AEW Five Fingers of Death 8/19 - 8/25 Part 2

All In 8/25/24

Bryan Danielson vs. Swerve Strickland

MD: I cried a little, maybe. It's important I lead with that because the next sentence is going make it seem like I'm less engaged than I should be. Look, here's the deal... one reason that I get these reviews out so quickly is because the brain doesn't shut off. It never shuts off. It's just who I am, right? I watch a match and I'm thinking, thinking, thinking. I'm thinking all sorts of things, but one thing I'm thinking about is what I'm going to say, if I'm going to say something at all. I don't watch a Bryan Danielson match without that in my head. What's the hook? What's the entry point? What's the unifying element that will get me into a review. Once I get in, I'm good. And maybe you might feel like that's a terrible way to consume any form of entertainment, art, whatever, but I'm not just consuming. I'm constantly engaging. It's built into my DNA. I can't fix it. It doesn't mean I'm less tapped in; it means I'm more tapped in, or at least that's how I feel. Here's the point, as I'm watching this thing, I'm thinking to myself: how am I ever going to write about this? I posted the master list recently. I had written up something like 90 Danielson matches from the last few years. What is there that I can possibly say about this that is additive or useful or meaningful or something you don't already know?

Maybe I don't go timeless. Maybe I go topical (and find something timeless by doing so). Let's try that, because I'm struggling a bit here. This is way bigger than me. Here goes. There was some talk last week about storytelling, whether it existed around and before a match or whether it exists in a match itself. I'm going to quote my pal Charles here. "I really disagree with the idea of wrestling and storytelling somehow being at odds with each other. It's about the overall viewing experience, and it all should work together and be cohesive. There are some skewed ideas now of what storytelling is." And my god, isn't this the perfect example of that?

There were so many elements set up in the build, so much rich narrative and character to draw from. With Danielson, it was a culmination of a lifetime of wrestling, of so many failed attempts at winning the AEW title, of the tension between family and passion and accomplishment, of going out on your own terms given the trauma of the first retirement, of finding drive and pushing yourself over the finish line when you're so close to peace and serenity and your final reward. For Swerve, it was about knowing just how far you climbed to get to the top, all the things you did that you had to live with, all the doubters you had to prove wrong, balancing the adulation of the crowd with the knowledge that in order to justify it all, you'd do anything, absolutely anything to keep it. It was about carrying the company only to realize that this night wasn't even about you, that your opponent was looking past you, not towards glory or victory but towards peace and finality, something you couldn't even imagine given the fire burning in your heart, and trying to find some way to bring that all together to become a force that could the change the fate of one night and define history for all time.

That was all before the bell rang! And then when it did, these forces began to crash and clash against one another. Early feeling out faded quickly as Swerve, mutable like water in his movements, tried for an early float around suplex. Danielson, however, had trained for all of Swerve's moves, and more than that, for his unique way of moving, and jammed it with a knee shot so that he could follow up by dismantling Swerve's shoulder. Swerve, champion that he is, was able to fight forward, to endure the first set of attacks, both grounded and daring, only for Danielson to lock in a headscissors in the ropes and target the shoulder again. Realizing that he wasn't going to beat him on these terms, he took advantage of a distracted ref and Nana's assistance and crushed Danielson's head onto the ring bell. Everything in the last paragraph, everything that these two are and were and might ever be led into everything in this paragraph. You can draw direct lines, direct correlation. It's a snake eating itself, backstory feeding action drawing on character and creating reaction. When wrestling hits like this, when it is allowed to draw upon decades of history and lifetimes of desires, there's nothing else in the world like it.

Things progressed along these lines. Danielson, bloodied yet resilient, came back (maybe using the iron in his arm on clotheslines? Maybe not; there are so many elements in here that you can tap into that it's hard to know where to stop). Certainly he showed his versatility and relentlessness by turning a Cattle Mutilation attempt into a pair of brutal Tiger Suplexes. Swerve, in response, put him down with the Vertebreaker. Again, so much was at play, not just Danielson's history of head and neck injuries, including his current vulnerability for which he says he needs surgery, but the fact that the Vertebreaker is such a dangerous, forbidden, rare move (not unlike the Tiger Suplexes that preceded it, actually; parallels are great too. Excess isn't usually a good thing but the time to unleash it is on the biggest match at the biggest stage; you hold it back in other matches exactly for this moment).

As Swerve drove the doctors away, the match shifted into a gripping third act. All throughout, Bryan Danielson's family presented themselves as a character in this play, with a splotch of pink standing out among this massive sea of humanity: Birdie's hat. You found yourself looking in their direction whenever the camera allowed us to see their reaction, to see their connection with the action in the ring. When Swerve took his first major advantage using the ring bell, he pulled a bloodied Bryan out to stomp his face in front of them and proclaim himself as Birdie's hero since he'd be the one to send Bryan back to her once and for all. Now, after the Vertebreaker, as Swerve hit Danielson with House Call after House Call, Bryan's hand extended to them and he mouthed an apology that somehow felt so much more sincere and heartfelt (empowered perhaps by a certain level of human ambiguity as opposed to something more contrived) than the one Bryan's own trainer made at Wrestlemania XXVI. He refused to stay down. More than that, he stood. An apology gave way to a declaration of love as he absorbed blow after blow and then turned to face Swerve as the crowd took a collective breath, and threw forth a resounding slap, one of the truly great comeback moments of this century.

From there it was a finishing stretch deserving of what came before, with both wrestlers surviving each other's best shots and one last bit of dangling plot, Swerve's own past coming home to roost as Hangman Page rode his way past security to disrupt Swerve's final defiantly indomitable moment. Just that last bit of narrative protection for a champion that earned it, for a man that will be here day in and day out in the years to come. Swerve would do everything to win, but there was a cost and some of those costs you pay for the rest of your life. With that cost paid once more (not for the last time), the smoke cleared and Danielson stood in the ring with his family as the fireworks went off and the show came to a close.

Here's another disclosure. I didn't see this live. I didn't get to see this until a few hours later, actually. I was able to see parts of the show live but not all of it. Why, you may ask? I took two (2) nature walks with my six year old daughter yesterday (2 is a lot for one day). We saw three foxes, two turtles and a blue heron. She caught multiple bugs in her net including a couple of end band net-wing beetles. That was on top of assisting her with Super Monkey Ball, reading a Franny K. Stein book to her, and overall helping prep her and her sister to be ready for the first day of school today. So maybe you weren't looking for that splotch of pink every moment of the match, but I was, and maybe your eyes were dry at the end, but mine weren't. It's funny. If she told me tomorrow that I should give up something I love to hang out with her more, I'd probably hedge. She's not the most rational entity I've ever dealt with. She's the sort that'll refuse to budge for ten minutes because she's still hunting a moth. She's six. She's also the third kid. I've seen a couple of other six year olds go down the path first. That said, if you stacked up all the most valuable and worthwhile times in my life, those couple of years during COVID when I was working from home every day and here, home, watching these kids grow up every moment that I could... well, that would top the list, I think. So maybe I wouldn't make exactly the call that Bryan is making here, but I can certainly understand it, and I'm certainly going to make something akin to it each and every time I can, even if that means I don't get to have the shared experience of watching this match with the rest of you live. It was still there for me when I was able to catch up. And that ring will be there for Bryan when he's ready for it again. For now, though, the Countdown keeps ticking down, and we'll be there for every moment (even if I might be a little late for some because of a more pressing engagement with a six year old).

