AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/9 - 3/15 Part 1

ROH TV 3/13/36

Athena vs Maya World [Proving Ground]

MD: Studio wrestling stemming from recent events when Maya, with Hyan and Deonna, stood up to Athena/Billie/Diamante back during the collaborative Metroplex show. Maya being an Athena protégé has not necessarily been a key part of her presentation so far in AEW/ROH up until this point, but I'd argue that she and Hyan don't necessarily have a clear, defined presentation relative to some others.

Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they tagging? What brings them together past an opportunity taken when others did not? What do they want out of life? What are their similarities? What are their differences? Etc. So far, it hasn't been super clear.

This helped though.

In some ways, Maya feels like even more of a "minion" to Athena than even Billie, because Billie was romping up and down the indies for a couple of years before arriving to AEW and finding her away under Athena's thumb. From a story perspective, one might wonder then why Billie was on TV with her and Maya was watching from the sidelines and then, once she arrived, left to her own devices.

Maya seems pretty happy with her lot in life though and doesn't care to ask those questions. Athena, on the other hand, in wonderfully hypocritical fashion, takes offense at Maya opposing her, complains about Maya crossing a line that Athena herself never truly drew.

Which brings them to this, a chance to make an example out of Maya, to teach her a lesson as she'd taught Billie lessons before, at the end of a forearm. But to show that Maya was even more beneath her notice (even as she was obviously getting under her skin), this was instead a proving ground match.

And Athena meant to prove her point right from the get go. Left hand extended. Her usual dainty code of honor handshake. Right into the magic forearm. Athena stomped Maya in the corner and started in on the ref, the crowd, Maya, the world. She wanted it too badly, however, showing that vulnerability which makes her stand out as much as the intensity. It's a give and take with her and once Maya got just a bit of distance between them, she took, forcing Athena to run into a very clever rope-assisted spin kick.

Now it was Maya's turn to take advantage of Athena's mistake. She had caused it by getting under Athena's skin and now she pressed the issue and reaped the benefits. She hit a series of moves, including doing damage on the floor. The problem was, in the micro, time was against her. She could keep Athena on her toes, but it was too early in the match for her to keep Athena down.

Athena got up. She reversed a whip, caught a kick, snuck in a knee, and then jammed both knees right into Maya's face in the corner. She would then, of course, lean on Maya. Maya's hope spots were solid and believable and tended to come not because of any mistake Athena made (she had already made her mistake at the start of the match and wouldn't make it again), but because she had such familiarity with Athena's offense.

Eventually that let her dodge just enough moves to come back all the way and things went back and forth with bombs, blocks, and roll-ups down the stretch. Maya managed to dodge the O-Face and position around to hook in a Reinera slam just as the bell rang. We were meant to wonder if maybe she could have snuck a win there; all it takes is three and this was deep into the match. But we have seen Athena survive far more than that. No, instead, this was a moral victory, a draw in a Proving Ground match, something unheard of in all of Athena's forever reign, and an opportunity for more. Phantom pin or no, what we're actually left wondering is if Athena would learn from her mistake or if her fury would overwhelm her all the more in their next encounter.

ROH TV Special Friday Episode 3/13/26

RUSH vs BEEF

MD: Two wrestlers. All Caps. You know what you're getting. Look, I have been fairly hard on Dralistico in specific situations when he's up against a babyface and playing a heel, not even a de facto heel, an outright heel, and he tries to steal the clap up and the cheers, not in a jeering way like, let's say, Yuta does, but to really get the crowd behind him. 

And yes, to some degree, Rush does this too, he does. He eats guys up. He takes the air out of the room. But unlike Dralistico or just about anyone else, he's beyond the realm of such expectations. He draws the eye that much. He turns the head. He locks you in so that you can do nothing but hang on and go for the ride. He's Ultimate Warrior and he's Goldberg and he's Buzz Sawyer. There are so few wrestlers in 2026 that can carry that sort of energy. He is an attraction. 

He's not treated like an attraction. He's not used like one. But he is one. Sometimes, I get the sense because of how he's presented, the fans don't really have any idea what they're getting into until that bell rings and the power takes them. 

And it rang here. He kicked away the code of honor. The great thing about this is that Beef, himself, can be sort of an attraction, an everyman. Is he more Hillbilly Jim than Dusty Rhodes? I don't know. Ask me again in five years, but also don't downplay the connection a guy like Jim had with the crowd. Beef has it too. They went off the ropes to start, Beef crashing into Rush, Rush holding his ground. That's the thing about Rush. When push comes to shove (no pun intended), he does give, he does show ass, he does falter. He just makes his opponent work for it and then he takes twice as much back as wrathfully as possible. Here he won that exchange by taking Beef out on a leapfrog allowing him to land an explosive dropkick, but then he ate a bunch of BEEF's fun pokey punches, stooging around the ring for him.

