AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/8 - 12/14 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 12/10/25

Samoa Joe vs Eddie Kingston

MD: Eddie Kingston is so, so tired.

He was on top of the world. He had beaten his rival, his contrast (Claudio) to win the ROH Title. He represented New Japan with the NJPW Strong title, a dream he could have never imagined. He had put it all on the line for the inaugural Continental Classic, betting on himself when none of his peers would, and he had come out triumphant. And then, just to cap it all off, he proved Bryan Danielson wrong about literally everything. 

It was a beautiful end to a very difficult story. 

But that's not how life works and that's not how pro wrestling works. The story never ends. There's always another day. There's always another challenge. There's always another hill to climb.

Sometimes, your story bumps into someone else's. So Mark Briscoe, living a story of his own, defeated him for the ROH title. Okada beat him for the Continental Championship. And against Gabe Kidd, he lost more than just the NJPW Strong title. He lost a year and a half of his career.

Maybe he could have quit right there. Maybe he could have let the demons overtake him. But this is all he knows and so much of what he loves. So he pushed, one step after the other.

And he came back to a world he could barely recognize anymore (except for some of it he recognized all too well). Ortiz was nowhere to be found. Ruby went off and had herself a baby. Mox had gone completely off the rails (Claudio). Being back in the ring was like trudging through mud, one hard step after the other as he got his instincts back, got his wind back, fought his way back to his feet again and again.

But hey, in all things, hope, right? There was Hook. The kid had come back himself, the odd man out. Eddie knew something about that. Maybe he needed some guidance, maybe he could be the path forward. Maybe through Hook, Eddie could find an end to his story, a legacy, could leave the place better than he found it. Maybe that was the dream as much as any title was. 

The thing is, Eddie Kingston's dreams so often turn into nightmares. 

Yeah, Hook was using him, sure, but it wasn't even about him. Eddie was just part of a cover story, just some trappings to get people's guard down. It wasn't his story. He was barely a bit player in the story actually going on. He was scenery so that Hook could betray Hangman Adam Page and Samoa Joe could steal (When did Joe have to steal anything?) the title once again.

You have to understand though, Eddie's spent his life like that, people looking past him, people ignoring him, people underestimating him, people insulting him. Eddie Kingston may be tired, but he sure as hell isn't asleep. 

And there's no cup of coffee quite like getting slapped in the face. 

So he did what he did. While Hangman and Swerve ran to the ring to band together and cause trouble, Eddie stayed in the back and called out Shibata. Shibata's second generation, trained with Inoki, got to be part of a legacy beyond Eddie's imagination, and he put in the work, and now he's out there sticking his finger in his ear and hitting low blows. So Eddie, still a half step slow, pushed through it and overcame him. He called out Joe, and even with Joe, with Joe of all people, Eddie was trapped in a familiar hell all over again, the old using the young, tossing out false promises and hypocritical bullshit, taking, taking, taking. 

By this point, Eddie knew that you can't count on anyone in life. You got to make that change yourself, even if it was hard and even if it was thankless and even if some days it felt pointless and futile. 

This wasn't the time he would choose to challenge for the big belt. He wasn't ready yet. He was still a quarter step slow. But to get to  choose, you have to compromise. You have to play the game. Eddie Kingston didn't play games and he sure as hell didn't compromise. 

And that's what led him to standing across the ring from the World Champion, sixty minute time limit, title on the line, in front of a hot Georgia crowd on a cold winter day. 

And say what you will about him, he didn't compromise.

He stood tall.

That was the one thing that Samoa Joe couldn't handle. 

Bullies never can.

At the bell, he pressed Joe to the corner, backed on to the center, and called him out to meet him there. That's how you deal with bullies. 

As Eddie tried to contain him, Joe hefted him over, leaning on size and strength, and he spent the next few minutes unleashing his signature strikes, jabs, elbows, chops, open handed shots. For each and every one, however, Eddie Kingston had an answer. He was a tree rooted in the center. Sometimes he bowed, sometimes he even cracked, but he never broke. He stood firm, and even though it might have taken a while now and again, he fired back. 

Joe may have been bigger. Joe may have been stronger. But Eddie had the higher moral ground. Joe was the champion. He was driven by pride. He had the world watching. They were chanting for him too. He had to meet Eddie's challenge. But though he met it, he came up short time and again. He may have staggered Eddie with a chop to the throat, but Eddie dropped him to his back with a chop off the ropes. 

So, in the face of mortal fortitude he couldn't imagine (because he underestimated Eddie Kingston just like everyone else), Samoa Joe blinked first. He slammed his body into Eddie in the corner. He stopped fighting and dropped down to hit a snap power slam. And because he blinked first, because the fans knew it, and because Eddie kept on struggling, kept on reaching, kept on working his way back to his feet, the fans stopped chanting for Joe and put all of their support behind Eddie instead.

And maybe that was enough to bolster him for one last comeback. Eddie got beneath the monster that is Joe and hit an exploder, all the pain he'd been absorbing squeezing its way out in the form of the anguish on his face when it only got him a two count. He hit the DDT he used to beat Shibata but that anguish doubled as Joe managed to roll out of the ring. 

And then, feeling it all slip away again, like it had so many times before, Eddie tried for the killshot, the Uraken. Joe blocked it once but Eddie pushed through the pain to set him up for it a second time. Joe was ready for it, ducked under, and locked in the Kokina Clutch. Eddie Kingston was ready enough to stand up to a bully but maybe not yet ready to defeat a champion, and trapped in the middle of the ring, nowhere to go, all he could do was tap. 

Life is hard. Life never ends. The struggle is there with you every day. But the thing is, life isn't black and white either. Did he win the title? No. Did he win the match? No. Did he make Joe blink first? Absolutely. And for a man like Samoa Joe, a man that lives and dies on his reputation, that's something he'll see in his own reflection when he looks in the mirror next. Joe knows. Eddie knows. The world knows. Eddie can come out of this one his head, heavy as it might be, held high. Will he? Maybe not, because he's Eddie Kingston after all, but he can. Can Joe? Can he really?

You see, Eddie may have had to tap, but he didn't quit, and difference between the two is absolutely everything. Maybe it's not the stuff dreams are made of, but it's as human a story as pro wrestling can tell.

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Eddie's Got 10 Homes, Eight Whips, But the Eights Whips He's Going to Trade for a Spaceship

Eddie Kingston vs. Samoa Joe PWS 6/24/07 - GREAT

PAS: With the very exciting news that Eddie Kingston is challenging Samoa Joe for the world title, I decided to check out one of their two previous singles matches (the other three months earlier, at Fighting Sports Midwest, I know I have seen but can't find online). This isn't the epic indy dream match you might hope for, but a really great example of heat seeking heel Eddie. He breaks out a bunch of stalling tricks, thumb to the eye. He really oversells Joe's first shoulder block like he ran into a steel beam, does a Flair flop on a headbutt, Eddie gets some offense after going to the eyes, but this was Joe steamrolling a shit talking heel, and Kingston going full 90s heel Lawler, I enjoyed the hell out of it but I am expecting a completely different awesome thing in a couple of weeks.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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Samoa Joe is Wrestling for the World Title. Here's Him 20 Years Ago vs. Super Dragon.

Super Dragon vs. Samoa Joe JAPW 10/30/04

ER: Samoa Joe will be in the main event of Full Gear in a week, and this match against Super Dragon from 20 years ago got posted recently. I had never seen this match and I don't think I saw any of the SoCal Dragon/Joe matches live. I don't know if I even knew they had a match in JAPW. Joe was my favorite wrestler in the world around this time. He was so fast and powerful in 2004. This is billed as "ROH vs. PWG in a JAPW ring", but Samoa Joe wrestles this like a guy who had done some tours with Zero-1 and was throwing in tributes to guys he rode the bus with. He buzzsaws through a legsweep like Hashimoto, rears back a headbutt like Fujiwara, he does a great magic trick of the Ole Kick into the guardrail just like Otani. Now, Otani would just actually kick guys in the face but Joe's magic is in how he builds up steam and accurately kicks just past Dragon's face into the railing, twice! He focuses on speed and impact rather than breaking faces and it's impressive as hell. I like Zero-1 Joe. It turns the match into something more than "ROH vs. PWG"; It becomes Guy Who Went to Japan vs. Guy Who Had Great Ideas With His Friends in a way I'm very nostalgic for. 

Super Dragon throws some of the hardest chops you can throw, like a 19 year old backyarder hitting his friend as hard as possible. His somersault senton tope is an insane dive to do in the Rahway Rec Center, flying past the ringpost and connecting flush with Joe while also hitting his head on the floor in a way that looked like Joe credibly reversed the dive into a sitout powerbomb in one motion. It's one of those moves and moments that defines that era of New Jersey indie wrestling, just incredible risk + innovation.  

They also weren't an easy crowd. Dragon hits a high concept enziguiri that doesn't quite read and the Jersey crowd starts chanting AVERAGE DRAGON. I thought these two would light each other up but instead I wound up impressed with how well they worked a lot of their strikes, hitting hard on chops but not killing each other with potatoes. Joe's ole kicks are an all time great worked act of violence, going in fast but only grazing. I've seen Dragon murder people with strikes and stomps but I thought it was cool how he "pulled" the double stomp off the top. That said, Samoa Joe holds onto his Death Valley Driver like a monster, straight into the pin, looked disgusting. There is nothing average about what they did. I loved wrestling so much in 2004. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/3 - 11/9

AEW Dynamite 11/5/25

Athena/Mercedes Mone vs Willow Nightingale/Harley Cameron

MD: Mercedes Mone is a star. Athena makes her shine all the brighter.

