believably had her number, right to the moment where that damaged hand went smack into the ringpost on the outside. Athena dodged, expressed true malicious glee at the mishap that followed, and immediately went to work. She smacked the hand on the commentary booth, smashed it behind the stairs, tied it up in a turnbuckle pad and kicked away. She wrestled like a madwoman unleashed, embodied the chaos that she, a fallen goddess, represents. She took her time, playing to the crowd, dancing, smiling, facewashing Mina with her foot. Sometimes it let Mina get a moment of hope, but she snatched it away. A complete performance by maybe the most immersive performer in wrestling.  

The character of Athena rides these waves of chaos and fury, and sometimes, it doesn't work out for her. Here, she had her heart set on hitting a running kick on Mina while she was seated on the outside. It failed once. It failed twice, and suddenly the match opened back up. Athena's leg was wounded and Mina honed in on it, both with offense like the ringpost figure-four and with cutoffs like a dragon whip on the way back in. All throughout, Athena's selling was amazing, working on one leg, fighting through the pain but making every effort seem almost mythic. 

In 2025, the most interesting way to talk about wrestling isn't necessarily to note dropped limbwork. So long as it's plausible, I look at it more of a lost opportunity than anything else, primarily because of how compelling Athena's limping selling was here, because of how much weight it gave everything in the match. Even then, I don't know if I'd have been frustrated by Mina dropping the hand selling through her working on Athena's leg and the big bombthrowing that following except for the fact that it started with the hand being broken and they went back to it at the end. Just something to note. For me, if Mina gave some lip service to it through the third quarter of the match, it would have kept everything tighter. More of a lost opportunity than an overall blemish.

That's because last quarter of the match was incredibly compelling, with them slugging on their knees, throwing bombs, the drama of the Koji Clutch and the Figure-Four, how Athena stopped the Glamorous Driver Mina by going to the hand and then survived it when Mina finally hit it. And at every point, whether she was kipping up or escaping the third Driver attempt by going up and over, Athena showed the toll of the match by selling that leg, by reacting in the moment, by being the most alive pro wrestler in the world. 

So they kept the crowd even though that was a minor miracle, and so Athena had another great match as she marches on to 1000 well-deserved days. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/30 - 7/7

AEW Collision 7/5/25

FTR vs The Outrunners

MD: I had gotten most of the way through the review down below (MD1) and decided that I wanted to see what it would look like if I hit it from a different direction (MD2) so here are two very different reviews of the match. I liked it that much.

MD2: The Outrunners had everything going their way. Oh, FTR had tried both mind games and dirty tricks on them. Of course they did. Dax had done it from the start, pushing for a clean break on the first exchange only to throw a cheapshot on the second. When things boiled over, he ran around the ring forcing Truth to give chase. When they slid back in, Cash completed the ambush by leaping halfway across the ring like a madman. Truth fired back quickly and made the tag but they then dragged Turbo down, cutting off the ring and laying a beating on him.

They wrestled a mini match here, a satisfying few minutes with shine, heat, and, as Turbo reversed a Cash suplex and kicked off a charging Dax to make the tag, comeback. Truth came in hot and FTR pinballed for him, all building to a bulldog/clothesline combo and the set up for the mega powers handshake elbow drop, that itself generally a precursor to Total Recall. 

But there was Cash again, flying in out of nowhere, an absolute maniac using his body as a wrecking ball, slamming one Outrunner into the other and down to the floor. Once there, things took a bleak turn as an entirely different match unfolded. After pummeling Truth a bit, they lodged Turbo's leg between the stairs and the ring, crushing it with the force of their bodies. Turbo incapacitated, they turned their attention entirely to Truth, opening him up and honing in on the face, head, and neck. 

With a gleeful sort of efficient cruelty, Cash would leave his vantage point on the apron multiple times, running around to jam Turbo's knee onto the stairs senselessly, or, in moments where Truth was able to get a shot in and maybe, just maybe, earn an iota of hope, pulling Turbo off the apron with purpose. For long, grueling minutes, there was no true hope to be found, not even in the face of bravery, toughness, and heart. 