AEW Five Fingers of Death Master List

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby & Orange vs. Swerve & Keith (Lee)

 

11. Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs. Keith Lee/Swerve Strickland AEW Dynamite 7/5

ER: I didn't consciously set out to write about every Darby Allin match I haphazardly cherry-picked my way through, but it's certainly become that. It would be great if I could just watch a Darby match that I didn't feel the need to say something about. Alas, he does too many things I like, finds too many ways to do new twists on old crash landings, and manages to do something every match that is astonishing enough that it makes me exclaim aloud. When compared to any of the other wrestlers who make me do the same on such a consistent basis during nearly every match of theirs I watch - Stan Hansen, Fit Finlay, Necro Butcher were the first that came to mind - it puts Allin in the immediate company of my favorite wrestlers of all time. It is still probably too soon to say that Darby Allin is one of my favorite all time wrestlers, but he's certainly put up some numbers through his 20s and I've been persistently surprised by his sustainability. There are only so many times I can say that before his run is cemented as legendary, regardless of when it ends. 

I've written up plenty of matches that I thought were Darby elevating one or even three opponents to something grander, but I think one of his great strengths is how selflessly he interjects his stunts and feats. Darby Allin manages to take Shane McMahon stunt bumps in a way that is in service to his opponent, never to himself as a Show Stopper. At this point there is a lengthy list of people who have had some of their greatest performances and matches while in the role of Darby Allin Opponent, and that is not a coincidence. Darby is a canvas that allows wrestlers of all sizes and styles to rise to something greater, in the same way Rey Mysterio or even Amazing Red did. 

Keith Lee is one of our great Should Be So Much Better wrestlers. He is a study of a man shaped like a root beer barrel who mostly works the least interesting style for his size and shape, a Mo Vaughn who bunts and works walks with men in scoring position. Swerve has a CVS receipt length list of matches where his focus was on doing a cool one armed handstand before hitting a move rather than just hitting a move, a John Morrison with more thigh slaps and less backspins. This match, surely not coincidentally against Star Maker Allin, was Lee and Swerve working to their full potential. This was a typically great show opening Darby Allin performance, with a constantly pushed pace getting one-upped all the way to the finish, laying things out to the strengths of every person involved. Keith Lee was Donkey Kong instead of a man the size of Trent Williams doing rope running reversals. His Only On Darby biel to start the match set a tone that every Lee match should have. Darby and Orange played off Lee perfectly, using him as a rock climbing gym who could throw them, and I love how their team works as one man split into two attacking beings, attacking in 1-2 flurries, one sacrificing his body so the other might have an opening to land a shot. 

Lee focuses too often on agility, Orange and Darby made him focus on power. He looks more powerful than ever with Allin getting ragdolled over ringposts and bouncing violently on throws. He brings interesting dogged struggle to stopping OC's constant attempts at diving DDTs or Slumdogs, and his lack of neck makes him impervious to backpack sleepers. Swerve forgets about matching athleticism with Darby, instead focusing on hitting him hard and torturing him. Swerve wedging Darby under the ring steps so that Lee (carrying Cassidy on his back) can walk up the steps while Darby screams like he's slowly being crushed in an industrial press? That's four men coming together to creatively inflict pain on a masochist babyface icon. 

I loved OC climbing all over Lee, attempting to drag him down by the neck while kicking his legs against Lee's resistance, before finally holding Lee stooped over with two consecutive Slumdogs, setting up an actual plausible way for a man Lee's size to bump for a Darby code red. Lee hadn't taken a bump all match and they found a complicated set up that could have looked bad at every step, and instead built to the most logical use of a Keith Lee Agile Bump. The finish is Darby and Orange as Santo and Casas: OC diving off the top with a leaping DDT that spikes Swerve onto his head while sending himself running and diving straight through the ropes into a the exact same DDT on Lee, while Darby ensnares the spiked Swerve in a Last Supper. It's a great twist on Santo's rolling senton/tope, taking out the man on the floor while Casas majistrals the man left in his wake. I don't seek to keep comparing Darby Allin with the greatest names in wrestling history, but he sure does make it easy. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Dustin vs. Swerve

 

10. Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland AEW Rampage 2/15 (Aired 2/17/23)

ER: I don't know how he keeps doing it. At the time, I didn't know Dustin was only in his late 20s during his heavy schedule years as Goldust. That was half his and half my life ago, and he wasn't taking Death Valley Drivers on the ring apron then. He's an old dude and he keeps surprising us. A 6'6" great actor is almost a curse. It doesn't matter how good Tim Robbins or Jeff Goldblum are, it makes everything tough when your leading man is a foot taller than everyone. Liam Neeson's wife and family die in every movie so he can just be 6'5" alone in every scene. Dustin is a 6'6" old guy who is somehow a perfect opponent for every style opponent. I guess shooting guard bodies age with more grace than center bodies, but seeing Attitude era Dustin I wouldn't have guessed he'd be this adaptable into his 50s. Swerve is a talented guy who sometimes shovels a ton of bullshit onto things that don't need shoveling, and I let out a loud HA when Dustin just kick stopped some kind of slow motion handstand capoeira to hit an all time Code Red. 

