AEW Five Fingers of Death 7/13 - 7/19

ROH TV 7/16/26

Eddie Kingston/Ortiz/Adam Priest/Tommy Billington vs Shane Taylor Promotions (Shane Taylor/Lee Moriarty/Shawn Dean/Carlie Bravo)

MD: I can hear it in your head.

Ospreay VS Brooks Was 8 Minutes Long With Will Working From Underneath When He's The Title Contender? What's The Ticket Sales For All In? How About Summerslam? Did The Dynamite Rating Hold Up? What Did Collision Do Against SNME? Danhausen Brought Out Karl-Anthony Towns? WWE Is Booking New York? Does That Mean There'll Be A Grand Slam To Counter SaudiMania? Someone Posted A Hogan VS Michaels Clip. Got To Post A Take On That. Dave Didn't Post The Mercedes/Maya Star Rating Yet? But He's In Arena Mexico. What's Going On With Sammy? What's Aminata's Contract Status? What About Bayley? Alvarez Says We Should Criticize AEW. Some Fans Say We Just  Should Focus On The Positives. Why Am I Typing This Like Ric Flair Tweets? What Did Styles Say This time? It's G1 Season. Big TJPW Show To Catch Up On. The TNT Champion Is Challenging at the PPV Again? Liv Morgan Supports Conversion Therapy? Tony Khan Is Playing 5 Star Booker? The Triangle of Madness Have Stardom Titles Now? 

Stop

Just stop.

Breathe. Take a breath.

None of that is going anywhere. 

Or it is, but you don't need to go with it for a few minutes.

It'll be there when you get back. Or the next thing will. Or the next. Or the next.

And you won't miss much of anything. It's fine. It'll be fine. There's something better for you out there.

A match.

A professional wrestling match.

It's full of story but not part of any storylines. 

It didn't go viral. Haven't seen a single clip from it. 

But it has eight practitioners of their craft, artists. Guys who have been around the block, guys who are on the rise, different sizes, shapes, styles. 

Twelve and a half minutes of freedom from everything above. It's on Honor Club. You have to want it to watch it. You're going to be surrounded by people who want it. It's in front of a studio audience there to see hours of wrestling. Small, intimate crowd. People who care. People who love it. People who are passionate enough to love it that much for what it is and not for all the noise around it. 

Where's Eddie Kingston been? 

Here. He's been here. Teaming with Ortiz. Wrestling with the younger guys. Wrestling the younger guys. Staring off against Shane Taylor. And yeah, you've missed him, but you don't need to miss him. He's right here waiting for you. 

Just get off the never-ending train to nowhere. Take a breath. Relax. Watch some pro wrestling that exists for the sake of pro wrestling. To entertain a crowd. To make Honor Club worth the price. To get guys reps. To create something out of nothing.

What does it look like when Eddie and Ortiz team with Priest and Billington? What does it look like when Shane Taylor Promotions come out at full strength? What does the clash of the two look like?

Aren't you curious? Even though it's not going to score you any points in any online argument. Even though it probably won't even get a look from the Observer. Even though this episode of ROH only has ONE vote on Cagematch. 

Doesn't that still sound interesting? Doesn't it sound more interesting than a lot of things that you feel far more obliged to watch and follow and post about?

Trust me when I tell you that it's better for your soul.

It was sure better for mine.

And yes, there were stories galore here, because characters drive stories and look at these characters. Ortiz and Bravo to start. Does Bravo respect the Code of Honor? No. He's tells the crowd to shut up and has a single finger on each hand for Ortiz instead. Mood set.

They trade rolling leg picks. Bravo goes under and around the leg. Ortiz gets behind him with a hammerlock. They burst into rope running. Ortiz drops down, gets a leap frog, hits an armdrag. Great way to start a match.

More stories. Eddie comes in and hits a Japanese arm drag on Dean. Dean yelps that it's an illegal move in the United States. Small crowd theatrics, maybe the best kind? Billington tagged in intending to chop down Taylor. Fearless bulldog mentality but up against a tank. Contrast makes things interesting. Styles make fights. It took Billington, Priest, and Ortiz working together to take him down. Things (like Taylor's size) mean something, have significance. 

Sometimes you want to see like vs like too. Adam Priest is any style. Lee Moriarty is the pure champ. They face off and Moriarty goes for a rolling leg pick of his own, but Priest had seen it twice so far in the match and jams it with a nasty back elbow to the jaw.

But then, Priest gets swept under. Transitions are structural, as important as any part of the match. Moriarty distracts the ref as Priest hits the ropes. Dean trips him and hits a stunner onto the apron, Bravo hits a knee drop off the apron, Taylor hits a legdrop on it. It takes mere seconds and changes everything.

Adam Priest, maybe the best heel of the 2020s, is out there playing face-in-peril, constantly reaching for his corner, constantly dragging himself across the mat, looking for any sign of hope and trying to create his own when there's none to be found. But STP stretch and do their thing. They toss him to the floor and swarm him. Bravo works small, little flourishes full of confidence. Dean has that same confidence, but he works bigger and more over the top with it. Moriarty is precise, contorting body parts, hitting suplexes, holding bridges (just as confident). Taylor is a wrecking ball. Priest tries to fire back on him. It doesn't go well for poor Adam. 

