AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/15 - 6/21

ROH Global Wars Cincinnati 6/18/26 / AEW Collision 6/20/26

Athena vs Syuri / Athena vs Maya World

MD: So, why do we watch?

I've been watching Athena as ROH champion since 2022. In that time, I've seen her defeat Yamashita, Nightingale, Sakura, Sakazaki, Hogan, Starkz, Martinez, Rose, Abadon, Catalina, Persephone, Windsor, and on and on and on, some multiple times. Plus, you might say the heart of the title run, the connective tissue, has been the Proving Ground matches. There have been so many of those. I've seen a lot of Athena. Anyone following ROH has.

So what's the appeal now so deep into the title reign? What made these two matches stand out against everything else last week? 

With some wrestlers, familiarity breeds contempt. You start predicting moves before they happen and while there's a sort of comfort to that, comfort only takes you so far. Athena is the definition of unpredictability. She is volatile, tempestuous. It's at the core of her character and generates the energy that draws you into her matches. But just as important, with Athena, the familiarity you develop gives you a launching point. 

For some wrestlers, it's all about spots and counters. The action drives character. The cart leads the horse. It's all about getting to the big idea with little care on how the match actually gets there. With Athena, character drives everything. Because the character is so good, so dynamic, so engaging, "everything" becomes full of organic, interesting destination points, maybe even more so than those matches that are contrived to get to certain spots. Who she is drives what she does. And she will react differently to every opponent and every situation. 

Knowing her past (encounters and otherwise) with Syuri and Maya made so much difference here. Despite her close connection to Maya as mentor and lack of such with Syuri, there were similarities. Both opponents had gotten the better of her in one way or another, and the list of those who had done so over the last few years is very small indeed. Syuri had successfully defended her IWGP Women's Title against Athena earlier this year. Maya is the one blemish on Athena's ROH singles record, surviving a Proving Ground match. She subsequently took he to the limit in the title match she earned and the Survival of the Fittest that followed. Maya may be billed as the It Girl, but there remains a sense of Final Girl to her as well, the one who might be fated to end the horror that is Athena. It's not quite a prophecy, not quite an inevitability, but it's as clear a possibility as any other right now. And Athena knows it. 

Of course, with Maya there were other factors at play. Her run through the Owen Hart Tournament, a title shot at All In on the line, is a bittersweet Cinderella story. Her brother passed away recently. Despite that, perhaps because of it, she threw herself into her work, becoming a last second substitution for Sareee and defeating Skye Blue to propel her to the semi-finals and to another match-up with Athena. The character of Athena has professed tough love when it comes to her minions. While there always seems to be a self-serving undercurrent to that, it's hard to deny the results, and occasionally, very occasionally, hints of humanity poke out from the monster she's become, though usually only to get swept away by the rage and fury of the fallen goddess. Meanwhile, Athena herself has lost in the semi-finals of the Owen tournament twice. As she carries ROH on her shoulders, she's been unable to reach the highest peaks in AEW. 

And of course, and this would be true if she was facing Shafir or Statlander in main events or Forza or Nixi XS in proving ground matches, Athena is excellent at not just finding the kernels of truth between herself and opponent but in crafting a dynamic character which will create such opportunities in the first place.

It's easy to compare and contrast how these matches played out and see that aspect plain as day. Look at the first few minutes of both. With Syuri, she extended her (yes, left) hand, Syuri took it graciously, Code of Honor met with some respect. Then they went at it, a feeling out process. Athena more than held her own, but Syuri, having the superior confidence and momentum since she won the last match, pressed her advantage. Athena didn't get dominated but she was absolutely on her back foot, forced to be reactive in the face of Syuri's technique, agility, and aggression. It was a bit of a role reversal compared to how she would normally bully around her opponents. It's actually somewhat rare that someone can get a conventional shine on her. This wasn't quite that, but it was far closer to it than usual, and it was fascinating because of that.

With Maya, things were completely different, and I don't just mean the fact it wasn't an ROH match so there was no Code of Honor (she was quick to shove Maya down and taunt her with her own M/W hand signals instead). This had more of an exhibition or celebratory feel. A playful feel. It reminded me a little of the Willow ROH match where they hit finishers of previous ROH champs. That had thrown me at the time but this didn't. Here, they went counter for counter, tit for tat, cartwheeling through things, rolling around the ring with cradles. There was a showy element to it. I'm not saying that the character of Athena was taking it easy on Maya, but I do think she was perhaps giving her some rope, was letting her shine. You might call it kindness, knowing this was Maya's moment in the sun after all that she'd been through, but knowing Athena, it was probably more like false hope. She was playing with her food, building confidence so that she could snatch it away. After the fact, she might even claim it was magnanimous, but it would have been her lying to herself, the world, the heavens. She held a grudge against Maya for taking her to the limit three times in the last few months, once literally in the Proving Ground. And perhaps even more than that, she now realizes that there is a chance that she is Cronus, not a god but a Titan, with Maya as the Zeus set to someday overtake her.

