AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/13 - 1/19 Part 2

Athena vs Thelka Stardom 1/13/25

MD: I really shouldn't have sat on this for so long. I thought it was great. The same Athena, just in a different environment, with a different opponent, with a different layout, and a bit of a different role. This was "ace" Athena and honestly bodes well for All In if they're going to go Athena vs Mercedes like some people are thinking.

She was as giving as I'd seen her in this run to start too. Thelka, who was already under her skin coming into it, slapped her right from the get go and sidestepped so that Athena went tumbling. She tossed her into the chairs and really didn't look back for a number of minutes. Athena had a couple of bits of hope (such as one where Thelka, always vocal, had been jawing with the ref) where she started to fire back but she got cut off. It wasn't until she was able to fly across the ring with a kick while Thelka was on the top that she really took over.

She controlled for a while after that, a lot of hugely impactful shots with a real sense of vengeance (goddess scorned sort of stuff that she's so good at) before things opened up and became more back and forth. Athena was just a little more creative than usual here, supplementing her usual offense for the setting. It didn't always work but they did an admirable job turning it into perceived struggle when it didn't (I'm fairly certain the straightjacket powerbomb didn't work as planned but they recovered so well and so fluidly it hardly mattered).

Down the stretch she really did feel like an Ace, with HATE coming in and Athena able to dispatch them with relative ease. It gave Thelka a temporary advantage but in the grand scheme of things, it made Athena look larger than life on the road to the magic forearm and the O-Face.

I'll be honest. Not a ton of people saw this. I write about Athena's matches all the time and it took me a month+ to see it. There's no reason why this couldn't be a good part of a blueprint for a Mercedes match at All In if they want to go that route, just with a bit more of her particular style and some more crowd pandering for the homestate Texas crowd. I'm glad I went back for this one.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/30 - 1/5

Stardom New Year Dream 1/3/25

Athena/Thekla vs. Mina Shirakawa/Tay Melo

MD: Pretty fun attraction tag here with a lot of moving parts. You had Athena debuting in Japan, her first time teaming with Thekla, her first time facing Mina, Tay's first match back in forever. Lots of interesting stuff. Athena was absolutely herself here. There was a moment relatively early on when Thekla was taking it to Tay on the outside where Athena seemed to be just soaking it all in and Thekla yelled at her to go after Mina, but other than that, the full Athena experience. She didn't adapt her act, but then she didn't have to. The stuff early on where she was able to react to Mina in her natural element was excellent (and I get the idea that Mina is thought to be underutilized relatively in Stardom, but she also felt entirely natural and confident here; more on that in a second). Since not that many people saw this, they can easily play this back in the states to high effect. The bit where Mina had Athena trapped and forced her to clap to We Want Mina was a great bit I'm not sure I'd seen out of her before and of course Athena's facial expressions during it were gold.

I really liked Thekla here too, incredibly vocal, always talking to Athena, to her opponent, to the ref, to the crowd. I'm not entirely sure it worked but I think a lot of that wasn't necessarily her fault. Just match card placement and lack of familiarity maybe. Tay looked good coming off such a long break. I don't think they nearly tapped into what they could have with her as an over the top heel, but she has a natural likability that mixes well with the MMA stylings. She'll be a fresh opponent for Athena if they wanted to go that route, but one great thing about Athena is that she came out of this with natural, organic animosity towards everyone anyway, even her own partner.

WrestleDynasty 1/5/25

Athena vs. Momo Watanabe vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Persephone 

MD: Honestly, this was one of the most enjoyable four-ways I've seen in forever. Usually they're a doomed sort of match because of contrived spots, nothing resonating, people acting completely out of character to make things work, and wrestling physics getting thrashed, plus lots and lots of people laying outside the ring. This had some of that but not much at all.

What made it work was that everyone stayed true to both who and what they were. There was a sort of different styles feel to this at times and there were mini stories within and then individual moments that both played on them and happened around them. Persephone worked well with Willow as a base but she also seemed absolutely intent to run gutsy strength spots against her and she managed around three throughout the match each one hitting better than the next. While I don't think Momo was the biggest presence here, she had a strong heel vs heel standoff with Athena. 