Moreover, there was lingering doubt and concern. Let's say Truth, through skill and pluck and luck, might find a way to make it to his corner, might find Turbo actually there, what condition could Turbo actually be in? What fight could he actually put up? Regardless, the hope spots escalated, with as much focus on Turbo's struggle back to the apron as Truth's within the ring. Cash came around again one last time but Turbo was ready for him, only for Dax to knock both off the apron and Truth to capitalize with a roll up, a hope spot of his own that wasn't even about the tag but instead a desperate swipe at victory. 

Escalation built up the pressure leading to a volcanic eruption as Dax missed a diving headbutt and Truth pulled himself to Turbo for the tag. But now Turbo had to face off against a nearly fresh Cash Wheeler with one leg and little hope, with only his guts to push him towards glory. He attempted a slam, powerhouse that he is, only to come up wanting. Cash charged in, had he had twice before, now for the kill, but Turbo, in a last burst of defiance, put everything he had into a countering clothesline. Bolstered by the heroic effort, he hefted Cash up for the slam and reunited with Truth. The two grasped hands in a heartfelt gesture of survival and triumph and pulled each other up so that they could finally drive the elbow down. No matter what would come next, that was a victory that could never be taken from them.

But what came next was in their favor! Dax and Cash tried to get an advantage on the apron but Turbo fought them both off and the Outrunners were able to come together one last time to hit a Shatter Machine of their own. This time, however, it was Dax who flew in and sacrificed his body to break up the pin. This last burst of hope turned once more into tragedy as Truth went sailing off the apron after a suplex attempt. As Stokely cravenly grasped Truth's leg on the outside, Cash managed one last reversal on Turbo and FTR hit a heartbreaking Shatter Machine. The Outrunners were defiant to the last but FTR was too much, too cruel, too merciless, too precise, and too underhanded. 

If this was a morality play, good vs evil, evil would only grow in power on this day. Yet the light of the Outrunners would give FTR reason to fear their own shadow, reason to fear an inevitable comeuppance that crept ever closer. If it was not around the next corner then maybe it would be around the one after that, even if it wouldn't come in the here and now at the hands of their former friends.

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MD1: A remarkable match. I'm going to get right to it. I want to talk about the structure. After some start-of-the-match stooging from FTR (Dax especially) and a really nice momentum shift tease which had Truth chase Dax around the ring and Cash take him out as organically as possible (so much of it coming down to Cash's wildman execution), they played out a very early short/quasi FIP, the sort of phantom FIP you sometimes get in a shine. It culminated with Truth and Turbo going for the megapowers handshake elbow drop. That was broken up. That's important because in denying the fans that moment, it allows the Outrunners to pick up a spiritual win late in the match when they finally earn it (I'd say that they get another in the late match when they hit their own Shatter Machine on FTR but honestly, in this match, the fact that they even came back at all was the sort of accomplishment that is so often just taken for granted in modern tags; let's get into THAT now). 

The crux of the match was Truth Magnum getting bloodied up and working FIP with FTR pulling out every Southern Tag trick in the book to build anticipation and draw heat. But what put it over the top is that they had taken out Turbo Floyd's leg with the stairs as part of the transition to heel offense. As Dax was doing some woundwork in the ring, Cash was hitting shinbreakers onto those steps off to the side, out in the background. 

Look, there have been tags where the guy on the apron gets taken out both at the start and later on. There are tags with double FIP where a limb is worked over and the initial FIP has to recover enough to allow for the hot tag. There are Japanese tags from the late 80s-early 90s which are built on someone holding out long enough for his partner to recover. I love Tenryu/Hansen vs Rusher/Baba from 89 which is built around Tenryu ambushing Baba with a dive as he's coming down and Rusher getting worked over until Baba is ready to come back. But I can't remember the last tag I've seen with a structure quite like this. I was actually thrown by it completely because I thought they were going to work over Turbo's leg after going out of their way to crush it with the stairs. But that was just in support to the face-in-peril and to set up a level of doubt after the hot tag.

