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.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/26 - 2/1

AEW Collision 1/31/26

Darby Allin vs Clark Connors

MD: I didn't write up Darby vs PAC. I should have but I was focused on MJF vs Bandido. That wasn't it though. There was something more. It was that belly-to-belly on the stairs. Every single Darby Allin match has a bump like that. Something that takes your stomach and shoves it up into your throat. He's such a good seller, such a good underdog, so credible with his timing and opportunism and fight, has such a connection with the crowd, that every single one of his matches probably doesn't need one of those massive exclamation points. There are going to be a lot of really effective, meaningful periods along the way. Lots of punctuation. But every match has an exclamation point or two.

That one struck me harder than most though. It reminded me of Foley going off the cell, actually. Not at all the same thing, but that's not the point. The point is presentation. It was visually ghastly, gutwrenching. It took me out for the rest of the match because all I could think about was the spot. It just ran through my head over and over. And it left me thinking "This won't matter in a week," and that thought made me frustrated, because it was special. Even within the confines of Darby's exclamation points, it felt special. Too special to just be thrown away. But that's what I thought was going to happen. It should be one of those things we're talking about ten years from now. 

Pro wrestling is about presentation. That's what Vince worked out back in the 80s and it's what carried him for decades. It's not just about presentation. But so much of it is. You can do the best work in the world and if the promotion doesn't present that work the right way, doesn't frame it in a manner that makes it feel important and that sets it up for success, then it won't mean nearly as much as it could. That's not the banal storytelling argument. This is actually something different. They turned Foley's bump into myth. Yet Darby takes a bump like that every few weeks. How do you square that circle?

Could it be instead that Darby is greater than the sum of the parts? That if any single part was raised to be too important then the whole might be diminished. There are people who will kick and scream if they ever see this sentence (thankfully they don't read my stuff) but in a lot of ways, Darby is the heir to Johnny Valentine. Valentine always said that people might think wrestling is fake but no one would think he was fake. 

We feel everything Darby does so acutely. We know it hurts. It's 2026. We all love and respect wrestling and we appreciate deeply the way wrestlers put their bodies on the line to create art for us to enjoy and engage with. With Darby it's different though. He carries with him that element of deathmatch realism, distilled into bumps. Yeah maybe they could protect themselves on X, but Darby? Not Darby. It's impossible. So he's the heir to Jeff Hardy and Mick Foley and ECW and Johnny Valentine all at once. That perfect package of size and shape and vulnerability and selling and bumping and grasping fight. But Darby Allin? Darby's different.

But still, when you have a bump like that, something so gripping and brutal and visual, where the angles are all wrong and the metal is unforgiving, and the jag fits right in between the vertebrae just so, you want it to be treated differently. You want it to continue to matter. You want the commentary to remember it and for it to be on highlight packages and in the opening to the show. It should live for years. If the production cares, then we can care and not just move on from it. It doesn't become crash TV or Excalibur using "But" or "and" to move right on to the next thing. There's a fine line between Vince thinking that pro wrestling fans have no memory for anything and the idea that it's worth it to immortalize things that can, do, and should matter to them with reinforcement. That's all selling is in the end, getting fans to buy in that things can and do matter. 

A lot of that is what I was going to say if I did write about the PAC match, and it's important I said it here, because they succeeded beyond my expectations in making that spot matter here against Connors.

They established up front that he had an alliance with Kidd, that he was there to make a mark against an AEW original, a perennial world title contender, the heir to Sting (let alone everyone else I mentioned). And the damage from the belly-to-belly was the perfect wedge to let him do it believably. 

If Darby was a crash test dummy of sorts, then Connors was an absolute wrecking ball. Darby came in with his back bandaged, and from even before the bell, Connors made it his goal in life to toss his own body at Darby, in some ways using Darby's favorite tactic against him. 

It started even as Darby was skateboarding down to ringside. He was there like a bull charging right into him. It continued again and again. He'd have Darby on the apron dangling and he'd just go headlong. He accomplished more with shoulder tackles than anyone in a decade or two. Darby would get a hope spot in, but his hand would clutch his back and Connors would charge right back at him. It was force vs object but both of them were moving in the most impactful way, a 21st century version of titans clashing, where things resonated not because nothing would give but because everything had to again and again.

And then they found themselves back on the outside and with the specter of the spot hanging above them, Connors went to double down upon it, tried to manifest it once again. He got greedy, hungry, possessed by the violence he had witnessed PAC orchestrate. Darby was ready, and literally used the steps to vault himself back into the match. There were bumps along the way but that was the beginning of the end, and he scored yet another mythic, impossible, gripping win. 

And yet. The one moment where Connors really shut him down, really took over? Darby had gone to the top and Connors (yet again) charged in. The bump Darby took, careening onto the apron and somehow managing to hit it multiple times on the way to the floor? An exclamation point in a sea of periods. The sort of thing that will stick with you, that should stick with you, that they should show again and again, that should be in an opening show package, that should matter next week. That should be used, just as the belly-to-belly was used here, to build something meaningful in the future. 

The problem of Darby Allin. Just how high can these towers of devastation get? All the way to Everest maybe. 

ROH TV 1/29/26

Athena vs Vertvixen

MD: Athena's entire rise was a Johnny Valentine moment as well. She had been transitioning from being a babyface, had dropped down the card, was on ROH, was up against Jody Threat in Canada, and she went hard against her. The clips went viral. Old timers and engagement accounts hoping to grift against AEW to make a buck and stay relevant leaned hard into their inherent misogyny and berated her for being careless, for not looking after her opponent in a way they never would if, let's say Lance Archer had a match like that, and she embraced it and ran with it, all the way to becoming one of the most engaging characters in wrestling. 

Wrestling shouldn't feel collaborative. It shouldn't feel cooperative. In 2026, the lean towards elaborate spots and counters and sequences have meant that all too often it does. 

That means if something goes wrong, it's jarring, and we're conditioned for the response to be consummate.

Athena, athletic, dominant, confident champion that she is, outwrestled Vertvixen to start. That confidence gave way to arrogance though, and Vertvixen turned it, both the wrestling and the mocking back onto Athena. Athena snapped, made use of her superior agility, and dropped Vertvixen's face right onto her knees. Vertvixen sold it hard, rubbing at her jaw and her nose and her teeth. There was the sense of something being slightly off as they didn't quite roll into the next bit of offense. In some ways, that's not surprising since Athena's so good at reacting and letting things sink in and resonate, but as an audience, we're used to specific timing cues and this felt just a little long. 

But then, instead of moving away from the potentially hurt area, Athena leaned hard into it, grasping the nose and whacking it. Before there was maybe the possibility of blood. She ensured the reality of it, and having done so, waved her bloody hand around to show the crowd. Aubrey was the referee and moved to get gloves on immediately even as Athena veered off course and into the wonderful world of woundwork. 

I have no idea what was planned and what was called. All I know is the effect it had on the audience and myself, the narrative power of something going off course and a heel pushing it even harder in that direction and reveling in it all the way. All I know is that the crowd, already inclined to get behind Vertvixen, got behind her all the more, and she came off looking all the better for fighting through the pain and doing some real damage to Athena long the way. And THAT in turn, made Athena's shaken confidence and deep anger down the stretch and especially in the post-match, set things up perfectly for Maya World and Hyan to run down to make the save and set things up for the big six-woman tag next week. 

Athena is always on. Athena gives herself completely to the role. But unlike most wrestlers, that doesn't just mean that she's reading her lines using as a method actress. It means instead that she's so tuned into who and what she's trying to portray that she'll perfectly take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way, and that, as much as anything else, is the true spirit of pro wrestling.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 1/19 - 1/25

ROH TV 1/22/26

Adam Priest/Tommy Billington vs Premier Athletes (Tony Nese/Ariya Daivari) 

MD: Wrestling isn't math.

Sometimes, though, it can be a book report.

Everyone rushes to make things quantitative, to bestow star ratings, to rate things next to each other. 

I care a lot more about understanding, about categorizing, about yeah, analyzing. That's not about scoring on points having to do with excitement, execution, innovation so much as breaking down the narrative and try to figure out how it ticks. These things can go hand-in-hand. You can use this to judge a match but that's not usually my intent. 