Then you had the moments. Athena, Willow, and Persephone reacted so well to everything that happened around them (with Momo not quite getting the same opportunity to do so that I saw). Athena would nail Willow with a forearm in the corner, the biggest most natural and organic smile and turn right into a shot from someone else. Likewise after Willow snuck in to make a pin or Persephone realized she had and opening. They were feeling the moment and riding the high of it all. Nothing (not even the dives) felt overly contrived. The finish was not just clever but played off the previous tag and was gripping visually. It looked like Watanabe took Athena's head off. Definitely one of the best 4-ways I've seen in ages. It just worked (and that is no small thing).

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs. Sho/Yoshinobu Kanemaru

MD: This is a fun bonus to 2025 that you would not have predicted, maybe ... well, ever. Just a fun pre-show match where Sammy really got to shine. That meant the big moonsault early, a nice face-in-peril performance including absolutely sailing across the ring on a back body drop. I was kind of sort of wondering how many more chances he'd get but maybe he deserves one more to reframe himself as a big-bumping upper mid-card heel (a la 1989-90 Mr. Perfect) who can make the up and coming babyfaces look great. Down the stretch you got Kanemaru/Dustin shtick which is really what you wanted in the first place and wouldn't mind seeing again. I liked the bit during the heat when Sho stepped on the belt too. You don't see that specific jerk move often. This hit the right marks.

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I don't repost every twitter notepad essay here (so if you want to see them all, give me a follow: https://x.com/MattD_SC) but I think this one maybe deserves it.  

The Emperor and his Clothes: Will Ospreay Coming off of World's End

Kyle Fletcher had an amazing Continental Classic. Coming off of Full Gear, he was that rarest of beasts in 2024, the heel who actually had heat. On that first night against Shelton Benjamin, the fans let him know it. Both he and Shelton leaned hard into the opportunity and they had maybe the clearest, sharpest heel vs face matchup AEW offered in ages. He went on to have similarly remarkable matches against Okada and Briscoe before ending the round robin section against Garcia in a match that felt like a prelude to a bountiful, vibrant future before us.

It all led to the semi-final (re)match against Will Ospreay. If you had asked me a week and a half ago, I would have told you without hesitation, without doubt, that AEW had to strap up Will Ospreay as soon as possible. He had to be the guy to lead the company, the hot hand. The Death Riders experiment stumbled because of a lack of commitment by the company to let it be a true central focus. Now with the soft reboot onto MAX, they should run with a hot babyface and push him hard. I like Ospreay as a personality even if he's not my favorite wrestler. He's earnest and warm and amiable. He can obviously make a splash with his physical prowess.

And they had assembled a sort of Ospreay-verse of suitable opponents over the last year: Fletcher, Ricochet, Takeshita, Okada, guys who had that extra gear to keep up with him. Even better, all four of them were starting to stooge and stall and play to the crowd differently, so not only did they have that extra high gear, but the low gears they needed to serve as contrast and get under the skin of the fans so that it wasn't all fireworks all the time, so that the fans weren't just glad to be there and witness Greatness but that they also wanted to see Ospreay triumph and the heels fail. It seemed like a pretty solid engine for success, even despite my own misgivings.

After World's End, I have second thoughts. As spectacular as he is, I just don't think Ospreay has the wherewithal to be the sort of breakthrough ace they need. He can make a splash, but to diminishing returns. It's all because he leaves so many narrative opportunities on the table in his matches. He takes up the air in the room so nothing can breathe. It's fine with an attraction. It's fine with the International Champion there to have matches like this; it's not fine on the guy you want to build the company around. Not as he is now.