I'm quite high on Mercedes for much that she does. I think her reactions in the moment are believable. Her matches are ambitious in many ways. She has an incredible work ethic. As an ace, she's tremendous at treating each and every opponent differently; I loved seeing her switching up her taunts and crowd interactions for Olympia's strength for instance. 

That said, there is often a rehearsed feel to her matches. It's a perfectionist's bent, a practice makes perfect sort of feel that's impossible to escape. While the matches feel alive in the moment, sometimes the overall effect is a little plastic, a little blunted. It's more DDP than Randy Savage. That's fine. 98 DDP was great. But it's not transcendent.

Athena, endlessly reactive, endlessly electric, as dynamic as any wrestler in the world, helps Mercedes transcend herself and become her own personal Randy Savage.

They worked so well together here and it felt natural as could be, a meshing of two disparate but tangential egos, two parallel characters, two parallel paths to a flawed sort of kayfabe greatness. You could see it right from the get go when Mercedes pulled a seething Athena to fawn over the belts and how it transitioned right to the two of them almost immediately switching gears with Mercedes seething behind Harley as she entered the ring and Athena posing with her big Yaaaaaay! after their successful initial ambush of the babyfaces. 

The structure was double heat, but Harley carried both face-in-perils. That fit the hierarchy very well. It allowed Harley to gain sympathy, allowed Willow to come in like a wrecking ball after the first hot tag, and allowed Athena and Mercedes to look like the very best in the world as they took over with a tandem backstabber out of nowhere, the wild Athena dive through Mercedes' legs, and an absolutely perfect but still chaotically organic double team move where Athena basically hit Mercedes with the MoneMaker but right onto Harley. 

That unique no shine/double heat structure let them utilize a Willow blind tag (instead of a conventionally hot one) after the break and allowed for things to break down a little early without it feeling unearned or unbalanced. The finish, with Statlander coming out to disrupt Billie and the belt and distract Athena (who had just hit one of her super impressive strength spots), furthered the Full Gear title match and set up a few matches in the future including Athena vs Harley for the ROH title. 

My big takeaway, however, is that while I understand Athena and Mercedes going out like this (they were almost too big to continue on in the tournament and this furthered other storylines) the pairing, either feuding or teaming, is just too good not to go back to sooner than not. 

It's pro wrestling. You need your stars shining as brightly as possible as much as possible, and Athena burns brightly enough to be the perfect spotlight for Mercedes Mone.

Samoa Joe/Powerhouse Hobbs/Katsuyori Shibata vs Eddie Kingston/HOOK/Hangman Adam Page

MD: Keep your eye on Eddie Kingston.

I came across an obituary of Gene Wilder a week or two ago. In it, the writer noted it was a known secret in the acting industry that actors that wished to "better themselves would do well to watch a movie with Gene Wilder in it and pay particular attention to him in a scene when someone else is speaking, someone else has the focus. He was always acting in those moments too, reacting or listening in perfect character and supporting the scene with his presence. A lot of good actors are good when they have something to do. Gene Wilder was good all the time."

I had immediately connected that to Negro Casas actually, and the work he did in trios matches when he wasn't the main focus of a feud.

But then I saw this match and it clicked here as well.

Eddie's not even in this feud. Eddie is HOOK's plus-one. But he managed to do something that was absolutely a contradiction here: he not only stole the show, but he then took what he stole and donated it back to his partners. 

Here's the key: he's constantly, consistently both engaged and engaging. Someone can be the one but not the other and it goes both ways. I love watching Ultimate Warrior on the apron in tags, but he's not necessarily responding to what's happening in the moment and adding to the overall match. There are also plenty of guys able to put their arm out for a tag but not also able to use it to draw you into the match. And Eddie draws you right in while making it about what's going on in the ring and not about himself. 

Some of that is his strength as a storytelling but I honestly believe so much of it is his foundation as a fan. He remembers caring. Hell, he watches certain matches over and over and over again because he still cares. He cares as much as anyone reading this and as much as the person writing this and he's able to channel that feeling into what he was doing here. 

That meant he showed his disgust when Samoa Joe started the match by dodging Hook and tagging out to Shibata, that he sold chops as if they were hurting him, and that when Hook was trying to fight back (and after Hook hit the suplex that threw his back out the rest of the way), he'd lean halfway into the ring to try to will him over to the corner.

And when it was time for him to get in there, he did exactly what he should. That meant getting beaten on by Samoa Joe in the corner, his comeback chops ineffectual. It meant being able to fire back against Shibata but cutting himself off due to the fact he's still working his way back to full strength. It meant that when it was time to mount a comeback, he climbed that hill and almost, almost worked with Hangman to hit a tandem Uraken/Buckshot (we need to see that at some point, TK, just saying; you've teased it now and let the heels rob us of it so you have to pay it off). 

And then after Hobbs crushed Hangman at the top of the stage, he found the inner strength to fight back against all the odds one last time. That's the only shame here. If this match had five more minutes, it could have been not just a double heat, but a triple heat, with Hook making that first tag to Eddie, with Eddie coming back after a 3-on-2 beating, and then with Eddie having to crawl back after Hangman got taken out, lasting just long enough in that All Japan Trios style for Hook to recover, even if it would all end in brave but futile heartbreak. 

But that's still out there on the table for another day. What we got was the best supporting player in all of wrestling pouring his heart out for yet another one of his award winning roles (not that he'd ever admit it, but those who watch closely... we know). 

Don't believe me? Next time you get a chance, just keep your eye on Eddie Kingston. You'll see it too.

Darby Allin vs Daniel Garcia

MD: Styles make fights. Contrast makes the world go round. Character drives action. 

Three sentences. Three true statements. You put them together and you get this match. While Darby is accomplished on the mat, he's no Daniel Garcia. While Garcia has a chip on his shoulder, has been training with Moxley and has been fighting full of grit, he's no Darby Allin. The difference between these two drove this one. In the ring, whether it be in the early feeling out process or trying holds down the stretch, Garcia had an advantage. When things hit the floor or got dirty, Darby tended to have an advantage. 

But Garcia was going to blink first again and again, because he had more to prove, because he couldn't get out of his own way (that's the character bit). That meant teasing the dance after choking Darby with the turnbuckle connector protector. It meant trying for an additional suplex (or neckbreaker) after hitting a superplex. It most especially meant mocking Sting when he had the Scorpion on, which ultimately cost him the match. 

There was a third character in this one as well ( and I don't mean PAC who set up a nice nearfall countout), the ring itself. They could have done this straightforward, eye gouges, ear biting, armbars and headscissors, but they chose to go inventive with it instead. After using the turnbuckle protector, Darby stuck Dany's arm in side the ringpost. Garcia's big transition to heel offense was trapping Darby in the apron. The stairs were used liberally. Garcia hooked Darby's chain to the corner. Pretty clever stuff all around which added to the chaotic nature of the match while keeping it character-driven and laser-focused on the contrast between the two. 

Three sentences that point to true north for almost every match and Darby and Garcia followed the map to their destination here.

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Found Footage Friday: VALENTINE~! GARVIN~! CENA~! JOE~! BOTSWANA~! DOUG~!

Greg Valentine vs. Ronnie Garvin WWF 1/14/89

MD: Another new Richard Land find (go seek him out on twitter if you want to see this). Apparently this show did exist but with terrible VQ to the point where it hasn't been looked at. From entrances to leaving this goes ~15 and it's probably even better than you'd expect coming in, which is saying a lot. They're able to balance the best strike exchanges in the history of the company with just enough variety, stooging, stalling, and other little tricks to tie it all together.

The exchanges are amazing, but varied as well. Valentine might go high and low with punches or throw chops. Garvin will fire back out of the corner, in the center, will pick him up to knock him down again. And they do such a great job not just registering each blow by throwing their head back (whether in the corner or not) or Valentine spacing out, but by setting up the anticipation of it all with Valentine dancing back or stalling in the ropes or both of them throwing hands. It's the ultimate combination of anticipation, execution, and reaction that makes this amazing, strike exchange after strike exchange, with Garvin throwing in enough other things (a jackknife pin, slamming Valentine's head into the corner) and Valentine doing his big stooging sells to make it more than just a slugfest but a complete living, breathing tapestry of violence.

ER: We all keep writing in various ways "Greg Valentine's case as an All Time Great only rises with every new match we find" because it just keeps happening. Since we started Found Footage Fridays 5-15 years ago Valentine has been one of our frequent topics, appearing in the feature 10+ times, and each one of those times only raised his stock as a worker. He's incredible. 15 years ago, I had no idea what a huge Greg Valentine fan I would become. It really started with the DVDVR 80s WWF Project, the first set in the project that would make for the best years of my wrestling fandom. Valentine/Garvin was the kind of WWF match I had never seen before and didn't realize was ever happening there. Years later Valentine would be the reason I'd start my favorite wrestling project ever - Complete Berzerker - after seeing his brilliant match against Berzerker. Every piece of footage I've seen since - new, old, seen, unseen - just confirmed how great Valentine was. 