That stooging was short-lived; because he is Rush, he started to fire back. Look, I am not a strike exchange sort of guy. But the strikes being exchanged aren't generally these strikes and not from these two. There was something rough and raw and wild here, something completely out of control. It wasn't pretty. It was far more about the throwing of the strikes than the withstanding of them, and as much about hyping the crowd up and getting into it as anything else. Rush would take a shot and then channel it right into the crowd as he waved his hands to try to rechannel the pain. It went from Beef's hand into his chest, into his arms, into the crowd, back through the crowd, into Rush's body, and then back at Beef. If that's not pro wrestling, I have no idea what is. And it all built to Beef just slapping hands one after the other, an out of control dynamo that wan't to lash back at what had been hurting him. 

It worked until it didn't. Rush caught him, thrashed him one last time with a forearm, sent him spiraling down to the corner. He teased the Horns, rolled back into the Tranquilo pose, and really never looked back from there. Beef had put up a good fight, a noble fight, an admirable fight, but there was a big hierarchy difference here, and all he could do was to try to catch his breath, to keep alive, to roll to the floor to recover. That's the last place you want to be against Rush though, and the end had already begun. The fans knew it too. They embraced Rush, let him lean back into a flag and bask. 

And in a different setting against a different opponent with different stakes on a different stage, maybe it would have frustrated me, but here, on an episode of ROH on YouTube in front of a crowd that just wanted to feel something, anything, no matter what, what can I do but throw up my hands and grin along. He's an attraction being an attraction. Hang on, ride the wave. He comes. He goes. He gets injured. He gets suspended. He gets grumpy. Let's enjoy him while we have him. Now and again we're allowed nice things.

Top Flight/Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs MxM/RPG Vice

MD: We talk about moments. Usually we talk about moments negatively when it comes to WWE because they fabricate unnatural ones and put them above and beyond matches, right? But moments are an important part of wrestling because they're an important part of wrestling matches, just like they're important in any other form of fiction. They should stem from the characters within the match naturally. They should be built to and they should pay off. One of the great fallacies of wrestling discussion of this decade is that it's either/or. It's not. It's all organic. That's true with promos and angles and matches and it's true with moments around and within matches.

And here, they did a great job of building to character-driven moments which had meaning within the match. Part of the joy of a match like this is to see the weird interactions. You have Top Flight interacting with Ortiz and Kingston. I was as interested in how Eddie would interact with Daniels post-match during the hand-raising as anything else in the match. That doesn't mean I don't love action. It just means that I find these characters and their history and all that they carry behind them fascinating as well. It's not either/or. It's additive. And Eddie looked as happy as I've seen him in ages post match celebrating with these guys, and I loved to see it.

There were big spots. Of course there were. Top Flight was in there. But my favorite moment in this whole thing was when MXM got Trent to pose (after trying to do so earlier in the match). He lingered too long and it ended up a transition allowing the babyfaces to take back over. That was very lucha-coded to me (though a lot of people wouldn't think of it that way because of the way lucha has been minimized in the States over the years), cocky heels doing cocky things either too many times or for too long and paying for it. What's great about it is that if the babyfaces did it, it'd be a big culminating moment, like Brody King finally doing the macarena but because it was the heels, it was them getting stooged. 

This was a lot of fun and it's always great to see Kingston in the mix with younger and contrasting talent. That's the strength of him. Yes, he can trade chops with Minoru Suzuki or whatever, but it's so much more interesting when you put him in there against a Lee Moriarty or Soberano, Jr. or, I don't know, Doink and see what happens.

AEW Dynamite 3/11/26

Dogs (David Finlay/Gabe Kidd) vs Orange Cassidy/Darby Allin

MD: This match was a cog in the storyline machine, a set up to the Roddy turn (or non-turn or whatever you'd call it) and setting up the six-man for the PPV, but it was also a way to really debut Finlay and make a statement about just who and what the Dogs were. They had that pretty amazing enhancement match on Collision, but this punctuated that real well in an actual match.

They're different than almost every team on the roster because they're dogged, just incessant energy. They have big spots for down the stretch, but for a lot of the body of the match, they just stay on their opponents. If you put Connors in there as well, then he's just throwing himself at people. With these two, it's more catching, like Finlay caught Darby on his dive with a forearm in order to really take over after the initial ambush and fire back. I liked how much they made Cassidy work for literally every inch when he was fighting from underneath. There were one or two times I thought he was about to make the hot tag but they dragged him back like their namesake and it really worked for me. 

And of course, Darby and Orange are the secret main character team of AEW, an odd couple that feed into one another in perfect, subtle ways. To make a very dated comic book reference, they're the Defenders of AEW, a non-team that absolutely work. I get there's mileage out of Roddy and Cassidy (a similar if less subtle team-up) right now, but I'd love to see Darby/Cassidy against FTR or hell even the Bucks (and for me to say that..). They're the TV workmen of the company and I'd be really interested to see a fighting champions run at some point. 