So we're going to do something a little different this week. We're going to look at a match through a narrative framework.

I'm not saying you can do this with every match exactly this way. I'm not saying I do it with every match automatically, though my brain is wired now to be thinking about some of these things as I watch, sure. 

This works well for a southern tag (the most beautiful form of pro wrestling there is) but for other things, be it face vs face matches or matches from cultures that structure things differently, the hinge points that still should exist are transitions or momentum shifts. Not everything will fit neatly into a three act structure but there still should be act breaks if you can figure out where to find them. Otherwise, it's just all noise and the match is probably not going to be very satisfying even if it might be sensational.

Pre-Match: This covers entrances, talking on the way to the ring, inset (insert?) promos. There's a lot to see here. It matters how people come down to the ring. It sets the stage, creates a mood. We're going to cover a 1981 joshi babyface vs babyface match later this week and to see Jackie Sato grasp people's hands on the way to the ring and understand the connection she had with the crowd relative to her opinions gave some insight into the match itself and to how the crowd reacted. We're the blind man touching the elephant and every data point helps.

Lots of data points here. Athletes are out first with Sterling putting over their relatively new heater, Stori Denali as she towers over everyone. He gets some cheap heat talking about local sports, hypes everyone up to shout Athletes Rule so that they can shout Athletes Suck instead. These guys were getting booed anyway but there's no question now. They look like a unit with matching red boots even if everyone's stylistically different in other ways with their own flourishes.

Priest/Billington are out to Billington's music, reddish matching tights, a tron that just focuses on Billington. We get an inset promo with Swirl and Lethal, Lethal having turned on Bandido, and Billington/Priest by proxy a few weeks ago. Lethal says they're done. Christian says they're not. A little wonky. As that's happening, they're moving down to the ring with haste and energy, Priest hyping up the crowd.

Code of Honor: Here's a bonus element just for ROH matches. I love the Code of Honor. It's a mandatory handshake before a match but it forces an extra character moment to set the stage right at the start of the match. Athena always puts a dainty left hand out to insult opponents for instance. Sometimes she clocks someone as they shake, sometimes she doesn't, but that tension is always there. It's an opportunity and while you need a baseline of straight up shakes, it's to a wrestler's detriment if he or she doesn't make the most of it.

Adam Priest absolutely makes the most of it. He tells you almost everything you need to know about him in the span of fifteen seconds. He gets right in Daivari's face, putting his hand out. When Daivari just stares him down he shoves him and puts the hand back out. He's got a chip in his shoulder, full of babyface fire. He's hungry and won't be denied. Daivari on the other hand is a vet's vet, just like Nese, and he has his own pride, and in the face of that challenge, he doesn't back down, but does show a modicum of respect, slapping Priest's hand to complete the Code. Again, fifteen seconds, but they set the stage immediately, making the most of it.

Feeling Out/Shine: They're still fleshing out the stage. It's Act 1 of a play, introducing the characters, setting, and the "normal world." Who are these people? What makes them different from each other? Why do you root for the babyface? Why do you boo the heel? If the match was going to play out with everything fair, everything normal, what might it look like? There may be a "false heat" of sort where it seems like the heel is getting an advantage, but then they get comeuppance. 

Priest and Daivari start with chain wrestling focused around the arm. Daivari is the early aggressor but Priest is ultimately able to turn things around and win the exchange, pumping his arm as the fans chant "Athletes Suck." Daivari presses him into the corner (since he couldn't get an advantage cleanly) and he and Nese double clubber before calling for an Athletes chant (they get "Suck" for their trouble). Billington manages a blind tag off the ropes and they hit a slick drop toe hold/elbow drop combo before controlling with the arm and quick tags for another couple of minutes, until Nese is able to get back in and has a nice rope running exchange with Billington leading to the...

Transition to Heel Offense/Heat: Transitions are everything. They're the act breaks, the change that we see in the world. They're the shocks to the system that grasp you as a viewer and change the course of history. They should be clever but definitive, not mushy and unclear, but also earned and believable. A kick to the gut out of nowhere doesn't generally cut it. That's not enough to change history. Something too far the other way is going to feel more like a process than an exclamation point. Sometimes that can be okay but it means you're telling a different sort of story and need to insert more nuance. 

They did an excellent job here. Nese and Daivari are very good at layering these things. Here Nese succeeds on a dropdown, throwing Billington off balance. Is a dropdown a trip? Is it just getting out of the way of someone running? It's pro wrestling. It can be either or both. It doesn't necessarily matter what the original intent was. Here it does throw Billington off and Nese charges right in behind him to clip the legs in the ropes. He goes to drive Billington into the barricade. Billington fights him off. Daivari comes to help. Billington fights him off too. Thus distracted, Nese is able to toss Billington into the hard ring apron shoulder first and then, as Nese rolls in to distract the ref, Daivari and Sterling are able to stomp on him. It's a great transition because it caught everyone by surprise, because it clearly leaned hard into character: Nese was opportunistic and underhanded, Billington valiant, and it led to a bit of cheating to show the difference all the more clearly. 

Heat/Hope Spots/Cutoffs: Again, wrestling isn't math and there can be differences in ratios here. Some of the best tags of the 80s have long, long shines where the heels get their comeuppance again and again and relatively short heats. To me, it's just basic narrative logic to have a longer heat where you're building up pressure more and more for a hot tag and getting the fans wanting it more and more.

It's good to have a singular narrative focus and they make use of the arm here. Billington's arm was thrashed on the apron. It gives Nese and Daivari a target to attack and gives an "out" for why Billington can't come back even though he's trying his best. He goes for punches or forearms but the arm gives way. He reverses Nese and puts him into tombstone position. The arm doesn't let him hit it. Hope snatched away. The Athletes get showy and cocky building to Nese missing a moonsault, but he's able to make the tag and Daivari cuts a crawling Billington off with an elbow drop. All of this builds up the pressure.

Transition to Hot Tag: again, transitions are inflection points, shocks, the world changing, act breaks, the most important part of a match past maybe the finish. This is the moment the crowd has been waiting for, what they had been hoping for. The inversions have already come with the hope spots and cutoffs, but this is one last chance to either be definitive with it or string a last series together.

Here it's basically just a double down after Daivari and Priest both go for clotheslines. Important is that Nese is still reeling from that missed moonsault (though that's just an extra detail for why he can't disrupt things, but the Athletes are so good with details). Simple, straightforward, as Daivari crawls towards his corner to find no one there and Billington finds exactly what he was looking for in Adam Priest. But it's art so it's subjective, right? You could say that even though Daivari had a clear moment of control (ball possession?) after the elbow drop cut off, that the key inflection point was the missed moonsault and everything after that was the Athletes losing control. It's interesting to think about either way. Again, not math.

Comeback/Finishing Stretch: Another place where you can separate more or combine if you want to, however you'd like to think about it. In modern wrestling, they're so stuck together that it's hard to differentiate. The comeback generally leads to pin attempts and break-ups and things ebbing and flowing towards a finish. In modern matches, you often get a really extended finishing stretch that can be as long as half the match where everything breaks down and you get constant spots/action for long minutes and I am not a huge fan of that. But yes, the babyface who got the hot tag comes in a house afire (of fire?) and releases all that pent up pressure and they start laying down false finishes to build to however the match is going to end, ideally raising that pressure back up for the finish.

This was a particularly great stretch because it was less about big moves and kickouts (or break-ups) and more about playing with conventions and expectations. We're all trained to know the various ways a match logically tends to end and this didn't just give us big moves but narrative beats where endings could happen only to snatch them away and build to the next one.

Priest led off with what would be the comeback phase. He had some great signature offense, mowing down Daivari as he fed for him but then catching a foot and turning it into a German Suplex and leaping off the turnbuckles with a tornado DDT after he shoved off Nese who was trying to stop him. This was disrupted by a Daivari small package attempt, which you can note, if you want, where things shifted from comeback to finishing stretch (though again, it all blurs).

