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

AEW Collision 11/15/25

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

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

It can be an opportunity. 

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

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

It can be an excuse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ROH TV 11/13/25

Athena/Billie Starkz vs Hyan/Maya World

MD: Here's what makes pro wrestling great. 

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

And all that? That was Athena selling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/21 - 7/27

AEW Dynamite 7/23/25

FTR vs JetSpeed 

MD: Wrestling isn't math. 

Except.

And yet, they found a way to overcome.

Wrestling isn't math, except for when it comes to the maximized balance of a southern tag. There became a trend over the 2010s, all the way from the start of the decade, where finishing stretches to tag matches got longer and longer and longer, gobbling up more of the shine and heat. Eventually, half the match took place after things broke down, creating minute after minute of exciting action where all four wrestlers could come in at the same time, cycling in and out, spot after spot, nearfall after nearfall, endless noise crashing into the face of the fans. 

It came at a cost. Ironically, it was the exact opposite of the Bulldogs-driven WWF 80s house style (maybe an overcorrection now that we have even more footage, but not too much of one), where the shine became so long relative to the heat and comeback that matches fell into a "heel-in-peril" mode. Modern tags tend to have everything break down as soon as possible so as to fit the maximum amount of sensation into the match.

The problem is this: it does a disservice to the natural benefits of the southern tag. You ramp up the pressure as much as possible during the heat so that the moment of comeback means as much as possible. The benefit of the tag gimmick isn't that there are four wrestlers in the ring at once as much as possible (that's a Tornado Tag, totally different thing). It's the rules keeping a wrestler out until a tag. That allows for an entirely different sort of hope spot and cutoff than you can get in a singles match, one that hinges on the idea that salvation is just around the corner, one heroic, desperate grasp away. To toss that by the wayside just to do more "stuff" is almost criminal, with the victim being the narrative advantages of the form.

The Revival found a way to compensate in the mid-10s, because they had the canvas to do so in NXT. Less constrained by time limitations in their role as a featured act on a developmental brand, they were able to simply put more into the matches. The finishing stretches were just as long and just as elaborate as ever, but it didn't come at the cost of lengthy heats. They rebalanced the equation by taking up more real estate making those exciting stretches actually mean all the more for how they were earned but it was a luxury that wouldn't carry forward onto the main roster. 

Coming off the exceptional Outrunners match from a few weeks ago, where they raised the stakes on the heat by putting both babyfaces in peril simultaneously, they again pushed the storytelling envelope last week, this time against JetSpeed. Here, they came up with a plausible way to have everything break down extremely early, almost from the start but in a way that still (as a one time thing to be used very, very rarely) managed to serve the possibilities of the form due to the simple threat of paying off narrative expectations. 

The name of the game here was pressure. This was part of an eliminator series for a title shot. The stakes were high. There are spots and then there is strategy, and when the former is underpinned in a character driven way, everything shines. It sounds simple but it actually happens in a relatively small number of matches. Some of the best wrestlers of decades past were able to do it instinctually. In today's comprehensively planned out style of pro wrestling, it has to be baked into the mix.

Here, it absolutely was. FTR charged in early and attempted an immediate Shatter Machine. They wanted the quick win. When that failed, they just kept pressing and pressing, trying to pull JetSpeed under. 

They never could for long though. I'd argue that this didn't necessarily have a shine. I'd argue that it didn't really even have a heat. I wouldn't call this the sort of "sputtering heat" you'd get from 80s Guerreros matches. It was simply constant pressure from FTR in a way that needed an absolute purity of vision to work. The heat was constantly threatened but it was never allowed to manifest. 

They tried using Dax's jacket to cut off the ring (early enough that the ref would allow it). They tried pile drivers on the outside. They had Dax slam JetSpeed into Cash's elbows and knees (not his fault as he was still holding the tag rope, as he was quick to point out). They tried the PowerPlex, twice. When they went to the legs for Bret's figure four around the ringpost, it worked right until it didn't, leaving Dax as an open target for Speedball's kicks. They pressed and pressed and pressed, but they couldn't hold the offense for more than a minute at the time. 