The Fletcher match started out well. Ospreay shined early and Fletcher, scoundrel that he was, retreated from the ring and stalled to force it to breathe a little,  to give it weight and contrast. This built to Fletcher catching Ospreay on the floor and lawn darting him into the barricade, opening him up. From there, it was lovely pro wrestling, Fletcher working the wound meticulously, wretchedly. Eventually, he savored it too much giving Ospreay a hope spot, which Fletcher cut off with another lawn dart into the turnbuckles.

All of this was to set up the big counter spot to send them into the finishing stretch, a third lawn dart attempt turned into a poisonrana. All well and good. The problem is that in between the cut off and the comeback, Ospreay had an extended 50-50 segment with strike exchanges and escalating counters. By the end they weren't booing Fletcher (unlike every other Fletcher C2 match despite him being more vile than ever) but instead cheering the match.

Likewise, in the Okada match, Ospreay, coming in damaged, survived a first round of heat only to get caught up in the ropes and hurt his leg. Okada started on it but it was just a tease as they went into 50-50 for the entire second half of the match.

There isn't one right match structure. There isn't one right way to tell a story. But if you're going to run with a babyface ace, there may be a best way. There are human impulses that manifest in most fiction. You build up emotional pressure. You pay it off. For some reason, Ospreay seems mostly disconnected from this notion.

Vs Fletcher, it would have worked so much better if Ospreay, despite brief moments of hope, didn't get to come back and stand tall until after that third lawn dart attempt. The pressure would have built far more and they could have done strike exchanges and everything else down the stretch to greater effect. Vs Okada, they wanted to mimic the NJPW tournament final style, but they could have still done so much of that after Okada worked a second round of heat. He was losing and he would have more protected him more after gutting through two heat segments.

I'm not telling you you're wrong for loving these matches. They are spectacular and exciting, but these great things can be even better if he stayed focused on letting them build without throwing in a bunch of counter sequences mid match. He jumps to sensation too soon and leaves emotion on the table. Without realizing that (or having someone that understands the ebb and flow of wrestling matches help him with it, be it a coach, someone like Jake Roberts who has spoken about it at length and in the most wonderfully vulgar ways, or TK himself who I know gets it), I don't see how he can possibly be the babyface ace they need.

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Baszler v. Shirai

12. Shayna Baszler v. Io Shirai Stardom 2/23

PAS: I really enjoy Baszler, she came over from UFC with a really fun asshole charisma, she was working more straight heel then in the AIW match I really loved and she reminded me of a distaff Minoru Suzuki. She has also clearly improved a bunch as she has a bunch of cool moves I haven't seen before, there was an awesome top rope gutwrench chained into another gutwrench and a great falcon arrow right into a choke, she also isn't pulling her stuff anymore as there was a nasty headkick, and some really killer bodyshots. I also liked her selling Shirai worked over her back and there were moments where she couldn't fully execute a Kimura because her back seized up. Shirai was fun too, she has a bunch of cool highspots, and it felt a little like a better version of Sabu v. Taz. I did think the finish was a bit abrupt, as Shirai just kind of ran through some big moves and pinned her, but outside of that I really dug it.

ER: Not the match I was expecting, in a good way. So far I've mostly seen Baszler in shorter matches as a crowbar and instead they work a pretty terrific pro style match, perfectly incorporating Baszler's cool tricks with Shirai's crazy energy. There's been talk lately of how important body part selling really is to a match, and I would say this match is a nice feather in the cap to the strengths of it. Baszler has a million ways to take apart an arm, but it probably wouldn't have been as interesting without Shirai constantly showing just how hurt her arm was. I thought her selling hit all the right notes, wasn't showy, was never forgotten, and was present without getting in the way of things. Shirai responds to Baszler's arm violence by unleashing hell on Baszler's back. She hits a crazy moonsault stomp with precision and accuracy, and it pays off great down the stretch. Baszler breaks out some nasty stuff, especially liked her hanging rear naked choke while sitting on the turnbuckles, and her kicks all land with some mean thuds. Shirai has some big comebacks, does a couple chair attacks on the floor, hits her pinpoint moonsault, and we build to that great moment of Baszler going for the kill with a bridging kimura, but unable to bridge because of those earlier stomps to her back. She knows this move will finish it but can't convince her back that's the case, and eventually relents and attempts to roll through to a traditional armbar, allowing Shirai an escape. I wish Shirai had gotten a little more clever with the finish, as after that great build with the selling paying off, and Shirai fighting for and getting a big trapped arm german, Shirai just hits a tombstone and moonsault. It felt like an oddly tacked on finish which was a downer since everything else in the match was executed and built to so nicely, but the match was still super satisfying, and an overall great performance from both. '