Anyway, this really got the job done and I hope that Finlay, Kidd, Connors get the freedom to keep working matches like this. So much of it was still all action but it was stifling and oppressive in the best way at the same time.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/26 - 6/1

AEW Collision 5/25/25

Top Flight/AR Fox vs RUSH/Beast Mortos/Dralistico

MD: One of my favorite lines is that wrestling isn't math except for maybe when it comes to tag team structure. The idea there is that tags work best when the heat is longer than the shine or everything breaking down in the finishing stretch. That way you build up the drama, bring the crowd up for hope spots, take them down for cutoffs, and squeeze as much pressure out of things as possible before the hot tag. But so much of what I believe in is to set up baselines. Baselines are useful to ensure that the crowd has a certain expectation and reacts accordingly, but they're also useful because once in a blue moon you can subvert them to high effect. If you don't have baselines or if you subvert them too often, then you may create sensation in the moment, but it tends to lack substance and staying power.

If there was a set baseline for tag team wrestling in AEW (and I'd argue that it's iffy at best) this match would have done a great job subverting. It had everything break down right from the get go and only settle down into a sort of heat midway through before everything went wild again. LFI create a special sort of chaos that allows for this, the same way that Abby or Brody might in years past. Here, they ambushed right from the get go, tossing Top Flight to the floor and focusing on Fox. Rush pulled off the pad and they immediately made the exposed buckle dangerously important by having Fox do everything in his power to avoid being slammed into it. Because of their cruelty and hubris in not settling on violence but instead wanting to escalate things, Fox was able to get some space and set up a huge dive train (with Rush plastering Fox on the floor after he crashed into Dralistico and Dante hitting an absolutely crazy dive on Mortos before hyping up the crowd).

The heat then only started when they managed to finally toss Fox into that exposed buckle to cut off the early comeback. Chekhov's Gun loaded and fired to high effect. I would have liked to see the buckle play into things a little more afterwards but it was absolutely necessarily. After the break, Darius took the hot tag and hit his usual hot comeback sequence and everything broke down again, before LFI finally swept them under for a definitive win. So yes, way too much chaos and mayhem instead of building up pressure but by starting with the heels in charge and basically trading in the shine for that extra bit of heat and two comebacks, it all still worked out okay. Still, the more they stick to establishing that baseline, the more an exception like this will feel extraordinary and not just commonplace. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/27 - 6/2

ROH TV 5/23/24

Workhorsemen vs Angelico/Serpentico

MD: We've got no Fingers of Death active this week and it's going to be a little bleak for a while with Kingston out. The fifth one is eternally floating and there are various people that will get rotated in there like Christian and Rush and Athena, but today, we're playing moneyball with the Workhorsemen and friends.

Anthony Henry is right off of an ill-timed jaw injury and a sort of a strange journey of being gone and being back and you can tell that he was rearing to get back in the game. JD Drake is the very definition of a DVDVR/Segunda Caida guy and I'm happy for whatever focus he gets. These ROH matches really do buck a lot of the current AEW criticism. They're closer to ten minutes than twenty, not stretched out by a commercial break, and very often, you don't know coming in who's going to win. There was just as much chance that Angelico and Serpentico took this as the Workhorsemen. And given that Workhorsemen won this, just as much chance that they were going to win as Top Flight in the match covered next.  

While the comeback was a lot of fun, my favorite part here was the opening exchanges. Where the Workhorsemen excel most is enabling their opponents to really be the best versions of themselves possible. They're versatile, contrasting in size and shape and style. Drake's excellent at knowing when to give and when not to give. Here he was matched up with Angelico and combined one or two slick and smooth little counters with jamming Angelico on a trip, only to miss a senton a moment later to put himself off balance for Angelico to actually hit. He was able to be there for Angelico so he could hit some of his more tricked out stuff but not make it look overly collaborative either. Then Henry and Serpentico did an extended tit-for-tat exchange that veered just far enough away from looking choreographed to work even though it was all done at high speed with everything hitting. Then, as the crowd was cheering, Henry nailed a cheapshot to take over and start the heat. Maybe it's because he appreciates the roar of the crowd and the thirll of the action more than ever post-injury but he was really living in the moment in these matches, pumped up and gloating during the spaces in-between. He's always a "hit it clean" guy but he was projecting for the last row in the best way in these. They made it seem like Angelico and Serpentico were going to take this before Maria's guys came out for the distraction, but that's part of the Workhorsemen's strength as well, making it all believable not matter what 'it' needs to be.

ROH TV 5/30/24

Workhorsemen vs Top Flight

MD: More of them enabling their opponents to be their absolute best. That meant that Dante was bounding off of Drake's back or leaping over and under and in between the ropes with Henry on a hook for a big move. It meant that Darius was able to storm in after the hot tag as scrappy and gritty and fiery as can be, with big and broad canvases to attack. Darius has pretty snappy punches in a world where no one's doing punches anymore and he stands out even next to his own brother because of it; that said, you couldn't overly fault Dante's rapid-fire forearms right into Henry's recently injured jaw.

And in between those moments, when it was time to grind down on Dante, the Workhorsemen kept things moving while being oppressive and interesting at the same time. Drake's took full advantage of Dante's jumping ability in the transition to heat as he pressed him up against the ropes and smashed him on the outside. It's a move that always looks great and effective, that was especially so here, and that is used at varying times in the match by Drake, but I'm actively glad it didn't show up in the Angelico/Serpentico match because while it can be a 75% of the time move, it really shouldn't be an every match one. It's too unique and conditional for that. This had just the right balance for a competitive mid-card TV match that could have gone either way, the sort of thing people occasionally lament is missing these days.