Of course, Athena is equal parts wrathful and resourceful and she was able to take over on both opponents. With Syuri, it was on the apron, absorbing repeated knee shots to hit a brutal twisting power slam upon it. With Maya, the moment that she Maya stepped just a bit too far, when her confidence was growing just a bit too much and she was maybe about to get one over on Athena, her mentor squashed her like a bug with her Something Evil variation on the floor. No Koji Clutch follow up needed here. It was all about contorting her, crushing her, and opening the door for the damage to follow. 

And the damage she did upon both opponents looked quite similar. With Syuri, it was a bit more focused. With Maya, it was somewhat more meandering, more playing to the crowd, more rubbing it in Maya's face, but it was equally brutal for both. Yet both would come back and get a measure of revenge. Here, however, is where the matches once again deviated. One of the joys of ROH matches and about Athena's run as a whole, is that there's more room to breathe, less need for commercial breaks to help drive the match (Maya came back right when they were returning from break, for instance). Instead of going down into the finishing stretch, the ROH title match was allowed to have an extra level of complexity. Syuri took Athena off the top rope with a hold and started to dismantle her arm. They were already past the conventional heat segment at this point, but it added an extra wrinkle which would make the remainder of the match more interesting. 

Athena would have to both escape submissions and fight back with one arm. Meanwhile, Syuri would shift her focus to bigger bombs in an attempt to put Athena way. As they fought to the finish, they traded those bombs, including Athena pulling out moves she only does rarely, like a Tiger Suplex. Syuri pushed her advantage (both the momentum with which she started the match with and that gained from the damaged arm) and Athena came off as something of a vulnerable champ who could lose at any moment, deepening the drama. Despite that, she was able to hit one last clutch reversal, slipping through the legs for a pumphandle tombstone, setting up the O-Face and her getting her win back and retaining the title. 

With Maya, things were very different. Athena survived Maya's comeback through familiarity, having an answer for everything Maya tried. Yet, Maya kept coming, her refusal to back down shifting Athena into the sort of reactive state she had been in against Syuri. That ended in disaster for Maya, however, as both women found themselves on the floor, and then up on the guardrail, with Athena getting the best of the moment and driving Maya down onto it with a Rock Bottom.

The match opened up emotionally from there. As it looked like Maya wouldn't beat the count (a 10 count here as opposed to the 20 count in ROH), Athena reached out to pull her in. It seemed at first like another magnanimous gesture, Athena giving her protege (though not minion) a chance to win or lose in the center of the ring, to not squander her opportunity on a fluke. She immediately began to berate her over her brother's memory, however.

Why do we watch Athena? Because she's dynamic and complex. Because she is the roiling ocean, an active volcano, because she is a villain that may not be sympathetic, may not be relatable, but that is all the more fascinating because of her strengths and her faults.

At first it seemed like she was offering a hand to Maya to lift her up. Then, as she berated her and Maya exploded upon her, it seemed like she was trying to awaken something within Maya, to try to make her fight all the more, to make her the best she could be. Here's where that familiarity comes into play though. That's not what she was doing at all. She was luring her in. It wasn't that she wanted Maya to be able to win or lose in the ring. It's that she wanted to put her down once and for all, definitively. It's not that she wanted Maya to rise up and fight. It's that she wanted her off her game and frazzled. That's why she was able to catch her in the corner and take her down, setting her up for the O-Face. Maybe if the wind had blown a little different or the sun had shined through the trees Athena may have decided differently and found just a modicum of grace. But it hadn't and she hadn't, and now it was time to end Maya.

The O-Face is one of the most protected moves in wrestling. Barring a fluke roll out of the ring or a foot on the rope, it ends matches. That's important. People love surprise kickouts and artificially propped up exciting finishing stretches, but it's so much better to define something, to make it important, to reinforce its importance, and then, when it really, really matters, when you want to make someone, when you want to highlight her journey and put her over the top, then and only then, to have someone kick out. Only then. Only when it matters the most. You build up capital, build it and build it and build it, and then you pay it off. That's the most powerful tool in pro wrestling.