Now here's another new piece of the Valentine lore and it takes me back to 2006 (that can't be right) and the first time I saw the Valentine/Garvin '89 MSG match. It finished very high on my DVDVR 80s ballot, and I got to talk to Valentine at a convention about their matches. He said that nobody liked working Garvin because he worked stiff, and so they paired Valentine with him a lot because Valentine didn't mind working stiff with Garvin. That's the simplest explanation, those were Valentine's words, and then I proceeded to talk to him about BattlArts without ever buying an 8x10. I didn't know the rules, sorry. 

Now we get another take on them beating the hell out of each other and crowds slowly catching on to just how hard these men are hitting each other. Dick Graham catches on pretty quick just how hard the men are hitting each other. My favorite realization from Graham is when Valentine kicked Garvin in the face like Tenryu right in front of the ringside camera, and Graham just shouted out "SHOOT!" You have no idea, Dick. You watch this, and realize this whole thing cannot happen with Valentine. I love Garvin, but Valentine could have worked this match with anybody. Valentine is the one falling all over the place for him and leaning in to his toughest shots. Valentine is the one permitting every piece of nasty action to proceed. When Garvin starts teeing off on Hammer in the ropes, throwing hard overhand chops, mixing up punches to the forehead and body, finishing him with a shot to the forehead in the corner that sent Valentine skidding down each turnbuckle to the mat, I can see why not many others were willing to work Garvin. But Valentine makes it all into more than just stiff shots. Valentine showcases the willingness to throw hands and the over-willingness to stooge (the man must have timberrrrrrr fell to the mat a dozen times for payoff blows), but most importantly Valentine knew how to put over every single thing Garvin did. 

My favorite part of the match might have been Garvin's crucifix pin, because I don't know if I've ever seen a more ligament stretching crucifix. Garvin tied up Hammer's arms and slowly started pulling him back, and if you'd never seen a crucifix pin before you'd think Hammer was getting his arms slowly broken behind him. Valentine made his taking the move look more like a shoot pin than I'd ever seen, like his necktie was caught in a shredder and the more time he spent struggling the closer he was brought to his death. This match could have been All Hands and still been one of the best WWF matches of the decade, but Valentine knew how to take things higher. 

Doug Gilbert vs. Botswana Beast (Kimala II) Barbed Wire MECW 1999

MD: This was supposed to be One Man Gang vs. Doug and you can't just make a substitution late on a match like this and just expect it to work, but they made a pretty good effort overall. Gilbert went into the wire real early which was sort of the only logical way to do this (he took it right to Beast but couldn't actually whip him) unless you were going to take out a knee and keep it on the mat or something. So there wasn't exactly build and payoff. Instead, they actually went to the floor which I'm not sure I've ever actually seen in a barbed wire match. More than that, you had to rationalize Beast even being able to get out under the bottom rope without killing himself. That did allow Gilbert to get some reasonable offense with the chair and then, back in the ring toss Beast in at least once. He came back and had a fun marathon whipping of Gilbert into the wire again and again before dropping the splash. When he went for a second one PG-13 came out to break things up and smash Beast with the hubcap. Reno Riggins hilariously made the save with a chair, which he immediately put down before hitting anyone with it, thus allowing for himself to get swept under so Beast could make the save. Doug Gilbert's Bobcat Goldthwait faces made this work despite the substitution.

ER: Ever since I was the high voter on the Botswana Beast vs. Terry Gordy match from the World Class set, I feel a strong connection to Beast that might not actually be present in his ring work. I've always been fascinated by Beast/Kimala II/Uganda in a similar but different way than I'm fascinated by Gallagher II. Kimala II might have been the worst All Japan worker of the 90s, yet there he was wrestling 800 matches in the greatest workrate fed of the decade, dressed up as the shorter, fatter version of a guy whom everyone in attendance knew. I love that Kimala II existed, I sincerely love that Gordy match, and if he's the worst All Japan worker of the 90s then I love that he got to exist there during that whole magic era. This was from '99, when he was working ECW shows in the states between All Japan tours and is a fun spectacle without being much of a match. My favorite bits were all centered on Beast's low center of gravity, showing how impossible it would be for Doug to shove him into the ropes against his will. I loved that Irish whip spot where Doug pulled with all his might only for Beast's feet to slide a bit forward on the mat, before Beast whipped Doug into the barbed wire with the strength of Andre. 

John Cena vs. Samoa Joe WWE 8/26/17

MD: This was absolutely delightful. It checks so many boxes just from the start. A match we never thought we'd get. Unproduced house show footage, clear as day, from 2010s WWE. A hot crowd. Two larger than life wrestlers who knew exactly what they were doing working a house show style. It feels like a million years ago and I'd say it overdelivered my expectations. You listen to the crowd build and build and build as they take them up and down (but each high getting a little bit higher) and that's just what I want out of pro wrestling more often than not. 

I can't even tell you the last time I saw a Cena match. It was probably for FFF. We watched one in 2022. That was probably it. I think that was a house show too. I can't get over how simplistic, minimalist, straightforward this was. Joe won an early exchange and celebrated, the shine was basically just a build to Cena winning a shoulderblock and it feeling like a huge deal. Joe took over with one (and only one) punch in the corner. Cena went down like a ton of bricks.

He never really looked back. Cena would get hope spots because he was Cena and basically anything he did was a hope spot. He'd dash into the ring before Joe expected. He'd block a punch. He'd heft him up into a fireman's carry out of nowhere, but Joe dropped him each time. The fans got louder each time though. Until it was just Cena standing up in the corner that did it. Amazing stuff. Joe ran right through him then, but then, when it was repeated, Cena moved and that's when he got in his signature comeback stuff. Talk about rewarding the crowd for caring. They went into a ref bump and a phantom win before the actual one, adding in a bit of doubt to the proceedings. I'm not entirely sure that was necessary given the match they were wrestling, but it was no real harm overall. Just an amazing reminder how special these guys are.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/8 - 4/14

AEW Dynamite 4/10/24

Samoa Joe vs Dustin Rhodes

MD: To me, this was a beautiful match. I love the build, the execution, the set up, the payoff, the restraint, the focus. I love that the first half of the match was basically nothing but punches, nothing but Dustin coming in hot, Joe raking the eyes to cut him off, tossing him into the post to open him up and cement his control, and then just Joe leaning and leaning on him, working the wound, pressing down upon him in the corner, just causing harm. Dustin would try to fire back and would get cut off. All that meant, when they shifted gears into the second half, Dustin hitting his power slam felt so meaningful. It meant that the code red was a way to cement Dustin coming back into the match, not just another move as part of a series of them. The match allowed it to be an escalation and not just noise. And then, of course, the ultimate escalation was the belt, and the rest of the match built to it being used, with some revenge (but not enough for Dustin, thus the belt being introduced in the first place) and a couple of exciting near-falls along the way.

I enjoy a lot of AEW, but I deeply wonder just how many guys on the roster, especially under the age of forty, would be able to do this sort of match. I wonder how many would even understand the value in it. I wonder what we're on the verge of losing over the next few years even as I am acutely aware of what we've already lost. But it doesn't have to be that way. They just did this match on a night where more eyes than normal were upon them. Joe's the locker room leader. Dustin is an coach and a trainer. It's 2024. I'm willing to accept that the point is no longer to do as much as possible with as little as possible, no matter how serene and perfect that sort of manipulation can be. But the goal can still be to make those things that you do mean as much as possible through taking the crowd up and down, through crescendoing throughout the match, through setting things up and paying them off. The formula here can be extrapolated to anything else on the card, even a Takeshita match, and it would probably make the match better, while still highlighting the amazing things other wrestlers could do. There's a skeleton key in this one for anyone who just wants to try to understand it.

AEW Collision 4/13/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs Powerhouse Hobbs/Kyle Fletcher

MD: Very long tag. The premise coming in is that Callis wanted them to hurt Danielson, even to the point of fines or suspensions, in order to stack the deck in Ospreay's favor at the PPV. That played out well enough in practice as this had a wild feel for the most part. The BCC were forewarned and prepared, meeting Hobbs/Fletcher head-on for early brawling and high-impact charging blows on the outside. This cycled into the ring for a shine until they were able to use a double or triple blind to allow Fletcher to take over on Castagnoli. That is, Claudio got dumped to the floor errantly and then was distracted by Hobbs, successfully dealt with the distraction, and then and only then, ate a cheapshot by Fletcher. This came up a few times in the match, each cycle more complicated than the last.

That's the advantage and the disadvantage of running tags like this in 2024. We've seen everything. We've seen how transitions in southern tags operate. We've seen the inversions. We've seen the inversions of the inversion. You can just do it, and there's real value to that, but the second you commit to at least one inversion, at least one fake-out in order to fool the fans and leave them guessing, then the train's going and you can't just get off. You have to pick the right stop. Here, they did a pretty good job throughout, both here initially transition to the heat on Claudio, then to cut off hope spots (often in part by eliminating the partner on the apron) and then to cycle through back to the floor after the hot tag to Danielson to take things into the (second, I think?) commercial break. It meant that when Fletcher just got a lucky reversal in to take back over on Danielson, that you were left just a little unsatisfied; once that genie is out of the bottle, you need a bit more thought to a key transition.

