AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/11 - 3/17

AEW Dynamite 3/13/24

Darby Allin vs. Jay White

MD: Obviously now, a few days after the match we're well aware of the injury that happened very early when Darby hit a dive and hurt his foot. Definitely a strange occurence considering that there was a post match ankle injury angle to write him off. I'm all for guys being written off but it was maybe a little weird considering he was climbing Everest. It should give White plenty of heat doing a "I Broke Darby's Foot" or, alternatively "I Shattered Darby's Dreams" deal. Given the weighty promo Darby made they've been walking a fine line where they admit that it was on the dive but also point out the post match chair shattering. This is rare ground; it's not every day someone gets hurt in the same place that they were supposed to get hurt to be written off screen and put heat on the heels, while also substituting the reason why they were written off for the actual injury. And it's not every day that the reason they were originally written off is due to climbing a dangerous mountain. Wrestling is at its most serene when it's at its most honestly bizarre sometimes, I guess?

Originally, I was going to write about consequence, focusing on the injured/lacerated back and how great a job they did making what happened to Darby against the Bucks resonate. That was present right from the get go. Darby, of course, has a history with headlock takeovers, but the one that White hit him with at the start was made to seem particularly devastating. This is a good thing. If wrestling is trying to create a suspension of disbelief over time, then having consequences last after one match and into the other is not just something to aim and strive for, but also actively helpful in situations like this where you have people of similar hierarchy and want to realistically put one over the other while still protecting the loser. It was presented as valiant (and crazy) that Darby was out there at all. He was bandaged. Every slam or bump or crash into the corner or prone press to the mat for a pin attempt was presented as painful. We'd seen the blood. We see the bandages. We could imagine the pain. Wrestling getting us to imagine pain is a great way to help us to suspend disbelief and more thoroughly immerse ourselves in what we're watching.

What's astounding here is how thoroughly they leaned into it even after the foot injury. Immediately thereafter, Darby hobbled across the ring to hit the tope. He followed it up by eating the half and half into the chair. I think back to Danielson/Okada one and how they adapted with the injury. Here, they didn't, and that felt like the right move since they were still selling the weight of a spot-of-the-year type crash through glass. The overarching story was that Darby was already a step slow. It made sense that as the match went on, he might be two steps slow. One injury creates the possibility of another. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. This is all basic pro wrestling storytelling; it can be done more or less gracefully, but early work on one body part so often opens things up to shift to what the wrestler really wants to work on. It's all a matter of whether it is coherent and compelling. This wasn't quite that as White never targeted the foot/ankle, but after comeback attempts and cutoffs and multiple times dodging the Blade Runner, Darby took too long to hit the coffin drop and then missed entirely when he tried to course correct once White rolled to the apron. That was basically the finish, as Darby valiantly beat the count only to get hit by the Blade Runner. I don't necessarily know if I have a unified thesis here other than the notion that Darby's one of the best in the world at portraying that most important element of pro wrestling, consequence, and here it was multiplied multifold considering the bump through the glass preceding the match, the weight of Everest over their heads, the legitimate injury early on, and the injury angle post match. In that regard, it was an unquestionable counterbalance to...

Eddie Kingston/PENTA/PAC vs. Young Bucks/Kazuchika Okada

MD: Hey, did you guys see the PENTA vs. Action Andretti match from Rampage a week or two ago? It was like there was a metal plate in Andretti's head and a giant magnet in PENTA's boot. He just kept zooming headlong into superkicks. It was the funniest match I've seen in a while. It's amazing when you think about it, that someone trained their body to be strong and fast and supple enough to twist and fly and contort all to the end of crashing into someone else's foot seven times in one match. Pro wrestling is the wackiest thing, really.