AEW Collision 6/1/24

Workhorsemen vs Daniel Garcia/Katsuyori Shibata

MD: Got to admit that it seemed like a nice neat way to do it this week. Three Workhorsemen matches over two weeks. Three very different sets of opponents. I didn't know that JD's leg was going to go out here putting a bit of a damper on all of this.

That said, it makes for a completely different sort of watching experience, right? It's 2024. When you peel back why we watch wrestling, old wrestling, new wrestling, it doesn't matter, it's not the same as why and how someone might have been watching it in 64 or 84. A lot of the time when I watch matches, I already know who goes over, right? I want to see the journey. I want to see it play out. I want to see the creative choices and how they're executed. I want to see if they zig in the way I want them to zig or zag in a way that I'd never seen before. I want to see them take the old structures and overlay new bits of execution. I want to see them tug at those most human emotions like only wrestling can do in ways both classic and novel.

Rarely do you really, truly connect with who you're watching though. When you do, it's special. It's like watching a perfect game in baseball a little bit, right? That butterfly in your stomach feeling where you don't want to jinx it. You want them to hit the landing. You think to yourself "man, if this thing just has the right finish and they make it the rest of the way..." I'll admit to watching some 2023-2024 Danielson matches and thinking to myself "I hope he's ok," but then he's been a jerk like that (and has landed on his head errantly a few times too).

Where I'm going here is that shortly into this one, JD Drake messed up his leg or his foot. They could have went home. They persisted. He could have stayed on the apron and had Anthony Henry work the lion's share of it. That would have been a pretty tough sell overall though. For a minute, it seemed like they might go that route, that we might have actually gotten something of a heel-in-peril structure for good or ill. Truth be told, they needed JD in there to shut Garcia down, to turn the tide, to justify a team of two killers like Shibata and Garcia getting dragged under.

Shibata and Garcia are like a modern day Raging and Ravishing, except for Shibata is more cold steel than hot fire and Garcia has a ton of steak to go along with the sizzle. When it happened and they were checking on Drake, Shibata dropped down into his pose and after a moment, Garcia did the same. Then we got that extra bit with Garcia and Henry, with Garcia hitting his new triple twisting neckbreakers (with a Henry heelbutt in the middle to keep it interesting), before Drake came in and asserted himself. The guy could barely walk but he is such a presence and an imposing figure that he could control the center of the ring with sheer gravitational force. Garcia created motion and movement by coming towards him and he powered through and did the rest.

There were moments in the back half where you maybe looked twice or wondered at something feeling just a bit off. Shibata has a great way of making his violence look natural, of just walking over and getting a shot in as opposed to setting up a complex spot (the world's big enough for both approaches), but some of those Tenryu tribute shots looked a bit hesitant which might have had to do to filling in necessary gaps. But like I said, they didn't just go home with it even though no one would have blamed them for that. They kept going. Shibata and Garcia needed a win that meant something, one that had heft and weight to it. Shibata and Garcia didn't need to just win; they needed to overcome. That meant when Drake finally did make it up and hit his moonsault, the fans knew full well what they were witnessing, the effort at play, the gutsiness in front of them, and they popped big accordingly. And when Shibata interjected to set up a win for his side, it meant something. It meant everything that it needed to mean, really a hell of an accomplishment, all things considered.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/6 - 5/12

AEW Collision 5/11/24

Blackpool Combat Club (Bryan Danielson/Claudio Castagnoli) vs Top Flight

MD: Unfortunately, I didn't love this one. And no, it's not because we had gotten in our heads the moment the show was announced that we wanted Makabe vs Danielson. I like Top Flight in general. Dante is a special talent. He has that extra bit of something that lets him go a bit higher, snap off a bit quicker. He can couple that with sympathetic selling. I've known that ever since the Malakai Black singles match. Darius has looked his best standing up to guys like Moxley. He's a scrapper deep down and should lean harder in that direction. Claudio's one of the greatest bases outside of Mexico ever. Danielson is Danielson, incentivized to make every match he has left special. 

So it had a lot going for it on paper. It also had a lot working against it. This was a hierarchy clash, and that meant that Top Flight was going to be punching up. Maybe two years ago you could have played up Top Flight having a significant teamwork advantage, but the BCC has been around for a while and Danielson has teamed with Claudio a bunch. Maybe in Minnesota, Top Flight would be the underdog babyfaces and treated as such by the crowd, but this was the first main match on the first main show in Vancouver and Danielson, a Pacific Northwest icon was in the match. There was a time a couple of years ago where I had hoped that the BCC would become Tsuruta-Gun and they'd spend a year feuding with a new Super Generation Army (I was thinking Garcia/Moriarty/Dante/Hook type guys with Yuta in the Taue turncoat role). But things didn't work out that way. The matches we have gotten along those lines had been too scattered to really coalesce into any sort of meaningful movement.