Overall it worked though and they were able to shift back from everything breaking down once again into a dynamic and escalated second round of heat on Danielson. For instance, once Claudio had recovered enough to herald Danielson's comeback in a very All Japan sort of way, the big hope spot was Danielson locking in a LeBell Lock, in as he might have gotten the win and not just the hot tag. The match had progressed enough that even though they were in the midst of heat, it still sort of worked. And then it all built to the crowd pleasing stuff, the BCC triumph, and the nefarious post-match to keep the story going. Claudio's a pro at these big TV tags and is only strengthened by having less restraints and more time. I know certain people have certain reservations about Fletcher and I do too, but he has some great instincts when it comes to working the crowd and letting things breathe in between moves. It's just that half of his opponents don't allow for that sort of thing and the star rating economy rewards the exact opposite. He's 25 and if encouraged to keep developing these good habits instead of bad, I'm curious just how he might develop.

By the way, I did watch the Team Kingston vs Team Kidd match from the NJPW show but while it was suitably chaotic with a solid, productive finish, I really wanted more ebbs and flows and momentum shifts instead of specific spots and unbridled mayhem so I'm not going to give it more words than that.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/15 - 1/21

MD: A lot to say this week, so I'll probably keep these relatively short. I could have just as easily written up Strong vs Sydal or Garcia vs Matthews or even Copeland vs Martin. Interesting selling all around. 

AEW Dynamite 1/17/24 

Samoa Joe vs. HOOK

MD: If selling is the story of the week, then the second story is likely one of intent. Yes, pro wrestling is and always has to be about winning a simulated athletic competition. And yes, most of the time it should be about money. Why? Because that takes from professional sports and is always relatable. But having compelling characters with interesting motivations always helps. Let's take a look at Samoa Joe. Here was a guy who had been written off by his industry and by a huge chunk of the fanbase, but had never been written off by himself. Here's someone who had been misused, undervalued, not provided the opportunities that he would have rightfully deserved in a more meritocratic business. So he made his own opportunity. He's seen others come and go around him, wild and chaotic and undisciplined, and he is the calm center of gravity holding things together. 

Here, in his first defense, with two challengers chomping at his heels and a Wardlow (a man who he has quite a bit of history with) waiting in the wings, he wanted to bring understanding to a new generation. He wished to make HOOK see how the world worked, wished to bestow upon him all the harsh lessons that life had taught him, all of the lessons that HOOK's own father, blinded by pride and boundless, uncharacteristic optimism, refused to teach him. HOOK took the fight to Joe as if he could define his own destiny through skill and determination and bravery. Joe shut him down and beat him around the ring, around the ringside area, crushed him to dust. HOOK rose back up with youthful defiance, trying to snatch a second grasp at victory by denying the truth before him. Joe choked him out. Almost certainly, the lesson wasn't absorbed. It was, however, transferred. It took Joe an entire career to become the man that he is now, no matter how formidable or fearsome the man he was twenty years ago had been. One can extrapolate forward another twenty years and think of the lessons HOOK will want to bestow upon others in 2044. It might well look a lot like this.

Christian Cage vs. Dustin Rhodes

MD: I am obligated to write about this match. There are, presumably, only so many Dustin matches left to write about. There are, presumably, only so many Christian Cage matches. I'm just not sure what needs to be said that isn't entirely evident, what comparative advantage I have here. Let me say this then. Everything here worked exactly how it was supposed to. We take so much of this for granted. We do not give the basic tenets of pro wrestling enough credit. It's because we've seen so much of it and we've seen it done so ineffectually. We anticipate. If you're reading this blog, I can almost assure you that if you watch a wrestler hit the ropes in context of a match, you almost certainly know what the end result of the spot will be. Our brains all work differently and we're all different people, but most of you are a half move ahead of what you're watching, sometimes more. Even if you aren't sure exactly how it'll go, you've got three or four possibilities mapped out ahead of time and it's just a matter of which path on the flow chart they decide to take. 

Generally that's ok. There's so much wrestling and a lot of it is all built similarly. The tiny nuances stand out. The massive spots and bumps stand out. The deviations stand out. A lot of times, for good or ill, the actual skeleton of the match is just there to provide us a means of delivery for the details. A match is rarely rewarded for the wrestlers doing the right things at the right times for the right reasons with the right results. It's more likely a match will get rewarded for coloring outside the lines, even if the coloring makes no sense. People flock towards innovation and sensation when there's still so much beauty to be found in the standard architecture of direct storytelling. Not here though. Here, it all worked. Here, the foundation was so strong that it moved in parallel with the details and was worth letting go and immersing yourself in. The babyface was cheered. The heel was booed. Everyone played their part. Dustin achieved multiple symbolic victories but Christian escaped with the victory and his belt once again. AEW is a big tent promotion. There will always be room for good, well executed, straightforward pro wrestling. It provides a baseline to be pressed against. There are very few 21st century wrestlers who can do it as well as these two.

AEW Collision 1/20/24

Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston/Ortiz

MD: Building off what I just said about Christian vs Dustin, part of the issue is that the crowd no longer wants to play its traditional role, but it wants to have more pivotal a role than ever. In a world of "Both These Guys" and "Fight Forever" chants, and in a company that (probably rightfully) embraces them, it takes someone really special to make pro wrestling in that environment special. It takes someone who can adapt to what is before him, who can lead the crowd despite the incentive of the day being to follow them, who can pause the script and lean into the moment. Enter Danielson and Kingston. The first minute or two of this was absolutely compelling. Danielson tried to get under Eddie's skin, tried to stall, tried to get the crowd to cheer for him. And he did. Eddie, on the other side of the Continental Classic and a win over Danielson, was annoyed that Bryan wouldn't just lock up with him, but confident enough to meet the moment. He looked to his imaginary watch (my current favorite pro wrestling object), and showed Danielson that it was literally impossible to get under his skin in a world where the crowd would go up for him just as much if not more. If selling is ultimately just reacting in order to give meaning to the physical actions within the ring, there is a sort of emotional selling which is reacting to both physical and non-physical stimulus. Here Danielson and Kingston are exceptional. You could spend the whole match just watching their facial reactions and it'd be more engrossing than 90% of the company's breathtaking highspots. I'm so glad that they've moved back into one another's orbit for at least one last go around.

AEW Rampage 1/19/24

Darby Allin vs. Jeff Hardy

MD: This was the rare case where I don't think the commercial break helped the match. Darby is the exception that proves the rule. He's so good at generating impact and fabricating consequence that he could ground a trainwreck and make it into a narrative. Hardy was, in many ways, the Darby of two decades prior. This match was best in the early going when it was like two ships firing their cannons at one another, calibrating and recalibrating with each perilous shot. Except the cannonballs were human cannonballs. One wrestler would crash and burn on a near miss and the other would line up his next shot and fire away. I wouldn't want it every day for the wrestlers' sake and the sake of my own sanity, but once every year or two, it's nice to see these two ships pass in the night, guns blaring. 

 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 2

All In 8/26

CM Punk vs Samoa Joe

MD: Even almost a week later, we don't know what we don't know. The Observer hit this morning, etc. Look, we tend to look at the text itself here at Segunda Caida, at least with modern matches, but you can't separate this match from what led up to it in the minutes prior. I won't focus much on what we don't, won't, or can't know, but this match goes down differently on a rewatch when you have some sense of what came before. Punk's Punk, a shit-eating grin on his face as he goes through the curtain, absolute satisfaction with his little shitheel chop and dodge away from Joe to start the match, mirthful elation as he hangs on to a headlock through a suplex. You'll almost never see a man quite so alive as Punk as he shifts from Cena to Hogan and basks in the boos and he carried his weight for the other half of this, bleeding, stooging, and outright begging off for Joe's Hulk Up. 

I said almost no one was more alive though, and the reason I said almost is because for as much as Punk was living in this moment and channeling every internal and external bit of stimuli to feed into his performance, Joe was simply more. From all accounts, Joe manifested this moment through sheer determination, presence (physical and otherwise), and force of will. You can read this as the culmination of a redemption story for Joe. We've all seen the pictures of him in the poncho during the Mania pre-show in Tampa, and while some of those have him smiling, it wasn't a proper last chapter for him. Neither was the bizarre start and stop of his final NXT moments. This though? Standing in Wembley with tens of thousands of people chanting his name, with them oohing and ahhing every move he chained together, with enough of them singing for him or going up for his pointed response to Punk's heatseeking channeling of Hogan... he basked in each and every second of it. The energy of the crowd radiated off of his body and fueled his every movement. He wrestled this match like someone who knew how far he had once been from the possibility of it and how close he had been to losing it at the last second. I could write about how they cleverly leaned into their own familiarity with one another, how they leveraged that early to build anticipation for certain spots later in the match, how balanced letting things breathe with keeping things moving. I could even give JR some flowers; over the last few years he has a mortifying tendency of calling the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. Here though, even as the match didn't feel like it was quite ready to be over, he noted how both wrestlers were going for that one big move, the perfect set up for Punk hitting the plunge. In a hundred other matches, he'd have mistimed that sort of a call completely. Here, it covered up the lack of a more developed finishing stretch perfectly.

Past those last 100 words to smooth past the finish, I think I'd rather just let the above sit as the review though. This one wasn't about structure or tricks. It was one old pro, as strung out as someone straightedge could possibly be, channeling a moment despite it all, and one old lion with legendary strength, clenching his fist hard enough to prevent the sands of time and opportunity from slipping out of his grasp. Maybe someone has the words to do that justice, but it's sure not me. The match stands on its own. The match speaks for itself.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/3 - 7/16

AEW Collision 7/8/23

CM Punk vs Samoa Joe

MD: Summer vacation with the family has me behind here, so I'm going to hold off on Darby and Dustin matches, but let's try to quickly move through this one before moving on. I haven't rewatched the Punk/Joe series for years. They left more in the tank on this one. This was less Punk/Joe IV than a Punk/Joe oddity that'd slip through the cracks as a handheld a decade after the fact. When you think about the setting, you can't fault them: this was the semi-finals of an Owen Hart tournament, as something to help define a new TV show, one of the initial feuds to set the tone. Punk had gone out earlier in the show telling the fans to chant for Owen and in a key moment down the stretch, that's exactly what they did.