AEW Collision 3/16/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Katsuyori Shibata

MD: The biggest red flag in this match is the strike exchange. It's at the end and we're at the beginning, so let's leave it ahead of us for now. There's a sort of comforting, lazy casualness to putting these dream matches on Saturday nights on free TV. They're all X amount of years after they should be (even, arguably, the Hechicero match! We were watching him fight Black Terry in 2014!). The stakes are low. Ultimately, there's a level of pride, the fear that this won't be enough, the worry of injury. On the other side of the scale is perspective; we understand that it's a near-miracle that we're getting these matches at all. And they continue to be interspersed in Danielson's 2024 journey, one where he is finding peace with himself and the path before him.

This match could never give us everything we hoped for. By its very nature, it made us hope for too much. What it did give us, however, was wonderful parallels and, truthfully, so, so much of what we were looking for. It certainly gave us what we needed and only a little that we likely didn't. Considering we were dreading shoot headbutts between the two, the match ended up not just a miracle and a joy but also an absolute relief.

They started out with a feeling out process and some matwork that was tight and gritty and based around opportunities and openings while still feeling tricked out. It felt like it was bordering on shoot style at times, not quite UWF but more UWF in 86 NJPW with that firm pro wrestling patina. Everything felt earned and it was all interesting. They played into the parallels (first on commentary mentioning the head injuries and then in the match itself) with both wrestlers getting bow and arrows.Danielson went to strikes first but that just let Shibata play stoic in the corner. More often than not, it's Danielson going into that well, not his opponent, so this let him play up against a different sort of paragon. Danielson realized he wasn't going to win in a standup at this stage of the match and went to the leg. That opened up the arm and other holds, including him stomping on the elbow. Shibata was able to get him out and hit a PK on the apron though, sending things to the break.

During the break, Shibata pressed the advantage on the floor, but Danielson trapped him in a chair and hit him with a running dropkick. He wasn't able to press it back in the ring, because Shibata, trapped in the corner, turned it around and started throwing these killer pokey Tenryu-esque punches. In his control, he was able to dropkick Danielson in the corner and step on his elbow. Parallels abound.

They went into a false finishing stretch there. Shibata wins matches with the sleeper into the PK and he tried the sleeper here. Danielson fought out and they traded ankle locks, with Danielson turning it into his ankle-hooked German, followed by a Shibata STO. This really felt like a finishing stretch, with both wrestlers down, Shibata recovering for the death valley driver, and Danielson reversing the ripcord forearm attempt into the Busaiku Knee and the LeBell Lock.

It doesn't work though. You see false finishes, but you rarely see a false finishing stretch that feels so fully formed. AEW house style often has a shine/heat/a finisher teased right before they go to the commercial break, but this went further than that. In doing so, it made the strike exchange that was to come more palatable to me. Yes, they'd ultimately be asking to get hit, but it was after they brought the match to a logical conclusion and it simply wouldn't end. Yes, I say this fully understanding why strike exchanges like this happen, the cultural significance, how they played out in the 2010s. I still don't love them. I get that fans want them. I get that they're expected. Later in the show, during the Keith/O'Riley and Claudio/Archer matches, they were even more egregious because this one felt like it was a special moment and it ended up being not even a once-in-the-night (or twice-in-the-night moment; guys were asking their opponent to hit them all night!).

But I won't punish this match for what came later. Here, at least, it did feel special, with Shibata sitting cross-legged first, with the two trading boots after he rolled to his feet, with Danielson dropping down and showing that they were equals, with both cross-legged and firing away. There is no rule of wrestling so universal that there isn't some situation where it makes sense to break it. For strike exchanges where people just ask for it, this was probably it. Danielson won it (when he couldn't earlier) and to me, it was because he had already hit the knee once. That's when they went into the real finish, with Danielson failing on his second knee, Shibata locking the Octopus, and the two going into roll ups. Maybe it was my own expectations. With these two, I was expecting that extra level of excess and we only got the normal level of it, placed at the right point in the right match to make it resonate. If they had worked the whole match that way, it would have frustrated me, but a couple of minutes of the ultimate parallel, the willing strike exchange, in a match built upon the notion of two so equally matched mirror-image wrestlers, well, what can I say? It worked for me.