Fighting Dustin made Swerve cut down on the bullshit and just kick and stomp on a seeping cut, raking his wrist tape across it to cover his arm deep red. I wish Dustin had been wearing all white instead of all red; it's like he was trying to cover up how much he was bleeding. He doesn't even need to bleed to draw sympathy, but he hides his blood showing he doesn't need such gimmicks; he bleeds for his love of the boys in the back. Dustin fucking slaps Swerve a couple of times. I like that Swerve's offense doesn't hit as hard as Dustin's. He's taking his shots and walking through them, an old man winning a gym game 10-8 over a young guy who keeps claiming he was shot from cardio day. I could never see Swerve do a handstand again, but I love how good he is at different angled spikes on his head. He'll take piledrivers, Code Reds, suplexes, a Cross Rhodes, all of it bouncing on or around the top of his head. Every nearfall worked. Retirement will never happen. Dustin is Satanico. The Code Red will get adorably slow but gracefully old but his uppercuts will be exactly the same. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 12/25 - 12/31 Part 2

AEW World's End 12/30/23

Eddie Kingston vs Jon Moxley

MD: Eddie vs Claudio is mythic. Eddie vs Danielson is masterful. Eddie vs Mox just tugs at your heartstrings, though, doesn't it? Wrestling can be such a simplistic thing sometimes and yet here? Let's break it down. We know what Eddie wants. Eddie leveraged his taste of success, all that hard work, into his life's greatest gamble, the creation of an American Triple Crown. What does Mox want? He doesn't want to prove himself to anyone else. He doesn't want fame, fortune, credit. He just wants a challenge worthy of his name. He wants a fight that'll go long and hard enough to make him feel alive. He wants a thrill that he can't allow himself to get anywhere else, because he's a family man, dammit. He wants the endorphins to pop. He wants to taste his own blood intermingled with someone else's. He wants to battle back all of the dark feelings that torment mankind with his fists alone. And if he wins too, all the better, because that means there's more to come, and because deep down, it would have meant that Eddie wasn't strong enough to carry his own dream. Mox is though, strong enough to never take that fishing trip, strong enough to carry this PPV, strong enough to march until the very end of the world, one foot after another, dragging dirt and dust and grime behind him. And if Eddie wins? Well, that's ok too, because it will have meant Eddie beat him, and that would have given validity to everything Eddie's fought for. He can dig that too. That's Mox for you.

Even in 2023, maybe especially in 2023, wrestling asks more of us than almost anything else. There's nothing truly comparable. The stakes are entirely artificial, but that's true with any TV show, right? We can relate to a TV drama, be it about life or death, be it about making ends meet, be it about finding love or getting respect. A belt though? What is a belt? What is a title? We're never going to win championships like this in our life. We can't go out and compete for them tomorrow. Just like speculative fiction or something with incredibly high stakes, it comes down to making it relatable, making us care, seeing ourselves in the wrestlers and our hopes and dreams in their hopes and dreams. We understand Eddie. And despite ourselves, we understand Mox too. Sometimes we want to look away, but we can't because they burn too bright. It hurts our eyes and it hurts our souls, but we understand and we relate and because they care, we care. For some of us, it goes back to Eddie's youth and our own fandom, to remembering how it felt to see Tenryu overcome Jumbo for the first time for Kawada to finally get what he fought his whole life for. We all look to the lens of our own experience for understanding, right? What stood out from Mox's book, more than anything else, was how different his experience was to mine even though we're only a few years apart. You read that book and you see a guy who made it to the mid 2000s, if not later, with no discernible idea what the internet was. He wasn't arguing whether or not Robert Gibson was better than Lance Storm on DVDVR, let me tell you that. But still, we see clearly what he shows us, and we watch, and we know, and we believe, and we're so damn lucky to get to. This was important, to the company, to the crowd, to the wrestlers, to us.

And it felt so, so good to watch Eddie Kingston ascendent, to watch him be an ace on a night where the company needed an ace. I know how they presented them, "The Ace of the World" and the "King of the Bums", but to me, Moxley was the Warrior King upon his throne and Kingston was the ace who learned, who studied, who had prepared his whole life for this moment. He controlled the center. He was poised. He was focused. He drew Moxley to him, told him to come charging in. He wrestled, as much as possible, a perfect match against a dangerous foe. The mistake he made, and it was a large one, was not down to planning or strategy, but the limits of his own body. He had to go big to keep control and he threw a dive that cost him. It was the right move but it meant rolling the dice and his number came up.

But that was ok, because underneath it all, underneath the poise, underneath the channeling of Misasa and Kawada and Taue and Kobashi (and Akiyama and Hase and on and on and on), there is still the white hot core that is Eddie Kingston. There's still the toughness, the animosity, the grievances tearing at him, the never say die attitude. So he fought back, and once he was in a position to do so, he found his center and the ace's mentality once more. He goaded Mox into an exchange, had him charge in, and then he ducked and took him over with an exploder. Mox tried to fire up but his leg gave way, and Eddie went in for the kill. This was the Eddie I've been watching in ROH, the one who controlled the ring, the one who locked his hips and threw, the one who planted his feet and fired away. He dropped Mox.

And then that fire underneath raised its ugly head once more. Mox had defeated him once upon a time with a bulldog choke. And there was Mox lying there prone, practically defeated. And Eddie, more human than you, or me, or any of us, cracked just a little. There are temptations in life and certainly temptations in the fantastical, fictional world of pro wrestling. These are storytellers. These are mythic beings living in stories. And there is no greater hubris than a story that ends clean and neat and perfect. The second Kingston lunged down to lock in his own bulldog choke, the whole world seemed to groan. I certainly did. Mox knew this hold. He trained for it. He owned it. He had the counter. Eddie followed with the hammer and anvil elbows and even though he made them his own, he was goading himself towards disaster. It went like clockwork: Mox reversed it, locked in a tight, inescapable choke. Here, at the precipice of glory, Eddie was Eddie once again. He was about to defeat himself. Again.

The thing is, though, Eddie Kingston, at his best and his worst and his truest, is a fighter. That ball of rage and angst may drive him to disaster, but it's a hell of a sturdy vehicle empowered by that roiling, writhing engine that's unlike anything else we've ever seen. If he had not wrestled so perfect a match up til that point, if he had not been the ace throughout, if Mox wasn't beaten down, if Eddie didn't have so much to fight for, then he would have been swept under, a fitting, imperfect end to the story of Eddie Kingston. But had spent the first two thirds of the match as the ace, and that put him in a position where the engine alone could take him over the finish line. He would have never been able to overcome Jon Moxley with heart and determination alone, but when he only had to call upon that for the final stretch, having shrugged off all the trappings of the heroes that came before him?

Eddie wrestled most of this match as a perfect, poised champion. He won it as Eddie Kingston at his rawest and most vulnerable. And here, at the end of this tournament and the end of this review, I don't have the words to explain to you how the combination of the two made it absolutely perfect. But it's ok, you were there too. They care, I care, you care. And here in the heart of winter, we're all less alone for that caring.