What followed was a series of false finishes, a double submission by the babyfaces, Sterling causing a distraction on the apron, heel miscommunication, Nese pulling the rope down, a kickout after a heel double-team, more heel miscommunication and Priest locking in his half crab, Denali using Billington cutting off Sterling's second attempt at distraction to chokeslam Priest (pin broken up by Billington), and then finally, after Billington cleared Daivari out to hit a dive and make it one-on-one, Priest reversing Nese's pumphandle driver finisher into a roll up for the win. Just a very clever and self-aware sequence of not just finishers or moves, but coded moments that we have fans have been conditioned can understand could possibly lead to the end of a match. It had me on the edge of my seat at least as after the double submission, almost anything that happened could plausibly lead to a finish given our understanding of pro wrestling.

Post-match: This is where the finish sets in and resonates. Maybe the heels get their heat back. Maybe the babyfaces run them off. Maybe they celebrate with the crowd. Maybe the commentary just takes things through the replay and cements the message of the match.

Here the Swirl came out to ambush and the Athletes joined in. The babyfaces won the battle but lost a bit more in the war, giving them plenty of places to take things moving forward.

Pre-Match, Feeling Out/Shine, Transition to Heel Offense, Heat/Hope Spots/Cutoffs, Transition to Hot Tag, Comeback/Finishing Stretch, Post-Match. In this case there was the Code of Honor as well, which fits in between Pre-Match and Feeling Out/Shine, and could probably be part of the latter. It's a useful framework to think about how matches are put together and how they work narratively. Not every tag match is going to follow it. A tag may have double heat. You may get a "Things Break Down" period after the hot tag that's so lengthy with so many momentum shifts that you may want to try to organize it some other way. If you're watching an All Japan tag from the early 90s, it's much more about specific match-ups and hierarchy. Lucha manages ebbs and flows differently and I wrote more about that here years ago. But in all of these cases, you're generally looking for transitions. Those are your anchors to breaking down a match.

And of course, you don't have to do any of this. You don't have to think about matches this way. You don't have to engage with wrestling this way. It's art. You can just sit back and consume it. But I know that I personally enjoyed this tag, which was very good, all the more for engaging with it and thinking about it through this lens. 

Did I give it a star rating? No. But by breaking it down this way, I pulled out a lot of what made it stand out and pop for me, at least from a storytelling perspective. There are lots of different ways to engage with wrestling (and art in general). Try to explore and figure out what works for you, even if it doesn't necessarily fit into some of the quantitative boxes others have traditionally used.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/1 - 12/7 Part 3

ROH Final Battle 12/5/25

Lee Moriarty vs Nigel McGuinness - Iron Man Match

In general, it doesn't make sense to argue in good faith against those who argue in bad faith. 

A cottage industry has sprouted where grifters spout takes they barely believe in order to tear things down to get engagement. That provides them followers, clicks, appearances, and maybe, if they're particularly successful, lucrative attention from corporate overlords. 

The thing is that younger people see this, and they see that it comes from someone with a big following and some level of past authority and significance, and they cling to it as at least a possible truth.

So no, I don't think it's worth validating them and their thoughts by spending too much time with it, but spending a little, well, there's not too much harm in that, especially when it doesn't take me too far afield from where I'd be anyway.

The question at hand? Storytelling, specifically the validity of implicit, in-ring storytelling vs something more explicit and driven by out-of-ring angles and promos. Can the text itself stand without being buoyed on a sea of context. 

The case study: Lee Moriary vs Nigel McGuinness from Final Battle 2025. An Ironman match between two pure rules stalwarts. 

On paper and certainly as the grifters would grift, this was a cold match. It was announced about a week before the show. It was set up solely on pride. The title wasn't on the line. It wasn't under pure rules. Moriarty had successfully defended the title against Nigel. Nigel had defeated Lee in the technical spectacle 4-way to score a title shot at Zack Sabre, Jr. at Forbidden Door 2025. They were 1-1 against each other. Lee is the longest running Pure champ. Nigel is the second longest running champ and the one who really put the title on the map. This, therefore, was about pride. That's the story coming in. That's it. One backstage promo. No angles. 

But that's not how wrestling works. There are always implicit characteristics. Lee's used to wrestling pure rules matches and here the rules were relaxed (rope breaks didn't count against you, for instance). Shane Taylor was allowed at ringside. Nigel came in with arguably more to prove. He's the one that made the challenge. Moriarty, on the other hand, had just been taken to the limit against Komander in a Proving Ground match and he'd have to defend against him upcoming. This was a distraction from that in some ways. Nigel had dropped twenty-two pounds for this and while he wasn't in the same sort of ring shape as Lee, he was far more rested up. They were in relatively neutral ground as McGuinness came up in Ohio but it's not far from Moriarty's home in Pittsburgh. 

All of this potentially matters, but at the same time, none of it is a sure thing. They're all elements and details, just a few of many, that could potentially be used by the wrestlers to craft a story. And even though the wrestlers might choose to tap into these, that doesn't mean that the story is compelling. I had a period when I was younger that I valued logic above all else in a match. Were all the parentheses closed? Did everything make sense? Was it all set up and paid off? Was anything extraneous? Now I realize that it's much more of a bare minimum or a starting point, and it's also not the be all and end all. Narratives can be a little messy if the sacrifice of coherency somehow increases emotional connection, if it helps people feel instead of think at a key moment. In most cases, however, structural underpinnings bolster that emotional connection instead of disrupting them, and the absence of such is not due to some stroke of creative brilliance but instead pure laziness. In a world with more nuance and less grifters, it'd be easier to point out such examples. As it is, we have to be careful not to use too wide a brush.

So coming in, a single question, quite often the most primal, most important question in all of pro wrestling: "Who is better?" And various attributes that separate the two wrestlers, and a situation primed for the wrestlers to explore these differences between them. You can see why this is a perfect case study. 

They had thirty minutes (and, of course, eventually an overtime) to ply their craft and make their art, and they went right to it. The first few minutes were a feeling out process, hold flowing into hold, reversals opening up new possibilities. There were risks here. It could feel too much like an exhibition. It could be too formless with nothing driving the action but technique. It could feel too collaborative where it's obvious they were propping one another up. But they walked the line well. Nigel was perhaps more the aggressor but Moriarty had answers, a series of interesting and intricate escapes. They both used rope breaks liberally, establishing to a crowd that had just seen a women's Pure title match that here they were fair game.

Notably, after being tagged by a back elbow on a switch, McGuinness snapped into the ropes to throw his comebacker Les Kellett lariat, but Moriarty simply walked out of reach. That would come into play a couple of minutes later as he went for it again, wanting a quick fall to take an early lead. Moriarty had him scouted and went behind for a roll up. McGuinness reversed into a pin attempt of his own, but Moriarty was a couple of moves ahead and turned it into his signature Border City Stretch. McGuinness, in their previous title match, had spent a debilitating minute in the hold. Here, with less than five minutes gone, he couldn't afford that. Instead, he quickly and strategically tapped so no damage was done.

The fans chose this moment to start supporting the quantitative underdog, chanting for McGuinness, and Moriarty went to the floor to burn some time and play to them accordingly. Back in the ring, McGuinness, now down a fall, ramped up the intensity. Moriarty picked an ankle after a roll, and Nigel went right to the ear to drive him to the ropes. He started opening up on Moriarty's arm, slamming it onto the mat and then working it over to create a vulnerability. Moriarty sold accordingly. Nigel went for the Tower of London in the corner, but Lee was able to escape, but not press an advantage. Instead, Nigel became even more aggressive, escalating things to strikes, first in the ring, and then, after chasing Lee out, on the floor. That aggression cost him dearly, however, as after chasing Moriarty back into the ring, Lee was able to roll him up for a quick three count making the match 2-0. 

Nigel, now in a hole, responded by going in harder on the arm. That made him predictable in some ways but it also gave him an advantage in the moment. For instance, if Lee went for a sunset flip, Nigel was able to block it just by slapping at the hands. Moriarty utilized his superior athleticism and comparable canniness to reverse repeated attempts at moves and use the distance McGuinness occasionally provided in setting up bigger attacks to fire back, but Nigel was able to cut off Moriarty by driving forward and attacking the arm. If Lee missed a move, sometimes the sheer recoil of it caused him to be momentarily stunned and to hold his arm, excellent selling that provided a clear, logical, immersive narrative opportunity for Nigel. 