Still, Danielson and Claudio are two of the best, and top, top notch tag workers as well. Dante and Darius are talented and fiery. While I didn't realize it coming in (and in fact was frustrated that they weren't doing a Danielson/Cash tag given Dax had a singles but we don't know what we don't know, of course), the match was meant to have a few purposes: to establish how much Danielson values AEW and its talent, to reestablish him as dominant after his loss and a couple of weeks away, to position him to have the post match promo and for Claudio to walk out. So this could have worked. Those were not necessarily hard goals to achieve. It more or less achieved them. As a match judged on its own standing however, it failed both in theory and execution. Execution first: quite often, the wrestlers didn't seem on the same page. I can think of a couple of clear occasions, when Claudio took a twisting headscissors from Dante and during a moment where a Top Flight double-team pressing off of Claudio was maybe supposed to take out Danielson too (maybe it wasn't? Who knows. It sort of did, just not clearly). Nothing overly egregious so long as everyone is healthy and fine. They were just jarring and unexpected moments from guys you expected to hit things clean even more so than anyone else. 

The structure was the bigger issue. Top Flight managed to control in their corner early, but a lot of this ended up being Darius getting swept under and battling from underneath. The problem was that the crowd was entirely behind Danielson as he was laying a beating on him. Darius' hope spots elicited boos at worst and woos at best and neither were exactly promising in the face of "yes" strikes. If Top Flight had taken a cockier, more brazen approach earlier with their control maybe they could have leaned de facto heel later on but they instead chose to breathlessly try to contain Claudio. It meant that it was far too much a stretch for the match to course correct and make Danielson's dominance feel deserved. Dante was able to shift the tide just a little with his rapid-fire forearms to Claudio after the hot tag, but things fell apart again soon after and the match stumbled to conclusion more than it stuck the landing. I fully believe there's a good match between these two but also that we'll probably never get to see it. It unfortunately wasn't this match in this place on this night with this purpose. It did enough of what it was supposed that we'll all just move on to the next thing, but I can't say it doesn't leave me a bit wistful for what might have been.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: The Elite vs. Top Flight Fox

 

Kenny Omega/The Young Bucks vs. AR Fox/Dante & Darius Martin AEW Rampage 2/15 (Aired 2/17/23)

ER: On paper the idea of The Elite working a 10 minute long NBA on TNT match filled with amateur Harlem Globetrotter routines sounds fucking terrible. I mean just awful. They're wearing jerseys and yucking it up real chuffed with themselves, throwing the rock around. It sounds so fucking bad man. But I guess my brain is just wrecked on gas station Stay Hard pills because I enjoyed all of it and actually wish it had way more basketball spots. How were the basketball spots in this actually good? Everybody in the match handled a ball much better than I would have guessed and what should have played as Bad Chikara Shit played out as Good Chikara Shit: Jump balls leading to atomic drops or superkicks, Kenny catching a ball to the nuts running in to interfere, Nick getting a ball thrown at the bridge of his nose two different times! Who could have possibly guessed that everyone but AR Fox had Necro Butcher Throwing Chair precision with a basketball. 

Fox didn't really contribute to any of the good pass drill clown hijinks, but he at least spammed a hall dozen high hang time dives. AR Fox dives look impressive in air but make very light contact, so spamming them as a swarming attack instead of impact attack works better. They made the smart choice and made all of the basketball spots end with actual impact. The Comedy lead to The Violence. A basketball to the face hurts, and the ball was flying around the ring while guys were busy doing other spots. Darius Martin looks cool backflipping with a basketball. Really cool. Like the Phoenix Suns Gorilla cool. The Goon worked excellently as a violent hockey player gimmick because it's cool seeing big Bill Irwin checking guys into boards and going low on shoulderblocks. We've never gotten a Bill Laimbeer/Draymond Green violent basketball player gimmick. We're not there yet. The technology isn't ready. But the basketball spots in this match transcended Human Tornado dunking on a huracanrana and I was not expecting that. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/2 - 1/8

AEW Dynamite 1/4

Bryan Danielson vs. Tony Nese

MD: A lot of grumbling and backlash for this one when it was announced, and my big takeaway was that I wish it had gotten just another minute or two so that Danielson and Nese could really go. Nese is probably the most giving, selfless guy on the roster, someone who knows his job, knows his role, knows his skillset, that can go but that still wants to get under the skin of the fans instead of having them cheer for his exchanges. He's the guy on the roster most likely to get cake in his face or to be completely embarrassed by Orange Cassidy but he has just enough credibility through his stuff looking good, through having Woods at his side, and through the sheer cardio and shape he's in. Basically, he's everything I'd want a Seth Rollins type guy to be. That means he's a lower-midcarder who makes everyone around him look better, but I'm almost always glad to see him. It's just that we live in an upside down world where Seth Rollins is Seth Rollins and not Tony Nese. It's not Tony Nese's fault. It's the world that's backwards.