Swerve Strickland vs Dustin Rhodes

MD: There's theory and there's execution, right? On paper, the theory behind this one was rough. The match already had the deck stacked against it due to a number of things we know and some we can assume. Here's what we most likely know: Lee vs Strickland both had a monumental build and almost no build at all. Strickland had to keep his momentum from the Continental Classic. He was going to be over (as a face) with this specific crowd almost no matter what he did. There was a PPV that needed to be planned out fairly precisely time-wise. Dustin was a logical replacement as Lee's partner. His contract is up in a few months if you believe the rumors and there's no saying what happens then, but he's a guy always treated with respect and dignity and that brings certain skills to the table that almost no one else in the company has. There are things we don't know too. For instance, we have no idea when Lee might be able to go again. We have no idea if the cinder block gimmick and the overall layout were meant for the Lee match (it makes sense that they were, but we don't know!). There were other snakebit elements about the PPV, of course. So, do you stray from the gimmick? Do you just squash Dustin? Do you have Dustin fight on after the cinder block shot but get almost no offense in, just tiny hope spots? Do you accept that it'll mean more for Swerve to win after Dustin has a full comeback? Wrestling lore has it that you put over the babyface in a situation like this, but who's even the crowd favorite here? I don't know. I personally think that either you do the cinder block post-match or you do it and then have Dustin just get some amazing hope spots in but no real control. With the post-match possibility, maybe it logically forces the idea of a suspension for Swerve more than if he does it before the match and Dustin wants to fight on anyway? I don't know. Obviously they went the way they did with this one. So that's the theory. I don't think it was entirely sound.

But the execution? That made it work. Dustin is just that good and Swerve is just that ascendant. The world doesn't revolve around our personal preferences. Swerve isn't my guy. Some of his offense is just too floaty for me. Some of the tricked out move entrances don't fit a guy at his level in my eyes. Occasionally, the match layout gets wonky for my liking. But even though Swerve isn't my guy, I don't for a second deny the fact that he is The Guy right now, and that 2024 should be his year. He brings any number of things to the table, but the most important is the most important thing anyone can possibly bring, his presence in the moment. Some of that fluidity that throws me off is also often channeled into a positive. He's just floating through the air out there, moving with a sort of grace and ease that makes it seem like most of the rest of the roster is trudging through mud. That's not just in the moves he hits and takes either. It's in his expressions, his reactions, the way he seethes and roils and portrays elation. You believe that there's something boiling underneath the surface that emerges in the most dynamic, engrossing ways (not unlike Eddie, actually). He's a star and he shines and while I don't always appreciate what he chooses to do or how he chooses to do it, I do want to see the emotion he carries and the ripples he creates through the reality of the ring despite it all. When Dustin started to come back, Swerve had the most believable look of disgust or shock or resignation or exasperation. When Swerve cut him off with a quick shot to the leg, there was smugness and satisfaction and relief. In a world where everyone rushes to the next spot, he's getting better every week at letting the moment settle in and showing the world exactly how he feels about it. And if he cares so much, the crowd cares too. That's how wrestling works. It's the absolute antithesis of the irony that occasionally gets splattered over AEW and that wasn't on this show at all.

And if course, if you give Dustin a body part to sell, you've got a match. I'm not sure I've seen anything quite so sublime in pro wrestling this month than his seated shots while on the top rope, which really is saying a lot. He built his way back from defensive body motions to desperately placed strikes to finding a way to stand tall to his big signature spots, doling out the proper amount of selling to establish the lingering consequence at each point. And then, after all that crawling and climbing back to fighting strength and getting a semblance of revenge, Swerve cut him off with the tiniest shot to the leg. So much accomplished with so little. Between circumstance, expectation, and the decision to lead with the cinder block (which might have worked perfectly in cutting Lee down to size but far less so here given hierarchy and more comparable size), this was an impossible situation. But Dustin, with all of his skills and savvy, and Swerve, so tremendous at bringing emotion to the forefront at this point in time, somehow found a way to make the impossible work.

Adam Cole

MD: I don't do this often, but what's the point of writing on a blog if you can't make use of the long form to make an open letter to the new lead heel. Look, Cole comes off like a nice guy, the nicest. I thought for certain some of the dissonance with his offense and actual personality would have been better served with him as a babyface, and we barely got to see whether it would or not given the injury (and some of his early year programs), but he's a heel again. He's not just any heel but the unveiled mastermind, the man in the shadows, the archvillain who took away the one thing the AEW audience cares about the most, friendship. He's the guy who built up Max to make him seem like he might be better, like there might be something good in this world, like there might be hope even for scumbags, and then tore it all away. He has a chance to be an actual booed, hated heel. That means, however, no storytime with Adam Cole, no Boom, no Baybee. It means denying the fans all of these things that they want. Cole claims that he's such a good heel that he can give the fans all of these things and then, once the bell rings, get them to hate him anyway. I've always had my doubts about that in practice, just from the evidence of my own two eyes. But if he really wants this to work, all of that stuff needs to go into the closet. When he brings it back in a year, imagine how much more over it'll be for its absence. MJF spent his entire year experimenting, trying new and different things, trying to pull back elements from how wrestling used to be and to push them forward to how wrestling might be. Not everything hit, but it sure as hell wasn't for lack of trying, and those things that did hit are things that might make a huge difference in the years to come. Now it's Cole's turn. He can be the same old cool heel, get mixed reactions, have the fans chanting along, lean on all of the old crutches, or he can take this opportunity, the biggest heel move possible in a company like AEW and really run with it, really get into the hearts and minds of the fanbase and figure out how to do something new to restore that old feeling of animosity. I hope he's up for the challenge.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 10/9 - 10/15

AEW Dynamite 10/10/23

Bryan Danielson vs Swerve Strickland

MD: Bryan Danielson likes to lie. He's also on his last real run (unless he's lying about that; we don't think he is). He's also had a relatively fragile year and a half. His arm injury in the Okada match is something he's referred to as his worst injury in a single match ever. It makes every match we do have with him, especially on a week to week basis, all the more special.

The evolution of emotional investment in wrestling is a fascinating thing. Forty years ago, fans were invested in seeing the babyface get revenge on the heel. Twenty years ago, a lot of our circle was interested in seeing their favorites actually pushed and be put over. In the last few years, people seem invested on the match hitting correctly and "star"-worthy and being able to say that you witnessed a great or canonical match as it happened.

When we're watching Danielson right now, our emotional investment is helplessly tied to the fear of him getting hurt. That isn't about his athleticism or his professional; it's about us being human and seeing it multiple times over the last few years (and not just with him but with people up and down the roster) and knowing that this is the last chance we have of getting to watch him so frequently.

And Danielson, pro that he is, can use that. People argued that he used it in the Okada match (teasing a head injury to help cover for his actual arm injury) inappropriately. You can make a case one way or another about that; I downplayed it given the circumstances in my review. Here though, it was something more benign but that still gave the crowd a sinking feeling in their stomachs, one that brought them down so that he could build them up once again, which is really what heat in wrestling is all about, and something that's hard if you're just chasing immortality and glory for your match.

A lot of words to say that for a while there, I pretty much bought into the rib injury. He landed one way and sold another, back to front. It was just haphazard enough and he was doing such a good job at going back to it in between moves and to slow himself down that for a little while there, he had me and while it was a very meta sort of engagement, one that wasn't about a babyface being healthy enough to beat a heel, I was still engaged. I was still leaning a little closer towards the screen.