McGuinness locked in his London Dungeon armhold once, but Moriarty made it to the ropes. After a missed corner charge by Lee (set up through a complex series of reversals), he locked it in again, and this time scored the submission. It was still 2-1 however, and Nigel, increasingly desperate with about ten minutes left, yet smelling blood given what he had just accomplished, immediately went for it again. It was a completely reasonable and compelling character decision from him, yet Lee was able to capitalize upon its predictability, rolling through and locking Nigel into a deep cradle to make the score 3-1.

Now, as the clock continued to tick down, they had built a match through the idea of contesting advantages. Lee had a clear quantitative advantage, up by two falls with time on his side, but Nigel had a clear qualitative advantage, with Lee's arm weakened and damaged. If Nigel's desperation drove him too hard to capitalize, Lee would be able to predict it and counter, however. Nigel did press, working over the arm and chopping Moriarty down, but another attempt at the London Dungeon was reversed. He shifted gears to a triangle choke, but Lee made it to the ropes. 

With about three and a half minutes left, they crashed into each other and Nigel finally hit the Les Kellett clothesline, but only for two. Moriarty escaped the ring. Nigel followed again. This time Shane Taylor got in between them and that distraction allowed Lee to lock in a choke. Nigel barely beat the count but was vulnerable to the Border City Stretch. Maybe because Nigel wasn't softened up enough (given his early tap at the start of the match) or because Lee's arm was damaged, Nigel was able to turn it around into a pin and make the score 3-2. Everything from them crashing into each other to the roll up to the pin was part of a single narrative sequence that also played upon what had come before (the quick tap, the multiple attempts at the clothesline, Nigel successfully chasing him to the floor earlier in the match but getting caught on the way back in). It was elaborate but because it was grounded in both character and what they had already built within the match; it absolutely worked.

Things only got wilder from there. Lee had tried unsuccessfully to wrestle defensively when he was further up in points (including on his back, Inoki style). Now he seemed more at a loss, still up but with momentum having shifted away from him. Nigel didn't let him rest and after going back and forth on waistlock attempts, they crashed into each other once again. Lee recovered first, but instead of letting the clock run out, he advanced and got tied up by Nigel for the equalizing pin. Lee, distracted, went to Taylor for advice, was rolled up  and with Nigel holding the tights, it was suddenly 4-3 with only seconds left. As the ref checked on Lee, Taylor clocked Nigel from the outside and with time running out, Lee scored the pin to equalize things at the buzzer. 

There was a sort of moral equivalency here, Nigel's tight pull and Taylor's interference, but perhaps one was more of a transgression than the other. Regardless, and despite Taylor's vehemence that Lee just take the draw that he got by the skin of his teeth, Moriarty called Nigel back for a sudden death overtime. Here they did a series of quick roll ups and pin attempts we've seen so often, but even with the relatively low stakes, the match that they had built and the intensity they brought to bear made these feel visceral and gripping, competitive instead of collaborative. On a double pin, Lee was able to get his shoulder up at the last second, winning the overtime fall and the match. 

Post-match, in an emotional moment, McGuinness presented his original ROH Pure Title belt to Lee. Meanwhile, Shane Taylor was still upset over with how things had played out and argued with Moriarty. Even though this match had come in relatively cold with little outside story hooks, they had, through the match itself, created one moving forward as there's now possible dissension within Shane Taylor Promotions.

Thirty minute matches can be hard to write about. On the match narrative itself, from bell to bell to bell, I went 1250+ words. Character traits and attributes drove the action here. Things were set up early that were paid off late. There was architectural connective tissue (and let's say the ligaments in Moriarty's arm) that kept the match from falling apart despite the length and the complexity of some of the sequences and the technique therein. 

So what else can you even say? There was a story here. It was a wonderful sports-based, competition-based story between two athletes, two masters, two warriors testing themselves against each other. It was full of human failing and triumphant opportunism. 

Grifters are going to grift and try to get people to underlook a match like this. Maybe it could have been built better and supported more on the way in. I'm not going to dismiss that possibility, but it still stood tall as it was. It was given everything it needed to succeed (time, freedom, a presentation on commentary that took it seriously and treated it as important) as an artistic endeavor and compelling story and it ultimately did succeed because the work itself was so detailed, rich, and strong. I feel for anyone that either can't see this because of ignorance or won't see it because they're only in this to make a buck. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/1 - 12/7 Part 2

ROH Final Battle 12/5/25

Athena vs Persephone

In so many ways, pro wrestling storytelling is about the creative and strategic demonstration of vulnerability. Both babyfaces and heels find their true strength in knowing when and how to deploy it.

This then was a story of three vulnerabilities.

Coming into the match, Persephone had Athena's number. Maybe Athena is a fallen goddess but Persephone is one at the height of her youthful power. She was able to keep up with her athletically to start, no small feat. Even when Athena got a temporary advantage, Persephone turned it back around. When she went to mind games, switching hands and dancing to mock Persephone (and maybe her superior strength) on the test of strength, Athena got clocked in the face for her trouble. 

The champion allowed the cracks to show, heading to the floor for a time out. She returned to the ring with another left-handed handshake (the first one refused by Persephone). This was a ploy for her can't miss magic forearm, but her younger opponent had her scouted and avoided it. Back on the floor, Athena tried to whip Persephone into the rail only to have it turned around on her. Nothing was working. Everything was failing. The walls were closing in already. 

That left her desperate, full of an emotional sort of vulnerability that she was confident enough to show. Diamante was out to second her, and she saved her boss from getting tossed into the stairs (generally Athena's own tactic). That allowed Athena to launch an ambush. She dove off of the stairs at Persephone knee-first, but Diamante's presence meant she couldn't hit a meteora but instead had to drop backwards into a code-breaker, taking the advantage but also badly harming her back.

She carried that second vulnerability with her for the rest of the match. It defined everything she did, every reaction, every bit of strategy, the possibilities at play. Selling isn't about holding your back after a move. It's not even about holding your back before a move. It shows consequence, yes, but it also defines the state of play for a character. Athena, far better than most, portrayed this pain throughout everything she did. It impacted how she moved across the ring, how she hefted Persephone up for a suplex, how she failed to heft her up for her more advanced signature offense. It made her a half step slow and a half step sloppy. It increased her desperation and doubled her paranoia. It created an underpinning of panic even as she tried to celebrate her advantage (and all but caused Athena's eyes to bug out as Persephone lifted her up out of the Koji Clutch down the stretch). 

And of course, it ultimately lead to Persephone not only being able to come back, but also able to put Athena's title at as much risk as it had ever been.

To defeat Athena, a wrestler has to not just be lucky, as Persephone was here (even if she had created her own luck) but also, as a character, be able to wrestle their very best match.

And that was the third vulnerability, Persephone's relative youth and overexuberance. 

Once she took back over from Athena and started doing damage, she repeatedly took her eyes off the prize. Right after taking over, she made a little pose as if the belt was around her waist. Her first real cover was lackadaisical. After slamming Athena into the announce table brutally, she went out of her way to say it had been for the commentary team and stuck her tongue out to either them or the crowd. 

And most of all, after finally hitting her Razor's Edge finisher, after Athena still managed to barely kick out, she completely lost her cool, pounding on Athena wildly and rushing up to the top rope to try to put her away. Athena followed her up, hit a killer German back into the ring, and then dropped her with the O-Face for a skin-of-her-teeth win.

Wrestling isn't math, of course, but a good match can often be defined by one good vulnerability. This one had three and it was the mix of the three, two character driven and one a situational result from one of the others, and the wrestlers' dedication and courage to show such weaknesses, that made this match sing.

Eddie Kingston vs Josh Woods

MD: Never in the history of pro wrestling has a tune-up match been more necessary.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure that a tune-up match has actually ever been necessary before this. Usually it's just a way to get a little more heat/momentum for a wrestler before a bigger match. That's not even true. Usually it's just a way to fill TV time and allow the announcers to hype the upcoming bigger match. Rarely does it make sense in practice. 

Here it absolutely did.