And it was exciting! Not just the match, or the fight to come back, but even the way they put this together excited me. Not only was Truth a bloody mess but Turbo was on one leg. Basically, both wrestlers were in peril simultaneously even though it was a standard tag that followed standard rules and drew within the lines. They would go back and take Turbo's leg out more to cut off hope spots so Truth couldn't make the tag. There were all sorts of possibilities at play here, all sorts of different ways they could have gone with it. For instance, what if Truth didn't get bloodied up until later in the match? What if he was able to make a tag earlier but then Turbo had to fight for another five or six minutes getting his leg worked over? Maybe not today or tomorrow, but someday down the line they can come back and do a twist on this and it will feel fresh. 

Just as this felt entirely fresh. Compared to most current tag matches which are back heavy (unbalanced in my mind) with loads of spots after everything breaks down post-hot tag, they got in and out of things pretty quickly after Turbo burst in. Every moment felt like a struggle and a triumph though. Turbo came in hot but his broken body betrayed him. Unable to slam Cash, he had to push through it all to hit the huge clothesline (for a huge pop), and then the slam. That led to the truly wonderful moment of the Outrunners not just clasping hands but helping each other up to their feet to hit the elbow. They followed that by spitting in FTR's eyes and hitting their own Shatter Machine before the unfortunate fall off the apron by Truth and Stokely getting involved to ensure the finish. 

Just a total masterclass of how to create drama and build heat before paying it off in a way that was very specific to the match. They didn't throw out everything that came before in the name of high spots and sensation. Instead they built the fire bolder and brighter. While some people might see this as incredibly conventional, I thought it was pretty daring in how it pushed the form (within the lines! within the rules! within the norms!). This is the FTR that was so dynamic and exciting as the Revival in NXT and this is the FTR that can still revolutionize tag team wrestling by taking everything that has always worked and push it in new and bold directions. All they need are the right opponents and the right platform. They certainly had both here.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/2 - 6/8

AEW Collision 6/4/25

Bandido/Outrunners vs Kyle Fletcher/Konosuke Takeshita/Hechicero

MD: We had a RUSH trios and an Athena proving ground match but I figured I'd spend some time with Kyle Fletcher and Hechicero instead. This was a bit of a time filler as there's no program I'm aware of right now save for a slight feud with Bandido and the Don Callis Family (maybe Archer goes after the ROH belt? They've suggested that previously) but it got to showcase Fletcher and Takeshita, had Bandido looking like a star, and gave us Hechicero hanging out with the DCF and honestly, that's all stuff I can go for. Wrestling for the sake of wrestling is not a sin. It's a joy. It's a mitzvah. It's a blessing. That some bad faith actors online have shaken the foundations of it at times is the opposite of all that. Screw them. This was a blast. 

For one thing, Bandido and Hechicero is a unique pairing. They've only had one singles and that was years ago. Their last interaction was something like five years ago. They match up extremely well. Hechicero can base for Bandido's stuff. Bandido can flow through all the llave and strange style that Hechicero can throw at him. This started with feeling out matwork between the two of them like a proper lucha trios and I loved it. From there everything picked up with the heels all stooging their way out until they caught Bandido and crushed him. Callis was great on commentary putting over Hechicero and showing derision for Bandido (which of course creates the opposite effect because everyone hates Callis).

The heat was lovely, as they beat the crap out of Truth Magnum. People may love big bomb Takeshita in crazy matches that go way over the top but hanging out with Fletcher brings something out in him that I love. Southern heel Takeshita is my favorite by far. He's got swagger, can play around with ref positioning, can let things settle in after the fact. And of course, Kyle Fletcher is the hero of the day, right? Posing, preening, heatseeking by pulling Truth's hand towards the corner when no one was there and following it up with a body slam to control the moment, and then when it came time after the hot tag, he happily looked the fool in a way that made him seem not happy at all, but instead as aggrieved as could be. 