They were exceptionally careful about this. Nese used everything at his disposal from an early ambush while Danielson was basking in the crowd's reaction to having Sterling and Nese out there to get tiny bits of advantage. He could never press it because the idea here was to show Danielson as an absolute star. And he was, but what I'm going to remember most is Nese's missed knee in the corner, just how well he set it up, just how well he pinballed off, the action and the reaction. Ultimately, this match was the right match for the moment, something celebratory, something tangentially connected to MJF, something quick and clean, and high impact, that showcased Danielson in front of his home crowd to set up the gauntlet ahead of him and the lure of the PPV match stip. Still, I had assumed he had picked Nese because he wanted to have one or two cardio exchanges where he really pushed himself, and I'm a little sad we didn't quite get them here. It would be a hell of a Dark match at Universal with no stakes or story purpose if they ever wanted to do it again though.

Samoa Joe (c) vs. Darby Allin

MD: I don't think I liked this quite as much as the first match between them but that doesn't mean there wasn't a ton to love. Darby's matches almost always start in some interesting way. Here it was Joe going after Nick Wayne just because he could (he's the King of TV after all) and Darby making him pay for it, then capitalizing on that advantage before the bell rang with some well-deserved revenge with the skateboard and a huge dive off a ladder. Joe's up there with Yokozuna and Abby as someone who can believably cut anyone off at any moment though. Here he caught Darby (who had maybe messed up his leg on the dive) off the apron and just crushed him on the stairs. This started a pretty awesome Joe control bit through the commercial break where he pinballed off the post again and jawed with the crowd. Between the size differential and the leg, Joe was able to just squash Darby, blocking his attempts to recover. You have to appreciate Joe's expressiveness here, just how deeply he was into every moment. He was absolutely living the character, smug, bemused, believing in himself entirely and looking down on everything and everyone around him. Great finishing stretch here, with Sting's pep talk driving Darby to Sting up, Joe putting forth amazingly portrayed struggle in not trying to get pulled out of the corner (causing the turnbuckle cover to go flying) and the two of them somehow making the code red believable before the finish. I almost would have had Darby hit the drop from all four corners just to put a sort of Warrior vs Macho Man exclamation point on things, but you can't argue with the hometown pop at the end.

AEW Rampage 1/6

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Top Flight

MD: It's since come out in interviews that the entire idea behind the BCC was to give young guys top guys to work. Regal has his own way to explain it but the others explained it more like Tsuruta-gun vs. the Super Generation Army. We did see a little bit of that at first, with Yuta and with a tag or six-man here or there but eventually, it all got subsumed into the JAS feud and it went away. This is it back and as clear as day.

That meant, as opposed to the Claudio tag from a week or two ago, that the BCC pressed and pressed and pressed and pressed. They pushed the Martins to their absolute limit and every glimpse of hope, every bit of offense, felt entirely earned and like a small victory in and of itself. This felt a lot more like one of those AJPW tags, where Top Flight might be able to force a tag, get a shot or two in, but then would get shut down immediately. A tag didn't, in and of itself, represent a shift in momentum. Quite the opposite as the damage had been done to the guy tagging out and it was still two-on-one until he recovered. In fact, some of the most hope Top Flight had was when Darius tagged while he was still more or less on the floor outside. They capitalized on his positioning as best as they could but it never lasted long. The BCC were just too much. That was the point as it made every iota of Top Flight's fight all the more valiant for the impossible odds. It's been a while since Mox and Danielson were able to have a straight up tag and they had some tandem stuff that was on the backburner for quite a while and that made the task even more impossible for Top Flight.

The Dante vs. Danielson bits were shiny and flashy and made me want to see a singles match. Darius balanced exhaustion and fire well when he did get something of a comeback, but he still has to find his own niche; it's never going to benefit him to be compared to Dante if they're doing very similar things. This was brutal in the best way and it kind of makes me hope for them to run it back again with Mox and Yuta where they can get some some revenge on Moxley.

Darby Allin vs. Mike Bennett

MD: Credit to Bennett here for being a good hand. He took most of the match but the only things I remembered after a first watch was Darby's finishing shots: the dropkick onto the chair on the outside that you know Bennett insisted on taking, as opposed the usual Darby wipe out bump; the bit where Maria laid on top of him and Darby was going to jump anyway; the code red off the top. Maybe that super slick kick out of the leg right into the grounded hammerlock too. And Bennett held up his end on keeping heat, even if the fans were going to chant Boston Sucks and You Still Suck instead of Bennett Sucks, alongside Let's Go Darby and just Darby's name. To his credit, they weren't chanting about Maria. I thought his cut offs were particularly good though I have to admit that his offense in general, while it all looked solid and gave Darby things to work with, was definitely all over the place. He did just enough focusing on a leg or an arm to establish that there was something there but not enough for it actually to be a meaningful story beat. It distracted instead of resonated. This is one where maybe Darby should have either taken just a bit more of it and flex his muscles as a champion once again or at least had Maria and Taven give him a bit more trouble to help protect him. I will say that Bennett came out of this looking better than he came in, even despite the most memorable moments being him getting his comeuppance.