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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.

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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.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/1 - 5/7

MD: Going to be more words than usual this week. I can't fill any sort of void except for maybe in my own heart but I'm feeling inspired. I know to a lot of people Dean was a sort of distant memory, someone who inspired them years ago or that went to shows or wrote with them. Those stories have meant so much to so many to see. Eric's post was wonderful. To people still on the DVDVR board, however, and there is still a board, and it's a pretty damn good place to talk about wrestling in longer form with more permanence than you can get on twitter or reddit, he was still a fixture. Dean retired a few years ago and started to watch every bit of televised wrestling and drop a sprawl of text immediately after it finished. It was distilled DEAN and an essential daily part of my life even just two weeks ago. Go click on this and read some of his posts over the last few months; you'll be glad you did. 

As for AEW, I said I might shift to covering a the webshows a bit more and what they do? Kill the webshows. If it's really because their TV partners didn't want them pushing content out on YouTube and if it speaks to the strength of that relationship, great. I'm really going to miss Dark and Elevation though. Elevation especially was how I got into AEW the most in late summer and early fall of 2021. Squashes and competitive mid-card matches with no commercials or time constraints or even plot progression built up my connection to wrestlers unfamiliar to me, and there were a lot. I get that you don't want to put squashes on TV and I get that sometimes these extra matches wore out crowds, but at its best, it allowed wrestlers to experiment, to get reps, to figure out what worked and what didn't and let crowds see certain stars (the Matt Hardys of the world), pop for their entrances and themes and signature moves, even when they weren't going to be on the main show. It gave us an Emi Sakura or Nyla Rose tag week after week after week after week and they were all a blast. It let the Acclaimed figure out how to be the Acclaimed or the Gunns figure out how to be the Gunns and let Athena as hard as one could go during one night in Canada and suddenly become one of the the best things in wrestling. I'm not sure how things will shake out in the months to come, if Rampage will serve this purpose more and if we'll get that itch scratched with the ROH studio tapings or if extra matches even end up on Bleacher Report, but I'll miss goofy rookie Elevation commentary from Wight and Menard (and Eddie Kingston for a while there!) and even goofier expert Dark commentary from Excalibur and Taz. I hope we see the return of Super Strong Suplex Machine sooner than later.

AEW Dynamite 5/3

Jericho Appreciation Society (Daniel Garcia/Jake Hager/Angelo Parker/Matt Menard) vs Orange Cassidy/Bandido/Adam Cole/Roderick Strong

MD: Nice big 8 man tag with a lot of little story beats. It's nice to see Strong outside of the WWE system again where he can feel like a big deal. That's part of the joy of AEW. I don't usually have a ton to say about Cole. My main takeaway on him is that he's been woefully miscast as a heel forever. The fans want to cheer him. They want to cheer his song. He has the offense of a scrappy babyface. He has the size of a scrappy babyface. I've seen him in interviews say that it's not an issue because he gets the fans to boo him during the match, but I honestly don't think that has played out in practice, at least not in AEW. This feels fresh. They played up the relationship between Cassidy and Cole but never really did anything with it unfortunately. The only sign of anything off at all was Bandido tagging Cole by slapping him on the back.

I liked how the match turned on the caught dive on Cassidy (with Garcia coming out nowhere with a knee to the back). I like Cole getting taken out when he went for Jericho at first opportunity; in general, even with him getting to tag with Strong again, he portrayed a certain intensity from his entrance to his first big boot, to the finish and both charges up the ramp. The buried what I was looking forward to the most in the commercial break, but 2.0 feeding and stooging for Orange Cassidy was a ton of fun as you'd expect, as was the suplex spots with Bandido. Garcia was a glorious jerk during the beat down on Cassidy, walking over him repeatedly and stepping on the ankle to prevent him getting away. Everyone got to get something in down the stretch. I'm looking forward to Strong against any of these guys and certainly to Hager vs Bandido if they ever want to run that, but Garcia is a top potential AEW Cassidy opponent and they're running that next week.

