Found Footage Friday: WCW in Manchester 1993~!

ER: We get a full 1993 WCW house show from a week long UK tour that had great sounding matches and really big crowds every night. This one is from Manchester and looks great. If there's a new Vader/Cactus match we get to talk about, it really wouldn't matter what the rest of the card looked like, but this is great. Aside from Vader/Cactus, we get something even more valuable, in a different way. We get fully into the handheld spirit of Dad Recording Events With a Camcorder by starting with some incredible man on the street interviews asking Impossibly British people about their favorite wrestlers. This is a professionally shot and assembled show and these interviews are supposedly professional, but it's crazy that they sold 8,000 tickets to a show and seemingly couldn't find more than a couple fans who had ever heard of WCW. This is essential. 

By the third interview they are talking to a shabby bearded man in a stocking cap who looks like Badly Drawn Boy if he had a bad childhood with a really strict loveless father. The man says his favorite wrestlers are Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo, because he saw them live a coupla times and saw them on TV. Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo have not wrestled in over 10 and 20 years, respectively. The man started acting like he was being asked too probing a question about his taste in wrestling. One Brilliant older lady says she loves Marcus Alexander Bagwell and then politely seemed embarrassed to say that she doesn't like Dustin Rhodes! She calls Barry Windham "Big Barry" and asks if he's married, then yells to her friend Barbara. She shows mild disgust at the mention of Big Van Vader. There are numerous kids with Arn Anderson signs. The most British kid in the fucking world wearing a bowtie and talking about how much he loves Sting. 

Johnny B Badd vs. Scotty Flamingo

MD: Good opener. It was obvious almost immediately that Scotty knew exactly what he had with this crowd. I'm not going back to looking at gates around this time but he was probably not in front of a crowd like this often. They were going to react to everything he did, every forced break in the corner, every complaint about a hairpull that didn't happen, ever stop in the action to interact with them, and he milked it to the fullest. Badd was used to these openers by now and stooged Scotty around for a bit before getting dragged down for most of the match. Scotty's stuff was varied and credible and they worked a few believable hope spots in before going to an energetic stretch of Badd coming back with a few inversions, be it Scotty reversing him off of multiple whips into the corner or just ducking the KO Punch. It wasn't until Johnny snuck in a late match headscissors takeover that he got Scotty off balance to hit it. This was exactly what it ought to have been and the crowd responded accordingly. 

ER: Sorry, Scotty Flamingo fucks. When the cameras cut to him in his fringe and his bulge, he looked like a sex god bringing color to a washed out colorless world. He looks like a Happy Mondays concert. Johnny B. Badd's sequined Naval blue and gold jacket, Captain's hat, and lampshade knee fringe is hotter and far gayer than any gear Cassandro ever wore to the ring and I am frankly stunned at how much bedazzled sex they brought to this town. Flamingo knew exactly what kind of heel to be, trying to sneak things in behind the ref's back, bumping comically when needed, while leaving the biggest bumps for babyface Badd. Johnny took a huge bump over the top to the floor and later a fast one through the ropes, and Scotty had this fun way of playing an innocent little guy. Flamingo used the Curt Hennig corner bump effectively, and the way he went down for Badd finally landing the left hand looked good. This crowd was clearly into all of this and I love a crowd who shows up ready to see some wrestling. 

Maxx Payne vs. Michael Hayes

MD: This peaked in the second minute. Not to say anything else they did was wrong, even if Hayes was 34 going on 60 in how he moved, but I liked the shtick the best. Probably not a surprise. It was good shtick too. Hayes came out decked to the nines and knew the crowd was going to be up for it all. Weird, you couldn't really hear the impacts in the ring (even of the nice punches that needed a louder stomp to go with them I guess?) but you could heard the crowd stomping and cavorting. Even just Payne pointing to each side of the ring to boos and Hayes doing it to cheers felt refreshing. Payne leaned on him like you'd expect and it was fine. Hayes came back and it was fine if a half step slow. And then the finish was nice as Payne shrugged off the DDT and dropped him right down with the... what was it? The Paynekiller? I need to look this up. Yep, the Payne Killer Fujiwara Arm Bar. Perfectly ok house show match but I wish they had done even more goofy stuff at the beginning. The crowd was eager to eat it up and Hayes could make it work.

ER: I liked this quite a bit, but mainly because it was worked around a lot of nice punches that hit and missed. Both guys have nice punches and the ways they would weave the misses in with the hits always felt different, like they kept telling the same punch story and ending it in different ways. I like "old man" Michael Hayes (as Matt said, somehow 34 years old here) and I like that nobody in England had ever seen a man move this way before. That moonwalk is something that would have made him a major star had British wrestling not collapsed already. Maxx Payne is a guy who lands with real heft. A super dense guy who isn't fat enough to be a big fat guy and clearly isn't a body guy, but is big and dense enough that the fat guy spots - like falling on Hayes after Hayes can't handle the lift - work well. I loved how he blocked Hayes' DDT attempt but just anchoring his feet to the mat and shoving off. 

Dustin Rhodes/Van Hammer vs. Barry Windham/Rick Rude

MD: This was a blatant lie as Barry took out Dustin with a chair right after he got to ringside (after a brief scuffle) and it turned into just Rude vs Hammer.

Van Hammer vs. Rick Rude

MD: In general, obviously it's a disappointment that we don't get Barry and Dustin in this tag but it did really let us see Rick Rude at the height of his power working a fairly complete match against Hammer. The early parts where he let Hammer show him up again and again with strength bits and comeuppance and bluster that made him look like a fool was all done extremely well, really getting the crowd moving in exactly the right ways at exactly the right times.

When things settled down, it was all a little weird. A lot of these wrestlers aged better than you'd think because the sheets were valuing so much of the wrong things back then but Hammer is an exception. Rude had to call the match against a broomstick; that's the impression I got at least, because he had him do heel spots and have them go wrong on him only for Rude to do the same spots and have Hammer overcome. For instance, the seated chinlock, which Rude liked to do and then miss on a jump onto the back. Hammer did it first and then when Rude tried to repeat, Hammer was able to lift him up. Likewise the leap onto an outstretched foot. Hammer did it first and you don't often see a babyface wipe out like that. Despite all that, it worked, because Rude made it work and the crowd wanted it to work and Hammer... I mean, he did what he did by this point, a few years into his WCW run. Rude hit almost a snap, swinging sort of Rude Awakening which I'm not sure I ever saw him do. So this had value, but not nearly the sort of value the tag would have had.

ER: Yeah that tag match we didn't get sure looked worlds better than a 15+ minute Van Hammer singles match, but you can't deny how over Hammer was. Before the show when Cappetta was running down the card, Hammer got louder cheers than anyone but Davey Boy, which is incredible. And Rick Rude is probably the best person on the roster at getting a good match out of Van Hammer. Rude knows how to sell effectively for guys like Van Hammer and he knows how to keep crowds interested to make up for the babyface skills Hammer lacks. Rude sells his back better than most wrestlers and takes higher backdrops than anyone, gets ragdolled incredibly on a bearhug, limbs swinging and flopping everywhere like he was giving something to the real Bez-heads in the crowd, blows snot rockets on a downed Hammer, and swings his head around so sweat flies off in waves when Hammer stands up out of a camel clutch. The finishing stretch of this is really good. Rude ducking and moving to avoid Hammer punches until Hammer fakes him out and catches him with one. Rude gives the crowd exactly what they want with his duck walk atomic drop sells and getting run over with clotheslines. I imagine the swinging Rude Awakening was to deal with Van Hammer's height, but it looked good for it. 

Davey Boy Smith vs. Vinnie Vegas

MD: What Worked:

- Vinnie Vegas' cutoffs, including a big boot that went over Davey's head and a great slam back into the corner.
- Vegas' lightning bolt tights that feel like they should have been worn by Sasaki.

What Didn't Work:

- Nash having no idea exactly how much to give at any one point (he gets it sometime in the next year; maybe he was just put off by the size of the crowd?)
- Nash's mannerisms in general. None of it seemed organic.It was all cartoony and over the top in a way where if he dialed it back fifteen percent the crowd would have eaten it up more.
- The crowd doing the same Bulldog chant for ten minutes straight. I shut my eyes and can still hear it.

ER: I got too excited for Matt talking about Vinnie Vegas's cutoffs before watching this and now I'm disappointed. I wanted to see leg. That said, I thought Vegas was a good Bulldog opponent here and I thought this all kinda rocked. Nash might have been more Skywalker Nitro here than what he would be in a couple years, but I thought they were great opponents and both looked good. All the early shoulderblocks and Vegas no sells were great. Bulldog threw a perfect dropkick to a large man and he ran very hard in to Vegas with shoulderblocks. They worked through some compelling slow exchanges that the crowd stayed incessantly attached to with a repeated Airhorn Bulldog chant. All the small stuff built to big Bulldog moments: The long test of strength blow job spot, the heavy sleeper that ended with Bulldog powering to his feet to run Vegas multiple times into the buckles, a sleeper that builds to Bulldog throwing clotheslines and slams. I thought it was all great. 

I thought Vegas looked great. He had a lot of good ideas and a good mix of offense. His two big boots had a nice visual look and were well timed, he threw Bulldog far with his bodyslam, and jumped into a good hard connection landing on his elbowdrop. Vegas did something that I loved as much as anything I've seen in a Kevin Nash match - and I'm a guy who loves a lot of Kevin Nash matches - when Vegas blocked a vertical suplex with a quick punch to Bulldog's kidney. It was so badass, caught perfectly on film. His running missed elbow into the turnbuckles to set up the running powerslam was a full speed miss meant to hit. I thought it was a performance that has aged really well. This felt more like a match he put together for Bulldog than a match Bulldog worked him through. 

Big Van Vader vs. Cactus Jack

MD: Race certainly earned his pay on this night between moving the guardrail out of the way when Cactus was having a superhuman run on the outside to being there for a lot of pivotal moments of Vader taking back over by eating Cactus' stuff while he recovered, including on the finish. The middle felt a little flat to me with Cactus kicking out of the two Vader Bombs a little too early in the sequence maybe, even though there was going to be an escalation to Vader coming off the turnbuckles with a splash. Maybe I just don't remember exactly where Vader's offense was here in 93.