But it was that pressure even in the face of JetSpeed's comebacks, that gave the match form and substance. It never came off as "Your Move, My Move." It never even felt like momentum shifts to me. It was the constant, incessant, groaning pressure from FTR and JetSpeed using their skill, speed, finesse, and heart to constantly push back against it and get their shots in. 

I'm not sure I've ever quite seen a tag like it. I led off by talking about southern tags, but after a second watch, this really wasn't a southern tag at all, because it never really came together in a way to break down in the first place. For it to still feel coherent, for it to still feel story-driven, for it to feel purposeful and not just like a tornado tag spotfest, for it to still somehow feel like a conventional tag match that threatened, at any and every point to become a southern tag and to start a heat segment that JetSpeed never quite allowed to come, is, to me, very impressive in and of itself.

A structural achievement and a testament to both teams. I thought there was still meat on the Outrunners bone, different variations of that same story that they could do with another team in another way six or nine months down the line.

With this, I think they stretched it just about as far as it could go without it falling apart completely and losing cohesion and focus like so many other spotfest tags of the last fifteen years. 

That said, part of me wants to see them try to prove me wrong. 

AEW Collision 7/26/25

Dustin Rhodes vs Lee Moriarty

MD: With Fletcher looming later this week, it's hard to say how many Dustin defenses we'll actually get, but I'm glad we got this one. It had time to breathe, a dueling limb story, and Lee served as a very game, very unique opponent.

He's the ROH Pure Champion, and it made sense for Dustin to not try to face him along those terms. But this was Dustin's first defense of a major singles title in decades and the TNT belt, itself, can switch between being a TV type title and something more prestigious depending on who has it. You got every impression that Dustin wanted to come in like a classic champion and take things to the mat. Lee kicking the hand away on the shake to the start only drove that thought home, as did his early bits of finesse leading to a Border City Stretch out of a rollup.

That was right down Moriarty's alley as Pure Champ, to burn rope breaks early even on moves that wouldn't get him the win, ones that were more about bluster and opportunity than actual damage. In fact, if you look through the match, Dustin would have burned his third rope break towards the end on the bodyscissored anklelock. That's great cover for Moriarty in losing because if this was a Pure match instead, he very likely would have won with a hold shortly thereafter.

It wasn't though, so that served more as insult than injury and led to Dustin taking things to the outside and unloading on Moriarty's arm. Shortly thereafter, Moriarty was able to get a Dragon Screw out of nowhere and hone in on Dustin's leg. 

And that was match for you. Dustin, given his reach advantage and Moriarty's arm, was going to win on a standup strike exchange. Moriarty, on the other hand, could lean hard into his own youth and speed advantage to hit Dustin quickly and from odd angles to take him off his feet. At one point, for instance, Dustin kicked Moriarty all of the way out of the ring on a figure four attempt. It was just a hope spot however, as Moriarty was able to dart back into the ring at high speed and take the leg out once more. Even after Taylor worked his arm out on the outside, Moriarty still couldn't get every hold he wanted every way he wanted however. 

Solid substance for the match and they worked it through the break until Dustin could come back with a powerslam and a pretty interesting Destroyer which Dustin, himself, took as a flat back bump instead of seated. No idea if that was intentional or not but if not it was a happy accident that served the match, since it allowed him to plausibly protect his leg on it. They went around a bit on the finish, including Dustin going for the Unnatural Kick and paying for it (but only to the tune of a one count, maybe not the time or place for it, but if this is his one title defense, what the hell, right?). Lee got a more legitimate naerfall after that and Dustin only managed to sneak out a win on a roll up on a second figure-four attempt. It'd be lovely if we had another five or six of these types of matches from Dustin against all sorts of comers, but I'm glad we got this one and I'm glad that it had the time it did.

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Janela v. Speedball v. 2 COLD!!

41. Joey Janela v. Speedball Mike Bailey v. 2 Cold Scorpio C4 5/27/16

PAS: Powerbomb.TV delivers with this barrel of fun 3 way dance. Janela gets a great heel reaction from me by turning a singles match into a 3-way, always my least favorite booking move, but bumps his way into my heart, with a missed top rope senton on the ring apron which looked chiropractic. The low celling was clearly fucking up his flying, but outside of that 2 Cold looked awesome, he is wrestling like an athletic Gypsy Joe at this point, as he mixes in shoot punches and chops with great looking flip kicks right into faces. I really enjoyed all of the karate sparring face offs with Bailey early, and Scorp isn't afraid to take a shooting star kneedrop right to his kidneys. This had some of the 3-way awkwardness, but man alive did I love watching it.