Darby Allin/Jungle Boy vs MJF/Sammy Guevara

MD: I don't think anyone would say that this main event angle has been a total success, though people can definitely appreciate that they're taking this swing and trying to elevate the pillars like this. What has worked, more than anything else, has been the MJF/Sammy pairing. In fact, given that we're still weeks from the PPV, it's a shame they've gone away from it here. I wouldn't mind if they go back to it at some later point. They were full on Heavenly Bodies/Too Cool here, full of themselves, congratulating one another, constantly jawing (including with the crowd during the commercial break to get big heat), constantly posturing. I would have liked some dumb simplistic double teams but I was ultimately happy with what we got, including the assisted abdominal stretch and Hollywood Blonds' terrible towel with Max's scarf.

Darby and Jungle Boy hit everything clean and played face-in-peril well enough, though the focus was really on the heel antics instead of the come back attempts. It's a bit like seeing Jarrett again. AEW's tag scene has had such a focus on big spots and cut off near falls that bullshit like this is fresh and really stands out. I liked Jungle Boy as a hot tag. We saw him so long with Luchasaurus where he didn't get to play that role. And Sammy looked amazing taking the tiger driver and code red, almost as good as I've ever seen either taken, which was impressive in such quick succession. Max's convoluted killshot looked great too, though he'd probably be better served with something way more simplistic that is just put over as deadly due to superior execution or some such. The finish with MJF and Sammy hitting moves but the other wanting the pin contrasted Darby tagging himself in but to hit a move and then go for the pin instead, making the babyfaces look somewhat more respectable while still playing into the animosity between them and pushing the 4-way to come. I have no idea what Khan has planned between now and May 28 but hopefully it's even more entertaining than the Sammy/MJF pairing; that feels like a bit of a high bar to clear though.

AEW Rampage 5/5

Lucha Bros/Hijo del Vikingo vs QTV (Powerhouse Hobbs/QT Marshall/Aaron Solo)

MD: Figured I'd give this some time too. There are a lot of different possible structures and narratives in pro wrestling. It doesn't have to be shine/heat/comeback. As long as there's a narrative throughline and things have weight and matter, as long as they have some semblance of build and payoff, you can do a lot of different things. Some stories are easier to tell than others. Some are more natural. Some require less work on the viewer. And, it's valid to occasionally just do a your move/my move fireworks spotfest so long as it's driven by a purpose on the card and it doesn't have a negative impact on it. Even then, however, I tend to find that last option limiting. If you pull back just a little on that, if you just take a breath and think things through, you can still hit a lot of those spots but underpin them with a more compelling narrative. Doing that will only make the spots feel more impressive and compelling because there'll be something providing them with actual substance. It's almost always additive if done well and smartly. The best wrestling is when people combine working smart and working hard, when you have both "workrate" and narrative, when one is the means and the other is the end.

So often with the Lucha Bros, I see a heck of a lot of means and not a lot of end. That's most especially true when they're up against similar opponents with similar mindsets. They try to go over the top and in doing so end up completely untethered. It pops the crowd in the moment but you end up remembering spots and moments, not the match as a whole.