In some ways, that's a symbol for Athena in general. Some people say she takes up too much of the air in her matches, that she overwhelms and eats up opponents, but she always reacts when things don't go her way. She sells it emotionally, because she expects to win, expects to dominate, and so often, lives up to her own expectations, thus creating that expectation with the fans as well. In that regard, she reminds me of Stan Hansen. By enforcing so strict a baseline, it means any deviation from it carries great rewards for an opponent who can step up and force it. 

Athena hit the O-Face clean. She pinned Maya cockily. Maya kicked out. Athena sold it like the shock, the transgression, the offense, the violation to the order of the universe that it was. She had invoked Maya's brother. She had awoken something inside of her. She had thought it would be something Maya couldn't handle, a means to the end that was the O-Face, but it was instead something that Athena couldn't handle, something stronger than her most dangerous weapon, something powered by love and not hate and therefore, something that Athena could no longer tap into or understand, no matter what she might claim. 

Maya got a fluke small package, but Athena pushed her way out. Then, much like Stan Hansen before her, inevitability, hierarchy, maybe even fate upon her side, Athena reared back to hit a lariat of her own. Maya ducked it, tied Athena up, pressed all of her weight down upon her, and heard the ref count three. 

Post-match, Athena embraced Maya. There's no way to know if that would have been the end of it, if she wouldn't have ambushed her if Mercedes hadn't come down. That's part of what makes Athena so interesting after all, the wild unpredictability. Even if she had spared her, it wouldn't have been heroism but instead another streak of false magnanimity from a fascinating villainess. 

So why do we watch? 

The consistency, the variance, the commitment, the familiarity, the unpredictability, the truth and the contradictions. 

How could we not? Why would we ever look away? 

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AEW (and NJPW) Five Fingers of Death 2/23 - 3/1

NJPW New Beginning USA 2/27/26

Athena vs Syuri

MD: There isn't a single universal theory of pro wrestling. But if there was just one word that could define it all, could push towards the ideal, one word that you could boil everything down to, it would be immersion. That's the goal. You don't want people to believe it's real. You want people to invest in the false reality of it. Now, maybe one way to get them to invest is by being as real as possible. That's a means, not an end though. Instead, it's about being as engrossing, as captivating, as fascinating as possible, while building a world the audience (in person and televised) can escape to, a place that they prefer to reality itself.

And to accomplish that, the one word becomes three. Commitment, consequence, consistency.

Which brings us to one of the most immersive wrestlers going today, or back to her. Back to Athena.

Here she was positioned as challenger to Syuri's IWGP Women's Championship. Her own ROH title was not on the line, nor was Syuri's NJPW Strong title. 

But despite her role as challenger, and despite the eventual outcome, and even despite Syuri's own athleticism and charisma, Athena commanded the room.

It is because she is entirely committed to her act. There are no strings. There is no net. When you watch her on the screen, she provides you with no reason to doubt who and what she is. There's no carefully set up collaborative spots, no hesitation before she leaps headlong into danger. And maybe most of all, there's no pausing to come up with a correct reaction, no remembering to hit her mark. She hits a move. A move hits her. There is instant reaction. For every action there is a reaction, and for her, it comes off like the most natural thing in the world no matter how over the top and dynamic she may be. 

She portrays a character that is erratic, vengeful, malicious, that writhes at every failure, that is infuriated by her opponent's every act of defiance, that is strong and athletic and entirely vulnerable in the most human ways. For as dominant as she is, for as much as she takes up the air in the room, she is a few pennies short of a dollar, is unhinged and unpredictable, and whatever poise and polish she shows, impressive as those things may be, do not hide cracks so big you could consider them fault lines, the sort that lead to continental drift.

There is strength in vulnerability. The greatest wrestlers have always known that. In vulnerability there can be found the most human elements of a character-driven performance. A wrestler who comes off as cool and untouchable, above it all, ironic, cannot tap into any of that same humanity. Athena, for all of her triumphs, so often evokes the most human of failings, all turned up to 11.

Everything went hard early here, both the wrestling and the character work. They crashed into each other on the lock up. Syuri broke clean against the ropes. Athena offered a (left) hand. Syuri looked to the crowd... Athena is eternally erratic. At some point in the match she's going to throw that magic elbow but would it come with the shake? Here the answer was yes, but Syuri was ready. She ducked and they went right back into a feeling out process worthy of a title match: mat wrestling, rope running, until Syuri locked her into a single underhook suplex and started in on the arm. 