On the other hand, watching Cactus taking Vader's punches is a pretty magic, horrific experience. Just gnarly shot after gnarly shot. Cactus' comebacks were all really good too, be it just getting his foot up at the exact right time or throwing a few DDTs or slamming him out on the floor. Vader was so big that Cactus could believably get a sleeper on him by jumping on his back. And when he took out Race once, he had a great heads up standing tall look to him, a hero you could get behind. So this was good overall, if maybe a bit too reliant on Race and a bit off in the middle. We're better off for having it certainly, if only to see those punches land one more time.

ER: I thought this was pretty fantastic; the match that obviously leapt off the page when the show dropped. A new match added to the legendary feud and it has moments just as violent as the best matches they had. The punches were there but sadly obscured; instead we got Vader taking a diving bump off the ring staging across and over a guardrail. It's one of the bigger Vader bumps in their feud and it's crazy to see on this show. It looked no different than a dangerous Cactus bump, but this match was about Vader and Harley Race being the ones taking bumps on concrete and ring edges, not Cactus. Vader was taking big DDT bumps with slick vertical pause, missed a big splash off the middle buckle. Honestly Cactus got out of this one easy. Jack was the one announced to the crowd multiple times as one of the main attractions but the reactions were not there. Nobody was talking about him in the pre-show interviews, nobody seemed to know how to react to him as a man. 

Vader knows how to get reaction and works impressively overtime. This is a match that raises Vader's stock. He was an incredibly hard working mammoth man. He worked 125 matches in 1993 and he's out there playing up to the large crowd, falling hard, swinging harder. In between his big bumps are the big hits. Beyond our obscured sequence of definitely shoot punches, there were straight kicks to the ribs and headbutts; a little kid smile before jumping ass to chest with a bombs away. I thought the Race involvement was hilarious and unnecessary but love that Race is a psycho taking suplexes at 50 and looking 65. Vader is good at being specially vicious taking over after his interference. He mule kicks Cactus so hard in the balls that it felt like a finish. But Vader is an artist. A fan's wrestler. While Jack is selling his balls Vader delivers his biggest hardest swing of the match into the side of his head. 

Cactus/Vader was an excellent feud to get another match from. They always had new ideas, and this one had a structure I hadn't seen from them. 

Sting vs. Paul Orndorff

MD: The good in this was really good. Orndorff looked amazing to start. There's an early sequence where he begins with an awesome grinding headlock and moves into faster rope running than you'd think into almost a snap press slam by Sting and the recoiling that followed and it was all great. I wish we had a little more stooging before he took over, but his offense for the transition was all credible, jabs and a perfectly timed knee cutoff.

The problem was that there was both a lack of motion and a lack of heeling once he did
take over. He mostly ground Sting down as they built to a few hope spots and I get why he might contain him and Sting sold well, but it maybe wasn't the match I would have wanted as a main event. I half get the impression that since the fans were just chanting for Sting over and over, Orndorff felt like he didn't need to do a whole lot to get more heat. They did have a good finish though with Orndorff taking a front bump into the corner and Sting splashing him to the back and then rolling up. I'm not sure I'd seen that in too many Sting matches. So good overall but maybe not rising to the moment.

ER: I thought Orndorff looked incredible here. Sting was a great babyface, I loved all his flying and his comeback punches might have been the best on the show. But I couldn't stop watching Orndorff and his weird arm but mostly his incredible skillset. He was fast, dynamic, bumped everything like he meant it and It mattered. He knew how to use that little arm to throw short sharp elbows to the jaw and pointed elbowdrops straight down to the throat that were exquisitely worked. He took a damn vertical suplex on the floor; his back suplex landed Sting firmly on his shoulders in a way that looked distinctly All Japan. I thought about Paul Orndorff in 90s All Japan as the crispest possible Johnny Ace and thinking about how differently things could have been. Sting/Orndorff is a match I don't think I've ever seen. I don't think of them as guys who feuded. This felt like a NEW new match to me, and they probably could have done more and built to something bigger than the Vader/Cactus match that preceded them. But for guys I don't think about as wrestling each other, Orndorff felt like one of the best to take Sting's offense. This man knew how to draw money wrestling wild eyed babyfaces like he was born to do it. 

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Tornado of Love for Darby and Sting

 

5. Sting/Darby Allin vs. Big Bill/Ricky Starks AEW Dynamite 2/7/24

ER: I must be the easiest to surprise person who routinely spends double digit hours per week watching and writing about pro wrestling. Maybe it's my bad memory or the glacial pace I take projects through, but I am frequently surprised by how good the guys I like watching are. Darby Allin has the ability of surprising me more than any of my other modern favorites, a real innovator of shocking and death defying indestructibility. He shouldn't be possible, but he's real and he's incredible. Big Bill catching Darby's tope and in one fluid long motion and turning it into a high swinging Boss Man Slam on the floor just might be the most expertly executed momentous Large Man Rey Mysterioing Darby spots we've ever been gifted. It's a seamless, dangerous, eye popping moment. A Darby Classic, which is a thing I have said a comical amount of times. But Darby is special because he is also good at every other little thing, not just the biggest most incredible wrestling spots of the year. I don't know if anyone in wrestling runs into a boot as well as Darby. I don't know if anyone ever has. He makes it look like a guy getting knocked out by a boot he never saw coming. He does things like that every match. He's incredible, we've all known he's incredible. He is always Must See. He is probably my favorite wrestler and I am routinely surprised by how good my favorite wrestler is...

but I am still in absolute disbelief that Sting is this damn good. I can't be alone here. Sting is fucking 65 years old. What is remarkable, is that I'm pretty sure that 65 years old Sting is my favorite Sting ever. Sting, a legend with several eras and years and runs and matches to be the personal favorite wrestler of millions, has captured my heart so surprisingly in his team with Darby. Sting was a guy I didn't even know existed until I was 10 or 11 years old. We didn't have cable TV and I barely even knew WCW existed. My friend Justin had a Sting wrestling buddy, and he told me it was Sting, but this man was less real to me than Gordon Sumner. To me it just looked like an off brand Ultimate Warrior doll. I did not grow up with Sting as my hero, and by the time I was watching WCW he was just about to become inactive for an entire year. It was an uphill battle getting into Sting as an adult. I've never even gotten too into Sting retroactively. I don't think he would come anywhere close to making a Top 100 Guys list. 

But Sting at 65 is a real game changer for me. All it took to get behind Sting, I guess, was the now built in vulnerability of being an old human, combined with a willingness - or a sicko urge - to take a clothesline on the floor the way he did here from Big Bill. Sting has been in his Gypsy Joe era on and off for over a decade and even with his crazy-at-the-time-crazier-in-retrospect run in TNA I still wouldn't have expected his AEW run. It's not the balcony dives, either, even though holy shit the balcony dives right?! Can you imagine even cleaning the gutters on your house when you're 65? My parents used to invite me up to use the pool and BBQ just to spring a surprise gutters check on me before I left. They were probably right to do so, because I wouldn't want to think of my dad climbing around on the roof at 65. So Sting is doing leaps off of his nice but modest Colonial, and folks that is crazy. But more than the great risks from a man whose career looked mostly finished 20 years ago, it's that he just wrestles harder than I can ever remember. I believe in this babyface hero more than I have at any point in my life. I love this babyface with a tastefully redone hairline, who throws his entire body into his punches and back elbows in a way he never did when he was 40. I think his form has gotten better on almost all of his offense. He's like if John Cena came back and did all of his old offense but with harder landings, harder impact, agonizing misses, and real stakes. Sting throws himself into every hit and miss in a way I've never seen from him, and I am finally a Stinger in my 40s. 

The finish is a spectacular moment. Of course it is. Darby takes himself and Bill out of the match by Human Backpacking onto him on the apron, navigating his torso like an attacking ape, riding him off the apron through a table, forcing Bill to bump by gouging his thumbs into the big man's eyes like a lonely toymaker. Taz was right to make fun of Big Bill's mint green boots all match, by the way. Sting had a great run with Ricky Starks, who is a wrestler I don't love but one I view as a little better than the other Austin Theories that have been clogging up cards with what people refer to as their Potential. He will at minimum take a nice bump to the floor and I was impressed by his comparative Face Acting restraint in handling an I'm Sorry I Love You moment. The timing on Sting hitting that exposed buckle was a work of Bret Hart or Jerry Lawler level of brilliant timing. Sting's shoulder-only kickout after Starks' spear true perfection. His Scorpion Death drop has never looked heavier or as conquering. I don't know if there's been a more exciting tag team run this decade than Darby Allin and a guy whose biggest year in pro wrestling was the year before Darby Allin existed. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/26 - 3/3 Part 2

AEW Revolution 3/3/24

Sting/Darby Allin vs Young Bucks

MD: I was on the fence whether to write this up or not. It's one of those matches that defies analysis, transcendent in the emotion. With a week's distance, however, I figured that maybe it might be fun to try to take a more clinical approach to something so impossible to break down. As I was writing, I think I ended up getting emotional anyway, but I'll at least give it a go. Let's start with the Bucks. I do not write often about the Bucks. I won't deny their talent certainly. I have a long essay in me about how they got ahead by breaking norms because if they would have wrestled within the norms, no matter how well they might have done it, they would have never gotten ahead. That's admirable on the one hand and probably very destructive in another. Metatextual deconstruction in an art form that relies upon suspension of disbelief is harmful over time. It takes a genie out of a bottle, changes incentives, modifies the relationship between wrestler and fan. I absolutely believe that it was what they needed to do to get ahead and it's hard to fault them for it, but ... well, like I said, I have an essay but that's not what I want to write about here.