ER: What a ridiculous match, that I very much loved. Janela is an actual weirdo, and I like weirdos, and while I hate 3 ways, I like weirdos getting jammed into 3 ways. And 3 ways with 3 lunatics are probably the best kind of 3 ways. So we get three loons doing loony stuff and it's pretty wonderful. This is one of my absolute favorite Bailey performances, just goofy and nasty all at once, with moonsault kneedrops and dropkicks running from outside the building and on point spinkicks and kicks and kicks and kicks. Scorp had a minor flub that really didn't matter to the overall match quality, and was also wearing some absurdly aggressive dick pants. They may as well have had arrows on the front of them. He's in his 50s now and still really good, and gets tremendous power behind his chops and strikes. I loved all his kicks, his vaulting legdrop out of the corner, and his willingness to lean into both guys' attacks (jeez that shooting star kneedrop to his kidneys!!). Janela worked this smart in terms of the match structure, bringing big bumps and some nice saves instead of jamming himself into convoluted 3 way spots. That somersault senton off the top to the apron was just stupid times ten, and I loved seeing his arm get redder and redder as Bailey kept kicking it. This is a weird instance of the 3 way being possibly better than any combo of singles match between these guys. I'm sure all the possible singles matches would have been awesome, but I don't know if they would have upped the crazy to these levels. Hopefully they test this theory in 2017, because I'd still watch it.

2016 ONGOING MOTY LIST

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2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

5. Speedball Mike Bailey v. Trevor Lee PWG 4/3

PAS: One of the best turn the dial to 11 indy matches I have ever seen. I watched Mad Max Fury Road earlier today, and in many ways this was that kind of wrestling match, never has Speedball's nickname been so apropos, cause I felt like I did a speedball before I watched it. I hadn't seen much Lee before, but he was great, he has this Clay Guida look, and kind of wrestles like Guida, intense always attacking and with great closing distance speed, when an opening presented itself he would leap right on it. He had some really brutal stuff, too, nasty running forearms, great dropkick, crazy judo throw. Bailey has some fun fancy shit, crazy kung fu movie kicks, and great highspots, and was awesome as a guy trying to fight off a wolverine. Finish run had spot of the year, don't want to ruin it, but it was fucking lunacy, and then Bailey hits this great looking double knee shooting star off the apron, but by the time he rolled him in and set up another shooting star, Lee had been given enough time to plausibly recover, and he got his knees up and hit a nasty small package driver for the pin. Most PWG matches have endless 2.9 sections which eventually just lose him, this had a killshot, but it was outside the ring, so I bought the recovery, and then instead of a bunch more near falls Lee just grabbed him and smashed him. Awesome stuff, that I can see both Segunda Caida people and people who don't love us agreeing on.

ER: I had seen Lee a couple times before and didn't think much, and Bailey is a SC favorite at this point, but Lee in this match is a wholllllle nuther son of a bitch. This guy was relentless here. Everything he did seemed so natural, even some spots that I've never seen look like anything but two guys being verrrry cooperative with each other. Comparing him to Clay Guida isn't very nice, as Lee is way more interesting than Guida, and does way more than headbang and dry hump his opponent to death. I apologize in advance for Kenny Omega eventually adopting a "dry hump opponent to death" gimmick. Lee threw some of the best running forearms I've seen, exploding late and looking great. He tossed Bailey around in some really impressive ways, rolling naturally into a nice Karelin throw. Bailey is a great underdog babyface and feeds nicely off of Lee's constance. Phil was kind and didn't spoil the spot of the year, but I'm cruel and will say that it was a beautiful, certifiably crazy, dangerous nasty reverse rana on the ring apron (and the apron was reallll narrow). As stupid as it might read, the move came off real organically and was just epic. Bailey tops it off with a shooting star kneedrop off the apron onto Lee's back. His freaking back! Also, it should be noted that Bailey wrestles barefoot, which means he's one of the rarest lunatics. How easy would it be to break a toe, crush your heel, damage one of those couple dozen little bones in there. Bumping barefoot just sounds...stupid. The finish, as Phil mentioned, is logical, satisfying, and original. We were watching it together and I wouldn't stop babbling about it. Bailey goes for a shooting star, Lee gets the knees up, and while Bailey is hunched over from landing on knees Lee grabs him in a small package, fluidly rolls through it and in one motion hits the package driver to end it. The whole sequence looked great. This match goes just the right amount of time, delivers some great, constant action (even the chinlocks had nice character stuff, as Lee undoes his hair so it hangs down in Bailey's eyes and mouth) and was a real blast.