One of the great things about AEW is the WAR-like nature of the potential pairings. You'll see Lucha Bros and Vikingo against the most logical guys in the world (let's say Rush and Dralistico) but you'll also see them here against QT, Hobbs, and Solo, three guys with wildly different skillsets. After a bit of posturing, QT took all of Vikingo's flashy stuff. I'll admit I had mixed feelings about his basing. In general, we applaud wrestlers for getting into positions on dives and saving the spot and their opponent. That's outside of the ring; when it happens in the ring however, it always feels a little dodgier. That was the case with the implosion 'rana. QT rushing to position made it feel more impactful but also poked at the suspension of disbelief just a tad. Still, it felt novel for him to be taking all the offense instead of someone like Kommander or Gringo Loco. There's value in that sort of dissonance too. Then Hobbs came in and just shut everything down. Solo is a 14 year vet 34 year old still trying to find his way but he can hit stuff clean and is pretty punchable, so it's not like he's a bad hand to have in there and to follow up Hobbs' stuff with a bunch of annoying offense to get under the crowd's skin. The built through the commercial break to the comeback and went into a finishing stretch. That's where we got the dives and the real bombs and because of the anticipation everything felt bigger than it would have if they were just escalating and escalating through spot after spot after spot. Speaking of escalating, I'm glad we didn't get the 630 through the table here. That shouldn't be an every match move, even if it's teased every match. It's one of the biggest spots in the promotion and they should only use it when it really matters, not against QT on a Rampage with a weird time spot. It was ok to do it a couple of times early to establish it but now keep it in the pocket so that when it happens, it means as much as humanly possible and that it also doesn't devalue other big dives and spots people do across the promotion. The finish felt a little abrupt to me but ultimately worked; Hobbs was distracted. Why was Hobbs distracted? Because he was choking Abrahantes and that's the best reason to lose a match I can think of.

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Eddie Kingston Don't Do Math, Eight Million in Ice

Eddie Kingston/Penta El 0M vs. The Young Bucks AEW Dynamite 7/7/21 - GREAT 

ER: I didn't like this as much as their straight tag the week before. That was a really well built classic tag with some hot moments. This was a full bullshit stunt show, with WAY bigger spots but not really any kind of satisfying build. This was a stunt show, and they hit some big stunts. It was clear there would be a ton of BS from the start, when they work Michael Nakazawa into an early superkick spot and Brandon Cutler is running around with cold spray, so there was always this weird mix of stooge comedy and violence. It's odd to have guys taking really dangerous bumps while seconds later having Cutler make dangerous bumps look silly by making funny faces through them, but the frenetic energy also added to the presentation. This was closer to a big ECW tag where tertiary people run in throughout just to take bad bumps, and the bad bumps here were bad. There are nasty small things, like Nick landing with a thwack into a chair on a drop toehold, up to bigger things like Kingston getting powerbombed onto a flat table, and then up to Matt Jackson taking a flipping piledriver off the apron through a table. I like smart dumb stuff like Nick hitting a 450 on the referee when the Bucks were falling behind, real fun dumb guy logic that buoyed this whole thing. Kingston brings thumbtacks and he takes the nastiest stuff, like getting a big handful of tacks thrown into his face, or tacks shoved into his mouth before a double superkick. The whole thing was a runaway train and part of a great show finishing fireworks display. 

Eddie Kingston/Jon Moxley vs. Minoru Suzuki/Lance Archer AEW Rampage 9/22 (Aired 9/24/21) - FUN

ER: A Lights Out, Anything Goes match where 75% of the combatants just hit each other with uninspired weapon shots. Eddie Kingston was the only one who was bringing any kind of passion to this fight, jumping and tearing his shirt, rushing headlong into a fight with Suzuki. Seeing the personalities of Suzuki and Kingston opposite each other is a large part of this match's thrill, so obviously I'm going to love seeing Suzuki kick Kingston through a table, but it wasn't enough. A lot of the match had such a huge disconnect, with Archer being unsurprisingly the biggest problem. Much of this Anything Goes fighting felt more like guys throwing really bad strikes while waiting for someone else to get into position for something that wasn't going to look that good. It's a series of false starts without any of their ideas building to a satisfying payoff. 