I love the hierarchy at play too. Bandido was able to hold his own and Truth got some big moments, but when it came to slamming Takeshita, for instance, that took an extra bit of effort. Likewise, they weren't allowed to do the double elbow drop even though it would have been a crowd pleaser. I really do believe this stuff matters. Everything has to be earned and has to be consummate to the levels at play. If they were in there against Rocky and Trent it would have made more sense. Against Kyle and Takeshita, it has to be earned more than they could manage on this night. That means anything that anyone else actually manages to get on them later means all the more because it was held back here. I really, truly believe this stuff matters over time. It only matters if they make it matter and if the commentary picks up on it and everyone goes along with it but it's worth trying. It's worth doing things with care, and despite all the bluster and despite the occasional maximalist tendencies, Fletcher and Takeshita are doing things with care. It's going to pay off so long as the company cares too and allows it to. Even the increasingly elaborate ways to set up the Don Callis punch are more and more of a highlight every week (this time it was like a Rube Goldberg machine). My hope? A few months down the line when Eddie Kingston is fighting Kyle Fletcher for something meaningful, Willow gets to be handcuffed to Callis. Just imagine it.

So yeah, this was a blast and wrestling is the best thing going and I hope Hechicero gets to hang out with the DCF more.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/14 - 10/20

MD: So we're down a few fingers right now. While I won't necessarily cover all of their matches, since I'm driving this thing, I am at least temporarily elevating Christian, Rush, and Athena from "friends" to fingers to bridge us to Eddie coming back at least. 

AEW Dynamite 10/16/24

Christian Cage vs. Jay White

MD: Overall I liked this, though it had one big issue that touches upon something people are well aware of but that I'll still cover in a bit. Before that, let's hit the elephant in the room, the botched interference from Kip (which then led to Hangman having to sit on the floor forever). I didn't mind it. I actually kind of liked it. Sometimes you need an exception that proves the rule. There's a moment in the first SNME match between Demolition and the Brainbusters where Arn holds Smash's leg down so Tully can hit a double axe-handle to his chest in a prone position and that one move justifies every transition that comes from the "flying nothing" of a double axe-handle that's being done just to get a foot up. Likewise, Flair winning the NWA title vs Race with a flying body press justifies every subsequent time he gets tossed off the top, which is basically every time he tries it as a heel.

Same thing here. If there's seven hours of AEW/ROH TV a week you'll probably see a couple of successful interference finishes every week and a reversed/backfiring one every few weeks. They're almost all perfectly timed and perfectly executed. When you think about it, both Kip and Hangman were out there to cause trouble. It sort of make sense that Kip would just be irritating and get involved whenever he could, not just at the single point where it would have the biggest impact and open things up for the finish. Likewise, Hangman was waiting for a moment of opportunity and Kip gave him that. That it didn't work out for either of them the first time made everything feel weirdly more organic (Christian's understandable yelling maybe notwithstanding, but I only caught that when it was pointed out to me). Basically, stuff should not work out perfectly more often because it makes it more believable when it does.

So what was the problem then? Jay White is not over as a babyface. Some of that is just Jay White, right? He's a sleazy, slimy sort of guy, in his look, in his character, in his wrestling. People CAN get behind that, but you have to really work at it. The BBG have been tweeners or just entities, up against whoever gets in their way and maybe that works too, but not if you need him to be over as a face because you've got a roster imbalance and he's got the star power to help fill it. People were pretty frustrated by the lack of an actual face turn for Statlander. On some level, at least White got a moment, but the moment was coming back with his theme and making a save for his best friend, who is also an erratic tweener at best. That's not really a face turn. Then the subsequent promo was kind of all over the place. Christian is absolutely over as a heel. People get enjoyment out of specific things he does because they're legitimately funny and so over the top, but they don't hesitate to boo him. They don't fall to This Is Awesome chants (which are not always a good thing to be lauded! I'm not going to go into detail on this today but it's something to stop and think about). But for this to work, I think they needed to be more behind White. For him to get to the next level as babyface, if that's what he's going to be for a while, he has to do something that's not just in his own self-interest that happens to be against a heel. He needs to do something worth cheering.