I will say this, however. The act needed an overhaul. They work best when they're representing a sort of counterculture, when they're pressing against something, rebelling against something, when they have a chip on their shoulder. The story of the Elite and All In and early AEW is that they bet on themselves (and against those who said they couldn't do it) and won, that they created a new paradigm where they could succeed outside of the old systems where they could not. There was a certain amount of time right at the start, through the pandemic, as crowds came back, when that sort of celebratory spirit could carry things. I think we're past that now and certain swings, such as the trios division being created to celebrate their vision of pro wrestling, sort of fell flat because of that. Obviously with the Punk situation, they had something they could press up against, but legally and practically, they weren't allowed to in a way that would draw money. Things weren't working. To their credit, they stopped, retooled, and looked at all of the current criticisms against them to pull together characters based in a sort of assumed reality that better fit guys in their mid to late 30s than the traditional "Young Bucks" gimmick did. Suddenly, they have something to press up against again; suddenly there's a chip on their shoulder once more; there's something with meat on the bone to give them an edge.

And that edge allowed for a program that needed to be something more than just two athletic guys bumping and selling and feeding and providing motion for Sting; it allowed for it to have the emotional weight and gravitas it deserved. By the time you hit the match itself, however, we were all in a sort of exceptional situation. There was always the hint of doubt that Sting would actually win due to some of the traditional pressures of pro wrestling. The retiring hero should lose on the the way out and put over younger talents. The champion should lose the belts to keep continuity. Darby is going off to climb a mountain. The Bucks were particularly ascendant in their new characters; the champions would be gone and the challengers would have to carry the territory. And up until the Dynamite before Revolution, the Bucks had all the heat. Yes, Sting and Darby were undefeated and had won the titles, but during the build the Bucks were in control of the situation. That changed on the 2/28 Dynamite, with head games and Sting dropping from the rafters for the final image of a Death Drop on a Jackson (not a stooge, not security). So some of that heat was blunted already. The Bucks had already gotten a taste of comeuppance. The champs were on the rise. It was okay though, because the iconic moment was worth it. This entire situation was exceptional; it bent the rules of pro wrestling. It was a once in a lifetime event. That's why the Bucks maybe did make sense as opponents; they've excepted themselves from those rules for their entire career. They could swim these uncertain waters as well as anyone.

And they swam right into the start of this exceptional match, with the breathtaking entrance of three Stings (three Bordens) and an immediate numbers game advantage for the babyfaces. The Bucks already needed some sort of wedge to get and keep control due to the size and presence differential. They had superior teamwork and experience, maybe (Sting and Darby were 29-0 after all), but that didn't really come into play during a Tornado Tag. The heel interference that was part of the Elite's 2021 heel run wasn't in play here either. Like I said, no stooges. But again, it didn't matter, because the fans were there to celebrate Sting. The family got their revenge early on. In some ways, that story closed itself off and it came down to the titles and the question of whether Sting was going to leave undefeated with gold around his waist, with the lingering secondary question of just what sensational and dangerous thing Sting or Darby might do on the way out. While that's a question that sort of tugs at suspension of disbelief, it only does so far. Sting and Darby are so confident in their own skin, so comfortable as the characters they embody, that you believe their crazy dives are meant to even the odds of size and age and actually harm their opponents. It's not gratuitous or simply living up to expectations; there's a reason that those expectations exist in the first place. Here, the snake eats its own tail in the best of ways.

They moved away from the ring and got the Borden kids out of play. There was never any explanation for this. In a tornado tag, anything goes. That said, when you're pulling against norms as thoroughly as this match did at times, you don't want extraneous questions. Maybe there could have been a throwaway line that they had come out for the entrance as planned and cleared, but then got involved in an unplanned way. Now, they had been escorted away by security, not because the interference was illegal, but because they were not cleared to wrestle or had signed any waiver to perform and AEW had to protect itself legally after what had happened a few weeks prior? Something like that. On the other hand, do you want to waste any emotional time on it? Sure, part of me wondered why they weren't helping out when the Bucks were doing major damage late in the match, but maybe it didn't bother anyone else. Maybe we just accept the moment for what it was and that the story had moved on. I'm never very good at just accepting the story had moved on myself, not when it comes to selling, not when it comes to dangling plot threads. But again, maybe that's just me. I spent a paragraph on it, but I'm also willing to let it go and not look back once I hit "enter" twice to start the next one.

The Bucks needed a major shift to take over considering they had already received quite a bit of comeuppance. They received it with Darby crashing through the glass. When you're in a situation where you can only have a relatively short heat segment with the heels in control, it helps when you have dynamic offense, spectacular suffering, and blood: the more the better. Darby's entire back was lacerated. That made everything feel absolutely serious quickly. Then, instead of getting to hit one of his signature dives, Sting was cut off and took a spectacular bump through a table instead. The Bucks did more than that, but just from those two flashpoints: the image of Darby's back and the image of Sting going through the table, they had everything they needed to capitalize on the drama of the moment. Sting made his superman comeback attempts (and the kickout on the EVP trigger was it's own sort of magic) but the numbers game was too much for him. Again, most people expected this to be celebratory; the whole show was a celebration of Sting, but there was always the tiniest kernel of doubt for reasons awash in the moment and ones listed above about the nature of pro wrestling retirements; if Sting demanded that he do the deed on the way out, who could really say no to him in the end? All of those things came together like a bolt of lightning to empower Darby's big save. That hit as perfectly as any pro wrestling moment ever does, that feeling in your stomach watching that makes you want to gasp and cheer and sigh all at once.

From there it was academic and, of course, exceptional. Sting won on the way out. It felt like the most right thing in the world. They broke three or four narrative rules in the build, in the start of the match, in the result. I'm not going to say it shouldn't have worked because of that. It was too big to fail, over 16,000 people and almost 40 years big, and fueled by respect and love and admiration, created by people who understood the worth and value of pro wrestling and the power of believing in something bigger than yourself. But as hard as a pill as it might have been for me to swallow at the start of February (and as hard as it is for me to accept at all, because I just don't want to see the guy go), this was the right place and the right time with the right people to create something that was exceptional not just in its nature, but in its quality as well. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby/Sting vs. House of Black

 

31. Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King AEW Rampage 9/21 (Aired 9/23)

ER: So this probably isn't a Cool Guy thing to admit, but I was never a Sting Guy. Maybe it's because I didn't start watching WCW until 1997, and the only reason I knew Sting even existed before then was because of my friend Justin's wrestling buddy, which I thought was a knock off Ultimate Warrior wrestling buddy. To be clear, I was never anti-Sting, just due to era and timing he was never anyone I had any real connection to, and it is wild to me that the most connected I have ever felt to Sting is now that he's a 63 year old Terry Funk in faceprint. Old Man Sting has this crazy match formula that's like a one move Bray Wyatt match but not dogshit like those matches. He punches his way through his match until he takes a dangerous fall and spends most of the match he just works Vibes until his finisher, and it's fucking great. It just works so well and feels impossible it's happening, a Superstar Wrestling Legend boiling down Big Star wrestling to just vibes, while adding Serious Falls to your formula. It's insane and it's a direction I somehow didn't even see coming when he was working Deathmatch adjacent matches with fucking Abyss in TNA in his late 40s. 

Terry Funk added a moonsault in his late 50s and it's one of the coolest things a Legendary Wrestler has ever done. "But it always looked like shit" it literally doesn't matter you baby. If you went over to your grandparents one day and he called you into the backyard and said, "Eric, you're going to love this, I've been working on this trick..." and then my grandfather attempted to moonsault off a ladder or the roof or his truck, then I don't think it would have been possible to trust my grandfather ever again. If my grandfather fell off a ladder in front of his unsuspecting grandson I would be forever scared that my grandpa was going to suddenly swerve his truck into traffic for a thrill. Sting has children and now takes bigger falls than at any point of his career and he's doing it while living a life of full financial and personal responsibility. Adding a dangerous fall into your B-Show TV Match Formula is an insane thing for a financially stable man who has lived through 13 U.S. Presidents. Sting is a thrill seeker and an addict and it's made me fascinated and captivated by Sting. He punches, he falls, the he makes a lot of faces until the finish. Why do I hate Danhausen doing the exact same thing? I have no idea. I don't know why I chose this path.  

Buddy Matthews was a perfect Sting dance partner for this, so active at getting his ass kicked around by Sting, taking a break to take his own big bump and make a big catch, then back to the ring to pinball around for sexagenarian signature offense. It's a great performance to match Sting's vibe, the guy taking the important "small offense" bumps while every other person in the match took 1-3 dangerous stunt falls. Matthews gets RVD bounce taking the Death Drop and it's the perfect way to use athletic show-off bumping. Everyone else dies. Sting gets shoved off the top rope through a table and hits his head on a second table on his fall. It was incredible. Darby crashed like a sack of laundry on a blocked tope suicida, hit a high coffin drop, and fell off the stage with Brody King while getting choked. Julia Hart's bump might have been the most dangerous and unexpected of the match, with perfect placement after Great Muta finished his walk-on Carol Burnett Show appearance. It's a great spectacle, with Matthews whipping violently for a Muta dragons crew and staggering into mist, knocking Julia Hart too far off the apron, mostly beyond the table she was aiming for, a sicko landing that left the table partly broken in a silhouette of her body. Sting is indispensable.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/1 - 1/7

AEW Collision 1/6/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs. Workhorsemen

MD: I was going to start this one with "Everything has to matter." I'm not quite sure I can get away with that though. I mean, I probably can. If you're reading this, you know what you're in for. I'm already sparing you guys another dissertation on how the commercial break saved Darby vs. Takeshita from itself (you're welcome). I just think sometimes it's worth spelling this stuff out lest it get overlooked in the sea of sensation and innovation, right? 

This was a short match full of things mattering. Let's lead with purpose. Why does this match exist? They wanted to get Sting in front of the Charlotte crowd one last time. They wanted to heat things up a bit for the Takeshita/Hobbs match. Maybe it was a bit of an achievement award for the Workhorsemen too, to be in their home base and up against a lifelong hero. It was there to start the show off hot, maybe even to help with the first quarter rating? In and out in ten minutes with Flair and Sting/Darby's entrance, outroing to a video package for Wednesday's tag, with their promo coming later in the show. So you can't just have Sting and Darby run over the Workhorsemen, but you couldn't have the Workhorsemen take too much of it either. You needed a wedge, a point a reason. You needed Stan Hansen smashing his arm into the post on the outside and then having his arm worked over by someone who needed a wedge to get the advantage and stay in it. 