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/25/20

What Worked

-I liked most of Hangman vs. Silver, good way to start off the show. Silver is a fun guy to feature, a compact power pack who was really good at cutting off Page. One of my least favorite things in Page matches is how unnecessarily complicated some of his offense is, and how it is never reversed. I liked how Silver cut off a lot of signature offense, like hitting a rana to counter the rope flip lariat. It made Page approach things differently and made for a more satisfying story. Silver has a low center of gravity and can use it in cool ways, like dropping low to the ground to do a quick go behind and snap German suplex. I wish Page had treated Silver's kicks a little more seriously, as it felt like we were building to something really cool when Silver was kicking away at Page, not letting him up, dodging right when he needed to, landing a big hooking kick to the jaw, but Page kinda just stood up and beat him anyway. Also, Silver doesn't need to do the half gainer flip bump every time he takes a clothesline. He did it three times here and you really don't need to be doing the same signature bump three times in three minutes. However, he also planted Page with a brainbuster and took a nice high backdrop bump, and there was more than enough here to make it work. 

-When Lee Johnson makes it onto Dynamite, you know you're getting a nice squad match, because he always takes the best beatings in squash matches. I need to seek out some of his Dark matches to see how he does with actual offense, because I like the way he bumps for lariats and other big offense. He doesn't take intentionally athletic feather soft bumps, his bumps look like he is being hurt. He made that lariat on the floor look brutal, and I don't think Will Hobbs has a very brutal lariat. 

-I do like that AEW is the kind of fed that makes mention about how cool it is that Jericho and Chris Daniels are meeting for the very first time. That's always cool to me when two guys who have been in wrestling for so long finally cross paths in the ring, like Buddy Rose facing Kerry von Erich in WWF. And let me tell you, if this was the year 1999 or 2000, I could not tell you just how over the moon excited I would be to see a Jericho/Daniels match. But this 2020 version is probably about as good as could reasonably expected. Jake Hager was my favorite guy here, and Hager might be THEE guy that I am absolutely never excited to see on my TV screen who can actually deliver something cool. He always gets an "oh sheesh this guy?" reaction from me, but I can't deny how much I enjoy Hager's meathead mouth breathing style. The best part of this was when Hager was driving his knee right into Danielses' back while throwing fists right into the ribs. It looked nasty as hell. 

-The gear AND choreography of the Omega Sweepers has improved every week. It's really satisfying to watch performers get better at their craft in real time. Moxley beatdown was strong. I want Moxley to wreck this guy. 

-Shida/Anna Jay was better than I expected, mainly because Jay doesn't even have 20 career matches work. Obviously there are going to be some glitches, so I'm more impressed with the things she can pull off naturally. She is really strong at making up the difference when selling strikes, like when Shida threw a dropkick that landed a little low and Jay sold her jaw convincingly. She goes to the jaw/mouth sell a bit much, did it right before that dropkick when missing a charge into the buckles, but it's a strong looking sell so hats off. I liked a lot of the ways she would counter Shida offense, like blocking the running apron knee with a downward strike, and especially her shifting weight at the last minute to land on Shida after a vertical suplex. I thought it was just a bad looking suplex at first, but I love a reversal that actually makes it look like the move wasn't pulled off quite right. Reversals in 2020 wrestling are so clean that they usually don't look like they're reversing anything. This looked like Shida tried to do a suplex and wasn't expecting Jay's weight shift. The nearfall kickout by Shida was perfectly timed, actually got me to buy into Jay sneaking away with the upset. 

-Fenix running into Blade's awesome powerslam, that works.

What Didn't Work

-Taz dropping silly shooty comments like "creative has nothing for me" or "wish me luck in my future endeavors" does nothing for me. Taz does not come off threatening to me at this point, and there are too many guys on the roster who could have locked in a better looking submission. Cody's burn about Taz's son (Hook!) training with Cody and not Taz was strong. 

-I feel bad for all the people who have strongly backed Rusev and have been gifted Miro. 

-I love Jack Evans and would rather see him on Dynamite than any number of other less interesting flippers that have been featured. But it's also really weird to give Top Flight a big Dynamite match last week ago, a match that got them buzz and made a big impression, to then bring Evans and Angelico back to Dynamite just to beat Top Flight. I don't think the match worked as a match, as all of these AEW flyer vs. flyer matches feel so same-y. I don't think Top Flight does much of anything that comes off natural, can't adjust on the fly; They can either do long semi-complicated sequences that end with something dumb like kicking Angelico in the arm, or they do weird things like adjust their several feet while rope running. It all comes off like guys just running through some spots that don't always feel like they belong to the same match. I did like the way Angelico went after Daunte's leg, thought his roll throughs to trap Daunte in leg locks and holds looked super cool and felt like old IWRG bleeding into AEW. Also, it is supremely annoying to give these guys names like Darius and Daunte, because there is no way I'm going to remember which one is fucking Daunte and which is Darius. Air Wolf I can remember, but Darius Martin? 

-I didn't think Fenix and PAC looked good as a team. They're two guys who, from their styles, seem like they would complement each other nicely, but their set ups felt long and things missed the mark. But I thought Butcher and the Blade looked good as heel opposition, thought Butcher looked great as a fist swinging bully, thought Blade worked some nice sequences with Fenix and especially loved Fenix aborting a flying attack off the top, jumping past Blade, and running hard into a great snap powerslam. But the match overall felt scattered and like it would have been a real mess without Butcher and Blade. 