When Danielson hit the turnbuckle, ready to charge back in for another shot, and subsequently collapsed, I was relieved instead of disheartened, because that's the moment I was sure he was just selling. Imagine a car careening off the road, two hands clenching the wheel tightly, going over bumps and almost tumbling over itself once or twice, only to meet up with the road once again. That's what happened here. After that, everything was smooth sailing, but synapses were popping and senses were attuned. The match was back on the road but you, the watcher, were coming off that emotional high and everything heading towards that finishing stretch was more exciting and vivid than it might have been otherwise. You valued it all the more because of your sense of relief. That's what I experienced here. I hadn't been entirely on board at the start (and a lot of that was on Swerve's sideways approach to everything, which slowed down the early matwork past the point of enjoyability for me) but once the ribs came into play, the match caught me and never let go. Chalk it up to top notch selling from a man who loves to lie, even to a crowd that legitimately cares about his well-being. It also makes for very interesting contrast with the Christian match, which didn't have that additional metatextual layer at all, but more on that after a brief check-in on how Eddie is doing.

ROH 10/12/23

Eddie Kingston vs Serpentico

MD: There was an Eddie Kingston vs Minoru Suzuki match on Tuesday, but I really don't have a lot to add. You can picture basically the whole match without seeing it. I liked that they more or less sold impact more and more as the match went on. The early chops were shrugged off in a way that the later ones weren't, which is logical and makes sense. There was just a little more of "Eddie Kingston, Ace" in here even in just how he was able to finish of Suzuki in the end and I was glad to see that.

I haven't touched on anything on ROH TV for a while either. If I had time, I would have written about Athena vs Hirsch from last week; they matched up well size-wise and Hirsch seemed like a unique opponent in letting Athena stretch her considerable athleticism as much as possible. Frankly, Athena should probably be the fifth Finger because of her exceptional combination of intensity, execution, and being in the moment in her reactions all the time, but I'd just have to say those last few words over and over again every week and there's not much there. Her squashes are great; I love seeing how she works the Magic Forearm into her matches, and she deserves exposure, but there's not a lot for me to write about on a weekly basis that isn't simply apparent.

That brings us to Serpentico. I love Serpentico. Talk about a guy who is completely comfortable in his own skin, probably with the best perspective in the entire company. He knows exactly who and what he is and exactly who and what he should be. Within those confines, he tries to be as creative as possible, but never in a way that harms the overall match or what he's there to accomplish. Part of being great at wrestling is knowing what not to do and when not to do it and he's able to walk the line between over the top antics and the match's ultimate goal extremely well. This was to facilitate a future match between Angelico and Kingston, which sounds great. It was a Proving Ground match (Eliminator but with a 10 minute time limit and challenger's advantage in case of a draw). The basic story was one of hierarchy. Serpentico was quick, daring, and crafty. If Eddie caught him, it wasn't going to be good. He went so far as to hit him with the chops in the corner, but eventually Eddie did catch him and while he survived a shot or two and was able to kick out, he really put over the Stretch Plum as nasty and soon found himself tapping. What I liked was that all of Serpentico's offense was in the front couple of minutes. This wasn't a case of him getting caught but then having a big comeback. Instead, when Eddie put him down, he really put him down, which is one of those things you want to see out of an ace. Definitely looking forward to Eddie working the mat with Angelico when they run that.

AEW Collision 10/14/23

Bryan Danielson vs Christian Cage

MD: It's very easy to take Collision for granted. For all that it was supposed to be or might have been, what it has consistently allowed for is long (two commercial breaks long) main event segments on a week to week basis that don't exist elsewhere in wrestling. These can be big 8-man. They can be long tags. They can be for a title or not. They can be a singles match like this.

I'm chosing my words carefully here. There was nothing particular clever or innovative about this match. That's not to say it wasn't smart. It was extremely smart. Things were earned. Things were built to. They let almost every moment resonate. Christian is so good at linking bits of offense with interactions with the crowd and a sort of seething, methodological purpose. I've said it before, but it doesn't feel like the same sort of "spots" almost everyone else in the company are doing, but just an organic, wrathful attempt to hurt his opponent. And Danielson, as we've seen him do so much so recently, reacted to the moment.

Yet nothing in this match couldn't have existed twenty years ago, maybe even thirty. Yet it got as much reaction, thorough, earnest, heated, as anything I've seen in AEW this year. They were a few chants for Christian early, but they didn't linger. He made sure of that. There was one "This is Awesome", after a dive that was earned and a pause in the action that followed. There were no Fight Forevers. Nothing like that. Instead they milked a simple countout attempt where fans in the front row helped Danielson up and the crowd completely ate it up. They went hard. There were some big bumps. They leveraged the hurt arm and Christian was doggedly focused upon it. But they didn't go over the top like you'd see in so many matches that tried to run up a score past five stars.

So, it wasn't necessarily clever or innovative or any single thing we hadn't seen before. Yet, believe me when I say this: it was unique and it was special. Some of that was just in how thoroughly and unabashedly it leaned into those traditional elements; patiently, consistently trusting in the eternal and the primal over the ephemeral, running an experiment it working beyond all expectations. But it was also this: Up until this year, I'm not sure this match could have ever existed in this exact form. In decades' past, even a main event match wouldn't get this sort of time on TV. If it did, there would have to be something over the top to justify it. It would have to be more thoroughly obscured under the veil of sports entertainment trappings. On the indies, it would have been impossible; the sheer length and scope would have led to excess, whether through greed or insecurity.

It took these wrestlers, in this moment, in this setting, on a show that neither made but both saw the potential in, in a company that neither made but that allows for the utmost in creative freedom, to let all of their years of experience and all of their trust in one another, in the crowd, in the manipulative art of pro wrestling, for something so simple, straightforward, and serene to come into being. This felt like where Pro Wrestling should have always been headed, back to the beginning and forward to the future. 

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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 7/24 - 7/30

AEW Dynamite 7/26/23

Darby Allin vs Swerve Strickland

MD: I kind of miss AEW bringing out the numbers for rematches. This is the third singles match between these two in AEW though there have been Royal Rampages and tags as well, of course. It feels like the tenth singles match maybe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. They're well matched up. Darby can take all of Swerve's stuff naturally and has an almost preternatural way of getting himself in position or setting himself up to where things that shouldn't be possible or feasible seem at least not a wild stretch. Moreover, Darby's whole gimmick is resilience. He takes and takes and takes and takes and then has the two or three moves he can do to turn the tide and get a lightning-quick win out of nowhere. It allows for slightly more escalation than I'd put up with otherwise. They start with the overly fancy chain wrestling and go from there all the way to an avalanche death valley driver onto the apron, with precisely timed counters and cutoffs to keep the transitions interesting. 