It all has to matter. Hierarchy has to matter. An ambush before the match has to matter. Henry's slick skill and Drake's size and timing have to matter. Sting's preternatural ability to stand up to a chair without flinching and Darby's preternatural ability to take endless amounts of punishment have to matter. Darby fighting from underneath has to matter. Henry's ability to cut him off has to matter. The potential of a guy Drake's size flipping feet over head and landing with all of his weight from the top rope has to matter. The impact of that missing has to matter. Darby's dive from the top to the floor has to matter, and Sting being able to destroy someone twice his size with the Stinger Splash and Scorpion Death Drop, well, it has to matter.

And they nailed it. The ambush created the wedge but not without having to overcome Sting being Sting (which allowed for a tremendously short shine on the outside given the overall length of the match). That wedge, combined with Henry's skill, was just enough to sweep Darby out on the apron and take out Sting's leg. Darby immediately fought back but was cut off in the ring. It built to Drake going for and missing the moonsault, and then Sting taking care of business on Drake while Darby hit the coffin drop to the floor on Henry, taking him out of the match. The Workhorsemen are great. This match could have been greater with another five or ten minutes. It wasn't supposed to be a "great match," though. That wasn't its purpose. For one thing, they couldn't overshadow the main event. This was to be a celebratory moment of Sting (and Flair) in Charlotte, with just enough friction and tension to make it feel earned and worthwhile for the crowd that got to enjoy it. They don't give out stars for that, but everyone in this one absolutely shined for what they were set out to accomplish.

Eddie Kingston vs. Trent Barretta

MD: As I've written about (at length, it feels like), we've generally seen Eddie Kingston as ROH champ ace, primarily in Proving Ground matches against younger competitors. We've seen him grow into the next evolution of that role during the Continental Classic, getting torn down so he could build himself back up. In this, his first defense of the newly formed Crown, he came in poised and centered and up against, interestingly enough, someone who had his own chip on his own shoulder. 

Eddie has a few years on Trent, but you can argue, quite easily I'd add, that Trent had outpaced Eddie throughout much of his career. He made it into WWE developmental, and even won titles there. He made it onto the main roster, even if without a big splash. He was a champion in New Japan. He was a debut AEW talent. Yet here, after Eddie's ascendant year, Trent failed to capitalize big opportunity after big opportunity after big opportunity. 

So he came in swinging against Eddie, who held back, game and ready. He got a few shots in early, but in a lot of ways, it felt like Trent was wrestling as Eddie had in the past. He was wrestling to prove his toughness, to prove that he fit in, to prove that he deserved to be there. He wasn't wrestling to win. Suddenly, Eddie wasn't just a guy carrying a brand or a roster or a show up on his shoulders. He was the bar. Somewhere along the line over the last tumultuous, hard-fought months, Eddie had taken that "Proving Ground" moniker and made it something real. He was the paragon, the iron that honed iron, the symbol of excellence for professional wrestling.

And Trent needed to throw everything he had at him in order to show the world (and his mom) that he belonged. Unfortunately, that didn't mean wrestling a perfect match but instead a chippy, aggressive one. It meant that Trent always had a show to fire back with, even maybe when he shouldn't. As Eddie was blasting him in the corner with the rapid fire chops, Trent was able to get a shot in. Eddie, almost reflexively, chopped him right between the eyes and opened him up. That took the tone of the first few minutes of the match and led them to doubling down on it. Trent wrestled Eddie's match, comported himself well along those lines, proved his toughness, proved that he belonged, proved that he could stand and fight with the best of them, and absolutely, unquestionable, undoubtedly lost, his nose busted open by the bar that he couldn't make it past, Eddie's chopping hand. One wonders if after the match Eddie might have looked in the mirror and saw in Trent who he had himself so recently been, but the answer is probably no. Eddie's the ace now. He can't look back, only forward, to Wednesday because he wants to keep the defenses coming.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 11/13 - 11/19, Part 3

AEW Full Gear 11/18/21

Eddie Kingston vs. Jay Lethal

MD: Variety is making Eddie's run fascinating and this was Eddie in 1983 AWA against the Heenan Family. That would make Lethal Ken Patera maybe? There's been a commonality about all of his title matches so far, that spirit of sportslike competition, no matter if he was facing Serpentico or Dalton Castle. Here, early, when Jay had to take a powder and was hiding behind Jarrett and Sonjay, you could see it in Eddie's bemused glare. He was very much in a world he didn't make and didn't want to be in. He'd been dragged into this through the loss to Jarrett. He still stood tall, still had Lethal scouted (blocking the Lethal Injection with suplexes twice), but he had to trudge through plenty of bullshit to get there.

One thing that makes this run enjoyable to me is that every match has an undertone of external narrative driving it, but the main thing is the title and the match. With Angelico, that meant Eddie's merciless (though businesslike) treatment of Serpentico and the idea that Eddie felt like Angelico was stepping to him just like everyone else. With Dalton, it was Castle thinking he'd be a more dynamic champion and Eddie feeling like they were doing it for Brodie. Even with Komander, it was the commentary-driven logic that Eddie might be particularly vulnerable to luchadores traditionally. That this was almost so overt, with so many moving parts relatively, made it almost less interesting on its own to me, but it still served well as part of a greater whole. I don't know how much longer this run is going to go given the upcoming tournament. Moreover, there's every chance Eddie is going to stumble back into a "fighting spirit" mode through it instead of this more agile and flexible ace mold we're seeing now (and a lot of the people who like him best would be overjoyed with that anyway so I'm shouting at the wind probably). Hopefully he finds a way through it all, though, because I'm not nearly done watching this particular version of Eddie Kingston.

Sting/Darby Allin/Adam Copeland vs. Christian/Luchasaurus/Nick Wayne

MD: Christian's the best guy on the roster, right? He's the best at putting together a sequence. He's the best at milking a moment. He's the best at working other people's stuff into something coherent and meaningful. I was blown away by his match with Trent on Rampage. I've been down on Trent lately. Maybe I've always been down on Trent. I like the idea of Trent but not the reality of him. He's a guy who does a lot of stuff, has it all look good and sharp and crisp, but it's too much, especially consummate to his place on the card and what he's asked to accomplish. Too much, too soon, why him, why then? Over and over again. It's a little like Lucy pulling the football away with me when it comes to him. But the Christian match, that I liked. It's true with a lot of the roster in AEW. There are a ton of guys that if paired up against the right (or wrong) opponent will either have a great match or a terrible one, lots of guys with great mechanics and a sense of abandon and even commitment, but that are prone to excesses and leaning towards sensation instead of sense. These are guys who will probably still frustrate me against someone like Danielson or Cassidy even if I'll find them way more frustrating if they're up against Page or Takeshita. But never will I be disappointed when they're up against Christian. I'll be outright amazed.

Everything he did in this match was great, from the entrance with the choir to staring off against Copeland until he tagged out to Luchasaurus to the great transition to control on Darby to the callback low blow on Flair to set up his final comeuppance and the rabbiting that followed. Narratively, wrestling lives and dies on a few things most of all: entry points, transitions, hope spots, cutoffs, the comeback (which is a transition, of course, with hope spots/cutoffs as false transitions), and the finish. What makes Christian a wrestling savant is how well he works his own stuff and his opponents' into these key moments, and then how he builds to them with the space between by using those tools at his disposal. He's the glue that holds everything together, spot after spot, sequence after sequence, match after match.

It helped that everyone else did their part here. Luchasaurus looked like as much of a force of nature as he ever has. Yes, it means he wrestles more like Kane or Lord Humongous than like a lucha dinosaur but we're all better off for it. Wayne based surprisingly well for Darby early and then ate everyone's offense as well he should. Copeland hit a press slam on Nick Wayne which is exactly what I want the giant Adam Copeland to be doing to the far smaller AEW roster. Sting knows exactly who he should be and can manifest that person better than anyone else in the world could. Add in a killer entrance and an emotionally resonant post-match and you get a nice, balanced, feel-good PPV opener.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/6 - 11/12

AEW Dynamite 11/8/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs Outrunners

MD: This was a tight piece of business, obviously, a way to keep the Sting farewell tour feeling special, in front of a crowd that was chanting for him in the early going, and a nice way to throw a bone to the Outrunners who ape his early aesthetic, maybe by way of the Beverly Brothers. That meant they could lean on Darby coming off of injury and let the Outrunners play the numbers game early, sneak in the clever tag out of a suplex position that we saw Darby and Orange Cassidy use when they were teaming in the already-missed house show run, and give Sting his iconic moment of shrugging off the double back elbow. Small nitpick: maybe have him win with the Death Drop considering that a Scorpion Deathlock played into the finish of the previous match, but at the end of the day, let Sting be Sting too, you know? A fun match that lets everyone in the crowd who hadn't been watching wrestling in 89 say that they got to see Sting live.

Ring of Honor 11/9/23

Eddie Kingston vs Angelico

MD: Of all of Eddie's great quality, maybe the greatest is that every match he's in, no matter how little build or notice it gets, instantly becomes a grudge match. It's because the chip on his shoulder is so big that any contest, be it an enhancement match or a dream match, tumbles right into it. Just to stand across the ring from him unlocks all sorts of grievances. Heel, face, storyline or no, he takes it personal and he makes it personal. You look at him the wrong way and it's an insult. And there's no right way to look at him if you're his opponent. That gives us, as viewers, reason to care about each and every match. 

It can be a little exhausting too. It's a good thing, don't get me wrong, but you don't let go and relax when watching Eddie wrestle. He carries a weight and you carry it with him. That feels good. It has substance to it. When he walks a mile, you walk that mile with him, and you're better off for it, but it's hard. And sometimes, it leaves some possibilities on the table. An Eddie Kingston match is going to be a fight. This isn't Bryan Danielson who is endlessly adaptable and reactive. Eddie's a black hole and you can't escape his gravitational pull. Traditionally, if you're wrestling Eddie, it can only be about one thing, that chip, that insult, that grievance.