So there needed to be just a bit of extra wind behind the sails of this one. Part of that is the nature of the two combatants. Christian controlled during the break, but overall, these are counter punchers. Christian is one of the best ever at coming up with interesting and believable ways to work people's stuff into matches and then to have counters that don't feel choreographed and contrived but like the exact thing that might happened. White's in-ring gimmick is that he's a defensive wrestler, an opportunist, someone who creates traps and then springs them, and while that takes an extra level of thought and work, it makes him stand out as unique. That meant that this match in specific was always going to be a bit back and forth; again, fine, if the fans were more into it. That said, I'd love to see these two as rivals over the next few years. I'm not sure there's much AEW could put together in-ring right now that would be more compelling mechanically and structurally (at least moment-to-moment) than a best of 5 or 7 between these two. I liked what I saw. I want to see more. I didn't have an issue with the interference. I just wish that White had a bit more of a babyface push driving him forward to make it all resonate a bit more.

Ring of Honor 10/17/24

Athena vs. Lady Frost

MD: I know exactly who Athena is. She lives and breathes it with every thing she does, every look on her face, her entire body language. I've noted before that I never really had a great sense of who Ember Moon was. The entrance didn't seem to sync perfectly with the ringwork and she never had enough in the way of stories and profiles to really hammer home the connection. Zero problem with her now. Lady Frost is another story. She's from Imperial Iceland. She has the fur and the blue themed gear. Her moves have icy names. She primarily has a gymnastic background in ring. She's tough, confident both in ring and out. You get little moments like her blowing her hair out of her face early on or her fighting through the pain of the crossface to make one last attempt to escape on the finish. She has an interesting real life story, coming from a wrestling family but starting relatively late in life. But I don't get how it all connects. She'd either be better off committing and doubling down or drawing back and dumping a lot of the gimmick for something more real. I'm sure having an Elsa on the roster could be marketable, but that's not what she is. She's talented and driven as a wrestler, but the gimmick is just window dressing and extraneous to that.

None of that is to say this wasn't good. It was. Athena was totally on, like always, as this existed in the backdrop of a number of things, both Abadon hunting her and the ongoing stockholm syndrome relationship between her and Lexy (and how it's all impacting Billie). They worked the security blanket chain into it as the first big transition to heel offense as Lexy used it to clothesline (literally) Frost. They had Athena constantly look to the crowd and to her credit, she made it seem like she was doing it to gloat and heelishly get cheers, not to constantly be searching for Abadon's presence. I'm not saying it's rocket science, but within the confines of pro wrestling, it's kind of next level to be balancing so many balls at once. All the while, she was working her normal intensity and merciless drive up against Frost's athleticism and gymnastic counters and offense. None of Frost's comebacks were rote; they were all interesting and based on her own personal strengths. Part of the appeal of Athena's matches are that she's able to adapt her act to not just every opponent, but to every moment, always reacting to what's going on around her and channeling the Funk-ian deranged mania. That worked here from the second she stepped out of the curtain to the second she retreated back through it as Abadon's music played.

AEW Collision 10/19/24

LFI (RUSH/The Beast Mortos) vs. Outrunners

MD: I also covered the BCC six man here. The Jake pre-match voiceover deal is a good idea and should be used as much as possible, as I get the sense he might not always be on the road. Plus, while I like the pairing, when he stands next to them, they (especially Mortos) look pretty small. No one's fault. Just how it is. 