Look, I love Eddie Kingston. We all love Eddie Kingston here. And yeah, he's been interesting to write about, and I am absolutely looking forward to write about his match with Samoa Joe. While I'm going to be surprised by how it plays out, I've got the hook in my head already (not that Hook). 

But he has been trudging through mud. He came back from injury and through design or simple reality (pretty sure it's design), he's been slugging it out, one step after another, dragging the weight of all that he is behind him. It's going to seem counter-intuitive to some people, but that's compelling. The best match is not necessarily the one that moves the fastest and hits the cleanest. It's not the one with the most stuff. When you come across a match or a story where you actually have to invest time, effort, focus, patience, almost always, the payoff there, so long as there is payoff, can mean even more. Anyone can invest in an Ospreay match, right? It's candy. It's fluff. It's special effects. This is a journey. And it's a risk too. You know Ospreay's going to get you where you're going, even if you're a baby strapped into a car seat and going around the block to make you stop crying. 

You can trudge through the wasteland watching Eddie Kingston and who knows if you have any idea if you're going to actually get there. Maybe, in 2023 you did. We're in 2025 now, almost 2026, and who the hell knows? 

But you know what? I think this match took us one step closer. 

It reminded me of Roderick Strong vs Erick Stevens that I wrote-up recently. 

Much like Stevens in that match, Eddie knew he needed something from Woods. What made this a tune-up is that you could squint and see Woods in the Ops. He's got that same sort of dogged skill. It's exactly what Eddie needed to throw himself up against.

And I think he worked the match like someone who knew he had to pick up speed, dragging all that weight behind.

They shook at the beginning (it's ROH after all) and Eddie got him right in the corner, and he didn't chop. Why not? Because chopping then and there wouldn't help him. It wouldn't give him what he needed. Now, later on, after Woods had wrenched at his arm, had tossed him around a bit, had charged at him from three different corners. When Eddie chopped later on? Well, then it mattered, it showed that he had it in him, that he could slug, that he could fight. It reminded a body that's still waking up from a year+ out of the ring what it's like to fire back. But he needed something to fire back against first. When Eddie hefted him up to top rope and slung both of them off with a superplex? That's not something you see Eddie do all that much, but he needed that impact, he needed to jar his bones and his spirit, to realign his spine so it could be one with the ring. And when he dropped the strap and started tossing Woods around? Well, that just felt right, didn't it? In a way things hadn't felt right for a long time. When he had dropped the strap against Shibata recently, he got a cheapshot for his trouble. This though? This was one step back towards the light, one step towards the promised land. And then, when he shouted Samoa Joe's name before hitting the DDT and picking up the win? Well, you ask me, that shout wasn't for Joe and that shout wasn't for us, but that shout was for Eddie, because he still needs to feel it, because maybe, probably, unfortunately, tune-up match or no, he's not quite there yet.

But here's the thing. All that weight Eddie's dragging? It's emotional weight. And if you let go and invest and have patience, he'll end up dragging you along with it and you'll get where he's going and it may not be where you thought you wanted to be, but it's where you needed to be. And honestly? That's a hell of a thing for pro wrestling to accomplish. Let's see how far he can take us on Wednesday Night. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/17 - 11/23

AEW Full Gear 2025 11/22/25

Darby Allin vs PAC

MD: There were people that questioned why this needed to be on the PPV when it was announced. On paper, maybe it was just a good match for the sake of being a good match, the sort of thing that has been used for years now to fill out AEW PPVs and tilt those Observer Thumbs Up and Cagematch ratings. And maybe that would have been enough. But there was more at play here.

Darby came in literally hot, having been burned by PAC (or more accurately put through a burning table by him, with Gabe Kidd's help) at Blood & Guts. But this is a Darby that had come down from Everest, one that's at peace with himself. He came in hot but he used that heat to fuel a wrestling machine. He didn't fly in with strikes but instead with headlock takeovers. The purpose of this was twofold. First, PAC had come in saying that they were going to wrestle a clean match and the better man would win. By outwrestling him early, Darby would hurt PAC more than any single punch to the face. More than that though, Darby was bandaged up. He had to wrestle conservatively, even if aggressively. While he had the luxury, he wouldn't use his own body as a weapon.

That luxury wouldn't last long. After barely escaping a makeshift Scorpion Deathlock attempt, PAC was able to catch him on the apron and press slam him to the floor. What followed was a brutal heat section where they did a great job mixing up big bumps/moves (that press slam, though that was a transition, Darby's absolutely brutal bump past the corner to the floor, even the neck-first catapult into the bottom rope) with PAC being a malicious maniac, tearing off the bandages and giving Darby an Indian burn. Everything came together for the latter: Darby's distorted skin, the way the bandage flew through the air, the look of exultation on PAC's face and agony on Darby's, how shocked and horrified the commentators were. It got as big a reaction from the crowd as both of Darby's huge bumps. 

Anything in pro wrestling can matter so long as it's presented correctly and much, much more effort should be made in making small things like this matter as much as possible. Not only is it safer and more varied than big bump after big bump, but it also allows those bumps, if framed correctly, to mean even more through escalation. The proof is in the audience reaction here (and yes, they did go up even higher as Darby crashed through the corner).

Darby mounted a comeback by catching PAC in the apron (and the sense of struggle here was great; PAC was desperate to get out in a way that others in that rare spot often aren't), setting him up for a dive and then a gnarly dropkick from the top to PAC seated on the floor in a chair. 

Darby was obviously hurting and PAC presents himself successfully as one of the best in the world, so they would go back and forth from there. PAC was able to catch Darby off the ropes turning a Coffin Splash into a suplex. He was unable to put him away with the Brutalizer though. Darby was able to get out of the way of a Black Arrow and it looked like he was going to put PAC away with the Scorpion Deathlock.

But there was a plan for this. The Death Riders have quit a little too much lately (even if it's almost all been on the head of their leader). PAC had vowed that this would be a fair fight, that the best man would win. So in some ways, he'd already lost when Wheeler Yuta rushed up to the apron to distract Darby and the ref, and doubly so, when he used the bat to knock Darby out. But moral victories don't exist in the record books, only wins and losses. 

And later on when Moxley faced O'Reilly there was a plan as well. Once it was clear that O'Reilly had an answer for every bit of wrestling Moxley could throw at him, Marina handed Mox the fork and he used it to take over. The plan worked for PAC. The plan only failed in the Casino Gauntlet because Matt Menard chose to punish Garcia and run him off instead of trying to win the National Title. The Plan here worked right up until the point it didn't, until the point where Moxley, having broken Kyle's arm, still managed to tap out to a chain reinforced ankle lock. Maybe he went back and finished the job after the match but even if he won the war, he lost the battle, and in this case, the battle was more important than the war. 

So yes, Darby vs PAC was great, but it wasn't just a great match for the sake of having great matches. There was a grudge coming in and it was worked to that. More importantly, it set the stage, through a begrudging plan of the Death Riders coming to fruition, for Mox vs O'Reilly where a similar plan, unveiled far sooner and far more desperately, nonetheless failed. That contrast hangs over Moxley like his own personal Sword of Damocles, just waiting to fall.

AEW Full Gear 2025 Collision Tailgate Brawl 11/22/25

Eddie Kingston/Hook vs Workhorsemen

MD: It's amazing what you can do in two minutes. Look, I'm not going to say anyone should or shouldn't have done whatever they did or didn't do. We never have the full story and it's always complicated and we do far too much speaking up on matters that we're just blind men touching elephants on.

What I can speak on, however, is this match. They had two minutes, less than two minutes according to cagematch (just 1:48). But the Workhorsemen punched in and showed what they could do. They ambushed Hook and Eddie on the way down. Drake took Eddie out, and that's the way things have been for Kingston as he builds up his fighting strength from match to match. That meant they had Hook isolated and though he tried to fire back off the ropes or out of the corner, they went to work. 

That meant hitting their signature flurry of a Drake apron clothesline, the Henry headtwist, and Drake flying in with a slingshot somersault senton. Hook was finally able to get out of the way causing a bit of miscommunication and then launching Henry. By then Eddie was recovered and he did the same to Drake setting the stage to hit a quick DDT out of nowhere and scoring the win. 