That would be the great equalizer for Syuri in the match and the great opportunity for Athena, as a performer, to act and react and be as vulnerable as possible. While she sold for a bit after the initial submission attempt, it was just the start of a longer story. Instead they went to the floor. Syuri knocked her back but Athena was too strong, too fierce, too ready and hefted her up to mercilessly toss her into the guardrail.

This, before her arm deteriorated further, was Athena's time to shine on offense. She hit her running punch in the corner and followed it with one of the only front handsprings in pro wrestling history that undeniably increases momentum and impact instead of just being a piece of flair. She snatched Syuri in a front facelock and spun around with her. She even hit the magic forearm out of nowhere. But she couldn't put Syuri away.

Instead, emotional cracks started to show, a seething frustration, and that brief inner distraction opened the door for Syuri to come back and start to dismantle the arm with various submissions. It was still back and forth. Athena was able to roll Syuri up with a counter that sent her careening into the corner. She was able to stop things flat and flip her into the Koji Clutch, but the damage had been done. 

Athena's selling wasn't just when the holds were on or immediately after. It wasn't even between her own moves. It impacted everything she did, the entire way she moved. If she was going to head up to the top, she'd be a half step slow because she only had one arm to work with. When she tried to slingshot back in, she couldn't gather proper momentum and ended up caught into a DDT. It took everything she had to force Syuri up to counter a triangle with power bombs and the first two didn't have nearly the oomph to them that they normally would. It took three to escape. 

It's because she wasn't checking boxes and she wasn't selling for the sake of selling. Instead she was embodying a character in a specific situation. Her arm was injured and it was a quality she had to deal with in every single action and reaction. It was definitional. It limited the way her character could move; it opened up any number of narrative possibilities as she lashed out again and again, as she constantly showed desperation and frustration on her face and in how she interacted with the referee, the fans, and her own inner heart; and it provided the character of Syuri any number of plausible, compelling opportunities to mount a comeback or double down and do more damage to Athena.

In the end, Athena managed an almost miraculous counter into a modified tombstone but couldn't put the weight upon Syuri to fully keep her down. With one bullet left to fire, she went up to the top for the O-Face, but she was that half step slow given that she had to drag her arm beside her. Syuri was able to dodge, to strike, to put a diminished Athena out of her misery and get the win. 

Athena presents herself as an ouroboros of emotion and reaction, constantly boiling over, a powder keg always waiting to explode. It's what makes her maybe the most fascinating and engrossing wrestler to watch today. With some wrestlers you're afraid to look away because you might miss a move or an athletic feat, and that's true with Athena as well, but she takes it so much further. If you look away even for a moment, you will absolutely miss some expression or little (or big) movement or even just a flick of her eyes that carries with it madness and destruction. Everything matters. Everything is monumental. Of course the crowd is immersed. So far as 2020s wrestling goes, she is immersion personified.

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Daisuke Ikeda Always Wants to Stay In Touch, Never Wants to Use a Crutch

Daisuke Ikeda/Syuri v. Kenichi Yamamoto/Kana Kana Produce 6/17/12-GREAT

This is the closest we have gotten to new FUTEN in a while, as this is a mixed tag with a very FUTEN flavor. Kana and Syuri are regular dance partners and they are very fun running through nasty leg submissions and punching and kicking each other in the face. Yamamoto is an especially nasty fuck in his interactions with Syuri, there is always an uncomfortable spousal abuse vibe you have to work through in these Kana mixed tags, but the Syuri v. Yamamoto section felt like Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba in the Killer Inside Me.

Much like your classic FUTEN tags this builds to a singles match showdown, and Kana is clearly as big a fan of Ikeda v. Ishikawa as I am. I have seen her in the Ikeda role against Ishikawa before and here she is the Ishikawa role against Ikeda. The end run is as violent as your Ikeda end runs normally are, you have to suspend disbelief a bit and buy Kana can hang in this abbatoir but she brings it, at one point splitting Ikeda's eye with a headbutt, and removing her boot to throw kicks (which I am not sure would actually make them harder, but it was a cool strap drop spot). Ikeda does Ikeda things, one point he just unloads a straight right, and the finish clothesline was up there with the most brutal he has thrown. Only thing that kept this from EPIC status, was the length, 45 minutes is just too long for a match this brutal, kind of requires too much absorption of stuff that should end it, and it can get a bit repetitive especially before the end run. Still anytime I get to see new examples of Ikeda dancing his special dance I jump on it.

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