The belt kind of changes that though. Yes, sure, Eddie is going to see it in personal terms; you want to take away what he cares about, what he clawed and scraped for, what he fights for every day, something he cares about more than you ever could. But it's also business too. And more than that, it's wrestling, the grandeur of wrestling along with the blood, something that you might not think a guy like Eddie would understand. But he does, because he understands what it means to be an ace, to carry a weight upon his back that's not just the burden of life, to carry a company, the hopes and dreams of everyone in the back, the reputation of everything that came before. 

That means we get to see a little bit of a different side to Eddie in these matches. Yes, he took it personal when Angelico made the challenge, but that didn't define this match; it just provided some extra color to it. Eddie's used to charging forward with a certain sort of abandon. He's used to being a man with nothing to lose. Now he has something to protect. That meant he came at this different. Angelico's always dangerous so he started the match by switching from one hand to the next, and avoiding a lock up, cautious. But he's Eddie so he got goaded in and threw a shot that let Angelico start to twist and tear at his hand. But he's Eddie so he pushed through it and kept throwing those chops, relentless. 

In return, Angelico realized that he wasn't going to get a quick tap on Eddie, no matter how skillfully he tied him up. He started throwing low kicks, started throwing his body at Eddie with dives. Angelico could chip away at his arm or his leg, but he couldn't make a chip larger than that one already on Eddie's shoulder though. All it ever takes is one backfist to change the complexion of the match and that's what it did here. Still, they gave Angelico a kickout and then finished things with the Northern Lights Driver, a nice hierarchy decision that helps keep over one of Eddie's four viable finishers after the story with Claudio where he needed to escalate to the power bomb. The variety of opponents and the more ace-tinted approach to these matches has been a nice change of pace, especially knowing that Eddie can take things deep into a land of grudges whenever the situation calls for it.

AEW Collision 11/11/23

Adam Copeland/Sting/Darby Allin vs Vincent/Dutch/Lance Archer

MD: Very complete, very satisfying match given that it had two commercial breaks, a little less time than some other Collision main events, and a lot of personalities to highlight on the face side. We've seen some matches lately where they hold back Sting and you sort of would expect them to do that with Copeland too here but they cycled through all of the faces early on (teasing Darby being in trouble and having him smack Archer away and dart to the corner) and gave the crowd a taste of everyone before they leaned into the first commercial break not with the usual transition into heat but with chaos and everything breaking down. That gave us the great shot of Sting elatedly dragging Vincent around the ringside area. It wasn't until the end of the break that they had Dutch jump him to lead into the first face-in-peril. It's important to have a little bit of variety now and again.

I always see the commercial breaks as an opportunity. Someday when AEW's on a streaming service and people are going back through these the same way that we watch 1992 WCW or 95 All Japan or 84 Mid South or old Houston footage, we'll hopefully have the international feed to watch and not have to worry about picture and picture and it'll be a net positive overall. It stops the proclivity for pure action for the sake of action and forces interaction with the crowd and a doubling down with the story at hand. 

This was our second look at Copeland and while he was fine against Luchasaurus, he wrestled like someone with something to prove here, hitting a dive, asserting himself with clotheslines, hitting a double team with Sting which harkened back to his late 90s creativity with Christian, eating Dutch's Bossman Slam with wild momentum. He's such an interesting case in some ways, someone who great up as much of a fan of wrestling as could be, but that has spent the entirety of his time within a carefully controlled system. He's someone that excelled in gimmick matches, that had offense which maybe wouldn't have held up in a less produced environment. He can't compete with the conditioning of  a lot of the AEW talent, but relying on smoke and mirrors instead of sheer athleticism might make him stand out, especially if he leans into his height a bit more than he has in his career. A lot of his major WWE feuds were against his size or larger than him. I'm curious how he resets this last act; he's suggested an interest in facing a lot of the ex-WWE guys that he missed in the 2010s, the Samoa Joes and Andrades and Malakai Blacks of the world, and to port his WWE act over against new a generation he missed could be of some interest, but the real value would be if he took what made him special over the years and tried to figure out how to refine it in a world without corporate limits and monolithic preferences. That doesn't necessarily mean aping Sting's proclivity for crazy dives. It doesn't just mean blood and pile drivers and a freedom of speech either. I don't entirely know what it means. Were I Copeland, I'd be spending every second of this borrowed time that was an impossibility ten years ago trying to figure out the myriad possibilities before me though. For the first time in two and a half decades, he can be anything and do anything; for someone who loves pro wrestling, what could that possibly look like? 

Here, in this bizarre WAR six-man with Jake Roberts on the outside and very unlikely partners on the inside, it looked like a pretty good start actually.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/21 - 8/27 Part 1

AEW Collision 8/26/23

Orange Cassidy/Penta/Eddie Kingston vs. Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade

MD: One of those random WAR like six mans that we get just a bit too rarely in AEW. It's good to have Eddie back between the injury and the excursion and the fans felt the same. Penta handled most of the shine (against Kip who reacted but didn't do anything novel like I'd expect, though at least Penelope got to take out Abrahantes on the glove catch) and Cassidy most of the FIP (after a very solid transition, with Kip goading Cassidy right into a Blade superkick, which IS what I'd expect). Penta and Abrahantes did most of the apron-working, including a freshly squeezed chant that was perfectly timed, with Eddie's only contribution being a memorable face made at Butcher. Butcher and Blade were pretty vocal in there with their 1966 Batman Goon muttering, like Butcher calling out a powerbomb that would never come and Blade shouting "Butcher and the Blade!" in a moment of beatdown on Cassidy.

It was a bit of a consolation prize for Kip and co. for not making the Wembley card. It was a longshot but Kip is local and original and worked hard to reinvent himself and Butcher and Blade are loyal, capable soldiers who pull off whatever's asked for them. The crowd was behind Cassidy when he worked from underneath, but they really wanted to see Eddie and he delivered, coming in hot, chopping everyone, and then starting the chain reaction of spots and linked finishers that set off the stretch. This ended with a sort of WWE dark match main event multi-man feel, with everyone getting their stuff in, but with an AEW twist, as all of that stuff ended up connected together. Eddie capped it all off by debuting a sliding elbow (obviously "a move he learned from Japan," which if a more present announcer was there, might have actually been noted). Fun stuff to open up a go home show and set up the post-match in-ring interview that followed.

Sting/CM Punk/Darby Allin/HOOK vs. Swerve Strickland/Jay White/Luchasaurus/Brian Cage

MD: Challenge here was to follow a fairly similar match. Well, not follow because it was taped first but you get the idea. This had plenty of time to breathe, with heat on both Punk and then HOOK. Theoretically it was all leading to White and Sting because that was teased early in the match but it only got there with a chop block cheapshot by White, probably a combo of making sure to protect Sting before the PPV and teasing something for the future. That'd be a great interaction somewhere down the line. White is a guy who is just always on. He tries to make the most out of every second he's on the camera and he's constantly active. It makes for a good pairing with hyperactive guys like Juice and Austin Gunn. The most interesting things here were Punk interfacing with Swerve's offense (he didn't take the headscissors well but did take the rolling suplex fine; when they were just posturing it was great) and to a lesser degree White (including the Sting tease that they really milked) and then HOOK having to work from underneath, especially against Luchasaurus and Cage. In the end, the fact they didn't pay off Sting and White was fine. He had his big moment against Luchasaurus and Punk and Joe was the ultimate focus, with Punk getting to make up for the flimsy GTS last week with a pretty solid one on Cage, and then to use the Kokina Clutch to end it setting up the perfectly timed Joe (who was a total pro on commentary) run in. Fun stuff with big star moments, but maybe a little slight relative to other Collision main events.

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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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AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/20 - 3/26

AEW Dynamite 3/22

Darby Allin/Sting/Orange Cassidy vs Kip Sabian/Butcher/Blade 

MD: There was a Dustin/Lee squash on Elevation on Monday but there's not much to say about it except for how fun Lee's nonchalant overhead throws were and Dustin having some fun with shifting his body around during the pinfall. He's about to be a granddad and if you follow him on social media, pretty nervous about it, so I'm glad they're keeping him busy.

Onto this then as there was a lot to like. I'm not sure I've mentioned this here, but to me, Cassidy and Moxley are two sides of the same coin. They're the ultimate grindstones that provide someone opportunity to really show their character. In wrestling, like any other form of fiction, character comes down to what you would do in any particular situation. What makes Wrestler A different from Wrestler B when faced with the same stimuli? With Moxley, he presses and presses and presses and you see what sort of wrestler exists under that sort of pressure. For Cassidy, it's endless frustration and aggravation. Moxley's "One Bad Day" involves car crashes and landmines going off around you and teeth piercing your flesh. Cassidy's "One Bad Day" is being stuck in line at a supermarket behind an old lady using coupons and a checkbook and dealing with that one asshole who's constantly changing lines even though you're in the middle of a traffic jam. Both of them will push you to a limit, but just what that looks like will be very different. 

Here, you could see him do it to Sabian early. I'm fortunate, I think, that I wasn't watching AEW a few years ago during the pandemic shows. The only Kip I know is after he took the mask off. As such, I think he brings a lot to the table, as he's very self aware. He tries to be a heel version of Cassidy in some ways, but as a heel, the act isn't nearly as genuine. It's hypocritical, a mask he puts on because he lacks the sort of easy confidence Cassidy lives and breathes on the inside. That's the character at least, and Kip plays it perfectly. He contrived a supervillain plan to throw Cassidy off his game to try to win the All Atlantic Title but even when it worked, it wasn't enough in the end because Kip will never be enough. There's value in that for a mid-card heel in a company that needs mid-card heels that can keep some heat in defeat. Anyway, that was a long way to go to say that I liked how the opening exchanged was summed up, with Sabian thinking he had the upper hand by escaping to the floor only to rush back in when Cassidy went to the pockets. 