This was one of those cases where neither team should probably be losing but where one team really did need to win. That's ok. They went out of their way to protect the Outrunners here. Mortos showed quite a bit of versatility early with the comedy charges with Truth. He's not just a lucha base which is important given that he has a lot of broad marketability moving forward. Overall this was fun. There were bits of Morton/Gibson styled rope running to get over early and then more Roadies strength stuff. Slugging it out with Rush is always fun to watch because Rush has a follow through which swings for the fences. Dralistico was all over the place here as a nuisance to the point where maybe some of the heat ended up on the ref it was so over the top. In some ways, that felt a bit like a Savage/Dibiase/Shawn match with Sherri on the outside or another over the top 80s heel manager, so I didn't hate it, but it was a bit jarring. 

I'm hesitant to even write this because I do like the Outrunners and I'm glad they're getting this opportunity, but I see the crowd getting behind a lot of what they're doing in the moment, a lot of the old tricks, and I worry a little people will see it all as pure, limiting parody and not even try to figure out how to extrapolate what they're doing into a more modern setting now when that is needed the most. I'd ask instead that people see this as a proof of concept. If it can work here, with these silly guys, and still get people behind them, then figure out how to distill that and tap into it with serious, main event storylines as well. Because it can work and it will work, and look at this as a way of proving it, not as a way of seeing it just as something silly that only works in a throwback pastiche like this.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/6 - 11/12

AEW Dynamite 11/8/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs Outrunners

MD: This was a tight piece of business, obviously, a way to keep the Sting farewell tour feeling special, in front of a crowd that was chanting for him in the early going, and a nice way to throw a bone to the Outrunners who ape his early aesthetic, maybe by way of the Beverly Brothers. That meant they could lean on Darby coming off of injury and let the Outrunners play the numbers game early, sneak in the clever tag out of a suplex position that we saw Darby and Orange Cassidy use when they were teaming in the already-missed house show run, and give Sting his iconic moment of shrugging off the double back elbow. Small nitpick: maybe have him win with the Death Drop considering that a Scorpion Deathlock played into the finish of the previous match, but at the end of the day, let Sting be Sting too, you know? A fun match that lets everyone in the crowd who hadn't been watching wrestling in 89 say that they got to see Sting live.

Ring of Honor 11/9/23

Eddie Kingston vs Angelico

MD: Of all of Eddie's great quality, maybe the greatest is that every match he's in, no matter how little build or notice it gets, instantly becomes a grudge match. It's because the chip on his shoulder is so big that any contest, be it an enhancement match or a dream match, tumbles right into it. Just to stand across the ring from him unlocks all sorts of grievances. Heel, face, storyline or no, he takes it personal and he makes it personal. You look at him the wrong way and it's an insult. And there's no right way to look at him if you're his opponent. That gives us, as viewers, reason to care about each and every match. 

It can be a little exhausting too. It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but you don't let go and relax when watching Eddie wrestle. He carries a weight and you carry it with him. That feels good. It has substance to it. When he walks a mile, you walk that mile with him, and you're better off for it, but it's hard. And sometimes, it leaves some possibilities on the table. An Eddie Kingston match is going to be a fight. This isn't Bryan Danielson who is endlessly adaptable and reactive. Eddie's a black hole and you can't escape his gravitational pull. Traditionally, if you're wrestling Eddie, it can only be about one thing, that chip, that insult, that grievance.

The belt kind of changes that though. Yes, sure, Eddie is going to see it in personal terms; you want to take away what he cares about, what he clawed and scraped for, what he fights for every day, something he cares about more than you ever could. But it's also business too. And more than that, it's wrestling, the grandeur of wrestling along with the blood, something that you might not think a guy like Eddie would understand. But he does, because he understands what it means to be an ace, to carry a weight upon his back that's not just the burden of life, to carry a company, the hopes and dreams of everyone in the back, the reputation of everything that came before. 