So what did we get if not the epic next chapter of a legendary feud? A very good TV tournament match with a tight, tight layout. There weren't any inversions (save for maybe the finish). This one was laser focused to fit the needs of the moment and because I'm sure now, a week plus later, everyone's written about the feel and the legacy and everything else, I want to briefly touch upon that layout.

They started with Punk ducking and moving, trying to get shots in when he could. He couldn't get too far with that strategy alone. Punk's character may be that of a striker, but Joe's a tank who just needs to get his hands on you to compact you like an accordion. Punk had a logical need to escalate and once he softened Joe up a bit he went for it. A bit doesn't cut it with Joe who walked away and then took over. From here, it was Joe asserting himself through the commercial break and Punk with escalating babyface comebacks. The crowd was split but that seemed more because they liked Joe than because they hated Punk, and this worked. A few strikes and a cutoff, a dodge on the floor leading to the clothesline off the apron and then a cutoff (that we miss) as Joe makes it into the ring first. All of it builds to Joe's first attempt at the Clutch and Punk hitting his biggest move of the match with a belly to back to shift things into an extended finishing stretch. The match opened up from there, with Punk repeatedly going for the GTS, setting up an expectation after three tries that he'd either hit it despite the weight difference or fall to the Clutch for his desperate stubbornness. Instead, he baited Joe in on the third attempt and rolled him forward for a banana peel win. Post-match, Joe got his heat back and reminded people that there's still an actual classic ahead of them. This, however, had to do its work while not overshadowing the tournament or the closing image of Ricky Starks to set up the final to come.

AEW Collision 7/15/23

CM Punk vs Ricky Starks

MD: I first caught this on the Sunday after and I had seen some negative or at least middling opinions on it first. That had lowered my expectations just a little coming in and with that in mind, this overachieved for me. This Punk run differs from the 2021-2022 one in how he's living in the moment. In this, I thought Starks was an almost perfect opponent. Something like Ospreay vs Omega is so carefully directed. Every shot, every angle, every spot, every move, every reaction feels drafted and redrafted and molded in plaster and colored in blood and sweat. This lived in the moment. It wasn't the spots you were watching for but the reactions on Punk and Starks' faces and how that shaped what they did or didn't do next.

When Punk did A, how did that impact Starks emotionally? When Starks did B, did Punk smile or frown or grimace? With Punk in 2023, it's impossible to predict exactly what the crowd will do at any moment so he's constantly adapting to the situation at hand. Some of that was in the struggle, like Punk's reaction to both of Starks' attempts at the rope walk. Some of it was in very muddy emotional beats. It was left to the viewer to decide whether Punk refused the favor of the ropes being held open because he was frustrated Starks got one up on him or because Starks had chosen to pose before doing it or as some broader mind game. It's left up to the viewer to wonder if that slight drove Starks' brutal forearms later or him crossing the line on the finish.

So much of this was based on the two wrestlers feeling each other out and just trying to figure out what their reality happened to be. Where did they fall on a spectrum? Who are they? Who do they want to be? What do they want this match to stand for, especially in the face of a torn crowd and the specter of the Hart family over them? And they came up with very different answers in the end. Despite part of the crowd being against him, despite all of his the insecurities that drive the man behind the wrestler, Punk the character is fully secure in who he is. He wanted to pay tribute to the Hart family that meant so much to him as a fan and a professional, to wrestle smart and provocative but clean. At times, after hitting a move or escaping one from Starks, you could see absolute elation come over his face. It was clear who he was, except for in those few moments where it wasn't clear at all. And Ricky? Well, we don't know, do we? 

That's the intrigue coming out of this match, and I think, how this match will ultimately be judged. That's the problem with star ratings. You wouldn't judge a chapter in a book, especially not before reading the rest. We have no idea where this is headed. Is it just the end of a tournament or is it the start of a story? Or a crossroads where two ships pass in the midst of very different journeys?

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

AEW Dynamite 6/14

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

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

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

AEW Collision 6/17

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

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

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

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

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Found Footage Friday: MISAWA~! KAWADA~! THE LAND OF GIANTS~! CHRISTIAN~! JOE~! DYING DAYS IWE~!

Rusher Kimura vs. Carl Fergie IWE 6/6/81

MD: It's always fun to see a journeyman overachieve in another country. You can think of Jim Dillon in the Maritimes (not that we have that footage) or the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs in Puerto Rico (that we do have and it's fun). Here, it's Carl Fergie - fresh off a midcard run putting guys over in Mid-South and on his way to do the same in Crockett - in a main event with Rusher Kimura. I was going to say that he was well prepared for this one by wrestling Lawler, but he doesn't wrestle Lawler until 1982, so it was somehow the other way around.

You need somewhat similar skill sets against both, mainly being able to snap your head back at the sight of a great worked punch and take a back body drop. With Rusher, however, you also had to deal with nasty chops in the corner and headbutts.  That gave the match a more visceral feel; when Fergie snuck in a kick out of the corner and tried to assert himself, he was probably forcing a break for the sake of his forehead and poor chest. Rusher was in a hybrid phase here: not the wrestler he'd been in the 70s, not the comedy statesman he'd be a few years later. It meant he'd try for things like a stretch out of a Russian Leg Sweep or the bearhug into a butterfly submission he won with, but no longer had the flexibility he once did. This set up other matches on the tour as much as anything else, with Gypsy Joe interfering to mercifully (as he was trying out that first submission) cause the first fall. I thought Fergie looked like he belonged, for the most part. Some of that was the state of IWE, but enough of it was Fergie himself.

ER: King Carl Fergie the Wicked, wearing a Nazi helmet for his dying days IWE main event. King Carl Fergie, conqueror of Goro Tsurumi and Atsushi Onita, partner of Gypsy Joe. Rusher Kimura's takedowns look so impossible to stop. Rusher had lost some speed but this man moved and manipulated the larger Fergie like a real shooter. When he pins Fergie's arm and grapevines the leg, you can see him using all of his weight to effortlessly drop Fergie to the mat. It's the way Fergie keeps trying to push Rusher off him from his back, but Rusher won't let go of that boot for anything. The shoulderblocks hit hard and Fergie gets tossed immaculately by a backdrop, then gets punched directly in the face, taking a tremendous floundering back bump with windmilling arms that almost catches the back of his neck on the ropes. Fergie took that punch like he was a heavy getting knocked out by Rick Simon. This is really fucking good. Fergie walks right up to Rusher Kimura because he's the man, and he punches Rusher in the face and shakes his fist out angrily after punching him, and every man in Korakuen knows that Fergie is the man. His elbow strikes to Kimura's collarbones only reinforces that feeling.  

I loved every headlock in this match. 

Carl Fergie takes an even higher backdrop than he did earlier and Rusher locks him into a killer butterfly mid-squat bearhug like he was a Negro Navarro T-1000 sent back to send Carl Fergie back to Memphis. Who was the human (?) who, over 40 years ago, knew how important it would be to document the time crimes that were happening in the final three months of the 4th most popular wrestling promotion in Japan. 

Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Land of Giants AJPW 11/20/90

MD: Eric already covered the hugely entertaining 11/21/90 Land of the Giants vs Dory/Terry match (amazing Terry performance) so I'm poking at the guts of this thing instead. And on paper, it's kind of interesting. Misawa and Kawada had spent most of the last many months against Jumbo, Taue, Inoue, Fuchi, Doc, Gordy, Hansen and even occasionally stablemate Kobashi and Ace. Those are all guys you can do a lot against. Here, they were up against the sort of challenge rare to AJPW, two absolute lugs with size, no mobility, terrible clubbering strikes, little presence. That's the sort of thing you expect out of post-WWF talent 80s NJPW maybe, where they'd just trot out Mad Maxx and Super Maxx managed by Wakamatsu to face Fujinami and Kimura, but it's a lot less of an AJPW thing.

And, yeah, it goes ok. The real testament to Misawa, Kawada, and the crowd, was that there was a legitimately hot tag to Misawa towards the end and the crowd went up for it; I don't think it was entirely warranted, but they went with it anyway. After that, there was a great American tag moment of Misawa and Kawada whipping the giants into each other too. Otherwise, the big appeal here would be the Super Generation Army throwing really high kicks at really tall guys. Nitron took them pretty well too. That's about the nicest thing I'm going to say about Land of the Giants here, unfortunately. The blows didn't look great, crummy knees in the ropes, weak sweeping clubbering forearms, a couple of slams that didn't have much mustard behind them. There was stuff that worked in theory but not execution, like Nitron catching Kawada with a cheapshot clothesline from his spot on the apron to cut off a flurry. Their finish at this point was an assisted legdrop (from an atomic drop position) and Masters pumping his arm before going up with it was sort of entertaining. The finish worked too, with Kawada getting Nitron out of the ring so Misawa could throw some magic forearms and duck a clothesline to hit a pretty beautiful bridging German on a giant of a man. But like I said, that they got the crowd back was the most impressive thing here.