And of course, Sabian got to then experience the thrill and the joy of not just one, or two, but three big moments with Sting. Speaking of confidence and awareness, Sting had big interactions with both Butcher, who beautifully missed his own splash, but Sabian, and he knew given the scope and the nature of the match, he didn't need a big dive here. What he needed instead was comedy and character, doing the Cassidy role to stymie Sabian, throwing the Cassidy kicks while Sabian was doing his down-up-arms fan interaction, and then finally just milking the Scorpion Death Drop forever. There were a few moments where things seemed just a bit off (I would have liked someone to break up the pin on Cassidy after Butcher and Blade Dragged the Lake on him, for instance) and this was a lesser match in the AEW Sting collection, but it was still a ton of fun and I'm happy for every heel team or trio that gets to interact with him, not just for the photo opportunity and adulation they likely feel, but because Sting puts so much effort and thought how to make the most of each and every match.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW 8 Man Tornado

16. The Hardys/Sting/Darby Allin vs. Private Party/The Butcher and the Blade AEW Dynamite 3/23

ER: Man this rocked. Jeff Hardy debuted the previous week in a big way against Private Party, and I love how he kept the chaos going. At the same time, this continued the improbably, amazing run of Sting, somehow putting in his greatest work of the century in his early 60s. Tony Schiavone has been so good on commentary during Sting matches, and I loved the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flew too too far with an early match plancha onto everyone. Tony is totally beside himself, talking about how he told Sting to "not do crazy things like that anymore", but laughing to himself at the same time. 

The action splits up and goes all over the arena, and really the only bad thing about the entire match is that we couldn't possibly see everything happening. Every pairing looked like it was worth seeing, at least based off what we were able to see. Everybody played into their role and did it well. Jeff had this crazy clothesline over the barricade (silly me thinking that would be the most reckless thing Jeff would attempt), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and the action flowed really well from ring to ringside to crowd to backstage. 

Jeff did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, never denying his yarder's heart. Teenage backyarders have that skateboarder mentality of looking for things to do a move off of, and here's a broken Jeff still looking for ledges that would be cool to stunt dive from. A majorly underrated part of the spot was Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. That kind of attention to detail is the perfect encapsulation of Sting's veteran knowledge and how the smallest things can make a match great. Matt Hardy looked awesome during the finishing stretch, like he and Private Party had been feuding for years. Private Party have come a long way in the past couple years, and they're getting so much better at feeding for offense and moving into position. I thought the finish was spectacular, as at this point I fully believe that Sting is as crazy as Terry Funk ever was and would be foolishly willing to take a frankensteiner into a cutter. Sting hopping off the middle buckle and blocking the cutter, dropping into a dragon sleeper and fighting up to his feet for the Scorpion Death Drop was such an awesome moment, timed expertly with a Twist of Fate. This is the most hyped I've ever been for Sting, a man still gaining new fans into his AARP membership. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/14 - 11/20 Part 2

AEW Full Gear 11/19

Eddie Kingston vs Jun Akiyama

MD: It's not every day you get to watch a guy live out his dream. We hear about dreams a lot in pro wrestling. Stuff like the Hardy brothers or Edge and Christian growing up to be tag team champions, Shawn Michaels with the boyhood dream fulfilled, Sasha Banks learning about Eddy passing in the arena, that sort of thing. And then there's Eddie Kingston, with a different life and a different dream. He'd been pushing for this match through social media and interviews and just wishing on a star, and we live in a pro wrestling world in 2022 where sometime wishes and dreams can sometimes can sometimes come true. That's the joy of AEW more than anything else, the dream of TWA and ROH fulfilled. And on this night, we got to come along for the ride.

Look, I'll be totally transparent here. If you read me talking about Eddie and Ishii and Eddie and Takeshita, you know that Eddie vs a Japanese guy isn't always my favorite Eddie Kingston. It can bring out the worst and the most excessive and all of the things that I, personally, don't love about the style. And yet, I loved just about every second of this. Some of that was Eddie, who put his heart out there, who wanted the perfect match, who threw his face into every forearm, who let out a scream, one of the many screams on this night actually, that was primal and true. It was, in part, Eddie going for a killshot on the apron so early or outright biting his hero to get an edge, completely unafraid to leave his mark on his idol's flesh. So much of it, however, was Akiyama, genuine, the real deal, no degrees of separation, with just enough grit and age to make the real even realer. So much of it was how much he threw himself into this, the way his knees buckled as Eddie lit up his chest, the bump he took the outside, the steel in his eyes as Kingston met his gaze, the amazing way his feet flew up on the DDT's impact. When he rolled through on the half and half and ducked under to hit the first exploder, the sort of thing you doubt again and again or at least that I do, that takes me out of a match each and every time, I bought it, or at least I let myself buy it, just this once. Call it a Thanksgiving week miracle. Call it yet another thing Eddie Kingston willed into the world on this night. 

As good and visceral and true as the match was, the post-match was all the more so. If you're here and reading this now, you probably got choked up a bit. There's nothing I can write that's more meaningful than that. When wrestling makes you feel, there's nothing better. He shared his dream with us, through pain and sweat and effort and persistence and hope, all from a guy who self-admittedly doesn't find that last bit so easy. The stuff pro wrestling dreams are made of.

Chris Jericho vs Sammy Guevara vs Claudio Castagnoli vs Bryan Danielson

MD: Maybe I'm feeling particularly forgiving due to the magic of Eddie Kingston's wish, but I'm going to go out and forgive most of the inherent failings of a 4-way here. Yes, at one point Claudio was out on the floor for a bit too long. Yes, Jericho really shouldn't have kicked out of the G2H/Shooting Star Press; someone should have broken it up instead, as is the point of having other guys in there. In general, though, this was really good and it was because all four wrestlers brought the best of what they could do and it was all pretty structurally smart, more focused on story than spots, or at least having the story drive the spots. I've said recently that Sammy is, in a lot of ways, the perfect opponent for 2022 Claudio and 2022 Danielson, but they're his perfect opponents as well. Danielson's able to make use of Sammy's agility and speed and intensity and creativeness. No one in the world can catch Sammy better than Claudio; the basing on the shooting star to the floor was like very little I've ever seen. Against these two, things that Sammy does that shouldn't work, whether it's his Snuka tribute leapfrog/backflip/standing Spanish Fly or the bonkers cutter followed by a Spanish Fly in rapid succession, simply work. The reason why we value execution in pro wrestling, whether it's great punches or incredible agility is that it allows for suspension of disbelief and when put against Danielson and Claudio, a new level of such suspension is unlocked for Guevara. 

Anyway, they quickly went into the story here, with the BCC pinballing the JAS and then facing off against one another. Later on, when they faced off against each other again, it was like two masters of a fighting style knowing exactly how to counter one another as they switched through the hammer and anvil elbows. Jericho and Sammy rained small slights upon one another before outright going at it to the crowd's delight. Jericho was astoundingly opportunistic here, channeling the most craven villains imaginable (full Bobby Heenan, really) and not paying for it and paying for it again and again until he made a daring leap during the giant swing, what felt like such a dangerous spot, whether it was or not, and then capitalizing for the victory. All four ways have the decked stacked against them and therefore, just by the sheer level of difficulty involved, this was better than it had any right to be.

Sting/Darby Allin vs Jeff Jarrett/Jay Lethal:

MD: I had some misgivings about this one because Jarrett being there made Sting seem a little older and you didn't want that given how many other main acts he's gone over in the last couple of years, but between Jarrett's condition and the fact that the first half of the match quite smartly saw young paired with old as they brawled around the arena, it worked out pretty well overall. I had wanted Singh in there or maybe a Sonjay/Singh/Lethal handicap, but at his stage of his development, it was probably better to just have Satnam in there for a few big moments, and what big moments they were, the two almost impossible catches, Sting's dive, the chokeslam, and the missed splash into the combo Death Drop/Coffin Drop which had been set up previously, but never hit as no one was quite big enough until now. Jarrett added a lot too, with reactions for the last row as he encountered Sting for the first time at the start, bouncing appropriately between Sting and Darby on punches, and then beating down Darby with fairly credible stuff when it was time for it.

I, and Taz along with me, thought that they steered off course when they took about three minutes to shift to more conventional tag rules. Immediately thereafter, Sonjay and Satnam just walked into the ring casually, so building to a hot tag for the sake of it was dubious at best. Sting couldn't quite land the finishing spot, but I was okay with this, as it was set up by Darby basically hulking(Stinging?) up after the just nuts guitar shot and there was a sense that maybe the student is becoming the master finally. Despite some grumblings about either Lethal or Jarrett from various quarters, this felt like it belonged on the card, no question.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 9/19 - 9/25 Part 2

AEW Rampage Grand Slam 9/23

Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King

MD: Unless they're in there against a team that's the top of the top, like FTR who can carry the heat in a more conventional structure no matter the opponent, Sting's tags always have a bunch of bells and whistles. That's in part because Darby Allin is bell and a whistle and his matches probably should have big set pieces anyway. It's in part to cover Sting's physical limitations. It's always amazing how well the matches go regardless and that nothing ever goes wrong. Here, things went wrong, but as with most wrestling, when things go wrong, they tend to create an even bigger dramatic effect. For the most part, these matches are tied together by Sting's presence, his star power, Darby's ability to bump and throw himself into situations, and the big stunts that everything builds to. This was no exception. There was the early ambush, the visual image of Julia going full Sherri (as she did often in this match) hanging on Sting's back, things ending up in the ring with Sting standing off and then fighting off both Matthews and King. There tends to be less of an overall narrative in matches like these. You're building from moment to moment and capitalizing on the opportunities the last moment presented. Darby hitting King with a code red and then himself out on a dive on Matthews allowed for Sting to match up with Matthews and set up his own dive. King recovering early enough meant that Sting could go flying through the tables (which included the first mishap that made everything more grisly and helped justify how out of it Sting would be for the rest of the match). That allowed for the handcuffing and Darby to fight back up the ramp during the commercial break and the 2-on-1 at the top with all of the individual story beats, ultimately leading to them revisiting the dangling choke that started this feud and both men crashing into tables and ultimately out of the match.