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Say Goodbye To The Bad Times, Now Meiko Satomura's Free On Her Own

Meiko Satomura vs. Kyoko Kimura SENDAI 3/11/15 - SKIPPABLE

Match starts around the hour-and-fifteen-minute mark.

I meant to have this out a lot sooner. Like, right after the WKO 100 wrapped, and before another 2015 Meiko match started getting hyped up. I remembered overhearing someone on Twitter talk this up, right before the WKO 100 started, so I figured I'd reconvene this project by catching up on this match, and boy oh boy, was that ever a bad idea. I wanted to come here and tell you that, even with THE BOSS's reign of terror, you shouldn't sleep on Meiko in 2015, and I probably will have chances to do that. This isn't one of them. This was a chance for me to feel sad and not want to write about wrestling for a while.

And let me be clear, this is not Meiko's fault. And when I say this is not Meiko's fault, what I mean is that it's actually Meiko's fault in a very significant way. This match's biggest crimes are it's layout and the story it decides to tell. Given that Meiko is SENDAI's booker, I guess it was her call to work this match evenly and try to present Kimura as someone on her level...and that's a big problem because Kyoko Kimura is bad. Like really, really bad. She has some double stomps that she busts out now and again that look pretty nice, but outside of that, I have seen literal backyard wrestlers who were both less sloppy and had more convincing offense than her. She is the rare person whom Hiroshi Tanahashi could tell to tighten up their strikes. And Meiko spends the whole match working like Meiko - same great offense, same great selling - and I'm expected to buy the two essentially as equals, to the point that it goes to a 20-minute time limit draw! It's not even like Meiko's selling makes Kyoko look more convincing. It makes it look even more fake because I don't buy that this feeb is giving someone who scored wins over Akira Hokuto and Aja Kong a run for her money.

I gotta wash the foul taste of this match out of my mouth. The much pimped Hojo match may do that, but right now, I wanna go with a sure thing, so we'll look at that next time. For now, we've got....

Meiko Satomura vs. Nanae Takahashi Stardom 3/20/12 - EPIC

Now this is more like it! This is also presented as a battle of equals, but unlike Kimura, Nanae Takahashi can actually hang with Meiko in this match. This in itself is a bit of a surprise, as I had always known her as the unremarkable partner of false idol Momoe Nakanishi before this match, but here, she's quite the capable ass-beater. She's also one of the screamier joshi wrestlers, so if you're someone who's turned off by that, be warned. Still, she does lay into Meiko from the opening bell here, and the effect is that when Meiko fights back, she looks twice as badass. Meiko's selling is on-point here, too. At the time, I read some people knocking her selling in this match big time, but I really don't see it at all. Nanae has some selling issues here and there in the latter half of the match, like when she pops up from a backdrop out of nowhere. On the other hand, when she turns around and gives one to Meiko, she gets to the ropes and uses them to pull herself up. Meiko sells fatigue really well in the match, too. There's a great part right after the backdrops where they have a strike exchange (an organic one, not one of those shitty New Japan "let's put on a show!" ones), and Meiko starts to get gassed, so Nanae just stops hitting her and backs her against the ropes before clubbering her. She does do a one-count kickout power-up spot near the end...but she collapses before she can land a single blow on Nanae, and it's immediately followed by the finish. It's a spot that I could see someone finding hokey, but I liked it, and was a great cap to a killer performance.

Next time: HOJO! And something else, I guess...

THE COMPLETE & ACCURATE MEIKO SATOMURA

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