Swerve really does bring a lot to the table, and I especially like the Swerve/Nana pairing compared to some of the other things they tried. I'm not sure of some of the timings on the distractions or specific things Nana said to Darby or Wayne, but the general vibe of the two of them dancing in sync or Swerve shuffling over the corner to seek reassurance after the Last Supper had them completely on the same page. In some ways, though, Swerve's entirely dependent on his opponent being able to fit into his act. When it's not quite grounded enough, you get something too floaty like the Wayne match. If someone can't keep up or feed into the spots, you get something like the Tanahashi match. Here though, everything hit and there was plenty of clever learned psychology and enough selling and resonance to keep it from going from clever to cutesy. I'm still hoping for a coffin match sooner than later between these two.

AEW Collision 7/29/23

Darby Allin vs Minoru Suzuki

MD: Not a lot to say about this one. Darby needed a win to heat him back up after a couple of losses and Suzuki is absolutely credible, especially as a surprise opponent. It never feels like a small thing to beat him. When you look at the annals of wrestling commentary over the decades, more workrate-heavy analyses are going to ignore Darby's initial reaction to Suzuki's music hitting, but the announcers certainly picked up on it and it underpinned the early, desperate onslaught. If the wrestler portrays investment, then it's easier for the crowd to be invested. It's the difference between people hitting a bunch of spots (clean or clever or otherwise) and a fully formed character acting in a compelling manner. You can run a throughline here: Darby wanted a fight. Darby realized what he got into. Darby ambushed at a key moment of the song and stayed on Suzuki. Darby realized that he could only chip away at him so much through conventional means but that he had to press the offense with strikes as there was an opening before him. Darby took Suzuki's stuff. Darby took the opening Suzuki gave him by going for his strike flurry instead of a chop and hit the Code Red. Darby realized that he could only put Suzuki away by throwing his body at him but in doing so, opened himself up to the sleeper. But he's Darby so he did it anyway and then found a way to sneak a win through desperate resilience. That's part of what makes Darby so great. It's all character driven based on the reality of the moment. Yes, he takes crazy bumps. Yes, he throws himself into everything. Yes, there's a real sense of danger with his stuff. But it's all grounded in something that resonates.

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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 6/5 - 6/11

AEW Dynamite 6/7 

Orange Cassidy vs Swerve Strickland

MD: Swerve is one of those wrestlers that I respect more than I like. He's always thinking, always looking, always trying to capitalize on the moment, always trying to get better along the lines that he thinks will get him over and will produce the best result. That doesn't always produce the best result with me, but he's over, he's dynamic, and I see no reason why they shouldn't push him to the moon. He's never rote, never trite, never boring. He's also a lot better as a heel because his offense comes at weird angles, takes an extra aggravating breath, and basically shouldn't work. As a babyface, it kind of drives me nuts. As a heel, you have to begrudgingly give him credit because he executes it and lays it out just well enough to make it almost, almost work. And that gap between working and not gets him heat, at least with me, and probably, subconsciously, with the crowd as well.

In some ways that makes him a mirror image of Cassidy, who takes such a classic babyface trickster formula, the Brer Rabbit/Bugs Bunny approach, overlays it with the slacker character, and underpins it all with more attention to detail and consequence than any wrestler has in years. At the end of the day, wrestling isn't about action. It's about reaction. It's in the word: selling. They're selling the reality of what they're doing through expressing pain, both immediate and lingering. And not despite the character, but because of the unblinking devotion to it and refusing to show any air in anything he does, the crowd buys every bit of what Cassidy is doing. Moreover, they bought everything Swerve brought to the table here, even if it was often infuriating on multiple levels. And most of all, they bought the threat of the title change. This felt like the moment, the straw that was going to break the camel's back, an ascendant force that was going to be too much for even wrestling's most unlikely enduring champion, now at the very end of his rope. 

All of that build, all of the weight behind this, the unique two-sides-of-the-same-coin nature of Cassidy and Swerve meant that they were able to get away with more than usual. They countered one another's mind games. They rode the house style of a full bit of heat and comeback before a big transition leading into the commercial break. They made everything take an extra attempt, an extra counter, and then paid it off with another piece of offense they wouldn't be able to otherwise hit. Then, later on they hit what they were initially going for when it mattered so much more. They called back the battle royal finish. They played with all the tropes: Nana up in the apron, it backfiring, neither of those leading to the actual finish, and so on. I had been a little hesitant to see them in an actual match. I thought it could have been the worst of both worlds, but they're so good and so smart and so aware of themselves and one another that it led to the best of both instead.

AEW House Rules 6/3

Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy vs Matt Menard/Daniel Garcia

MD: We got this a little late but at least we got it. I, for one, am loving these house shows. The wrestlers are obviously trying things out. The dynamics are different. They have room to breathe. They can really work the crowd. The matches don't have to be built around commercials (though I often see that as a structural feature and not a bug on AEW TV). They really milked this one for all it was worth. Pre-match, Garcia comes out to jaw on the mic allowing Menard to low blow Darby. They then hammer Cassidy's midsection with the skateboard before the bell. He gets dragged out by officials making it two-on-one. Darby survives at first (and is smart enough to go for quick wins both here and in his hope spots) but when he goes for the early code red on Menard, Garcia, having gotten a blind tag, is in to boot him in the face. The heat that follows is solid, with the numbers game cutting off Darby's comeback attempts and Menard and Garcia showing their personalities and letting it breathe.

Obviously, every builds to Cassidy running out, bandaged up. It comes right after another big comeback spot from Darby and you think that the drama might have had Cassidy run out first and then Darby have to come back but it works for the moment as the match had clearly and cleanly established that no matter what Darby did, he wouldn't be able to pin one JAS member without the other breaking it up. Cassidy coming in like this after the hot tag felt like watching Super Astro or someone doing their beloved shtick in the feel good tercera of an 80s lucha trios. Once Darby was sufficiently recovered, they cycled into a fun, bomb filled finishing stretch. Just a nice piece of business overall that they couldn't get away with on TV quite the same way.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/22 - 5/28 (Part 1?)

MD: I'm only two hours through ROH, but it was a good show so far, with nothing that I felt an absolute need to write about. There was also a Fletcher vs Cassidy match from Dynamite. I like Fletcher as the guy who contrasts HOOK for the next decade. There's a lot of upside there. He's still at a stage where he's just giving up the struggle to set up the next spot at times, but his reactions are good. I would have liked a bit more character-driven rationale (immaturity from Fletcher) for the kickouts towards the end. Too many bombs. I get that they're getting over Cassidy's resilience under impossible circumstance, but it was a bit much. I'll start the PPV here and maybe do the pillars match on Wednesday if I get around to it.

