AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/17 - 3/23

ROH 3/20/25

Satnam Singh vs. Sid Ellington

MD: Satnam's come a long way in as I don't think he could have fit his part quite right in a squash like this even a year ago, even when he was having the Danielson match. Ellington was about as game as could be, quite Darby-ish in his willingness to take months off of his life in order to help put Satnam over here. 

There was nothing particularly complex about this. Ellington rushed Satnam instead of accepting the handshake. Satnam brushed him off. Ellington rushed again and ducked a mammoth clothesline and got a shot in. Satnam brushed him off. Ellington tried again and basically got stomped into the mat. Now he was caught and, in a company that was once known for its biels, he ate probably the most spectacular one we've seen. Satnam chopped him a few times in the corner, played to the crowd fairly effectively about doing another, and then chucked him to the other side of the ring with another biel. Ellington managed one last gasp, by leaping onto Satnam's back. Satnam yanked him around into a press slam right into the turnbuckle which was one of the nastiest things I've ever seen, then ended him with a chokeslam. 

Straightforward enough, but it was the inbetween stuff that impressed me. Well, I was impressed by the biels and the press slam into the post too. I am a human being after all and Satnam is one in a billion. But those inbetween bits, brushing off the shot, taking his time walking from moment to moment and letting both the anticipation and the aftermath of everything he did set in, interacting with the crowd, just seeming alive in there as if he was a living breathing entity reacting to what was going on around him instead of going from spot to spot to spot. That matters and it's not easy and, when married to how big and how unique he is and how well he can move for his size, it definitely makes one feel like there's something there. 

The problem is that we're in 2025 and it's a weekly episodic televised business. We've been thirty years since a giant could be a real attraction. Vince, Sr. can't just send Andre around from territory to territory and then bring him back to MSG once a month. This is a company with Hobbs crashing through people, with Toa slapping the mat, with Wardlow out of action (one way or the other). It's a company with Ospreay and Omega, two guys who could be protected attractions in their own right (in entirely different ways), on top. It's a company where Mistico flies in for post-show six-mans and with Hologram back from injury, where a guy like Bill seems to have a ceiling as a heater.

If you see Satnam every week, he's no longer as special. You can build him to be beat, to be overcome, but you can only do that once or twice before he loses his luster. He'll always be a giant. He'll always be a threat. But he'll only be unstoppable until he's not. And by making him less special, unlike other wrestlers who can more easily take losses, you make everything less special, because he is so obviously special.

I'm not sure what the answer is for Bill or Toa or Wardlow. For Hobbs, it's push him as hard as you can push him. That much I've figured out. For Satnam, I almost hate to say it, but the answer is probably keeping him on ROH. He's a special attraction for the live crowd. The only people that get to see something so thoroughly amazing are the ones who pay a ticket and get there early or stick around; or that pay that extra fee for Honor Club. Just let him mow through people, do impressive things to young talent willing to enhance him. 

And then, when you're sure, when you're absolutely sure, when you have that guy who needs that rub, when you get that one basket to put all your eggs in, push him forward to TV and build him up and then have him be the wall for your new hero to climb. You only get to do it once though. Until then, let him amaze the people who really care week in and week out. I'm one of them, and I was sure as hell amazed by the attraction I saw here. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/20 - 5/26 Part 2

AEW Collision 5/25/24

Bryan Danielson/FTR vs Jeff Jarrett/Jay Lethal/Satnam Singh

MD: I thought about skipping this because I already said everything that needed to be said for the Dynamite singles match. I thought about just mentioning how great the commercial break was with Satnam doing damage while Jarrett and Jay (and Karen) sat on chairs on the outside and Nigel had a great one-liner about how he never called Tony "Whipped him into the ropes" as that would be silly. I thought about just noting that I'll write five-thousand words if they ever give us a Jarrett vs Danielson singles match. But this was really good. I don't need to say too much about it, but it was really good. You had Danielson getting one upped by Jarrett early and then instead of it working into a shine where the heel gets his comeuppance, it not playing out until the end. You had Satnam showing how dangerous he could and should be by just reaching over and cutting off Dax's shine and draping him over the top; it's as easy as that. You have the protection of Satnam by him not doing all of his big spots every match. He didn't do the body press here. He did do the head-dribbling; he hadn't done that in the Danielson match. That's a huge failing of modern wrestling, the Andrade Effect. Andrade's double moonsault should happen one out of five, maybe even ten matches. He should hit the moonsault most matches and only do the double one on the rare occasion that someone is going to organically roll out of the way. It's 2024 here. We're not all so bull-headed that we're trying to power bomb kidman when we've never done a power bomb in a life. I know that Ric Flair felt like he needed to get all of his signature stuff in because he would have been disappointed if Ray Stevens didn't, but it's better to draw the crowd into something immersive than just give them rote ritual. Don't do anything for the sake of doing it. If Satnam has a number of physically amazing spots, the fans will appreciate seeing the one or two that they actually got to see that sometimes others didn't get to see, as opposed to everyone always getting to see all of them.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Danielson vs Jarrett. Jarrett feeding for Danielson's stuff was so great, just the way he'd slam his whole body back and forth in response. I hated that they were doing the quick camera cuts on Danielson's dropkicks. It's Danielson and Jarrett! We're not talking someone from the Nightmare Factory who only has 40 matches under their belt (and those people will get there but at least then I get the impulse, right?). Don't do the camera cut and rob me of the chance to see Jeff Jarrett respond and react to Danielson flying at him! It'll be ok. I trust them. They trust each other. Production guy who will never, ever read this; please trust them too.