It's a tricky balance, having everything weighty enough, having it all make sense, having it all justified, having it remain consistent with everything that's happened in Sting's other matches and across the rest of the card. The weight of things here had to balance with the Starks/Hobbs street fight for instance. But I think they more or less nailed it, aided in part by some of the mishaps like the tables not cooperating or Julia's huge bump going wrong at the end to help get across the weight of the finish. Obviously, everything here built to the big surprise of Muta and it worked because the crowd went up for it and because Matthews portrayed shock and fear exactly when he should have. Plus he took an absolutely amazing dragon screw. That helped too. But that highlights a broader point. There wasn't a moment in this match where any of the wrestlers (including Julia, though maybe not Muta) wasn't entirely engaged and putting everything they had into it. When you've got a stunt show held together by star power and spots, that engagement is absolutely everything.

Sammy Guevara vs. Eddie Kingston

MD: I've been watching a lot of 1986 New Japan lately. Actually, let me rephrase that. I just finished watching every single NJPW match we have on tape for 1986. The throughline of that year is the NJPW vs UWF feud and there are two matches in particular: Fujinami vs Maeda and the match where Koshinaka wins the title from Takada that you can sum up like this: the NJPW guy had to wrestle an absolutely perfect match to hang in the UWF guy. In both cases, Fujinami and Koshinaka rise to the occasion and you end up with two just great matches. As this started towards the finishing stretch, I kind of had that same feeling. After all that had happened, given pent up rage in Kingston that had been simmering and simmering, given that Sammy robbed Eddie of his revenge against Jericho, given how Ruby Soho was hurt, and most especially given the way Sammy repeated his line to start the match, he would have had to wrestle an absolutely perfect match to hang with Eddie, to have any sort of chance of actually beating him. That would have meant leaning on every advantage, his speed, his agility, Tay at ringside, Eddie's own rage used against him, everything. If he had managed that, he would have had a shot, not to pin Eddie, not to make him submit, but maybe to knock him out. 

Sammy did not wrestle that match. He got beat around the ring. He capitalized on a mistake. He drew some heat during the commercial break doing snow angels in the ring and yes, leaning on Tay. He survived a strike exchange even. But the tide was too much. It was not his perfect match. It's not within his character to do so. What he did manage to do, however, was to tap into that rage, that pent up aggression, a symbolic throbbing heart of AEW that is connected to everyone sitting at home and every missed opportunity past and present. He unleashed a monster too big for him to stop, but also too big for itself to stop. Eddie had been stretching Jericho in his own head for months. With Sammy in his grasp, he couldn't let go. So Eddie lost a victory and Sammy won a Pyrrhic one, celebrating down the ramp while Eddie's angst and frustration, the towering monster inside of him, only grew stronger and more intense. It got me thinking though, got me wondering. Maybe someday we'll see them run it back. Maybe someday we'll see what Sammy's perfect match against Eddie might be. Koshinaka spent all of 86 getting better, made stronger against the hard steel of Takada. Maybe Eddie is exactly what Sammy needs?

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: 8/29 - 9/4 Part 2

All Out 9/4

Sting/Darby Allin/Miro vs. House of Black (Malakai Black/Brody King/Buddy Matthews)

MD: While this broke down at the end, it also felt very different from the last couple of far more chaotic Sting PPV matches. I loved the roles in the first half, with Miro taking the shine, Darby eating the heat, and Sting in there for the comeback. That was a different layout to the opening pairings in the FTR trios for instance. There was a sense throughout of real unity for the House of Black, something that, when combined with their size and presence, means even after their loss in the trios tournament and here, they'll be viable challengers for the trios belts or the tag titles without much effort. Miro sort of dropped out as the match went on as much more of the focus was on Sting or Darby but I liked his interactions in general, first refusing to tag in Darby and then telling Darby (who was trapped in a neutral corner) that he had to listen to him and make it over to make the tag. The bit at the end with Sting refusing to break the Scorpion even as he was getting battered and then with the mist (learned it from Muta) were both iconic. This probably could have played just as well on TV as PPV but it was still a lot of fun.

Bryan Danielson vs. Chris Jericho

MD: Full disclosure. Due to things like parental responsibility, I didn't get a chance to catch most of the PPV until Monday morning and then I jumped around a lot. This was probably the third match on the show I saw. That meant I wasn't experiencing it like the live crowd or a lot of you. I know there were criticisms of this maybe being placed wrong on the card or that it went too long, and while I agree with the latter to a degree and in a specific way I'll get into in a moment, I can't really speak for the former. Therefore, overall, this was a hit to me, not a miss. This might well be Jericho's career year and I thought the overarching story of the match was excellent, really. He had dusted off the Lionheart persona and style and had great success against Jon Moxley with it, as it played against very specific weaknesses of Mox. Now, with pride on the line, he came in expecting to repeat his success against Danielson, only to find he was brushing up against Danielson's strengths. You could see it early through his facial expressions. He came out posing and grinning through an immediate successful exchange or two, got immediately knocked on his ass, threw a chair, and came back finding the grin again. He had a couple of tricked out moves that had worked wonders against Moxley but when they failed him against Danielson, he had no recourse other than to go right back to them and fail again. That, as much as anything else was the story. He may have been able to escape a lot of what Danielson was putting him in, barely, but Danielson was easily escaping his holds and shifting back to being the aggressor. 

Whatever the Lionheart was, it was less of one thing than the whole of Bryan Danielson. Lionheart was a mask that Jericho put back on, an artificial guise, but as much as it freshened him up and gave him novel angles to attack from, he found himself too married to it and it limited him and forced him into stubborn mistakes (like the plancha to the outside which cost him). Danielson on the other hand, was the sum of everything he'd ever been, something that culminates with the seated zen position he's been using to absorb damage and throw his opponents off as of late. Where Jericho hid in his own past (and as the match went on, hid poorly, constantly adjusting pants that no longer fit correctly), Danielson wrestles like a man fully actualized. The story was so clear and clean that I wouldn't have cut any of the matwork from the beginning or middle of the match. It wasn't gratuitous. It was the point. That said, I do think the finishing stretch (everything from the first, countered Lionsault) probably went too long. There was escalation desperation in Jericho but they could have cut a few minutes and still gotten that across. In the end, they got to where they needed to be, delusion and cowardice and rationalization and a low blow to prop up a false, flimsy pride, as Daniel Garcia watched on shaking his head. Jericho, like all the greatest heels, came in expecting to win on his own merit and only succeeded to lie to himself once again.

Jon Moxley vs. CM Punk

MD: Going to stick straight to the match here. A couple of days ago, Phil wrote an explainer on the Ringer on where the backstage stuff stood and by the time this gets posted, Dynamite will have aired and things that are moving quickly will reach some other destination. I won't make this a retrospective or wax poetic on the last year. I did think this was very good though. It inverted the match from Cleveland, where Punk came in looking for a title match and Moxley rushed forward, unrelenting from the bell. There, that forced Punk off his balance and caused him to blow up his own leg. Here, he was ready both for Moxley's Hansenian onslaught, which he met head on and for his own kick, which hit picture perfect. That meant instead of early Death Riders, we got the early GTS. Things went to the outside after that, Moxley's domain, and maybe Punk hurt his arm on the dive or maybe he was selling that he did, but Mox was able to take over and open him up. The crowd, despite being in Chicago, couldn't deny Moxley at times and despite his attitude, despite (or because of?) his barbarism and dominance, they gravitated back towards him. For a while, he'd get heat by taking it so over the top. After Punk was opened up and after he made sure that the opening became a gusher, he licked the blood. Shortly thereafter, he jammed his own head against Punk's so that it'd be all over his face. When Punk started to come back from the woundwork, he went straight to the leg to cut him off. With Moxley, the malice is personal, but you shouldn't take it personally. It's universal. He carries disdain for each and every person he faces. He's a storm and it's up to his opponent to endure it and to cobble out a meaningful match from it. If you cut him (scrape him even), he will bleed. If you punch him, his head will rock. If you stretch him, he will know pain. But it's up to you to channel and redirect the forward motion, the potential energy of him, into something coherent. 

As Mox continued to dismantle and batter his opponent, Punk was able to endure however he could, was able to tough it out, was able to survive, even if sometimes that meant going for an eye. Moxley returned favor by biting the wound, by stubbornly, and unfairly (because fairness has nothing to do with pro wrestling) cutting him off by going after the leg. But eventually, Punk lasted long enough to get under Moxley, literally, and to drop him down into a GTS. In another world, that's the image that would stick with us of this night, the remnants of the match's second GTS and all the damage that had been inflicted on Punk since the first, a hobbled Moxley draped over a bloodied and exhausted Punk, and Punk's eyes opening as he saw what he needed to do. A talking point in our circle about Survivor Series 97 was that the main event between Bret and Shawn was actually shaping up to be their best match together. I might not go so far with this one, but it had a lot of merits on its own, and I can't help but wonder if in years to come, all of those will simply be a similar afterthought to everything that transpired after.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 6/20 - 6/26

AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 6/26

Chris Jericho/Sammy Guevara/Minoru Suzuki vs. Eddie Kingston/Wheeler Yuta/Shota Umino

MD: Hot crowd, some real stakes, a lot of personal issues, and guys stepping up, so there was a lot to like here. The biggest issue was Eddie vs Jericho, obviously, but Eddie had reasons to get his hands on Sammy after what happened to Ortiz and Suzuki was in the match to be the anti-Kingston weapon (to great success as we'd see). So they delayed Jericho vs Eddie until the time was right. The AEW house style is all about setting up spots and paying them off later, or alternatively, hitting spots and then inverting them on a second attempt. Here, after Yuta started off with Jericho giving him a ton of shine (albeit shine leading to an easy enough kick out for him) and the subsequent brawling around the ring, they gave the crowd a Kingston vs Suzuki chop off. Suzuki walked into the machine gun chops, completely negating them. He took the advantage and Jericho came in to take advantage of that, only for Kingston to comeback and then hit the machine gun chops on Jericho, who sold all over the place. That, right there, was a nice little bit of set up and payoff. Suzuki was able to get Kingston's arm as he tried to knock him off the apron, though, and that gave us a bit of a heat. Just a bit though. 