AEW Double or Nothing 2023

Blackjack Battle Royal for the International Championship

MD: You can tell a lot about someone's love of wrestling when it comes to how they feel about battle royals. There's nothing wrong with a person not liking them, complaining about it being too hard to see the action or too much hugging in the corner, etc., not enough "action," the notion that if you've seen one, you've seen them all. I wouldn't necessarily hold that against someone, but I'm always glad when someone appreciates the possibilities inherent. 

Before my time watching, a Battle Royal, like the big San Francisco one, but others as well, was a chance to see wrestlers you wouldn't normally see interacting with the local stars. They built it up as the most dangerous sort of match possible (despite that lack of action) where a punch could come from any direction and a freak injury could occur at any moment. That made a lot of sense during in age where kayfabe was protected and strikes and holds, not spots, were the glue that held wrestling together. 

When I started watching, towards the late 80s or early 90s, WWF Battle Royals were a way to break up the stultifying structure of the WWF feud system. The British Bulldog would feud for eight months with the Warlord and you'd rarely see him up against else during that time. A battle royal would let him interact with the Barbarian or Haku or Ted Dibiase and also brush shoulders with some of the other babyfaces, a brief save, a little nod, a quick team-up. That stuff was magic for a kid who wanted a more coherent universe in his wrestling and not just a series of isolated feuds. So maybe there's some level of comfort food for me in battle royals.

In AEW, it's not that guys don't cross streams and interact. Khan books random matches all the time. It's more a case that we can never have enough of it. There's only so much time and there are hierarchical needs that keep certain wrestlers away from one another. That was true a few weeks ago in the Darby vs Swerve match. It was true in Ricky Starks vs Jay White. For us to get matches like that every week, it makes continuous elevation of certain wrestlers tricky. In a Battle Royal, though? There's very little harm in getting knocked over the top. Moreover, here the wrestlers are encouraged to interact with one another and, more often than not, the spots are frequent and clever. 

I have no idea who agented this one, but they absolutely earned their keep. While there was brawling and guys hanging from the ropes and certain guys disappeared from the action (Butcher didn't get much shine for a change), it was one signature spot after the next, one interesting interaction after the next. The Lucha Bros, working with Bandido and Komander, interacting with Jay White, for instance, were standouts. The most memorable moment of the match might have been Bandido hefting up Nese for a delayed vertical suplex as Fenix and Penta fought off all comers. Brian Cage and especially Big Bill got plenty of shine. Bill's a guy who has been delivering and entertaining week in and week out and this felt like the first step in moving him to whatever might be next. I know people were high on the Swerve vs Cassidy finishing stretch but I find Swerve best as a heel and against someone with a little contrast, a few less twists and rolls, someone a bit more conventional. I worry that a straight up match between the two would frustrate me. Here though, as just a taste at the end of a very well put together Battle Royal, just a taste of it was more than enough. Cassidy was especially good at selling the cumulative damage of weeks on his back and hand, in the midst of a match where that wasn't the narrative centerpiece. It was just another detail in a twenty minute stretch of AEW that had a ton of excellent ones.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/10 - 4/16

AEW Dynamite 4/12

Darby Allin vs Swerve Strickland

MD: I was thinking of a format change because the column felt a little redundant in the last month or two, especially when we had five more active fingers and at least two or three of us tackling things. I was thinking maybe a Dark/Elevation match of a week sort of deal which is stuff that gets less attention, but I'll keep powering on for a bit. If we get some Danielson/Omega interaction, I'll lay down my criticisms of Omega, once, and then move on. I'm sure everyone's looking forward to that. 

Strickland's a guy who I had a lot of criticisms about when he was a face, but I really do like him as a heel. A lot of the obtuse offense works better when you're a jerk taunting and stymieing your opponent (and the crowd with it) and the contrived setups should get heat, not applause. I do think that Cassidy vs Matthews was the best AEW match of the week and probably of a month or two, but I have more to say about this one. It was something of an impossible situation. Darby had to win. He's in the main event program. He had MJF coming out after the match. Swerve, too, probably had to win. He had a new faction after his old faction petered out in a weird sort of way that you almost never see in wrestling. There was a point right after his turn that he felt like the number three heel in the company after MJF and Jericho and he had lost a chunk of momentum over time. The new faction isn't exactly a sure thing either. The Embassy is a fine trios champ act over in ROH with big, looming credible-looking monsters, but it needs to be rebuilt to a degree to accentuate Swerve. I like Nana but you can't help but squint and turn your head sideways and think about what the pairing of Swerve and Tully might have been like. 

Anyway, Swerve can't lose, but Darby has to win. Darby having to win trumps Swerve having not to lose, so it's up to the math of the situation and the specifics of the match to avoid misery and failure. The math of the situation had Swerve heated up given the ambush on Darby last week and a bit more heat coming his way through screwing Keith Lee at the end of the show. That is what it is, quantitative pro wrestling booking, the sort you could get from AI or in EWR. Wrestling by numbers and on Tony's newly rearranged booking spreadsheet. 

The other half is the more interesting one. The match had to be laid out in a manner that would put Darby over while keeping Swerve strong, with both of them needing more rub than usual. Thankfully, they had a few things going their way. First, there was the familiarity, seven singles matches between them. That let Darby hit some big moves right from the get go but also had Swerve ready to sweep out the legs and take over. Second, Darby's nature is to work from underneath anyway, so Swerve could take most of this without anyone blinking an eye so long as Darby was ready to fight back memorably. You factor those two things in and mix it with a hearty dose of interference from Nana, and you had Swerve looking dangerous, someone who could win against to talent, or at the very worst, could hurt them badly, which only made Darby getting one up on him at key moments having him look like a worldbeater. Then you give Swerve the ultimate out, hurting his own foot on a high risk move, the sort of thing he needed to keep someone like Darby on the ropes. That didn't lose him the advantage even, but it made him a half step slow on covers and opened him up to the gnarly foot biting by a Darby that was frothing with his own blood. There's an old line of thought that for a heel to keep his heat, he needed a viable excuse; maybe it was the truth, maybe it was a lie, but it had to sound good. If it sounded good and was a lie, then that'd just get him all the more heat. 