ER: Yeah, this wasn't great. It merely existed, and was worked surprisingly straight forward for being a couple of Faux Warriors vs. the two hottest young studs in the company. Misawa and Kawada didn't go after them any differently than they would have gone after Dynamite Kid and Johnny Smith, so that was kind of disappointing. I either wanted to see two giants with bad offense hold down two elites, or two elites absolutely lace into two bad giants, and we got something much less risky and much less interesting. What *is* important to note, is that the team of SKYWALKER NITRON and Butch Masters is not "Land of the Giants", which I suppose makes more sense than their actual name. No, their name is THE Land of Giants. Their team name makes sure to place the focus on the Land rather than the Giants who inhabit this Land, much like hit the hit Sid & Marty Krofft series The Land of Lost. 

In This Land of Giants, the Giants do not hit very hard. Of all the future X-Men, I imagine Misawa or Kawada could have worked a more compelling match with Kelsey Grammer or Alan Cumming. SKYWALKER NITRON throws two of the piddliest clotheslines, even though Kawada mostly saved one of them by just running neck first into it. Running into an actual clothesline in the backyard would have provided far more resistance that NITRON's long noodle of an arm. I do like how Misawa came in and kicked at him, actually liked his kicks more than Kawada's here. Lighter on form, harder on impact. Butch Masters is really good at stepping over the top rope, which is not a thing that every tall wrestler can say. SKYWALKER NITRON can't say it. But Butch steps over it straight, an optical illusion that makes it look like he's just stepping up onto a curb while he's actually clearing three ropes. NITRON meanwhile looks like he's trying to get into a ski boat from the water. Each man who hails from The Land of Giants did their own bearhug, and Misawa broke up SKYWALKER's by walking in and just elbowing him straight in the kidneys. Kawada hits a cool pescado into NITRON, and I do like the finisher of the team who hails from The Land of Giants, a man-assisted legdrop. What other Giants come from this Land? Were they sending their biggest and best Giants to the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium? Was this merely a work placement program, or a study abroad kind of situation? What is the Giant Exchange Program in The Land? Are these two as good as Tall Rick or Thomas Big Boots? 

Christian vs. Samoa Joe NEW 4/21/07

MD: I love Christian's WWECW work. He was an amazing week to week TV wrestler, someone who could work his own spots and his opponent's spots into a match in clever, believable, varied, and interesting ways to deal with the grind of televised match after match after match. A sort of neo-Bret Hart for a different era with different demands. I've never really had any indication that he worked it out much before that though. Some of that is on me in that I didn't chase down his TNA run. Unfortunately, I do think some of it might be on him too.

It's a little off-putting how much of this match is rote heel champion vs. local dominant attraction house show fare, actually. It's not that the stalling isn't fun and the antics with the ref aren't good and the cheating isn't effective. It just doesn't stand out as special like you'd expect a Christian vs. Samoa Joe match to be. In fact, even though he hits some of his big offensive moves, it's the least "Joe" match I've ever seen. He's so submerged in the formula that he comes off as just another guy lacking his usual aura. Because it's such an aberration, I'm leaning towards Christian not quite being there yet and my gut says that this would have been a lot better a couple of years later or even right now. Again, there was nothing bad or wrong about it and the stuff that was good was very good; it just was less than the sum of its parts should have been. That's all.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/30 - 2/5

AEW Dynamite 2/1

Bryan Danielson vs. Timothy Thatcher

MD: This was exactly what you thought it'd be but it was still very nice to see it play out. If I had to point to something, it'd be 1) Danielson's early use of space, the way he kept trying to control the distance between himself and Thatcher 2) Thatcher's expressions in general: elation when he was prying off a body part and grinding on a hold or a sort of toothless but genuine shock when something didn't go his way, very much in the moment of all time, and 3) Danielson's selling overall. We saw it in the Cage match, but it was all the more present here: his movements were ginger; he was putting over the danger he was in at each point; you could feel the desperation and the middle ground between heart, technical prowess, and ability to channel the crowd as he was throwing fists into Thatcher's side on the top rope. 

Otherwise, like I said, it was two masters pressing down on each other, one going for blood and the other playing defense masterfully. I'm writing this on Sunday and I haven't talked to Phil about what match on Dynamite he'd be covering, but I think I'd be most interested to hear what he had to say about this one, because while it was the most predictable of the three (the two I'm covering and Mox/Page III), it also feels like the hardest to say anything meaningful about.

Darby Allin vs. Samoa Joe

MD: Bryce Remsburg referred all three of the Joe/Darby matches and he posted recently that Darby wanted the matches to feel as chaotic as the Necro/Joe match from 2005. This was pretty damn chaotic. With the no holds barred stip, they started with something additive, the thumbtack hairshirt, and ended it by tearing apart the ring pretty efficiently (though not efficiently enough for Darby's kayfabe hopes and dreams of winning the match) and one last ghastly bump to be the spine-compressing cherry on top of a match full of them. Despite props, plenty of replays, and the fact that the only breather to be had was when Joe was putting the squeeze on Darby during the PiP, everything felt brutally organic. The physics of Darby crashing knee first into the ringsteps and somehow going heels over head onto his feet on the other side of the rail should have been impossible, but Darby's a wizard of execution (albeit usually the person getting executed is himself) and somehow it worked. It's a testament to both wrestlers really: two table spots, a couple of gnarly chair spots, a bump over the handrail on the arena stairs, a yeet right over the ropes to the floor. Nothing looked clean or pretty, but it all looked believably painful. Joe's blood helped, not even in putting over the damage to Joe necessarily, but in making you feel like he was angry enough to show this level of malice and disregard. It was one of those Sabu-ian instances where something like Darby not being able to get the hairshirt back on correctly only made the carnage more immersive. 

(After the fact edit: Just read Phil's column and he did in fact go with Darby vs Joe and ended it with the Bryce factoid, which was my entry point into the write-up. Great minds and all that...)

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/2 - 1/8

AEW Dynamite 1/4

Bryan Danielson vs. Tony Nese

MD: A lot of grumbling and backlash for this one when it was announced, and my big takeaway was that I wish it had gotten just another minute or two so that Danielson and Nese could really go. Nese is probably the most giving, selfless guy on the roster, someone who knows his job, knows his role, knows his skillset, that can go but that still wants to get under the skin of the fans instead of having them cheer for his exchanges. He's the guy on the roster most likely to get cake in his face or to be completely embarrassed by Orange Cassidy but he has just enough credibility through his stuff looking good, through having Woods at his side, and through the sheer cardio and shape he's in. Basically, he's everything I'd want a Seth Rollins type guy to be. That means he's a lower-midcarder who makes everyone around him look better, but I'm almost always glad to see him. It's just that we live in an upside down world where Seth Rollins is Seth Rollins and not Tony Nese. It's not Tony Nese's fault. It's the world that's backwards.

They were exceptionally careful about this. Nese used everything at his disposal from an early ambush while Danielson was basking in the crowd's reaction to having Sterling and Nese out there to get tiny bits of advantage. He could never press it because the idea here was to show Danielson as an absolute star. And he was, but what I'm going to remember most is Nese's missed knee in the corner, just how well he set it up, just how well he pinballed off, the action and the reaction. Ultimately, this match was the right match for the moment, something celebratory, something tangentially connected to MJF, something quick and clean, and high impact, that showcased Danielson in front of his home crowd to set up the gauntlet ahead of him and the lure of the PPV match stip. Still, I had assumed he had picked Nese because he wanted to have one or two cardio exchanges where he really pushed himself, and I'm a little sad we didn't quite get them here. It would be a hell of a Dark match at Universal with no stakes or story purpose if they ever wanted to do it again though.

Samoa Joe (c) vs. Darby Allin

MD: I don't think I liked this quite as much as the first match between them but that doesn't mean there wasn't a ton to love. Darby's matches almost always start in some interesting way. Here it was Joe going after Nick Wayne just because he could (he's the King of TV after all) and Darby making him pay for it, then capitalizing on that advantage before the bell rang with some well-deserved revenge with the skateboard and a huge dive off a ladder. Joe's up there with Yokozuna and Abby as someone who can believably cut anyone off at any moment though. Here he caught Darby (who had maybe messed up his leg on the dive) off the apron and just crushed him on the stairs. This started a pretty awesome Joe control bit through the commercial break where he pinballed off the post again and jawed with the crowd. Between the size differential and the leg, Joe was able to just squash Darby, blocking his attempts to recover. You have to appreciate Joe's expressiveness here, just how deeply he was into every moment. He was absolutely living the character, smug, bemused, believing in himself entirely and looking down on everything and everyone around him. Great finishing stretch here, with Sting's pep talk driving Darby to Sting up, Joe putting forth amazingly portrayed struggle in not trying to get pulled out of the corner (causing the turnbuckle cover to go flying) and the two of them somehow making the code red believable before the finish. I almost would have had Darby hit the drop from all four corners just to put a sort of Warrior vs Macho Man exclamation point on things, but you can't argue with the hometown pop at the end.

AEW Rampage 1/6

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Top Flight

MD: It's since come out in interviews that the entire idea behind the BCC was to give young guys top guys to work. Regal has his own way to explain it but the others explained it more like Tsuruta-gun vs. the Super Generation Army. We did see a little bit of that at first, with Yuta and with a tag or six-man here or there but eventually, it all got subsumed into the JAS feud and it went away. This is it back and as clear as day.