Moxley gets chokeslammed to the floor into a bunch of guys who came out to catch that chokeslam to the floor; Archer wraps his belt around Moxley's neck but when we come back from break Moxley's hands were tied and the belt was no longer around his neck. Suzuki spent a lot of time grabbing half ass submissions before letting them go, like a lightly applied single leg crab that Moxley wouldn't have even been able to defend, but it goes nowhere. Kingston's fire is the only thing that keeps this watchable, bursting back into the ring with his arm hanging limp at his side (I love when King charges into a fight brazenly wearing his injuries) and breaks a hold with an eye poke. We get a great moment where Homicide returns but then immediately fumbles around with a chair (I swear Homicide always has the absolute worst luck with inanimate objects in big moments), and Archer manages to make the finish look like, ahem, trash. When Kingston has Archer inside a trash can lid and Archer doesn't start selling kendo stick shots until the 4th one in, you know you're just dealing with a guy who has no idea how to work a match like this. Some fun moments, but a major letdown.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: Ageless Negro Casas Teams w/ Pentagon

62. Negro Casas/Penta El Zero M/Cavernario vs. Dragon Lee/Caristico/Mistico CMLL 7/20

ER: This match ends in straight falls with Cavernario stripping Caristico of his mask after kicking him in the balls. And everything before that abrupt but expected finish was straight fire. Pentagon worked way more inspired than we typically have seen from him over the past couple years. Watch him fly recklessly into the front row fans as the match starts and create energy all around ringside. One of my frequent complaints about him is how sluggish he can come off in the ring, especially between moves. But here he's lighting up the tecnicos and not just hanging back when he's not the featured guy. The crowd was into him, and he beats the brakes off of Dragon Lee around ringside. Lee takes that over the barricade fast bump so crazy, he looks like OJ Simpson on the stretcher flying off the second deck at Dodger Stadium in Naked Gun (man that description was a mouthful). Caristico takes his own bump into the front row, getting beaten by Cavernario while fans tried to keep their distance. Cavernario was a bulldozer as well, not giving the tecnicos time to breathe during a beatdown, landing hard kicks and a big springboard splash. But Negro Casas was the main man in this one. He picks apart Mistico in the primera works over his knee and twists his ankle, and after he and Cavernario have beaten him Casas even lifts him up at a 2 count and soaks in the boos. Casas kicks the hell out of Lee on the apron, and I still think Casas is the most exciting apron wrestler in the game. I mean, maybe I can just take the word "apron" out of that sentence. Lee comes close to kicking Casas' chin while draped in the ropes, Casas comes up holding his chin and shows Lee how to land a kick by punting a hole in his chest. Casas hits one of the most violent/gorgeous standing kicks to the face I've seen, hitting the best Kick of Fear on the apron, then gets absolutely leveled by a leaping Lee knee. We get some nice dives and ranas to the floor down the stretch: Lee gets crazy height on a flip dive, Cavernario tries to send his body through the barricade catching a dive, Penta eats a rana, just a fantastic rudo performance. These guys had so much natural charisma together, hopefully we see them team more than this one time.

PAS: This is a match where Negro Casas who is in his late 50s, is teaming with arguably the cream of the crop of luchadores in their 20s and 30s and not only is the superior performer, but also looks on their level athletically. He is 35 years older then Dragon Lee, Dragon Lee is a freak athlete, and Casas looks right there with him move for move. What kind of black magic is this? Pentagon was making his Arena Mexico debut, which I am sure was a dream of his, and he really worked hard, flying around the ring and laying in his shots. Straight falls was a little disappointing, as I really think with a big time Tercera Caida this could have been a real top tier match. Still really cool stuff, and the influx of indy guys has seemingly upped everyone's game.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Wrestlemania Weekend Thursday Wrestlecon Supershow and Axcess Cherry Picking