So yeah, this was good. In this case, it was even better at 15 minutes than it would have been at twenty five and it gave them so much to go back to. I just hope there's time to before it's all said and done.

AEW Double or Nothing 2024 5/26/24

Anarchy in the Arena

MD: There's no way to talk about any of these matches coherently. So let me tell a story instead. I caught this the morning after but hadn't been spoiled. Kind of weird thing happened midway through, though. My 11 year old woke up. One of the firm and fast rules of pro wrestling in the household is that it never gets in the way of my family life. I've told this story before but I basically moved in with my then five-year old stepson the same month of the Benoit incident and it was very informative on how much wrestling I have the kids consume. My main feeling is that if they came across it on their own and took an interest, great, I'd show them stuff. Otherwise, there was a firm line. I don't necessarily hide it from any of them, but I usually do stop watching if they come around and want to do something. But she was up early and I wanted to see the end of the match so I tossed her a headphone and we watched the back half together.

I'm not saying this was absolutely her first match ever, but she really doesn't have a working knowledge of the tropes, even if she great at English and has a strong sense of fiction in general. We came in at the point where all of the babyfaces were put through tables which built to the fire spot. And I have to admit, it was pretty tough. I had to explain why they set up the table instead of just laying someone on and jumping on them. Thankfully pro wrestling logic more or less works out. More importantly, I had to explain why everyone was bloody right at the get go. The first time she saw Dax or Danielson, she let out a "Ohhh!" in shock, and then was even more so when I explained how that happened and she was aghast and wanted to know why anyone would do that, to which I reminded her that the second she saw it, she went "Ohhh!" She was more shocked by the fire spot as you can imagine. But she didn't get how he was able to recover and come back later. In general, I repeated, multiple times, that this is the sort of thing they only do once a year.

The nicest thing I can say is that overall, I was able to explain the way causality and consequence worked here. Once Darby got tied up, even as his partners tried to save him, there was a sense that he just had to end up hanging up. It was inevitable. Once upon a time, the sheer threat of it would have been enough, and it would have been like knights saving a princess from a tower before a dragon devoured them. Now, the fans demand to see the dragon devour the princess, even if he spits her out later. But the idea of the Bucks' shoes ending up in Danielson's hands made total sense to her. That sense of hubris and comeuppance is universal. The heels did something that was dangerous but also the height of vanity and it backfired upon them. That sort of thing is primal. All of that is to say that the match mostly held together. If anything, you could be annoyed as a viewer that Perry was able to come back in and even get the win but you're sort of supposed to be annoyed by that, so long as he ultimately gets his comeuppance later on. But still, it would have been better if something like that could have mattered more. But you could say that about almost everything on the card, right?

I did go back to show her the beginning again, because she likes Final Countdown and I thought she'd get a kick out of it. That meant I had to explain why Perry was the Scapegoat so that was another headache. The match was full of things (fire, exploding weapons, gimmicked shoes, the music) that all were callbacks; it's very true that this drained some of the organic sense of violence of it all and the next time they run something like this it needs to be raw. At times it felt more like the Jarrett vs Briscoe Concession Stand Brawl (a WWE style food fight) than, let's say Mad Dog vs Demus. Next time they run this, they should be sure everyone is expecting the former and lean hard with the latter. Some of the individual moments were transcendent though, most especially some of the things Darby let happen to him and the two big musical moments: Darby hitting the coffin drop right as the words hit and the shot of Danielson reveling in it all with the wide shot. Still, it's best to remind yourself that it only happens once a year, give or take Stadium Stampede. It just means that the rest of the year should try harder to be like the two Satnam matches and define a baseline of meaning so that the rare match like this can play off of it. Anyway, right after this we watched To Catch a Thief together and that was a more wholesome family experience.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/20 - 5/26 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 5/22