That meant, as opposed to the Claudio tag from a week or two ago, that the BCC pressed and pressed and pressed and pressed. They pushed the Martins to their absolute limit and every glimpse of hope, every bit of offense, felt entirely earned and like a small victory in and of itself. This felt a lot more like one of those AJPW tags, where Top Flight might be able to force a tag, get a shot or two in, but then would get shut down immediately. A tag didn't, in and of itself, represent a shift in momentum. Quite the opposite as the damage had been done to the guy tagging out and it was still two-on-one until he recovered. In fact, some of the most hope Top Flight had was when Darius tagged while he was still more or less on the floor outside. They capitalized on his positioning as best as they could but it never lasted long. The BCC were just too much. That was the point as it made every iota of Top Flight's fight all the more valiant for the impossible odds. It's been a while since Mox and Danielson were able to have a straight up tag and they had some tandem stuff that was on the backburner for quite a while and that made the task even more impossible for Top Flight.

The Dante vs. Danielson bits were shiny and flashy and made me want to see a singles match. Darius balanced exhaustion and fire well when he did get something of a comeback, but he still has to find his own niche; it's never going to benefit him to be compared to Dante if they're doing very similar things. This was brutal in the best way and it kind of makes me hope for them to run it back again with Mox and Yuta where they can get some some revenge on Moxley.

Darby Allin vs. Mike Bennett

MD: Credit to Bennett here for being a good hand. He took most of the match but the only things I remembered after a first watch was Darby's finishing shots: the dropkick onto the chair on the outside that you know Bennett insisted on taking, as opposed the usual Darby wipe out bump; the bit where Maria laid on top of him and Darby was going to jump anyway; the code red off the top. Maybe that super slick kick out of the leg right into the grounded hammerlock too. And Bennett held up his end on keeping heat, even if the fans were going to chant Boston Sucks and You Still Suck instead of Bennett Sucks, alongside Let's Go Darby and just Darby's name. To his credit, they weren't chanting about Maria. I thought his cut offs were particularly good though I have to admit that his offense in general, while it all looked solid and gave Darby things to work with, was definitely all over the place. He did just enough focusing on a leg or an arm to establish that there was something there but not enough for it actually to be a meaningful story beat. It distracted instead of resonated. This is one where maybe Darby should have either taken just a bit more of it and flex his muscles as a champion once again or at least had Maria and Taven give him a bit more trouble to help protect him. I will say that Bennett came out of this looking better than he came in, even despite the most memorable moments being him getting his comeuppance.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/5 - 12/11

AEW Dynamite 12/7

Dynamite Diamond Battle Royal

MD: Dustin is healthy again and was in this one. He's saying he'll retire in 2023, so we're going to cover every bit of his work as we can between now and then, if that actually happens (wrestlers are wrestlers and he's more of a wrestler than most). He does seem to be featured a bit right now and may even get an All Atlantic Title match, maybe? Hopefully? Dustin vs Cassidy would be a new match-up and I think they could do pretty interesting things with it for a one-off. We'll see.

This was, of course, an AEW Battle Royal which means some fun, pointed moments, and a lot of fun moments that just seem to happen. There's a lot to cover even if this wasn't the most eventful AEW Battle Royal I've seen. First, look at all of those managers and seconds! Stokely and Big Billy, The Blade and the Bunny, Penelope Ford, The Boys, Nana! And that's even with Sterling, Vickie, Jake, Arn, and a few others not there. Managers are a great, integral part of wrestling, and AEW is great for using them so thoroughly even if the contract stuff can be a bit much at times. Speaking of contract stuff, one of the biggest actual storybeats here was Matt Hardy, made by Ethan Page and Lee Moriarty to do their bidding and work as a pretty effective unit. Page lost the forest for the trees, of course, and enjoyed rubbing it in so much that he let himself get distracted, but while it was happening, there were fun bits like Matt jousting with both faces and heels, him leaving Moriarty high and dry for a high five, and Page cheering him on against the Butcher (while not helping) leading to a Hardy chant. Butcher was more of a monster in this than Cage, which says a lot about both of them. I loved Blade jumping up to the apron to celebrate with Butcher after he eliminated Dustin. Dustin got his big moment against kip with a picture perfect Destroyer, which was Kip's comeuppance for screwing with Cassidy. Kip had a nice little beat where Cassidy blocked a slam into the corner and he turned to look at him in a moment of exasperation or shock before Cassidy hammered him in. Speaking of Cassidy, one of my favorite little things in all of this was when Jungle Boy came out and Cassidy did his little version of the arm waving to great him before giving him a handshake as Dean saluted them both. It's little things like that which make the promotion feel more alive and active and more than just the sum of matches, promos and angles. Starks, to his credit, was able to take out Butcher (and like I said, Butcher being such a beast in this made that mean all the more), but they could have focused him a little more even than that. Same with Jungle Boy, who had just sort of been in it before he got bodied by Big Bill with the boot and the crazy chokeslam. What mattered in the end was that Starks won though, which laid the groundwork for the promos that would follow. Not the best AEW Battle Royal ever, and the tenor of the eliminations was a bit affected by the commercial break, but even a just ok one is always full of all of those great little moments that makes the tapestry all the more vivid.

Darby Allin vs Samoa Joe

MD: This was a hell of a thing. It's know how much of this was Darby being Darby and how much of it was Joe finding his groove after a time of inactivity, in the latter stages of his career, but if pressed (and I'm pressed every week around here; that's the point), I'd say it was about 50/50. Just a monster base against an insane bumper; not a flyer so much as just a lawn dart who throws himself into everything he does. Joe gave right at the get go, pushing Darby back but eating a dropkick out but then he did his trademark walk away and it was on from there. Joe just absolutely dismantled Darby on the outside, brutal stuff. He leaned on him during the commercial break, and then cut off the comeback attempt by setting up the amazing spinning bump off the post. All throughout, Joe emanated sadistic glee, grinning, scoffing, flexing to mock Darby after that bump, tossing Darby's in and back out of the ring to break the count, just a living, breathing monolithic monster that lives in the same world as you and I. Of course, Darby's exudes resilience like no other and he somehow was able to mount a believable comeback with Joe taking just enough of his stuff to really wow you and make you think that Darby might pull it out. It was all for naught with the great chokeout finish, one of those things that probably aren't as impressive as, let's say Joe catching Darby in a fireman's carry off a plancha like earlier in the match, but that looked great nonetheless. Post match, they go with one of those moments where you can't see the strings and have no idea how they pull it off without severe spinal damage as Joe dropped Darby right on the skateboard wheels. Don't try this at home, I guess? You wonder if they should have been trying it in the arena, but it sure had an effect. The crowd was great throughout, oohing and ahhing every bit of offense, and every bit of it was deserved. Even if this Joe run gives us nothing else, it sure as heck gave us this.

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2005: Necro vs. Joe VS. Ikeda vs. Ishikawa

First, if folks haven't listened yet, Phil did a podcast with the aforementioned Necro Butcher on this match here:

WAY OF THE BLADE POD

Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher IWA-MS 6/11/05

ER: This is arguably the most legendarily violent match of the last 20 years, the kind of match that embodies everything about that era of super indy wrestling, while taking it to such extreme lengths that everyone reading this likely remembers the first time they ever saw it. It runs just under 10 minutes and has as many memorable moments in those 10 minutes as any match you've seen. This is a fight that never really threatens to turn into a match. The strikes get more unprofessional the longer we go, and it's not surprising that after a few jaw rattling elbows they spill to the floor (where much of the match is spent). Joe levels Necro with a huge elbow suicida, they brawl into the crowd, and Necro gets immediately opened up once they start trading headbutts (unclear if it's one of the couple Joe threw, or one of the many Necro threw, but things get very bloody very quick). Necro and Joe really had it out for Necro's face in this match, and we get the first unholy meeting of Necro's face with concrete when Joe powerslams Necro forehead first on the floor. The match plays better than almost any other crowd brawl, as we aren't walking while hair holding at any point, it's always just these two throwing punches, chops, and elbows. Necro drags a guardrail into the ring and used it on Joe, hitting a senton with Joe underneath, and Joe follows Necro's lead in using metal painfully by hitting a German suplex through a set up chair. They fight to the apron and Necro punches Joe straight across the face...before Joe hits the most famous exploder suplex within our circle of wrestling fandom, chucking Necro onto his head/neck/face.

This is the line for many people. You know for certain that you side with the sickos if you stick around after that suplex, as Necro leaves a visible blood puddle on the ground from where his face made first contact, and then his head starts spraying plasma. And it wasn't a deep red color, it was that red paint plasma that you see in movies like The Harder They Come, leaving at first drops and then puddles on the floor of the New Alhambra. I loved Necro's comeback, this bloody limp corpse suddenly firing punches to Joe's face and body, actually backing him up and making Necro come off like some sick freak Terminator. And of course that's when Joe decides he needs to start throwing his most brutal strikes of the match, especially his knee strikes which just bounce right off the side of Necro's head. The KO finish was the way this should have ended, Necro choosing death rather than ever getting pinned by conventional weapons. It's pretty amazing that he even stayed standing as long as he did, as I can't imagine the average man getting up from a fraction of the punishment Necro took. But, Necro was never merely an average man.