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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/18/20

 What Worked

-I'm never excited to see Kip Sabian wrestling on TV, but I appreciate that AEW has significantly cut down on his televised ring time. There was one point earlier this year where Sabian had actually wrestled more TV matches than anyone else on the roster, and I am thankful that AEW at least realized how fucking stupid that was and now only put him on TV occasionally, rather than weekly. 

-I like the level of temper tantrum unprofessionalism that pours out of Thunder Rosa during her matches, always makes things way more interesting than the typical bad women's matches they put on. There are always a couple of things that land in meaner than normal areas and you just don't see that in other AEW women's matches. I liked her hitting a hard senton right across Serena Deeb's chest, Schiavone says "Her reputation is well earned," and I think he was talking about her match quality but that's not what I think of when I hear she has a reputation. I like her unprofessionalism the most when it actually applies to a good match, and this was a good match. There was messiness, which is baked in at this point, and the roll up counter stuff at the end felt completely unnecessary, but I liked a lot of this. Deeb's Tenryu powerbomb after Baker snuck in a swinging neckbreaker on the ramp was a great nearfall (bad move hanging in the crowd after the match, Britt), some shots to the jaw landed great, loved Deeb scraping her boot on Rosa's face and hitting a cool diving shoulder tackle off the ropes. 

What Didn't Work

-It's cool that AEW gives high profile TV time to a team like Top Flight, but I cannot imagine a new team working a style I'm any less interested in than Top Flight. It feels like every single indy I have access to has 1-2 teams exactly like Top Flight, who all do at least One Cool Athletic Thing and really wholly on taking moves to reverse moves and need opponents to be in very specific locations for the bulk of their offense to work. There were a couple cool moves, and I liked the speed Duante brought to cartwheels and the impressive height he got on leapfrogs. But I'm going to need to see more than someone hitting the same tope con hilo that literally two dozen guys on the AEW roster can also (and do!) hit. I hate that kind of offense where someone takes a move, but then that move gives them the power to reverse a move. Duante took a Finlay roll from Matt Jackson and then just turned it into a crucifix pin. I guess it looked cool, but if you can just eat offense and act like that gives you leverage to take a pin, I'm probably not going to understand it. But I'm sure many people are stoked to see more guys on TV who can go through the motions of hitting a dragon rana, and not care that neither leg actually hooked the shoulders on said rana. 

-Kip Sabian is a good opponent for Orange Cassidy to work his hands-in-pocket offense against, because Kip Sabian's strikes never look like they actually connect with anything anyway, so it makes sense that Cassidy is so easily able to avoid it. Sabian's wrestling is really confusing, because him throwing elbows, or kicks to the stomach don't look like it is connecting anyway, so when he misses a clothesline I can't always tell if it is just Cassidy avoiding him or if that was Sabian's finisher. I liked Cassidy blocking the drop toehold and stepping out of it, because it looked like a drop toehold that would not have taken anyone down. Appropriate sell. Sabian actually hits two clotheslines during picture in picture, and they actually do make the same amount of contact as the missed clothesline earlier. He also makes the decision to throw a dropkick at a turnbuckle, which I can only assume was his intention because Cassidy moved away from the turnbuckle well before Sabian threw the dropkick. Odd choice. He also made it so his head only connected 1 of 3 times while being hit into turnbuckles, so there's a strong chance that Kip Sabian is playing some weird game of wrestling telephone, where he is interpreting movements as explained to him by several different wrestlers but without ever actually seeing pro wrestling. 

-THAT was the promised contract signing!? I love a good contract signing, and a decent contract signing is something that even the worst era WWE can still make look good. But this was one dry dick of a contract signing. Moxley attacked backstage and rubbing his head while Omega gets all his Observer accomplishments listed? Fuck man just shove a table onto someone. 

-You put Eddie Kingston on commentary and then cut right to a commercial? I had to listen to Miro mumble his way through a brutally bad Kip Sabian match with a far shorter commercial break. That's just the lousiest time management. 

-PAC/Blade was not the comeback match I assume the wanted for PAC. They did that dumb kind of shit where they chase each other back and forth to opposing turnbuckles and kick each other in the head, lotta boots to the head that didn't actually look good. PAC hits a missile dropkick that Blade doesn't quite get into position for so it just looked like PAC took the hardest possible back bump off the top. Blade's powerslam looked good, the superplex looked good, but a lot of this match stunk. 

-Sadly, I got into a very long and very pointless argument during the main event, so missed a chunk of the middle. That stretch I missed could have been very awesome. The parts that I saw were not good, primarily due to Brian Cage working like a really terrible joshi wrestler. Gimme them shitty enziguiris and keep working like a 140 lb. woman, yeah! I thought several moments looked off and I still do not understand all of the praise I see for Ricky Starks. Is this the same kind of praise that people gave to MJF when he first became a thing a year or two ago? Or the way a bunch of people thought Damien Sandow was the fucking future 7 years ago? 

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