Wrestlecon Supershow

Joey Janela vs. Penta el 0M

ER: I was curious what Janela could do here, since Penta is just beyond dullsville at this point. Penta is just about the most boring and uninspired guy these days when it comes to getting his shit in, completely disregarding any offense he has taken and just running through his sequences. I really liked him in the first season of LU and I can’t think of anyone whose stock has fallen farther in that time, while still maintaining a rabid fanbase. Janela looked good, hitting a bunch of nice full extension superkicks at well timed parts of the match, hitting a big superplex, a great dive down the stretch, and making Penta’s sometimes dodgy offense look good. Penta has terrible slingblades, but Janela made them work, really got good bounce off the backtracker, and the Penelope interference was used really well. I liked her yanking Penta’s foot to set up a superplex, and the finish with Janela leaping off the ropes into a superkick, and then Penelope doing the same, dodging one, and getting leveled by another was some fun BS. Penta is super predictable the whole match, but Janela mixed a couple things up and paced out a nice performance

ER: So Jerry Lawler threw a fireball that hit Joey Ryan in the tip of the dick, which is just fantastic. The execution was fantastic, the build up was great, and Ryan sold it for ages, as he should have. This was a comedy spot that paid off.

Jeff Cobb vs. Tomohiro Ishii

PAS: I am not the biggest fan of your Ishii slugfests, he always kind of comes off as third rate Takeshi Ishikawa, with out the selling or diversity to really take it to the next level. Still big dudes pounding on each other is a genre of match I am going to dig, and Cobb's power stuff is really fun. Wasn't a huge fan of the early endless elbow exchange, but this got pretty great by the end. Loved when Ishii got pissed off and started countering the elbow smashes by leaning in and headbutting Cobb's arm, nasty stuff and a cool variation of a fighting spirit spot. Cobb also had some out of control throws, he has such explosion with his hips and he chucks Ishii like a longshoreman throwing a bag of coffee. Couple of great headbutts too, with both guys reckless throwing their head at their opponent.

ER: That elbow exchange was interminable, but happily they got it out of the way really early in the match, instead of doing that thing where a match is peaking and we have to stop thing for some standing exchange. But we got that out of the way and then the match was able to do what it was supposed to do, which is to be a human recreation of BattleBots. Cobb brought maybe his meanest match ever, and dropped stuff like the standing shooting star, and instead focused on all of the big throws. It was appropriate to bring out the triple Germans on the weekend that Kurt Angle returns to the WWE big stage, and I don't know if Angle's ever looked as great as Cobb's here. The bridge was an impressive touch, and he mixes them up by even suplexing Ishii into the buckles. This was a long match with a lot of heavy lifting, and I was really impressed with Cobb's gas tank. He does a cool captured arm and leg suplex into a bridge, and at one point I actually yelled ROLLING OLYMPIC HELL when he grabbed Ishii in a head and arm choke. Cobb becoming a proxy Tamon Honda would be great for us. Ishii is just a total masochist, not leaving a match satisfied until his vertebrae are properly compressed. He lands a bunch of stiff arm lariats into Cobb's lungs, and I was really losing it when he pushed Cobb back across the ring by headbutting Cobb's strikes, just backing him up with his cinder block head, and Cobb had a bunch of great "Who the hell is this guy!?" faces. Cobb hits my favorite spot of the match by leaping head first into Ishii with a spectacular torpedo headbutt, and this match was one of the greatest versions of two large beer kegs becoming sentient and hurling themselves into each other that I've seen. This could have been bogged down by no selling suplexes and throw trading, but I loved how they ramped everything up, and loved how Ishii outlasted Cobb and won with a vertical suplex (you know, followed by a couple of brutal headbutts).

Rey Horus/Rey Fenix vs. Flamita/Bandido

PAS: I could imagine this was a blast to watch live, but it felt a little like a car with a gas pedal stuck on mash. Everything was worked at the same pace, it never felt like it had a chance to breath for me. Fenix was super impressive, in a match filled with freaky athletes, everything he did had an extra burst of speed and an extra pop of height. There was some crazy flipping on the ropes where he got knocked down bounced up and still hit a springboard, the balance was bonkers. I also really loved Horus's out of control surprise tope con hilo through the ropes, dives are so much cooler when they are out of nowhere like that. I hadn't seen much Bandido and he didn't do a ton for me, seems like he was setting up his signature counters too much, felt like a Dragon's Gate guy to me which is not a compliment.