Nevertheless, Priest doesn't quit. He doesn't give up. He keeps on running, keeps on fighting, and manages to double down with Bravo after simultaneous clotheslines. He gets the hot tag. Eddie comes in like the (beloved) maniac he is. The Kobashi chops in the corner. He directs traffic. His team unloads and then toss Bravo in for an exploder. STP comes back and do the same to Eddie, tossing him in to a Taylor uranage. Things have broken down but even in chaos, there's a beautiful undercurrent of symmetry and order.

It's an 8-man tag. Plenty of people to break up pins. Plenty of offense to feature as well. Things waterfall. One guy rushes in to hit a bit of signature offense, then the next, but it all happens so quickly, and here in the finishing stretch after the meat of the match has already been consumed, that you can relax and enjoy it. The subsequent dives cleared the ring and the finish had Priest's half crab, a missile dropkick out of nowhere by Billington and dueling roll ups leading to the pin.

The progression was just right. Opening exchanges. Shine. Heat. Comeback. Chaos. Completion. All underpinned by contrast and character.

Sometimes a match can "just" be a match. That's not an insult. It can be wonderful. That doesn't mean it lacks story. It doesn't mean it doesn't draw you in. In some ways, it helps you let go and can draw you in all the more. It cuts out the distractions and lets you focus on the passion and the craft.

That doesn't mean there aren't things coming out of this I'd want to see too. We got a taste of Priest vs Moriarty. What does a Pure Title match between the two look like. We've seen Infantry vs Ortiz/Kingston once, but there's way more left on the bone. And yeah, Billington wanted to challenge himself against Shane Taylor. If he wants it that badly, I'd want to see him have the chance.

In a world without house shows, where the analytics of every quarter hour of TV is carefully examined, where fans are pushed by the algorithm to care most about lore, divisive arguments, and what's trending, a match like this can be a breath of fresh air.

I got the train for twelve minutes and just enjoyed myself. You can too. You'll be better off for it. A match like this is a gift, an increasingly rare gift. Log off for a bit and go open the present. 

You can be present. It's okay. The noise will be waiting for you whether you want it to be or not.

Enjoy the gift while you can. We don't get enough of them anymore.

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

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Lee Moriarty vs. Josh Woods

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

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

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

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

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

But yeah, I have some heat with Posey here.

AR Fox vs. Shane Taylor

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

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

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

Gypsy Joe Invitational

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But...

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/4 - 3/10

AEW Collision 3/9/24

Bryan Danielson vs Shane Taylor

MD: There were three or four cascading stories to this one. First and foremost, Shane Taylor is a big, dangerous guy. I've been watching some 1987 baby Hashimoto matches as of late. He's usually paired up with young lions like Chono and Nogami and Anjo, and these aren't at all slouches, even at the start of their careers, but my big takeaway is that it's just not fair. Hashimoto is too big and too quick and too skilled and agile enough to make Maeda's spin wheel kick look like nothing compared to his own. Taylor isn't quite that, but he still brings a ton to the table, that combination of size and power and striking and precision blocking. Danielson sees the leg here as a wedge, as a way in, as a bridge to other offense, as a great equalizer, and he gets there eventually, first to open up the match and then later on to set up the finishing stretch, but Taylor sure didn't make it easy for him. He blocked early, counter-punched, and even once Danielson created that wedge, was just able to bully him towards the corner to take over. 

Then there was the morality at play and the underlying animus empowering Taylor. Danielson came into AEW as a pretty clear babyface, but during his second real feud in the company, with Adam Page for the title (preceded, of course, by the Kingston match in the tournament to give him the shot), he took a hard left turn, running through Dark Order members. In between the loss to Page and the Revolution match with Moxley that would herald the creation of the BCC, Danielson, mean, cruel, brutal, kicked Lee Moriarty's face in. Moriarty never quite made it into the BCC. He ended up under Taylor's wing instead. This may be a more serene, Bryan Danielson, one on the other side of his match with Kingston, at peace with himself and the world around him, but that doesn't erase his transgressions of the last two years. It meant that Taylor had something to fight for, something to prove, something to avenge, and even things that should have worked, like the focus on the leg, only worked so much.

Therefore, Danielson had to find another wedge, be it kicking high or using Taylor's just rage against him. At key moments he was able to dodge, to duck, to avoid, and therefore to open Taylor up again. The punches that Taylor was hitting early became far more challenging down the stretch. Kicks from Danielson that might have been blocked early, hit true once damage was done. He still had Taylor's power to contend with. While he wrapped the leg around the post, he never really locked on any meaningful hold; that wasn't the intent of the targeting. Instead, he chipped away at the armor here and there, provided himself the means to strike at the heart within. It took effort, persistence, skill, but he was able to duck and dodge and roll and create distance just enough to sail across the ring with a knee that would put him down for three seconds. Ospreay was coming out after the match. While Danielson's reputation speaks for itself, their most recent pay-per-view efforts had very different results. Danielson was coming off from a loss and needed a meaningful win. Taylor's own record isn't stellar, but between his size, his presence, his strikes, his righteous fury, Danielson's win mattered enough to paper over the loss to Kingston.

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