But in two minutes the Workhorsemen, professional as can be, got a spotlight to show that they could take the initiative, knock Hook around the ring, and hit some polished, brutal offense on the guy who was going to be the hingepoint of the PPV's main event. No small thing even for two men who are very, very good at what they do.

ROH TV 11/20/25

Athena vs Harley Cameron (Ported: https://x.com/MattD_SC/status/1991866317486555505)

Throughout the years, we've created a critical system of reviewing and ranking matches that's based on things like action, execution, big spots, and exciting finishing stretches.

It often leaves more performative elements behind. These would include facial reactions, body language, character driven creative choices, and yeah, even selling. 

In fact, over the years, matches that lean too hard on some of these elements tend to be judged by some as unfortunate because they can "negatively impact the action" and make it so a match isn't considered as conventionally great as it might have been if the wrestlers had just been allowed to go hard and lean into workrate instead.

A recent review I saw of Demolition vs Brainbusters from SNME 21, a match that trades workrate for a clever and consistent story of Demolition getting increasingly frustrated leading to a DQ, comes to mind.

Along these lines, some of Jon Moxley's recent performances where he's been leaning hard into the role of a mad king who saw his pro wrestling kingdom crumbling, a man who claimed to stand for things but was slowly being revealed as an emperor with no clothes, an animal with his back against the wall desperate for victory, for revenge, but forced to look himself in the mirror and see a coward, quitter, and hypocrite, have been excellent.

But there are different lanes for different sorts of performances, and I think there's no one as good in the world right now at letting her character drive her physicality and matches as Athena. 

That was evident in her 11/20 ROH TV title match against Harley Cameron. 

Despite being champion for over 1000 days, she came in on her back foot, having been pinned by Harley in the tag tournament (albeit after eating Willow's doctor bomb).

That was maddening for Athena (the character) for multiple reasons. First, she and Mercedes were a sort of super team and they were defeated in the first round. Second, she's been pinned only a handful of times in the last few years. Third, there's a massive difference in hierarchy and experience between Athena and Harley. Harley's treated as plucky and determined, hard-working and fiery, but also as an upstart underdog and often as a comedy act.

That gave Athena a ton to work with but it meant shaping the match and her performance around this mentality as opposed to shooting to have the most exciting, spot filled match possible.

She came out to the ring without her usual celebratory fanfare, scowling instead. She offered a normal handshake instead of her usual left handed princess dangle. Then she ran right in, impatient and irritated, charging into Harley's armdrags. That Harley's execution wasn't perfect only added fuel to the fire here.

When Athena took over, she was constantly distracted. At times, after her running punch in the corner or when putting on a hold, she'd start to unveil her usual grin only for reality to hit and the scowl to return. Just when she started to relax and enjoy herself, the fans began clapping up Harley and she became irate. She jawed back with them, delusionally claiming that they were taunting Harley and not her. 

The match was built around Athena's character-driven mistakes (rushing in, losing her cool, being distracted by the crowd, trying to use Harley's own finisher) creating openings for Harley in order to counteract the hierarchal differences. It demanded absolute consistency from Athena in both what she did and in how she did it. It demanded selling that's far more complex and nuanced than remembering to limp now and again, a selling of the soul. 

These performances tend not to earn stars, but they move hearts and minds. And in 2025, Athena is as good at them as anyone.

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

AEW Collision 11/15/25

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

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

It can be an opportunity. 

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

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

It can be an excuse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ROH TV 11/13/25

Athena/Billie Starkz vs Hyan/Maya World

MD: Here's what makes pro wrestling great. 

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

And all that? That was Athena selling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/22 - 9/28

AEW Collision 9/27/25

Eddie Kingston/HOOK vs Big Bill/Bryan Keith [Tornado Tag]

MD: So here's what I think is going on. I think Kingston's having a comeback like Japanese wrestlers traditionally come back, where they really struggle in their first few matches and they need to build back up in a very kayfabe sense. Yes, some of it is that he's against Bill, who is, in fact, Big, but that's just the feel I get. He was on the shelf for over a year. He's not as young as he used to be. He's a fighter, a slugger, even a champion, but he's got to pull himself back against some of the hardest competition in the world. It's such an Eddie thing to do. Everything is a struggle. Everything is hard. But then everything becomes worth doing and every victory, even small ones within matches, mean so much more.

The problem is that it's 2025 and we're in the US and no one's actually telling this story in a way that the fans can understand. There hasn't been a video package on it. Commentary isn't talking about it. Here, Bill and Keith took out Eddie early and he was just there on the floor while they double teamed Hook (as it was a tornado tag) and Bill sort of ran interference blocking off Eddie from getting back in. 

And it 100% fit the idea that Eddie has to build back up and regain his strength and power and stamina and just find who he is again and until then, Hook has to survive on faith against adversity. And as an aside, some of his selling as he was pulling himself up with the ropes was just excellent. Best I've seen out of him. Worth noting. BUT to the fans in that audience, I think they just had no idea why Eddie wasn't rushing the ring, because he's Eddie, and of course he wants to get in a fight. And eventually they did and of course they got behind him then, but the last thing you can afford is for fans to question their faith in Eddie because things just aren't properly explained to them.

ROH TV 9/25/25

LFI (RUSH/Sammy Guevara) vs Ross/Marshall Von Erich

MD: This was filmed during the Philly residency, towards the end, and it definitely had a lot working against it. Sons of Texas vs Shane Taylor Promotions and Rush/Sammy vs Outrunners both worked because the crowd had someone to latch on to. But in neither case, that someone was one of the teams in this match. They were anti-Texas and anti-cowboys and they were certainly anti-Sammy. They were vaguely pro-Rush but it's easy to get behind the Outrunners, even in Philly. If this was in WV the following week, it probably would have worked better.

This was closing the circle on the Sammy turn and checking the box but it could have been a lot more heated and a lot more fiery but I think they knew the crowd wouldn't get behind it as much. It needed a bit more because I've never quite seen THESE Von Erichs in a situation where they could get hot like their dad and uncle (and that could still come if they ran this back in Texas or somewhere else) and because Sammy and Rush are still coming together. Sammy's sort of figuring out the act and the possibility in the moment. And there is a lot to tap into there given the personalities at play but you kind of wish they could get a house show run to work it all out first. 

So instead of the Von Erichs getting revenge for what Sammy did and almost getting the titles, the crowd bounced all over the place until they had fun with Marshall's hat. That, at least, built to a nice moment of comeback but ultimately, I think this just had too much working against it. If they ran it back in two months in front of a different crowd, who knows? 

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D3AN~!!! Day 6: MORIARTY~! WOODS~! TAYLOR~! FOX~! GYPSY JOE~?

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Lee Moriarty vs. Josh Woods

MD: Look, this is the D3AN review and I really enjoyed the match, especially on the rewatch, so I'll promise to only spend one paragraph on the rope breaks.

Let me talk about Pure Rules matches in general first. It's a singular gimmick. There's nothing else like it. Every other gimmick match relaxes one rule or another. For Pure Rules, though, the gimmick is that the conventional norms and rules of pro wrestling matter more and not less. You get one punch. You get three rope breaks. Interference is nullified. There is a time limit and judging as opposed to just draws. Etc. It leans into the rules and puts more weight on them. It enhances certain aspects of pro wrestling and creates a more vivid and distinct box. In doing so, different stories can be told and the limitations can actually create narrative possibilities and inspire creativity. I've seen people say that Lee Moriarty isn't as technical as they might want and while I don't necessarily see that, I'd argue that he's strategic instead and that in strategy, more than just technique in and of itself, you find more explicit storytelling. His Pure Rules matches are full of those.