PAS: One of the great big fight auras in wrestling history. The entire crowd was rabid, the announce team was rabid and both wrestlers were foaming. The match opens with possible the last good forearm exchange in wrestling, there was no tough guy faces and your turn my turn forearming, just two lunatics in the pocket throwing as hard as they can. Joe sends Necro to the floor and wastes him with an elbow suicida. Necro unsurprisingly starts spraying blood after a Samoa Joe headbutt (he had wrestled in Japan the night before and cut himself especially deep to make a point to the Big Japan management, wrestling is fucking strange). The match is pretty one sided from this point, but in an awesomely one sided way. Necro takes some monstrously violent head trauma, including taking a powerslam with his forehead landing on concrete and a sheer drop exploder suplex off the ring apron onto the floor onto the crown of his skull. Necro timed his moments of offense perfectly, just when he seemed overwhelmed he would stun Joe with a couple of body shots or a straight right hand. Joe eventually snaps when he can’t put Necro away and obliterates him with knee lifts, with the blood flying off Necro’s head like activator juice in a Rick James video. Wild fight which felt like a combination of Marvin Hagler vs. Tommy Hearns and that viral video where that one teen girl hits the other teen girl in the head with a shovel. 

Verdict: Really a battle of two of the most violent matches in wrestling history. I think the crowd heat pushes this over the top. There is nothing like a wild insane crowd to add to the mania. It's close, but we got a new champ.

ALL TIME MOTY MASTER LIST

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New Footage Friday: YATSU~! TAKANO~! RED~! JOE~! FUGO FUGO~! TAKAYAMA~! JOETA~! CHAINS~!

Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Shunji Takano AJPW 6/5/89

MD: This was a recent Classics drop, a match we never had from the big 6/5/89 show. We don't have a ton of singles Yatsu matches from this period, as most of his big ones were tags or six-mans, so it was a welcome pick up. Takano is a guy that, if you had asked me in 89, and from performances alone, I would have told you would have been a much bigger star than Taue. He was a couple of years younger than him but much farther along, with more presence for his size, able to scrap with anyone on the roster, possessing a decent athleticism, and with those kicks that he'd use when the situation was warranted against someone like Abby or Hansen (or as the case may be here, Yatsu) as his secret weapon. They were loose allies as Takano was often the third guy in a Jumbo/Yatsu trios and started respectfully enough, but after Takano took a but too long on a break, Yatsu just exploded out of the corner on him with forearms and knees in the ropes and it became a heated ten minutes from there. This was 1989 AJPW so you could get a momentum shift from Yatsu just catching Takano off the ropes and shoving him down or Takano escaping a hold and just stomping Yatsu in the head on the way up. We got most of their big stuff, including Yatsu's power bomb (and a top rope elbow which was not one of his usual moves) and this great full rotation Saito suplex from Takano. When Takano did lay in those kicks in the corner, it felt like a full payment receipt for those early knees from Yatsu. The finish was weird, as Takano did seem to get his shoulder up and he was hot after the match. Definitely a good one to have escape the archive.

PAS: 80s All Japan is going to deliver big dudes hitting each other very hard, and this totally delivered that. Yatsu especially threw real heat including some big shots in the corner and a great looking throw. Yatsu had really powerful hips and he also got a ton of torque when he chucked someone. That finish was pretty badly blow which is why I imagine this was stuck in the vault for 30 years, but it was an entertaining 10 minutes nonetheless. 

Red vs. Samoa Joe ICW 6/26/15

MD: If the Red vs Rey match we saw a few weeks ago was worked like a dream match, this felt like much more of a sub-10 minute TV match sprint. It was a lot of fun though. The first half had Red try something only for Joe to one-up him: he hit a punch exchange and Joe just crushed him into the corner with a flurry; he got some chops off and Joe flattened him with one of his own. Things picked up to the point where Red's speed got him a DDT and a frog splash but the size differential made it so he could barely even reach over to hook a leg. After that it was just a matter of time before Joe caught him out of the corner and dropped him with the muscle buster (which Red somehow managed a face-first bump out of). You could haved tacked on a few minutes at the start with Red evading Joe and in the middle of Joe grinding Red down to have a more complete match but it was fun for what it was.

PAS: This was really fun stuff, it did feel like the best TV match of a week. Joe is a great bruiser and Red is one of the best working babyfaces of his era. I loved Joe just running through Red with a big shoulder block,  and his killer punch flurry in the corner. Red's comeback's worked really well, that snap rana was very cool, and the frog splash landed big. All of Joe's big bombs looked huge and it ended right when it should have.  

Fugo Fugo Yumeji/Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Joeta/Kendi Takeshima WUW 1/1/15

PAS: EXIT Underground is my new favorite wrestling thing. Takayama fits the chains perfectly as he has always been his best as a guy pushing the limits of violence, and he lays Takeshima out at the end of this match with a great looking side suplex and vicious knee strike. Still these matches are Fugo Fugo showcases and he delivers here, his stuff is like a mix of FUTEN and Kurisu which is an incredible mix. I love how he just will shut off all strike exchanges with sick headbutts, and he splits Takeshima with one after the match. He has great chemistry with Joeta and they are really killing each other with strikes and kicks in this match, Joeta has one whip kick from the floor which looks like it sends Fugo's jaw into the stand. Nothing I love more then super stiff wrestling in a filthy looking arena and this totally delivers on that promise.

MD: This wasn't quite as confined as the last match we saw with the chains, but no one was going anywhere anyway (except for that time where Fugo Fugo got knocked out of the ring). This had a real sense of inevitability given the way Takayama towered over his opponents and just crushed them down at will. It then became about whether or not Fugo Fugo would ever kick out or if he was bullheadedly going to fight off two guys forever. For a while, you got the sense he just might, just meeting them strike for strike for strike, just nasty shots all around. At one point they had him in their corner and you got the sense that Fugo Fugo's hubris might do him, but he roared back and when his thirst for violence was finally sated, he made that tag and that was basically the end of it. These chain rope matches need to make the rounds so they become Daniel Garcia's signature match and his blow off with Dante Martin in 2025 is in a match like this where Dante can't make use of the ropes to vault off of. In the meantime, we're more than happy to see 2010s Japanese vets beat the snot out of each other.

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Super Dragon Doesn't Want the Pistols to Whistle

Super Dragon is back!! After a six year hiatus (which followed a three year hiatus, which followed another three year break) Dragon came out last night at the PWG return to jump Bandido and form a heel trio with Taurus and Flamita. Who knows how many matches we will get (if any) but I am amped. Figured I would review a couple of his big matches and pump up the Super Dragon C+A

Super Dragon vs. Bobby Quance APW 10/25/02 - EPIC

SR: This was a serious contender for the greatest US indy match I've ever seen. Virtually flawlessly worked 30 minute junior epic which had everything – matwork, storytelling, selling, devastating moves and guys slapping eachother in the mouth. We start with 10 minutes of nearly uninterrupted matwork which was ultra tightly worked, smooth stuff. Quance is someone nobody really talks about anymore, but he was a great talent and just mindlbowingly good for a dude in his 2nd year of wrestling. The matwork they did here was much better than the wristlocky WoS imitation stuff you usually get in US indies and closer to lucha matwork with a bit of japanese influence sprinkled in. Quance would shoot for double leg takedowns and judo legtrips, while Dragon just pounces on him like a snake, in between working ultra tight pin attempts and slapping eachother. Quances tiger feint rana may be the single coolest move a skinny US junior has ever invented. This is 2/3 falls and both the first 2 falls have really smart finishes that pay off in the long run of the match. Dragon was incredibly vicious here, modifying his signature offense to work Quances arm, but he also did a great job selling a big head kick. Quances arm selling was pretty much flawless as he was struggling to hit his offense for the rest of the match and he looked quite sympathetic trying to take down his bigger, more vicious opponent. There were also numerous great counters from Super Dragon, ranging from Fujiwara armbars to turning a DDT into a powerbomb mid-air. He also had this amazing flying armbar. Match also had all the usual brutal offense, neck-compressing suplexes, huge double stomps and lariats etc. The finish is fucking infuriating, but please don't let that detract from the amazing work these two did here.

PAS: I didn't like this quite as much as Sebastian, the knife's edge between a pro-wrestler and a reckless maniac which Super Dragon lives on is what makes him so compelling. This was much more a typical juniors match, although admittedly one worked at a super high level. I loved all of the arm work and the different ways Super Dragon whipped into them, he feels like he could have been the world best Minoru Tanaka, and this match really made me think about how great Super Dragon would have been in BattlArts. Quance was a bit colorless, but I was super impressed with his matwork, and that 619 rana was excellent. His shooting star landed with a real thud too, which was nice. Finish had a ref bump and imposter Super Dragon run in and get the win (two matches two imposter Super Dragons), a bummer considering how good the work was, but it was still a treat to watch 

Super Dragon vs. Samoa Joe PWG 2/12/05 - EPIC

PAS: This is the rematch after Joe was able to beat Dragon by count out in their previous match. This was as border line unprofessional as you want a match up between these two to get. Dragon and Joe are just unloading with slaps, headbutts, chops and kicks, and every couple of minutes they interrupt the wrestling match they are having and just start a double murder. They do a cool countout tease with Joe crushing Dragon with a spectacular elbow suicida, and Dragon barely beating the 20 count. Joe almost gets the pin with a sick death valley driver, but Dragon is able to fight back, hitting a gross curb stomp where he grabs Joe by the nose, a top rope double stomp to Joe's neck and a psycho driver which dumped Joe right on his hot dog neck. Joe rolls to the floor and is able to get a flurry of slaps, but Dragon sneaks in right at 20 to steal a count out win. Though the fake Super Dragon jumping SD 1, kind of Shelton holed Joe a bit, but otherwise this was a classic, totally what I love about both guys. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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