2015 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

54. Biff Busick vs. Speedball Mike Bailey CZW 7/12

PAS: Not a real mat based match like the Thatcher or Gulak series, but more of spotfest indy title match. Really fun example of that match though. Busick does a nice job of mauling Bailey and is a pretty good base for some of Bailey's highspots, and Bailey has really great looking highspots. I liked his spin kicks and his rapid fire switch leg kicks. His big run of offense including catching Busick in mid air and hitting a backflip powerslam, a spinning splash and a top rope shooting star double knee, it is hard to be impressed by spots in 2014, but that was impressive. Cool finish run by Busick too, and that head throw choke by Biff is one of the best finishers in wrestling

ER: The more I see Bailey the more I really dig his kicks, and as much as I love those matches it's awesome to see Busick in against non-Thatcher/Gulak types. The guy really has a nice adaptable arsenal and can hop into any match type. Phil is right that Busick's headlock takeover slam is one of the best things in wrestling today. Every time I see it I keep imagining the guy's head getting popped off like a grape. Busick is a real bully to Bailey and it was a great visual to see him holding one side of Bailey's face while smacking him down with the other. Big, rough 45 degree downward smacks. Phil also mentioned my favorite spot (easily one of the coolest wrestling moments of the last year), when Busick runs full speed at Bailey with that old gigantic Mike Knox crossbody, but comes in too high, and Bailey uses the natural momentum to flip over into a kind of moonsault powerslam for an awesome near fall. I'm really getting used to these "Bailey vs. indy asskicker" matches.


2014 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

58. Kevin Steen v. Speedball Mike Bailey C*4 5/3

PAS: Really great match, one of my favorite Steen matches ever. Worked really similar to the NXT Owens v. Zayn match, with Steen as this violent threshing machine and Bailey trying to survive. Nasty chops, big powerbombs, throws into chairs, Bailey really took a pounding. Bailey unloads some really cool spin kicks here and they time them nicely to stun or slow down Steen, Bailey is one of the best guys at using fancy martial arts in a wrestling context, although his flying spots aren't as impressive here as his kicks. Built to a big set of near falls, and by the end the crowd was going bananas. Really good indy wrestling style match

ER: Man I loved Steen in this. Had almost a modern indy Finlay feel to him, as he would do some dangerous indy spots, but pepper in things like standing on Bailey's hands or raking his face with his boot eyelets (which will ALWAYS make me like a match that much more). Bailey is a cool little worker as his flying stuff can be impressive, breaking out loony things like shooting star kneedrops or shooting star sentons (like an inside version of Richochet's 630) but not always with the crispness or ease of some of the flyers regularly featured on say Lucha Underground. His main selling point are his cool strikes and he has a way of throwing big arching spin kicks and always making sure they land with precision. Steen is more than game for that kind of action as he leans way into Bailey's kicks. Steen was a real fun bully here, dishing out big chops, a great kneedrop, crotching Bailey on the post, splatting him with a few sentons, and the coup de grace: a devastating powerbomb on the apron that deserves Jim Ross freaking out and spitting more than most calls. My problems with the match were that powerbomb looked so brutal that it should have resulted in death, not been something that happened 2/3 of the way through; and Bailey doesn't seem to sell any more in this match than Steen does, which seems odd to me. It ended up being worked fairly even by the end which, if you've seen both men, doesn't quite add up for me. But I cannot deny how much fun I had watching it and I always enjoy two guys who complement each other this nicely.


2014 MASTER LIST

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