Which brings us to the rope breaks. Shortly after Woods opened up the match by targeting Moriarty's midsection, he trapped him in the ropes, and yanked on multiple limbs at once. Mike Posey, the ref often noted on commentary as a "Pure Rules" expert, called this a legitimate rope break. Later on, Moriarty, who had started to target the arm, did something similar by bringing Woods to the ropes and yanking on the arm. Dylan and Mose did a good job covering on commentary, but I'm going to cry foul. Again, it's about the rules meaning more. Sure, that means that if someone can sneak in a punch without the ref seeing, they can get big heat from that. Likewise if a rope break is somehow missed by the ref, but this was blatant and obvious. You can't get charged a rope break on a hold that is intrinsically illegal. It's on the ref to break it. If you were to outright choke someone and they went to the rope on the five count, there's no way that would count on a rope break because it's an illegal hold. I have no problem with Moriarty trying to make use of the approach after losing one break, because then the ref had already weighed in on it, but it has to be nipped in the bud now or else it'll become a slippery slope that will destroy the strategic elements of Pure Rules matches moving forward. And that's all I'll say about that.

That said, the match was a lot of fun. Woods brought a certain level of Steve Williams-esque intensity and bestial strength to go along with his technique, hefting Lee this way or that. Lee, on the other hand, had a lot of slickness and precision, kicking limbs away, getting in a counter that snap targeted the arm, etc. That's not to say Woods couldn't bring that to the table too, like when he locked in a lightning fast Navarro-style lock out of nowhere. 

When the match did open up, the duel "limb"work was interesting because Woods was working with one arm and Moriarty's midsection was what was targeted, leading to some unique and consistent selling. Between his strength and skill, Woods came off as a unique challenge, losing only because of Moriarty's superior experience with the rules. In this, you can argue from a story perspective that Woods himself was thrown by the rule disruption. He got his third ropebreak, but instead of honing in on the body, he went to the ankle, and instead of letting Moriarty crawl to the ropes and maybe even make use of them himself, he chose to drag Moriarty back to the center of the ring, setting up the roll up reversals. Muscle memory and an inability to think on the fly and maximize his advantages cost him the match, which is a very solid and compelling sort of story for a Pure Rules match. 

But yeah, I have some heat with Posey here.

AR Fox vs. Shane Taylor

MD: To me, the comparison point to Fox is RVD. It's not a one to one, but stylistically, he should be so different from everyone else in wrestling just as RVD was. The way he moves, the creativity, the dubious physics, the effort. The problem is we're in a world where a lot of wrestling actually looks like what Fox does. Imagine if everyone moved like RVD in the late 90s-early 00s. Even if he was the absolute most of what he was, he wouldn't stand out nearly as much. Things that you'd accept and laud in him would frustrated instead because familiarity would breed a level of contempt. That said, I tend to forgive some of the more ridiculous stuff and see it more as a feature than a bug or at least as an exception. 

It helps when he's working real contrast instead of something similar, and he had that here with Taylor. I liked how impromptu and free flowing this felt. Yes, it was a DEAN show, but it was also at the 2300. Taylor was a brick wall and Fox had to use every trick to chip away at him. Some of Taylor's matter-of-fact blocks as shots were coming at him from every angle were great. 

And Fox had to defy gravity, shoved off the apron and landing on the guardrail to finally hit the flurry that managed to get Taylor off his feet, a true moral victory. Unfortunately, he had to continue to escalate the risks to try to put him down for good and all it took was one miss for Taylor to throw the punch that ended it. This was a great way to feature two very different wrestlers in a short sprinty impromptu match.

Gypsy Joe Invitational

MD: Little disclaimer here once again. What I'm about to say is just me talking. I've got nothing to do with the running of this show. I write on the blog. I love writing on the blog. Phil and Eric are friends and creative collaborators, but this is their baby with the other Matt and TK and the coaches and wrestlers involved with the show. This is just me talking as me. 

We're not getting this thing. It's lost media. I don't even know who won it. I don't know who was in it. I've seen one photo of Slade and one photo of a flying VCR.

So obviously, something went wrong or it went off the rails or who knows, right?

But that's the DVDVR spirit, isn't it? Read the road reports. Read the DVDVR reviews. Look at what's been archived from the old board. Sometimes wrestling is messy. Sometimes indie wrestling is especially messy. That's part of the beauty of it. It's live and raw and real and passionate.

There's a perfectly polished company with glossy, pre-planned everything, which has sacrificed creative freedom for total control. 

And then there's a competitor brand. And sometimes that brand is going to be a little rough around the edges, and that doesn't mean it's not professional. It means it's professional wrestling. Sometimes you go to a wrestling show to see someone hit their head on a ceiling that's too low. 

DEAN is all about diversity, about finding love in all sorts of wrestling, about just how weird and outlandish and messy pro wrestling can be. Sometimes it's going to be the absolute serene. Sometimes it's going to be the Anticristo promo. And sometimes it's going to be Survival Tobita vs Ken the Box. 

I have no idea what happened here. I have no idea what I would have found good and what I would have found bad in this.

But I sure as hell know that Dean Rasmussen would have squeezed every bit of joy out of it and created his own where it was missing. He would have called out the mess but he would have embraced it too. 

So yeah, look, I don't think we're getting this. And that's fine. I'm so glad we got to see any of this show, that it existed at all. We're in a world where the maestro match happened at the 2300 and was up for us to see. That's a beautiful world. That's a world that wouldn't exist without people that care so much about pro wrestling. 

But...

Some of you were there. Some of you witnessed this. 

Come on over to the Board. It's there. It's working better than it's been working in a couple of years. You can actually scroll between pages now. Modern technology at its best. Hit the thread. Do a mini road report. Write about the match. Document the thing. The good, the bad, especially the ugly. Throw in some ~'s. Have fun with it. It'll be off in a corner of the internet not too many people will see, somewhere that won't cause any trouble for anyone. but it'll be where some of the people that care the most will be able to see it.

This show is an amazing, mind blowing, almost impossible to imagine way to honor the spirit of the DVDVR and the big guy at the heart of it, but so is writing about what you saw and what you feel.  

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D3AN~!!! Day 5: MAD DOG~! DEMUS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Mad Dog Connelly vs. Demus [Hair vs Hair]

MD:  This begins and ends with the eye. Injured the day before in San Francisco, Connelly stumbled and crashed down the aisle in Philadelphia, a flimsy eyepatch the only thing protecting one of the most vulnerable parts of the body, already woefully damaged. He'd barely survived Demus on the first DEAN~!!! show, and now with stakes infinitely higher, on a more even playing field outside of his trademark match, he began from a deep, almost impossible deficit. 

Like a wounded animal, he leaned into his own pain and targeted Demus' eye. He knew his own agony and wished nothing more than to share that feeling with his opponent. Connelly's desperate back-against-the-wall impulse drove his every action. He went for an early pin and then started to tear at Demus' shirt. At first, I thought this was to expose the chest for chops, and he did that, but more so, it was to gather resources. The shirt became a weapon, one that he could use in the absence of a dog collar in order to hang Demus over the rope.

But as desperate as Mad Dog might have been, Demus' own survival instincts were canny and activated. He'd lost hair matches before. He knew the bitter shame of such defeats. He would not face it now, especially not against a damaged opponent. So for the first time in the match (but certainly not the last), Demus went to the eye to escape. This would be a theme as the match went on. All things equal, maybe Connelly could beat Demus and maybe Demus could beat Connelly. But all things were not equal, and Demus would stop at nothing to win. 

Before long, the eyepatch was torn off, and the mutual sense of desperation had escalated. The two were throwing their own bodies at one another. Demus crashed off the turnbuckles with the bulkiest body block you'll ever see. Connelly, able to stay in it with an awesome punch and crushing chairshot, went careening into the chair in the center of the ring as a seated Demus moved at the last moment. Demus likewise crashed and burned off a senton attempt. 

That left Demus open to Connelly's best shot, a Gotch style pile driver. Given the low center of gravity at play, the skull hit the ground with no give, no mercy, no respite. Yet still, Demus somehow survived it and desperation creeping back in, the wounded dog climbed the ropes once more. This time however, Demus made it to his feet too early and was able to brandish the chair himself, tossing it straight up and straight at Connelly's eye.

The throw hit true and Connelly was left staggered and hopeless. From there, Demus hefted him up and dropped to his knees with the meanest Muscle Buster you'll ever see. Connelly, channeling that desperate spirit one last time managed to kick out, but it was all for naught. Demus had one last trick up his sleeve, a dog collar of his own. If this had come into play earlier in the match, it might have turned the tide for Mad Dog, but now he was barely able to stand, and with it, Demus, in a pique of dark irony, was able to hang Connelly with his own twisted trademark. 