Bryan Danielson vs. Satnam Singh

If there is an art to this thing called pro wrestling that we all love, it is this: creating the biggest emotional impact by doing as little as possible. That does not necessarily mean that one should never do anything and it doesn’t even mean that one should never do much. It means instead that every bit of effort should maximize the amount of possible impact. Whatever a wrestler does should carry with it the greatest possible impact in the moment, done in a way and at a time to create the greatest possible impact as part of a greater whole. And in order to achieve that, one should likely do as little as possible at each point, so as to increase the value of increased effort when it is most impactful. Pro wrestling is manipulation. Pro wrestling is conditioning an audience. It's using every tool imaginable to move hearts and minds relative to the needs of the moment and the match and the card. If you do more, it should matter more. It should be the means and not the end. Getting this wrong devalues every individual action for everyone and unbalances the possibilities of pro wrestling. Getting this right over time can create possibilities so that when escalation occurs (even and especially at times where it is not expected if done sparingly), it blows minds and sends an audience into a meaningful, mindful, focused, driven fervor, where they are not chanting for sensation and to hear their own voice but instead towards a purpose and narrative destination.

It's about using every emotional hook at one's disposal, everything with inherent value. That could be a geographic connection with a crowd, or a personal story that resonates with people, an injury, a difference in hierarchy or age, sheer athleticism used smartly, or an angle or storyline. It could be anything under the sun natural or contrived that can be used in lieu of action for the sake of action.

And yes, it can most certainly be the sheer existence of a towering giant. Giants are to be protected. Everything is to be protected in its own way (why? so you can cash in on that value when it matters and so that you can establish a meaningful baseline so that everything can matter in its own way; nothing for the sake of itself and everything with purpose!). Satnam especially should be protected. He's a legitimate giant in an industry that's shrunk over the last two decades with the right voices in his ear and as much agility as anyone his size ever. If we learned anything from the journey of Paul Wight, it's that hours of weekly primetime TV with featured matches devalues everything and everyone, but AEW with its cycled roster allows for someone like Satnam to be an attraction and to be special.

I've mentioned this before, but I learned so much from watching 89 Andre. He was mostly immobile and had lost much of his physical strength due to his injuries, but he was still a giant, in some ways even more so than he had been fifteen years earlier, for now he was wide and not just tall. He was one of the world's most famous wrestlers, a legend in his own enormous boots. He was considered a force of nature, and so long as he was treated that way by the other wrestlers and so long as he could leverage his own amazing instincts on when and how to act and when not to, his presence could be leveraged in the most amazing ways. He could accomplish more with a small move of his arm or an emanated sound and grimace than almost any other wrestler in history could do with a half dozen moves strung together.

Satnam has shown up on Dark or Rampage or ROH or a pre-show. We've got a match or two from a house show on tape. But generally, he's been used sparingly. In a world without Dark, it's tough because he needs reps too, and you can't move him from territory to territory. But he has been treated, if not as an attraction, then as someone used carefully. This was his biggest spotlight so far and it was against someone who knew how to make the most out of both the least and the most.

Here, that meant standing face to chest with Satnam to let the image burn into people's minds. It meant coming in with a gameplan of kicks in the best Inoki fashion only to get shoved away with ease. It meant letting things sink in with the chop in the corner and the stalling delayed vertical suplex. Satnam should take his time, should control the pace, should create a heavy, imposing atmosphere and here he did. At the same time, there was no need to rush right to the chokeslam on the apron when it's already established how deadly Satnam shoving Danielson away or tossing him into the stairs was. Teasing it was enough. Instead, with the accidental break of the table as either a planned spot or an inadvertent distraction, Danielson was able to get a few big jumping knees in. Satnam staggered but didn't fall. Then, when Satnam cut him off and did hit the chokeslam on the apron, it meant all the more for the build.

They moved into the finish with Danielson getting the low blow and using multiple knees to take Satnam down. Low blows aren't done every match or done right in front of the ref. They're protected and because they're protected, Satnam was protected by the tide turning because of one. It taking multiple knees to drop him didn't hurt either the knees or Satnam and in some ways helped both. And then Satnam was protected from the tap. Danielson had found a way, as the best in the world should. Satnam was shown to be a monstrous threat that could do damage to anyone at any moment and that couldn't be overcome cleanly. If they ever ran it back, people would be prepared for Danielson to have a nearly impossible hill to climb. And the storyline progressed towards the pay per view.

So much has been devalued over the years due to a penchant for excess, slavish devotion to sensation for the sake of sensation, and the burdens of weekly big match TV, so that any chance to restore weight of meaning like this should be lauded and appreciated. Wrestling can be this still. It can be this again! It’s not a lost art. It’s right there, just waiting for people to embrace it once more. The things that worked in the past worked for a reason and that reason lives in all of our hearts. The evidence is right here. People just need to reach out and rediscover the possibilities. Wrestlers have to stop working with us, stop working for us, and start working us again. A match like this can light the way.

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