That means we get to see a little bit of a different side to Eddie in these matches. Yes, he took it personal when Angelico made the challenge, but that didn't define this match; it just provided some extra color to it. Eddie's used to charging forward with a certain sort of abandon. He's used to being a man with nothing to lose. Now he has something to protect. That meant he came at this different. Angelico's always dangerous so he started the match by switching from one hand to the next, and avoiding a lock up, cautious. But he's Eddie so he got goaded in and threw a shot that let Angelico start to twist and tear at his hand. But he's Eddie so he pushed through it and kept throwing those chops, relentless. 

In return, Angelico realized that he wasn't going to get a quick tap on Eddie, no matter how skillfully he tied him up. He started throwing low kicks, started throwing his body at Eddie with dives. Angelico could chip away at his arm or his leg, but he couldn't make a chip larger than that one already on Eddie's shoulder though. All it ever takes is one backfist to change the complexion of the match and that's what it did here. Still, they gave Angelico a kickout and then finished things with the Northern Lights Driver, a nice hierarchy decision that helps keep over one of Eddie's four viable finishers after the story with Claudio where he needed to escalate to the power bomb. The variety of opponents and the more ace-tinted approach to these matches has been a nice change of pace, especially knowing that Eddie can take things deep into a land of grudges whenever the situation calls for it.

AEW Collision 11/11/23

Adam Copeland/Sting/Darby Allin vs Vincent/Dutch/Lance Archer

MD: Very complete, very satisfying match given that it had two commercial breaks, a little less time than some other Collision main events, and a lot of personalities to highlight on the face side. We've seen some matches lately where they hold back Sting and you sort of would expect them to do that with Copeland too here but they cycled through all of the faces early on (teasing Darby being in trouble and having him smack Archer away and dart to the corner) and gave the crowd a taste of everyone before they leaned into the first commercial break not with the usual transition into heat but with chaos and everything breaking down. That gave us the great shot of Sting elatedly dragging Vincent around the ringside area. It wasn't until the end of the break that they had Dutch jump him to lead into the first face-in-peril. It's important to have a little bit of variety now and again.

I always see the commercial breaks as an opportunity. Someday when AEW's on a streaming service and people are going back through these the same way that we watch 1992 WCW or 95 All Japan or 84 Mid South or old Houston footage, we'll hopefully have the international feed to watch and not have to worry about picture and picture and it'll be a net positive overall. It stops the proclivity for pure action for the sake of action and forces interaction with the crowd and a doubling down with the story at hand. 

This was our second look at Copeland and while he was fine against Luchasaurus, he wrestled like someone with something to prove here, hitting a dive, asserting himself with clotheslines, hitting a double team with Sting which harkened back to his late 90s creativity with Christian, eating Dutch's Bossman Slam with wild momentum. He's such an interesting case in some ways, someone who great up as much of a fan of wrestling as could be, but that has spent the entirety of his time within a carefully controlled system. He's someone that excelled in gimmick matches, that had offense which maybe wouldn't have held up in a less produced environment. He can't compete with the conditioning of  a lot of the AEW talent, but relying on smoke and mirrors instead of sheer athleticism might make him stand out, especially if he leans into his height a bit more than he has in his career. A lot of his major WWE feuds were against his size or larger than him. I'm curious how he resets this last act; he's suggested an interest in facing a lot of the ex-WWE guys that he missed in the 2010s, the Samoa Joes and Andrades and Malakai Blacks of the world, and to port his WWE act over against new a generation he missed could be of some interest, but the real value would be if he took what made him special over the years and tried to figure out how to refine it in a world without corporate limits and monolithic preferences. That doesn't necessarily mean aping Sting's proclivity for crazy dives. It doesn't just mean blood and pile drivers and a freedom of speech either. I don't entirely know what it means. Were I Copeland, I'd be spending every second of this borrowed time that was an impossibility ten years ago trying to figure out the myriad possibilities before me though. For the first time in two and a half decades, he can be anything and do anything; for someone who loves pro wrestling, what could that possibly look like? 

Here, in this bizarre WAR six-man with Jake Roberts on the outside and very unlikely partners on the inside, it looked like a pretty good start actually.

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