The match would break down shortly thereafter and stay broken down for the rest. It worked more often than not and most often when there was a big character impulse driving it, like Umino getting Jericho in the Crab and then enduring shots from everyone or when the hit the dive train with Suzuki teasing his or the triple submissions or, I suppose when they hit one rapid fire spot after the next ending with Sammy's cutter and Yuta's splash, though that last one felt more choreographed than opportunistic. Some of the choices between break-ups and nearfalls towards the end were a little dubious, most especially the tornado DDT/brainbuster combo. The dynamic between Kingston and Suzuki, where Suzuki kept getting in his way and slowing him down but not ultimately stopping him from getting a shot in here or there was effective. Yuta and Umino stepped up appropriately; no one can say that Yuta isn't taking full advantage of his opportunity. Sammy looked like he belonged in there. I'd say the finish followed from the story of the match well enough too, as the cumulative damage was ultimately too much for Kingston's side. I would have maybe liked more extended heat before everything broke down though. 

Bullet Club (Young Bucks/El Phantasmo) vs. Dudes with Attitudes (Sting/Darby Allin/Shingo Takagi)

MD: By the time this match started, it'd been non-stop multi-wrestler action since that little heat segment on Kingston's arm, with maybe a small respite when Clark Connors was getting beaten on. The action was good and I'd argue even at times smart, but it was all a little much. If they had shuffled the Ospreay/Cassidy match earlier on the card maybe? On paper, a match with a bunch of comedy spots would have been a good palette cleanser but it was still a multi-man spot-laden thing, so while being different in one way, it was more of the same in another. That said, in a vacuum, all of these things worked. Sting hit the big dive to start and then got to hit his first ever senton. Darby unsurprisingly fed into all of the Bucks' stuff well and they fed for his comeback. Sting got to get a bunch of superhero moments and the crowd went up for all of them. When everything really went crazy at the end it occasionally got a bit disjointed, which sometimes makes things feel more organic but maybe not here. I thought the finish felt a little flat maybe because Shingo had a bit too many things and the fans weren't as familiar with them as they might have been? Or maybe it was because it was a bit of an anti-climax due to the couple of minutes before it. Still, it's amazing how natural and meaningful Sting felt on this card, which is a testament both to him and his opponents.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Part 2: AEW Revolution 3/6/22

AEW Revolution 3/6

Eddie Kingston vs. Chris Jericho - EPIC

MD: I wondered how Jericho was going to handle this one. There were limitations due to the card. In a world without MJF vs Punk they could have done a bloody brawl or something more cinematic. In a world without Danielson vs Mox, they could have had an absolute slugfest. What we got instead was the most in shape Jericho has been in years and him pushing himself to the limit physically to work a Kingston match. That meant the perfect mix of hard strikes, big selling, and nasty bombs.

Eddie was going to be Eddie. He's a constant, always on, always filling the gap, always thinking, always acting, always hitting as hard as he can and leaning into everyone else's shots to make them twice as resonant. Jericho, however, was absolutely present, selling the emotion of the match, responding to the fans' chants, getting into it with Aubrey to get more heat after a near-fall. He started out from a deficit, getting caught with the half and half immediately. The hole was only going to get deeper when the striking shot because he couldn't match Eddie's chops (in fact, no amount of leaning in that Eddie did could fully justify how much he was selling for Jericho on them).

What he did instead was acutely target Eddie's orbital bone with pinpoint shots. That paid out throughout the match. When he wanted to hit the top rope frankensteiner, he'd shoot a palm strike up first. When he wanted to cut off Eddie in the corner, it would be with a jab to the eye. Of course, Eddie was Eddie and would shoot a poke right back at Jericho. Likewise, Jericho was Jericho and instead of leaning wholly into his strengths, he had to try to outsuplex Eddie with a number of Germans and one amazing Foley-like bump from Kingston off the apron to the floor. It all built to Eddie surviving the Walls, Jericho surviving the backfist, then almost winning by hitting a first codebreaker onto the orbital bone. Eddie bumped for a second codebreaker as hard anyone ever took it, but Jericho's ego and spite won out. He went for a Judas Effect to crush Eddie's face instead of going for the pin and Eddie was able to capitalize with two backfists and the world's most over the top stretch plum. Eddie's match is a hell of a thing, something that wears all of its influences on its sleeve but while making everything matter and everything hit emotionally, and Jericho jumped headlong into it better than anyone could have expected.

PAS:  Eddie just delivers every time in big matches. This was Kingston Road Eddie, which isn't always my favorite style of his, but it was a great version of it. As always Eddie elevates the match over a regular All Japan pastiche by his amazing selling, loved all of the stuff around the eye, and how vicious Jericho was. Potato shot Jericho isn't the way he normally works, but it is my favorite version of him, and he was matching Eddie with every blow, some of those suplexes were really sick, and good on old man Jericho for taking those head drops, and it made total sense for his old crickly neck to be the thing that did him in with the Stretch Plum.

CM Punk vs. MJF

MD: I've watched this one twice now and I appreciate the work and the effort certainly. I appreciate the thought put into it. Nothing is in there without a reason. Everything builds from something else, whether something from four decades ago, two decades ago, or two months ago. The announcers did a fairly heroic job in connecting the dots and laying everything out for the audience, on the understanding that the fans in the crowd would be the most hardcore possible and would know enough to begin with to follow along for most of it. And overall, I did think it worked.

There were things I outright loved. I loved the build early on to the chain being used as a punch-enhancing weapon. I'm a proponent of the gimmick immediately being present and having an indirect impact on what happens in a match but also being built up for an early payoff. That's true with a cage or barbed wire or a chain. Here it impacted movement and was used indirectly and the punch was teased a few times, but when it paid off, it was on MJF's hand and led to Punk gushing. That followed, by the way, MJF using the chain to block Punk's bulldog out of the corner, so it was the ultimate indirect use of the chain leading to the first meaningful direct use of it, which, in turn, led to the blood. By the way, the corner bulldog would come up again twice later, first Punk hitting it with the chain wrapped to avoid the indirect counter and then MJF trying it onto the thumbtacks, which was him, once again, showing his hubris and needing to vanquish Punk with his own move.

Once Punk's gusher started, we got what I thought was the most important moment of the match and the entire feud, when Max took the mic and reiterated that Punk abandoned and betrayed him. Even after the victory in Chicago, even after the ambush last week, even after bloodying him with the chain, Punk was in MJF's head, he had no catharsis, and he lashed out at the fans for not going along with him and seeing him as the hero of his own story. This is pro wrestling and one feud has to move on to the next and Wardlow was waiting in the wings, but that was the moment that signified that no matter how else everything played out in the match itself, the feud could end and Punk could win it. In many ways, it proved he already had.

Still, the match had to get there, and I think it moved along fairly well, through the crushing of the hand, through the submission attempts, through the wrapped knee opening MJF up, through Punk dragging Max around the ring (though that felt a little too collaborative to me), through Punk shattering his knee on the stairs, right up until the tombstone on the apron. That's when things veered off a bit. It was one too many clever spots in a match that could be allowed to be clever, but only up to the point where that ingenuity didn't get in the way of the visceral violence. To me, the tombstone and the thumbtacks that followed ended up as one too many spots from the head when they should have been laying it into each other down the stretch instead. Maybe it's okay because Max had already lost himself the war. Maybe it's okay because he'd already bled (though not nearly enough). Maybe it's okay because Wardlow had learned his worth and was about to show it to the world, but maybe okay isn't what the match was going for and maybe that final patch of being okay snatched away just a touch of greatness. Just a touch though, since there was still a lot of greatness to be found.

Bryan Danielson vs. Jon Moxley

PAS: Wrote this up for The Ringer  . Easily one my favorite matches of the year.

MD: Phil's covered this already and at length, but I'll lead with this: with Punk and MJF, I saw the strings. I appreciated the work and effort put into them. I liked most (but not all of them), but there was never a moment in the match that they weren't clear for everyone to see. It's 2022. That's ok. But.

There were definitely strings in Mox vs Danielson. There were parallels. Mox went for the big clothesline twice before hitting it. Danielson focused on the ribs for a time. They had parallels towards the end with the submissions and the specific flip over counters. They had Danielson and Moxley both use the hammer and anvil elbows and the repeated kicks to the face. There was thought put into this, but there were also absolutely zero gaps to be found.

There were strings because there had to be strings because not all of it could have just been intuitive, but you have to exhume them after the fact, a dry listed out post-mortem at the brains behind the heart. Because this match was all heart and all emotion and all intensity. Every second of it had both guys completely on, completely in the moment, driving forward. If Kingston vs Jericho were a series of moves and moments that all fit the character and all made sense and all hit hard, this was a twenty minute primal scream, airtight blood, and violence, and technique. Danielson, over the last few weeks in interviews, likened this level of intensity to being as close to god as he could possibly be.

Mox wrote an entire book that espouses his philosophy on wrestling and life and you can watch it play out on screen in his matches. With Mox, it was the early egging on, hands behind his back, the headbutts, the burst of energy when he finally hit the clothesline. With Danielson, it was that moment after Mox kicked out of the flying knee, when he just shook his head again and again and again, horrified that he didn't win but elated that there was more to come. Horror and elation sums this one up pretty well as a viewer too.

Darby Allin/Sammy Guevara/Sting vs. Andrade/Isiah Kassidy/Matt Hardy

PAS: Perfect palate cleansing match in between the Moxley vs. Danielson and title match. Just 13 minutes of car crash spots, including two of the crazier garbage spots I can remember (and shockingly neither included Darby, the rare match where he is out nutsed). The stage dive Spanish fly through two tables was so psycho that it really should have been saved for a different match where it could stand out, the level of difficulty on that spot was wild, one one wrong inch could have gone very wrong. Of course Sting diving off of a balcony through two tables was totally wild, the stacked tables meant he didn't have to fall as a far, but that is an insane thing for a 60 year old guy to do, what a treat this Sting run has been, he has just been perfect.

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