So you take all of this and add in the things that make Darby and Swerve special, Darby's selling and speed of execution, Swerve's clarity of focus and reactions in the moment, the offense from both of them that feels stilted and off-center and that pulls your eye in ways you're not expecting, and they pulled off something of the impossible. But that's what Darby Allin does whenever he goes out there anyway, looking like a star while getting beaten around the ring. Swerve will have his moment and while he may not be stronger on paper for this loss, that he was able to manage it with such verve and panache only made him all the stronger in my eyes.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 2/27 - 3/5

AEW Rampage 3/3

Keith Lee/Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland/Parker Boudreaux

MD: For reasons that would probably surprise no one, there were a few years towards the end of the 00s where I wasn't watching much wrestling. One of the things that got me back into it was 2009 WWECW. Not unlike Rampage, it was a brisk and enjoyable hour-long show. It featured Christian as babyface ace champion, Regal as the lead heel, and somewhere in the background, a two month feud between Goldust and the debuting Sheamus. Sheamus had anchored local promotions and worked FCW before this and was a lot farther along than Boudreaux, and was working guys like Noble, Regal, and even Steamboat on untelevised events at the time, but it helped to transition him to working TV and helped to get him over as a threat to the crowd. Basically, the AEW house shows can't come soon enough. Boudreaux has size. He's only 24. But his instincts and positioning just need so much work. If they only have a few months of Dustin left, he ought to be paired in a few last dream matches during that time. On the margins, though, there's no one who could better see if there's anything worth developing in Boudreaux.

Here they gave him time with both Lee and Dustin. During the heat, Swerve came in to cut Dustin off for the most part, while Boudreaux primarily did damage, the bits less concerned with timing. On the comeback, Lee got his hands on Swerve a few times, taking most of his shots and powering through with justified rage but it was only a tease for a blowoff to come. Boudreaux got hefted up to take the fall. It's probably fine not to protect him more at this point. He's a physical prospect but it's still too early to know if there's anything there and they can always build him back up when ready. Right now he needs ring time.

 

AEW Revolution 3/5

MJF vs. Bryan Danielson

MD:  When you watch a match like this, you're looking for the overall narrative, for the transitions, for the selling in the moment and deep in the stretch, for the false finishes and the real ones, for their ability to keep things interesting and fill time but also to make things meaningful and resonant so it's not obvious that they're filling time. You look to see if minute 13 somehow inevitably leads to minute 48. You're looking for Chekhov's collections of guns, the ones that fire off successfully, the ones that never go off, and the ones that strike without warning in build. In most cases, something fails and something falls because it's a long time to fill and humans are fallible. I thought this hit most of its marks pretty well, far better than most of the matches you'd compare it to.

A lot of what made it work was how self-aware and metatextual it was. Coming in, the match was presented as Danielson wanting to push MJF well past his limits and MJF being vulnerable and unable to hang. That's a little different than the athlete vs athlete nature of most ironman matches, where the gimmick is set up to present both as the very top of human endurance and achievement. That allowed for a bunch of narratives beats you wouldn't normally get, beats and counterbeats really. For instance, MJF opened up the shoulder work after stalling a few times, and even calling out how negatively stalling had been looked at by the sheets over the years (best not to let me get into that). He escaped the ring a few times and when it looked like he might again, he lured Danielson to yank the arm over the top. At times, the character of MJF was using the underlying metatext as a tool. At other times, he lost himself to it and wanted to prove himself. The first fall is a great example of the latter, where Danielson coaxed him into going along for the Malenko/Guerrero pin attempts and blew him up so he'd be open for the knee. 

What made this work was that, with one exception, it never seemed self-aware from human beings putting together a match. It was more than all of the players/characters (including Bryce) were aware of the history of these matches and the history of one another. That's what led to MJF hitting the low blow to get two falls while losing one, and more importantly, getting back into the match after Danielson's initial comeback. It's what led him to taking big chances (missing the moonsault which took his leg out for the rest of the match but hitting the elbow drop through the table). It led to Bryce spotting the ring and taking it off or for Danielson to dodge first before hitting the knee to score his third fall. 

The things that didn't work for me are primarily nitpicks. They went back to the water so many times. Taz covered well for it on the idea that maybe MJF couldn't hang with Danielson's cardio and he was making a mistake but it never cost him and never played into the match save for the one stalling heel moment early on with the fan. I would have liked that to have been a false finish where he tries to blow it at Danielson only to miss and then that set up the oxygen shot, just because they built it up so much, whether they meant to or not. I thought the selling was appropriate for most of the match (Danielson was maybe up too soon after the Storm Cradle Driver but sure, that could have been desperation). I don't think the visual of MJF crawling across the ring with blood in his mouth and making a fish face quite worked though. The overtime period with the tap out immediately thereafter didn't quite work either. That was the one part of that match that openly broke the facade and felt like a homage as opposed to characters being aware of the past. Finally, I would have rather MJF won it with the Regal Stretch but they refuse to even call it (and Tony gets it wrong anyway) so I get why they didn't do it.

I don't want this to be a four paragraph review which has one with nitpicks though, so let me reiterate in paragraph five that this hit far, far more than it missed and in a situation with a high level of difficulty. There was a ton of thought and care put into this and the execution landed. It really did feel like a script where they went over it again and again and again looking for holes. There's an old notion in wrestling that even more than their money, fans are giving the wrestlers and the promotion their precious, valuable time. Here it was sixty minutes worth spending.

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

AEW Rampage 2/17

Dustin Rhodes vs. Swerve Strickland

MD: I'd say "You have to give it to Dustin," but it's not like we do much around here other than giving it to Dustin, so we're going to be doing that anyway, right? He could mail it in, or at the very least, he could just play the hits, but he seems to take every opponent as opportunity to think of their stuff will interface with what he does and be open to adapt his stuff to what they do, all the while drawing a crowd in with a babyface performance that organically inspires clapping up and chants more than almost anyone on the roster. 

With Swerve, that means you're going to get a combo of mean shots and completely unnecessary rolls, certainly a bane of watching him as a babyface but just about over the line of "tolerable" when he's a heel. As a heel, he has certain luxuries that most on the roster don't lean into either. He can be a bit more chickenshit, a bit more disingenuous, can balance the athleticism with a real sliminess in the ring. MJF plays that sort of character before the bell rings, but he needs to be at least somewhat credible given his role. The Gunns haven't leaned into it for months, probably because they feel like they have too much to prove. Christian is just back from injury and doesn't have that level of athleticism anyway. So it's down to Swerve to really find the sweet spot between rolling into a "Complete Shot" and biting Dustin's arm to force create an opening. I liked the straight punch that preceded it on the flip, flop, and fly, and the dodge of the power slam, but I also liked the notion that all of the punches and dodges in the world weren't going to let Swerve take over and it was only through the biting that he could.

They made good use of the apron and the barricade going into the break, leaving Dustin bloodied and giving Swerve something else to bite and target. The crowd more or less stayed behind him throughout and while I thought things escalated a little bit too much and maybe just a little unbalanced, what with death valley drivers on the apron and superplexes into pile drivers, at least with the latter, Dustin went out of his way to justify the kick out with his slow, labored cover. And it all built to a very decisive finish, a rare DQ (the sort of thing which fits Swerve perfectly) and Keith Lee's return. It seems we're on borrowed time with Dustin matches now, so I'm going to value every one we get.

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