There'll always be the question of what might have happened on this night if Connelly had entered healthy. Maybe the pain drove him. It absolutely allowed Demus to prey upon a vulnerability and gave him an advantage in the match. Animal pride had empowered both men throughout and Connelly was possessed by it in the post match, causing chaos and shaving his own hair. He was defeated, but it would take far more than this for him to be truly vanquished.

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D3AN~!!! Day 4: SAMMY~! MORTOS~! DRALISTICO~! CHEESEBURGER~! ISOM~! TITUS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

LFI (Sammy Guevara/Beast Mortos/Dralistico) vs Cheeseburger/Eli Isom/Rhett Titus

MD: Let's embrace the chaotic indie spirit of a random match popping up out of nowhere. We don't have a choice after all and embracing it would be a very DEAN thing to do. And why the hell not, right? Look, DEAN liked all of these guys. Yes, DEAN was great at finding things to like about almost anyone who had something to like, especially in the early 2020s, but he was also great at highlighting what those things were. More on this at the end because of Sammy's promo. 

This was definitely structured as an enhancement sort of match with name talent. Powers and Roma and Brunzell on a late 80s Superstars and that's okay. It meant that Isom could fire back a bit and give everything just a bit more dramatic weight. You know what to expect with Mortos (that headbutt) and Dralistico (throwing himself into his offense for good or ill, here good), but Sammy was the one to watch. 

Sammy's been paying his dues as Dustin's little buddy for the last year+, title belt or no, putting in the effort as a babyface. But now he gets to stretch and preen. They're still working it out. Him matching Rush's Tranquilo pose with his little bit of breakdancing works great. It didn't work quite as well with Mortos and Dralistico just standing beside him. Otherwise, they were a pretty well oiled machine here.

And of course the post-match promo was funny for what it was. Surreal to a degree to hear Sammy talk about Dean. Bobby Heenan is on record for giving someone advice in WCW that instead of saying they hated the fans, they should say they love them (the advice was not taken) and Sammy more or less did that here. Him referencing "pillars" in 2025 is a good bit. And then saying that he, and his stablemates were Dean's favorite wrestlers. Also a good bit. Sammy's online, of course. He's got that "Where are my five stars?" promo that he's never going to live down (Sorry), but I can't imagine him in these circles. So the fact that he didn't and wouldn't and couldn't know that DEAN was big on guys like Mortos and RUSH, but that he absolutely loved Sammy's JAS run with Tay, for instance, makes it even more funny. 

No, Sammy was not one of Dean's favorites, but in his own inestimable way, Dean loved wrestling more than anyone. And that meant he was going to find every awesome thing about Sammy and embrace them and shout it from the rooftops. There are absolutely things that Sammy does that I think are very good (and no, I'm not going to list them here), but I've written up a bunch of his matches with Dustin over the last year+ and while I’ve been fair and even-handed, I’ve not shouted anything from rooftops. So, though he didn't know any of this, though he was doing the right thing to get heat, what Sammy really did was remind me once again just what we lost when we lost the big guy. 

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D3AN~!!! Day 3: YUTA~! MAKO~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Wheeler Yuta vs Matt Mako

MD: If the first Texas residency belonged to Hologram and if the Chicago residency belonged to Toni Storm, I kind of sort of thing that this Philly residency belongs to Yuta. Maybe not the clearest choice. You could argue Daniel Garcia or Mox or maybe a few others. But there was something about how the hometown crowd thoroughly hated Yuta that puts it over the top. Every time he appeared on screen, the chants started. Every time he tagged in, the boos rang out.

As such, this will end up being his signature match for the residency (there's still that ROH mixed tag with Shafir coming up, which is TK booking for me once again), because it was very good. 

If Matthews vs Starkz was about contrast, this one was about dissonance. 

Yuta is incredibly skilled. The springboard takeover into a seamless, picture perfect Cattle Mutilation was a thing of beauty. He nailed his signature rebound between the ropes to hit a German Suplex. He's a former Pure Champion. Yet the transition to offense was because Shafir got involved. Yet when pressed, he pulled off the turnbuckle pad to try to get an advantage. Yet he only won because of another Shafir distraction and him going to the eyes. 

That gap between obvious truth (Yuta's skill) and reality (Yuta's cheating), between expectation and how things actually play out creates a sort of cognitive dissonance which is the cornerstone for heel heat. It's well and good if the bad guy does something bad, but when he does it in a way that runs counter to the possibilities the fans know to be true, that's even worse. 

Of course, you might argue that Mako drove him to it by being that good. Just one tremendous, memorable, crisp piece of offense after the next. Even when Yuta did get him, like with that Cattle Mutilation, he couldn't keep him in it. Even when Shafir got in his face, like after he dropped Yuta into a chair on the outside with a sleeper, Mako was able to just shift directions and crash into Yuta with even more speed. 

But still, Yuta should be able to at least hold his own and on a card like this, he should have at least tried (not to mention the insult to injury that was his out of line behavior post match attacking one of Dean's kids). The only thing he proved here was that Mako had his number. But that doesn't matter when it comes to the record books. 

And that selfless performative embodiment of true selfishness is exactly why Yuta gets the legitimate heat that he does in a world still afflicted by ironic chants and winking cool heels. And it's why he owned his hometown residency, even in more of a secondary role.

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D3AN~!!! Day 2: MATTHEWS~! STARKZ~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Nicole Matthews vs Billie Starkz

MD: I have absolutely nothing to do with putting these shows on. Can't reiterate that enough. This is Phil and Eric being bold and daring and working with the other Matt and eventually the fine folks at ROH. That said, one note that I, and a lot of other people had, after DEAN 2 was that they should get a women's match on the next one.

And the first name that came to everyone's mind was Nicole Matthews. She's a card carrying member of the club. She knows the secret handshake. She gets it, firsthand. Billie Starkz on the other hand, is more of a fifth of sixth generation creature (I'm more second generation myself, the early days of the board instead of RSPW). She was born into social media, not message boards, but early on in her career she had a couple of select voices in her ears. She may be Athena's No. 1 (actually a different number but I'm not googling it right now) minion, but there's a ~! built into her wrestling DNA whether she actually knows it or not. 

Matthews was naturally de facto face here. She left her fine wine heel gimmick (and the giant goblet that goes with it) at home. Billie on the other hand, is an absolute gremlin, a deranged goblin, a complete menace. Matthews understood the gravitas of the time and the place. Billie was boisterous, bragging that she was the hand-selected ROH rep here to win this first-time match between the two.

So while it was a cold match on paper, the characters really made the thing sing. Billie was incessant, the best possible pimple on the already craggly face of Philadelphia. She messed with Matthews' hair in a headscissors. She switched hands on a test of strength. She slapped her in the face after some chain wrestling. She caught her foot and took a bite out of it. She facewashed her in the middle of the ring. She snuck in an eyepoke during a strike exchange. Incessant. Irritating. Incorrigible.

So, in return, Matthews took her to school. She stretched Starkz with a bow and arrow. She wrenched that hand and drove her to the mat. She chopped right through her in the corner. She stomped away. She caught the foot and drove forearms into her jaw. She regained her vision and hit the nastiest short arm lariat you can imagine. The comeuppance was deserved and the comeuppance was delivered. 

If contrast makes the wrestling world go round (and it does, trust me), this world was happily spinning away. 

Contrast or no, there was a balance to this one. Starkz hit a brutal Alabama Slam in the corner. Matthews got her back later by pulling her feet out and causing the back of her head to hit the turnbuckle. That was the story of this as much as anything else. Starkz stretched as far as she could, taxing and testing Matthews with disrespectful question after disrespectful question and Matthews had a brutal answer for each and every one. 

Maybe the finish was some sort of master plan by Starkz, lulling Matthews into a false sense of security so that she'd miss the moonsault, but I think it was more down to one more irritating Starkz quality, her plucky resilience. Regardless, Matthews did miss and Starkz planted her with the Sugoi Driver to steal one out. Matthews had taught her a number of painful lessons and very likely, Starkz managed to not learn a single thing from any of them. Thus is the state of the American youth, alas. 

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