WWE Axcess

Kassius Ohno vs. Keith Lee

PAS: Cool idea to run these short indy style matches at Axcess, hopefully more fancams show up. Hero is a guy I kind of forgot about, I don't watch a ton of NXT and he got memory holed a bit, but his is still fucking great. He may be the best leg slap striker in wrestling history, I know it is a lot of smoke and mirrors, but he really looks like he is murdering people with those shots. Lee seemed a bit cowed by a WWE stage, as his charisma was a bit muted, although he is still an impressive athletic marvel. I loved Hero taunting him only to get smashed with a pounce and firemans carry powerslam.

ER: Rachel and I saw a great show in SF last night, Soccer Mommy headlining with Oakland's extraordinary Madeline Kenney opening for her (and debuting some wildly great new stuff, check them both out on bandcamp), and between sets we watched this match on YouTube. I think Phil is totally on the money calling Hero the best thigh slap striker in wrestling. People make fun of that skill mostly because it's something we see done so much so badly, but Hero throws so many great strikes with well hidden slaps that it feels like a cool old theatrical art. Tajiri would be the other candidate, and I think it's a cool skill to learn so well. Lee was a bit more restrained than I was expecting, but Ohno sure helped Lee look great. It was crazy how high Ohno got on a slam and how far he flew off the Pounce. Lee leans into a bunch of high kicks and comes up with some cool surprises of his own, really liked a couple tornado back elbows he caught Ohno with. Shout out to whomever captured this and didn't get caught recording front row, super fun little match. 

2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Nothing Can Stop Ki, He's All the Way Up

Low-Ki v. Penta El 0M Tier 1 Wrestling 6/11/17 - FUN

PAS: Penta 0M is an interesting case, he looks cool, has a ton of charisma, but I am always slightly disappointed by his indy dream matches (still think his best match is that Vampiro LU brawl). I always wish it was LA Park. Low-Ki however does not disappoint, and is just killing it in the last couple of years. Here he comes out in the Hitman outfit and wrestles this match with holstered guns. Pretty much a 12 minute moves exhibition, but luckily Ki has some moves, he still is cat quick and gets great height on his dropkicks and double stomps. There was also a great spot where he leaps recklessly into a superkick that looked like it broke his larynx, totally crazy stuff. There were a few too many flippy piledrivers for my taste, but I did love the finish, Ki's double stomp is Togo Senton level beautiful now, and he crushes Penta with it.

ER: Lucha Underground Season 1 : Pentagon :: ECW : Taz. This dude has been exposed for a year + now, but he had me going all the way. He's a guy I could see putting at 25 on the 2015 SC500, and then the next year we go "what the fuck is wrong with us!?" and have him at 430. His Chi Chi Rodriguez fist pump "Woo!" is one of the lamer things done by a supposed wrestling badass. I've heard some people make fun of Ki in the suit, which is silly to me as I think the suit and gloves and wild offense looks awesome, but I gotta say the double holster looks even more awesome. That is a cool fucking look. He looks like a henchman in No More Heroes. The match devolves pretty quickly into move trading, and PentaGroonXXX's strikes are sorely lacking the LU gunshot sound effects, but he still leans into all of Ki's craziest stuff. One of my favorite things in wrestling is watching Ki recoil after delivering offense. He'll get crazy height on a dropkick or double stomp, and then go banging across the ring like a cueball slamming into the 8 ball. Him flying bent legged into a thrust kick looked great, but I'm getting sick of Penta and his Adam Cole offense. Still, it's Ki, it's gonna be worth watching.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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